Carl Zimmer

And she's like, wow, cool.

you should think about other stuff, like how about a bra?

And so they actually went forward with this sort of, you know, sprayed polymer fiber bra, which was being much nicer than the kind of medieval stuff that women had to put up with before then.

And then, you know, she's at the same time spending a lot of time in hospitals because a lot of her family was sick with various ailments.

And she was looking at these, you know, doctors and nurses who were wearing masks, which just weren't fitting them very well.

And she thought, wait a minute, like I could...

You could take a bra cup and just basically fit it on people's faces.

So she goes to 3M and is like, hey, what about this?

And they're like, hmm, interesting.

And at first it didn't seem actually like it worked well against viruses and other pathogens, but it was good on dust.

And so it started showing up in hardware stores in the 70s.

And then there were further experiments that basically figured it showed you could essentially kind of amazingly kind of give the material a little static charge.

And that was good enough that then if you put it on, it traps droplets that contain viruses and doesn't let them through.

So N95s are a really good way to keep viruses from coming into your mouth or going out.

Well, yeah.

So we are...

releasing living things into the air with every breath.

But we're not the only ones.

So I'm looking at you and I see beyond you the ocean.

And the Pacific Ocean, every time those waves crash down on the surf, it's spewing up vast numbers of tiny droplets.