Prior to his post-college Peace Corps experience, my friend Erik wanted to train his body to need fewer showers. So he stopped bathing. After a rough patch (for everyone around him), Erik really didn’t smell all that bad. Today, many researchers are studying whether we should be adding bacteria to our bodies instead of constantly scrubbing it away. NYT Magazine’s Julia Scott visited with a team looking to put an end to daily showers — which they replace with a few pumps of mist containing billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha (you may have met them before, in dirt and untreated water). The team’s MIT-trained engineer hasn’t showered for the past 12 years. Welcome to: My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment. (I’m pretty my 7 year-old son has been running the same test.)