Ask A Genius 1291: Handwashing, NYC Hygiene, and Public Spaces

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/02

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is it necessary to wash your hands after picking up dog poop with toilet paper? I do.

Rick Rosner: I’m not sure if it’s strictly necessary, but I’m in the habit of washing my hands frequently. It’s a habit that started during COVID—or maybe even earlier when I was living in New York City and using public transit every day. After a couple of years in New York, seeing what people do on the subway and in public spaces, you realize that every publicly accessible surface has had every substance that can come out of a human body on it.

My wife saw someone vomit—or vomit on the ground—about once a week in New York City. Seeing and smelling urine multiple times a day was part of daily life. If you get on the subway during rush hour—New York subway trains are usually 8 to 11 cars long, and all of them are packed—a rookie mistake is seeing a packed train but noticing that one car is completely empty.

Packed, packed, packed… empty.

A rookie will get in that car. Then the doors will close, the train will start moving, and they will realize they’ve made a huge mistake—because a person experiencing a severe mental health crisis and/or homelessness is the only other occupant of that car, and they have a ton of shit in their pants. Or maybe the shit is all over the place. There are a lot of substances in New York City.

And so, I probably got a little obsessive about handwashing during my last few months there. Then I probably got sloppy again until COVID happened. At that point, we were urged to wash our hands constantly. We didn’t know how COVID was transmitted—whether it was airborne or spread through surfaces—so we became hyper-vigilant about handwashing.

Now, one of our dogs probably has cancer. Given that she’s 14, we’re not willing to spend thousands on a precise diagnosis because everyone we’ve talked to—including the vet—says you don’t want to put a dog that old through the brutality of surgery, which she might not survive, or chemotherapy, which would make her miserable. You just want to keep the dog happy for as long as possible.

But anyway, I looked it up, and most dog cancers are not contagious. The only known transmissible cancer in dogs is canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT), which spreads through direct contact. But I’m not willing to take Wikipedia’s word for it. So yes, I wash my hands after picking up dog poop because I don’t want to take any chances.

I never saw someone masturbating on the subway. But Carol did—at least once. If she was sitting down, a guy would step in front of her and either brandish his—well, I don’t think anyone ever fully exposed himself to her, but a couple of times, a guy would push out his groin to show that he had an erection.

Then, at a gym in LA—formerly Bally’s, now LA Fitness, off Gower and Sunset—my writing partner saw a guy masturbating into a urinal.

So, anyway, yes, public surfaces get covered with stuff you don’t necessarily want to touch.

Jacobsen: Ew.

Rosner: Yes. This was the guy who had bluebird tattoos on his shoulders.

Jacobsen: What does that mean?

Rosner: Nothing. It’s a common tattoo—a traditional one. Along the lines of a woodpecker smoking a cigar. This was a bluebird guy. He didn’t, but I’m saying that there are certain tattoos—like a heart with “Mom” across it—that predate modern tattoo fads.

Jacobsen: What do you rate it on Rotten Tomatoes?… What do you consider the funniest thing you have ever heard?

Rosner: I don’t know. I’ll probably need to think about it because nothing comes immediately to mind. It’s some situational thing. It might come out of a stand-up routine. I’m bad at remembering jokes, but there’s shit I’ve found ridiculously funny. None of it comes to mind right now, though. I’ll try to keep it in mind and see if I can remember.

I can tell you that some comedians used to keep massive archives of jokes. They probably don’t have file cabinets anymore, but that was old-school. Milton Berle had a file cabinet with about a hundred thousand jokes. That’s a lot.

Nowadays, people would have a database. Milton Berle’s nickname was “The Thief of Bad Gags,” which was a play on The Thief of Baghdad because he was notorious for stealing other people’s jokes. There’s a character on Hacks who has a massive file of jokes.

Twitter itself used to be a huge repository of jokes—thousands posted every day. Now that entire edifice of humor has been ripped to shreds. Because all the funny people got chased away by the hateful lunatics that Musk encouraged and let back on. It’s a shame—both for the country and for people who once had a fun place to share information, humor, and empathy.

What is the funniest thing you’ve ever heard or seen?

I remember one thing from when I was a kid.

Jacobsen: Go.

Rosner: So, when we grew up—maybe even when you grew up—there were in-person bullies. I assume there still are, but it was more of a thing before you could bully people online or through social media.

