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A
Most people don't know how many financial accounts they have or their net worth. And when you're not paying attention, you're leaving money on the table. The solution is Monarch, an all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. On your laptop or phone in just minutes, link all your accounts for a complete picture of your financial health. You'll never need a spreadsheet again. Get 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code control. That's monarch.com promo code control. It's Thursday, November 6, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. There's still one big election result out there. You might not care unless you're in the Pacific Northwest or just a caring person, but you know, the city of Seattle is the 18th biggest city in America. It is almost 800,000 people. New York has 8 million. But does Seattle even get a tenth of the coverage? So right now Katie Wilson is trailing Bruce Harrell. Oh, I'm a drag you to the Seattle mayoral race. And I will quote Ron Davis, who does the blog Rendezvous Washington could be Rendezvous. I don't know. Not into pronouncing anything. But he is into pronouncing this. While there are some reasons to be concerned, I still think the evidence clearly suggests the odds favor Katie Wilson. And then the next sentence is very, very clarifying. I don't believe this is cope. I have heard first and secondhand from half a dozen leading sophisticated data analysts and consultant folks. So anytime someone tells you that he doesn't believe this is cope, it's of course cope, or at least it's cope. Motivated doesn't mean that there is no analysis where there's no fact factoring into the analysis. But you know, here's a guy rendezvous who wants Katie Wilson to win and she very well might win even though she trailed by seven on election day. And then after a tranche of ballots dropped yesterday, trailed by eight. The thing is, in the past, the leftward swing of the late returning ballots have amounted to 9, 10 and 12 point shifts. If they that holds up and Katie Wilson is behind by eight, then Katie Wilson could win. But why? You ever wonder, to quote Andy Rooney, who has once been to Seattle, I assume you ever wonder why the late shift goes Dem or goes Lib? Because it doesn't go that all the time go that it doesn't follow that trajectory all the time. You know, in recent presidential races when once they bank the early vote, that's usually Good for Democrats. And then the Republicans come out on election day. That's a thing Republicans rock ribbed Republicans coming out on election day not trusting the mail in their ballots. The more flaky, crazy, hacky sack playing libs they'll mail in their ballots. But on Seattle and some other big cities where if you're a liberal, you just vote late, the best theory I've heard is that the young procrastinate. So the rock ribbed Republicans, there are no Republicans. Seattle, there are seven of them. But the less liberal people who might own a house, who might, you know, file their taxes on time, who might not be as good as hacky sack, One, two or three hacks. Not the extended hackery of the Sakura bunch. The libs go late, they go to drop boxes and they know that their ballots will be counted and there will be a lib shift and rendezvous will be justified in saying that it's going to be a Katie Wilson win. I will say about Will son, that the betting markets have Harrell ahead and they didn't. They didn't when Katie Wilson won the primary. But Harold's ahead now. Not that the betting markets know it. It's only a tiny little lead. They probably just looked at the big headline number and the second drop. But I care. I care about you, Seattle. I care about what goes on in the Queen City. In the Emerald City. The Queen City, Cincinnati. I take that one back. In the Emerald City. I care about your storefronts that are boarded up in your Little Saigon section where a lot of people used to buy and do drugs and now, from what I understand, slightly fewer people do. This is a fascinating race to me because as you know, as go Seattle, so goes Walla Walla. Actually, it doesn't. Given recent trends on the show today, I shall spiel about Sasha Suda, ousted as director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum, which used to be the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And that that change, that reordering of the words and elimination of of that seems to have played a central role in the ouster of Sasha Suda. The gist investigates. But first, you might be upset about disgusting hair in your food. Or I'm going to say slightly less disgusting natural bird feathers in your way. But are they really that disgusting, scientifically speaking? Or is that bullshit? And when we play, is that bullshit? Sadie Dingfelder comes by for the Feather and hair edition. How disgusting are they? Not disgusting at all. Is that bullshit? Up next, okay, the weather's getting colder, unless you're in Phoenix, but it's still getting colder. And sometimes when you're in a warm city, you're like, look, I might get to wear a sweater. And sometimes when you're in a cold city, there is this phenomenon known as sweater weather. And Quince has got you covered literally. $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters. Oh, it's such a luxury. That's the Mongolian cashmere. $50. That's what you can afford. And that's the one I love. I have this green quint sweater that is a go to and I am going to go to Quint for additional sweater type coverings. I also should mention that they've gone beyond clothing. They've they have home, bath, kitchen and travel. Some luggage from Quince. Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with quince. Go to quince.com/the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Quincom. Slash the gist. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/the gist Claude is an AI service that I so love. I use it for writing all the time. It's also excellent for coding and it's improved my professional workflow. I am not going to say that all of the correspondence I get goes through Claude at some point. I mean, if you write in, you're going to hear from me, but just as an assist, saved me hours, hours and hours and hours. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. It gives me so much suggestions I wouldn't have thought of and takes what I did think of and polishes it so that it's what I meant or I can tell myself, yeah, that's what I meant. And the thing that it does, artificial intelligence. Right? What is intelligence but identifying connections where you didn't see them before? That's what I think a key definition of intelligence is in my head. And when I think of intelligence, intelligent humans, now that we have intelligent machines. And that's what Claude does. Claude finds connections between all these sources that I wouldn't have found on my own. Plus all the professional tools through MCP connectors, GitHub and Jira and HubSpot and Notion. If you work with those, you know what I mean. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Sign up For Claude today and get 50% off Claude Pro when you use my link. Claude AI slash the gist. That's Claude AI slash the gist right now for 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro. That includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude AI slash the Gist. I'm interested in disgusting things. I'm not as disgusted by things that other people find disgusting, you know, although I have been watching the pit a lot and you know, oozing entrails, not my favorite. But you know, there is one or two categories of things that people find disgusting that I just don't get. So Sadie and I, Sadie Dingfelder, who comes on the Gist and we play Is that Bullshit? Sadie and I were talking about feathers which are quite beautiful, but some people find disgusting. And we said maybe this will be an interesting segment for. Is that bullshit? And it's interesting. I don't know if it's broad enough, which is a crazy thing since there are probably more feathers in the world than, you know, any non microscopic substance given our bird population. But I got to thinking, you know what people get freaked out about that. I don't, I don't love. I don't order extra of it on the side. Hair, Human hair. Or presumably human hair in my soup, in my food. So, Sadie, welcome back to the Gist. How are you?
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B
Great. How are you doing?
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A
I'm very well. And we're going to touch on the feather inquiry, but can you give us a baseline of what your attitude is towards feathers without having looked into it? And the same question for hair?
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B
Yeah. Well, so everyone I know, I mean, I love hanging out with kids in the woods and I love looking for feathers and I found these really pretty turkey feathers in my woods. And then my friend was like, oh my God, like, don't let my kids touch those disgusting feathers. And. And so I thought, you know, I don't. I know that a lot of people think feathers are super gross, but I didn't know if it was really true or not. And then I was recently at a bird banding workshop and the attitude of the bird banders towards feather hygiene was quite cavalier.
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A
People, you would think, right, you would think if they were totally freaked out, they'd have chosen a different hobby.
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B
It's true. But people would lick the tip of their finger to like separate out the feather and like, I don't know. So I was really surprised. And they weren't all dying of bird flu, so.
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A
No, it's just only a couple. Only A couple succumb to chickenpox or avian flu. But what about hair? When I say, you know, hair in your soup or you get a little piece of hair in your baba ganoush, how freaked out are you?
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B
I have to say that I will never find any foreign objects in my food because it's a. It's very much like an eat food first look later thing. So I. That's never happened to me. Has it happened to you?
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A
Yeah, I see the hair, and my wife always, you know, does the slow mo Secret Service catching the bullet slash hair jump to, you know, plunge headfirst into the baba ganoush or the tziki sauce or whatever.
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B
Wow. So it happens.
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A
Well, she finds. She finds hair quite disgusting, which is why I wanted to ask you, you know, how disgusting is it? And I guess before we can figure this out, we have to. Or I'd like to know, how do they even study this? How do they study what kind of germs are on hair?
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B
Well, so my favorite study I found was from 2019. And the way they did it, they actually counted the number of bacteria on hair in two different ways. One way was they literally just used an electron microscope and a grad student that counted the number of little bacteria rods, and then they extrapolated that to the whole hair. The other way they did it was really interesting. They would actually stain part of the bacteria's DNA. And they know how many times this particular part snip occurs. Anyway, they used a computer to count the fluorescence, the brightness of the light. The two methods converged on roughly the same numbers, but the range is, like. Is pretty big in terms of the amount of bacteria they found.
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A
You mean there can be a lot of bacteria? Maybe there's not a lot of bacteria. And they're using this to find. Is bacteria just a proxy for, you know, disgusting? This. Is there good bacteria, bad bacteria? When it comes to hair, yes.
