Episode 6
· 01:17:07
Welcome to Everything is Interesting. Today joining me is Christian Genco. And, Christian, why don't you give a quick intro and we'll jump right in?
Christian:Hi. I what what dimension of intro would you like? I, I work in software.
Travis:Anything you want. We're gonna talk about I think we're gonna talk all about, like, air quality.
Christian:Yes. I have no credentials in air quality. I'm Yeah. I'm in no way formally, credentialed to be able to talk about this. But, yeah, my my background's in software engineering.
Christian:I've been in, like, the the bootstrap SaaS world for my entire professional career. I've never had a job. And I'm really into fresh air.
Travis:Awesome. Yeah.
Christian:So that's the I'm I'm excited to talk about it.
Travis:Fresh air, evangelist and air quality evangelist.
Christian:Sure.
Travis:Is it safe to say? Yeah.
Christian:Yes. Cool. Like, the business coach president?
Travis:Yeah. Let's jump right in. You have I mean, first, you have this, like, epic blog post on your site, all about, like, your experiments and stuff with, you know, improving air quality and teaching other people how to do that. How did you, like where did this come from? How did you get here in the first place?
Christian:Yeah. I was trying to remember because I I knew that was a question you were gonna ask. I I was in this, kick, maybe maybe 5 or 6 years ago where I was just trying to figure everything out from first principles. This was before I got married. This was before I had kids.
Christian:And, I think I was really just trying to get to the fundamentals of, like, what should I be eating? And what should I be drinking? And how much sleep should I be getting?
Travis:Yeah. Like the very basics, like how do I how do I make my body function well? How do I live my life? Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:Right. And I had so much time just to endlessly experiment these sorts of things. And I I had a history of doing this sort of thing. I I I love doing these sorts of experiments to try to figure out, like, what what's the weird way of doing things. I don't know if you know, about Brian Johnson, the, the, like, vampire, founder of Braintree who's trying to live forever.
Christian:He's, like, a way more extreme version of what I thought I was doing. If I had way more money, I I probably wouldn't have gone along those lines. But I was doing that same sort of thing, but trying to figure out, like, different diets. And I tried the keto thing and the and the, paleo thing and the, I tried all all vegan and I tried all meat and, trying to trying to figure out, what the best way to eat is. A little summary on that.
Christian:Most of the mainstream stuff is correct, like with diet and exercise. Where I ended up on those is, like, you know, eat fewer calories than you consume, eat a little bit more protein. With water, with with, like, drinking things, very boring, like, you know, drink water. Reverse osmosis filtered water is probably the best for you. And in one of these offshoots of trying to dig down into, like, what's the best way of doing all these things, I did find with air quality that there are some weird things that have drastically improved my life that don't require huge interventions that have like, they're they're weird things.
Christian:One one of my guiding general principles in, this whole set of experiments and research was, like, I'm trying to minimize raised eyebrows. Like, with food, you know, there were a bunch of weird diets I was on where I told doctors I was, like, eating, you know, 60% of my diet through fat, and their eyebrows would raise, like, hold on. Like, that kinda goes against all the advice of, you know, cardiovascular health and all that sort of thing. So as a general guiding principle, I try to minimize raised eyebrows. There are some weird things that I found in air quality specifically that I would recommend, like gadgets to buy, that are strange, that I have felt, have, like, a market improvement in health.
Christian:So, the original question is, like, what what got me into this? Deep curiosity into, like, is the mainstream approach to everything in my life the correct way to do it? And the deeper I dug into air quality specifically, the the more I found, like, there's are some things that I think 15 years from now are gonna be standard accepted science and, you know, the way that we build buildings is gonna be different. The the things that we monitor in air are gonna be different. And I I feel pretty confident that, I know what those things are gonna be.
Travis:Yeah. Gotcha. I I often wonder in general as an aside, like, not just with air quality or health, but, like, I often wonder about what those things are gonna be, you know, 15, 50, 100 years in the future where because right like, right now, we look back on people in, like, early 20th century and go like, oh, man. They were missing out on this thing that is totally obvious to us, you know, or even further back, like washing your hands, germ theory, you know, just like the very like, what we see now is basic things.
Christian:Right.
Travis:Like, logically, there will be those things about you know, in the future, people think about our time of, like, oh, they they didn't know this thing that is so obvious and basic to us. So Yeah. That totally jive like, resonates of, like, okay. What's the thing that, like, you're saying 20 years from now is gonna be, like, oh, just accepted norm. What are we missing out on?
Travis:How can we accelerate that? Exactly.
Christian:A lot of those things also come from problems that we've created. I think, with air quality in particular Right. A lot of these problems I'm about to talk about come from the fact that we live in houses that are really well built and, like, sealed from from the outside, and we want the, you know, we we have this technology to be able to cook inside. That's incredible and remarkable. And the sorts of problems created by that system aren't problems that people would have had 2000 years ago because we couldn't build houses that well.
Christian:People, you know, build these these huts and shacks with these giant gaps between the walls. That lets fresh air in. That that's, yeah. The the I think the way that I've sort of formulated it is, technology in general is good, but with every, gain in technology, you risk, oh, it's it's Chesterton's fence, from c k Chesterton of, like, don't knock over a fence if you don't know why it was built in the first place. There there's categories of things like that where when we introduce a new technology, we don't realize the new problems that we didn't have before that we were sort of taking for granted that, are not created by the new technology.
Christian:So the, you know, the the solution to that, I don't think, philosophically, is, well, technology is bad. Let's let's go to the old primal ways of doing things. There's an argument to be made, I suppose, with that for food specifically, but I argue against myself.
Travis:It's like the eruption that proves the rule, sort of.
Christian:Perhaps. Perhaps. In in general, I think the the solution to the problems that technology creates, is a better understanding and and more better technology. And you can you can follow that too far, sort of the the, antagonist to the naturalistic fallacy. But, yeah, specifically with air quality, I think the the place where right now, like, we've had these new problems being created, and I think there are some practices and some technology that, solves problems that weren't problems 2000 years ago because we didn't live in houses that were so well sealed.
Christian:We weren't cooking inside as much.
Travis:Okay. So, I mean, we could go we could go a number of directions here. What's your I guess, how do you if somebody asks you about this, how do you summarize, like, the what are the problems? And then from there, like, let's go let's look at okay. Then what do you do about those problems?
Christian:Oh, man. I'm gonna I'm gonna be about to ramble for, like, 2 minutes.
Travis:That's the whole point of this podcast. That's perfect. That's great. Yeah.
Christian:But I I, I lament, I think, that I don't have, like, a snappy Yeah. You know, I think we'll talk
Travis:about bitch. Whatever.
Christian:Yeah. The well, like, if if I am talking to someone in an in an elevator, I think the, like, the most interesting, concise problem that I can surface for people is that, it would benefit everyone to be paying attention to carbon dioxide levels indoors. And that's something no one thinks about, but you can get a monitor that that monitors the level of of carbon dioxide in the air. Carbon dioxide, by the way, distinct from carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a is a problem that we've known about for a while.
Christian:You might have a carbon monoxide detector in your house, that comes from incomplete combustion. Usually, if you have gas powered appliances, that'll kill you. That's like a
Travis:super serious problem. Super deadly, super fast.
Christian:Yeah. We know about that. That's yeah. That's that's not what I'm advocating for. Carbon dioxide is the product of, biological metabolism.
Christian:So when you breathe out, you can sort of think of it as you you have, like, these tiny furnaces in each of your cells. You breathe oxygen in. The oxygen goes through your bloodstream, goes to each of your cells. There's the tiny furnace that takes in oxygen, has an output of carbon dioxide. And I don't wanna get too much into that.
Christian:You breathe out the carbon dioxide. That's where carbon dioxide comes from. So there has to be humans or biological things in the room to make carbon dioxide. Atmospheric levels, if you just go outside, of carbon dioxide are somewhere between 4 100 and 600 parts per million. If you're indoors in a room that is, roughly sealed, so like the doors are closed, the windows are closed, If a single person is in a normal sized room, like a think like a bedroom in a house, for about, 45 minutes to an hour, the approximate concentration of carbon dioxide will double in that room to about a 1000, parts per million.
Christian:Now the problem with that is you're effectively, you can model it as you are slowly suffocating. If think think of it like, you know, in the extreme case, if you put a plastic bag in your head and you start breathing into the plastic bag, you die. The reason you die is, you use up all the oxygen. There's a much higher concentration of carbon dioxide. The furnaces in your cells shut down.
Christian:You're dead. That doesn't happen in a room because there there are slow leaks of these gases that are able to go through grass in the walls, they're able to get under underneath doors. But there are measurable cognitive defects, starting at 1,000 parts per million of of CO2. So, yeah, the elevator pitch is, like, pay attention to this, get monitors in all your rooms. If you have kids, get monitors in your kids' rooms.
Christian:The tragedy is, like, most schools are built Yeah. Not with this in mind. And so, like, the longer if you have a whole bunch of people in a room, my goodness, like, it it skyrockets. I've been in rooms before, in conferences even, where it feels like this huge space, but there's so many people in the room all breathing that the carbon monoxide levels can go from atmospheric, it would be about 400, blasting past the 1000 parts per million, it can go like 4, 5, 6000 parts per million. And, I've started being able to feel it.
Christian:Like, I I sort of noticed myself feeling kinda groggy. And before doing all this research, if if you were talking to me 10 years ago and, you know, I was in a room where the the carbon dioxide was that high, I would have had an an explanation for it. If you'd asked me, like, how are you feeling, and why do you think you're feeling that way?