Bullies back then bullied you physically. They’d push you around. They’d hit you, shove you down, call you a faggot, push you into lockers, knock your books out of your hands.

There were two brothers, the Heap brothers, and they were bullies.

They were big, poor, and had somewhat brittle bones. One of them was always wearing a dirty forearm cast because they had broken a fist or a bone in their wrist from punching someone. And they would go ahead and punch you with the cast—because casts are hard.

So, they were feared, and not well-liked. I’m not remembering the entire story, but everybody—maybe me in particular—thought it was funny that one of them was driving age, and the little brother wasn’t.

The little brother was riding next to his older brother in the front seat—probably in a station wagon. The car didn’t have bucket seats; it had that full bench seat across the front, like cars used to have back then. And then, the little brother puked. I forget what caused the puking, but I used to think chains of people barfing were funny—one person making the next person puke, and so on.

Anyway, the little brother pukes all across the dashboard and the windshield. Then the older brother, trying to drive, looks over, sees the puke, and pukes on the little brother. Then their German Shepherd jumps over two seatbacks from the way back of the station wagon and starts lapping up the barf.

This barf apocalypse—I thought it was the fucking funniest thing ever when I was 15.

There was even a barf chain reaction in a Stephen King story. It’s been in more than one movie, but in a Stephen King movie—Stand by Me—there was a pie-eating contest. Some fat kid eats one mouthful too many and barfs all over the other contestants, and then they all barf, and then everybody barfs.

I’m not the only one who thinks barfing is hilarious. Now, though, it’s totally played out. I don’t care much for seeing barfing in TV shows or movies anymore because it’s become a cliché.

Jacobsen: My addendum.

There’s a Rick and Morty episode where they co-opted some alien species. Rick talked them into coming down to Earth. Their whole thing was that they would grab a human and barf in their mouth or on their face or whatever, and then the person would convert, and the aliens could control them.

Then they got to the White House and did it to the president. Then they took over. It was very entertaining. There’s a small clip online where people splice together the key moments, and it’s just all the barfing. Then there’s a sea of barf. A 180-degree spray, left to right.

The whole thing is great. So yes, you can still be original with barfing.

Rosner: I can tell you a tip I picked up on one of the shows I worked on: if you want to easily make realistic barf, just have someone take a mouthful of vegetable soup. That works for most barfing purposes.

This brings up another thing. There was a Stephen King movie that I didn’t see all of—Dreamcatcher. I think it had Morgan Freeman in it. The monster that took over people took the shape of a turd and went up people’s asses.

And even as I say it, I can’t believe that was actually the plot—but it fucking was.

It wasn’t a comedy. It was a serious horror movie.

There you go.

Jacobsen: What’s the craziest email anyone has ever sent you?

Rosner: Fucking—I can tell you something stupid. Ten years ago, I would have done a long interview about this. Let me just say—

You know that show I do in the mornings where people yell at each other about politics?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: Well, we had a Young Republican vs. Rick segment—except without the “vs. Rick” part. Pretty much. They had a Young Republican on Young Republican pundits—aspiring politicians—are generally well-trained.

This kid came on in a suit. When you look at Young Republicans, you just want to punch them—but no. Because they look like someone who would never get laid in a thousand years. But they know their shit, and they’re in a suit.

Every point you bring up about how shitty the Republicans are, they have a way to refute it. It’s obvious that the Republicans are better at media training. They build a bench.

They build a team. They always have young people waiting in the wings who are trained and will grow up to be the Charlie Kirks, the Ted Cruzes. There’s a ton of money around Republican think tanks, CPAC, and all that—to get these people financed and camera-ready. The Democrats don’t fucking do that.

And this all leads to the number of times I’ve fucked up because I didn’t have media training, with the most egregious time happening before you and I started talking in 2014. I’ve told this story before—I was being interviewed by Fox News for a little human-interest piece on what it’s like to have a high IQ. It was a rookie reporter, and I gave a flippant answer—which you should never do. If I’d had any media training at all, I wouldn’t have done the interview in the first place. Someone with experience would have asked, “What will this get you?” And I’d have been like, “Uh, maybe it would lead to something?” Then they would have asked, “Has this kind of shit ever led to anything in the past?” And I’d have been like, “Mostly no.” And they would have said, “Then don’t fucking do it.”