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B
There. I mean, obviously there's not. Not all bacteria cause illness in humans, and a lot of it depends on where it lands in your body. Like sometimes very beneficial bacteria and can cause huge problems if it ends up in your lungs or whatever. So they were just using it as a proxy. There were other studies that counted other types of pathogens, like viruses. But in general, I think foodborne illness, they tend to be interested in bacteria because when we say disgusting, I mean that's a psychological measure. So I was just trying to figure out what the likelihood that you would actually be able to catch something from. From a piece of hair in your food.
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A
Right. So they. So they have these studies, they stain some of the DNA. They find that there's a big range of the bacteria can. That can be on hair. But what does that really mean?
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B
Well, so they compared it to the. So they compared it to hair follicle versus the hair shaft. Hair follicles are actually embedded in your scalp. And the. They also compared it to skin and they found that there are many. Hair is actually quite. Not a very. It's not a very. It's like an arid desert. Like it's hard for bacteria to thrive on hair shafts. But in your hair follicle, which is embedded in your skin and has all these nice oils and plenty to eat and moisture, there's just tons and tons and tons in your hair follicle. But in terms of hair that gets in your food, that's going to be hair shaft. Unless you have someone who is like plucking their eyebrows while making your soup.
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A
That'd be bad. Yeah. Even I know not to go to that restaurant. Now, these are some recent studies, but I feel like it got. Maybe it's just visceral and you don't even have to have a study to back this up. But I feel like maybe when I grew up, people would cite studies akin to the urine in the dessert mint when leaving the restaurant. Studies. They would cite these very scary studies about hair. I don't know, maybe the studies didn't even actually exist. Exist, you know, 50 years ago. Maybe they were just old wives tale studies.
- [15:17]
B
No, they did. They did, actually. So going back to roughly the time that the USDA started requiring people to wear hairnets officially, it got into the USDA food code in 1969. And that was about the time that a few studies came out where they were looking at hair as a vector for staff. And around the time that the FDA started requiring food workers to wear hairnets, there was a study that came out that found that staph was more present on patients and hospitals hair than on staff and hospitals and also on outpatients.
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A
So they did this study about the staphylocoli in the hospital on the patients versus the STFF staff of the hospital. How'd they do it? What they measure? What did they find?
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B
Okay, they compared the. The level of staff on the patient's hairs and also in the staff, the people who worked at the hospital's noses. The noses, yeah. Yeah. And they found more staff on the hair than in the noses of the hospital workers.
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A
I don't know what we're supposed to find there's something about like looking at the noses and I could see a headline. There's even more staff on just the patients in the hospital than in the noses. But aren't the noses clean? I have no idea. But this is the kind of study that maybe causes alarm if people read it. And I guess it prompted the FDA to require hairnet hairnets for everyone.
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B
Well actually that goes back much earlier and it's so wild. So their big hairnet hired a, a business called Vanita Hairnet hired a guy named Bernays, Edward Bernays, who is Freud's nephew.
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A
Yeah, well he said he was. I'm not sure if he really was. Let's say he was anyway.
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B
No, he was, he was.
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A
How do we know he would spin? He was the father of spin.
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B
He, he was. Well Freud said he was also his nephew.
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A
Okay.
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B
So yeah, he was the father of spin as you mentioned but he really sort of pioneered shifting public opinion without like direct advertising. So Vanita Hairnet came to him in the 1920s and they were like oh my God, our sales are tanking. These women are cutting their hair short. What can we do about it? And he did not say oh let's advertise, you know, the beauty of long hair. What he did was he got doctors to write letters to medical journals and newspapers about how hair and food is super gross and food workers need to wear hairnets to keep their hair out of food. And so he was, I don't want to say he's single handedly, I mean probably people were already grossed out by hair and food but he is the one that came up with the hairnet solution for this sort of non problem.
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A
Yeah. Now Bernays was an interesting cat and I did read that book the Father of Spin by Larry Tye. In fact I'm going to say I interviewed him. Maybe I Larry Ty I, maybe I worked on a show that, where I prepped the interview. Sometimes in my mind it gets all conflated. But the one he had all these interesting ideas and experiments. But also there's a big myth around him which you would think was self perpetuated by the father of spin. It is true that real propagandists had their his book on their shelves. Like he wrote a book called Propaganda. And so the big one that I remember and maybe this is the one most associated with him, the national bookseller said we want to sell more books. They bring it to Edward Bernays. He has the booksellers as the client and I guess everyone else would construct some sort of Campaign about the glory of books or whatever. What he does is he talks to his other client, the National Homebuilders, and convinces them to have bookshelves included in every new home that's built. And the genius of this. I don't know if it's true or not. It doesn't matter. It's such a good story. And when you're the father of spin, even if it's a lie, accounts, if you get credit for the story. Once you have big empty bookshelves, what do you got to buy to put on them? The answer is feathers and hair. No, the answer is. The answer is books.