Travis:I think
Christian:I would have said, I feel kinda groggy, and, I think I'm tired. So maybe I need to sleep, but that doesn't quite make sense because, like, I slept really well last night, but, yeah, I think I feel tired. I'm not sure why. And what I've noticed since measuring this is, like, oh, if I go outside, like, I feel much better. I wake up instantly, and the the metric that I've been able to put my finger on is that's probably because of of, carbon dioxide levels being torn.
Christian:So, my elevator pitch, I'd like the the single most important thing, to pay attention to that I think most people don't is, start measuring carbon dioxide levels and, figure out how to keep them lower. And I would wager you'll start sleeping better, you'll start thinking better, and you'll be overall healthier.
Travis:So what okay. So what have you done? I mean, I've I've gone down this road a a little bit, not to the extent that you have. And the one, when I first measured, I was like I I was like, oh, I wonder if our bedroom is getting, you know, the carbon dioxide levels are getting too high at night because we closed our door. And it's like, oh, that's a perfect setup for that.
Travis:And I was I was actually pleasantly surprised they weren't getting as high as I was thought maybe they would be, but still elevated, you know, still like, oh, that's probably not that's probably not great. Like, it'd be better healthier if they were lower. But part of my, I think, frustration when I first was like, okay, what can I do about that is like, well, okay, you could leave your door open? What if you don't want to leave your door open or, you know, whatever? Yeah.
Travis:You could leave a window open. Okay. It's winter. It's, you know, 10 degrees outside, like that sucks. So and then there's more expensive options.
Travis:Obviously, we can we can get into that. What have you done from a, like, practical perspective to, you know, shift that for yourself?
Christian:Oh, I I love this question. So, yeah, you you bring up also, one of the one of the inherent problems with, indoor air quality is it's this it's this multivariable problem Right. Of, like, yeah, if we wanna lower the CO2, the obvious way to do that is to open a window. But now, you know, one of the other variables you're trying to keep constant is temperature. And so if it's too hot or too cold outside, you can mix humidity in there also.
Christian:If it's too humid or too dry outside, now we're losing or letting in too much humidity, and we're losing the temperature gradient that we just spent all this electricity to create. So, yeah, that's a problem. So the, you know, if you can open a window, if it's nice weather outside, if you don't have seasonal allergies, if if the humidity is is, good temperature, open a window. That's the fastest, cheapest, easiest way to normalize CO2. This is one of the problems created by us living in, buildings that are more sealed, that, like, we have technology to make it a more comfortable humidity and temperature inside.
Christian:Like, the the technology has created this problem that now the the air inside is getting stale. If you can't do that or
Travis:On that note, a question a question about the window thing. One thing I've I've wondered, and I haven't, like, really tried to think this through, so there may be an obvious answer. So say say it is, like, you know, it's it's summer and it's really hot or it's winter and it's really cold. You know? I don't really wanna open a window, but that's what I have available to me.
Travis:Does it does it make like, logically, does it make sense, like, okay, the trade off of the the c o two in the room is too high. So I'm gonna open the window for, you know, 5 minutes or 3 minutes or just to get, like, okay. Let's exchange some air. Mhmm. And then, yeah, I've gotta expend the energy to then reheat that air, recool that air, whatever.
Travis:Does that trade off, like, does that make sense logically? Or is it, like, yeah, you're there's a trade off that it doesn't work. Like, it's too extensive or whatever.
Christian:I mean, if if you're okay reheating the air and you're okay, like, getting up every 4 to 5 minutes
Travis:to open up your turn
Christian:on a fan to to make it more efficient, that's that's a solution to this multivariable problem. I have a much better one that I'll
Travis:talk to
Christian:in a second.
Travis:You were you were
Christian:you were headed there. But, yeah, that that that is a totally valid solution. You couldn't get up every 4 to 5 minutes that you're in a room. Actually, in the room I'm in currently, that's effectively what I do. There's this door to the outside.
Christian:And, there's 2 other solutions I use, but I'll get to those in a second. When those 2 other solutions aren't practical to do, and the weather outside is nice, that's what I'll do. I have a a monitor I'm looking at at my desk that shows what the the CO two level is. Right now, I'm at 2 bars, which is precisely 872 parts per million, which is which is acceptable. I'll take action around, around a1000.
Christian:So, like, once it gets to 3 bars on on this, monitor, I'll open the door, for a couple minutes. And then as soon as it drops right down, then I'll I'll close it again. Yeah. So there's there's 2 other things that I would recommend. The first one is cheap and easy, which is if you have most most houses in North America have, whole house ventilation systems, so like a ducted, air conditioning system.
Christian:Mhmm. If you turn the fan on on there, you're recirculating all the air in the house, which isn't in itself bringing in fresh air, but houses still have some leaks if if your house wasn't built totally airtight, if you haven't done, like, a blower door test, if your house was built, if your house is older than 5 or 10 years old, that's probably enough to get enough air exchange on the surface area of your entire house. You'll have enough air going in and out that that's usually enough. So before I installed solution number 3 in the the condo that my family's in right now, that's what I would do. And, actually, there's not a great solution for my daughter's bedroom right now, so that's what I'll do for her now.
Christian:I'll turn on that whole house ventilation system that keeps the the CO2 low. And the mechanism behind that is just, like, instead of keeping the air confined to one room, you're intentionally pushing new air in, and then old air has to find a way to be pushed out. And then through all the cracks and crevices and slots into the doors and everything else, air is able to exchange with outside at a slow rate, you know, per square foot, but there's enough square feet around your entire house that that that, tends to keep air low. So that's something people listening to this could do like tonight. You can, you know, order a order a, c o two monitor on Amazon and then, you know, turn your fan on.
Christian:Measure it, with the fan on, measure it with the fan off, what you'll probably find. What I found is, with that fan off and no other interventions, I'm not opening a window or anything, overnight, c o 2 in our bedroom with with 2 people would creep up to, like, 25, 100, 3000 parts per million. With the fan on, it wouldn't get above, oh, call it, like, 900 parts per million.
Travis:Yeah. Okay. So it's, like, super effective and then in that case. Yeah. Yeah.
Travis:And even I I imagine even if you're not, even if you do have a a well sealed house where you're not really exchanging much outside air, you're at least spreading that carbon dioxide throughout your house.
Christian:So you're,
Travis:you know, you're, you're creating an even level instead of just liking it in one room where you have the door closed for 8 hours at night or whatever.
Christian:Right. Right.
Travis:So you're still getting some benefit there. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Christian:Yep. That makes sense. So a much better solution.
Travis:Yeah. What's the solution
Christian:more exciting?
Travis:Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:It's something called an energy recovery ventilator, an ERV, which every house for this, for for posterity, I think I think 15 years from now, like, every HVAC person is gonna know about RVs. All new houses are gonna be built with RVs. A lot of people in colder climates already know about them. They, they're also called HRVs, heat recovery ventilators. If they if they don't if they don't, also transfer, humidity, but it it's the same sort of technology.
Christian:So Okay. Basically, what this is is a, it's a box that exchanges, it it rubs 2 streams of air against each other so that those 2 streams of air can exchange energy where energy is, heat and humidity. So, and but the the gases, stay in their given stream. So, you know, it it'll be this big box. It has 2 ports going to the outside and 2 ports coming to the inside.
Christian:On the outside, we have an in air coming in, air going out. On the inside, we have air coming into the house and air getting sucked out of the house. So we have one stream coming in from the outside and being blown inside. So that would be the same as if you just put a fan in your window. And you might think, wow, it's going to make it too cold, it's going to make it too hot.
Christian:But the second stream is air coming from the inside going outside, and it has this thing called an ERV core that's usually made of paper or something made of plastic. It's a whole bunch of different sheets where, you know, really close next to each other. We're trying to maximize the surface area that these two streams have to be able to rub against each other to exchange this energy. So And it's essentially like
Travis:a heat exchange, like a radiator, like a heat exchanger. Right? Is that, like, basically?
Christian:A a heat exchanger my model of a heat exchanger is, like, you're you're generating the heat in different layers and then blowing air over it. So, like, a heat exchanger is a is a really good model for, like, air going over these these membranes to take something from the membrane and then, like, blow it out. This is This is like if you sandwich 2 of those together, like mix them together in a deck of cards. Between each layer, if you look at layer 1, layer 1 might be a layer of the air inside going out. Layer 2 would be a layer of the outside air coming in.
Christian:So as those 2 layers are rubbing against each other, with this thin semipermeable membrane in between them, think like, you know, in the case for you of the outside is really cold and the inside air you've worked really hard to heat. As those two layers rub against each other, the heat from your house air going outside is going to move across the semipermeable membrane into the cold air coming in.
Travis:There's a gradient there, so it's gonna seek to seek equilibrium and Exactly. Exactly.
Christian:So what the the effect that that creates is the outgoing air is going to cool off as it goes out, and the incoming air is going to heat up as it comes in. And I don't know the efficiency numbers off the top of my head, but I think it's something like 80% efficient. So if you have a, a I'm I'm not gonna I'm gonna pull these numbers out of here, but it's roughly something like, you know, if if, the outdoor air was, call it freezing 30 degrees, your indoor air is a comfortable 80 degrees, you'll be able to recover something like 80% of the energy. But I don't quite know the conversion of, like, the energy to the temperature. But, the effect would be instead of instead of air coming in at 30 degrees, it comes in at something like 65, 70 degrees, like, surprisingly efficient, surprisingly warm.
