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2a6755d2-3b0f-11eb-a672-2b121585a5e6	The Circleville Poison Pen Letters Mystery	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-circleville-poison-pen-letters-mystery	For 20 years, a tiny town in Ohio was held enrapt by the prolific author of a series of unhinged letters. By the time they abruptly stopped, the letters – which revealed terrible secrets – had claimed a life and sent a possibly innocent man to prison.	For 20 years, a tiny town in Ohio was held enrapt by the prolific author of a series of unhinged letters. By the time they abruptly stopped, the letters – which revealed terrible secrets – had claimed a life and sent a possibly innocent man to prison.	Tue, 11 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=11, tm_isdst=0)	49242791	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to Squarespace.com SYSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code S YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be Chuck Bryant, and we can hear Jerry Clears a bell, so she's here with us. And this, of course, is stuff you should know. True crime? Yeah, I'd say sort of, but no, it really is true crime. It's just not necessarily murdery. No, but it's stalky, and I hadn't really realized it until I saw it spelled out a few times. But this is a huge stalking case. One of the weirdest, creepiest, most mysterious stalking cases of all time. Yes, but I think I know who did it. Hold it. Wait. Save it, because we'll definitely have that combo. Okay. Yeah, I think this is one of those. What is it? Occam's razor. Is that the most obvious thing? We did an episode on that, remember? Yeah, a gazillion years ago. But I think this is one of those where it is a lot less mysterious when you kind of just look at it at its face. Right. So in other words, you think the cat did it. The cat did do it. Always. So we're talking about this mystery, usually called in its full title, the Circleville Ohio Poison Pen Letters, and it is a weird, unsolved mystery case. In fact, it came into the widest public awareness thanks to that TV show Unsolved Mysteries back in the early 90s. They loved it, and a lot of their info was based on this journalist and private investigator named Martin Yant, who had already been investigating it by then. But it is a really weird, odd, true crime mystery. And yes, it is true crime, even though you're right, it doesn't have murder involved. There's no serial killer or anything like that. But it is bizarre and it is weird, and it is still unsolved to this day. Yeah, there's a death. It's not a murder, though. I don't want to ruin it. So before we get too far into it, I want to give some shout outs to some of the sources for this one. Unsolved Mysteries their website, a couple of CBS websites. Mental Floss thought catalog, historic mysteries list first had some good stuff and then true Crimes times. Had some good stuff. And then also there are a couple of podcast sites that have already covered this that if this floats your boat, go check out the Whatever Remains podcast coverage of this. And there's also one called Invisible Ships podcast that covered this too. And we use some of their info from their sites, too. Yes, and this is one of those that's a little frustrating to research because there's a lot of different conflicting information, and it's kind of hard to get to the real facts. But some of it's not the biggest deal. It's just like, oh, I saw that this was this and I mean, right off the bat, for instance, in Circleville, Ohio, these mystery letters started coming to Mary Gillespie. But then I saw sites that say, oh, no, the superintendent received letters before Mary Gillispie even. Is that right? Yeah. So who knows? It doesn't really damage the main storyline. Like, nothing contradicts it, such to where I was like, well, I don't even know what I've just read then, right? I don't even know what's true anymore. But all this just as a way of setting up, if there are things that are slightly off, it's because it's just hard to get the real like, we didn't have the case file in front of us. So most of the coverage of this mystery does start with Mary Golispy receiving her first letter. And Mary Golispy was a local bus driver in Circleville, Ohio. And Circleville, Ohio, is a tiny little town about 2020, 5 miles south of Columbus, Ohio, the capital of Ohio. A school bus driver, by the way, which is very key. Yes, thank you for that. And so this is a small town, and Mary Gillespie was a small town person who just kind of typically minded her own business, from what I could tell, generally well thought of, if she was ever thought of at all by other people. And she got this first letter, and it was written in this kind of weird blocky handwriting, and it was a rather alarming letter for anybody to get because it basically said, I know that you're having an affair with the superintendent of the West Fall School District, which you're an employee of, and if you don't stop, bad things are going to start happening to you. Right. His name was Gordon Massey, said they were watching her. The superintendent was Gordon Massey that she was having an affair with. Right? Yes. As opposed to who the letter writer. It would be no mystery if we need the letter writer. Hey, if I were listening to this podcast I would have been confused just then. So I was looking out for that version of me that's out there listening. Oh goodness, I hope that person isn't listening. So they said that they were watching and quote, this is no joke. So these letters start coming in. Almost all of them had that same blocky letter meaning basically capital letters. Some did not though, and we'll get into that a little bit more later. But the lion's share of them had this one kind of writing style that was very signature, clearly kind of written by the same person. Yeah. And so Mary, she hides these letters for a little while, obviously didn't even tell her husband at first and then eventually says Ron. And there are a bunch of just norm core names in here. So it might get a little confusing with like the Ron's and the Mary's and the Paul's. But she told her husband Ron, she said, listen, I've been getting these letters and here's what they say. And the letters are saying that I need to tell the school board about this or they will out me basically on how you would out someone in the 70s, which is on the radio CB by putting up billboards and signs. This would be your modern social media threat, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. And so Ron said, well I think Mary said, listen, I think, I know these are coming from this other guy, David. He's another school bus driver. David Longbury. And he tried to come on to me and I rebuffed him and I think that's who's writing this? From what I could tell, Mary kept the letters to herself until Ron started getting letters himself that basically said, your wife was having an affair with Gordon Massey and you better make them stop or else I'm going to tell everybody. And so that's when she turned to David's like, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about these letters and that I've been accused of having an affair. I'm totally not having an affair though, but what are we going to do about these letters? So they loop in, as you would do, some family members. Ron's sister Karen, who will become a key player, and her husband Paul Fresh Hour was their last name, married last name. He would become a key player. He was a prison guard. And not just a little side factoid about him is the prison movie Brewbaker with Robert Redford. He was in that movie, they filmed it nearby and he was cast as an extra, as a prison guard because he was a real prison guard. He was a real prison guard. And another fun fact about Paul Freshow is in the late sixty s at the prison he was a guard at, it was overrun by an inmate riot and he was held prisoner for, like, 30 hours by the inmates. Well, he was a natural for Brewbaker then. He was. So by the time these letters started coming through, he was no longer a prison guard. He was a quality inspector at the local Anheuser Bush bottling plant. But I took from the fact that he was a former prison guard, that they wanted to get some muscle involved, and they went to him to ask him to write the letters. That was how I took it. Yeah. And he worked and this kind of becomes key later on. He worked about 50 to 60 hours a week and had a pretty decent commute to and from. So the long and short of that is he was gone at work a lot of the time. Right. So Paul said, okay, of course I'll help you guys out. And he sent a letter, at least one, to David Longberry, the other bus driver that had made advances on Mary and who they suspected was the writer of these letters, and said, hey, buster, we know what you're doing. You better stop. If you don't, bad things are going to happen to you, so cool off. Essentially, I'm paraphrasing here in the 70s kind of way, and it seems like it worked because for a few weeks, the letters that have been started to come, like, hard and fast just dried up at first. Yeah. Because he said, Stop what you're doing, because I'm about to ruin go on. The image and the style that you're used to. That's right. And who wouldn't stop writing letters if received with that threat? Yeah. Because they thought they had this anonymous letter writer dead to rights, and he was going to be scared off now because ultimately, if it was this guy who, from Ron Gillispie's point of view, what? He was being told by his wife that she wasn't having an affair, this guy was making this up because she had resisted his advances. If you tell somebody, look, stop. We know that you're doing this, of course they're going to stop. The jig is up. So they did think that had handled it, especially when those letters dried up for a few weeks, but not too long after that, they were rather dismayed because rather than just letters now, there were signs being posted around town that were saying essentially the same thing. Yeah. They were saying not only that, but they were saying that Gordon Massey, superintendent not letterwriter, was involved romantically with the Golissa's twelve year old daughter, Tracy. Right. So, of course, dad sees this. Ron starts driving around, tearing these signs down before the break of dawn, so no one would see these things. And this just sort of went on for a while. There were these letters that would come and go. I think about a little more than a year went by, and in August of 77, mary's like, I got to get out of here. I'm going to go to Florida with my sister in laws, with your sister Karen and a couple of other friends. Later on, people said that was a cover up for maybe going down to meet Gordon Massey in Florida, but I don't think that's true. I think she went down with her friends. Oh, really? Yeah. Do you think that's true? I think we might have different people in mind on who did this then. Okay. We'll get to that, though. Okay. That will be the exciting reveal at the end. I can't wait. Man it was Gordon Matthew, the letter writer. Back at home, Ron answers the phone. It was a person claiming to be the letter writer on the other end. He said that he recognized the voice, he got mad, he got his gun and tells the kids, I'm going to take care of this problem once and for all. And a few hours later, Ron is dead. Dead. D-E-A-D. But he wasn't dead, like, from a stab wound or no one had broken his neck or anything like that. He was dead from a car accident. He had run into, I believe, a tree. He'd run off the road, driven about 30ft at a high speed and run into a tree. It was the 70s, so he very well might not have even had a seatbelt installed in his car, but at the very least, he didn't have it on. Yeah, the pickup truck, he was half thrown from the cab, which is grizzly, and he died at the site. Like, he wasn't pronounced dead at the hospital or on the way to the hospital. They pronounced him dead on the site. He was super dead of massive internal injuries. And so there were a couple of really fishy things about all this. Number one, the intersection where he died at, it was not far from his house, so he knew this intersection very well. The weather was fine, it was nighttime, but it wasn't, like, raining out or anything like that. And his gun was found to have had one round missing and it had been fired. It wasn't just missing. Like the gun had been fired and no shell casing was found. So in between the time that he stormed out of his house to apparently confront the letter writer and the time he was found dead, he had discharged his gun and they had no idea at whom where it was discharged, under what circumstances. They just knew that he had shot his gun once. So it was not a revolver? Not that I know of, because I've seen multiple places that they did not find a shell casing. So it sounds like it was an automatic or semi automatic. All right, so that some people might say is fishy. The other thing that other people say is fishy. I don't find any of this fishy, by the way, is that they ruled a drunken driving accident. Other people friends would say, like, Brian didn't even drink that much. We didn't see him drinking that day. But you can't argue with science. And he had twice the legal limit in his blood alcohol content. I don't think amuse I think he drank up some courage to go confront someone and wrecked his car and died. Yeah. Something that gets left out of this is that this was a really dark period in Ron Gillispie's life. Like, he was driving around for hours before work every day, finding these signs, at the very least, looking for him if he couldn't find them. Like, he didn't sleep very well. It makes a lot of sense that he would have taken up drinking when he was otherwise a teenager. He was being told by this person that his wife was having an affair, even though she swore that she wasn't. It was a bad time for him. So he had a really rough last year or so of his life, and then he died badly as well, too. It was not a good end for Ron Gillispie. And there was a bit of a scandal after that because apparently Paul Fresh hour said that he suspected it was foul play and that the sheriff on the case, basically the local law enforcement guy who would see this case through its entirety was a guy named Dwight Ragcliffe. He was the sheriff. And Paul Fresher claims that at first, Sheriff Racliffe agreed with him, that it seemed like there was something fishing in, that foul play might have been involved. But then after that, he suddenly changes his story. Sheriff Radcliffe does, and like you said, it gets ruled in accident, especially after the coroner comes back with a point 16 blood alcohol content for Ron Gillespie. That's right. And Radcliffe said there was initially some kind of suspect that I know you did too. Looked high and low. I don't think it's literally ever been released to sheriff Radcliffe initially had in for questioning, but apparently this person even went so far as to take a polygraph test and got away with it. I don't know if it was one of the who knows? I don't know if it's any of the key suspects that we'll talk about later or not. And I don't think we'll ever know who that was. But there was a suspect, and that was sort of dismissed out of hand once the DUI alcohol reading came back and the polygraph test was passed. Yeah, the one person I saw floated as potentially who it was was David Longberry, that bus driver. That's who I figured. Yeah. But yeah, it's never been documented. I'm not even positive that it's documented that Sheriff Radcliffe actually did any of this, like a polygraph and all that stuff he said he did. So Ron is dead. Chuck the Circleville Letter Writer has claimed a life, a human life has been snuffed out that otherwise probably wouldn't have been had. The Circleville Letter Writer not started writing this terrible letter campaign. That's right. You want to take a break and pick back up afterwards? Let's do it. Okay. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively, complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? 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I got an urgent locate and destroy Sierra six stone, asset of considerable baxi agency. That could be fine. The man's got some street cred. Have something they really want. What's? Your gut. It'll be my funeral you're going to next. I'm about to put a hit so big on your boys that even his most loyal allies won't hesitate to drop a time. Nameless assassins with limited morality. What could possibly go wrong this summer? From the directors of Endgame and Captain America winter Soldier. You hurt me. I mean, my ego is a little bruised. Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana De Armas and Billy Bob Thornton want to make an omelet? You got to kill some people. The uncatchable meets the unstoppable. They can kill anybody. Maybe not anybody. The Gray Man. Only on Netflix. July 22. Rated PG 13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. All right, so ron is gone. And it's about the same time that Karen and Paul are having a rough go of it as well. And the feeling I got was they didn't have a great marriage. It wasn't because of the Circleville stuff, but they began to divorce, and Karen had cheated on him. Karen, she didn't get the house, she didn't get the kids, and ended up living in a trailer on Mary's property after Ron was gone. And this was like Karen was not she didn't take any of this well. Right. Everything I saw was that Karen lived in a constant state of upset and anger at Paul because of this divorce, even though she was the one that cheated. Right. Just put that in your hat. Like, put a pin in that and save it for later. Put it in your hat and smoke it. Right. So one of the things that came out of this close contact where Karen was living on a trailer in Mary's property is that supposedly during this time, after Ron died, mary admitted that she actually was having an affair with Gordon Massey. But don't judge her too harshly yet, because it didn't start until after the letter writing campaign started. The letters were BS all along. You know what I think? What? I think she had had an affair with him before and stopped and then started back up. Okay. That's possible. That's my feeling. I think she had an affair with him. Maybe it was off and on. Who knows? Maybe it was pretty much constant. And then at some point, Gordon Massey left his wife or his wife left him. I got the impression his wife might have left him and that Mary was not necessarily his only fling, his only mistress, and that after that and after Ron died, she felt comfortable saying that they were having an affair. But it started after the letter writing campaign. That's my take on it. Well, supposedly, the superintendent had I don't know if it was verified or not, but was accused of having affairs with quite a few of the female bus drivers. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah. Not just Mary. No, but I mean specifically bus drivers. I got you. Okay. Yeah. I think the Circleville letter writer basically intimated that or outright set it in some of the letters. Right. Yeah. Okay. Gordon I just think it's interesting that he has the thing for bus drivers, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. It is a real thing, isn't it? I guess so. Those yellow buses, he can't turn them down. Maybe so. Okay, so we've got Mary admitting that she is having or has had an affair with Gordon Massey. Bronze dead, paul and Karen are splitting up, and we start to reach into the 1980s, and not only were the signs continuing, the letters were continuing, the postcards were continuing. People who had nothing to do with Mary or Karen or Paul or Gordon we're getting letters like, the businesses were getting letters. I saw one that was addressed to a barber shop, and it said, Dear public. And then it went into this tirade about Gordon and Mary. So a lot of people were getting letters in this town about this stuff, and then things kind of stepped up tremendously in February of 1983. Yeah. And by the way, I think all of these letters were still being postmarked from Columbus, Ohio. Yeah. And that's kind of a key detail that we can't overlook is that they're all being mailed in Columbus, what, like, half hour away or so? Something like that. Yeah. Okay, so they weren't being mailed from that town. Right. So Mary is doing her job. She's still a bus driver. Six years later, despite all this stuff, she's still taking those kids to school, bless her heart, and she sees a sign on her route that I have seen, and this is one of those dumb details. I've seen it was on a post. I've seen it was attached to a fence. But either way, there was a sign that had incriminating stuff about her. Once again, it threatened the life of her daughter, which was a big one. So this is when she actually got out to take down and she took down the whole thing because it was kind of an odd looking set up. And what she realized when she got home was that it was a booby trapped sign that had a gun, a 25 caliber handgun, and a little container that allegedly was supposed to go off if someone were to come by and kind of yank that sign down without much care. Yeah. Like, I think maybe some string was connected to the back of the sign, and it went to the trigger, maybe, or something like that. But it was designed to elicit an angry response, and apparently she didn't take it down in anger, and it saved her life. But there's a gun now. Ron died, probably from his own accidental driving. This is totally different. This is attempted murder, and this is like an entirely new ball game. This isn't just, like, harassing somebody or stalking somebody. This now is attempted murder. There's a loaded gun that was set up to go off on Mary. So, of course, the police get a hold of this gun, and they see pretty quickly that somebody's attempted to file the serial number off of it, but they haven't done a very good job of it. And they hand it over to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the state investigators, and they say, oh, yeah, this is easy. Watch this. And they get a piece of blank paper and a nice crayon, and they rub it over it, and sure enough, there's the serial number that wasn't properly filed down, and they can now trace the gun. That's right. And they traced it back to a guy who worked at anheuser Bush, and he said, you know what? That was my gun. But I sold it for $35 to Paul Fresh Hour. Yeah, my coworker. I guess we'll sort of reveal what we think as we go since we're doing that. I don't think that sign was supposed to go off and kill anyone. I think it was a rigged booby trap, like a fake booby trap. I know who you think it was, all right? I know who you think it was. Hold on to that. Put a pin in your hat. So Paul Fresher, the guy who was Mary and Ron's brotherinlaw, Karen's ex husband, his gun has now been found in a booby trapped sign from The Circleville Letter Writer. That is a big deal. And so the police start asking Paul some questions, like, why is your gun in a booby trap that was attached to a sign from The Circleville Letter Writer? And Paul says, hey, man, I have no idea. Anybody could have put that there. That gun was stolen a long time ago. And they say, Well, Paul, did you report this to our local sheriff's department? And Paul says, no, I never got around to and they say, Paul, you should probably come downtown with us. That's right. And he went downtown with Sheriff Radcliffe. And the sheriff said, hey, I've seen a few cop TV shows in my day. I've seen McCloud, so let's get a handwriting test going. And he was like, well, okay, where's your forensic expert? And he goes, we don't have one. So like I said, I've seen TV. So I'm going to make up some of my own tests, and I'm going to tell you to write some of this stuff. I'm going to tell you to copy these letters. I'm going to read some of them to you, and you need to write down what I'm saying, and that's going to be the proof. And that's basically what happened. He basically said, you know what? It looks like a match to me. At least pretty much. And so I'm going to arrest you on charges of attempted murder. And he was released on bond and, interestingly, checked himself into a mental health center proactively to get examined, because I think at first he thought about using a reason of insanity plea and wanted to, I guess, support that, play some groundwork. Yeah. But he got out of that, and he changed his mind later on. Yes. So one other thing that I think pushed Sheriff Ragcliffe into arresting Paul, in addition to that janky handwriting test, was Karen Fresh Hour. Paul's Strange wife, during an interview, told the sheriff, not only do I think that Paul is The Circleville Letter Writer, I actually found letters before hidden in our house addressed to other people in that same weird handwriting. And Sheriff said, did you keep these letters? Can I see them? And she's like, no, I didn't keep them. I don't like clutter or whatever. But that definitely helped. Push the sheriff into arresting Paul. So before Paul knows it, he's on trial in October of 1983 for attempted murder because of that booby trapped gun. And at the trial, one of the things that really sunk him was that they allowed the letters to be introduced not in any kind of, like, criminal capacity, like he wasn't charged with harassment or stalking or anything like that. They just basically used it to paint him as a weirdo and a harassing crackpot and that the letters gave some sort of roundabout motive or at least suggested that he was the person who boobytrapped that sign, because the letters were connected to the sign, we're connected to the gun. We're connected to Paul fresh hour. And without the letters, it was just the gun and Paul Fresher. So it was a huge coup for the prosecutors to be able to introduce those letters. And then the handwriting analyst took over, right? Yeah. The handwriting analyst confirmed two of them that they at least believed. And I think we did a full episode on that, didn't we, on handwriting analysis, that he wrote those. The other bad thing that he had going against him was that he had taken the day off of work the day that the boobytrap sign was discovered. A little bit fishy for someone who works so much, or at the very least, if he was innocent, which I think very bad luck for him, that he had happen to take that day off of work. Yeah. It's very coincidental, don't you think? Well, sure. Okay. Of course you can't say it's not a coincidence, right? But he either took the day off to do the booby trap, or it was just a bad coincidence. Wait, he just said, you can't say it's coincidence. I said, you have to say it's coincidence. Okay. Unless he did it. Okay. I got you. I don't think he did it. All right. I think there's a third alternative that we'll talk about later. It's all building. I'm so excited, man. So he said in court, like, hey, listen, the sheriff gave me this test. He told me to copy the letters, and I just took that to mean to try and imitate the writing. And none of this was even above board. He's like, he's no letter writing expert. He shouldn't have been conducting this junk science test. And here was some other interesting tidbit. Mary said that, hey, listen, another bus driver said that she went past that intersection where that sign was boobytrapped earlier that day, and there was a dude there who did not look like Paul at all, and there was an El Camino there. Yellow, yellow El Camino. And Paul doesn't drive that. And so I don't think it's him, because look what's going on here. He's getting railroaded by the supposed handwriting and the fact that it was his gun, and that's really just circumstantial evidence. So not only was official that there was a strange man spotted 20 minutes before Mary found this booby trap sign at the very spot the booby trap sign was put up. But also, Chuck, it turns out that if you see there is a suspect, a possible suspect whose brother had a yellow El Camino, and that person turned out to be Karen Fresh Hour. Yeah, I saw other places. It was not a brother or a boyfriend. I saw that, too. Well, no, it was another relative who had the El Camino because the brother would have been Royce. I guess you could have two brothers, right? Yes. And a brother or a relative could have been a boyfriend, too. We're talking about central Ohio. What I think, and this is furthering my case here a little bit is because this guy I don't think we mentioned when the school bus went by, he apparently turned around real quick and acted like he was peeing or something to not be identified. I think that was Karen's boyfriend driving her relatives. Got you. Okay. I like where you're going with that, though. Throw them off the case or whatever. I got it off the case. Nip them off the case. That's right. So that was never introduced, right? No, not in court, I don't think. Right. Yeah. So the fact that that wasn't introduced, the fact that they had Paul's gun, they introduced the letters. His coworker at Anheuser Bush said, yeah, I saw him. The gun, the personnel records at Anheuser Bush said he wasn't there that day. The jury took two and a half hours and came back with a guilty plea and Paul Fresh Hour, who may not have ever written one of these letters or boobytrapped this gun or this sign, I had no motive. That's another one, too, which we'll talk about in a second. He was sentenced to seven to 25 years in Ohio State Prison for attempted murder in 1983. He was convicted and sentenced. That's right. And he remained there for many years. He was denied. He was a great prisoner when that seven years came up. He was eligible for parole in 1990. And these letters kept coming while he was in jail, even though there's no way that he could have written these and had them postmarked from Columbus, from prison. He was even put in solitary for a while because they said, these letters are coming. And they clearly weren't coming from him, but that was still the fact that they were still coming. At his parole hearing, they said, no, these letters are coming, so we're going to keep you in here. Imagine that. Imagine being like, I'm innocent and somebody else out there is proving that I'm innocent because these letters are still coming. But you're taking is that somehow I'm doing he got a letter in prison. Yes. So you're going to keep me in. And then after he was denied parole that first time, he was up for it after seven years in prison. He got a letter from The Circleville Letter Writer saying, now, when are you going to believe you aren't going to get out of there? I told you two years ago, when we set them up, they stay set up. Don't you listen at all? So he got a taunting letter after he was denied parole because the letters were still going on. Yes. I wonder who wrote that. So he finally did get out in 1994 after eleven years in prison. Ten to eleven years in prison for attempted murder. And he set up a website, and this is like the mid 90s, so that was like a big deal. He probably crystal links or something, but he set up a website that was dedicated to this case and professing his innocence and everything. And you said something that I want to circle back to, and that was motive. He didn't really have one. No, that is something that everyone has struggled with, even like the prosecutors couldn't quite say why he would have done this, that it doesn't make any sense. That there's really nothing he didn't have anything to gain from Mary being found out or whether she had an affair or not. He had nothing to gain from her dying if he set up that booby trap. Yeah. It just didn't make any sense. And when you have, like, you have motive, opportunity and means, and he had opportunity and he had means, but he never had motive, and that was a really big deal. And the fact that he had a really good alibi despite all of that, for almost all the day, and yet he was still convicted and spent more than ten years in prison for it very sad. We should also mention that there was a letter sent not only to Paul in prison, but while he was still in jail. There was a letter sent to Unsolved Mysteries, the TV show. That's right. And they were doing a segment about it and it said, Forget Circleville, Ohio, do nothing to hurt Sheriff Radcliffe. If you come to Ohio, Ul sickos will pay. Signed, the circle will writer. I don't know if it's the first time it was signed as such. Well, we'll get to it. Some of the letters are signed W over the years, and those are the ones that weren't written quite in that blocky style, but that will come back. That letter demonstrates something that's really characteristic of The Circleville letters, and that almost the only punctuation in them are colons. Not semicolons, not periods, not even ellipses. You know that annoying thing that people do where rather than commas or periods, they just use ellipses, and sometimes like multiple ellipses at once. This person used colons like that. So in a single letter, there could be scores of colons just littering the letter. And they did this in this letter to Unsolved Mysteries as well, which you don't see people doing that with colon. So I feel like that suggests that every single letter that used colons was definitely written by the same person. The only issue I will take with any of that is that I like to use the Ellipsis. I've never seen you want to use Ellipsis. I may not have used them with you. Okay. Wow. You're a whole different person that I never knew before. Yeah, I like Ellipses. I think it says a lot. It can be a very effective tool and I like it. I don't do, like, eight dots in a row. I use the standard three. Okay, no, I know what you mean. So you're using it as a device to basically say, just pause and think about what I just said or the ball in your court or yeah, something like that. Okay. It's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about using an Ellipse, rather, where a comma should be, where a period should be, where even a hyphen should be. Using an Ellipse for that is irrelevantingly. Bad to read. Yeah, my mom does that. Okay, well, I don't mean to insult you or your family. No, you don't. It's definitely weird. And it's the thing because it's not just one. My mom will put, like, eight or nine dots in between phrases and sentences and emails. I don't know, maybe. I'm not sure what that is. And if you were in generation while she was typing it, each dot would be like, what am I going to say next? All right, well, let's take our final break here and we will talk a little bit more about these darn letters right after this. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. 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I got an urgent locate and destroy Sierra six stone. Asset of considerable value to the agency. That could be fun. The man's got some street cred. Has something they really want. What's? Your gut. It's going to be my funeral you're going to next. I'm about to put a hit so big on your boy's head that even his most loyal allies won't hesitate to drop a time. Nameless assassins with limited morality. What could possibly go wrong this summer? From the directors of Endgame and Captain America winter Soldier. You hurt me. I mean, my ego is a little bruised. Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Anna Dearness and Billy Bob Thornton want to make an omelet? You got to kill some people. The uncatchable meets the unstoppable. They can kill anybody. Maybe not anybody. The Gray Man. Only on Netflix. July 22. Rated PG 13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Okay, so one thing about this mystery, Chuck, is it would be, like, remarkable and noteworthy even if it were just limited to Mary and her family receiving these threatening letters. And there being some signs, hundreds and hundreds. Yeah, that's not at all what it was like. As a matter of fact, I saw more than 1000 letters in multiple places. More than 1000 letters. Postcards and signs were mailed or put up around circleville and even central Ohio in general over the years. And the whole letter writing campaign lasted for almost 20 years, more than 18 years of these letters. And they alleged everything from murder to affairs to complaints about the Ohio politics. They just were all over the place. So it's a really weird case. Even more so than, like, the core case that we're talking about. It's even stranger and more rambling than that. Yeah. Like you said, they expanded far beyond the Golispe family. Some accused the sheriff of being involved in a cover up about Ron's death. Some were about just other noteworthy people in town, or not noteworthy people who just had an affair with this person. And you're the local doctor or you're the local county coroner. Right. You've been abusing children. And the weird thing is, a lot of this stuff was actually true. So it was like, is someone just really attentive and exposing these things? What's going on there? Yeah, and I think the town lived in a bit of a state of fear that they were going to get targeted next, and all of their worst secrets were going to come out because, like you said, the county coroner, a guy named Doctor Ray Carroll, he apparently had previously been accused of inappropriate contact with children in a letter, right? No, in general. Oh, okay. But most people didn't know about this. It was like a secret from his past. And this letter writer brought this up, and years later, I think he may have lost his medical license. The state medical board charged him with eight counts of gross immorality, including stuff that involved children in 1993. So this letter writer seemed to be correct about that. There's another one that they were never proven correct about. That was just maybe the most scandalous accusation they ever made, and it was directed at the prosecutor in Paul Freshowers case, a guy named Roger Klein. Yeah. They said that, I know you killed that woman who was pregnant. She was a schoolteacher, and I'm going to dig up their body and mail the bones to the cops unless you admit it. And I think this was never sort of went anywhere. Right. It was just one of those accusations. No. And Roger Klein ended up continuing along the career path up to being an appeals court judge when he retired a few years back. But the accusation was that he was having an affair with the schoolteacher, got her pregnant, and then killed her and by proxy, their unborn child. And there was a schoolteacher named Vicky Coke who was murdered and whose murder was never solved. And I've seen in a couple of places that Roger Klein was proven to have had an affair with her, but I could not find that, like, roundly proven. The upshot of all of this is this was exposed in one of the letters. So the coroner and Ron Gillispie's death is exposed in a letter and targeted Roger Klein, the prosecutor in Paul Freshow's case, gets a letter of his own, and he's targeted. So it wasn't just Mary and her affair with Gordon Massey that was the full subject of these letters. Other people were targeted as well. That's right. So there's a couple of more people we should mention, I guess, before we get to our final verdicts. And they're both children of key players. One was William Massey. This is Superintendent Massey's son. I mentioned some of those earlier letters were written in a kind of different style of handwriting, and they were signed with a W. Some people say it could have been William Massey writing these and actually signing them. He was a grade school I'm sorry, I think high school student at the time. Teenager. Yeah. So just throwing that out there. And then there is Mark Fresh Hour, who was Karen and Sue's son, who went with the dad, got custody. So I'm not sure what kind of say they had. But I know that Mark did not go see his dad in prison one time and generally is sort of believed to have been on Mom's side through all this. Yeah. So I'm glad you line those up, because, like, I get the Christie book. We're just basically introducing characters who are now suspects at the very end of this whole thing. Yeah. And interestingly, Mark, in September 2002, was found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound floating in a river. So some people say that this was guilt because he was a part of this thing. His mom, Karen, said, no, he had been battling depression. Nothing to see here. So let's talk about the person that brings up, then that is related. Marc Fresh Hour having to do with the case against his father is everyone says that if he did this, it was at the behest of his mother, Karen, Mark, Paul's ex wife, and that it was Karen who was actually the Circleville letter writer who basically used this whole campaign to set her ex husband Paul up. Right. Well, what do you think? Are you getting into what you think? No, I'm just going over one of the subjects. What do you think? Well, here's what I think. If that's where we are, sure. All right. We have other suspects to talk about, but sure. Well, it'll all come out in this. Okay. And I think that the original letter was sent, in fact, by David Longberry, the bus driver who Mary Gillispie refuted, and I think he got jealous. I think he wrote quite a few of those first letters because they are all about other bus drivers and they are all about the school system, and it's a lot of insider baseball knowledge. He wrote the first one. Then. I think Karen used that skin to start writing letters of her own when she became obsessed with getting back at her husband, soon to be ex husband. And I think she did enlist her son Mark. I think she enlisted her ex boyfriend, or I'm sorry, her boyfriend, who said supposedly match the description of the guy in the El Camino. I think that it was all her. That Martin Yant guy, the investigator said, in my 22 years as a journalist, I don't think I've ever met an individual so consumed with so much irrational hatred for another and a willingness to say anything, no matter how provably false, to defame him about her ex husband. And I think it was all her. And then I think all these other weird letters, I think people of Ohio just started writing these as ways to expose people. Okay. That's what I think. Like you said, that's Martin Jan's take on it. He knows probably more than anybody about this case aside from Paul Fresh Hour, who, by the way, he thinks that it yeah, he thinks that it started out as David Longberry and was followed up by Karen Fresh Hour to set up. Yeah, that was Martin Yan's theory. So you're in good company. You're in good company. You and Martin Yann agree on that? And, I mean, there is a lot to base it on. Like, Karen and or her son had access to Paul's gun, so that she had the means, the opportunity, and the motive, for sure. She definitely hated Paul fresh hour. She happened to throw away all those other letters that she had found. Supposedly, yeah. I think even if she wasn't the letter writer, at the very least, she was doing what she could to set Paul up or make sure Paul went to jail for this, even if she hadn't gone to the trouble of being the letter writer. Okay. And my final piece is she didn't come out with any of this stuff until after that divorce was started. Right? Yeah. Like, that all would have come out during the divorce proceedings because it was bitter and acrimonious, so she would have used anything she could have against him. So the fact that she didn't mention those things during the divorce proceedings is extra fishy. Is that what you're saying? No, she did mention them. I'm saying none of this was mentioned. Like, this whole time these letters were going on, none of it was mentioned until she started to get divorced. Okay? That's not what I saw. I saw she didn't mention it until Paul was starting to be railroaded toward prison, and the fact that she didn't talk about it during the divorce proceedings made it fishy. I saw. The other way is that she conveniently didn't mention any of this stuff until the divorce started to get ugly. I got you not mentioned it, but that's when she got involved. I think I got you. Okay. All right. So do you want to know who? I think there's a really good chance that what you just said is correct. I think it's entirely possible. I want to hear your take. I think it's also just as possible that the Circleville letter writer was Paul Fresh Hour, and here's why. I saw that a motive for him to write these initial letters. Someone's floated, I don't remember who that he was loyal to his wife at the time, and that his wife was the sister of Ron, who was being hurt by his wife Mary having an affair. So it's possible, whether it was his own idea or with Karen, he would have written these letters as a weird, roundabout way to get her to stop having this affair. Okay, so it is possible he did have motive, and then from that point on, he possibly had motive to keep it up as a way of grinding an axe. He accused sheriff Radcliffe of covering up Ron's death. The Cirqueville letter writer accused the sheriff of covering up Ron's death. The prosecutor in the case got his own letter. The guy who prosecuted Paul Fresher got his own super scandalous letter. The coroner who ruled it was an accident in Ron Gillespie's death got a super scandalous letter. These people were people that Paul Fresher would have had a problem with and no one else, none of the other suspects would have had a problem with. Also, apparently there was a letter, a handwriting analyst who was on a 2021 episode of 48 Hours who said these were written by one person, and that person was Paul Fresh hour based on his handwriting and apparently Whatever Remains podcast turned up. Apparently somebody got fingerprints off of some of the letters that were sent while Paul was in prison, and they had Paul's fingerprints on them. So there's a lot of stuff that incriminates Paul as well. It's entirely possible it was him. And the last thing is, the moment he got out of prison, right around the time he got out of prison, the letters just stopped altogether. Yes. I don't know I don't know what that means, though. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's up for subjective interpretation. I think it's either multiple people, mainly David Longberry and Karen, or it was all Paul. That's my take. Well, I mean, who else could have been? It could have been Gordon Massey. Obviously. Okay, right. The original guy. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, if you like this, there's a little bit more of this case, so there's probably a rabbit hole for you to jump down. Go search it on the Internet and listen to those other podcasts, Whatever Remains in Invisible Ships, and see what you think about theirs, too. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail or get on Reddit. Man. I'm not on reddit. Hardly at all. But sometimes stuff like this is a lot of fun because you get to see all these different people's takes and opinions. I saw this one guy who literally read the entire 160 something page thing that Paul had put out in the early 90s. Right. Man, you got more time than I do. Yeah, it's really detailed. I was looking through and I didn't make it through the whole thing. But if you're into that, go to their Unresolved Mysteries subreddit. That will be up your alley. All right. I'm going to call this flannon isles. Wave explained. Yeah. This is from Allison from Toronto. But I have to say that we got so many letters that said basically the same thing almost immediately after that episode that I think it's probably what happened. It seems pretty plausible to me. Hey, guys, love the podcast. You're the best. With regard to Flannel Niles mystery, I'd like to share how I envision it. How about this? The box on the cranes banging around. The two keepers don their weather gear and set off to secure it. The other stays behind from the elevated vantage point of the lighthouse, maybe while skinning the horizon with binoculars. Who knows? He spots that rogue wave coming toward the island in an attempt to warn and save his friends, bolts from the lighthouse without weather gear, maybe even knocks over that chair, only to be swept away with his friends in an attempt to save them. One wave, all three gone. I think he saw it coming and thought he had enough time to save them all. That is from Alison from Toronto and many other people who said basically the exact same thing. And it sounds pretty good to me. It really does. It's super plausible. And it didn't dawn on me at all, if that's a possibility. One wave or another. Sometimes when you're sitting here in front of the microphone, you don't have time to ruminate like you people do at home. No, the people want our defense. They want some more jokes. They want some more pizza insights. Yeah, they want another piece of us. Yes, but thank you. I mean, without the rest of everybody, we would be incomplete. So everybody else completes us, right? That's right. If you want to send us an email that completes us, we would appreciate that. You can send it to us at stuffpodcast. Wait, hold on. Chuck, who was that they wrote in? Allison from Toronto. Thank you. Allison from Toronto. And everybody else who wrote into you can send your email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You want your kid eating the Best nutrition nation, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco, pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-09-16-sysk-handwriting.mp3	SYSK Selects: How Handwriting Analysis Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-handwriting-analysis-works	In this week's SYSK Select episode, one of the fields of forensic investigation, handwriting analysis is based on the principle of uniqueness - that each person writes in their own peculiar way. Learn about this interesting area of crime fighting and how	In this week's SYSK Select episode, one of the fields of forensic investigation, handwriting analysis is based on the principle of uniqueness - that each person writes in their own peculiar way. Learn about this interesting area of crime fighting and how	Sat, 16 Sep 2017 16:13:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=16, tm_min=13, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=259, tm_isdst=0)	39452935	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's Saturday select stuff you should know. I'm doing handwriting analysis. It's pretty awesome. It's from October 2013. And I just selected this one because I thought it dovetailed nicely with our Secret Service episode this week. So enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles to be Chuck Bryant and stuff. You should know. Jerry's over there. That's right. We're all here. Yeah. We're at the ready for yet another forensics podcast? Yes, we are. I thought we were done. No, I don't know that we're ever going to be done, Chuck. Not only are we never going to be finished, this one, like every other forensics episode we've ever done, traces back to Alfonsfertillon. Oh, is he the first? Dude, he's the guy. He did fingerprinting. He did facial characteristics. Yeah. Mug shots. Yeah, mug shots. And what's it called? The facial sketch artist tree. He did that, please. Sketches. Yeah. And crime scene photography, even. Maybe so it's entirely possible. Well, we owe a great debt to that man. Yeah. He was basically, like he had his finger on the pulse of, like, forensics, like every subdiscipline of the field of forensics. This guy virtually started it. That's a cool movie at a Paris police station. Yeah, it would be unless you were doing the research and found out he was kind of a jerk. Yeah, but who cares? Well, no, then you have to kind of beef his character up and maybe what is he, like, he was jilted or something like that? Sure. Does he need, like, an orphan to come into his life? Yeah, like they did with Gandhi. Remember that movie? Oh, yeah. Made him look like a saint. Wow. So I think at the very least, people, you may not be able to become forensics experts, but at the very least, you can watch all those TV shows now with a better understanding. Is that what we're trying to do? To help people better watch TV? Sure. Okay. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever written anything by hand? You laugh, but think about this, pal. There's a time that's coming when there's not going to be much need whatsoever for that. I know. There is currently a legitimate debate on whether or not to keep teaching cursive handwriting. Yeah, I think that the debate has been answered and the people who want to keep teaching cursive just haven't quite accepted their fate yet. That was the answer. No. Sure. Yeah. I was looking at copy books, which we'll talk about in a second. And apparently the whole point to teaching penmanship lies in an era where if you had good penmanship, that was a part of business. You needed to look respectable, put together, have good handwriting. Yeah. Your business transactions were carried out through handwriting, typically. And you needed to have good, clean handwriting. You said a lot about your character this is also at a time when people were burned to the stake for witchcraft. Sure. Shortly after. So maybe you don't put that much stock into it, but there was a point in time where handwriting counted. It doesn't count any longer. Yeah. And I'm not saying that I'm definitely not waving like, the flag of Glory over the corpse of Curse of Writing, right? Yeah, you are. I'm not. You're doing it right now. No, I don't mean to. And that's why I said I'm not doing that. But you put that flag down. Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is the writing is on the wall, as it were. I'm not necessarily about it was the last thing anyone ever wrote in Cursive was that Cursive is dead. Yeah. I can say that I don't write by hand that much anymore. And when I do now, I get weird with it. I leave out letters and have to go back and put them in. Same here. I'll write out of order. And even this word I put C additional. I left out, like, three letters and had to go back and put them in. But I do it really quickly. It's not like I'm stumped, but like, if I was writing curses, I'd be stumped. Yeah. I've tried to write cursive here, there, just to see if I still have it, and I do not. You lost it. I don't think I ever really had the Z. It's a tough one, the Z. Remember the Z? Yes. I could write a Z right now, but yeah, anyway, it's weird. It's almost like a Dyslexic thing happens now when I write. You would use this. You could spray paint Cursive z. I could do that right now. I think I'd be better at spray painting in Cursive z than writing it. Yeah, because it would be large. Yeah. The point is, Curse of is probably dead. Yeah. Writing things down by hand is becoming less and less what is that? I'm sorry, everyone. I don't mean to interrupt myself, but Chuck has held up one of his pages of notes and there's some weird writing on the back. What is that? Do you know what that is? No. My parents signatures. Because I was seeing if I could still duplicate them as I could back in high school. You used to do that? Sure. What for? You're a good kid in high school. Where did you need to know your parents signatures? Here's what I would do. I was a good kid, but I would skip school in class sometimes. What did I go fishing with? Rad. Okay. And that's the thing. I wasn't, like, doing drugs or drinking. I would skip school and go fishing. And then I would write notes and forge my parents signature, which is not right, kids. Yeah. But it wasn't like I was off being a vandal or anything. I was just catching some trout. Catching some trout and beating foxes in the head with a hammer. No. Huffing Scotchgard. But I used to really do my parents signatures spot on, and I was very proud of that. Yeah. So how is it how does it hold up completely before? Because I don't have what's called an exemplar. Yeah. My mom's little initial signature is still pretty right on DMT. DMV. But my father's I used to do that one a lot better. That's a fine signature. Can I see it one more time? Yeah. James Allen Bryant. That's a nice one. Yeah. All right. You've never forged your parent signature at all? No. Neither one of them. I may have tried. I remember even practicing. I think my dad seems like, just looking at it, it's highly duplicable, but it's not really you can tell that I I want to say the person, because I refer to myself in third person a lot, was trying to recreate it. Yeah. Just make a potato stamp and you're set. I've never tried that one. You got your signature for life with a potato stamp. You just carve out. Yeah. You never did that in craft class. You carve out something and press it on ink in a potato, and then press it on ink, and you basically can make your own stamp. Oh, it makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Potato stamps. No, we didn't make those. You missed out, buddy. Chuck yes. I feel like we've kind of covered a lot of points of handwriting analysis. Yeah. Little teasers before we start, too, I think we should point out that what we're talking about and I was just made to find on the Internet that when you search handwriting analysis, what comes up is actually graphology. Yeah, that comes up a lot. Which, if handwriting analysis, forensic handwriting analysis is really struggling forging ahead to become a science, graphology is quite happy to not be whatsoever. It's all very unscientific. Yeah. That's like, let me write down a sentence and you tell me what kind of person I am. Exactly. Like, if you write using small letters, you're actually afraid of the world and very self conscious, and you want to hide or disappear. Or another example is if the first letters in your first and last name are big, you have your signature. Yeah. You crave attention or you think overly of yourself. Yeah. None of this is founded at all whatsoever. It's hokum. Handwriting analysis, while still, as I said, struggling to be a science, is much less hokumb. It has one fatal flaw that's possibly not fatal, but it's the same flaw that fingerprint analysis has. Subjectivity. Subjectivity. Yeah, that's right. Which we'll talk about, but maybe now is a good time for a message. Okay, now we're back. Let's talk about handwriting analysis and handwriting in general. Chuckers okay, well, questions, documents is the legal term for what they're analyzing. Yeah. It's not just handwriting. It could be, like, forgeries. Yeah, dude, it could be a lot of stuff. These people question document examiners Qdes. They examine typewriting, computer printed documents, photocopies, decipherment of altered obliterated or charred documents. Yeah, but that's a tough one. Examination of inks and papers, erased entries, indented writings. Like you wrote something on a pad and ripped it up. Yeah. There's a whole division of people who just rub pencils on a piece of paper to see what comes up. Counterfeit currency and examination of commercially printed matter. So they're kind of all over the place. But the sexy stuff is and a lot of times in the private sector, it's not even for forensics. It's, hey, examine the signature on this document. Is it real? Did Mickey Mantle sign this? Baseball. Yeah, exactly. But what they're looking for and what the entire field of forensic handwriting analysis is based on is called the principle of uniqueness, which has been around since at least the 1920s. And it is the idea that everybody has their own brand of handwriting, and that while maybe you make cursive z in a certain way that I might make the same z in the same way, if you take all of the characteristics that you have and put them together, you form a unique package. Your handwriting is unique in that sense. So the individual weird characteristics might be similar to other people's weird individual characteristics, but you can't put 20 or 30 weird characteristics of handwriting together right. And compare it to anybody else's. And so, based on that, you should logically be able to look at one person's handwriting and compare it to a sample of another person's handwriting or the same person's handwriting and see whether they match or whether they were written by two different people based on the number of differences or similarities between the two samples. Boom. Yeah. So let's talk about handwriting. Yeah. And those are individual characteristics. Before that, you have what's called or everyone has an underlying style characteristic. And that is based on the fact that when you were a little snotnosed kid in school, they gave you what's called a copybook, which had I know we all remember this words on one line and then an empty line where you had to copy it and make it look like that. And depending on where you live and when you live and went to school, you're going to have a different copy book. So your underlying style characteristics are going to be based on this original copybook. That you might have some similarities with people like for me, that grew up in the mid seventy s and elementary school in Cab County, Georgia. Right, exactly. Because you use the same copy book. Yeah. What's awesome is a handwriting analyst could tell you what copy book you used or where you were from and when based on that structural analysis. Yeah. And I imagine teachers even informed that somewhat individual instruction. For sure. Yeah. Because the teacher is going to be like, that's not an R, and smack your knuckles and say, Try again. So the copy book, how we learn to actually write handwriting is based on or creates the style characteristics. Right. But then once we actually learn how to produce a letter using our hands, just through repetition, we start to add our own style to it. Those are the individual characteristics. We stop thinking about how to make the structure of a letter, and we're thinking about what we're actually writing about. Yeah. And when it comes to forensic examination, style characteristics aren't really what's important. Maybe that could help rule out certain geographic areas or something. But mainly what they're looking at are those individual characteristics. Right. That's kind of where the key is when you want to track down a perp. Yeah. Because like we said, the chances of the same person having the same set of individual characteristics impossible. Pretty much, yeah. And here's the thing. They're not just looking for similarities. They say in this article, it's probably easy for even a layman to look at two sentences and compare them and say, well, look, these letters are the same. What they're looking for are the differences. And therein lines. The key. Yeah. The differences in two different pieces of text. One is the exemplar, which is basically a comparison sample. The exemplar is a previous document that you've written in the past, written by a known author. Yeah. Like, hey, Chuck, we found this diary entry for you from five years ago. This will be your exemplar. Now, we want you to write some stuff now. Exactly. So that would be a requested exemplary if they ask you to write something now, but either way, they know that this came from you. So it's an exemplary an example document, and they use those to compare to the question document. So whenever you're talking handwriting analysis, you have to have two kinds of documents an exemplar and a question document. That's right. You want to talk about Lindberg for a minute? Yeah. The question document very frequently is a ransom note. That's right. And in the case of the Lindbergh baby, which Grandpa Simpson everybody knows kidnapped, or is that's what it was? There were 14 ransom notes. Yeah. Well, it depends on who you ask. A lot of people think Bruno Hopman was innocent. Maybe. And executed as an innocent man. But there was still 14 ransom notes. Still 14 notes, yeah. And when Bruno Hauptman came in, they couldn't find many exemplars from his past, so they said, well, let's just get him in custody and have him write some things down. Right. Putting it lightly, which that's fine. Good idea. Procedurally speaking, that's a requested exemplar. Yeah. All right. The thing is, the police had this guy, right, until he was exhausted over and over again. Apparently, he wasn't producing what they wanted him to produce. So they said, See this ransom note? Copy this. And the guy did it. And apparently every bit of handwriting analysis or sample that they got from this guy was coerced. Questionable. As questionable as the question document. That's right. But he was still convicted and executed, right? Yeah. And who knows if he was innocent or not? There's all kinds of varying opinions on the Internet, of course, but at the very least, the handwriting documents in his samples that he gave were definitely coerced and probably not the best thing to put your case on. That was an early obstacle that handwriting analysis had to overcome was creating procedures for the police to say, if you're going to request an exemplary, here's how you do it, here's what to ask for. Do not show them the question document. Don't ask them to copy, just have them write. That's why you should always cut your ransom note out from the funny papers and individual letters. Plus it looks cool and creepy. So what you're looking for, if you're going to compare things, is not, hey, look at this sentence and compare to this sentence, because that doesn't tell you much. You want numerous exemplars. You want like ten documents that you can compare to ten other documents. The reason behind that is because when you write something so you're writing a letter, when you start, you're all fresh faced and bushy tailed, and then as you go further down the page, you get a little more tired, a little more fatigued. Sure. And your writing starts to fall apart. So you're never going to write the same way twice, even within a document. Right. Which is a characteristic in and of itself. What's more, starting a word with the letter A, you're probably going to produce that A differently than an A that comes in the middle of a word. Yeah. Or at the end, right? Yeah, I do that for sure. And like, certain letters will connect, but only certain letters. Like, I might connect my T to my H in the middle of a word, but not at the beginning. Right. That kind of thing, yeah. So what are they looking for? Well, they're looking for several things. What are they looking for? They're looking for letter form, which is like the curves, the size of the letters, but the relationship between a letter that's supposed to be small, like an S, and a letter that's supposed to be big, like maybe an H. Yes. Even the width within a single letter, maybe, right. The slant, the slope, whether or not, like I talked about, you connect certain letters together, links between them, and then, like we mentioned, where that letter falls. So if you want to analyze a lowercase A, and we should point out too, that apparently you can't analyze uppercase letters only. Is that right? You can analyze those, just okay. Uppercase and lowercase are like they yield nothing. That's right. Apparently. But let's say you have a letter a lowercase A. You want to find within the document an example of an A at the beginning, one in the middle, one at the end, and see how those compare to each other before you even compare it to the other exemplar. Yeah. Like just really thorough and detailed stuff. It really is. Sounds like very tedious work, too, which we'll get into in a second. Exactly how tedious it is. But yeah. The point is, if you are a handwriting analyst, you're not going to put an A at the beginning of a word next to an A or compare it to an A in the middle of the word. They're two different things as far as your concern. Yeah. You'll get laughed at if you do that in class. Line forms. Another thing. They look at how smooth it is, how dark it is, indicates what kind of pressure you're using on the paper, how quickly you're writing. Yeah. The speed formatting, of course, spacing between letters, spacing between words, where your margins are. Like, they'll give you a blank sheet of paper that's not lined and see, if you like most people, typically the sentence will go down if you don't have a line paper or what kind of margins you just instinctively use. Or if you're like a serial killer and you don't use margins. Yeah. That's crazy. Scribble all over the page. Yeah. They should just lock you up right there. Right, exactly. You're basically confessing to something horrible. If it is line paper, where if you make like, a lowercase Y, how does the bottom of the Y or the G or the curse of Z intersect with the line? How far down does it go? How big are your loops? Where do you cross your T? It mind numbingly details. Do you skip lines? Yeah. Do you dot your eyes with little hearts, that kind of thing? The bubble letters. I know some females. It's still sort of right that way. Yeah. Not with the hearts, but definitely. That very distinctive. I got a lot of love notes like that in my day. With the little heart eye? Yeah. And I would write back, like, the serial killer. Those were my love notes. It's like 20,000 words on a single piece. Yes, I do like you. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting outside of your house right now. I know what you're doing. Yeah. Just a big one longer run on it. Okay. So one thing that they will do here's, one method that they will use, is they will actually create tables. Yeah. Three tables in all is what you want. So you make your first table, you start with the letter A and you go through the question documents. Yeah. And this is all on the article, by the way. It even has the little tables. And the sample sentence they use is, I have your daughter. Yeah. It's kind of creepy. It was, but it was like, appropriately creepy. Why couldn't they just put, let's play some basketball? I hadn't even thought of that. It seemed like, yeah, of course I have your daughter. Okay, I know what that says, about three tables. So the first table, what they're going to do is go through all the question documents and they're going to start with the letter A. If the letter A is present in the documents sure. They're going to put all the letters that are present in the documents. So, for example, I have your daughter has two A's, right? Well, no. Yes, it does, but the sentence itself doesn't have all the letters of the alphabet. So you're going to go through and figure out what letters are present in your question document. Put those down one side. Then you're going to go through starting with the letter A and find every different letter A. So if there's a letter A that slants to the left, you're going to put that down next to A in row one. And then if you've come across another A that's nice to left, you're going to skip that one because you've already found it. The point is, you're going to create a table of every characteristically different example of a particular letter. Yeah. And they're doing this with digital cameras. Right. So in the article, they did it by hand. They tried to recreate what the weird letter looked like, but yeah, they're going to take a digital photo of just that letter and then compile it into a table. That's right. And at the end, what they are doing is comparing the tables, making sure they have a match for each letter in the exemplar. Right. Because they went through the question document. Then they did the exact same thing for the exemplar. Then they put the two tables together and created a third table. And from that third table, they should be able to see pretty clearly whether the two things were written by the same person. And so if you're an FBI analyst, you're going to come up with one of five possible outcomes. There's identification, where you're pretty much putting your career on the line or your professional reputation on the line. Say this is written by the same person. Right. There's may have, which means that the similarities outweigh the differences, but you're still not 100% sure identification level sure. Yeah. That's a real woofy way to go. Right. There's no conclusion, which is like the similarities and the differences are pretty much the same, or there's just not enough evidence there or enough material to go with. Then there's may not have, which is the differences outweigh the similarities, but you're still not sure. And then there's elimination, where you're sure that they weren't written by the same person, which is probably as equally a boldest statement as they were. Yeah. I imagine those are few and far between the identification and eliminations in a major case. Yeah. All right. So coming up, we have something on forgeries and simulation. Like if you're trying to sniff someone off the case. But first we have a message break. OK. So we're talking about simulation before we broke. And that's like a big part of this is if you give and I can't imagine, like, let's say someone like an officer picked you up and of course you didn't do anything, but they bring you into a room and they're like, we need some handwriting examples. Yeah. You can be freaked out, for sure, like how you're writing, and you're probably going to write weird. Or if you did do it, you might try and fool them by writing weird. And by weird, I mean different than you normally write. Yes. Not like using strange letters or something. Right, yeah. You're going to maybe write a little more slowly or just write like, bigger than you do or smaller than you do, or just different. I saw a picture of a ransom note. Not a ransom note, a stick up note, and it was obviously done with squiggly lines and words were purposely misspelled, so that if anybody ever did analyze the handwriting, what they had wouldn't match up to anyone's normal handwriting. That's a good idea. Yeah. So on the front end of the crime, you do the different handwriting. Right. That's not bad. I didn't mean to assist any would be bank robbers, but yeah, but after the fact, if they have the two things and you try to simulate a different writing, they're pretty good at trying to determine whether or not you've done that. They are. I mean, you can completely throw off handwriting analysis. Sure. Just where you get a no conclusion, at least. Right. But like you said, handwriting analysts do have ways they have ways of knowing whether you're simulating your handwriting. Yeah. And like you said, there'll be more pin lists, definitely be slower. And basically they'll root you out as not just writing naturally. Right. Like at a normal speed, even. Right. Because you're really putting a lot of thought into the words you're writing, rather than just writing like you have nothing to hide. Exactly. So this is all good and well and fine and it's a legitimate field. It's not always allowed in court, though, because, like you said, it's subjective. Yeah, I want to say, and I don't know why I developed an affinity for handwriting analysis, because I think fingerprinting is BS, frankly. And I remember saying pretty much that effect in the fingerprinting episode. For some reason, handwriting analysis struck me as more legit. Yeah. And I don't know why, but it did. And so I kind of looked around and found as recently as June, they had a major national conference for handwriting analysts. That aim was to further the science and the measurements in the field. Yeah. In Gaithersburg, Maryland. Measurement, Science and Standards and Forensic Handwriting Analysis Conference. Right. It's not a new field. Right. And they've subjected it to scientific testing over the years, like the principle of uniqueness, the founding principle of handwriting analysis. It's been tested many times. One of the favorite tests they like to do is to get identical twins to provide handwriting samples. Same DNA, same environmental factors, same physiology, all of these things that affect your handwriting. Because your handwriting is changed by the fine motor neurons that you have in your body. If you're an identical twin, you're going to be similar. You'd think your handwriting would be similar. No. Handwriting analyst routinely can tell the difference between twins. Penmanship wow. Yeah. So they have tested this stuff, and they are, I guess, aware that it's not a fully scientific field and they're taking steps to make it more scientific. Yeah. Because they want to, A, protect their jobs, and B, they want it to be like, at the end of the day, they want it to be allowed in court. They don't want to be offered for podcast, fodder, I imagine. Also, they don't want to put away any innocent people. Sure. So let's talk about another brilliant plan. If you want to be a forger of things, provide both exemplars yourself. Right. This is pretty amazing. And this guy had a killer name. Conrad Koju. Koju kujo kujao. Conrad Ku kujo. I think it's Kanrae Kuja. K-U-J-A-U-S. All right. Conrad Kuja. What's? Call him that? Yes. The Kuja. KUJ was a supposed collector of Nazi memorabilia. First of all, those people freak me out. Remember American Beauty? Yeah. So he was a collector of this stuff and a German publishing company. He approached them and said, you know what? I've got 60 handwritten journals written by Terfior himself. Yeah. They were found in a plane wreck. Just found them. And they seemed to be genuine, and they paid him $2.3 million. And the same company, the German newspaper also owned that publishing company. They printed stuff. They said, hey, let's syndicate this out. The London Times said, sure, we'll write about this. But they said, but you know what? We're the London Times. Let's get a handwriting analyst, check this stuff out. Three of them, they had three high end handwriting analysts analyzed the stuff, and all three of them said, yes, the same person wrote these samples, who wrote the diary. So, yeah, these are Hitler's diaries. Yeah, because they got the exemplars that were supposedly written by Hitler himself. Said it's the same thing. These are legit. Right. So Kudo walks away with cool 2.3 million in 19, $80, no less. And the world has 60 previously unknown journals from Adolf Hitler. We think within a year it was uncovered as a fraud. That's right. Thanks to the London Times, they used ultraviolet light examination and found out that the paper wasn't around until 1954. A little bit of a problem. Anyone that knows Hitler knows that he died in 1945. Open your eyes, Chuck. And then they did some more forensic tests and said the ink actually was applied on the paper about twelve months ago. Within the past year, and he's a fraud. And he wrote both sets, and I don't know why they didn't check. And they said, well, we need some real examples of Hitler's writing. And he's like, Here. No, I think that's what they did. I think he was just that lucky wow. That he had flooded the market with fake Hitler handwriting, and so that the authenticated samples that they used as exemplars just happened to be ones that he'd also forged. So it passed the handwriting analysis. Handwriting analysis came out on top in that instance, but it was still a fraud. It was still a forgery. Amazing. It came out on top as a technique, but overall, it took kind of a hit because it still failed. Unbelievable, yet believable. What about John mark Carr? Do you remember him? Oh, dude, man. And I got to admit, if there was ever a case of judging a book by its cover, when I saw that guy, I was like, Yep, he did it. He's the creepiest guy I've ever seen. He is creepy. You got that right. Yeah. But he was creepy for another reason, because, of course, we're talking about the John Bay Ramsay case. He falsely confessed to killing John Bennett Ramsay, which I think he did it to get a free ride from Thailand back to the US. Yeah, I think so. I think he'd like the attention and everything, too, but I think he just didn't have any money and wanted to get back to the state. So he confessed to John Banet's killing. Well, he's living as a trans woman now. He is. And apparently trying to recruit six year olds and younger, preferably brunette girls, for a sex cult, apparently. He's trying to find a sex cult. Yeah. I only saw this one article that was on several different networks in June of what was it like, 2010? And I didn't see anything else after that. I think that is very grown up of you to say, because it is hearsay. He had one accuser, and it was somebody who he was formerly close to, a girl he had been engaged to who was saying she was coming forward to try to protect people, but there was no follow up, no nothing weird. Who knows? Chuck, that was very good of you. But back to the handwriting part of this, they compared the ransom note to a couple of exemplars from his past. The Secret Service does a lot of this, by the way, and one was a high school yearbook that he signed, and one was a job application from Thailand. And they couldn't match it because it was inconclusive, because the high school year back yearbook was old and apparently in a, quote, artistic writing style quote. So I don't know what that means. I guess he did, like, in high school, you do those, like, bubble letters, right? Fill them in. Yeah. And then the job in Thailand, he use all uppercase letters and they couldn't compare that to the ransom notes. That was both upper and lower. Yeah, and then the DNA obviously sniffed him off the case. And he was not the guy. No, he was just weird. He was an odd duck. Yeah. I don't think they still never caught anyone, did they? No, they never arrested anybody. Yeah. I think last thing I heard was that the case was reopened and they thought they had enough evidence for the parents, but they didn't or something to indict them. Oh, yeah, that was a few years back. Yeah. Very sad. And I don't see why it was so hard to get these exemplars. Is it that tough to find handwriting examples from someone? Sure. Especially if they're not cooperating too. Well, I guess that's true. What do you have lying around that's got your handwriting on it? I got a bunch of notebooks and stuff with tons of stuff in there. Well, then you'd be an easy case. All right, well, I better not kidnap or kill anyone any time soon. Keep your nose clean. What else you got? I think that's about it for me. Well, there's the fish system. They're trying to bring this into the non subjective modern age, the forensic information system for handwriting that basically they take a large body of handwritten material, digitize it, and then plot it as arithmetic and geometric values. So basically it'll be a numeric database, sort of like a fingerprint database. So instead of just having like this big diary in a locker, you have an actual numeric value that you can compare it to. Now isn't that just using computers as like flak jacket from criticism? I mean, really the computers is carrying out program subjectivity, isn't it? Yeah, probably so, but it's really just a database. It's not saying that like any better way of doing things. And I just saw this from 2009, sort of the same thing in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology. They did a test to see if people write differently when they're lying or not. And they do? Oh, yeah. They had them write truthful sentences and lies. And apparently you write differently when you lie. The content of the sentence, whether it's a lie or truthful, change the handwriting. Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah. So I guess I could help with forensics for sure. It could act as a sort of secondary lie detector at least. Right? You could be like, I am the kidnapper. Right. Have them right there. But it's not for comparisons. Well, if it doesn't work out for comparison, you have a handwritten confession. Pretty cool. And there's no schooling for this, by the way. Really? Yeah, like most of this forensic stuff, it's all just like training. Yeah, but there's certification. Well, there's no college program. No, but I think you still have to become certified. I don't think you have to. I think, like, you can advertise on the Internet and just be Joe Schmo then writing analysts, that kind of thing. But I think there is a certification or accreditation out there. Okay. It says that the training period is a minimum of two years of full time training under the tutelage of a qualified expert, a wizard. So, yeah, forensics, the game continues. Nice. Let's see. You got anything else? No. We still have to cover shadow analysis and smell. Smelly people. Yes. If you want to know more about forensics, you should type that word into the search bar. It'll bring up this handwriting analysis article and a ton of other stuff. Just type in, like I said, to the search bar houseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, man. I'm going to call this email from a feminist lesbian. Okay. Self described. Guys, your timing is amazing. I'm listening to old episodes and I listened to microloans yesterday. It's amazing how lined up my universe is with you guys right now. So I guess she was into micro loans or something, right? I love you guys to the point where my mental tape, the dialogue that plays in one's head is sometimes even in your voice. As a northern feminist and lesbian, I was leery of two southern dudes educating me. But I poo poo all your critics. So she listened to us. She's like, what are these bumkins? Hay feed. Hay feed is going to teach me. I'm a feminist lesbian from the north. Yeah. Chipopou is that once you get the hand of your dry, wet and humor, you are the most awesome and epic truth tellers who have grace, dignity and a humility about your own mistakes and limitations that I find unparalleled. Man, you embrace all people's choices and lives and you are silly to boot. I must say that I just learned so much and I have fun. Whatever you're talking about relates to my life and your excellent teachers. I sit outside by the river in the back of my house. Draw or play sudoko. It's the most difficult word to pronounce. If you don't learn it right the first time, they'll puzzle that game. Right? Right. With some people, you predict what number is going to go and where. It's pretty neat. You should try it. It's challenging. Do you like crosswords? I love crosswords. You will like this. Really not the exact same thing by any stretch. It definitely includes some math, but you'll like it. If you like crosswords, give it a shot. Yeah. So she plays this out by the river and listens to us for hours after long days. In short, everyone needs to be nice because I am all knowing and I say you are wonderful. Words can hurt. You are kind, decent human beings first and foremost. And being in the public eye makes people forget that. So there. And that is from Corinne Shaw in western Mass. Nice. Thanks a lot. Corinne Shaw. That was a very nice letter. Thank you. Yeah, like, I picture her out there by the river, playing that sudoku weird game. Sudoku. Sudoku. It ends with a U. No, it ends with an O. No, it doesn't. Unless you misspelled it. Sudoku. She spelled it S-U-D-U-K-O suduko. I think it's sudoku. We'll agree to disagree. Again, thank you very much for that very nice letter. If you want to send us a very nice letter or criticism, we have a thick skin after all these years, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. We will tweet back at you, angrily, probably, and rally everybody else against you. You can join us on Facebook.com, where Chuck will comment on your post. Make you feel bad if you make us feel bad, right, Chuck? He's a master at that. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
41280d08-53a3-11e8-bdec-6b678dd7db67	The Legend of Betsy Ross	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-legend-of-betsy-ross	Betsy Ross is an American icon to many, the seamstress who sewed the first U.S. flag because of a personal commission from George Washington. But is it true? Sort of. Learn all about this fascinating story today.	Betsy Ross is an American icon to many, the seamstress who sewed the first U.S. flag because of a personal commission from George Washington. But is it true? Sort of. Learn all about this fascinating story today.	Thu, 24 Jan 2019 14:53:31 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=14, tm_min=53, tm_sec=31, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=24, tm_isdst=0)	40799997	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from Howstuckworkscom Yankee Doodle hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Spear to 76. Brian it and Jerry Bicentennial. Baby Rowland. And I'm Josh. Like I said, Jerry wishes she was a bicentennial baby. Yes, she does. Both of you all do. I know, man. I'd be five years younger. Yeah, that's exactly where I am. Squarely in the Bicentennial baby year. Oh, that's right. I demand people refer to me as such when I'm out in public. Dr. Bicentennial Baby Clark, Esquire. Yeah. So how are you feeling? Pretty good. Good, man. We should probably say thank you to all the people who came out for our West Coast joint. Yeah, that's a good idea. Chuck last week. So big thanks to Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco for Stuff You Should Know shows and then everyone who came out for movie crushing into the world live. Yes. Thank you to everybody for all those jams. We had, like, really good crowds and good responses everywhere we went. How did you thing go? I was drunk in wine country. It went really well. I was tense and on stage in Cafe Dew. Nord. Actually, it went well when I went out, so it includes like, a presentation, like a visual, audio visual thing, and I could not get it to start working for a good 15 seconds. Oh, my gosh. Which in my mind was a good 15 minutes. And I was like, if you've all ever wanted to see someone die of fright on stage, oh, man. But I got it working, and it went well from there. But the thing that got me the most was they sat around for 30 more minutes after the show asking questions, so they were really into it, and it meant a lot to me. That's great. Thank you. I haven't been to Brooklyn yet, but this will come out after the Brooklyn show, and I'm just going to no, actually, it'll come out probably the day of the Brooklyn show. I'll hold my thanks for that. We'll see how it goes. Brooklyn great. Congratulations. How did yours go with busy Phillips? It was good. It was fun. She's super nice, and I only made a couple of really terrible jokes, and I will cut those out. Oh, you got to leave them in. Are they that bad? Yes, they were pretty bad. Okay. Like dad jokes or like, super offensive jokes? No one which evidently Emily said I said the wrong word, which explains why it made no sense because she even asked me yesterday. She was like, what was up with that one joke? I was like, what? And I told her, and she's like, no, that's not what you said. I was like, oh, I don't say it here, but it explained a lot. You got to tell me later. Okay, yeah, I'll totally tell you. Okay, cool. But what about the other one? Was it a bad joke? No, just dumb. Okay. Got to keep the image up. I know what you mean, man. Sure. But otherwise it'll be although I got the file today and the last 20 minutes of it aren't there. So I emailed them and they're like, please tell me this is not all. So it may be a truncated version. I don't know. We'll see. The lost episode is what they call it. I know. Okay, well, good, congratulations. I'm glad. Aside from the file snafu and those two bad jokes. Right. Otherwise it was great. And we're going to go back out on the road sometime soon, we decided this year, right? Yeah. We're figuring it out. Hopefully another like, nine is shows. Yeah. Over the course of this year. Sure. Places we've never been, places we have been. Who knows? We're going to mix it up. Yeah. So keep an eye out for that. We've learned. Now we're just straight up going to put that in the beginnings of episodes. No messing around anymore. No messing around. Okay. So all of that, of course, segues quite nicely into the story of Betsy Ross and the American flags origin fraud. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I don't think that's the official historical stance, but I think a better way to say it, Chuck, is questioned and just a great story for history, so who cares if it's true? Yeah, lay off, Putts. No, the person who's, like, said fraud. I guess so. Well, I mean, let's get into this because the first thing that you will probably say if you're a Betsy Ross believer she was a real person, by the way. Yeah. I think the first thing a lot of our listeners around the world will say was, who is Betsy Ross? Sure. Well, she is credited, which is where I was going with the sort of creation, design and sewing of the first flag, thanks to a lot of things, but certainly held up by a very famous painting called The Birth of Our Nation's Flag by Charles Weisberger. Very famous painting. Yeah, but it's one of those paintings. It's like super old timing where there's a lot of written explanation painted into the painting. I just find that there's nothing more old timey than that. You want to read that? Well, sure. I wasn't expecting this. He says something along the line. He looks like he just won an award. Yeah, well, I don't have anything prepared. He said the National Standard was made by Betsy Ross in 1776 at Philadelphia in the room represented in this picture. That's a lot of words, but it goes on. Still, the committee Robert Morrison, Honorable George Ross, accompanied by General George Washington, called upon the celebrated woman and together with her suggestions produced our beautiful emblem of liberty. So what are you guys doing this weekend? I was thinking about maybe going roller skating. I know it hasn't been invented yet because it's only 1870 something. 1893 and he actually wrote out 1870 something. 1893. I know. And then he said, how about this new country? Pretty neat, right? And it just kind of trails off from there. It just ends there. It's a really worthy painting, frankly. It is very worthy. But that helps sort of cement the idea that Betsy Ross was, in fact, the designer and creator, seamstress, I guess, for the first flag. Well, I'm going to take issue on behalf of some of our more historically astute listeners and say, I don't think she's credited with designing the flag. I think that's the one thing that everybody agrees on is that she is not given credit for designing it. She's given credit for physically creating the first Flight and then helping with some troubleshooting in the early design. Oh, you should go to an elementary school. Why, are they teaching otherwise? Sure. Is that right? Yeah. It's all created 100% by Betsy Ross fraud. It's not true. What? Which part is not true? The thing you said or the thing I just said? Neither one. Okay. But we should talk about the real Betsy Ross, because she was a real lady. She's not an apparition or a visage. She was born in 1752 on New Year's Day. She's a New Year's Day baby, supposedly. I think that's documented. Yeah, probably. Okay. Elizabeth Griscom was her name. Born to Samuel and Rebecca in Pennsylvania. And her great grandpappy, Andrew Griscom, was a very notable Philadelphian. He was one of the first settlers and a carpenter and built, apparently, a lot of Philadelphia's first buildings. Yeah, that's pretty prominent for that time, because this is when the whole place is being settled, and it's being settled by Quakers. Pennsylvania is a Quaker settlement, and that's how Elizabeth Kriscom, aka Betsy Ross, which makes you think, like, she robbed banks later in life and went on the Lamb and changed her name. Not true. You'll see, it'll all become apparent in a second. But she was raised as a strict Quaker in Pennsylvania. Right. One of nine children who grew to adulthood. But her parents had 17 kids. Dude, that is so many kids, man. Well, the quickest take, like, keeping their faith going by multiplying seriously. I mean, that's, like, how a lot of religious groups, they do at two fold. They reproduce a lot, and they also try to make sure that their members who are born into their groups marry other members born into the group so that they will raise more Quakers or what have you, whatever the religious group is. And actually, Betsy ran a foul of this later on, as we'll see. She was a bit of a rebel. Yeah. And also, I imagine Samuel, as a Quaker was like, you know, it's very fun procreation. And his wife was like, It's not as fun for me. And he's like, sure. It is. Such a great 18th century quicker impression. Maybe the best I've ever heard. Chuck, this is the one thing we're allowed to do that's good. The Quakers actually had a really liberal society. Like, there was a lot of equality. They were a very peaceful group, and still are. They're pacifists through and through. But they also were really strict morally. Like, if you were in a play, you could be fine 20 shillings and spend ten days in jail for being in a play, because it was just kind of frivolous and not very religious. But on the other hand, they all drank like fish. You just weren't allowed to sell it to, like, the Native Americans, because they equated that with corrupting them. None of them Quakers. Oh, yeah, sure. Nice view. I think we used to work with one, didn't we? Yeah. So I think we know the same Quakers. Probably. But now I'm wondering, first of all, I was about to shout out the name that was like, Should I not? Then I was like, why wouldn't I? I just made the whole thing happen. Why would I? Yeah, exactly. And then you thought fraud. Well, some people like to keep their stuff personal, so I'm not going to do that under the table. Quaker is what that is. But they're also called the Society of Friends, I think is the greatest name for any religious group of all time. Right. Founded by six year olds. Society of Best Wins. All right. So they're in Pennsylvania. The one thing that we do know is that her nickname was Betsy. And when she was about 15, she did learn to sew very well. She was an apprentice to an upholster named John Webster, and this is where she learned her craft. Right. You always hear of Betsy Ross being a seamstress, right? She was not a seamstress. She was, like you just said, an upholster, which involves a lot more than, say, dressmaking. As a matter of fact, I'm sure she did make clothes here. There. She knew how to. But mostly her stuff was on, like, sewing curtains and tablecloths and rugs and other textiles rather than, like, actual clothing. So she was in a pollster through and through. So is seamstress specifically clothing? That's the impression I have. Interesting. I feel like such a fraud because I didn't look up the difference between the two, but that's my take on it. No, I'm going to find out. Also took umbrellas, Venetian blinds and flags. That's something an upholstery would have made back in the 18th century. Apparently, seamstress is any woman who sews. Okay. Anything. Well, then I wonder if a pollster is a specialty of a seamstress, then, yeah, probably so. Okay. And what is a man who sews called a seamster? Maybe never thought about that. And if he's in the union, he's a seamster. Teamster. Oh, dad. I know. It's gotten really bad. Maybe we'll have Jerry cut that out to keep my public inventory. So while she was doing this work, she met a man named John Ross. Note the last name. And he was also an apprentice, and he was good at it. And he opened his own shop. He came from a well connected family. And his actual Uncle George, who you might have recognized from that painting, george Ross Jr. He signed the Declaration of Independence. Right. That's legit. Yeah, he was big time. He was, I think, a representative for Pennsylvania and the legislature, either Pennsylvania or New Jersey, one of the two. He was a big wig. If he's hanging out with George Washington and Betsy Ross's upholstery shop, then he was a big wig. That's right. A big powdered wig. By the way, her marriage to John Ross, it didn't last very long, although it was kind of marked by that younger age radicalism where she so John Ross was an Anglican, right? Yeah. He wasn't a Quaker, which was bad. Right. So they fell in love. He was in a pollster as well. And John Ross and Betsy, later Betsy Ross, when they met and fell in love, they had to elope to New Jersey, which everybody does. They eloped to New Jersey because her parents were like, you cannot do that. And she said, Well, I'm doing it. And they said, well, then you're out. And she went off and got married. And she was excommunicated. It's not the way, I think, that's specifically Catholic, but she was kicked out of the Quakers and her family disowned her. So she definitely loved the guy and went off and followed her heart. And they made sweet upholstery together because he opened his own shop, actually. Yeah. It's really sad, though. I mean, it's great that they found each other, but anytime someone's, like, expelled and disowned by their family, it's just sort of over. Religion is a sad thing. Yeah, it is. For any reason, really. Like bringing shame or dishonor. It's like it's your family that's supposed to be there for you no matter what. But it doesn't always work out that way. Which, Chuck, means that family is what you make of it. I thought family. What was it? Never trust family. Never trust family. But specifically blood family. Okay. So the Revolutionary War comes along, and in Philadelphia, people were kind of getting together, forming militias in order to defend the city in case things went down. Right. And no one knows for sure what was going on with John and Betsy, but we do know that he died. We just don't know quite how. Yeah. They think maybe it was either an accident or a death from being in the militia or there's supposedly a family rumor that he may have suffered from mental illness and may have died as a result of some complication from that. Yes. It's really sad, though, because that was obviously her true love enough to leave her family in religion. And she was widowed in 1776, just three years later. After they got married. Yes. So it was just three years after, right? Yeah. Okay. So when she was a widow, that radicalism I mentioned earlier started to kick in. She went back to Quakerism, if she ever left. I've never seen that she began attending, like, Anglican mass or anything, but she went back to the Quakers, but she joined a specific group of Quakers called the Free Quakers, or fighting Quakers, who are like, yeah, we're Quakers, but we also are not crazy into Pacifism because we want trap. Yeah. We will. Shove me back. Show me and see what happens. And that was what they wore on their shirts. Oh, man. But the reason that they were anti Pacifist is because they wanted to support independence, and there was going to be a fight, a struggle for independence, and you couldn't really side with one side and be a pacifist. Basically, yeah. Remember our Pacifism episode? That was a good one. Yeah, that was a good one. So she was once again unlucky and loved. She got married again to a man named Joseph Ashburn. He died in prison in Britain, and then she finally got married a third time to a man named John Claypool, and she was married to him until he died. But this was like 20 years this time. You want to know how she and John Claypool met? At her second husband's funeral? Almost. Okay. He showed up a bar afterward. John Claypool. Even sooner than that. John Claypool was imprisoned with Joseph Ashburn over in Great Britain. And after he got out, he made his way over to America, and he's the one who brought Betsy Ross the news that her husband had died. And then I guess he was like, so you're doing all right. Can I be of any assistance for you? And rather than just being there for her, he took away the for her, and he was just there. I wonder if he was like, by the way, your husband's last words were, totally, you should go marry my wife. That's what they used to do back in the day. So she worked as an upholster until she died at the age of 84 and 1836. She had five little girls, which is kind of great. And aside from that, that's kind of what we know about Betsy Ross as far as the facts go. Yeah. That's about where they run out, and you might say listener. Well, guys, you left out the most important one, the most important fact, the story of pursuing the American flag. Well, we're going to stick by what we just said and say that we just ran out of facts, which means it's pretty good time for a message break, don't you think? Charles agreed. We'll be right back. Okay, so it's about here that we should kind of go over the Betsy Ross legend, because what we just described is an 18th, early 19th century American woman who is a Quaker and an upholster and her love life and her children her offspring. Yeah, that's it. That's all we've got. So the flag story, for those of you who aren't familiar with this, is that when Betsy Ross was hanging around for upholstery shop one day in Philadelphia, and I believe 1776, I think June 1776 is when they say it happened. Three men came in that trio, including George Washington, george Ross, who was remember, her first husband's uncle, and then a man named Robert Morris, who was a wealthy man known as the financier of the Revolution and considered one of the founders of the US. Financial system. These three come in very important men. And as legend goes, betsy Ross recognized George Washington immediately. And they said, Ms. Ross, we need your help. We're part of the Continental Congress's Flag Committee, and we've been tasked with coming up with a flag. Will you help us create this flag? And she basically said, Let me see what you got. Yeah. She said, well, first of all, my husband passed away six months ago, so why are you bothering me of all people, right? And Uncle George was like, I know, but you're still family. You still got Ross on your name, and this will make for a good story later. So she looks at the design and she said, this is not bad. She said, but you may want to change the proportions a bit. And this is kind of the one thing that I think most historians do agree on, is that her one big change design wise was changing the star from a six pointer to a five pointer. Right. If you agree that Betsy Ross did have a hand in making the original flag, then you would probably say, that's probably correct. And apparently just because it was easier on her to cut. Yeah, I think, though, that they were saying, like, five pointed stars will be harder than a six point star. She said no, and whipped out her scissors and cut up some either cloth or paper and showed them how easy it was. And they're like, oh, that's beautiful. And George West was like, Are we still talking about this? Can we go? He's like, Why am I in the poultry shop? Why am I in the story? It doesn't even make sense that I would be here. Oh, save that. Okay. So they said, sure, that's fine. Easier to cut. You've proved it. Even though George Ross was over there trying to cut the six and prove her wrong, the sun went down, came back up, he was missing a fingertip. And so they said, that's fine, let's just do it. And they draw up the new sketch, they incorporate her new star, and they said, Get to it, kind lady. And she did, and it was a big flag. It wasn't like this was when they were going to fly out in public, so it wasn't like a little tester flag, right. So it took a while, and what it would take a few days, maybe. And she finally says, here's what I've got. And they say, this is great. Let's see how it looks on the mast of a ship. They hoisted it up a ship and they said, all right, I think we're good to go here, everyone. Tadao. Basically, that's it. You know what just occurred to me, Chuck, is how closely our history episodes resemble drunk history episodes. I know it's a for sober. Right? So the flag is it's been proven on this master of the ship, it looks beautiful. And they go back to Betsy Ross and they say, betsy, we're going to need a lot more of these. The implication is commerce takes over and Betsy becomes wealthy and secures her place as one of the important figures of early American history. That's right. Here's the thing, though, is there is no proof or evidence that this happened. This all comes from a story that her grandson William can be told in 1870. So she's been passed away for what, 30 years? Almost close to 40. Yeah, between 30 and 40. But it wasn't like she died 150 years before when her grandson wrote it down. He had known her in his lifetime. Yes. And he said that his aunt had told him this ten years before. Right. And said, Listen, she told me this story. He recounted it probably in a much nicer way than we just did. And he told us in a speech at the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and this was 1876 is right around the corner, and everyone's getting all hot and bothered by the upcoming celebration. Right. And I think everyone just sort of, well, we'll get to the reasons why, but everyone definitely bought into this. This is great, let's run with it. Right? And so here's about where historians say, okay, all right, so William can be produced. This story in a speech to the Historical Society. It took place 100 years after the thing happened, almost 40 years after Betsy Ross died. It's family lore, and apparently they got other people from the family to come testify. Like, yes, they've heard this story multiple times in very similar iterations. It's like the story of how our ancestor or grandmother, Anne, or whatever she was to them, sewed the first American flag, and they said, okay, we don't think that the Ross and Claypool families are liars by any stretch. They're not? No. They just didn't make it up. Right. That's kind of what's it called when you give somebody the benefit of the doubt. Benefit of the doubt. That's the benefit of the doubt that historians tend to give the family so that they're not just like liars who made this up, but it is family lore, and so historians kind of approach it with a little bit of a grain of salt. The thing is, there's no other family in the United States who's saying, actually, it was our grandmother who made the first American flag or my grandfather was at that meeting, and he was the one who came up with the stars. There's nothing like that. There's no other competing stories to this family story. The reason why historians take away the grain of salt is because, again, like you said, there's just no documentary evidence whatsoever to show that it ever did take place. Yeah. And there are a few flags here, red flags that is about why this may not be true. What I think is that it is a version of the truth. And then history tells wraps a good story around it. Right. There was no record of a flag committee being formed. The fact that George Washington was there is just doubtful in and of itself, as a huge superstar army general and American hero, that he would be like, we're kind of kidding around when he's like, why am I here? But why would he have been there, like, in person? Not only that, this was recounted by William Canby as a congressional committee for the flag. And there's two problems with that. One. George Washington wasn't a member of Congress. Right. So, again, why would they send him along with this committee? And then, secondly, Congress never in any way, shape, or form, on paper at least, took up the flag, the details of the flag, until 1777, a full year after the story supposedly took place. That's right. There are a few things working in her favor here. It is verified that she was paid a pretty good sum of money that same year by the Pennsylvania State Navy Board. Okay. I saw that she did make flags for the Pennsylvania Navy. Well, this is where it gets all murky because there's another man, which we'll get into. Let's put a pin in that, though, okay. Of that guy for now. Okay. Alright. Cause we're getting pretty fast and furious. And there's also a painting supposedly dating to a different painting that shows her sewing an American flag, but I don't think they have officially authenticated that. It's from 1850. 118 51. Yeah. Okay. But here's what I don't understand. If there was a painting in 1851, supposedly none of this happened until the Camby story. Yeah. Like when the big meeting took place. Well, that's when William Can be told that family story. But the fact that there's a painting that predates his speech by 19 years showing the same thing oh, sure. That lends support to his story, for sure. All right. But it's still that's an 1851 painting depicting something that happened 75 years prior. Right? Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. My math was I forgot. 100 years. You forgot to carry the one. I did. But again, that painting is not, I don't think, fully authenticated. So who knows if that's true or not? One of those dirty, lying Ross Claypool family members did it in, like, 2012. You said less Claypool for a minute. I was about to run out of the room. Yes. I like Les Claypool. Huh. I'm not a primus guy, so I wouldn't call myself a primus guy either, but I like some of their songs. Yeah. Yeah. So, Chuck, you want to take another message break and then come back and get to it? Get to the truth about the flag? Sure. All right. Charles. So you said that there was another guy who kind of muddles the issue a little bit. And he does. But not fully. Because if little school kids are being taught that Betsy Ross did design the flag. That is an issue because this guy named Francis Hopkinson is given credit more than anybody else for having a hand in designing the first American flag. If not being the designer of the American flag. The sketch that this trio of the Congressional committee brought in, allegedly. Yeah. So the story the story I heard around the campfire of old Hopkinson was that he kind of was, in fact, the designer. He designed quite a few things back then for the United States. Right. And the first thing that he did was say, I want payment of a quarter cask of wine. But then he said, Actually, I want \u00a32700, which would be like half a million pounds today. Wow. Apparently, bureaucracy took over, and they batted it back and forth. And then we're like, well, no, we're paying you as sort of that working for a corporation and owning your own IP. And they were like, no, we're paying you anyway, this is ours. And when you look at what he filed for and this is where the naval thing comes in, it was for the naval flag of the United States is what he requested payment for. Right. Supposedly, the quarter cask of public wine was for the American flag, and the big old, like, 2700 pound bill was for the naval flag. And that's the only one that Congress responded to. They just totally ignored the first one, I guess. Yeah. But this is where I just get a little confused. Like, it was important, and that's kind of one of the keys here, too, is that they needed a flag. It wasn't just like I mean, there were practical reasons. It's not like we just want to fly a flag. Like in battle. Flags are very important as they were back then, because if you were a small Navy and you didn't have a flag that everyone knew as the United States would be basically, don't bomb me. Right, exactly. Don't shoot, I'm friendly with you, which we needed an able flag. Right. So there are a bunch of flags that you could find in revolutionary America at the time. There were some very famous ones that you would recognize today. The Washington Squadron. That's a good one. It is. It's a white flag with a green pine tree. An appeal to heaven, too. Right. Which is the point of that is to say that when you revolt. You're going above the king's head, because the king had the divine right, like they ruled by on behalf of heaven. So by revolting against the king, you were going to heaven, the king's boss, and saying, hey, we want to get rid of this guy. But the pine tree there was actually a revolt that took place a few years before the Boston Tea Party, even. It was the first revolt in the colonies against the king, the first actual revolt. And it was because the king said, I own this pine tree. I own that pine tree. I own this pine tree. And they were to make ships masts out of they were very valuable, but the king was keeping all the good ones. And so these mill owners just started cutting up the king's one as well. And the sheriff and I can't remember where it was, but came to arrest a mill owner, and some other mill owners came around, and they beat the sheriff up and chased them off, and that was the first actual act of rebellion in the colonies, and that's why the pine tree became a symbol of rebellion and revolution. Yeah. I didn't know that until today. It's a symbol of a pain in my butt if you're the King of England. But it's a pretty flag. It's all right. Okay. Are you a Gadstone flag person? No. Okay. Not that thing. That's too much controversy. That's the very famous don't tread on me flag. Right. Rattlesnake coiled up saying, don't mess with Texas. No, not Texas. Don't tread on me is what it says. Yeah. And then there's, of course, the Sons of Liberty flag. Nine vertical stripes, red and white. It's fine. This one took the one we stuck with, with the 13 stripes and 13 stars over the blue field in the upper left corner. There were different designs for that, including one that I think I might have liked better. Well, one time they had 13 stars forming a square, but then they had one where they were in an arch over 76, which I think would look kind of cool. That's a boss flag. Yeah. Yeah. I agreed for a little while. They had the American flag, the red and white stripes, 13 red and white stripes as a field on the flag, and then the canton, which is a square in the upper left corner, which can be up to a quarter of the size of the flag, and it's still considered a canton, was the Union Jack, the British flag? Yeah. It looks real weird. And they apparently were running into trouble flying that, too, because it was a little confusing, so they abandoned that. And as legend has it, that flag is what showed that they really needed an official United States flag. So that supposedly is what led to that Betsy Ross flag, which was 13 stars in a circle on a blue canton with the 13 alternating red and white stripes yes. I would say that at the very least, the Grand Union Flag, as it was known, with the Union Jack in the corner, was highly confusing in battle. Right. So Congress, it becomes clear to them that, yes, they need a flag. We need a national flag. But the big distinction between what actually happened and the story of Betsy Ross is that they didn't say anything about the flag until June 14, 1777, when they passed a flag resolution. And they just basically said, yeah, these are some things we want on the flag, and that's it. And that's the first time there's any trail, any paper trail of the United States actually thinking and talking about and discussing a flag. And we have every other change from then up to, I think, 1959 or 1960, from 1777 on to the mid 20th century, every change that was made because they documented it. But this alleged first Betsy Ross flag took place outside of that documented history. Well, they may not have known at the time that this was something important. Yeah, I guess so. Why does this happen? Well, there's a lot of reasons. One reason was, even way back in the 1870s, there was a notion that women were doing some great things and being overlooked, and they wanted to inspire young women and girls across the country to do great things as well. So what better way to do so than to sort of gussy up this Betsy Ross story? Right. There was also, like, a desire for you kind of referenced it earlier about the centennial coming up in 1876. There was, like, a real hunger in the United States, which was a relatively young country, to have its own mythology. That's what some of these stories that were being kind of generated and rehashed or put down on paper for maybe the first time, that's what they provided was this shared national history that the United States citizens were kind of, like, rallying behind. Yeah, that's a good example of why that would have taken off and become cemented. Yeah. The other thing that kind of cracks me up is the fact that George Washington was in the story himself. Right. Because apparently he was just such a legend at the time and just emblematic of what this country was and would be, is that he turned up in a lot of stories that he was never really at. Right. Because this is the time where people would just tell a story and be like, and guess who else was there. Maybe if they're losing the crowd, general George Washington himself, the crowd just gasps and sits up. Yeah, that's great if they're losing the crowd. And then, of course, the easiest explanation is that it's a simple story and it's easy to tell, and it's pretty streamlined, has a nice beginning, middle, and end, and it's much better than some weird convoluted retelling that no one would remember anyway. Right. So here's where Francis Hopkinson comes in the story. It's going to get a little muddy here, kid, but just wine. But then money. And then it was a naval flag. Let's see. I got a couple of things about the flag. So there's the study of flags, how they're made what they symbolize is called valexology. I thought it was flaggery. No, that's where you're starting to lose steam. Okay. Valexology. There's a great 99% invisible episode on flag. Yeah, that's right. I knew I heard that word. Yeah, it is. So the United States flag. There's 13 horizontal stripes. Seven red, six white, in case you ever want to win at trivia. The stripes are the 13 colonies, obviously, and the stars of the 50 states of the union. The red symbolizes hardiness and valor, not blood. White symbolizes purity and innocence. Blue represents vigilance, perseverance, and justice. And if you ever want to see a heck of a flag, go to the Smithsonian museum of American history. And you can see the star spangled banner, the flag that was flying over fort McKenry in 1814, when Francis Scott key looked up in the dawn's light and saw that it was still flying over there despite just a massive assault by the British. And was inspired to write the Star spangled banner, which became the national anthem in 1931. Of course, is what I meant. Amazing. So that's the flag and Betsy Ross go forth and tell the truth. And if you want to know more about Betsy Ross, you can read this article, a fine one by Ed Grabaneski. Actually onhouseofworks.com since I said that it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this really cool email from an Atari guy. This is thrilling. I thought so, too. Hey, guys. I love the show. I worked at Atari in the late seventy s. I ran the warehouse. In 1976, Warner Brothers purchased Atari from its founder, Nolan Bushnell. Nolan stayed on for a couple of years after that before departing in 78. Cartridges created to meet movie releases is probably one of the reasons he left. When I first heard that the et Cartridges had been buried, I laughed because I oversaw the burying of leftover Superman cartridges. That's great. For that first movie in 78 at the Sunnyvale, California landfill, which is right across the street from the building Iran. Something you would not be able to do today because of environmental restrictions like the Et. Cartridge. Superman would fly around, pick up Lois lane, and rescue her from some villains. The only problem, superman kept dropping her and she would plummet to the ground. That's a bug. It's so funny. It's just so similar to Et. The cartridge was rushed into production, was a huge flop. Thought you might find the Warner brothers tie interesting. Sure. That is from Gordon C. Ulig. Nice. Thanks a lot, Gordon. That was a good one. I see he runs his own it business now, too. Yeah, man, that's what happens. So if you want to get in touch with us, like Gordon did with a great story that kind of rounds out something we were talking about, we love those things. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstynow. You can hang out with us on Instagram. I've got my own site. The Josh Clark Way. And then, as always, you can send us a nice email to stuffpodcasts@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