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B
I do have feathers on my bookshelf.
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A
You do? Yes.
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B
Well, you know, stories that we know are real about him are even more wild. Like the. He was hired by a bacon manufacturer to publicize that, to get doctors to say basically that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You got to have a big hearty breakfast and bacon and eggs is like the best option. So we had doctors recommending bacon as a. As a good breakfast. And then he also. I don't know if you overlapped with Ivory Soap carving, but if I overlap.
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A
With it, I know of it. You know what your generation is to bird banding? Mine is to Ivory Soap carving.
- [20:24]
B
Well, yeah. Oh, and here's another one. Dixie cups and bathrooms. This is something that I remember seeing when I was a little kid. Everyone had like a sheath. A dispenser.
- [20:34]
A
Yeah. So cool.
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B
Yeah, a dispenser of these little cups in the bathroom. And that was totally. This guy, he. He was hired by the, the like disposable cup manufacturers and he basically created this whole campaign that very cleverly used imagery that sort of looked like used STD sort of words and vaginal imagery about how it's gross to leave cups in the bathroom and you need disposable cups.
- [21:02]
A
And the genius of once you have the dispenser, you got to fill the dispenser. So the dispenser is subsidized. They sell the dispenser at a loss. You get your first sheath of cups with, and then you just got to keep filling it. It's like the technology with razors and clippable blades.
- [21:17]
B
Fascinating.
- [21:18]
A
By the way, did Bernays work on feathers at all?
- [21:21]
B
Not that I'm aware of. I wish he did. I would have hired him.
- [21:24]
A
Did you work on feathers? What did you find out about our original inquiry about the disgustingness of feathers?
- [21:30]
B
Okay, this is so crazy, but feathers, in terms of you're Counting bacteria per square inch, they're a lot less gross than human hair shafts. They run from 100 to 10,000 bacteria units per cubic centimeter. And human hair, not the Roots, runs 10 to the fifth to 10 to the sixth, which I guess is 1 million to 10 million. It's an order of magnitude less gross feathers, additionally, what's cool to know is that the little creepy crawlies on feathers, which is the technical term, are specialized for birds. They actually do not generally jump to humans. When they do, it's a big deal. But in general, your feather. Oh, and. But I should mention, though, these are wild bird feathers, so we're not talking about disgusting city pigeon feathers. And I couldn't find any research on disgusting city pigeon feathers. But in poultry houses, which is not the cleanliest place, they run about the same as human hair. 10 to the third to 10 to the fifth.
- [22:35]
A
Gotcha. And this is why when there's an ostrich in the kitchen, he has to wear a bird net. It makes sense. Okay, so this brings us all back to. You said a couple things about hair, and I wanna sort it out and get it all straight, that some of the Studies in the 60s or 70s have been since disproved. And I think you also said that the shaft is arid and not a good breeding ground for bacteria. But the follicle could be.
- [23:03]
B
Mm, absolutely.
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A
Okay. And then in your comparison of hair to feathers, who won?
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B
Feathers are a lot less gross than hair.
- [23:11]
A
And why are hairnets usually made or worn?
- [23:15]
B
Hairnets are worn because this genius, who is Freud's nephew, was hired by Vanita Hairnet. This is my theory. But he convinced the American public specifically that hair and food is exquisitely gross and needs to be prevented with hair nets.
- [23:33]
A
Okay, so knowing all that and knowing why hair nets are so ubiquitous and learning about the studies, we could get to our verdict. The question is human hair, especially disgusting as a vector of disease, something to really worry about? Is that bullshit?
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B
It is bullshit. All the things you need to worry about, you can't see, like the people leaving food, workers leaving food out, or touching food with dirty hands.
- [24:00]
A
So there's much more disgusting things there. The hairnet is mostly for show theater. Yeah. Sadie Dingfelder is the author of Do I know you? A Face Blind Reporter's Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory and Imagination. And she comes on our show to play Is that bullshit with us. And in a way, I would say we are birds of a feather. Thank you so much, Sadie.
- [24:24]
B
Thank.