Christian:And the only energy that you're putting into that system is 2 fans. So, you know, the the one that I have is a Panasonic Whisper Comfort ERV, I think, and it's these 2 DC motors. I put an energy monitor on it once, and it it consumes, something like a dollar 50 of electricity per day, because it's just it's just these 2 really low power fans that I just have running constantly, that are that are moving the air, forwards and backwards.
Travis:So because the actual all the membrane stuff is all passive. Like, it's it's just the airflow. Right? There's no, like, moving part. Yeah.
Christian:Yeah. You're just you're just putting energy in the system to to move the air, inside and outside.
Travis:And it also can transmit transfer the humidity across that
Christian:as well? Yeah. So same same thing if if you're, so in your case, you are probably working to try to increase the humidity of the indoor air and then the outside air. Because it's cold, it'll be much drier. I'd love to get into humidity next.
Christian:Also in that semipermeable membrane, water can move across it. Humidity can move across it. So your your moist, hot air as it moves across gets drier and colder, and the cold, dry air moving from outside gets, more humid and hotter as it's coming in. So you also save the humidity if you put work into that. Humidity is also important for temperature because water carries with it a lot of energy.
Christian:That's that's why it's an energy recovery ventilator. Like, yeah, water water carries a lot of, heat with it.
Travis:Right. Interesting. Okay. So so you you bought one of those and installed it yourself? Yeah.
Travis:Okay. Cool. So tell me So Now I'm like I I mean, I I've known about those for a little while and, like, thought, maybe I should do that. You know, maybe I'll get around to it. So how was that?
Christian:So, I've installed I've installed, what, 3 or 4 of them myself now.
Travis:Okay. Cool.
Christian:And every installation that I've done so far has been the most janky. Like, it looks like a meth lab, but but that's what I'm done. Because what I do is just I'll take, like, a window, or the installation that I have right now is, I put a cat door in, one of the doors, like, going out from our master bedroom. And I just have, like, the ducts. My wife hates this.
Christian:So I just have, like, the ducts going from this machine that is on the floor. Floor. I have those going to the window, and then I, like, duct tape it all. So it's,
Travis:Yeah. Right.
Christian:It looks terrible. But, like, the the numbers improve super well.
Travis:Right.
Christian:So this is something you could do, like, in an afternoon. You get one of these machines. You you dedicate a window to, you know, be the the 2 vents for the incoming and the and the outgoing air. If you're building a house from scratch, just tell your HVAC person, like, you know, I want an ERV installed, and they can do it. Surprisingly, I've talked to several HVAC people, and a lot of them don't even know what an ERV is, which, like, what the heck is going on?
Christian:Yeah. What what
Travis:are you even doing? This is your fridge. This is
Christian:your field. Yeah. And you have I mean,
Travis:yeah. I guess it's not not that bad.
Christian:If you if you have a house with a, accessible attic or a accessible crawl space, you can go back and retrofit and, like, and put the diaper in. So that's that's the ultimate plan for this place. Right now, I just have the 1 ERV in our master bedroom. So to get that fresh air circulating through the house into my daughter's bedroom, that's why I have the the whole house, air on also. But I really only do that at night, and then, you know, most of the time, the the air from the bedroom just kinda circulates through the rest of the house and Right.
Christian:Yeah.
Travis:Yeah. Just ambiantly. Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:But the the best solution, like my plan for this place, is in the crawl space to take that same ERV, set up permanent ducts on either side of the house. One of the disadvantages of having, the the install in a window is, like, the the air coming in and the air going out can feedback on each other. I have them pointed in opposite directions, but But they're because they're so
Travis:close. Right there.
Christian:Yeah. So that that's that's inefficient. So ideally, you know, it would be at least I think the recommendation is something like 10 feet apart and point away from each other. But in our condo, I can actually have it on opposite sides of the house. So I'd love for the incoming air to come in on one side and then come into multiple rooms in the house, so I have 1 in each bedroom Yeah.
Christian:And then be sucked out of I think I'm gonna do both bathrooms. So then, the bathrooms tend to be more humid, and also bathrooms tend to have air that you want out of your house anyway. So, yeah, that's that's gonna become the the outgoing error that then, goes outside.
Travis:Okay. Interesting. So when you do that, if you're like, oh, I'm gonna put it on, you know, opposite sides of the house, do you then have to have 2 separate,
Christian:u units?
Travis:Like, is does it then become a more complex? Like, you don't just have this one thing. You have, like, an ERV over here and an ERV over here. How how does that
Christian:You you can do multiple units, but, you know, with with a single unit with a single unit, there's there's 4, airports into that.
Travis:There's So you're just ducting them to different spots?
Christian:Yeah. Exactly. I'll I'll just I'll run the ducts further and and Yeah. You know, move them further away. Yeah.
Travis:Cool. Okay. Alright. I think that's climbing climbing up my list. We have, like, good attic and crawl space access.
Travis:So, like, this would be very feasible. So I'm thinking, like, yeah, maybe maybe this is the next year project for me.
Christian:It's pretty simple also. Like, it's it's docks. And, you know, to to get the vents in your house, you just take a drywall saw and Yeah. Cut all of that. Put the fire.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah.
Travis:Okay. Interesting. Okay. So that's kind of, c02 and and humidity a little bit. I'm looking at your over on my screen, I have your your blog post with your 5 categories, of of air quality.
Travis:So you got temperature, PM 2.5 humidity, c02, and VOCs. So talk about, let's let's talk about other ones now besides just, CO 2 and and humidity.
Christian:I'll talk about humidity briefly, just to make sure I flush that out. Humidity so, normally, the only dimension of air quality that people are thinking about is temperature. That's like, you know, if you if you have a thermostat or not. Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:Am I too cold or am I too hot? That one's that one's easy. And you have, like, the objective measurement on the wall. You know, it's this temperature. Number
Travis:go up. Number go down.
Christian:Right. But we heat the heat the house or cool the house. Yeah. Humidity plays a big role in temperature. I didn't realize this.
Christian:And also just, like, general health. So it plays a role in temperature because, if a room is more humid, strangely, the room will feel colder and hotter. So like Yeah. If there's heat in the room and it's humid, you're gonna feel a lot hotter. And if it's cold in the room and it's more humid, you're gonna feel a lot colder, because water, you can think of it sort of like, you know, in space, there's no particles to move temperature.
Christian:To
Travis:conduct to conduct Yeah.
Christian:Yeah. It's not conducting. But when you have water, water's a really good conductor. So it'll either you know, if there was too hot, it'll it'll be impressively, you know, keeping your heat in. And if there was too cold, then the water's, like, taking the the water off of you.
Christian:So, like, humidity plays into temperature. But more importantly, if humidity is too low, so if it's, I like to say that 40% humidity is my cutoff for for that humidity is too low. Particularly in cold climates, when you're heating the air, you can think of, you can think of heating the air as if the air is a sponge and you're giving the sponge more space, so now it can hold more water. And if you make the air colder, you're squeezing the sponge so then water goes out. So what tends to happen in cold climates, the air is really cold outside.
Christian:So because it's cold, the sponge sponge is compressed. There's not a lot of water in it. Mhmm. If we take that sponge, bring it inside, and heat it up, now we've made it super dry because the water the the air already wasn't holding very much water because it was colder. And now we've heated it up without adding any water to the system.
Christian:Now it's really dry. Where is it gonna
Travis:Right.
Christian:It it gets that water from you. It get, like, you know, humans humans are very moist. Right. There's the clip for this episode.
Travis:Perfect. That's the media clip. Yeah.
Christian:Yeah. So, like, you know, your eyes, are moist. They they have this, mucus membrane on them. Your nose, your nasal passage, your your mouth, everything has this this mucus membrane on it. That keeps you healthy.
Christian:My my theory is that this is a big part of why people tend to get much more sick in the winter is that we're living in these spaces where we're just, like, drying people out. We we put people in there and all of a sudden your your mucus membrane is totally dry. Your mucus membrane is what keeps you, from getting infections of things.
Travis:Like It's a protective layer kinda thing. Right?
Christian:Exactly. Exactly. There's also studies that I've read of, when when the air is more dry, it's dustier, just like stuff stuff can be in the air longer. And so if you measure, like, the viral load of air or the bacterial load, if you take all the water out of the air, the water particles kinda stick to this stuff and
Travis:then weigh things down.
Christian:Right. Right. Right. But if the air is dryer, it can it can just stay in the air forever, and then you also get sick. So, that's the danger of having the the humidity be too low.
Christian:Yeah. The cool thing is this is a pretty well known like, there's a there's a very straightforward solution to keeping the humidity high, which is a humidifier.
Travis:So Right.
Christian:Like, there's nothing nothing fancy you need to get from Walmart. My favorite is, they they make, like, ultrasonic humidifiers. What I don't like about that is that that's that's putting, particulates from your water into the air. So that we'll we'll get into the PM 2.5 in a second, but, I don't love the the ultrasonic humidifiers for that reason. I think the, there's also ones that boil the water.
Christian:Those use a lot more they they use a lot more energy, and also I think that's still putting, more of the particulate matter in the air. The ones that I love are, I think they're called evaporative humidifiers. It's a there's a technology connections video on this that I'll I'll send you to include in the show notes, but, it's it's a big bucket of water with a big, they call it a wick. Sometimes they call it a filter. It's just this big, like, lots of folds in some kind of a paper or or you could use a towel also, and then there's a fan going over that.