211ea8bc-121b-11eb-85ed-df49be9911eb	Short Stuff: Beast of Gevaudan	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-beast-of-gevaudan	The first truly international news story covered a beast that terrorized the French countryside, eviscerating dozens of villagers for three years in the 1760s. How about that?	The first truly international news story covered a beast that terrorized the French countryside, eviscerating dozens of villagers for three years in the 1760s. How about that?	Wed, 30 Jun 2021 13:08:30 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=13, tm_min=8, tm_sec=30, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=181, tm_isdst=0)	12167548	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us, but that's okay because we know Dave here in spirit watching over us like this Obi Wan Kenobi esque type dude who kind of gently guides us in the directions he wants us to go without us realizing that, making us think that we have free will, but it ultimately just being an illusion. And this is the story of the Beast of Jeff Odin. That was a great who was that? Bella Legosi. Some creep just walked through my basement and put a little sleeping stuff on a napkin, put it in my face, and I woke up and now I'm recording. Was it jeff Bridges. And you're? Sandra Bullock. What? Have you ever seen the Vanishing? Was she in that? I saw the original version. I didn't see that. They were both very good on their own, for sure. One of those rare ones where the adaptation is as good as the original format. Halloween in August. July. Yeah. It will be out in July, I think. But yes, absolutely. We are talking about a horror show, horror movie horror. And the fact that it happened in the 18th century makes it even creepier. Totally. In exactly the same way that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is still creepy and scary to this day because it takes place in 18th century upstate New York. This is creepy. Also in the exact same way, right, 1760s. We're talking about the south of France, but not like the lovely seaside of the south of France. This sounds like it's a little bit more of a small town of Jebu DA, and there is a lot of killing going on, and no one knows what's doing the killing, but they know it's terrible. Bodies are ripped to shreds, heads are missing, throats are ripped out, and I think about 100 people, give or take, because this is also legend were killed, but it really did happen, and people were freaked out, and we're like, there's a monster in these darwoods. Yeah. And they were understandably freaked out because those deaths were really, really grizzly and gruesome. And I mean, if this is a fairly sparsely populated area, if you lose 100 people over three years and some of them are having their heads pulled off and their entrails pulled out stir, it definitely is, and it definitely did. And they documented the first death in, I believe, June of 1764, and it was a 14 year old girl named Jean Boulet, and she was just basically being like little Bo Peep, tending to her livestock, her family's livestock out in the hills, and she was attacked and torn apart. And she was the first fatality, but apparently she was the second victim. And just a little before that, another young sheep herder was tending to their flock and was attacked, but their sheep banded together and chased off this beast of Jebudan and saved their life. That's right. And so more attacks are following. Dozens of people are dying. There are some women, mostly kids, a few lone dudes here and there, and described as a dog, like a wolf like creature, as big as a horse, though. And this was the time, this was 1760s, that they're talking real monsters here. They're not saying, like, it was probably a wolf. They're saying that it was some beast that they've really never witnessed before. Yeah, I mean, there was a pretty decent amount of superstition among the people who live there, I would guess, too. But then also, again, the fact that people are being torn to shreds and it's happening so frequently and their children are being killed, too, you can kind of understand how they would attribute this to a monster pretty much out of the gate. That's right. But we're going to take a break. We almost certainly know what this beast was now, and we're going to take a break and reveal it right after this. So, Chuck, one of the things I saw about this was that this is considered one of the first international media stories that it was reported on by the Avignon newspaper. And those reports made their way to the Paris newspapers, and then from there they spread to the rest of the world and that it was being written about and covered all over the world, from Europe all the way to Boston, from what I saw, and that this was really the first time. And that part of that media attention and media frenzy really kind of helped pump the story up into really huge proportions for a little while. Yes. So there's a book written by a man named JM. Smith, historian, and it's called and this one really annoys me because it's such a great title, did not need this colon. It should just be called Monsters of the Jebuda. Full stop, sure. But it's called Monsters of the Colon the Making of a Beast. I don't know why that colon annoys more than others. It's a better follow up subtitle and let's have a sandwich or something. Well, at least it's pertinent to the main title. You are always seconds away from saying, let's have a sandwich. Can we be honest? I'm a walking colon. Leading to that? You and Joey Tribiani. Oh, does he like sandwiches? That was always the favorite joke on friends. What's his favorite food? Sandwiches. Okay. So, yeah, these days, basically everyone agrees that it was a wolf back then. Apparently. This author argues there were certain social factors at play where France was not in the best way as a country, as a nation, after the war. Which war was that? Seven Years War. Yeah. The Seven Years War that they had fought and they sort of rallied around this story and came together a little bit. And this monster but it was a wolf. It was like, just to give an example, like, let's say your country faced a pandemic, how it would bring everybody together to kind of like defeat that pandemic and then everyone better off afterward on the other side. This is exactly what happened with the Beast of Jpudin. It brought France together and it really brought a lot of France together and that like King Louis the 15th got involved, started sending troops. There was a 2700 libra Tour Noir, which is a type of currency, French currency bounty, and I did the calculations that's 12 silver. That's a lot of silver reward I saw somewhere else that was basically like a year's wages for the average person in France at the time. So it was a substantial reward. And there were a lot of people looking for this wolf or this monster, this beast. It was very much like Jaws, but the fact that they couldn't find it and they actually did find one wolf and kill it and stuff it and send it off to Versailles and the killing still continued, it made this problem take on those really kind of supernatural proportions even more so. Are you saying that the one they killed in June of 1767 was not in fact the wolf? No, this was a different wolf that was killed before June 1767. I think everybody believes that in June of 1767, john Chestell did kill whatever. If it wasn't the one, it was the last of the ones that had been doing this. Well, this is just like Jaws then, because in Jaws they had the red herring shark that they killed. Yeah. And they wanted to cut it open and the mayor said, I'm not going to let you cut that thing open in front of everyone and let that child spill out of its guts. Yeah, and Richard Dreyfus said that there's no way that's the shark, because the shark we're looking for has teeth the size of a shot glass. It's one of my favorite lines. It is a great line, but sneaking and cut it up in the middle of the night and it's not the shark and this was not the wolf. I wonder though, like, how much Spielberg kind of took from this true life story to add to Joe, because now that you're pointing it out, there's a lot of similarities between the two. There were human remains. Oh, yeah. It was Richard Bell. Bellster. What is going on? I don't know, but they did find human remains in these wolves that were killed. So it really supports this idea that it was a group of wolves that were killing people and that even at the time, even in this place, this little area was overrun by wolves. There was a huge wolf problem and that's really what was the basis of all this attacks. Right. They did not find the Louisiana license plate Sportsman's Paradise. That will be my last Jaws reference. That's a trivia question right there, just waiting. True Jaws fans will be like, oh, yeah. But like we said, in 1767, they did. A man named Jeancashel, I guess, killed who everyone kind of agrees was the wolf, because the killing stopped after that. Right. And there was still debate on whether or not it could have been something else. I think wolf experts say. You know what? Back then, wolves would attack people much more than they do now in the heat of the moment with adrenaline going on. Wolves can be really puffy at certain times. They do. With their coats. They have really big bones and long limbs. People could easily exaggerate the size of this thing as maybe the size of a horse. Yeah, because over the years, there were a lot of things that were attributed to this. There was a Hyena Dawn, which is a prehistoric, giant hyena jackal type dog that would have just torn you to shreds, probably not that dire. Wolf, same situation that was long extinct. There was the idea that it was actually human, a serial killer who was actually on the prowl, but probably not it because they were just so prolific, if that was the case, that a human probably could not have carried out all these killings. And then there was also the idea that a human was involved, but that they were acting as a wolf whisperer, directing the wolves to kill like this. But then people said, no, it was probably just a lot of wolves or a lot of wolves here, and people were leaving their little kids out to ten livestock, which you just don't see anymore. And there's far fewer wolves. So that's all it was, just statistics coming back and tearing people to shreds and a wolf being a wolf. This would make for a good movie, I think the setting and everything lends itself to something that could be kind of cool. Yeah. And one other thing that's kind of cool about this is there were survivors who were attacked, and some of them were like little kids who fended off wolves. One girl did. She had a bayonet attached to a staff and used it to stab the wolf, and it was a beast of jebudan. And some lived to tell the tale, which is pretty cool. Wow. Yeah, definitely movie. Let's do it. Movie material. Chuck, you got anything else? No. Okay, well, then I'll see you later, everybody. Okay. All right. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
02b8d64c-3b0e-11eb-947e-c75b23dd2953	Girl Scouts: More than cookie sellers	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/girl-scouts-more-than-cookie-sellers	We put our research to the test and it turns out the Girl Scouts is a great organization.	We put our research to the test and it turns out the Girl Scouts is a great organization.	Thu, 20 May 2021 11:36:13 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=11, tm_min=36, tm_sec=13, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=140, tm_isdst=0)	48194962	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Trooper Jerry Rowland. Albert. There somewhere for Scout. This is stuff you should know. Be prepared. I am prepared ish. Yeah. I wonder if Jerry was a Girl Scout. I know we didn't get a chance to ask because it's all business with hers. She's just busy, busy, busy. I know she had to leave to go to a meeting, but my guess is that what do you think? Yes, I think there's actually a one in three chance that she was because, Chuck, that is the astounding stat that one and every three American adult women were a Girl Scout at some point in time. Yeah, I think they're currently around the 2.6 million level, and it varies between two and a half to 3 million, depending what's going on. And I think in recent years, numbers have gone down a little bit, and they're always trying to get those numbers up. But what I've seen is that it is remarkably steady, though it hovers around that same amount. And I've seen that that's the total number of Girl Scouts. I've also seen that that includes the adult volunteers, and that at any given time, there are about 1.7 million Girl Scouts active Girl Scouts in the United States, and that they usually hang in there for about four years is the average length of time, which is pretty good. That was longer than my Boy Scout or Cub Scout run? I can tell you. How long was your run? I think it was my shorter. Okay. I had a real problem at a young age of the idea of giving respect to elders just because they were old. I was like, no, I feel like there's a lot of old jerks out there who don't really deserve to be treated particularly special. Sure. That was my big issue with it. The problem is my dad was the den leader, and he decided to be a good role model and stick it out. Without you? Yes. But with me watching TV, like, in the house at the same time when they were having 10 meters. So the upshot of all this, long story short, is my dad doesn't really like me. Right. That's the upshot of most of your stories. My Cub scouting lasted one meeting. That was my tenure, because I went to a Cub Scout meeting, and I guess I went during the candy drive, and literally at the first meeting, they were like, here's a bunch of candy. You got to go sell this stuff. Right? And I kind of was just like, what? I don't want to do this. I don't even know what's going on yet. Why am I working for you? That's got to be an odd time to jump in feet first. You kind of want to ease into it a little more, I guess. So but I didn't do it. And maybe we'll do it on the Boy Scouts at some point, too, but my nephew Noah, who is now a grown adult who is getting married next weekend, actually oh, hey, congratulations, Noah. Yeah. No and Ellie are getting married, which is great, but he is now an adult college graduate. But he Scouted. He went all the way through. I always thought that was very cool, and that really shows a stick to it, whether you're a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout to go all the way through the whole process. So Noah is Scott's son, right? Correct. Yes. I'm not at all surprised that Noah made it Eagle Scout, because also, I'm sure that when Scott was born, they were like, just give this guy the Eagle badge. Now. He didn't Boy Scout either. He didn't need to. He was an Eagle Scout by birth. Well, and my dad raised his camping, so he was always just sort of like, you guys don't need to do that stuff because we do all that stuff anyway, right? Yeah. And plus, also there's some dues money. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That was sort of the thing. I think Girl Scouts dues money is $25 annually. They do have financial assistance, and then you have to pay for some other program stuff along the way. But that is a very low fee, and we'll get to this. But the reason is low is because those Girl Scouts can print money with those cookies. Yeah. I was not familiar with the Girl Scout cookies until I started researching this episode. Come on. They print money, man. They make, like, four $500 million a year off that thing. My friend. The gross revenue, I think, last year was $800 million I'm sorry. In 2019, 20% off. Okay. Yeah. And that's why those dues are so low, because they actually stay with the local councils, which we'll talk more about that. But speaking of Girl Scout cookies, I want to give a shout out to a couple of troops, one in particular, Troop 1492, because my friend Annabella King is a Girl Scout, a junior Girl Scout in that troop. Yes. She is the daughter of Yumi's very close friend, Wheezy, and she actually wrote a little bit about what it means to her to be a Girl Scout. If I could share a couple of passages, I think it really gets the point across. I would love to hear it. So Annabella says and she's been doing this for years by now she said she's working on her Star or her Silver Award, which there's bronze, silver, and gold. And these are, like, very prestigious awards for a Girl Scout to go after. So she said she's working on the silver one right now in parentheses. It's something really good to have on your resume, by the way. But she says that Girl Scouts is a great opportunity for greater jobs in life gives a pathway to pioneering your own business. They train you to be an entrepreneur in the early stages of life. And here's that cookie thing. Selling the cookies is the way they examine your skill and take note of the abilities you may have. It is also showing you what real life situations may be like. For example, when having a cookie stand out and advertising that you are selling something, you have to put in some enthusiasm. You can't just stand there and wait for others to come walking by. If interested, you have to grab their attention. She is an up and coming person. She also says that back when she was younger, so she's in the 7th grade. She was saying that to her before she was in the Scouts, that Girl Scouts were just annoying little girls selling cookies and stealing your money. But I have to say that is probably what a lot of people think as well. But Girl Scouts is something that impacts the community. It brings people together. I love that. I've also got a quote from our good friend John Hodgman, who was a Girl Scout, and he said, a Yale man never talks about the Girl Scouts. That's right. That's a great all purpose quote from Hodgeman. Yeah. And you know what? That's a joke that will be lost on many people because it's a call back to our Ivy League episode in 3D that not many people probably even got through because it was in. Sorry about that, Chuck. Yeah, sorry about the 3D episode, everybody. We have made sure that that will never, ever happen again. All right, should we go back to the early days of Girl Scouting? We should, but while we're at it, I want to give one more shout out to another Girl Scout troop I'm affiliated with. Two I want to shout out troops 17 107. That is my niece Mila, the movie Stars troop. Wow, that's great. I like to call it Troop Beverly Hills. Is Shelly Long the leader or not? Shelley Long. Shelley Long. And she is actually the leader. Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah. All right, so let's go back in time, and congratulations to both of those young ladies for pursuing this, because what I learned from researching the Girl Scouts is that it is a pretty great organization, and they have tried to dig into controversies and stuff like that. And I'm not disparaging the Boy Scouts, they're great, too, or Scouts USA, but they have certainly had a little more controversy over the years. And the Girl Scouts well, one of the reason that the Girl Scouts tend to be controversial is because they're inclusive. That's the problem that people have with girls, because they can't let that other human being in. They're a little different than the other human beings in this trip. That's the controversy that comes up. Typically, yeah. They have always been more inclusive. I think in the 1950s, the girl Scouts desegregated. And it took all the way to 1000 1975, and a lot of pressure from the ACP for the Boy Scouts to do so. And also of note, Chuck, is by the time the Boy Scouts fully integrated their troops, the Girl Scouts were already on their first African American president. That's right. Having progressive from the outset. And then even though it took to the guess to integrate, they were inclusive of girls with disabilities, too, because the woman who founded the Girl Scouts, Juliet Gordon Lowe, she was deaf. She became deaf after an accident. So she made sure that girls with disabilities were included from the get go. That's right. And we want to shout out by name gloria D. Scott. First African American president of the Girl Scouts in 1975. But let's go back in time to Juliette Gordon Lowe, who was a Southern gal from Savannah, Georgia. Yeah, no, it sounded like a cross between Andy from the office doing a Southern thing and Kevin Stacey at midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Oh, boy. That was all the way around. Yes. Julie Gordonlow is from Savannah. She was raised in the south and came from I don't think it was like a rich family or anything, but a family that was doing well enough to where she got a really good education compared to some of her peers. And she ended up getting involved in a marriage that wasn't so great, a husband that was an alcoholic and a gambler and a philanderer. And their whole marriage and divorce saga lasted many, many years because it was a time where getting a divorce wasn't super easy. And then he had a stroke, and she thought she maybe should stay with him. But he had a mistress who he left his money to. He eventually died during divorce proceedings. But long story short, she ended up a widow and went to London, where she had a very fateful meeting at a luncheon party one day with Sir Robert Baden Powell. Yes. And this guy is the guy who co founded the Scouts, the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides. At least back in the day, if you were a Girl Scout over in the UK, you were a member of the Girl Guides. But they're all affiliated under a single umbrella, basically a bunch of different Scouting groups around the world. And at first, Julia Lowe, her nickname was Daisy, by the way, she was a Scout leader, a troop leader for Girl Guides over in England. But when she moved back to the United States full time, she said, I'm going to set up my own shop, basically, based on my experience there. And she set up the first Girl Scout troop meeting in March of, I believe, and it included 18 girls. And the first registered Girl Scout was her niece, Daisy Gordon, who I think it was named after her. That's wonderful. And I think they were even called the Girl Guides at first. Oh, is that right? I think so. Okay. And I should have had that down cold, but I'm pretty sure that I saw that. But regardless, they either were Girl Scouts initially or became Girl Scouts. And just the whole thing appealed to her, teaching girls how to be self sufficient, how to know their way around a campfire, how to be meaningful to their community. There's a lot of community service involved that really all spoke to her. And these days you can get involved in the Girl Scouts if you're between five and 17 and they are broken down. Thusly Daisy Scouts, which I guess comes from Juliet's name. Right? Her nickname, yes. Daisy Scouts are the littlest, the most adorable, I imagine, cute brownies. I never knew that. I thought brownies was the first step in. So daisies come before brownies. Then you have your Junior Scouts, and then Girl Scouts rounded out with eleven to 17 year olds. And I believe they used to be cadets, seniors and ambassadors, but now those are the names that they take. I've seen them referred to still as cadets and seniors on the Girl Scout site. Okay. Do you still use that some? I guess so. But yeah, once you reach a certain age, I guess, eleven, they lump you in together with all of the older girls. That's right. The Daisies are five and six, like I said, and they meet with a couple of adult leaders. They earn pedals learning pedals, which is super awesome and sweet. I mean, this whole thing is overflowing with just sugary goodness. Well, yeah. And those pedals, too, they're based on the ten points of the Girl Scout law, which are things like be considerate and caring. So that's a pedal. Courageous and strong as a pedal, honest and fair, responsible for what you say and do. So it's like some pretty great character development from a very young age. Yes. And those ten laws are also represented by the Girl Scout dime, isn't that right? Yes. So you can get a free dime just by becoming a Girl Scout because one of the ceremonies is the ceremony of the dime. And that dime, $0.10, represents the ten points of the Girl Scout law. And the Girl Scouts are like, Wait a minute, I just gave you $25. They're like, you just learned your first life lesson, chump. Welcome to the Scouts. But regardless of which group you are on, you are earning these pedals, these badges, these patches in various ways. A lot of times it's by completing a craft project, sometimes an older group may present the American flag at a professional baseball game. Sometimes there's a lot of Stem activity these days. It started out sort of more, as you would think back in the 1930s, things like cooking and stuff like that. And I think they still don't shy away from that. But these days it's all about Stem. And getting girls into science, technology, engineering and math, and they're doing full on coding and stuff like that, so they really kind of rolled with the times. Yeah. And a lot of that develops over time. So, like, if you're a daisy, they'll start introducing you to that Stem stuff where it's like, this is a car. Draw a picture of a car, and it's kind of like automotive engineering. It's just the very beginnings of it. But then by the time you're like a brownie, you're building prototypes of a car that's of your own design, so it starts to progress pretty quickly. And then yeah, coding is a really big one, too, so there's like a foundation of those kind of things, but it just gets a little more advanced as the girl goes through the Scout ranks. Yeah. And I got to say, it really struck me today how brilliant the badge idea is for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and giving kids something to work for and, like, seeing them through to an end point of a goal so they can earn something, because kids really love to earn a little prize for accomplishing something. It's really meaningful. Yeah. Aside from these individual things that they can earn, there are also group service projects for the whole troop where you do a lot of community service. They might collect food and clothing for a homeless shelter, or they might decorate a nursing home over holidays and stuff like that. And the older they get, the more advanced these things are, and the more not autonomy, necessarily, but the more advanced these projects are that they can bite off. Yeah. And as they get older, they're expected to do projects on their own, community service projects. They do what are called journeys, where they learn about a new thing. And my friend Annabella says that this past winter no, this coming winter, they will likely buy a bunch of clothes and presents for two or three families who do not have enough money. We will then wrap the gifts, and someone brings it to that family. This is just one example. Sure. As they progress, and by the time they're in that final group of Girl Scouts from eleven to 17, they start to focus on potential careers and what these girls are interested in and what they might want to do, and then steering them toward that, whether it's eco action and environmentally friendly and cleaning up parks and stuff like that. But all of these service projects and all of this stuff is really all about just building skills as well as building confidence. Absolutely. And independence and selfreliance. And also just kind of being like a generally good person, too. Not self reliance or independence by taking advantage of exploiting other weaknesses, but becoming independent and self reliant while also being like a person of character and somebody you can trust. It's important. The second part is important, too. Yeah. That's Tech Bro camp that you were talking about, right? Or Farmer broke. Oh, boy. Let's take a break on that one and discuss whether we'll even edit that out. No, let's leave it. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. I'm still laughing at that. That's good. That's a good sign. Chuck so, yes, there's a lot of focus on Stem careers now, or just even interest in Stem hobbies, like coding. But there's also still a very large emphasis on being outdoorsy, which is one of the original things that the Girl Scouts were into back when Juliet Gordon Lowe was the founder and still active. And she, like, poured herself into this, by the way. We really breezed past her biography. But she was a very interesting, very worthwhile human being with very little of that. When you're talking about somebody from 100 years ago, you're like and then we'll just kind of glaze over this because she was a proctor of her time now. She was a very progressive person who would fit in quite well today, I think. And she was just a good person, but she emphasized things like outdoorsiness, in addition to learning how to cook and run a home, that kind of stuff. So that whole emphasis is still around today with things like camping. That's still a big part of being a Girl Scout, is spending time at camp and spending time outdoors, too. Yeah. Brownies. I think by the time you're a Brownie and then a junior and then a full on Girl Scout, you definitely go on camping trips. You go on overnight trips. Sometimes they're at established camps. Sometimes it's a little more rustic kind of style, camping. Sometimes the Scout leaders can kind of bite off all of the responsibility if they're comfortable with that. And sometimes they go to places where they have what's called a core staff who are kind of doing meals and stuff like that. There's really no exact set way it can go down. But the point is to get these girls out in the woods, adventuring, building campfires, rock climbing, doing crafts, making s'mores. Just something that really speaks to me and that I really believe in, of course, because I grew up doing that stuff. And by the way, if you like s'mores like I do, I like S'mores. Anything? Sure. Me, too. You can thank the Girl Scouts for that because they are the ones with the first recorded recipe for S'mores. What did they visit? S'mores? Yes. I don't know if they invented it, but they told everybody else about it. Back in 1927, there was a Girl Scout handbook that had the first printed recipe for s'mores. It was so old timey, they were called some moors. It wasn't turned into a contraction until the never knew that's what it's for. I never thought about it. What? I don't know. I just called them s. Moores I never thought about the fact that it was a contraction. It stands for some mores some mores. Yeah, because once you have one, you want some more. Yes, but apparently in this 1927 article, it says that while they're called S'mores, just one is plenty filling. Basically, I'm paraphrasing. I got a level up recommendation for your S'more game. Okay. And I'm a more traditionalist. I don't like to get too fancy, but I have lately started. I'll get the garadelli dark chocolate caramel square. Instead of a regular old Hershey, I'll throw one of those dark chocolate caramels more squares in there, and it's really pretty good. The addition of the caramel is nice. Yeah. Basically. And I'm so sorry to the good people of Pennsylvania, but the Hershey chocolate is basically anything is a level up from that as long as it's not like the generic store brand version of chocolate. Not really good chocolate, to tell you the truth. There's so much better chocolate out there, especially if you travel eastward across the Atlantic. All the chocolate over there is amazing. And then if you keep going east and you hit Japan, all of their chocolate is amazing. And then you come back around, you're like, we're back to Hershey again. Although you hit Gary Delhi square first, and then you keep going eastward and you hit Pennsylvania and things get sad. Japan has good chocolate. Oh, yes. Meiji chocolate products. They make chocolate covered almonds, chocolate covered macadamia nuts, and you can get them here in the States. I'll get you some and you can take me forever. Okay. By the way, I should tell everyone you very sweetly sent a postcard to me with the Fred Rogers stamp, and you go here to start your stamp collection. Yes. I'm glad you got it, man. We should also mention quickly that if you do not have a Girl Scout troop near you, or if you just would rather freestyle it, you can become a Juliet, named after Juliet, obviously. And that is just sort of it seems like something you do on your own, maybe with your parents, so you can still earn badges and stuff like that and just pay a smaller fee. But you're not, I think, officially part of a troupe. No, but you're part of a council. And so we should say that the Girl Scout organizations are divided into councils, which I think, by my count, literally, I counted I went on the Wikipedia page and counted all the councils, and it was like 130. I can't believe I didn't write down the exact number after going to that trouble. But it's like 130 councils around the United States. That includes, like, Puerto Rico and a couple of other areas, but there's 130 councils, and then the councils are further divided into troops. And I don't remember what you said that made me think about to start talking about councils and troops. The Juliet. Oh, yes. But if you're a Juliette, if you're basically a solo Girl Scout, you can do all the same things that a Girl Scout does an adult mentor. But you're a member of the Council. You're just not a member of a troop. But, like, when the troops get together for a GMB or they go to camp, you might be affiliated with the troop or something. You've lived too far away to go to the weekly meetings, basically. Boy, I hope those Girl Scouts are nice to those Juliet. I hope so, too. It kind of made my stomach a little upset thinking about what it might be like for Juliet. I was thinking that a Juliet that takes a leadership position at, like, a council meeting or something like that deserves, like, double the patches, because you could really easily be like a shrinking violet in a situation like that. I know I would. You have that kind of, like, tenacity and self confidence to be yourself in front of a group that hangs out with one another every week, it seems like. Hats off to the Juliet, I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah. I like the idea of Josh Clark going around the country to these meetings and just saying, raise your hand if you're a Juliet. Double that girl's patches. And then everyone's like, who is