- [24:31]
A
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If you pay off early or cancel contact us. And now the spiel Sasha Suda is out at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. No, wait, correction. It is the Philadelphia Art Museum. And that is why in fact, she is out. The juxtaposition of the words art and museum plus the exclusion of the word of was described widely as the controversial rebrand. Not Philadelphia Museum of Art, but Philadelphia Art Museum. Was this a decision of the idiotic or an idiotic decision? I don't know. I know. The Philadelphia Art Museum, after it was rebranded as such, got styled as Fam for the whole fam. Hey, fam, as the influencers say. But the critics called it not the Fam, but the Fart. And those, those critics, the ones mocking it, they were the ones who wanted it to be called the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which would be the Fart. There are a couple of other knocks against Sasha Suda and they were also redesign related. Sorry, controversial redesign related. There is now a new logo. It was a griffin in sinister pose. That means the griffin was facing to the left. Looks like a standard issue heraldic griffin. There are griffins on the roof of the museum. Griffins have long been associated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as it was called at the time when people liked the griffins. It all makes sense. No, it doesn't. Screamed obviously very well adjusted critics of the Philadelphia Art Museum of Art in Philadelphia. It looks, quote, more like a soccer team, a clothing brand for teens, or a beer label, according to the Philadelphia association of Snobs and Blowhards. Yes, Fazab the Inquirer, from which that quote originates, the clothing brand for teens dismissal says that the board of the museum wasn't consulted, but insiders say they were consulted. They approved the half million dollars that they needed to approve to commence the redesign. They were updated along the way. They just weren't given a vote. Should this griffin be more of a grr griffin or a griff? And you know, the kind with the tongue out. It's a griffin, people. It's a griffin. Who cares what particular type of griffin it is? Who cares about the font of the design? Oh, wait, I'm forgetting. It is an art museum or possibly a museum of art. So yes, the visuals are very important. And as we know, with the artsies come the fartsies. Here is w H y y describing in a scathing critique, I would say the new typeface around badge centered by a griffin, encircled by the words Philadelphia Art Museum in bold type. It replaces the previous logo that put the title on three lines. The words Philadelphia and Museum of in small type, anchored by art in oversized letters. Why? Y ended with this griffin descriptor described as chunky. The thick and bold new logo is designed to stick out in a crowded digital environment. Make way for the big griffs. This badonka donk of a logo got the director bounced. De it doesn't seem fair. Wait, there's more. The design firm, the generators of all this zaftig griffin schlock. Do you know where they were from. It's not Philadelphia. It's worse. It's far worse. They were from Brooklyn. I should note the Ron mom dummy hired a Philadelphia firm to describe his logos. No one seems to complain about that, but there were no obese Griffins involved. There was also some concern I came across in the press coverage over suda's commitment to inclusion, which is of course code for something. I can't figure it out. Could mean anything. Could be coming from any direction, giving the art museum world. Maybe it's this, she told the Philadelphia Voice. Sorry, the Philly voice. Quote, we're really here to represent the communities that we exist to serve. We are aiming to open our doors so wide that maybe we won't even need them eventually. Ah, so this was a concern about theft. It is really hard to say. Maybe they had to open the door so wide because of very fat Griffins. Was it all really just a new name without an of? That seems pretty petty. Was it really a Chunky Griffin? It's a great name for a gastropub. There's got to be more to this firing. It can't be putting the art before the museum and the use of. Of at least the last director, a Mr. Timothy Rub, was bounced for mismanaging a sexual harassment complaint. No, not against him personally. He wasn't alleged to have Tim rubbed people the wrong way. But you know, it was 20, 21 and older white men were getting bounced from the institutions. Then comes this younger Canadian female, Sasha Sar, with her fam and her openness and her inclusion. She also stepped into a strike, which she decided not to immediately take sides on. That was apparently a bad move. Years later that marked her for ouster. And they were just waiting for the right time. Which was when she approved a thick griff, the Griffin of chunk. Or is it the chunkiness of of the Griffin? Either way, Sasha Sana is no more. Don't let the wide open doors that you might not need hit you on the way out. And to add insult to this rather perplexing ouster, Philly voice notes, much is at stake for the museum and the city on the cusp of the semi quincentennial next year, as well. As for Suda, a Canadian citizen who is in the US on a work visa. And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Michelle Pesca. I'll list her next. First in my heart, she is the COO of Peach Fish Productions. And then there's Jeff Craig. He oversees all of our socials and Kathleen Sykes very much helps me with the gist list. New improve G Peru do Peru. Thanks for listening.