Christian:So the the wick, in the bucket of water wakes the water up. You blow water through that membrane, and then that's very effectively you know, again, for only the only energy putting being put in the system is just water that you're blowing through it. That that takes water from the bucket, brings it up into the wick, and then and then pushes it out in the air. That's the most effective, humidifier that I found. The downside of that is they can get kinda gross, so you have to make sure that you're, like, cleaning it out.
Christian:I throw away the wick at least once a season, when I use it. So that's that's how to keep humidity up. Okay. That's if humidity is too low. If humidity is too high, which I like to set at, like, 60%, that's a much bigger problem for me in Texas.
Christian:It's a much, hotter, more humid climate. Humidity too high, encourages mold growth. Anything above 60% humidity, mold can grow. So, like, in your drywall, you can get mold. You can get black mold in places.
Christian:It also just kinda feels like things feel sticky. I don't I don't know about it.
Travis:I grew up in Louisiana and then and then lived in Texas for a long time, and I I like Colorado because it doesn't feel it doesn't feel sticky. Yeah.
Christian:So you can fix that inside with, you know, we we used a humidifier to fix too low of humidity. They make dehumidifiers. Dehumidifiers will will take water out of the air. This I I I feel like it's important. It also, like, makes your air conditioning more effective.
Christian:Oh, air conditioners also naturally dehumidifier. So, if if you if you're in Texas, if you're in Louisiana, and you have, the air conditioner on, one of the things that does, in addition to cooling down the air, is take water out of the air. You can help that cool down better by also having a a dehumidifier. And then, you know, that that's that's mostly for bacterial growth. Keeping that down, just makes for healthier air, and then, yeah, it feels a little bit better.
Christian:That does use more electricity. The the humid humidifiers are effectively just tiny, if you get stand alone ones, pretty inefficient, air conditioners. And, so you can feel the 2 streams of air. Like, it's it's effectively cooling off the air. Again, with that that sponge analogy, the air comes in and as as a big sponge with a bunch of water in it.
Christian:The dehumidifier just kind of squeezes that sponge a little bit. But some days in Dallas, I have it set to, if it's above 60% humidity, to turn on. I'll empty, like, a bucket a day in Dallas in our tiny 3rd trunks. They're like, yeah. It's it's surprising how much water there is, in Texas.
Christian:Oh, you may be tempted to be like, there's all this water. I don't wanna waste it, so let me, like, do something with it. There I don't I don't fully know the science behind this, but there's there's a gas that gets concentrated when you dehumidify the air. Oh, interesting. That, like, you're not supposed to definitely don't drink it, and I think you're not even supposed to use it to water plants.
Christian:So I use it to, like, flush the toilet.
Travis:Interesting. Not even water a plant. Oh, that's I didn't know that. That's fascinating.
Christian:Yeah. Double check on that. That's that's something I'm not sure of, but, yeah, I'd rather you're not supposed to definitely not supposed to drink it because Yeah. Because of the way that yeah. Because it's taken from the air, what would that be?
Christian:I think there's a gas that gets concentrated or something. I'm I'm I can't speak as much as that, but yeah.
Travis:Maybe we'll we'll we'll find it find it later. Maybe we'll we'll throw something in the show notes about that K. For for those curious. Interesting. Okay.
Travis:Cool. Yeah. I remember, my in laws live in, in Oklahoma, and in their their last house, they had a kind of temporary situation. They had, like, portable AC units that, you know, like, that, like, had a duct that would go in the window and thing, and you had to empty the empty the water tank in them. And it was, like, ton in the summer.
Travis:It was, like, just hung. Like, you had to really stay on top of it or it would just overflow because it was just tons and tons of water. So
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you're taking air in from, oh, oh, this is a very important point, actually. So I was under the assumption that those sorts of portable air conditioners or the window units or the ones that I'm more familiar with, I was under the assumption that those were exchanging air from outside. Because like it's in the window, and it's it's blowing air out and it's blowing air in.
Christian:So obviously, like, some air is exchanging between. And they're not. There's one stream of air in the outside that's coming into the unit and then coming back out that just gets heated. And then there's another stream of air on the inside that goes in and comes back out, and it's cooled. And no air is being exchanged between those 2.
Christian:So if you're in a room with a closed door, with closed windows, with a little portable air conditioner, that's not solving the problem of, CPU.
Travis:It's not the same problem.
Christian:Right, right. You're changing the temperature, but, like, yeah, it's, yeah, not no no error, particles are are being exchanged with the new phone.
Travis:Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Alright. Let's talk, particulate.
Travis:P m p m 2.5. That's, like, the other big, big one. Right? I mean, that's the
Christian:Yeah. PM 2.5. This this is a good one too because the solution to it is, already something that we had talked about. This is also solved by the, the ERV. So, PM 2.5 stands for particulate matter, smaller than 2.5 microns.
Christian:So we're not talking about dust, we're talking about it's something like 20 times smaller than the width of a human hair. It's like smoke is is PM2.5. Yeah. Okay. What else would be PM2.5?
Christian:Smoke is the most common one. So, like, if you burn your food and you see a big puff of smoke, that's all just, like, a whole bunch of PM 2.5. The ideal level of PM 2.5 is 0, and there's no way to fill like, if you have a HEPA filter, the particles are too small for a HEPA filter to filter out. So the only real way to get rid of PM 2.5 is to ventilate the space. So, you know, sometimes we burn food and there's just this cloud of smoke in the house, and I'll just open all the doors and windows and set up one fan on one side of the house blowing in, another fan on the other side of the house blowing out.
Christian:And that filters it out. Or if you already have an know, crank the ERV up a little bit, exchange the air a little bit faster, and now that'll that'll move it out. Something very important here is, like, the more that I learned about indoor air quality, the more I've been, like, horrified at the concept of indoor kitchens. Because it's, like, it's like this chemical lab where we're, like, heating and burning food, and the oil is getting up in the air.
Travis:Like, we'll aerosolize all the stuff and throw it in the air.
Christian:Right. Right. And then so specifically for BM 2.5, like, the danger of it is I I can't I can't quote the studies very well, but, like, that there's there's a level of PM 2.5 that, similar to carbon dioxide, and it's above a 1000 parts per million, causes the same sort of, cognitive effect. No. And additionally oh, I don't I I wish I could cite this better, but there are things along the lines of, like, an increase of cancer and and, like, respiratory diseases and asthma and that sort of thing if you're, exposed to BM 2.5 for, like, high amounts for a long time.
Christian:I I can't quote the scary specific statistics, as well. But, yeah, the the solution to it is just to to ventilate the space. And in your kitchen, very important to have a vent hood that's venting externally. We're doing a kitchen remodel right now, and, my wife is doing a consulation. She wants more cabinets and a nicer countertop.
Christian:And, like, fair enough. The main reason I'm excited about it is that we're getting an actual vent hood. The vent that was installed was just a carbon filter in the microwave that just recirculated the air.
Travis:Yep. Right.
Christian:Yeah. Which is getting like, it's doing something. But way, way better is if above your stove, the place that's gonna be generating most of these, PM 2.5 particles, like the the smoke and the, air sliced oil particles, that sort of thing, turn the vent hood on anytime you're cooking. If you have, like, a portable cooker, like a, you know, an air fryer or a, pressure cooker or something like that, when you're cooking with it, put it underneath the vent hood, turn the vent hood on. That's gonna immediately, vent the the primary source of the the particulate matter that's gonna be in your house.
Christian:And then, you know, the the the systems of, ERVs or, you know, venting your whole house, you're not you'd not need it nearly as much because we're venting it as a source of of what's producing the VOCs, the, the PM 2 0 5.
Travis:Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's on my that's another one on my list to improve. Our vent hood just really suck or rather doesn't suck.
Travis:Like, it's just, you know, weak and pitiful and doesn't actually like, if you make a bunch of smoke, you can with the vent hood on, you can see, like, it's not really doing much, so we always end up, like, opening a window. Yeah. And it one of the nice things in Colorado, most of the maybe not most of the year. A lot of the year, it's nice enough outside. Like, it doesn't matter.
Travis:You just, you know, windows open, and we have, like, an attic fan that sucks air through the house and it's great and you get fresh air all the time. But yeah that's definitely on my on my radar to improve our event head situation for sure. What other, okay so you you mentioned so that those are like the the really small particles. What other so we have in our house in our bedrooms, we have smaller air purifiers, then we have a larger one out in the main living area. Do do you use those?
Travis:Like, what benefit like, do you get benefit from those? What's your kinda your your take on that?
Christian:I misspoke, actually. Those do help PM 2.5. They they don't have VOCs. So Yeah. Oh, okay.
Christian:Like the like the HEBA filters, if you have those, or like the MERV filters. Yeah. I I have one of those in, almost every room. Those will filter out particles as small as as, 2.5 microns. So, yeah, that that will help.
Christian:And so, yeah, my my solution to that is, you know, the in in the main room, and in our bedroom, and I should have one in my daughter's room also. But, yeah, just have that kind of constantly on, on low, and that'll, that'll that'll do something to to be, filtering out those particles.