Because it jeopardized my job. It always pissed off the people at Kimmel anytime I did an interview.

Anyway, this reporter asked me, “How do you get any sleep? How do you get anything done when you’re spending all your time on IQ tests?” And I answered, “I don’t.” When I’m taking one of those crazy-hard IQ tests that take a hundred hours, I generally don’t spend more than an average of about forty minutes a day on it. I gave her a fairly detailed answer. Then, a few hours later—maybe the next day—she asked me the same question again. This annoyed me because I had already answered it.

So I said, “Frankly, I spend more time looking at porn than I do taking IQ tests.”

Which, to me, seemed like a reasonable-ish, flippant response—because everybody looks at porn. Nobody talks about it, but I still think it’s fair game to bring up. Plus, I was just making a joke. And that destroyed my career.

Because I ended up getting in a fight with the reporter. She ended up not liking me. She fucked me. She made the subheading of the entire story: “Late-night TV writer is addicted to porn,” based on that one comment—where I just said, “I look at porn” in a jokey way.

Anyway, so last night, we were wondering if there has ever been a pair of conjoined twins who shared a brain. It turns out that there is a living set of twins, Krista and Tatiana Hogan, whose brains are connected through the thalamus. I read about what the thalamus does and promptly forgot it. But anyway, they can see each other’s thoughts. One can see through both of her twin’s eyes, while the other can only see what one of her twin’s eyes is seeing. They can control their own limbs, but to some extent, they can also control each other’s limbs. They know when the other one is in pain.

They can talk to each other through their thoughts—though I’d have to reread the article to confirm exactly how that works. But when you think about it, the way joined consciousness functions is, in a way, pretty straightforward. With each aspect of cognition, either you share access to the other consciousness or you don’t. With vision, to some extent, they can see what the other is seeing. With thinking, to some extent, they can perceive what the other is thinking. And that’s the deal.

Can they retrieve their twin’s memories? If they turned 18, how would that work? And the extent to which they’ve been studied has been limited because they signed a deal with a documentary company.

They might be financially strapped to some extent. I saw a photo of the twins with their grandma, and they were sitting in the doorway of a mobile home. You’ve got to feed two people with one job.

But they look happy. There are pictures of them smiling, taking swimming lessons. They do cross-country skiing. They go to a normal school. Their development is reportedly a little delayed, but exactly what that means is unclear.

There was an article that showed them starting sixth grade at the same time as other kids their age. But when we start being able to get information piped into our brains—either it’ll be intelligible to us, or it won’t be, or it’ll be somewhat intelligible. To me, it seems pretty straightforward, though I’m sure you can come up with situations where it wouldn’t be. But at the most elementary level, it’s a sliding scale. You can either perceive what the person you’re merged with is seeing, thinking, and remembering with 100% fidelity, or with something less—anywhere between 100% and zero.

And you’ve got that same sliding scale for every aspect of cognition. What happens over their lifespan? Do they become more integrated, or do they become less integrated? We don’t really know. I assume that the cognitive functions in the brain—the more joint thinking they do, the more integrated their minds become. They grow into themselves. You’re thinking all the time, but you learn stuff. Your thinking gets more sophisticated. I would assume their integration would also get more sophisticated. They’d learn to understand what the other one is thinking and perceiving with more clarity the more they experience it.

Now, they do have issues. They have seizures. I read something that said they do, and they’re also diabetic, which doesn’t necessarily affect cognition, but if you’re struggling with blood sugar levels, it can impact everything. When they were little—toddlers—they had circulation issues. One twin’s heart was working too hard, and doctors figured out how to fix that. But I assume that if you get everything else on an even keel, then yes, they should become good at “cross-thinking.”

Jacobsen: So does this show that there is no mind independent of a brain? What are you asking? Does this show, in a hardcore way, that there is no mind independent of the brain?

Rosner: Yes. If we’re still trying to make that argument, then yes. Somebody could argue, “If your mind is someplace else besides your brain,” but that’s an argument from the 1600s. Then why should two people with connected brains have connected minds? It seems like one more piece of evidence that your mind is in your brain.

When I was looking for these people, I came across a set of conjoined twins who lived to age 62—George and Lori—which surprised me because that would indicate they were fraternal twins. But no, George came out as trans later in life. It used to be Lori and Dori. I thought that was interesting.

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