Travis:We have in in our main living area, we have a big one, and we'll often like, if we're cooking, we'll often, like, wheel it over because it, like, has little wheels on it and, like, move it over to the kitchen and turn it on. And it has it's one of the ones that has, like, a, you know, has, like, different colored lights depending on how and it shows, like, a number, you know, so it's it has a sensor in there. Mhmm. And it is remarkable how quickly it will spike when you're cooking, especially if you're using high heat or, you know, making any sort of, you know, mess or whatever. It's like it goes it turns, you know, red and jacks the fan way up, like, really fast.
Travis:And it takes a it takes a while to to actually to come down. It is if if you pay attention to it, it's like, oh, I'm I'm breathing all that in. That's to make it feel so good.
Christian:Okay. You you have one of the fancy automated ones that, like, is measuring it and and Yeah. To it. Those are great. Yeah.
Christian:Those those are really cool.
Travis:Yeah. I'll put it like I'm actually really happy with the one the brand that we have at Levo it, I think is I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I
Christian:don't know. Yeah. It. But Yeah.
Travis:Yeah. We have the the smaller, like, the bedroom sized ones and then one big one, and I'm pretty happy with them. Like, they've been pretty, like, trouble free.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah.
Travis:I think they have all sorts of models that are, you know, smart, whatever. You can hook them up to different things, but we just have the dumb ones that, you know, the controls are right on there because I'm old and too confused to tie it all into fancy systems.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. That that's the same brand that, we have. RS don't automatically respond, though. I have a a really expensive one that I got, that does respond to changing levels.
Christian:Like, it has the sensor in it. But it's it's fine. Like, at at its core, there's so many fancy ones that cost 100 a 100 of dollars. And I've read, like, all the Wirecutter articles that talk about what the what the best ones are. And fundamentally, like, that sort of air filter is a fan and a filter.
Christian:And so, like, you can go to Home Depot and buy I did this actually in, there were wildfires in, Canada, and we were staying in a place that, we were just gonna be at temporarily. But I I was trying to lower the the PM 2.5 in the space. And, because of the wildfires, like, everybody in all the big box stores, like, Canadian Tire is is their version of Walmart up there. There was not a single air purifier to be found. Because everyone's going there thinking, like, I gotta purify my air.
Christian:I gotta buy an air purifier. But I was like, I know from first principles that an air purifier is merely a fan and a filter. So I went over to, like, the, you know, the hardware section, and I got a big box fan and a roll of duct tape. And then I went over to, like, the, you know, the the HVAC section and got just, like, a huge, big, like, a furnace filter, one of these big yeah. It was, like, foot and a half by foot and a half, and then set that up in the place we were staying and duct taped the the box fan, to the filter.
Christian:And that's from from there's YouTube videos that, like, break down how effective each of them are, and they measure, you know, how how effective are these things in getting out of the surface of the air. It looks super ugly. Again, not not helping, like, the vibe of being in a in a meth lab, but, like That's
Travis:the wipe test. Right.
Christian:But, from a functional standpoint, like, that's that's as functional at filtering out the the particles as one of these fancy I think I think one of the ones I got was, like, a $600 like crazy carbon filter. Crazy you you don't you don't need that. But they look much nicer. They pass the WIF test, and it's cool that they can, like, automatically, have And they have
Travis:some cool features and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:Maybe. Wi Fi, and it'll, like, track the Right. Yeah. Levels and all, like, kind of like Make
Travis:you sandwich and everything.
Christian:Yeah. Oh, when you're doing construction, there's a version of that that you can build where instead of just, a flat filter to a fan Mhmm. You can make it much more efficient by making a box out of the filters and then putting the fan as one, side of the box. So now you can have, like, 1, 2, 3, 4 4 filters of surface area being driven by 1 fan. So that's nice when you're, that that's, like, really intense.
Christian:You don't need it in your house, and that's also taking up a bunch of space. But, specifically, if you're constructing a house and you're trying to keep dust down, that's a that's a technique I've seen to,
Travis:make that setup more effective. You're making a temporary a lot of mess temporarily. Yeah. Makes sense. Cool.
Travis:Okay. So that's that's, p n 2.5. So the the takeaway there is, don't cook inside. And Yeah. If you do get a manhood that works and also, purifiers.
Travis:So VOCs.
Christian:VOCs. I confabulated a little bit in my explanation of, PM 2.5. That was a purifier
Travis:thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. VOC
Christian:stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. So think like formaldehyde. Think like, toxic toxic gases. Think like, part of cooking part of cooking part of that smoke that you see would be volatile organic compounds. Part of that would be, PM 2.5, really tiny in particular matter.
Christian:So the the PM 2.5 is what can be filtered out by these air filters, by a merge filter or a, or a HEPA filter. The VOCs, because they're they're, like, you know, molecular components from the hot Yeah. Right. Right. Those those cannot be, filtered out by, those sorts of filters.
Christian:Got them. There are some filters that say that they filter out VOCs, and I bought one that said it did. But then the the FCC sued them and said, actually, it doesn't. And then they had remove the statement. So as far as I know, there is no filter that can filter out VOCs.
Christian:There are also some plants that people say the plants can filter out VOCs, but, like, the number of plants you would have to have to do it is Yeah.
Travis:Kind of inefficient. Looked into that, it's like, yeah. You would need to live in a greenhouse and even that isn't like they're too slow, basically.
Christian:Right. Right. So So this is okay. So this
Travis:is, like, the difference between, you know, like, you're doing woodworking or whatever and you have a mask, you know, a dust mask, like a, like an n 95 mask and filter out stuff or, like, a respirator with the pucks, you know, that's, like, actually filtering out VOCs. So you can get that for, like, a, you know, like, a respirator, but probably not on, like, a home scale, you know, like, whole room scale kind of thing.
Christian:My understanding is the the respirators with the pucks are just better at filtering out smaller components. But Oh, okay. But, like, if there's formaldehyde in the air, formaldehyde is still gonna be able to get through whatever sort of filter you can
Travis:I thought you could get stuff that would filter out VOCs, but I but I haven't ever done stuff that you would need that, you know, so I don't I don't actually know? I haven't
Christian:If if you can find something that says I've I've anytime I've dug into, like, a filter that says it can filter out VOCs Yeah. It it seems like it can't actually. So the the the place where I've landed on VOCs is, and this is this is what I confabulated with a a PM 2 5 earlier. The place where I landed with VOCs is the only way to filter it out is to ventilate the space. You you gotta yeah.
Christian:You have to exchange the ear.
Travis:What are okay. So in a in a, you know, just standard, like, presidential home setting, what do you have to be concerned about as sources for VOCs? Just like cooking some from cooking and then if you're, like, doing remodeling work and painting or using chemicals or whatever?
Christian:Yeah. Chemicals can off gas cooking for sure. Paint. Air fresheners are just it's just VOCs in in there.
Travis:Just like really good smelling VOCs.
Christian:Right. Right. And so some you know, there's there's, with with any of the air quality monitors you can get, it'll it'll give you a readout of what the VOCs are. If you have, like, peppermint oil that you spray in the air, the VOCs will spike. Because peppermint oil, it is a volatile organic compound.
Christian:If you're trying to filter it out, it's not going to get filtered out by a HEPA filter or one of those big puck filters. Like, oh, that's a really good test, actually. If you have peppermint oil or something like that that smells identifiable, put put the mask on, you know, before there's any peppermint oil in the air.
Travis:You can smell it.
Christian:Spray it. See if you can smell it. If you can, then it's not filtering out VOCs. I have not yet found a way to filter that out. And if you find 1, let me know.
Christian:Let me know.
Travis:Yeah. That's a good test.
Christian:Yeah. Some furniture, like cheap furniture, especially, the the plywood in it is bound with a formaldehyde based component. And if you get it fresh from the factory, it, like, hasn't off gassed, enough. And so that'll just be sort of sitting in your house fuming. I used to think that was a much bigger deal than I now think it is.
Christian:I I got sort of neurotic about, like, we gotta let this piece of furniture, like, off gassing the in the garage for, you know, a month before we can bring it inside. And I no longer think that's as big of a source of VOCs. Like, as long as you have some sort of a a passive way that you're, not necessarily passive. As long as as long as air is being recirculated, as long as it's being exchanged.
Travis:Sealed room and then Yeah.
Christian:Right. Right. Right. The the extreme case of this would be, like, if you're in a sealed room and you're painting and Yeah. You know, you have incense burning and there's one of those, like, glade wig plugin things, that that would be extremely obvious.
Travis:And you're going to bed.
Christian:Right. That's that's bad. So that's that's I I think this is an area that's gonna become much better studied. There there's this, syndrome I read about called sick building syndrome Mhmm. Where people report feeling these really strange symptoms when they're in specific places.
Christian:And I used to feel this in my parents' house. Like, my allergies would get much worse, and I I couldn't figure out what that was. And I would feel kinda groggy, and, like, my eyes would would get kinda swollen. And I got that you you can get these tests where so on on most of these monitors, it just tells you the total level of VOCs, but that can give you false positives. Because if there's, like, peppermint oil or or something else, there there's a lot of things that are are technically volatile organic compounds, but aren't necessarily harmful for you for you.
Christian:There are tests you can get where you do a sample of the air, and then, you send them in the sealed vial. You send them a sample of the air, and then they run it through, oh, what's it called? Electron microscopy? Oh, it's it's a big machine that, like, takes the compounds, and it it zooms them through this, tube. It it gives you this readout, and then you're able to, like, identify what the actual compounds are.
Christian:Okay. Right. Okay. And and the bar spectrometer? Is that A spec mass mass spectroscopy?
Travis:Mass spectrometer?
Christian:That's Yeah. I think I I think it's mass yeah.
Travis:Remembering way back to, like, high school chemistry or physics or whatever, like, that sounds right.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. I I think that is right. So so they're able to identify, like, what the actual specific compounds are. Right.
Christian:And, when I did that with air in my parents' house, what I found was, pine. There was there was, like, a pine oil, that was really high. But I was like, well, that's not it. And then I realized my mom loves using the fireplace, specifically in winter. And so fireplaces oh, talk about sources of EFCs.
Christian:You're literally burning stuff into the air, making, you know, volatile organic compounds, especially if you can smell anything. If you can smell that fiery smell, you're smelling VOCs. And there's there's some PM 2.5 that comes with that too. So, I have yet to, like, put my finger on what it is specifically in the house, but my my current hypothesis is that, in the winter, my mom's, running the fireplace all the time. That's putting a bunch of VOCs in the air.
Christian:And I think something with that I'm I'm, more sensitive to.
Travis:Yeah. You're reacting to. Yeah. I I'm remembering now. I haven't thought about this in forever.
Travis:I'm remembering, in in middle school, we, like I went to a small school, and we there was a new, like, building built right when I started middle school. It was finished, like, right before the fall, you know, my my 7th grade year started. And I lived in Louisiana. I had allergies and stuff. But, like, being inside that building for the first, like, 5 or 6 months of that year, it was like, I would always just, like, have, like, really bad, seemingly, like, allergy symptoms.
Travis:Mhmm. But I remember it being like, oh, yeah. This seems like it's probably because of, like, the carpet or the, you know, whatever the stuff in there, and it eventually went away. Yeah. So probably a VOC stuff from all
Christian:of the construction. That sounds a lot of VOCs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:New construction material in particular, can can off gas, strongly.
Travis:We in the in the past, a couple times, we've had a gotten, like, a, like, a memory foam mattress,
Christian:you know, just put it online.
Travis:And those, like, I mean, you can smell them when you open them. You know, they're like in a vacuum, you know, sealed bag really small. And you open them and it's like, oh, and we always put them outside for a few days.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. I don't get this, but I've heard of people, like, getting really bad headaches from VOCs. Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:If if you can if you can smell something and it smells bad, it's probably VOCs.
Travis:It's your it's your it's your body telling you something. Right. Cool. Okay. Okay.
Travis:Alright. So okay. So if I wanted to summarize what the, or or or how about you, please, summarize what you're you know, for somebody who's like, okay. Great. I wanna I wanna be healthier through better indoor air quality.
Travis:Mhmm. What are what's the, like, the low hanging fruit? Like, do, you know, 1, 2, 3.
Christian:Great.
Travis:You're gonna improve your situation.
Christian:The very first thing I would recommend is get a monitor that can track the 5 dimensions of air quality. C o 2, I think, is the most important to get started with because if you solve for c02, you you kinda get VOCs and carbon dioxide for free.
Travis:What's your do you have a recommended, like, oh, this is the obvious choice for which one to get for for most, you know, normal people.
Christian:I have a few that I've recommended in the past. So, like, I I like the, Aware air quality monitors, those plug in through USB, and they look nice. They they pass the life test. It's like this cool looking, white box. And, you know, those will those will sync to apps on your phone.
Christian:So you can see history of, like, those stuff.
Travis:Over time. Yeah. Like, shit.
Christian:When I first got into it, there was a Christmas where I bought I think I bought 8 of them and just gave one to, like, everyone in my family. Okay. Yeah. Those are kind of expensive, though. It's like it's like 100 and something dollars per per monitor.
Christian:There's a company called Air Gradient that used to sell kits to make your own.
Travis:I have a couple of those, actually. Wonderful.
Christian:Yeah. So those are great because it's just battery powered. So, like, I'll bring it with me on trips, and so I can measure in, like, on the airplane. Airplane CO 2, by the way, is wild. It gets be
Travis:in pain.
Christian:It's insane. I think that's part of the reason why, like, movies hit me differently emotionally on airplanes. I think it's just, like, I'm kinda drunk on the c o two.
Travis:Oh, interesting.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Humidity on planes also is is, super super low. So I think that's part of why.
Travis:I've read something about, you know how it's like it's a it's like a a trope about how people drink bloody Marys on airplanes? Yeah. Yeah. I think I've read maybe it's not the c o two. Maybe it's the, like, the lack of humidity or something that affects your taste, you know, like your
Christian:Yeah.
Travis:Your taste receptors or whatever. And so that it makes bloody Marys, like, taste better on an airplane. Yeah. Yeah. There's some study about that.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Like, your your mucus membrane in your nose would be, affected. That would be dried out. So, yeah, your your sensation of, taste and smell would be drastically affected.
Travis:Maybe just dampened. Yeah. So maybe that's like, oh, you need this really strong
Christian:Something really punchy.
Travis:Yeah. Normally, at least to me, tastes terrible.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Probably probably from the, humidity.
Travis:Oh, the thing about movies hitting you, like, harder, like, emotionally.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hotel rooms also are so like, the my my main, reason why I prefer Airbnbs now over hotel rooms when I travel is that they'll consistently have windows that you can open.
Christian:So, like, I'll I'll tolerate especially if I'm traveling alone, I'll I'll tolerate, uncomfortable temperature, if it means, like, fresh air is coming in. In hotel rooms, I I just went on a trip, around Boston recently, and it was so dry. It wasn't even that cold outside, but, like, I, so my my strategy in hotel rooms, because I'm not gonna, like, travel with a with a humidifier, is to, like, first line of defense is just run the, run the shower and, like, try to vent out, you know, leave all the doors open, try to try to fan that humid air out into the room. And then for overnight, I'll I'll take the plastic trash can, that they have in the room, and I'll take the bag out of it, fill that with water, get 1 or 2 of the towels, dip 1 of one end of the towels in, drape the other end, like, over a over a chair, and then position that by some sort of a fan. So when the hotel comes in, they had, like, the fan that goes on the floor, like, the big, wide one, and I set the fan to just blow all night.
Christian:And in the morning, it's wild because, like, you feel the towel and it is bone dry. Like, all of the water has has been sucked out into the room. So I used to really before it before I was, aware of all this air quality stuff, I used to really consistently get sick, like, anytime I would travel, particularly to places like Las Vegas, where it's just like, you know, the, the, ambient humidity is, is already pretty low. And then, you know, the hotels don't really think about healthy humidity levels. So, you know, it's gonna be even drier in there sometimes.
Christian:Especially if it's well, if they're cooling it off. No. Yeah. So if you take if you take hot dry air in Nevada and then you cool off the air on the inside, you're, like, squeezing the sponge. Well, the relative humidity would if you cool off the air, the relative humidity would raise.
Christian:But then in the process of cooling off the air, you would also be, removing some of the water from it. Yeah. I'm not sure what the net anyway, it's super, super dry in in hotel rooms.
Travis:It's already so dry that you're, yeah, you're starting from such a dry dry point. Yeah.
Christian:Right. Yeah. So, to your question, like, what where do people get started? Get a monitor. The Aware ones are good.
Christian:Air Guardian used to have a kit. You can still I think if if you're more technically minded, if you like soldering, you can, like, order the PCBs and and order all the different components. AliExpress has, each of these individual components. You you can get one for you could probably build it for something like $30. I just looked up before this interview.
Christian:Ergogradian has a new model that they sell that I think is supposed to be, like, a wall mounted something. I have one of the the portable ones just for the battery. I love that one. But I don't know where to buy that one anymore, so I don't know that I can recommend that. I don't know though.
Christian:Like, I've I've tested a whole bunch of different ones, and I've tried to do side by side comparisons of, like, which one's the most accurate of being able to figure out what the CO two is. And I don't think it matters. I think I think roughly you're looking for just high, medium, low. You need to do these trenches. Thing.
Christian:Right?
Travis:It's just a directional. Like, oh, you need to oh, I need to I need it to go down. Yeah.
Christian:Right. Right. The the cutoff for CO 2 is, like, is it is it roughly what it is outside? Is it starting to creep up more? Or is it way higher than a 1000 parts per million?
Christian:And, yeah, that you that you intervene, accordingly. So that yeah. That's that's the first part. Just have a way to measure it. On Amazon also, if you if you just Google for, air quality monitors.
Christian:Sure. Ideally, find one that can measure all 5 dimensions, one that can measure, temperature, humidity, CO 2, PM 2.5, and, VOCs. And, like and and that's the the 2 that I've suggested, the, Aware ones and the the are grading ones will do all 5 dimensions. So have have, like, a way to measure it. And then just kinda pay attention to, like, let's have one in the bedroom overnight and see how high these things spike.
Christian:Let's see what happens to PM 2.5 and VOCs after I cook. Like, in in yep. What I've been doing is opening a window. How how effective is that at actually lowering them? And then what I I I don't know if I just gaslit myself into feeling like, you know, when these numbers are this way, I feel better.
Christian:When they're this way, I feel worse. But, I currently feel like there's a really strong correlation between, particularly CO 2 and how well I'm able to work. So that's been a really important correlation for me. If, like, if I'm starting to feel groggy, if I'm starting to feel like I I can't quite think as quickly as I usually do, the first thing I do is check the CO 2. And usually, if I'm feeling that sort of way, I can identify like, okay, I need to open a open a door.
Christian:So, yeah, first thing, just have have better objective measurements of this so that you can start taking interventions, start doing experiments. That's the, that's the very first step I would do. And then, some cheap interventions to do are, if you live in a cold climate, it's most important for you to get a humidifier. If you live in a hot climate, it it's most important for you to get a dehumidifier. I live in a hot climate, but I have balls now because in the winter, it still gets cold.
Christian:And then just, you know, make sure that the the humidity is between 40 to 60%. That's probably the the first easiest intervention I would do. Oh, and to keep c o two lower, at night in particular, I would turn on your, central, air conditioner. So it's just constantly running air through the through the whole place. Yeah.
Christian:If the weather outside is nice, opening the window is a very cheap intervention you can do. That's that's pretty low hanging fruit. The more you can have the window open, probably the the better the air quality is gonna be. Unless you're, like, in a department in the city, and you could argue that the OC is Yeah. There's, like, a public company.
Christian:Or something. Right? Right. Right.
Travis:Big city in China, maybe not so much.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a problem. Also, like, the wild wildfires in Canada or or,
Travis:California. A few years ago here in Colorado, there was a like, the biggest fire ever in Colorado history was, like, 10 miles from our house.
Christian:Yeah. And so
Travis:I was like, we didn't go outside or as little as possible, you know, for, like, 3 months. And I literally had, like, painters tape on cracks around the door, you know, trying and running all the purifiers at max and trying to, like, just it was crazy.
Christian:Yeah. If the air quality outside is worse than inside, then it's Right.
Travis:Yeah. You don't have
Christian:to worry about that. Right. So that that would probably be step number 2. So step number 1, like, get a monitor, start paying attention, to to how how your activities in the house affect how the levels of each of these 5 dimensions go. Step 2 would be do some easy interventions of, open windows as often as you can if the outdoor air is higher quality than inside.
Christian:Get a humidifier or dehumidifier to try to keep humidity between 40 to 60% based on what you found when you're monitoring. Like, is your humidity does it tend to be too high? Does it tend to be too low? And then, overnight, keep CO 2 low, run the whole house fan. That would be step number 2.
Christian:And then step number 3, ERVs are amazing. You can get cheap ones for something like $600. That's, if you can't do a more permanent installation, like, the the Cadillac of that would be you, kind of run the system in parallel to your air conditioning system, have inputs into at least every bedroom, take air out of the bathrooms probably is the best way to do it Right. Just so that there's a stream of incoming and outgoing air that it's it's gonna, like, refresh all the all the air in each room, and then have that vent take to the outside of of the incoming and outgoing air. That's gonna take care of, c o two and, VOCs.
Christian:Oh, something else I would include in step number 2 actually is to to get some sort of, Hepa or MERV filter in the house. That's that's also a pretty cheap intervention. If you wanna go to Home Depot, you could get that done for, like, $30. If you wanna get one of the fancier ones that pass at the wipe test, that'll be, like, I don't know, 80 to a100. One of the things I don't like about the fancy ones though is the filters are really expensive.
Christian:We have 2 of them. I but I found through AliExpress, you can get, like filters that are the same size that are like a quarter of the price. So that's nice. But, yeah, step number 3 would be, a whole house ERV system. As close as you can get to that, I think is better.
Christian:They also make whole house humidifiers, whole house dehumidifiers. I'm planning for the the house that we build from scratch, to to just kind of have this integrated into the All part of the HVAC system. Right. Yeah. Is there anything else I'd recommend?
Christian:I think that covers everything. Oh, the vent hood. You you mentioned Oh, yeah. Vent vent hood would be I'm sure your vent hood
Travis:is actually venting.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Probably part of my step number 3 if you oh, so if you have a vent hood, step number 2 would be use it. Anytime you're shipping, like, turn it on. A horrifying number of vent hoods that I've seen aren't just recirculating the air back into your space.
Christian:So that's probably not gonna do much of anything, but I don't know. It it might be better than nothing if you're if you're using something.
Travis:Around a little bit or something.
Christian:Right. Right. So so if you don't have a vent hood that's externally venting, part of my step number 3 would be, get a method that that is externally venting. Yeah. Cool.
Christian:Cool. Or Awesome. Book outside if you're in an apartment and can't do that.
Travis:I mean, hey. In the like, in the summer, we grill a ton outside, you know, and it's like, hey. Great. That moves moves that outside. That's great.
Christian:Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Travis:Cool. Awesome. Well, that that's very, very actionable, advice. Anything else that we haven't covered on air quality that we should cover?
Christian:I really like the home performance YouTube channel with, Corbett and Grace Lunsford. That's where I that that was that was one of the highest sources of information on this for me.
Travis:Oh, good. Okay. I haven't even heard of that.
Christian:Yeah. I'll send you a link, great. Yeah. Oh, oh, there's another one I didn't write down. Oh my gosh.
Christian:What's his name?
Travis:You mentioned the technology connections that he has a video on.
Christian:Yeah. Technology connections has one on, humidifiers. I'll I'll send that to you. Oh, there's a there's a builder in Austin, the build show on, on YouTube. I forgot the guy's name.
Christian:But he also talks about a lot of this air quality stuff. And also just generally really good building practices. Like, I learned a lot more about crawl spaces and, insulation and, like, the best way to do waterproofing. And, yeah, he's a he's a great source for all that kind of thing. Cool.
Christian:Yeah. I think that's that's everything I wanted to cover. This was so much fun. Thank you so it's the first time I talked publicly about this. And, yeah, it's, it's all that I'm passionate about.
Travis:Yeah. That's perfect. And I love that it's like I mean, I can the the whole premise of this podcast is, like, I can talk to anybody who's, like, excited about something and just nerd out on it with them. You know? Just, like, totally go for it.
Travis:And it's nice that this has a side effect of, like, oh, it's it's like it will help people.
Christian:Like, if you
Travis:will, you know, who who would benefit from this, listen, and then, like, follow this advice, like, oh, their lives will be improved. How cool is that? You know? Yeah. Love it.
Christian:Yeah. If anyone listening to this wants to chat about this, I I legitimately enjoy talking about this. Evidently. Yeah. Yeah.
Christian:I've had a I've had a bunch of people, like, you know, read my blog post and send me pictures of their their janky setups of how they connected their ERVs to their photos. I love seeing those if you, or, you know, yeah, if you if you find a a ERV system. Oh, there's there's one thing that comes up frequently. People ask me about, there's a type of ERV that, it's it's like I forgot what they're called, but it's it's a system where, it's basically just 2 holes that you punch in the wall, and they alternate. 1 of them will suck in air, and the other one will will suck out air.
Christian:And then they'll change, and one of them will will push out air, and the other one will, will pull air. And they have, like, a ceramic thing in it that that, both key. Across this somewhere. Yeah. I don't recommend those.
Christian:I think they're I think they're energy inefficient and also Okay. Yeah. I, they're they they can be more expensive. If if you're gonna do that, do a do a, like, action based away system.
Travis:Go all out. Like, do the do the right thing.
Christian:That's the one that works better. The ERV core of the the thing that's rubbing the shoes very together, I think, is the is the best solution to the to this problem. I think that's the that's the best way to ventilate. But, yeah, anyone anyone listening to this who wants to talk about it, probably x is the best way to contact me. I'll send you a link to put in the show notes, but it's x Yeah.
Christian:Slash, cgenco, c g e n c o.
Travis:Alright. Cool. Yeah. And I'll link your I'll link your blog post, obviously. And anything else, you know, obviously, if you think of anything to me, we'll we'll throw in the show notes for sure.
Travis:Yes, sir. That'll be super great. Alright. Cool. Last thing we do is totally unrelated to the topic at hand, or I guess it could be, but probably not.
Travis:Lightning round questions. K. So do you have a favorite, book to recommend to people? Either all time or recently, whatever. Oh my goodness.
Christian:So usually when people ask me this, I ask them, like, how would you like your life to be different? Because that drastically changes the the sort of recommendation I would give. Like, there's some really good sci fi I've read recently. I really liked, the Bobaverse series was really good.
Travis:Just started listening to that.
Christian:So good. So good. The 3 body problem was really good. I've enjoyed the the Netflix adaptation. I think that was like one of the one of the most, one of my favorite, like, film adaptations of a book.
Christian:Yep. Spiritually, I in having our daughter, I hate to say this like, it's difficult to say this without sounding cliche, but like, I went through a spiritual transformation, like, through reading, the the untethered soul series. Some really good deep stuff in there about just like how to oh, how would I even talk about that? How to how to, like, frame what your conscious experience is in a way that, gives you the capacity to, handle with grace and tranquility any sort of adversity that might happen to you. Like k.
Christian:Yeah. That's that's been that's been really meaningful for me. We could do all of that sort of that, though.
Travis:What is it called? The an The Untethered Soul?
Christian:The Untethered soul. And there's a bunch of, like, lecture series that he does. I I've, I've started reading, like, I've listened to the audiobook. I love the audiobook. There's a there's a lecture series he has on Audible, and I I listen to, like, one of those lectures every night.
Christian:And it's been I I've oh, man. We're launching into a whole other episode
Travis:of the couple. We'll have to do another episode.
Christian:We'll have to. Yeah. I I, in my life, have, really struggled with, feeling like I could authentically, embody any sort of religious or spiritual, ideology. And this is the first one that I found, and I found it really late in life. This was maybe maybe 2 or 3 years ago that I, like, stumbled on this.
Christian:This is the only one that I feel like, I'm able to fully, authentically connect with that just, like, makes sense from an intellectual level. So my my intellect, like, doesn't get in the way. And, yeah, I found it very comforting spiritually. I would highly recommend it. Interesting.
Christian:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's business books I recommend. I don't know.
Christian:Depending on how you wanna change your life, what what, that would impact the the recommendation I would give you. There's a really good book I read recently called, Save the Cat or Don't Save the Cat about screenwriting that gives you like x-ray vision into how film and TD plots are written. And I found that fascinating. Yeah. Because it like gives you this formula of you're like, oh, they're like doing this story beat.
Christian:And that means the next thing that happens in the show is that, you know, this character is going to have something bad happen to him. And you're watching the show, and you're like, oh, this person's card just got stolen. I'm like, oh, my god. I just know how everything is written now.
Travis:Does it write for you, though?
Christian:So I was really into magic as a kid and, like performing magic. And it it knowing how things work ruins part of it. Like, it's no longer magic.
Travis:Like, prize. Yeah.
Christian:But at the same time, I feel like I've gotten a much deeper appreciation for it. It's like, like, I know I know what you did, and I know how you did it. And, like, oh my gosh. That like, it it hits me much deeper now of,
Travis:like, wow. You did it really good.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. You know, my my daughter watching Disney movies, like, she she's she's enjoying them and experiencing them at this level of, like, she's won, just from 1 a couple months ago. And, you know, when she watches things right now, she's doing, like, basic pattern matching and she can recognize some of the words now and gets really excited about that. And the colors come on and, you know, she she can, experience some of the emotional overtones of the soundtrack.
Christian:And, that's a perfectly valid way to enjoy media that, from from my current perspective, like, you know, I'm I'm able to experience that and and enjoy that. But also there's all these deeper levels now of, like, oh, oh, I understand why they did the soundtrack in the way that they did them. And so, you know, what what is my experience of it ruined now? Well, kind of. Like, I'm not I'm not able to experience it in the same sort of, like, beautiful, naive, magical way that my daughter is.
Christian:But, you know, I can be watching the same Disney movie with her now and, like, feel the same sense of enraptured, mint, in the medium that she can. But, yeah, I'm focusing on different things and and flexible on it at different levels. Yeah.
Travis:I I really that's an interesting recommendation. I really that really resonates. Yeah. And I guess then it, like, you know, you'll watch a great movie more than once. You know?
Travis:It's like, yeah, you're not surprised. You you know it's gonna happen, but you can still enjoy it and appreciate it. And yeah. That makes sense.
Christian:I wanna include one more.
Travis:Good. Yeah.
Christian:I just kept in mind called On Looking, that is a really unpopular one. I've I've never heard anyone else recommend it. But it's, it's this woman who, the first chapter is she walks around her block. She lives in New York City. And she writes down everything she notices.
Travis:Oh, I've heard of this.
Christian:It's Yeah. Fascinating. Oh, really good books for me just, like, changed my perception of reality, and this one hit me hard. So she walks around her block. She writes in everything she notices.
Christian:And it's garbage day, and so she's like, I see, you know, my neighbors put the garbage out, and there's some q tips spilling out on the ground. And, you know, I I see my neighbor, you know, walking outside. And, you know, I see the school bus across the road, and I see that, like, this person, you know, double parks, whatever, everything she can, pages and pages of just everything she notices walking around the block. And then the rest of the book, every chapter of the book, she takes a different expert, and she goes on the same walk with them. And she asked them what they noticed, and it's completely different.
Christian:She walks around with, like, an entomologist, someone who studies bugs. And she's like, what do you notice? And he's like, well, you can see from this tree, you know, this one, is indigenous to here, and you can tell that because, like, bugs are eating it. But this other one, is not indigenous to here because bugs are eating it. So there's no native bug species that, is eating this tree.
Christian:Like, wow. I wasn't even thinking about that.
Travis:Right.
Christian:And, you know, you can tell by the trail of how this bug ate this leaf that it's this type of bug and, you know, this other one laid eggs in this spot, and that means it's this sort of bug. She talks to a, geologist, and the geologist is looking at the rocks on the side of the building. You can tell that this rock came from this quarry during this decade because of how it was mined. You can see the marks on it. You can see from this type of stone it has these sorts of minerals on it.
Christian:And it's just you know, every chapter is a new person. She talks to a doctor, like, a, orthopedic surgeon, I think. And he's, like, diagnosing people's medical conditions based on the way that they're walking. He's like, oh, you can tell this person has, like, flat foot because of, you know, the wear on their shoes at the way that they're walking. And it's it's fascinating to me because, like, it hits on this basic, what?
Christian:Cut me off, please. No. No. Start my arms up. It it hits on this basic, quality to me of, like, the benefit of having conversations with people is to see the world from their perspective.
Christian:Like Yep. There there are no invalid perspectives. It's just like how other people are seeing the world.
Travis:And by by talking to people openly, you can filters and yes. Right.
Christian:I would love to be able to talk to an entomologist about the like, he's seeing a totally different set of facts about the world than than I am. And, yeah, I I I try to live my life in a way where I'm I'm maximizing for exposing myself to to more of those, opposing
Travis:people. I have one of my, like, not to toot my own horn, but one of my, like, favorite or things that I keep coming back to that I've, like, posted on Twitter is this tweet where I say something like, you know, like, it's it's very probable that my perception of of the world of everything is, like, not accurate. Mhmm. Like, it is not, you know, correct or whatever and, like, cause there's so many people. Like, there's so many different ways of looking at something.
Travis:And maybe that's a a different way of saying that is, like, not that it's not correct or accurate, but that there's all these different angles, you know, of viewing, like, walking around the block and what you see and stuff. It's not like that my perception isn't inaccurate, but there's so many perceptions you could have of one event or place or whatever.
Christian:Sure.
Travis:Yeah. I find
Christian:Perhaps the most accurate perception is combining as many perceptions as we Right. As we can have. There's the the cartoon of, like, there's 5 people with blindfolds on touching different parts of an elephant, and this one person's like, oh, this is a snake holding the trunk, and the other ones on the on the legs like, oh, this is clearly a tree.
Travis:A tree.
Christian:Yeah. If if those people could talk to each other and share their perspectives, they might be able to piece together that that this is an elephant. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've thought about that a lot specifically around this this last election.
Christian:Like, the the more I think we can embrace opposing viewpoints and and, work to understand other people's perspectives, I think the, the better the world would be, the better Yeah. Everyone's individual lives would be.
Travis:Cool. Alright. Well, that's a good, man, that's only we we we went pretty deep, and that's only one of my lightning round.
Christian:I could try. If you have more, I could try to answer it faster.
Travis:Okay. Let's let's do a couple more, like, lightning round.
Christian:Lightning round. So fast.
Travis:Favorite movie or TV show that you've watched in the past month? Oh. Or your all time favorite if you have a strong all time favorite.
Christian:I don't. I've I've been really enjoying podcasts recently. Okay. Favorite movie that I've watched in the last month. You know, it's funny that reading that book may have actually ruined movies for me because there there are a few movies that I watched that, like, while I was watching it, I was just like, this is so poorly put together.
Travis:But you can see what they're doing, but they're not doing it well.
Christian:Yeah. The Santa Claus 2 movie we we were playing last night and just like the dialogue felt trite and and uninspired. And no. Yeah. There's there's not one.
Christian:There's not one.
Travis:Okay. So we'll have an anti an anti recommendation, which is it's Santa Claus 2. Yeah. Perfect.
Christian:The the escape clause, I think it was called. Or yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is it
Travis:is this a Tim Allen?
Christian:Is that The Tim Allen one. Yeah. Yeah.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. I feel like he you know, I from childhood, I remember him as, you know, a home improvement show. And, but I feel like a lot of his movies are like, they're not very good.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I do in in the Christmas theme, How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey. Oh, pinnacle of cinema. There Right.
Christian:There is no better film.
Travis:Excellent. Alright. We'll we'll link that one.
Christian:K.
Travis:Perfect. Okay. Favorite food?
Christian:Favorite food? I really enjoy, like, Thai red curry.
Travis:Okay.
Christian:I I so in in part of the same spirit of, like, taking to the bottom of, nutrition and things, I've I've been, learning, like, bodybuilding and weightlifting, and, one of my go to 2 of my go to meals actually are, like, 0% fat, Greek yogurt because that has a super high ratio of protein to calories.
Travis:Yep.
Christian:And it's tasty. Like, you can you can fix it up to taste like ice cream. And then I'll also have, like, lean turkey with, 0% cottage cheese and a bunch of spices. These are not foods that I would recommend to someone just like to to enjoy on their own, but they've become my favorite because, like goals. Yeah.
Christian:They're they're accomplishing my goals while also being really tasty. So, like, I I find myself eating those a lot. Yeah. Okay. Fair fair.
Travis:I mean, that's a good tip if you're trying to up your protein intake, then those are good. Good option. That's great. Cool. Alright.
Travis:That's the last question I have.
Christian:Great.
Travis:I don't I don't think there's anything else, but clearly we'll have to do another episode at some point in the future about anything and everything.
Christian:I would love to. This was so fun. Excellent.
Travis:Okay. Well, thanks, Christian. I'll put everything in the show notes. Ruby will find you and everything. Yeah, that'd be great.
Christian:Appreciate it.
Travis:Thanks thanks for coming on.
Christian:Oh, thank you. Alright.
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