this guy? Who is that, dear? I don't think he's allowed here. Yeah, I didn't actually see that. Is it exclusively female leadership as far as the troops go, or can dad read the handbook by the River Valley Council? I'm not quite sure what area they are in charge of, but they had a handy handbook about you can be a male Girl Scout leader, but that's great. You can rely on the fact that there will always be a female co leader present with you. They would never leave you alone with the girls. Yes, that's good. I wasn't sure, but I figured there are plenty of dads who would want to be involved, especially if you're a single father, you wouldn't want to be shut out of something like that, that kind of fun activity. Yeah. They're so well known for being inclusive that they're like, no, we can do this. There's a way to do this. That's great. These days, and I think for a long time they have their uniform, which I think it used to be more of a full uniform, kind of head to toe, and now you kind of wear your regular clothes and you might have a sash or a vest or something or scorch. Is this house the word article? Did it even say that? Oh, it does. That's such an ugly word to hear. But seeing it written down, it's even worse somehow. It is. There was one other thing. I'm sorry, I want to give another shout out to a different sentence in this House Stuff Works article, because it is so, like, 2010 works. So it's talking about how one of the traditions of Girl Scouting is to take ashes from a campfire and save it until the next time you build a fire, and then you put those ashes in that fire. So there's this continuous kind of chain of fires, no matter where you build the fires or when. And then it says, if more than one Scout collects ashes, they're pooled before adding them to the campfire. As if anyone would have even thought about what might happen if more than one Scout collected ashes. As if they would say, no Scout is much more good looking and popular than you. Your ashes, you just dump them on the ground. Right now we're going to put only Jenny ashes in. Yeah, we don't want your garbage ashes. That was us. Yeah. I don't think I might have written this one. You did. I don't think I did. I don't think I did either. So speaking of inclusivity, the Latina population, by 2031 in three girls in the United States will be Latina, and it is a really growing population. And the Girl Scouts of America. Recognize this? They've created Spanish language website. They have bilingual camps. They try to incorporate some of the culture into their meetings. And I think from 2011 to 2016, anna Maria Chavez served as the CEO, as the first woman of color. And today that is Judith Baddie, who is the CEO who was the first AfricanAmerican woman. She is a former scout herself from Nassau County, New York, which is just great. And I think a lot of times, if you Scouted when you were young, you grow up and try and pass along that tradition to your children and or at least try to get them involved and then serve as a Scout leader. Yeah, I think some really high number, like 25% of former Girl Scouts end up volunteering for Scouts when they have kids. That's right. And then you said that Judith Baddie was the first AfricanAmerican CEO. People are probably like, Wait a minute. You guys mentioned a woman named Gloria back in the 70s. She was the first African American president. CEO is a relatively new position for Girl Scouts, I think, in the 21st century, it was created. Can we talk about these cookies? Have we taken a second break yet? No, we should take a second break because I need to go gather some cookies to fortify myself before we start talking about cookies for, like, ten minutes. All right, go get a cookie, everybody. Okay, great. I'm ready. Cookie time. Like you said, 800 million in sales I have from 2018, and it was about the same in 2019, I think. Yeah. My friend, that is more than Oreo generates in a given year. That's amazing. And this idea goes way back in 1917, a Girl Scout troop baked some cookies. A troop from Muscogee, Oklahoma, shout out the high school cafeteria as their service project. And then in 1922, in their publication The American Girl, they gave out the recipe, and they basically said right away, hey, listen, we're. Going to make some money off these because people are crazy for these. You can make six or seven dozen of these for a little more than a quarter up to we're going to sell them for that amount per dozen. And they were like, this is how we're going to fund our organizations. And people loved them. I mean, it's become a part of American tradition. It's the Girl Scout cookie drive because that's the only place you can get these exact cookies. And people love them, including me. Yeah, they're good cookies. Of course, obviously. Without question. The Tag alongs are the best of the best by far. That is my number two. Oh, you're kidding. What is number one? The Dosi dough is my favorite, which is the peanut butter sandwich. I always find this hard to find. Are they out every year? Oh, yeah, they're the third most popular. Maybe I'm just like, no, I'm set on the Tag alongs and I've always skipped over the dosi dose. I'll have to try those. Those are your number one, huh? Number one is the dosi. Dosi. Doug Tagalong is my number two. And then I will rock a Samoa. Even though I'm not the biggest coconut fan, I will still rock up Samoa. Okay, so one of the things you'll see about Samoas, which were introduced in 1974, by the way, they are frequently called Caramel Delights, depending on where in the country you are, because there are two bakeries in the world, I guess, that are licensed to make Girl Scout cookies every year, and depending on the bakery, they're either producing Caramel Delights or Samoa. And I guess the bakery decides what they want to call it, and people will say that's the only difference. Those people are liars, liars, liars. There is actually a very big difference between Samoa and Caramel Delights. Samoa are made with dark chocolate. Caramel Delights are made with milk chocolate, which makes difference. Having only ever had Samoa, I have not truly lived yet, because I can imagine a Samoa with milk chocolate rather than dark chocolate is probably exponentially better, unless the milk chocolate they use is hershey's. Oh, you would rather have the milk chocolate? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, totally. You're a dark chocolate guy, huh? I mean, I like all chocolate. I'm a chocolate lover, but I do like dark chocolate. I've developed a real taste for it in the past 15 years or so. Okay. Yeah, I just wouldn't even go near it when I was a kid. I think because I ate some baker's chocolate once, I learned a harsh lesson, even though it was the wrong lesson. But, yeah, I think it's an adult thing. Like you don't like Scotch when you're eight, but you love Scotch when you're 30. Yeah. When you're eight, you're totally a beer person. Sure. I think by popularity thin mints are lead the way with 25% of sales. Samosa number two at 19%, dosi does or number three at 16, and then Tagalongs come in at 13, and then you've got your Tree Foils at number seven I'm sorry, with 7%. And those are the short bread cookies, but they're still such a staple that I believe Tree Foils are one of the leading ones in production, at least. So Tree Foil or trefoil, if you've ever wondered what that means. Is it Tree Foil? I think both work. Man okay, I was just gently trying to put out the alternate. It's actually referring to the shape of the cookie. And remember we talked about in the Adidas versus Puma episode? The Adidas logo is a trefoil. It has three lobes. Well, that three lobe shape. It actually looks like four, but the bottom one is supposed to be kind of like a point. It refers to a clover that was part of the original logo for the Girl Scout cookies that was turned into it was kind of blown up and really kind of turned into this minimalist icon by a very famous and incredibly prolific logo designer named Saul Bass. Oh, yeah, he did the Hitchcock posters. He did everything credit. He did the Shining poster. The very famous the Shining poster. He did, manolent. Warner Bros. Kleenex, Dixie Cup, the Hannah Barbera Star, at and T United Way. I mean, basically everything. And one of the signature things about Saul Bass logos is the ones that he created in the still in use today. Like, they may have made them, like, three dimensional or changed the color slightly, but it's basically the same thing. That guy was that good, but he came up with this new updated trefoil version of the Girl Scout logo back in 79, and they're still using it today. And if you look closely, it is the three lobed clover that was part of the original logo makes up the hair of the girls. And there are three girls. The middle one is a girl of color. The other two are white, and they're all smiling and looking to the right toward the future, which is pretty cool if you think about it. I love that. I got something I want to play for you real quick. Okay. Tree Foil. All right. I'm sure I could find one that said trefoil. Go find one that says truck. You'll build a robot, I know you. You won't be defeated. So I was looking at one other thing about cookies real quick. I was looking at all of the cookies they ever came out with, and there were not a bunch that I was sad to miss, but I did see two that escaped my attention that I wish I had eaten. One where apple cinnamon from 1997 to 2001. Does that sound good? Love apple cinnamon. And another one were Savannah smiles, which I just missed because I wasn't paying attention. But they are lemon coolers that were out from 2012 to 2019. So if we have any clout with the girl scouts whatsoever. After this episode, I want to put in a personal request to bring back Apple Cinnamon and bring back Savannah Smiles. And what if they just sent you a VHS copy of the movie Savannah Smiles from 1980 something? I'd be okayish with it. Here's. The kind of neat thing about the Girl Scout cookie drive is they can earn badges. The cookie connection. Badges. Cookie biz. Badges. Dough charms. They can earn things, but it's not by selling the most, which is what happens at Pharma Bro Camp. The biggest markup and the most sales is what gets you your badges. There it is for setting a goal and accomplishing that goal, whatever it is. It could be for making a really great advertisement or poster, or maybe putting an advertisement in the local paper. It could be writing a story about the sale and getting that published or something. There are all kinds of cool ways to earn those cookie badges that don't, and I don't think any of them include, well, we sold the most, right? No, it's the local press that hops on who sold the most. But the Girl Scouts themselves, they're like, yes, you go out and sell it. But the point is setting goals, reaching goals, learning. Like, they have a digital it's basically like salesforce, but for Girl Scout cookies called Digital cookie, and these little girls are learning how to run that kind of stuff. It's more of a focus on entrepreneurship than anything else. And for a long time, I was very critical of Girl Scout cookie drives. I wasn't to the level where I was complaining that the Girl Scouts had set up on a public sidewalk or that somebody was selling their kids cookies for them at the office. It wasn't to that level or anything like that, but I was under the impression that the Girl Scouts of America was basically sending these kids out to basically send all the money back to the central group. And that's just mother. Yeah. Apparently almost all of it stays with the Councils, and that money goes back into the local troops. That it's really, like, self funding thing. I didn't really fully grasp that, and I also didn't realize how inclusive the Girl Scouts were. But now, I mean, I'm going to buy all the cookies all the time. You thought Queen Tagalong just sat on her throne of money? Pretty much, right? No, 70% goes to the councils, 30% goes back to the bakeries, and then about twelve to 17% goes to the actual individual troops from the Council. And that's why those annual dues are so low. $25 is most families can swing something like that a year, right. But they still do have financial assistance, if you can't, which is wonderful. So the Girl Scouts, like we said, and again, we're not trying to disparage Boy Scouts, but they have always been more inclusive. They have always had policies of nondiscrimination from very early on. And like you said, some of the controversy comes from people of a certain political persuasion, perhaps, that think the Girl Scouts are too independent and feminist oriented, and they're run by militants and lesbians. And the worst things that you could possibly say about a really great group like this, right. In the 70s, they had Betty Friedan, our old friend who we've spoken about before, very much a noted feminist. She sat on the board of directors, which was a great thing. But of course, that didn't assuage any fears that it was a feminist organization, because that was back when that was a dirty word. Now, are we in the third wave of feminism? I honestly don't know. I mean, the third wave has definitely come about, but I don't know if we've reached the fourth or not by now. Well, we'll do a show on that at some point, and we'll figure out all the waves. But the Girl Scouts have always been behind supporting legislation relevant to women, stuff like Title Nine, which we've talked about, which is equal funding for female sports activities and stuff like that in colleges. And it's just always encouraged young girls to be independent and to do their own thing because that's what it takes to succeed in the world. And I don't think they tag that as feminism necessarily, but they just said these are great traits to learn. So you can be an independent woman in America or all over the world, because they do have troops all over the world, we should mention. Yeah. And they're usually, like, raked over the coals whenever they salute or they support, like, a feminist leader, a feminist activist, often pro choice activists. They're usually one in the same or very often one in the same. And so the far right will just go crazy over that and say the Girl Scouts are, like, this brainwashing machine for producing leftist agenda kids. Right? Yeah. And that just doesn't seem to be the case whatsoever. I think really what it is is the far right seems to think of groups like that, like the Girl Scouts as having some sort of agenda and not realizing that the groups like the Girl Scouts have the values that they have, which tend to be counter far right, because mainstream America doesn't share the same values as far right. And these are fairly mainstream things like inclusivity equality, female independence. Those are pretty mainstream ideas. I guess that's all I have to say about that. And for those of you that want to write in note josh is saying far right. He's not saying all Republicans. It's a big difference. Thanks for that. But this is 2021, and 2020 was also basically the beginning of 2021, and the left jumped all over the Girl Scouts for tweeting out A. Congratulations to Amy Comey Barrett for becoming, I think, the fifth woman Supreme Court justice in history. Yeah, that's awesome. They even put the other women on there. It was like a Twitter card with all of the women Supreme Court justices pictures on there, but everybody on the left jumped all over them. So I think, just like the ACLU, if both sides are made edit you're right. You're doing everything right, then, yeah. The Girl Scouts is a non religiously affiliated secular group, but they do have my promise and my faith. Pin, which they say complements existing religious recognitions, allows girls to further strengthen the connection between their faith and Girl Scouts. And there is the phrase, on my honor, I will try and serve God in my country. But the official policy now for the GSUSA is that you can swap the word God out if you want, and you can just say serve the community or serve others or serve humanity, serve my country. Or you can just drop it all together if you want. Again, in the spirit of inclusivity, they also ruled it's okay to swap out my country for the socialist agenda, which, I mean, some people on the far right were like, see, there's a problem with that brainwashing machine. Also, that Gold Award, did you say that? Yummy's friend's daughter is going for that Gold Award? Or the silver? She is working on her silver. I will be surprised if she doesn't go for the gold. Well, only 5.5% of Girl Scouts who are eligible even get that gold. So it is very prestigious indeed. So let's hope that she can get there. Yeah. I want to wrap up with a couple of words from her. She said that she got to read one of her essays about going to see Wicked on Broadway, and she said, I can now say that I was literally on Broadway. Haha. She said I didn't win the competition, but out of all the girls who submitted their essays, I got in. That trip will stay with me forever. It is these small moments that will stay in my mind forever. Girl Scouts will always stay with you. You make friends and you learn new things in life. It is so fun and amazing. Amazing. And I guess my last thing is I want to shout out some famous Girl Scouts. I was listening to the podcast the other day with Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes and Smart Smartless. And they had Amy Sedarison, who is one of my favorite humans, and she was talking about being a Girl Scout, which is no surprise. So Amy Sudaris is a veteran. And by the way, one great Instagram follow if you don't follow her. Sally Ride, Venus Williams, Carrie Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, taylor Swift, Nancy Reagan, Gloria Steinem queen of Them lucille Ball, Natalie Merchant, Martha Stewart sheryl Crowe, katie Couric, Laura Bush, Dakota Fanning and many, many more. Yeah, you and I saw the same Good Housekeeping slide show. Apparently. No, it took so long to get did you say Natalie Merchant? She's got to get a shout out. Yeah, she was in there. Okay, good. I used to be a big 10,000 Maniacs fan. How could you not be? I'll bet they're one of those bands where if you went back and listened to them now, you'd be like, wow, they're even better than I liked, or that I realized back then. I still listen. Okay, well, there's a little tip for all you Girl Scouts out there, and Boy Scouts, too. Don't be shy. Start listening to 10,000 Maniacs and see what you think. Agreed. And thank you very much to our special guest, Annabella from Troop 1492 in Maryland. I hope we earned you a badge of some sort for this. Double or badges. I say double the badges, strangers. Double the badges. It's time for listener mail. This is Kiva plug many, many years ago. I think we started our team in 2007. I'm looking now. Yes, it was okay. Oh, no. 2009, we started a Kiva team. And for those who don't know, Kiva is a micro lending website. They are not perfect, but they do a pretty good job where you can donate very small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in developing nations and all over the world, not even developing nations exclusively anymore, to help people out, give them a leg up. And it's called microlending because ideally, they repay this money, and most of the loans do get repaid. And we started our team many years ago. And let me read this email first. Hey, guys. Recently decided to start the catalog from the beginning again and reach the 2009 episode. Who were the first Americans where we plugged the Kiva team for the first time? I thought it'd be a good enough reason to write in and request that you plugged the team again because it's been a while. There may be a lot of new listeners who discovered the podcast since then and aren't aware of the Kiva team. And this is from Lee Rondorf in Minnesota. So I appreciate the nudge. Lee. I am very proud to say this is amazing, dude. I haven't been to the site in a while. The stuff you should know. Kiva Team, since its inception, has loaned almost $9.3 million crazy. 341,000 loans, almost 12,000 members, and about 30 loans per member. That is spectacular. That beats my number, I got to tell you. It's amazing. And I got the reminder the other day to reload. I had about $100 in there, sitting there in my account. That's how it works. They'll give you the money back. It will be in your account, and then you can go relin that money. And I'm still working off that first deposit I made many years ago. That's nice. I've got to go look at my account, and it's been a while. I stopped getting those nudge emails because they really work when they come in. I'm like, oh, yeah, I need to go reblan that. So I got to go check it out and also figure out why I'm not getting those emails anymore. That's right. So we should encourage people to look into Kiva. If it's something you feel like you want to support, you can start with just a $25 loan to get your account started. And let's get this thing well over $10 million. And I meant to tell you, too, I refreshed our page a little bit. Oh, nice. We had some terrible old picture of us, like, in the video studio. Yeah, I remember that picture. So I updated that with a picture of us that we like to use. And I also just changed the name of the team to Stuff You Should Know and not Stuff You Should Know from Houseworkscom. Oh, wow, Chuck. Very nice. All modernize and streamline. Well, if you want to join our Kiva team, go to Kiva.org teamstepychnoght. Yeah. And although it does have underscores between Stuff You Should Know, but you can just go search teams for Stuff You Should Know and make sure you do it through our team. So we're all collected together. It's kind of nice. And we don't discriminate, whoever you are. We're as inclusive as the Girl Scouts are, so join up. And if you want to send us an email in the meantime, we always like to hear from everybody. You can send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-sysk-igloos.mp3	How Igloos Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-igloos-work	Igloos were traditionally used by Inuit Indians as temporary shelter while on hunting and fishing trips. In this episode, Josh and Chuck look at the design of igloos, from their impressive heat-catching properties to their ingenious construction.	Igloos were traditionally used by Inuit Indians as temporary shelter while on hunting and fishing trips. In this episode, Josh and Chuck look at the design of igloos, from their impressive heat-catching properties to their ingenious construction.	Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:18:57 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=17, tm_min=18, tm_sec=57, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=88, tm_isdst=0)	26418013	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. As Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Hello, sir. That makes this stuff. You should know, right? That's right. Unless I'm in the wrong place. You're a little under the weather still, aren't you just as sick as I was when we recorded fainting goats? Yes. Not ten minutes ago? Yes. So Chuck hasn't been sick all week? No. It'll probably just be a couple of days. It will clear up. You have a robust immune system for a man of your age. Remember when you were actually sick for weeks and weeks, like in year one? Yeah. And I think like, 18 podcasts were screwed up because I could not get better. Those are the unhealthy days. So you lead a much healthier lifestyle. Much healthier. We don't need to check you into the sanitarium like we had to back in the day. I'm okay now. I've gotten over my consumption. Hopefully you will very soon. I have the all fate that you will. Right. So, Chuck, while we're waiting for you to recuperate, I want to talk to you about technology. Okay. Specifically, some of the oldest technology known to man. Clothes. Clothing is technology? Yeah. I don't think so. But it is, Chuck. Probably more than anything else, the thing that defines humanity is our desire and our ceaseless striving to become more than human, to take ourselves out of the rat race of evolution, the crapshoot of genetics, and to basically take hold of our biological destiny. Right. Yeah. We sort of did that with clothing many years ago. Yeah. So that's what we do. We use technology to do that. And clothing was one of the earliest ones because we are a subtropical species. Humans are yeah. We're not supposed to live in really cold places. Right. But we do. We've managed to migrate from somewhere near the equator where we can run around without clothes. Yeah. To those are what they call the sexy epoch. That's right. To some colder climbs, thanks to close along the way, we figured out that we could use hammers and use stones for hammers and other tools. Sure. And we figured out that we could build our own shelters, make things warm on the inside. Right. So eventually, over the years, we figured out an enclosed heating systems. And then now, thanks to all this, we have swedes. Right. Envos. Envos. Thanks to the swedes. So the technology of Volvo's are a direct result of the technology of clothes. Wow. In a weird way, you're exactly right. But somewhere along the line, there was a branch of that linear development of thought and talent of technology all the way to enclosed shelters that house swedes, where somebody figured out that you can make an enclosed shelter out of blocks of hardpack snow. And we know those today. As igloose. Yes. And do you know what the Inuit call the igloo? Igloo. Igloo. Yeah. Trick question. That was a good question, though, because it's an Inuit word for what I believe it means snowhouse. So the Inuits are just among, like, the most pragmatic speakers on the planet. They're very cut and dry. Yeah. They call their snow houses igloo's. Right. That just makes utterance we're talking about the Canadian tundra, Josh, and TPS and castles and other things that were being built were all well and good if you're in Europe or if you are in a warmer climate, let's say, like the Florida Panhandle. Right. You don't have to take 50ft of ice to quarry stone. Exactly. But if you're on the Canadian tundra, those aren't really good options. So snow hardpack snow became the masonry, if you will, for the Inuits. Right. Let's go ahead and get to this Eskimo thing. Yeah. Eskimo and Inuit are one in the same they're two different terms for the same group of people. These people who inhabit areas spanning from Siberia to Alaska, Canada, Greenland, 3500 miles range. Right. Yeah. Which makes them the most widely spread Aboriginal group on the planet. Yeah. An Aboriginal, for those of you don't know, doesn't just refer to the Aborigines in Australia. Indigenous. The first people in that region yes. Would be Aboriginal. Yes. Okay. That was the one who gets pushed around by the Europeans. Exactly. Aboriginal, yes. And if you want to insult and Inuit, you just go ahead and call them an Eskimo. Yeah. Apparently it's a Derogatory term because it was a term that the White Man gave. I think it was another tribe. Was it? Yeah. But it was an outside group. I was just figuring the white man. Yeah. So it was another group named the Eskimos, which was thought to mean eaters of raw meat or raw blubber is what I've heard, as well. Raw blubber. But then they later thought that Eskimo meant to net snowshoes, to build snowshoes, and linguists can't prove it, although that's kind of what they think. But in the glory that is language, things can go from their original meaning to a popular meaning, and its old meaning is meaningless. It's only what people think or use. Right. Which is how lol is the word. That's right. Law. So we're going to refer to them as Inuit because that's the way to do it. We don't want to alienate anybody. No. Especially the Inuit, because they are tough people and they have survived for many years in conditions that don't seem to be survivable, especially way back in the day. But they made it through. Right. And they're thriving, actually, too. We'll get to that in a second. Yeah, I was surprised to see that. But, Chuck, a couple of other facts about the Inuit, which means the People. Right. So they call their snow houses, they glue. They call themselves the People. It's very spare. I could have been a good anyway, I think. I think so, too. Keep things simple. Fall down goat. Yeah. So they have never really established a formal system of government. It's the family is generally the center of the community. Yeah. No class system. Males are the figureheads. Yeah. No class system is pretty cool. And basically, if you're a boy, you're a hunter. If you're a girl, you marry a hunter and hopefully produce more boy hunters because everyone is equally responsible for coming up with food. And I imagine every family that's what that means. Every family is equally responsible for contributing to the food in the community. Yeah. So the more boy hunters, the better. So fascinating group. And they have never lived in Igloo's permanent shelters. Well, yeah. And it's important that you mentioned hunting, because clearly if you are living on the Arctic tundra, there's one thing that you're probably not going to have, and that is a vegetable garden. So they are very convert as a people. They do a lot of hunting. They did a lot of hunting of seals, which is probably they were called blubber blub readers. And where there are seals is going to be a lot of ice. Sea ice. Yeah. Which leads to another peculiar trait of the Inuit. Peculiar meaning unique. Kayak angst. Remember we talked about that on the webcast, like, a long time ago. I don't remember that. And everything was cut off in the middle of it, and it was geicawasaki day. Oh, yeah. And I wrote a blog post on it saying, like, as I was saying before I was cut off, kayak angst. Is this a condition specific only to the Inuit, where an Inuit males, too, where you become afraid of going out to hunt seals in a kayak, usually following an episode where you've been up for several days, the sun very rarely sets because it's summertime, which is the only time when you can hunt seal. Really? Okay. So you have a loss of sense of time. You're completely without any landmark or reference points, all just horizon and sea ice. Right. So you're with no bearings. No sense of time. And you doze off and wake up and you have no idea how long you've been asleep. How far you've drifted. And you may be out there drifting for the rest of your life. And you finally do find land again. You make your way back to your community. And you become terrified at the thought of getting back in a kayak again for a kayak angst. Wow. Yeah. Specific only to the Inuit. I don't remember that at all. That's so weird. Well, you should read my blog post. I usually have an inkling, but that one doesn't ring true for me. So the Inuit did not live in Igloos. Josh, as he said, that is not true. People might think that Inuit tribes has had Igloos all over the place, and that was their house. They were really? Hunting shelters. Yes, it's like a hunting camp. Like Robin Williams Fishing Camp and Insomnia. Yeah. Except snow nutty because of no sleep and too much sun. Well, Al Pacino was. Yeah, that's right. That was Christopher Nolan. Yeah. He's just amazing. Although you had Inception problems, right? It was really just Ellen Page. Get her out of the movie and you're okay. It wasn't even her, necessarily. Although I'm not a big fan of hers. I think she's a good actress and everything, but I'll never forget for Juno. But it was more her character. Clearly her character was put in afterward because the producers were like or the studio executives are like, Wait, what is going on? So they wrote in Ellen Pages character to explain everything to everybody at each step so that you can keep up with this really dense movie. Good. You love getting me wound up. Inception around, Josh. All right, where were we? The Inuit state were hunting camps, like we said. Yes. And they're still around today. And they are booming. Not Igloos, actually. They're not quite as common, but they did a study who is this? The Human Rights program in Canada. In Canada. Department of Canadian Heritage said that there could be as many as 68,400 Inuit in Canada by 2017, and in only 41,000 and change. So, yeah, they're booming as a people. Pretty cool. So they're thriving. Igloo's were never permanent shelters or structures for them. And they had kayak angst. One other thing, too. Eskimo kisses. Yeah. What's the deal there? So, you know, it's like rubbing the tip of your nose. Yeah, it's cute. It is. It's not entirely accurate, though, I'm sure, but they did kiss with their noses. Oh, really? Yeah, but you would put your nostrils to the face, usually around, like, the cheeks, right below the eyes. You would put your nose to a loved one's face like that and inhale deeply. And that's the real Eskimo kiss. Or Inuit kiss. Interesting. Yeah. They had it wrong, though. You know how to write the French. Yeah. They figured it out, and everyone was like, oh, yeah, this is the way to kiss. Forget that note stuff. All right, so let's talk about Igloos for a second. Okay. They're built out of blocks of ice. They are not built out of the kind of snow that you probably have in your front yard in Ohio in the wintertime. It depends on how wet it was. Yeah. Although thunderstorm. My cousin in law, alex Schreiber. Ohio State University student. Built in Igloo last winter. He and his buddies. Nice. Check this thing out, dude. Nice, right? Wow. I should post this. I'm going to give you permission to post this. It's like, 7ft tall at least. It's huge, and it's really well constructed. He's sitting on top of it, and it's not caving in. If I build an Igloo, it wouldn't last very long. Pretty cool, though. That is a backyard in Ohio. Too. Yeah. Nice. Gray day, leafless trees everywhere. Yes. He and his buddies clearly had enough boredom in time to build this. Very cool. Alex Shriver, huh? Yeah. Awesome. Is he listening right now? I hope so. Yeah, he listens. Okay. And I told I get my heads up. Yeah. We have to post that. He's going to write back and say, don't mention the igloo. Don't they always yeah. So, Chuck, even though, like, say, a hunting expedition went out, or even a single hunter went out and built an igloo, it wasn't just the single igloo every single time. Sometimes they lived in them for longer periods, sometimes more people lived in a group, and they would actually create compounds out of igloo's by melding them together, creating walkways, breezeways. Pretty cool. And there were some that basically igloo cities that came about where I think they would have halls for banquets and balls and stuff, like Inuit balls held in a large igloo. Pretty cool, though. I didn't know this. I had no idea. I always pictured just the single, and I also thought they lived in them. So this one, because we're like the totem poles, we should probably also, while we're just, like, busting things left and right, chilly Willy, the helpful little penguin from the he was so cute. I went and watched one to refresh my memory. Chilly Willy the Ding Dong. He was very cute. I thought he would be mischievous or I remembered him being mischievous, like Woody Woodpecker, right? Who is a jerk, right? No, chili Willie was a very helpful, cute, sweet little baby penguin and his little igloo. The typical igloo that you think of a dome with, like, a rounded entryway, pretty much dead on. Yeah. But it looks like your cousin cousin in law. It looks like he knows what he's doing. Yeah. Alex. Yeah. Matthew. No, I said Matthew. Oh, sorry. Yeah, there's no penguins in Alaska, either. That's the other problem, as well. Chili William is not accurate, but cute nonetheless. No, but the igloo he built was accurate. That's right. And Josh, since we're talking igloo's here's what a naive person might say. Why in the world, if you're freezing cold out in Alaska, would you build a room out of ice and snow to sit in? Yeah. How warm could that be? It would take somebody pretty naive to say something like that, though. You know how warm it could be? Up to 40 degrees warmer than it is outside of the igloo, buddy. Yes. And why, Chuck, where are these furnaces coming from? Well, your body, for one human body is a pretty good furnace. Yeah. And when you cut down the wind chill, you're going to take a big bite out of the cold. You put a couple of warm Inuit bodies in there and imagine these are big, tough dudes anyway. They're probably just, like, exuding warmth. It will radiate out and insulate the igloo will insulate the heat in, right? It traps the heat. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're talking negative 40 degrees, that's really cold. But if you could bring that up to zero, that's still cold, but it ain't, like, negative 40, which is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Yeah, good point. So the snow is an insulator, right? Yeah. It cuts down on the wind, the melting. That's the other thing, too. Yeah. When you build an igloo and don't worry, we're about to give you step by step instructions on how to build an igloo, we should get Alex on the horn. Yeah. Really, bro. At the very least, you can verify it, right? That's right. When you build an Igloo, the sun, when it does come out, or if it's out the whole time, especially during the day, it'll heat up enough, possibly, to melt some, refreeze at night, which is what you want. Melt refreeze. And your body heat also may melt it from the inside out some. And then when you go out to hunt, it'll refreeze every time. More likely. It's probably the more likely scenario. So this thawing and freezing and thawing and freezing basically turns the igloo into this really strong and insulated structure. And badaboom. Badabing. You got yourself an insulated place to fish. Yes. Or at least to bunk down while you're fishing. Yeah. So, Josh, are we at the point where we tell people how to build an Igloo? I don't think we can delay it any longer. Oh, we can? Okay. You mentioned that Igloos are kind of out of fashion with the Inuit these days. Yeah. Not as common, but they are becoming increasingly common at ski resorts, apparently. Yes. If you are such a ski junkie and that you want to just basically wake up, roll out of bed, put on your skis, and start skiing immediately, they have. Igloo is usually on the slopes that you can rent igloo villages that you can rent an igloo overnight or for as long as you stay there. Wow. Pretty sweet. Or if you're feeling squarely, you can build one yourself. True. Den. Is that a segue? It is. If you've done it before, like your cousin in law, it could take as little as an hour. If you don't know what you're doing, it could take six or more. Yeah, I want to ask Alex, actually, how long it took, because the first pictures are at night, so it clearly took them longer than a few hours. Yeah. When I saw that someone could build one an hour. I don't know about that. I don't believe that. I'm pretty sure if you were raised as an Inuit and you were, I don't know, in your 20s, I'll bet you could build an igloo in an hour. Yeah, maybe so. Yeah. And it looks like Alex and his buddies used a tub, like a shallow plastic tub, to pack the snow down. That's smart. And form the blocks. Yeah. So the way we're going to teach you how to do. It requires a snow shovel, which looks an awful lot like a drywall, or not a snow shovel. It does require a snow shovel, but a snow saw. Yes. Which looks an awful lot like a drywall saw. Indeed. And basically, you want to go find some ice, like you were saying, you normally wouldn't find ice or snow that's just fallen. That's going to work for an Igloo. You want to find wedding hard packed, like it's more solid, the better snow. Right. And what do you want to do with that snow truck? Well, you want to use your little saw. You want to cut large blocks. I guess you can vary the size, but they recommend, in the Complete Wilderness Training Guide, they recommend 3ft long, 15 inches high, eight inches deep. Right. So when you get your blocks, you want to start building, put your foundation in a circle and start building up that foundation, working your way up as you go, decreasing in size as you go. And you also have to shape it at a slant, obviously, or you're just going to have an ice block tower and not a domeed roof. Correct. Yeah. You want to shape it at a slant, like you said, but you also want to make the blocks decrease in size as you get bigger. Decrease and overlap. So you did some brickwork, and that's sort of the same principle there. I never built anything that was tall enough that I had to really build it back to stagger it. And when I did, it was like the pre made castle rock wall that's designed to set back. Right. So it didn't require any thought. But yes, if you kind of have something that's technically at a slight incline, it will provide structure if you can get it to connect. Right. As a dome. Like Buckminster Fuller's, geodesic Dome. Exactly. Very super strong structure. So as you're building this and you start to make the dome part, it should support itself if you've done it right. But you can always use sticks on the inside to support it temporarily until you get the dome complete, and then it's all pressing against each other. And then how do you finish it off with the top? Well, you want to take a chunk of ice. What you're going to have is this perfect dome with some variation of a perfect dome. Right. And there's going to be a central hole in the top, right? Yeah. Like a little chimney. Yes. But you actually want to plug this one. That's right. This is one chimney you want to plug. And you cut another block that's going to be bigger than the hole. And you want to shape it so that it basically fits this hole that's left over, which should be something like an octagon maybe, roughly shape. And you want to fit it in there perfectly. You want to cut it, shape it put it in there. So it's in there, perfectly packed in there. Because this is your load bearing keystone, basically. Yes. As long as that thing is intact, everything else should be fine. You lose that, you're in a lot of trouble. Right. And then after that, you're ready to start insulating it filling in the cracks. You want to shovel snow on top of everything, and the loose snow is what you want now. You want to work with it. Yeah. And you're going to use some insulated gloves on your hands or else you're going to lose your hands to gangrene in a few days. Prospect. Sure. And you fill in the cracks with the snow. You just kind of smooth it over with your hands so that the snow packs into the cracks and all of a sudden, this separate block pattern is lost. And you have basically a smooth dome. Yes. Is what you're going for. Right. Yeah. And at the end, it's a lot harder to try and build a door into your thing. It's easier just to build the dome and then cut your door out after it's finished. That's a good point. And a lot of people, a true aficionado of the Igloo, would build a little L shaped entryway tunnel because that will cut down on the wind coming in even more. Yeah. Because the wind has to turn a corner. That's right. So you cut that hole in whatever shape you want, whether a key shape or a lot of people use, like a tent shape. An aframe. Yeah. And then you cover it with blocks. You make like an entryway shelter, basically. And then, like you said, you might want to put it as an L. And then you dig a hole into the snow so that you can get into it. But basically you're kind of crawling into the entryway, it looked like. Yeah. Right. And then after that, you get inside and there's a very vital step that you might not think of. Yes. And that is drilling air holes. Yes. Because once you've packed it full of loose snow and it's basically mortared and the thing melts in thaws, freezes and thaws and freezes and becomes even more of a solid structure. If you don't have air holes, you'll suffocate and die. Yes. Especially if you do something like bring a camp stove or a Coleman lantern or that kind of thing in there. We don't want to see that happen. No. I don't even know that we should recommend bringing a stove at all. Yeah. Which this article says you can, as long as you have enough air holes for ventilation. I just say build it for fun and just keep the noxious fumes out of it altogether. Yeah. I should say that this article also specifically says that it is in no way, shape or form meant to be a comprehensive guide to billing in a glue. It's the basic yes. There are some good how to photos though, if you want to check it out. For sure. Yeah. Some really good illustrations, right? How stuff works is lousy with So I guess that's it for Igloo's. They are everything we thought they were and more. Yeah, a lot of times you think, oh, I bet you it's just our interpretation that you see in the movies, all these things. But they really do look just like that and they're built just like that. And not a lot of surprises here now, which is kind of reassuring in a lot of ways. It makes me feel good. Yeah. So I guess if you want to catch up on your Chili Willy, we won't blame you. I found plenty on YouTube. He's adorable. More butter. More, better. More syrup. More syrup. I don't remember that one. That was a good one. No, it's a Parquet commercial now. Are you sure? Yeah. Okay, well, check out Chile Willie and be sure to go on to Howstep Works.com and type in Igloo igloo. And it's going to bring up a pretty cool step by step illustrated guide to building your own Igloo Sons camp stove with air holes. That's right. I think. Did I say handy search bar? You just did. Okay, well then it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this isn't so much a mail. This is something I wanted to mention a long time ago and kind of forgot. Remember the lifestyle podcast? Yes. You want to do a quick recap of what a Life Straw is? Yeah. So Life Straw is a portable device for purifying water and it's cheap, it's easy to hang on to, it lasts for up to a year, and if you are in a place that's infested with guineaworm, you still need to drink water, but you don't want guineaworm. Life Straw helps. And I think the Rotarians are big into getting them all over the world. They are. And so is Stephen Neiman. And Steven wrote on our Facebook while after the lifestyle podcast that he was pretty blown away by this thing and he thought it's a pretty cool invention and that he and his company, the result of this podcast, their company is going to donate a minimum of 6000 like Straws this year in 2011. Nice. 6000, I bet, huh? Yeah. And I asked him if you minded us mentioning this. He said not at all. His company is 11th hour search in Alexandria, Virginia. It's a very small staffing firm, so it's not like even some huge company that's doing this. Right. And he said his wife works in Haiti for the US. And that's where he is right now. I don't know if he still is a little while ago. And they like the podcast on Haitian voodoo and so good on you, brother. Donating 6000 lives. Charles. That is awesome. Yes. So we just want to recognize more than awesome. That's very cool. That's got to be worth a t shirt. I would say so. Steven, you got his email? I don't have his email, but if you want to write in yeah, right in. Send us your email. Steven and your t shirt size. Sorry it took so long to mention this. It got lost in the shuffle. Well, get going. Chuck. If you are saving the world, we want to know how. Because we want to send you a t shirt. If you're saving the world in a verifiable and inspirational manner, in a dramatic fashion, yes, you can go onto our Facebook page, facebook.com STUFFYou. Know you can tweet to us syskpodcast. And you can send us an email stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestough work? Check out our blogs on the Houseofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?"
02a74cd8-3b0e-11eb-947e-13973fccffc0	How Uranium Mining Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-uranium-mining-works	Mining uranium is dangerous work. Not only does it involve mining, which is dangerous itself, uranium is also found alongside some very radioactive stuff. Learn the ins and outs of this thrilling endeavor in this episode of SYSK.	Mining uranium is dangerous work. Not only does it involve mining, which is dangerous itself, uranium is also found alongside some very radioactive stuff. Learn the ins and outs of this thrilling endeavor in this episode of SYSK.	Thu, 06 May 2021 12:05:25 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=12, tm_min=5, tm_sec=25, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=126, tm_isdst=0)	47851386	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there and Jerry's over there. Out there in the ether. But here still. And this is Stuff You Should Know, jerry, whom we love so much. So we're talking, Chuck, about uranium mining, obviously, because anytime Jerry comes up, it goes pretty much hand in hand with uranium mining, right? Sure. Like we talked about mining before. Not our finest episode, if I remember correctly, from some of the listener mail corrections we got. Was it coal mining? No, it's like underground mining. Okay, we're going to skirt around that. And uranium mining is like its own thing. Like all mining bears some resemblance to one another. But uranium mining in particular is really heavily regulated. The stuff that it produces, uranium, appropriately enough, is a really regulated substance because it can do some pretty powerful stuff. And it's just kind of interesting, especially considering the history of uranium in humans, which is a fairly recent history. Yeah, it kind of depends on what era you're talking about. But uranium brings to mind a couple of things depending on when you're talking about if you're talking about the fifties, during the Cold War and the arms race, then you can only think about enriched uranium and nuclear war and nuclear bombs. If you fast forward to the think about a kinder, gentler uranium, still radioactive, but one that would be used for energy production. And here's a pretty whopping stat on the kind of punch it packs as far as producing energy. And this is startling, frankly. A seven g pellet of uranium fuel produces as much energy as almost \u00a31800 of coal in three and a half barrels of oil. Yeah, that's remarkable. I love that, too. So I fiddled with it on a calculator a little bit. Oh, boy. So if you took about 75 enriched uranium fuel, okay, it would produce the same amount of energy as something like almost \u00a32 million of coal. Just 75 produces \u00a32 million of coal's worth of energy. And it's pretty amazing stuff. And it's because uranium is radioactive. Like, it decays spontaneously over time, right. And when it does, it releases gamma radiation and energy in the form of heat. And if you can contain and kind of encourage this decay, these reactions where neutrons kind of bombard uranium atoms and create all sorts of energy release and it happens like trillions of times a second, you can generate enough heat to boil water to spin a turbine, which to me still is one of the most hilarious things that humans have ever come up with. Using nuclear fuel to generate steam, to turn a turbine to produce electricity is just as hilariously roundabout as it gets. But that's what nuclear energy does. It's how it produces electricity. Yeah. And kind of the cool thing about that production of electricity in regards to nuclear warheads is after the de escalation, after the Cold War and we could still go back and use that stuff. We could take that enriched uranium that was stored in nuclear weapons and reuse a lot of that stuff. In fact, most of it, I think, for reactors to power reactors. Yeah, and you can get a lot of use out of it because typically the nuclear fuel, the enriched uranium that they use in a nuclear reactor to create electricity is about 5% uranium 235, which is that's the money isotope when you're creating nuclear power. That's right. If you're using it for military purposes, like a nuclear bomb, it's like 90%. So you could get a lot of nuclear fuel out of uranium that was enriched for a nuclear bomb and reusing it for nuclear fuel. I think that's just such a great, like, swords to Plow shares kind of fable. Yeah. And it can also be used for other stuff. It's not just for making power super efficiently. There's something called I don't know how it's pronounced, but it's M-O-L-Y-B denim, D-U-D-E-N. Um so I don't know if it's the B is silent and it's Molly Denim 99 or Molly B denim 99, but I think they call it Mo 99, which is super useful. Yes, sure. But this is a decay product, one of the decay products of uranium. And it is really useful for medical imaging, like to see if your heart is pumping right or to see if your cancer is metastasized. And the kind of freaky thing is, until 2010, it was actually made and used for weapons grade uranium. And then starting in 2010, now it's a low enriched version that they use for it. Yeah. And I saw that there are nuclear reactors that produce electricity that don't have to use enriched uranium. They can actually use, like, natural uranium ore and still generate electricity from that, which I think that might be. I don't know if that's a trend or not, but I'd like to see it become one where it's like if we can get away with nuclear enrichment and not do that anymore, it would save a lot of problems because nuclear in and of itself isn't necessarily problematic. And it is like low carbon or almost carbon free form of energy. But there's a lot of problems with the byproducts of the enrichment processes we'll talk about. Yeah. Another cool little fact about when they first discovered uranium as well as radium is early uses. Radium was used to make glow paint and uranium was used as a glaze, a decorative glaze. And then all of a sudden they're like, hey, guys, this stuff is actually nuclear. No wonder it glows and it makes a nice glaze. Yeah. There's also something called Vaseline glass, which is a collector's item, but it has like a radioactive glow to it because it has uranium in it. And then Fiesta wear, like that celebrated 20th century dinnerware, the Red used uranium in its glaze until 1973. What's it called? Fiesta Westaware. Yeah, I know that colored plates and bowls and everything that we're like really kind of big from the 30s until I think it's still around today. You've seen it? Yeah, I like that stuff. We have some of that stuff for like, barbecues and stuff. Exactly. Well, instead of our fine China and Christmas. Right. So if you got it in 1973 or prior, you may want to just update your collection because that stuff is radioactive. We have like, the new target versions of that stuff I got you. Okay, good. That's probably not radioactive. I hope not. So, uranium, it was discovered in 1789 by a subject of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which is present day Czech Republic. His name was Martin Clap Roth and he was actually a German chemist. I guess he liked Bohemia more, but he discovered it and named it uranium after the planet Uranus, which had been discovered earlier in the decade. And I guess it was still just the hot new thing on everybody's mind because that's what uranium is named after. Yeah. And there's different kinds of uranium. It has different kinds of isotopes, which basically are the different forms with different numbers of neutrons. And depending on how stable each isotope is, each version is some are more radioactive, some are more likely to produce nuclear fission. Some are less likely. I think you mentioned uranium 235 is the money one for nuclear war and I guess for power production, too. Right. That's the one you want. You don't want any of that garbage 238 stuff. But 238 is the most abundant, so there is more of that stuff. And you don't even ask about 37, 36. There's three that are naturally occurring. 238, 235 and 234. And what's really cool about it is uranium 235 and uranium 238 are what are called primordial elements, where they're like genuine real deal stardust, like they were created in or shortly after the Big Bang. So the uranium around here on Earth was around at the beginning of the universe? It's way older than Earth, hence the name primordial, if you believe that kind of thing. Right, exactly. And it's half life. This truck is 3000 years, which is why it's been around for longer than Earth. Did you get that joke? I did. Someone's going to be mad at us. Oh, man, they're going to be so mad. No, actually, the half life of 235 is about 700 million years and then 238 the half life. So if you take a gram of pure uranium 238 and store it in a container and you come back and check on it in four and a half billion years, only half of it will have decayed in that time. It is ancient stuff, and it's pretty cool that we figured out a way to use that primordial element, this ancient stuff that was created in the Big Bang to generate steam, to turn a turbine, to generate electricity. It's amazing. If you want to mind this stuff, australia is number one in the world. I think about 30% of all uranium in the world is in Australia. Number two is Kazakhstan. Yeah, that was a terrible Borac. Maybe the worst I've ever heard. Wow. Number three is Russia. I'm really ashamed of myself. And then number four is Canada. Wait a minute. Russia's got Canada beat? Yeah, Russia's. Number three ahead of Canada. That must be as of this year. Okay, got you. Or I guess last year, kazakhstan came up. Within about the last decade, canada has got the number one producing mine, cigar Lake Mine. It produced something like 13% of the world's uranium single handedly in 2019. Just this one mine in Canada. And Canada's uranium is so rich. Remember we said, how rich is it? I'm glad you asked, Chuck. It's so rich that they have to use robots to mine it because the humans can't get near it. It's too dangerous. You put a pin in that, we'll be talking about that a little bit later. It's as rich as it comes, which is good for Canada. Sure. The US. Doesn't have a ton of it. I believe that there are currently six states that have mining operations. Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah have the bulk of it. And then there's also some in Arizona, Nebraska and Texas. And Arizona is interesting because in Grand Canyon National Park there is uranium. And in 2012, President Obama said, you know what? For 20 years, there's a ban on uranium mining on this million acres of land around the Grand Canyon. And then just a couple of months ago, in February of this year, they passed the House passed the Grand Canyon Protection Act to make that permanent. And I think it now goes to Senate committee. It passed generally, of course, along party lines with Democrats saying we got to protect our land and Republicans saying, oh, it's fine, right? In so many ways. I saw a press release from Mark Kelly, who's now a senator from Arizona, and he and I think Kristin Cinema cosponsored a bill because they're both from Arizona to basically do what that House bill did was protect or make that ban permanent. And in this press release, he said that the Grand Canyon generates a different one. I think it was a concurrent bill. Yeah, it was a different bill. I think that there was a House bill and the Senate bill. I think they do this sometimes. It makes it happen faster because when it goes through committee, they come together and work out the differences rather than it goes through the House. And then it goes to say it can happen concurrently. I think that's what was going on. But anyway, the upshot of it is that in the press release, mark Kelly said that the Grand Canyon generates something like $1.3 billion in tourist revenue for the state of Arizona every year, which is like, how long is it going to take you to mine that much uranium? It just makes sense. To protect the Grand Canyon and just that case alone. Yeah. I mean, that was the point that they were making on the democrat side is the amount of uranium was I can't remember, but it was not that much. I think it was, like, less than 1% of the total in the United States. And they were just saying the benefits just don't even come close to outweighing the risks here. Yeah. And I mean, again, I don't think I'm not but I would say we're not here to just knock uranium as an energy source or even uranium mining when it's done correctly, but yeah, when it butts up against maybe the most celebrated natural treasure in an entire nation, on an entire continent, maybe just skip that one, I think, is kind of my take on it. Yeah. To squeeze just a little bit of uranium there. Yeah. It's just so short sighted. I'm so sick of short sightedness. Me, too. There's a cool quote in here. And this was from originally from the House of Work website, right? Yeah, it was, as a matter of fact, our old pals and this guy, Michael Amanda, he's a historian on the atomic Age. He's talking about, basically, World War II coming around and uranium being the hot ticket. And he said uranium went from being a weed to a weapon. Instead of serving as this useless pigment and glaze, it became a strategic element of war. And I think that happened pretty quickly when the arms race heated up. Like Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States were really moving fast to get as much uranium as possible on their hands. Yeah. And I mean, up to that point, uranium was like, again, it was used for pigment, a ceramic glaze, not for much. And then the Manhattan Project happened, and all of a sudden, it's like every country in the world is looking to see whether they have uranium deposits or not, because the USSR in the United States want as much as it can get, not just even necessarily to build up its stockpile to keep the other guy from getting his hands on it as well. So the human introduction, the general public's introduction to uranium was kind of jarring in that sense because it came hand in hand with the Atomic Age. Uranium 235 was what was used as the nuclear core for Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. So it was a very memorable debut uranium had in the public mind. It stayed that way for a while until it started to become associated more with nuclear energy. Should we take a break? I think we should take a break. Yeah. All right, let's do it. Stuff you should know. Josh and Shawn. Stuff you should know. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so let's say you want to mine uranium. The first thing you have to do is find uranium and you're looking for these large deposits. You don't open up a mine unless you do the math and you figure out that, hey, there's enough. I mean, it's a really simple math formula. Basically, like, this is how much it costs to mine, and this is how much we can possibly get from this place. Is it worth it or not? Because I think one and every 1000 exploration sites of all metals and minerals are ever really used as the mining site. So they're poking around at first and they're using these. You can actually walk around with a Geiger counter on the ground and look for it close up. After you have used something called I'm going to go with centillometer. Yeah, that's good. I was going to say centilometer because it's based on the word scintillating. Like exciting. You can do that from further range and that picks up gamma rays at bigger distances. So you'll use that at first, then you'll zero in with that Geiger counter. You'll check out the landscape and see how viable it is, and you'll just enter that all into your little spreadsheet or however you're determining that equation. And if it spits out, yes, good place for mine, then they'll go through this really long arduous process of getting permitted. Yeah. And the stuff that you're going to mine then becomes what's known as ore bodies, which are deposits that are economically worth mining and extracting. Right. It does take a lot of time. This article says between three and ten years to go from basically prospecting to production. I saw ten to 15 elsewhere, to bombing somebody right. To add another year onto that one. Right. But yeah. So say anywhere between three and 15 years. I'm leaning more towards the ten to 15 year side just because of the permitting, having to deal with the public saying, like, you're not going to do that in my backyard kind of thing. It's rather involved. It's involved for any mine because you have to plan the mine, too, as you'll see in a second. Like, you've got to plan what kind of mind you're going to build. You have to plan the mine itself. You have to figure out what to do with it, who are you going to sell it to? Then you have to go through the permitting process. Then you have to actually start to extract it. One of the things that really jumped out to me, Chuck, was how few people it actually takes to mine. Yes. I mean, this article made it sound like kind of a full scale operation. I'm sure they range in size, but it has to be a certain size to make it worth your while, like we said. So it seems like 100 people or less. Yeah. Total can run this mining side. The whole shebang 100 people, the mine uranium, which I just thought that was really surprising. Yeah. And we should also mention, too, that they just don't go digging in there. Like uranium could be mistaken for when it decays. There are byproducts called daughter elements, radon and radium, and that can also set off a Geiger counter. They make super sure that it's uranium down there before they get comfortable. Right. Well, that's actually how they find it, using the Geiger counters, because the uranium itself, it has such a long half life, it decays so slowly that it's its daughter isotopes or daughter elements that are the ones that are setting the Geiger counter off. But then you have to say, okay, well, how much uranium is in here? Because I don't want that rate on. That's just a hazard to our health, even though we use it to find the uranium. How much uranium is here and how much rate on is there? Because if you find a really ancient deposit that's just been sitting undisturbed and has been slowly but surely decaying, all of those daughter isotopes are going to keep building up. So you might find a deposit that's a lot of rad on you don't want to have anything to do with, but not that much uranium 235. Yes. So once you have found your stuff, you've got your permit, you're all ready to go. It's ten to 15 years on. You need to figure out, and you probably already figure out at this point what kind of mine you're going to have. And there's a few different ones. I know we've talked about mountain top removal mining and regular underground mining, but open pit mining is one thing they can do, which is basically they blast away land and create a big pit. And then they go in there and they remove big uranium or chunks and say, here you go. Go process it. Go crush it up and slurry. And what's that saying they have that's kind of cool. So apparently the miners themselves, like, if you're a uranium minor, you're not just an ordinary minor in, no disrespect to ordinary miners, but you're especially trained, especially to recognize uranium because it's up to you in an open process to pick the stuff out and get as much of the actual uranium as possible. So they do have this saying a mine is a terrible thing to waste. You want to get all the uranium out and a waste is a terrible thing to mine. You don't want to mine the stuff that's not uranium. And so I added a little bit of extra to that saying. It's a lot more succinct than that, but I think you get the price here. I thought you were going to add even more. No, surprisingly, I wasn't. Also strip mine, is that true? Yeah, open pit and strip mining are like within if you've got the deposit within like 400ft of the surface. But I think the big difference between those two trucks strip mine is just like taking the layers of soil off the top until you reach the deposit, whereas open pit, like you were saying, you blast it in a rubble. But they're related, they're like, they're surface mining. I think they both qualify as that. Yeah. Then you've got underground mining, of course, which is just deeper, and you go down in those mine shafts, or what's called addits, which are the vertical and horizontal tunnels, and it's just way more labor intensive. It's obviously a bit more expensive, it's a bit more dangerous, higher health risks. So they would prefer out of those two, to probably open pit mine? Well, yes, but it also depends on who you're talking about prefers. It like if you're a miner, you probably prefer open pit because you're exposed to open air. If you're a concerned agent of the EPA, you probably prefer a well run underground mine, because if it's done correctly and built properly, it's probably going to have less of an environmental footprint than blowing a huge pit into the earth and getting all the radioactive chunks out. Yeah. And I think the one that has the least environmental impact is in situ, which means in the original place, and this is interesting, in that they basically don't take these big chunks out of the ground and process it. They use chemicals, they use baking soda and sort of like a club soda mixture solution. And they inject it into the rock through pipes and that separates the uranium from the rock, but it turns it into a solution that they then pump back up to the surface. Yeah. There's injection wells that go down into the deposit because sometimes uranium can be kind of suspended in sand or sand stone or even gravel or near the water table. Yes. So that's something that confounds it. Let's say you're going and you got topsoil and a little bit of bedrock. And then you've got a nice aquifer of fresh, unpolluted drinking water. Then below that, you've got a big clay strip of impermeable clay. Then you've got the uranium. Then you got another clay strip holding that uranium deposit sand in between it. Right. Your job is to drill down past the aquifer, pass the clay into the uranium sand, inject it with all that stuff, and then leach the dissolved uranium out through a pump, through that aquifer without leaking it into the aquifer and then taking it off site for processing. And if you do it right, you don't pollute the groundwater and you don't disrupt or make the clay permeable so that you actually let the uranium leak out of deposit. If you do it right, it would have the least environmental footprint, it seems to me. Probably the trickiest version of it. Yeah. And I think sometimes when you combine two regular words, it just ends up sounding super gross. And I think leaky deposit fits into that category. Yeah, it definitely does. Especially a moist leaky deposit. I'm sorry. Then there's heap leaching, which is terrible. It sounds like kind of the worst of the environmental as far as environmental impact goes. And that is when it sounds like, unless I'm reading this wrong, they extract all the ore from the ground, the big chunks they busted up on the ground, above ground. And then they leach that pile with chemicals to separate it. So it's almost like in situ, but above ground they'll just like, hey, let's just take it up here and then leach it. Yeah. A lot of these have a lot to do with one another. I think with open pit, you actually end up using heat bleaching a lot of times because you're taking those chunks that you blasted out of the earth and you're pouring acid, spraying acid all over this pile. And the stuff that trickles down is caught by these pipes and your uranium is dissolved in there. Or like you're saying you're spraying it with hydrogen peroxide or club soda or something like that. So it's all kind of you can do some of them in conjunction with one another. But the point is, you're getting that uranium out of the ground somehow and then you're starting the process of extracting it from the ore as best you can. That's right. Then you've got your stuff. Then you need to make it into different stuff. You need to mill it at a uranium mill. And what you want eventually to get to is and it's pretty funny that they name it this, it's uranium powder, but they call it yellow cake, which just sounds delicious. It does. But if you ate that, you would be in big trouble. Yes, very big trouble. And it's very highly regulated, of course. I think they like to put these mills pretty close by the mines themselves. I think the US Atomic Energy Commission really kind of AIDS people in saying, let's just bring this all close together. And you take that dry uranium oil and you just mill it up, basically. I mean, it's not in, like, a lot of mining operations. At the end of the day, you're basically just trying to separate all the byproducts or not byproducts, but all the stuff that you don't want out of the way. Yeah, that's 100% what they're doing. They're just depending on what mineral you're after. You're going to use different chemicals and stages of chemicals in the process. Right. So when you produce this yellow cake, what you've basically done is separated natural uranium away from the ore, the rock that it was part of, or the sand that it was part of, and you compress it into these yellow cakes and you send it off. So now you've got milled and processed uranium, but it still isn't enriched. It's still in its natural form and in about its natural percentages. So natural uranium, if you have, like, a thing of yellow cake in your hands, again, don't eat it. Sounds delicious. It's just not it's not public's sheet cake. No. Which, even if I knew that was radioactive, I wouldn't be able to help myself. I would still eat it. So you've got the yellow cake in your hands. What you're holding is 99.3% uranium 238, which is the one with a very long half life life that's not very radioactive as far as humans are concerned. It's holding things, and then it's zero 7% uranium 235. And again, there's at least one Canadian reactor that supposedly can create electricity through yellow cake. Really? Yeah, that's what I was saying before, that it can use it in its natural form, which is great, because all of this mining and processing is potentially harmful enough to the environment. But wait until we tell you about enrichment. Right, right. Yeah. Because what did you say it was? Zero 7% in its natural state. Yeah. The goal is to get it and it's not like it has to be 50%. The goal is to enrich it to about two to 5%. Right. Which is still that's significant. But that's for if you want nuclear fuel, if you want it for military purposes, you have to enrich that zero 7% of uranium 235 up to 90%. Oh, really? Yes. So that's why I was saying, if you get your hands on some military enriched uranium, you could fuel a lot of nuclear reactions with that. And the point of enrichment? Enrichment is just another word for concentrating, basically, where you're stripping out now from the yellow cake, not just the other stuff that's not uranium, but all the uranium that's not uranium 235. And so it takes a lot of yellow cake to get uranium 235 in enough abundance to actually produce fuel. Like, for example, if you're upgrading \u00a31000 of yellow cake from \u00a3.1 thousand. Of yellow cake. Oh my God. If you're enriching it up to 5% at the end of that you would have, I think, \u00a350 of uranium 235, the stuff you could actually use to make pellets out of in fuel from 1000. Yeah. And then you'd have \u00a3950 of what's called depleted uranium which is mostly uranium 238, some uranium 235 that you couldn't get out of there, and all sorts of other heavy metals and potentially radioactive impurities. And you can use that for your glaze, your pottery, you can your fiesta air, when you're enriching to what your byproduct is going to be ultimately is called uranium hexafluoride gas. And that will go into a cylinder and then as it cools, it becomes a solid. And that's where you have your ultimately your solid little you compress it down and you've got your little fuel pellet. Isn't that interesting? They go from powder to gas to solid to fuel pellet. And so when you take that enriched uranium you turn it into pellets. That's the fabrication process. And I believe yet another company is responsible for that. You just get increasingly more specialized and you even start out again with specialized miners who are mining the uranium. And then as it passes through hand to hand, it's just getting more and more specialized. And then finally you have either enriched uranium for nuclear fuel or enriched uranium to explode significant portions of the planet up with. Yeah. What I'm curious about is if it's all a group profit share or if they just have a fee that they charge to mill and a fee to enrich or if they're like, no, we're all in this together and we get ultimately part of the profits. I honestly don't know, to tell you the truth. Yeah, somebody will know, I'm guessing, because even though there's federal regulations, I don't think the market itself is necessarily regulated. Right? Well, that's not true. The market would have to be regulated, but I don't know if it's regulated in the sense that it's not capitalist or there's not a capitalist drive pushing it. I'm not sure. So we need to talk about health concerns for humans and then the environment. So should we do health and then break or break and then do both? I say break and do both, Chuck, because I think we've come to a pretty good breaking point. Huzzah stuff you should know. Josh and Shaw stuff you should know. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com. Easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, so we've got this stuff. We mined it. First of all, we found it. I was really proud of even finding it, Chuck. And then I was astounded that we were able to not only mill the stuff, but also enrich it and then fabricate it into nuclear fuel. And if you combine all those processes together, you have what's called the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle. And that's basically what we're talking about today, the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, which is basically what you do with this stuff once it's enriched or if it's used as spent fuel. That's a whole other podcast that I would really love to do some day. Totally. And our particular the stuff you should know operation is very efficient because we send Jerry out ahead, and if her hair glows green, then we've got our spot. Yeah, she's like ham and a hammerham. Oh, man. My friend Meredith, by the way, told me someone alerted her to that because she was the one who used to say that her and my friend Bob. And she told me what it meant, and now I can't remember. I think Bob said it was like someone he would say it when he saw a hot guy or whatever. And if he was a hot guy would be Hammondahamehamana and a super hot guy would be Hamun. Ahamana, plus tax. That's pretty great. So it's just a designation. I think you got to love Bob. He lives in New York, right? You know, Bob moves around between New Jersey and Portland. I think when you met him, it was in Portland, but really, you may have met him in both, actually, because I associate him with New York for some reason. Well, I always do to Portland is I'm not sure why Bob moved to Portland because he's a very New York guy. He grew up in the New Jersey area. But I'm not sure where he is right now. I need to get in touch with Bob right home. All right, so health concerns for humans. People can debate whether or not we should mine uranium all day long, but there's neither side that says it's fine for people. It's good for a water supply. Everyone acknowledges that it has serious health impacts for us and our planet. Yes. And one of the big ones is again, remember co occurs with its daughter isotopes or its daughter elements. And in particular, radon is a real problem because radon is a daughter of radium 226 radon gases. Radium 226 comes from uranium 238 decay. Right there's. 14 daughters, and they follow this predictable stage as uranium decays. Radon gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking tobacco. It's the number one cause of lung cancer among non smokers. And you can actually get it from just sitting around in your house. The problem with it is you can inhale it. And when you inhale it into your lungs, it becomes, I believe, polonium, which decays itself in your lungs and releases gamma radiation and alpha particles and beta particles and does all sorts of terrible stuff to you, which can give you lung cancer over time. But like I said, you can get it from sitting in your house. You should actually get your house check for radon once in a while, because it's possible there's a uranium deposit under your house somewhere, and that radon has made its way up. When you crack open the earth to purposefully get to a uranium deposit, radon is going to come out in aces, which makes it a very hazardous thing for uranium miners. Yeah. And if you work at an underground mine, especially, they're going to be I don't know how often, but they're going to be checking and testing for radon gas all over that work site. It's not just like right where they're digging or whatever blasting. It's going to be in the break room. It's going to be in the kitchen, in the office trailers. They're testing for radon gas everywhere, at least here in the US. It's going to be radios in the vending machine. It will be, man, I ain't going to eat none of those HOS. Maybe some sheet cake from public. Sure. I don't even draw the line. Uranium itself, actually, it's toxicity is really the biggest danger there. And, like, ingesting that, you can have serious kidney problems. But like you said, usually radium and radon are the biggest. I mean, that stuff can get in your bones. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. It's a real problem. The thing is, uranium, when it releases alpha particles, those things kind of tend to bounce right off of your skin. So with uranium, remember how it's not particularly radioactive? That's if it's just sitting there outside, like, even if you're holding in your hands, it becomes particularly problematic when it's broken and you either inhale it like you're inhaling radon or you ingest it, it just gets on your fingers or your food or something. It's this invisible thing, but it goes into your body, and it wreaks havoc, in particular, kidney damage, because it gets into your blood, and your poor kidneys have to filter it out of the blood. And it's like, I'm not equipped for this kind of thing. It might even say hamuna, hamuna, hamuna itself. And then you have real serious kidney problems after that. Yeah. And since part of the process involves breaking it up, that's the whole goal, then it's an issue. But also it also is problematic with depleted uranium, too, which, again, is the byproduct of uranium enrichment. It's a big, old, dense hunk of uranium 238 and a bunch of other heavy metals, and they use that for all sorts of stuff. They use it for shielding to shield out other radiation. They use it as weights and airplanes. They use it for bullets. It's like tank piercing bullets. And I was reading a VA post about how some Gulf War veterans may have been exposed to depleted uranium toxicity, because if they came under friendly fire, because some of the shells were coated in depleted uranium, because it's so dense, it'll go right through a tank. But it also has this terrible secondary side effect where that means that the depleted uranium breaks up, and it can be inhaled. It can get ingested. It can go into your skin. So even if you weren't killed by the depleted uranium shell piercing the tank that you're in, you may actually get cancer later on or kidney failure down the road because of that depleted uranium. So there is, like, a real problem with it. And then above all that, too, in addition to it, it's toxic just because it's a heavy metal as well, which you don't want anywhere in your body. Yeah, and we haven't even really touched on the environmental impact. Obviously, these mines that were around and then abandoned before the sort of mid 1970s are super dangerous places because they leave behind something called tailings. These are those leftover pieces of ore that they don't use. And they have those byproducts that we were talking about, like radon and radium, but also polonium and sometimes even arsenic. And if it was preventing 75 or so, an abandoned uranium mine was not cleaned up very well. Yeah, they've had to do a lot of work since then to clean this stuff up. Like, things are way different now, and they've gone back to try and clean stuff up. But the wind and the rain carries the stuff away. It gets into the water supply. And I think they said something like, it takes 40 years to restore the environment back to its natural state. And I hear that. I'm like, no way, man. You can never restore it to its natural state, as if it had never happened. I don't buy it. Yes, I'm with you. I don't buy it either. It seems a really short time for a radioactive substance contaminating groundwater, for Pete's sake. But this is something that's especially affected Native American population, and even more specifically, the Navajo Nation, because a lot of uranium mines are in the hundreds of thousands of acres of the Navajo land. I think \u00a370 million of uranium reserves in the 1970s were on Navajo land. And then on July 16, 1979, there was the biggest expulsion of radioactive material in the history of the United States when a dam broke at the Church Rock uranium mill operated by the United Nuclear Corporation under well, I say under Jimmy Carter's watch. It's not like it was his fault or anything, but he is one of the people who first said, hey, we should really use the stuff for nuclear power. Yeah. And I mean, this happened while everybody was thinking about Three Mile Island, and still no one ever heard of it. It happened four months after Three Mile Island and Three Mile Island. I think we should do one on, like, nuclear releases, the whole episode on that. But Three Mile Island scared the bejesus out of everybody, because all of a sudden, this green nuclear energy was really threatening and scary, and it really put a dent in the public opinion on nuclear power. But with the Church Rock release, it just dwarfed. Three Mile Islands released. And still, I hadn't heard of it until two days ago when I started researching this. And it was a huge deal. Like, people dying people. It contaminated the river. Like, 93 million gallons of toxic radioactive sludge tailings from uranium mining just contaminated the river. And they did tests of the drinking water 80 miles downstream of this release, and they found that it had 7000 times the acceptable radioactivity of drinking water, the acceptable drinking water standards. 7000 times, 80 miles downstream. And just because it happened on this Navajo land, everybody's like, I hadn't heard of that. Well, all of it is a crime. But the real crime at the center of it is they didn't even notify them, hardly. They did a really bad job of even letting them know. So that's 80 miles away, you're getting radioactive fallout in the water. But right there where it happened, they were walking into the river like they always do, and their skin was literally burned on contact, and they were getting boils because from this Yellow River, all of a sudden, it's so shameful. And whoever wrote this article, I think was from the Navajo Nation. And they said, yes, it was an accident, but Exxon Valdez was an accident. And they're always accidents. Three Mile Island was an accident. But that's kind of the point. It's like accidents happen. And when an accident happens at a uranium operation, it's catastrophic. Yeah. And I mean, even the best designed mine operation has to figure out what to do with those tailings. All that toxic sludge and radioactive sludge, and all gets combined. And if you don't design your damn right, your dam's going to fail. But even if you do design your damn right, how long is it going to stick around, even under the best of circumstances, this is not just your normal stuff. This is stuff that's going to be radioactive for a very long time. So it's a real problem, like figuring out what to do with this on the back end is a huge problem that humanity just keeps kicking down the road. You know what other two words sound gross together? Let me hear it. Nuclear relief. That's not as bad as what was the other one? I don't even remember. I already forgot it had moist in it. Well, you added moist, but I always add moist just to put a tag on all this. They do require companies, I believe, to engage in what's called a reclamation bond, which basically says, hey, we're setting aside so much of our budget to come back and clean this up so they can't at the end say, no, we went broke. Sorry. So they set aside that money upfront, supposedly, and the fines are pretty steep, up to a quarter of a million bucks. If you break these land management rules, all the incentive is there for them to do a good job, and their reputation is at stake. So we don't want to make it appear like it's just willy nilly. They're just doing whatever they are accidents, and the company wouldn't work again if they have one of those accidents. It's just one of those things. Well, it's also a demonstration of, like, it matters who is in charge of the country at any given point in time, because you have to have a will to enforce those regulations that are meant to keep communities safe, or you don't, and you just let business do its thing. And that seems to go hand in hand with an increase in accidents. Yes. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. A little bit of contempt, but I have hope that we can figure it out, because I think that nuclear energy is not inherently problematic. It's just our understanding of how to use it is. Yeah, we did a good episode on thanks. I think so, too, Chuck. No, I mean before. Oh, I got you. Okay. Thanks for the last one. Thanks for nothing for this one, I guess. Sure. If you want to know more about uranium and uranium mining and all that jazz, go onto the Internet, and then keep an ear out for our episode on accidental nuclear releases sometime in the future. Since I said sometime in the future, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this from a teacher. Hey, guys. My name is Emily. I'm a full time high school teacher from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I want to thank you for a number of things. First of all, your podcast on stamp collecting was hilarious. I was in stitches thinking about Josh's joke about FDR coming up with terrible stamp ideas for the postmaster general. Additionally, as you know, this pandemic has been so hard on nearly everyone, but I think maybe hardest on students and teachers. As teachers, we've gone from being honored, thanked, and admired a year ago for all the quick work we were able to do when we first shut down to being vilified for not doing enough. It's been exhausting. At the end of the day, it's been hard to find much joy in anything. The exception your podcast. The excitement and enthusiasm you have for knowledge is the only thing my brain seems to have space for these days. Especially as of late. I found myself literally laughing out loud more often at your jokes and one liners at least. Truly tired. Obviously, this is so invaluable to me as most days end with me feeling like crying or crawling into a ball and sleeping. Also, your most recent post on your respective Instagram accounts showing you all together give me hope that things are returning to normal soon. All this to say you're providing such an essential service to people around the globe. For most of us who have been confined to our homes and towns, you bring the world to us. I am and will forever be grateful. That is Emily Gunch, a truly tired teacher. And Emily, that means more to us than you will ever understand. So thanks for sending that out. That's also really well said. I'm glad that this is like a teacher. Totally. And if you don't know what she's talking about, we posted photos of the three of us together again, including a picture of Jerry at Josh Mclark's Instagram and at Chuck the podcasters. Wow. Nice, Chuck. I didn't know we were going to get an Insta shout out. We never plug our instagrams. But why not? Why not? Why not? Don't see a picture of Jerry? Yes. People tape over her mouth over it. We're, like, scowling at her and she looks sheepish. People really did lose their minds to see Jerry's face. That's great. Her beautiful face. Great. Okay, if you want to get in touch with this like Ms. Gunch did. Right? Yes. Gunshot's. Lunch. Nice. I nailed it. You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Listen to your favorite shows."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-10-03-sysk-police-body-cameras-final.mp3	How Police Body Cameras Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-police-body-cameras-work	Cops wearing cameras is a new thing. So new that we aren't entirely sure of all the ramifications that go along with them just yet. In theory they should protect both police and citizens, but as we learned, they are no magic pill against police brutality	Cops wearing cameras is a new thing. So new that we aren't entirely sure of all the ramifications that go along with them just yet. In theory they should protect both police and citizens, but as we learned, they are no magic pill against police brutality	Tue, 03 Oct 2017 14:03:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=14, tm_min=3, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=276, tm_isdst=0)	42993033	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"With no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with their top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms. Apply Capital One in a member FDIC hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetaffworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know. The ever expanding law enforcement edition. Yet another. Yeah, we just did one, didn't we? Yeah, I can't remember which one. They all run together now. Yeah, we've done a lot. Yes. Body cameras. And I kind of, when I picked this one out, thought, well, I don't know if there's a whole lot there, but it ended up being a little more interesting than I thought, to be honest. Yeah, there's a lot there. At least culturally, too. Totally. So we're talking body cameras, and they're pretty straightforward at their base, but once you kind of start looking at the cultural baggage associated with them, why they're being used, it is a pretty mushrooming topic, for sure. And apparently back in 2005, the Brits started using them. They ran some yeah, because, I mean, like the city of London, I don't think there's a square inch that isn't under surveillance. Yeah, they're just pretty technologically forward, I think. Sure. Like, the first cell phone I ever saw was in London. Oh, really? Yeah. I was thinking of Japan and Korea for that kind of stuff. Well, maybe there, too, but I didn't go to either one of those places in the early ninety s. I got you. So you're like London's in your head for that. Yes. So I guess the UK in particular, once they started using body cameras, they started using them more and more and more. And that's definitely the case with the United States more recently. And apparently there's a pilot program that really started the whole thing off back in 2012 in a little town called Rialto, California, which is about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Yeah. And in Rialto, I'm not sure what the impetus was but the police chief and a criminologist got together and said, let's try this. They gave half of the police force body cameras to wear and then switched and gave the other half, I guess the second half of the year, throughout all of 2012. Yeah. What they were mainly tracking were two different things the incidences of police force and then civilian complaints against officers generally after use of police force, but just complaints, period, basically. And the results are pretty surprising, I think. Yeah. The officers who wore the cameras used for half as often, just generally would use 50%. I get well, not 50% less force. That's a little misleading. They would use force 50% less of the time. Of the time, yeah. And then the complaints filed, they said they couldn't really there were so few complaints, they couldn't really draw a good statistical conclusion. But there was a 90% reduction compared with 2011 of complaints. Right. And they found out other stuff, too. I looked into the study, and this is just the commentary from the research team. These aren't like facts and figures, but you do a study like this and then they analyze it, then they say, well, this is what I think. They say that their research shows that people tend to adhere to social norms and change their conduct once they're aware that their behavior is being observed. And the body worn cameras convey a straightforward, pragmatic message. You're being watched videotaped and expected to follow the rules. And apparently this, what they call self awareness effect, is a neutral third eye that works on both sides. They said it suspects tend to cool down their aggressive actions more, and it deters officers from reacting excessively or unnecessarily with force. So it kind of works both ways. And the final thing I thought was really interesting was it had what they call the spillover effect, which was even officers that weren't using the cameras, because they did, like you said, with half the force at a time, they had fewer incidences of force used. And they speculate that they just think there's a conscious effort then going on to improve their behavior so that the officers that had the cameras being watched didn't have an advantage or a disadvantage. Like they sort of normalize the whole thing, even if they weren't wearing a camera. I had not heard that part at all. Yeah, it's a speculation, but it sort of makes sense. Well, so the Rialto study is really often cited because it was the first of its kind in the United States, and because the results were so surprising, the city immediately was like, okay, all officers now have body cameras after the results came in. And it just so happened that this took place. This study took place right before a couple of very high profile police involved deaths. Eric Garner and then Michael Brown. And Michael Brown's death in particular raised the issue of body worn cameras, which is the general term for the cameras police are wearing, because Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown, the police officer who shot him six times, gave one account of the story and witnesses gave another account of the story. And so when Michael Brown's death kind of became part of a national conversation, and especially with Eric Garner's death, too, which immediately preceded, I think, like a month before, back in 2014, eric Garner's death was full on videotaped by a guy who was standing there recording it on a cell phone. And it got out and it was released to the public and it started this national conversation about police brutality. But it also had this other real aspect to it, that this conversation might not be happening were it not for video documentation of Eric Garner's death. So the fact that this is happening at a time right after Rialto has had this study, people are looking around saying there's entire swaths. These communities have had what was called a simmering distrust of the police, and they've had it forever. But now, all of a sudden, the rest of the nation is paying attention to this very important issue. And these body cameras work so well for this little town east of Los Angeles. Maybe we should start to institute those. And all of a sudden, the Department of justice starts shelling out $43 million in grants for local law enforcement to buy body cameras. And there was this idea that, good, the problem solved. But to a lot of people, and at least in part myself included, it kind of seems like this could just be a bandaid. Does it actually solve anything or does it actually just underscore the distrust on both sides? Like, I don't trust that you're not going to file a false report about me being brutal on you, so I'm recording you and I have to wear this because the federal government knows that you don't trust me, and I might beat you up extra judiciously. So if neither side trust one another and you just have video camera observing the whole thing, does that actually solve anything or does it just underscore the distrust? That's probably the biggest question to me that came out of researching this episode. Yeah. I think for me, it's not a magic pill by any means, but it's another tool that can help. Right? That's what I think. Then. The issue to me then is you can't just overly rely on that one tool. I think it kind of has a tendency to lull people into complacency, like, okay, we've got this tool out there now. We don't have to worry about the actual underlying issues. Yeah, and we'll get into I mean, there's a bunch of reasons why it's not a magic pill. We'll get into all those later. But as of right now, it was hard to get 2017 statistics. But I got one from about a year ago that said 43 of the 68 major cities now have what they call the major police forces in the US. Now use body cameras. However, 95% say that they will begin to use them and are taking steps to do so. But however, they and this is one of the issues of why it's not a magic pill. Only 3% and this is a survey only 3% of the officers reported recording seven plus hours per day. And that's in a typical, I think, what do they work generally 12 hours at a time. Yeah, from what I understand, So only 3% are recording seven. Of those hours, 49% recorded, less than 50% recorded three or fewer hours per day. Right. So that's one of the big issues, is some departments. And it varies from department and locality to locality and what the rules are. Some of them say, all right, well, here's your body camera, but you don't have to use it. Some of them say use it during any confrontation with the citizen. Any call you have to make, some say, well, you got to turn them off when you go into a private residence because as we'll talk about a little later, the ACLU, it's a privacy issue when you're filming people without their consent that could potentially be released. But surprisingly, a little bit, the ACLU eventually kind of said, no, we would rather have the officers wear these even though it's a privacy issue for citizens. Right. It's a tricky thing. Oh, man. It is a can of worms like no other. But I think everyone knows what these are. We haven't even said yet. These are cameras that police officers wear on their body. The ones I've mostly seen, they wear sort of on their chest. Yes. Like where their CB used to be. Yeah. Some of them, though, are on the shoulder, on the helmet or on the collar. But mostly I've seen the one that it kind of actually looks like a little CB, whatever you call it, not a CB handle because that's Rubber Ducky in the truck. What? You know, the CB handle is what your name is. Right. And Rubber Ducky was from Convoy, I think. Oh, was it? I think so. The movie or the song? Well, the song was from the movie or the improv troupe. Oh, man, those guys are great. So the receiver but you talk into it. The mouthpiece okay, I just call it the walkie talkie part. The walkie talkie part. Anyway, it's generally mounted on the chest. And there are many manufacturers that make these. Now, some of them are wireless, some of them have high def. Some of them have one touch activation and ultra wide angle. Because that's one of the issues why it's not a magic pill. Like the view that they get if it's not a wide angle is a chest high view of whatever the officers body is pointed at. Right. Not necessarily what their face is looking at, where their eyes are looking, it's okay. But it's not a solve for everything and all issues. No, it's not, because we'll get into later if something happens off camera that isn't captured like a suspect reaching for a gun, but on camera, all of a sudden the cop is just standing there, and then the next thing, he pulls his gun out and shoots the guy. It's like, well, that cop just went berserk because the camera didn't capture that thing. Most of them have a time and date stamp. Some of them have the badge number of the cop. Some of them have GPS coordinates. Some of them take still photos. Some stream to remote devices. Very few of them can. You actually is it like an iPhone that has a screen that you can watch it, but some of them can hook up to an app to your phone where you can watch it? Yup. Advanced. I read this article about the one that Tasers putting out. It was largely about that. It was a motherboard article by Alex Pasternack, and he talks about how one of the big concerns is in the addition of facial recognition. Like computer facial recognition. Yeah. Because supposedly I didn't know this, half of Americans have their face in a facial recognition database already. Yeah. So if you're just somebody walking past one of these cameras and it has facial recognition attached to it, it will say, oh, well, there when Josh Clarke, he was here on this date at this time, and he's wanted for murder. Right. Well, that was part of the point. It's like, well, the camera can pick it up, and then the database can let you know, go get that guy. He's wanted for murder. But also, if you're just a private citizen, is your right against unlawful search and seizure being violated by that kind of thing? And apparently that is definitely a direction that these cameras are starting to go now. Facial recognition will soon be the next step. As they're deployed further and further, it's going to be like a common feature on them. Yeah. Another feature that most of these cameras have now, and this is a very interesting one, because it's kind of played out recently to be significant, is a buffering prerecorded. So if this camera is on, it's recording, but it records in 30 seconds or 62nd intervals with no audio most of the time. Got you. So what's happening is even if the cop has not pressed record, it's recording and erasing over itself constantly if it's turned on. So what happens when the cop hits record? Is it's going to have that 30 or 60 seconds tagged onto it, and that gets saved, which can be a big asset if the cop a lot of times, cop will see something and turn it on, but they have just missed what's happened. But it'll grab that 30 seconds, which can be a big help. Or in the case of Baltimore, it can bust a cop planning evidence. Yeah, I saw that, too. So that to me was more like interpretation of video. What was your take on it? Well, no, there were two of them. The most recent one was interpretation of video. I think there was one previous to that where it actually caught the cop planning evidence because he didn't know that the 32nd buffer was happening. Oh, really? I didn't see that one. And then that may have been I'm not sure in this case, but sometimes it's uploaded to a cloud and it's there. Right. The second one, I think was what it looks like is that the cops made a concerted effort to organize and deploy their cameras at specific times to get away with planning evidence. So that's the speculation. This is all very brand new in the news. I see. But there are cops saying like, do you have yours on? You're not supposed to have yours on yet, saying things like that. And of course the ACLU and the prosecutors are saying this is clearly the cops trying to coordinate this thing with their cameras, staging with reality. Yeah. And that's something that is going to start happening more and more. I mean, ideally all cops are doing really good work and you don't have to worry about that. But there's been plenty of cases over the years of bad cops doing bad things and now with these body cameras, they're going to have to find a way to get around it. Yeah. Can I just say something real quick? So the whole issue to me is this, right? I think I probably come off as this trustful of cops sometimes. And to me, as a society, we give cops a tremendous amount of power over us, right. And we give it to them in exchange for them upholding the law and protecting us right when we need it. Right. But the problem is if that trust is broken, then that's a huge issue because you go suddenly from because you can't do anything about it and you go from being a protected citizen to being a hostage of the state. Right. So that means to me that police have to be like above reproach. They have to be as angelic as possible. Right. And if they're called into question for something, there shouldn't even be the slightest hint that they're being protected or it's being covered up or anything like that. And government needs to step in and do something about it. And that has not been the case. Government has broken down in its role of overseeing police when the question of trust is brought up and what you're left with then is a citizenry that says, I don't trust the cops any longer. And just as bad as that, I don't trust the governments to root out bad cops when the trust is broken. Yeah, but the power structure is still there. That doesn't exactly so we're all hostages now. To the cops, it's clearer than ever. Now, that's my problem. I'm not saying that that is necessarily the case or that even if it is the case, it's the case across the board. There are plenty of plenty and plenty of good cops out there who really do hold themselves to a very high standard. But the fact is, there are bad cops out there, too. And I don't believe that bad cops are rooted out and prosecuted like they should be and that the trust between the citizens and the police has eroded as a result. And the government has totally dropped the ball in repairing that. Especially tough, too. Every bad cop documentary you've ever seen, 100% of them, the first thing you hear cops saying is, well, the first rule is you got to cover for your buddy cops. Sure. Like, even if you don't agree with them, you don't write out a cop. And so then you're like, man, I think cops also subscribe almost across the board to what's right is right, though. You know what I mean? Yeah, sure. And then they do kind of tend to go toward that. I like to think that. I want to think that. And I hope I'm not being naive in thinking that. You want to take a break? Yes. All right, let's do it. And we'll talk a little more about body cameras. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. 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Find Halo at specialty pet stores and online. All right, we're back with a little more of the mundane, which is the cost of these things. They can go up to about $900 or as low as the low hundreds. Let's just say an average of four, $500 for a system. And if you have a large police force of 800 cops, it's a lot of dough. It is. But Uncle Sam is offsetting a lot of that. Yeah, for sure. Everyone is in favor of these. I think our article points out in a very astute way. Like, ideally, these things can provide clarity, but at the very least, it's just another measure in place to help protect citizens and police. Yes, but there's a group who say, no, this is kind of a bad idea. And I find it suspicious that the government is supporting this so wholeheartedly that it's just advancing the surveillance state. That much more normalizing, the idea of people being recorded everywhere they go all the time, even in interacting with other people. Yeah. So I think there are some people who just don't even like the idea of body worn cameras at all. Well, citizens and cops, probably. Right. So another big problem well, I guess it's sort of a problem or challenge, at least is how to store this information depending on where you are. Like, they use Oakland as an example in this article. 600 cops, 600 body cameras generates about seven terabytes of video every month. And storing the stuff is a big challenge because depending on where you are, you have a lot of rules in place, because this is evidence, potentially. Right. And you can't just store it anyway you like. In Oakland, they have to keep it for two years of anything that's involved in an investigation. It's longer than that. Duluth, Minnesota, they point out 30 days. Laurel. Maryland has six months. That's a lot of data. And the security standards are really strict, and they got to figure out how to store this stuff, how to do it safely. And because people that know how to make money are behind this, there are companies that very smartly are coming up with complete systems that will offer a police department, say, hey, we got you covered. We will take care of your storage. We will comply with all your rules and regulations. We'll train your people because you got to hire in house people just to keep track of the data, and we'll do it all for you. Exactly. Like, Taser apparently has one heck of a system where when the officer puts their body worn camera on the dock to charge, it simultaneously starts uploading all of the days recording. Right. Yeah. And it goes to the cloud, and multiple people have access to it, but any interaction with the video is logged automatically by the system. If somebody goes to delete it, only certain people have access to delete files, but again, multiple people do. And so if somebody goes to delete it, the other people who have the ability to delete it are notified. Yeah. It spreads out accountability. Yeah. So it's like, well, wait a minute. I'm going down, too, for letting you delete it. So what are you deleting this for? Kind of thing. Right. It's a pretty smart system. From what I read from Pastureneck in particular, his article, it was like, Taser's got it going on. But if you take the software away from it and the Led light attached to it and all that stuff, really what you have is basically a GoPro camera. It's the highly encrypted and protected software that goes along with it that really makes it, like, law enforcement specific. Yeah. And I think in a lot of these places, the DA even has access remotely to this footage, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. The thing that worries me a little bit is the situations where the local police department has their own employees who are responsible for keeping and maintaining and storing the video. It should be larger than that. That's too localized. Yeah. I mean, it makes me think of all the movies I've seen where the evidence locker is guarded by, like, a dude, right. And someone comes down there and they're, like, hurt in the movie. I jacked up my hand, man. I can't sign in today. Just let me in. I got to look at something for my case. Right. And then they're in there taking apart a gun and putting it in their pants to take out. Yeah. What movie was that? Pounds of Cocaine. That's every movie that's every movie ever made. And of Green Gables even had a scene like that. Yes, absolutely. That frogs movie you're talking about yeah. That had it in there. Yes, I was right. Apparently, I added a superfluous exclamation point. Yeah. What's it called? Just frogs. No, frogs. It's just frogs. Was it frogs. Frogs. So one of the criticisms I've seen, though, is it's like, well, wait a minute. Why don't you trust us? Surely we can police our own video, be trusted to police our own video. The very fact that the video exists means that you aren't trusted. So, no, you shouldn't have full jurisdiction over it, because if this video is meant to because we don't trust you, the citizens, and we don't trust you, the cops, but you the cops, are the ones who are actually in control of this video. That's lopsided that's not a good solution. It's not a full solution, I should say. Right. Because they wouldn't turn that over to the citizen. So why don't you keep track of this? No, that's a big issue, too, is who gets to see it. Yeah. Well, a lot of cities have laws in the books where, like, a TV station can ask for it and they have to give it to them. Yeah. Through not FOIA, but local state disclosure laws. Yeah. Which is another big can of worms. It is. Because you got to give the other side as well, too. Right. Like, if a police officer dies in the line of duty and their body camera is recording it, which happened in Arizona, not too long ago. I did. I had anxiety the whole time watching it. It was an officer named Tyler Stewart yeah. Very sad. It was extremely sad to see he was murdered by some guy named Robert Smith, who just drew a gun after three minutes of questioning. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I didn't see that coming. I didn't either. Everything's normal. Yeah. Super shady. And then, of course, you find out afterward that he'd been contemplating suicide. And the reason he was there is because he trashed his girlfriend's apartment and he had a lot of problems going on. But yeah, I mean, I was putting myself in the cop shoes, and I'm like, I would have not suspected anything out of this guy's. No, he was disarming for sure. Yeah, but Officer Stewart recorded his own death at the hands of this guy, and the local media was like, well, we want to see it. And apparently Arizona has foil laws that say, okay, well, the media gets it. You have to release that, which is apparently pretty rare. Yeah, but in this case, it's like, doesn't the family of the officer have any rights to be spared this being out there on the Internet for anybody who wants to see this guy's death forever? Yeah, I mean, of course they cut it, but still, if anyone can look this up on YouTube, that's just I don't know, it's shameful. So the issue cuts both ways, especially privacy. Do you protect the citizens privacy? Do you protect the cops privacy? Yeah. Do you protect no. Do you take the WikiLeaks approach and protect nobody's privacy? Right. Like it happened. Just keep it raw, and if it's open to interpretation, then settle it in court kind of thing. Yeah, who knows? All right, you want to take another break, man? I keep working to send the breaks, man. I'm sorry. No, you're doing great. All right, we'll take another break and talk a little bit about how these things work and why they're not magic pills right after this. 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You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo Holistic, made with only whole meat, no meat meals and probiotics. For digestive health, our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find Halo. Holistic at chewy. Amazonandhalopetscom okay, Chuck, we're back. I'll tell you one thing, I looked up Taser stock. Yeah. If you bought in 2010, you're doing pretty good. Yeah. Because of their body worn camera program. Yeah. It was like $5. And before this, I think they just only made like tasers and nonlethal weapons. But when they got into the body camera market, their stock went from like $5. I think it peaked at like 35 or 40. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad at all. Good for them. Yeah. And again, I can't remember the name of it, but if you read the Alec Paternac article, it's a really sharp system. I own zero stock and Taser, like, I'm just a fan. I'm not a fan even of their non lethal weapons. But their body worn camera systems is pretty smart, it seems like. Yeah, I'm a fan of smart things. Sure. If you're going to design a system, it should be foolproof and work well and store everything you need it to not break down. Right. Seems like they got it going on. Yeah. So one of the other reasons that, like I said earlier, it's not a magic pill because you're only getting this one, our article points out, very astutely, that it's not an unbiased view. Still, if you had six or eight, like if you were in London, you had six or eight cameras and different angles on different light posts and you could coordinate this thing and fully see everything that happened. Right. It may be unbiased, truly, but just a single shot from a body camera, that single angle is not unbiased by any means. No. It helps. And that's about it. Did you see the nurse wobbles arrest? No. The Utah nurse who refused to draw the blood of the suspect while he was unconscious. So if you just watched the arresting officer's, jeff Paine's body camera yeah, I mean, because it's up close and personal suddenly just basically goes dark when it's pressed up against her back and it shows like, very little of anything. It was because of the other officer that was with him's, body camera, that you get like, oh, wow, that really was a lot of force, unnecessary force that this guy was using on this lady that you wouldn't have gotten just from the footage from his body camera. And that having supporting video evidence definitely expands the context one way or the other. It's interesting, though, we're getting to a point where you're going to have, say, a crime on an officer stop of a car with a car camera, dashboard camera, let's say two officers body cameras, the people inside the car filming with their iPhones, let's say two. So you've got five different points of view going on that people, courts and juries are going to have to sift through. DA's defendants are going to have to look at all this stuff and try and piece together what happened. And this is all new. Like previously, you did this from testimony only, right? Exactly. So are we opening ourselves up to a time when Das are less willing to bring up charges unless there is footage? Yes. I wonder. But I mean, it doesn't sound like there's going to be much of lack of it. There's. A company called Wolfcom who makes body worn cameras for police is also releasing one for civilians. It's basically the same thing without their police software. Like just somebody just wears at all times? Yeah, basically to film the police while the police are filming them. And they say it's perfect for protests, improving legality. And there's like a button, the power button or stop or the record button has to be pressed a certain way. So even if somebody bumping into you're, beating you up, your camera won't stop recording. It's like, good Lord. The fact that this is the climate that that's like a selling point is really unsettling and sad. It is like, hey, everybody, come get your body worn cameras. Because you need to film the people who are filming you, because you can't trust even this measure that's being used to supposedly protect your rights. It's crazy that we're in this state, in this country. It's depressing. It is. That raised another point to me, to Chuck, the idea of having all these different points of view or video documentation. This is also coming at a time when we are starting to see editing software where you can take video and make it do anything and make it say anything. You can do anything with video. Yeah, like there was a moon landing. How is that going to affect the use of video in documentation for court cases, too? Well, and we've already seen just with Baltimore, what can happen when cops not have to wear these and where they're trying to coordinate whose camera on. Did you have your camera on? What about that 32nd buffer? Jeez, it's all just sad that we're at that stage now to where but, you know, it's also a good thing that for how many years were bad things happening without any citizen? There was no recourse for so long, and it still isn't to a large degree. This is just a little, small thing. No, it's true. But I mean, there has to be a certain level of at least gratification among people who have lived with distrust of the police or have been abused as a whole by police for decades, that people are now finally starting to be like, oh, man, this is crazy. How long has this been going on? Because there's a light being shined on it. And so in that sense, yes, it's crazy that we're at this state right now in our country, but maybe it's just a growing pain toward moving to a better place. Yeah. You know. The Rialto study. Too. And their summation. They also said something about I can't remember exactly how they put it. But something about how they found that they think that it also requires police to take more verbal abuse from people. Which isn't fun. But sort of like the days are over where if you smart off to a cop. They can't just throw your face on the ground right. And put their knee through your cheekbone. Right. Because you've smarted off to them. So I don't think they waited either way on what that means. They just said, it looks like cops are going to have to start enduring a little more talk back from the drunk guy at the bar without diving right into excessive force because they were pissed off. Now junkie at the bar now with standard one of the big things that these body cameras are touted for, and I think you said it early on, is that people behave differently when they know they're being recorded. Right. So that officers won't have to take verbal lashings from people. Well, maybe so as often. And so the very presence of the cameras supposedly can keep situations from escalating or it can actually de escalate a situation. Just if the officers like, I need you to know you're being recorded right now, do they have to positively straighten up? I don't know if they have to or not. Well, in such the early, nascent days of this, this is sort of an early podcast to see what ramifications are going to happen later on. Who knows? Yeah. And one of the things that I saw was that this is a situation, this is a technology that's gotten a lot of press. Yeah, but it's still very early on in actual, like academic study of it. Sure. Supposedly, and including the Rialto study, most studies are not published in journals and aren't peer reviewed. They're just studies largely carried out by criminologists or scientists, but also by the local police departments carrying the studies out on their own department. Right. There's supposedly only been two peer reviewed journal studies published on body worn cameras so far, and one of them was on the effect of giving an officer leeway on when to press record. How does that impact things like the use of violence? And this 2016 study in the Journal of Experimental Criminology found that compared to the control group, if the officer had very little leeway in deciding when to record, meaning they had to record all the time, that the use of physical violence decreased by 37%. Yeah, but in situations where officers had a lot of leeway in deciding when to press record or not. It was 71% higher than the control group. Yeah. This whole when is it recording and when is it not seems like the biggest sticking point right now. And are we going to move to a future where they are absolutely required to record any interaction with a citizen or they get suspended or something? Right. Like, who knows what we're headed towards. Yeah, like, it's a big deal if they're not recording. Not like you're supposed to be recording kind of thing. I guess from a good cops point of view, they should say, like, man, I want to record this thing because this is what's going to exonerate me in this atmosphere we have today. Yeah, but I think I do it right. I think cops are also scared that footage that could also be footage can be used against them even if it doesn't show anything. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think, man, it's just so fraught as a technology with complications to be used like this. Yeah. And again, the fact that we're using it says, hey, you guys don't trust you guys, so we're going to keep these cameras here so everybody be cool. Like that solves anything. I wonder when cars are going to come equipped with built in cameras that record all around the car, let's say. I mean, the camera is already there with a lot of these safety features. All that's lacking is the record button. Well, the cops have those for running license plates while they're driving down the street. Their cameras are just looking at license plates of the cars they're driving past to run them. There was one other thing I saw in that FastCo Motherboard Pasternac article. He just kind of casually made mention that department stores, hospitals, airports, they're already using video facial recognition systems. So if you walk into, like, Macy's or something, I don't know specifically, but I'm just picking on Macy's that when you're on camera, your face is being run against the database to see if you're somebody that they should be worried about, or maybe even call the cops about somebody that likes neckties, and they may have that, too. It depends on whether they got their software from Taser or from Neiman Marcus. Yes. I did not know that. And that just takes profiling to a higher level, huh? Yeah, well, or maybe not if they're getting good information. Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, that's not profiling, is it? It's ultra tailored profiling. If someone walks in and they're like, well, this guy committed three acts of shoplifting in the past year. Might want to watch him, is that profiling? No, because it's specific to you not, say, your race or something like that. So yeah, it's difficult to argue that point of it. It's more just like the being surveilled everywhere. So this is a good one. Yeah. You got anything else? No, I'm interested to see where this goes. Plenty of follow up stories over the years, I'm sure. Yup will happen. Yes, I'm sure as well. If you want to know more about body worn cameras, police cameras. Just look up police body cameras and it'll bring up this really good article by Julia Layton on how stuff works. As I said that it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this well, I'm going to call it. Very cute email from little kid. Maybe I shouldn't read that one on this one, right? He's got a slog through this and be like, this is the future I have ahead of me. All right, so this was from Noah. He is five years old and is Scottish and his mom sort of supplemented the email with some little things here and there. And then at the end she said he really wanted to write into you guys personally. So I let him use my email account and otherwise it is just his words. And then a PS from mom. Deer chosh. C-H-O-S-H. Smart kid. Very cute. I like listening to your podcast. I listen to it in the car and before I fall asleep, my favorite facts is about an iceberg as big as Jamaica and what to do in a tornado. And then mom says in parenthesis, he reminds me frequently to not go in a tunnel during a tornado. We live in Scotland where there are no tornadoes. You're funny. And I like learning about disasters as long as they're not too scary and my mama says I'm too little. Can you do an episode about the different kinds of bridges and engineers? I listened to that one. You did? But I'd like another because I'm going to be a structural engineer and build bridges. Sharp kid. Love, Noah. Parentheses, I'm five and I live in Scotland, which is in Europe. Thanks for the tip, Noah. Noah, that is great. You are wonderful. We appreciate you. And mom adds this. PS. I'm afraid there's one in the family who's not a fan. Every time Stuff You Should Know comes on in the car, my three year old daughter cries. No. Not stuff you should know. I can't sing to that. That's cute. She said, Sorry, guys, you can't compete with Disney and me personally. Mom, if you can record your daughter screaming about how she doesn't like Stuff You Should Know, that's a ringtone. And then record Noah talking about how he does love Stuff You Should Know in that lovely Scottish accent. I for one would like to hear that. Yeah, same here. And we'll even play it. Yeah. Thanks a lot. No way. You're the bomb buddy in America. That means you're terrific. Yes, and thanks to mom too for fostering that email. Way to go. Mama is great. You're all great. If you are a cute kid who wants to tell us hi, we love hearing from you. You can tweet to us at Joshua Clarke or at SUSK podcast. You hang out with Chuck on Facebook? Comsto charleswchuckbryant. You can take the traditional route and send us an email@stuffpodcastuffworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the Web stephychnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Hey everybody. If you have extra space or maybe you travel a lot, you should consider hosting on Airbnb. Just think about all that extra income. You could contribute more to your retirement or pay for a big trip. 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https://podcasts.howstuf…rrents-final.mp3	How Ocean Currents Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ocean-currents-work	It's easy to overlook the importance of ocean currents - they move along out at sea, while we stay mostly on land. But we are globally affected by them every day. Currents form the base of the food chain, drive weather and keep life as we know it going.	It's easy to overlook the importance of ocean currents - they move along out at sea, while we stay mostly on land. But we are globally affected by them every day. Currents form the base of the food chain, drive weather and keep life as we know it going.	Thu, 04 Jun 2015 16:48:58 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=16, tm_min=48, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=155, tm_isdst=0)	36942651	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. One about ocean Current. We should start titling our episodes like Friends did. Yeah, the one where Ross talks about ocean current. Yeah, the one where Chuck's eyes glazed over. I love this stuff. Man, earth science really gets me jazzed. That's good. It really does. It's very detailed. Yeah, there's a lot to it. It's often oversimplified, but it's also very understandable. And when you really learn about it, you realize what an elegant system the whole thing is. Sure. Maybe not necessarily a living organism, but I could see how someone would characterize it as such. Yeah, I like that. It's a good intro. That's what I got. So, yes. Title. Ocean Currents. Well, not title. That's part of the ocean currents. It's a type of current. Yeah, it's under the current umbrella. I've misspoken the first 10 seconds. I think it's funny that in this article, the word current refers to the motion of water when speaking of water. Is that what it says? Yeah. When speaking of water, the word current refers to the motion of the water. Yeah, it was a little clumsy. Miriam defines. Yeah. Well, this is about ocean currents or all kinds of currents. River currents. Yeah. There's currents and marshes and swamps and currents all over the place. But this is about ocean currents. Yeah. As long as water is not stagnant, there's currents present. And if it's stagnant, it's bad news. Right. Mosquitoes disease. Sure. But then again, you can make the case that if it's not stagnant, if there's a current, it'll carry your car away in the blink of an eye. Don't even think about it, boy. Did you see the photos of the Downtown Connector the other day in Atlanta when it flooded? No. Apparently the storm drains backed up, and the Downtown Connector of Atlanta was a lake. Wow. Like it literally stopped traffic. I can believe that. Yes. People in Atlanta don't know how to drive in the rain to begin with. Oh, I don't know about that. Really? Yeah. So we do is driving the rain. Man, people in La. Don't know that driving the rain seems to me like everybody's brain just drops a couple of gears when rain starts and everyone starts bumping into everybody else and driving at 2 miles an hour. You just pedal through the metal. What's different all the time? I got good tires. Yeah, because you like tire stores. I don't like tire stores, but I'm willing to spend time there to get good tires that move water away from my car so I can drive really fast no matter what the weather. You should start your retirement. I want to point out Jerry just side heavily at this tangent. I think your retirement business should be Josh's Tire House emporium. Yeah. And then have a really sweet set up. It would be like fine tires here is like no place else on Earth. Oh, yeah. You got WiFi. You got a coffee machine. Well, there's a coffee machine. Well, no, I mean a barista. Oh, got you like a little mini Starbucks right there in your tire shop. Sure. Games. Have icebreakers meet and greets. Yeah. I could serve ice breakers. Gum too. You have tender day. Okay. What else? I don't know. That's all I got. Aromatherapy would be good. That would be a big one. Massage? Yeah. All right. My plan B. All right. Josh's Tire Warehouse emporium, I think, is what we came up with. Sure. Josh's big house of tires or house of big tires. Okay. So ocean current. Yeah, we're about to do it. So one of the things that I did not realize, Chuck, when researching this is that ocean currency, they're old, but they aren't permanent. They haven't always been around. Currents change. Some currents have been at it for thousands and thousands of years. Other currents change month to month. Very fickle in some cases. But there are some really ancient currents, some ancient ocean currents out there that are very old and have been this way since the Gulf Stream has been around for about 5 million years. Ever since the isthmus of Panama. Close. Yeah. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah. I think what I found the most interesting was that ocean currents, they have a purpose. It's not just like water moving around. Willynilly right. If it wasn't for ocean currents, there would be no life in Antarctica, right? Well, maybe not all of Antarctica, but no ocean marine life. They make that possible. But that's an important point. Like, if there's no ocean marine life, then say there's no phytoplankton. Sure. There's no phytoplankton. There's no fishies eating the phytoplankton. There's no fishies around to eat the phytoplankton. There's no seals to eat the fishies if there's no seals. Everything finds its support, its basis in the ocean life. Absolutely. That's all supported by the currents. That's right. So the fact that as purpose is very teleological of you, Chuck. Thank you. So let's not put this off any longer. Let's talk about different types of currents. You can't talk about tire stores anymore? No. Okay. We're done with the tire stores. Like, I started to get nauseated just talking that much about tire stores. Oh, really? All right. I don't feel good. Well, let's start with surface currents then, buddy. I'll bring you back to the ocean. Earth science, your home earth science is that you love surface currents occur about three to 400 meters deep and above. Yeah, they're called surface currents. Right. And they're driven by the wind. Yeah. They make up for about 10% of the ocean. And if you've ever gone to the beach, you've seen coastal currents. Surface currents. There's a couple of types. Coastal is one of them. You see them in action. Right. Like playing in the sand as a little kid or as an adult, you're seeing coastal surface currents at work. Right. So let's step back one more degree. So service currents are created by wave action. That's right. Especially coastal currents are created by wave action. Yes, it's created by wind. Waves are created by wind. And you know Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the Geodesic dome, among other great things sure. He was the person who pointed out that the wind doesn't blow, the wind sucks. It's a good point. Right. Coastal currents begin with waves. Waves begin with wind. Wind begins with heat. Because at the equator, you have a lot of sunshine all year round, and it's very warm. Yes, it is. Anyone who's been near the equator can attest, and that heat heats up air, and as the air heats up, it moves away from the equator. It's like, I got to go cool off. It moves toward the poles, north and south, and as it moves toward the poles, it cools down and turns back around. It's like, I need to heat back up at the equator. Right. And as a result of this, you have wind, and this wind pushes on the surface of the water, transfers some of its energy in the form of friction to the water surface and creates waves. And those waves transfer the energy to the shoreline. And when they come in at an angle, that's when you get that coastal current. Right? Yeah. Again, if you ever been to the beach and you see the tide or the waves coming in at that angle and you see it moving with the beach, like, if you've ever been out playing like a raft as a little kid, you look up an hour later and your parents are like, half a mile down the beach from where you started. It's a bit of a panicky situation. It is. And also you're like, what kind of parents do I have that they just let me drift half a mile? They're passed out in the sand at that point. Yeah. So that is called when a wave breaks on the beach at that angle, it's going to pull sediment and sand and water down in what's known as a long shore current that is directed off parallel, also perpendicular. But the parallel movement is the long shore current. Yeah. It's like when a wave comes in at an angle to the shore, it distributes its energy, part of it directly onto the shore, part of it parallel to the shore. That's that longshore current, like you said. And one of the things that it does, you also said, is it takes that sand and other stuff and deposits it elsewhere, further down, and along the way, it creates things like barrier islands and sandbarss and all that stuff. And it's ever shifting, ever moving, eroding and depositing of sand and sediment and those little underwater and sometimes above water deposits create other types of currents, specifically a rip tide current. Yeah. That's the long shore drift. And if you've ever seen the beach curve back in pretty hard, the water can't make that turn. Really? So it's just going to deposit stuff and sort of drop it off there at the end of that point, and it'll build up in what's known as a spit. Right. All those obstructions, all those deposits form obstructions for waves. When they're going back out, once they transfer their energy, they're like, oh, I'm pretty far inland, I need to get back out to the ocean. Yeah. And so it backed up. Right. And as it does, it encounters these underwater barriers that it itself have deposited. It's kind of a big ironic moment. And so it can't get back out to see as fast as it wants because it's running in these obstructions. And when there's like a break in the obstruction, like a sandbar or something like that, a break in the sandbar. It provides a natural funnel, and that creates a rip tide current. Yeah. Like, hey, look at that little narrow channel. I'm going to take all this water that would normally just flow out nice and easy. I'm going to send it through there and I'm going to grab your little kid and take them with me. Right. It creates basically, suction. Just like when you open a drain in a bathtub and it starts to drain, it drains pretty quick. Yeah. It's dangerous. That's how you drown. When you're swimming in the ocean, you hear about strong rip currents and inclement weather, and it's no joke. Even really good swimmers can get caught in a rip. Yeah. And it's bad news. Rip tide very bad news. And then there's some other currents that are created that don't just occur at the shore, but they do occur in the ocean and at the shore. Yeah. There's this thing called upwelling. Yeah. I like this stuff. And upwelling can happen in a few different ways, but as far as the coast is concerned, when wind comes in and it basically blows water away from an area yeah. Like from the shore. Right. Water likes to try to even itself out. So if some water is blown away from the surface, this stuff that's below it, the deeper water will come up and basically replace it. Yeah. And that's upwelling. Yeah. What strikes me, when you look at wind and all these currents, everything is circular almost. Right. There's a lot of spinning going on. Yeah. There's a really distinct relationship between wind and water. It's inseparable, especially when you're talking about global winds and currents together. Right. Yeah. But both of them are broken down to fluid dynamics, and they do form these circles and cycles and clockwise motions and counterclockwise motions, depending on where you are in the world. Yeah. And in the case of upwelling and downwelling, it's not a horizontal spin, but it is a vertical from top to bottom and then from bottom back up to the top. Yes. And you want to talk about that was which one? Well, both. It's the same pattern from top to bottom and bottom to top, with upwelling and downwelling. Right. And the whole thing about upwelling and downwelling, whether it's at the shore or in the ocean, is that the ocean is kind of like if you take a slice of ocean at the top and take a slice of ocean at the bottom, very different. And you look at them under a microscope or test them for whatever, using some sort of spectroscope, maybe some sort of oscillator glavin or something like that, or just look at it. Yeah. You're going to find that it's like two different types of water, even though it's from the same section of ocean. Right. Yeah. And the stuff at the top is going to be very oxygen rich. There's going to be a lot of life phytoplankton, that kind of stuff, but not too many nutrients. The stuff at the bottom is going to be lousy with CO2. Yeah. Cold. Yeah, very cold. And a lot of nutrients. Right. And when both of these things are needed at different spots yeah. So the upwelling and the downwelling creates this kind of gas exchange and nutrient exchange throughout the ocean. And the oxygen at the top, when it's deposited down lower, thanks to downwelling, all of that oxygen circulates downward through the ocean, and all the fishies that need oxygen in their gills get to breathe it in. Right. Yeah. And with upwelling, like I mentioned earlier in Antarctica, where it's super cold and you would not expect marine life to do so well, it is because of the upwelling that brings the nutrients from the bottom up to the top, and that cycle, and that's called life. And one other really neat thing about upwelling and downwelling is the oxygen that's at the top of the ocean. Were it to just sit there for very long and dissolve, we would have a very big problem, because all of that life, once it dies, would decay very quickly up top. Yeah. That's not good. No, it wouldn't, because anaerobic bacteria would begin to thrive, and we'd have an overabundance of hydrogen sulfide, which would lead to ocean acidification, which would mean the end of the world, basically. Yeah. So that nutrient swap is very important for everybody on the planet. Yes. And there's this elegant solution to the oceans that happens every day, everywhere in the ocean, thanks to upwelling and downwelling. All right. Well, that's a good start, my friend. My eyes are not glazed over, actually. Good. They're sharp, full of life. We will talk after this break about some more surface currents. All right, josh, there's more than one kind of surface current. We covered the I kind of like the first part. But there's also surface ocean currents. And again, the wind is the big contributor to how these babies form, and specifically, I guess we should talk about the Coriolis effect. Yeah. This is a game changer, as people who read selfhelp books on airplanes would call it, right? Yeah. So again, it all starts with heat. And all that heat is found in the thickest part at the equator. My brain is broken. So at the equator it's the hottest, right? That's right. And it's also spinning faster at the equator than the poles, right? It is. Okay. The earth, that is. Yeah. So at the equator, it's hot. It's spinning faster because of the spin, because of the heat. The ocean is actually about 8 CM higher here than at the rest of the ocean. Yeah. That's so much higher. Right. It's just enough to make water flow away from the equator. Plus you've got wind that's whipped up because hot air at the equator starts moving northward and cools down and that creates wind. Right. So if the Earth didn't rotate, you would still have these things, but wind would travel in a straight line away from the equator toward the poles, cool down and turn around and come back in a straight line. That's right. But that's not the case. No, it isn't, because the Earth does rotate and it produces the Coriolis effect. Yeah. It's like a curve, basically. It curves to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. Right. So it makes wind curve. And since wind drives surface currents, it makes surface currents curve as well, right? That's right. So what's really cool is the ocean has its own topography. It's definitely not flat. Anybody who's looked at us, you can be like, oh, it's pretty choppy. But if you could step back even further and you have the right kind of topographical glasses on, maybe you would see that there's like valleys and mountains and maybe not mountains, but little tiny hills and valleys in the ocean. So, like I said, it has its own topography. And this is created by those winds that push on the water. And as they're pushing the water up and the Coriolis effect is turning it, some water starts to kind of mound. So in some parts of the ocean, you have water that forms a mound that's about like three to 6ft tall. Yeah. It doesn't sound intuitive. No, I don't have water mounding up on itself. You think of it as flat, but there is actually water that's mounted up into little hills. Yeah. Okay. And so that means that gravity wants to push this water downward. Right. But it doesn't just go back down the hill because the Coriolis effect pushes it upward. And the net outcome is that instead the water just says, how about I just go around instead? Yeah, you stay up here on the mound, you stay down here. But I am going to just go around. And what it does is, since a mound is roughly circular, it creates a current that goes around these things, around these mounds, and there's five major ones in the entire world. I know where you're headed. And they form what are called gyres. That's right, gyres. And they are the North Atlantic. South Atlantic, north Pacific. South Pacific. And then the Indian Ocean has its very own gyre. Yes. There are smaller ones around Antarctica, but those are the five major gyres. We talked about the Gulf Stream earlier. That is a part of the North Atlantic gyre, and it carries 4500 times the water of the entire Mississippi River. The Gulf Stream does. Yeah. The Gulf Stream is the hero of all gyres. It is. Let me see. I've got to find this one because it's so amazing. So the Gulf Stream, at any given point, it moves water at a rate of 15 super domes worth per second. So you remember the Super Dome in Louisiana? Yes, sure. Say you filled it with water, and then you took that, copied it 1514 more times. So you have 15 Superdomes full of water. That's how much water passes through any given point per second in the Gulf Stream. All right. That's a lot of water. How many Big Macs is that? It's trillions of Big Macs. Billions and billions served. But the Gulf Stream itself is actually technically the western boundary current of the North Atlantic gyre. Yeah. And it's going to carry warm water. It has a big impact in the world. It's going to carry warm water up north from the Gulf of Mexico. And that's why, if you're living on the east coast of Florida, you're going to have cooler summers and warmer winters. Western Europe is going to be a lot warmer than other places on its exact same latitude. And this is all because of the Gulf Stream. Right. You can deposit bodies in it if you're a dexter. Yeah. And those things are going to see you later body. Yeah. It'll probably get carried to England and they'll be like, Blind me. Why is this so that's just the Gulf Stream. There's actually at least four major currents that form the boundary currents of the North Atlantic gyre. Yeah. And then North Atlantic gyre is just one. We've also talked about jars before with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Yeah. Did we do waves or did we just do we did rogue waves. We did rogue waves, too, but we covered waves and surfing. Okay. Yeah, I remember that. But these boundary currents are created, again in part by the winds flowing away from the equator, the Coriolis effect turning the waves, and the mounds of water circulating the waves around them. So you've got these, like, just clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on which hemisphere you are, currents that are just massive, that move water around. And again, they cycle nutrients, like you said, they affect the weather because they deposit warm water from the south all the way up to England, apparently. So England is on the same latitude as, like, some glacial parts of Canada. Yeah, that makes sense. But their winters are like nothing compared to that. Thank you. Ocean, same thing as Bermuda, is very temperate. It has very nice climate, and it's on the same latitude as North Carolina, which is it can get kind of cold there. Oh, yeah, sure. That's all thanks to the Gulf Stream. Thank you, Gulfstream. And if you want to thank the Gulf Stream, Chuck, you can thank Ben Franklin, because he's the one who named it. Oh, really? Yeah. As the first postmaster general of the United States, he wanted to figure out why mail took so many more weeks longer to get from England to the US. Than it did from the US. To England. Because they're going against traffic. Exactly. But he didn't know that, and he found out, and he took some measurements and roughly charted the Gulf Stream back in the 18th century. Man, he was a smart dude. He really was. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. I didn't know he dabbled in oceanography. But again, the Gulf Stream. Amazing. And it's just one boundary current of one major driver. Yeah. It's kind of hypnotic. If you look at these motion maps of global motion maps of, like, trade winds and ocean currents. Yeah, I can watch those videos all day. Yeah. It's just stuff spinning around and traveling around, and it's soothing. And especially when they do, like, heat gradients or topographical gradients. So it's really colorful, too. And it's ever shifting. Oh, yeah. You can just get a little jewel out of the corner of my mouth when I watch those. That's about as good as watching fantasia. There's one other thing we should say about those surface currents. As they drag on the water below them right. So the wind is transferring its energy to the surface of the water. Yeah. And it drags a little bit less the deeper you go. Right. Apparently, though, the motion of water usually goes in opposition to the motion of wind. So what you end up having, if you could take a column slice from top to bottom of the ocean, you would find that the water ultimately is making a very long downward spiral. And that's called the Ekman spiral. Yeah. There's a graphic of that. That looks pretty neat, as well. Pretty neat. Again, mesmerizing stuff. Yeah. So, Chuck, after this, we will talk about the global conveyor belt. That's my favorite part, I think. Okay. All right. My favorite part of ocean currency ocean currents. It works. The deep ocean current, aka. The global conveyor belt, is fascinating to me. If you're talking about this is about 90% if the surface currents are about 10%, about 90% of the ocean's water is part of the deep ocean current, and we can't see it because we appear on Earth and we are not deep under the water, it's invisible to us. Right. But it circles the globe at 16 times as strong as all of the world's rivers combined. Which is, again, still not as much as the Gulf Stream. Yeah. Still pretty impressive. It's pretty impressive, but slow. It moves to water a few centimeters a second, whereas the Gulf Stream moves waters at like a couple hundred centimeters a second. Yeah. I think the conveyor belt, they said, like one patch will take 1000 years to complete the circuit. Yes. And it takes ten years for water to make a full circuit on the North Atlantic gyre. Yeah. So ten years. Yeah. And then 1000 years. Right. Wow. So the global conveyor belt, it is driven by density, which I think is pretty interesting. Yeah. Because up to this point, it's all been driven by wind, which is ultimately driven by heat. This is also driven by heat in a way, but in a completely different way. Yeah. Heat and salt, thermohaline circulation, thermo being heat, hailing being salt, warm water holds less salt. So what happens is, like, let's say you're in the Antarctic and water freezes to form an iceberg or water evaporates. Either way, salt is not going to be a part of that equation. No. The salt is left behind as the water freezes. And icebergs aren't salty, they're fresh water. Yeah. So the salt is left behind. It's got to go somewhere. It is going to be very dense at that point. So it is going to be cold and dense and sink to the ocean floor. Right. So remember back when we were talking about coastal currents and upwelling and downwelling? Yeah. This plays a part. When water sinks, other water moves in to replace it. And so what starts off here and this actually, I think, starts around the North Pole, definitely in the North Atlantic. As that water sinks and moves downward, it starts this current that goes all the way around the world. And again, it takes 1000 years to complete. Yeah. It just kick starts it basically. And it's called the conveyor belt, I think, because it never stops moving and it's super slow. Yeah, I kept getting that. Remember that? Whatever. That Bugs Bunny assembly line song. It was always the same. Like I don't remember that. I can't remember it either. Now I have a theme song in my head. I'm trying to think about it, but there's like any time Bugs Bunny messed around in a conveyor belt or something, they use the same composition. Oh, really? Yeah, I'll try to find it. All right. So once this water hits Antarctica, basically the same thing happens all over again. The cold water is going to split. Some of it heads to the Indian Ocean, some heads to the Pacific. And this upwelling and downwelling, the cycle starts all over again. Yes. As it moves closer to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, it gets closer to the equator. The water starts to warm up, it loses some of its salinity, it starts to thin out a little bit, and so it rises. And when it does, it takes all those nutrients and all that CO2 up with it. And it's very much like the gas exchange that occurs in the human cardio pulmonary system, right? Yeah. It's not homeostasis, but it almost feels like that if you took the whole system overall. Yeah, it's homeostatic for sure. Yeah. But it's like that by this exchange, this transfer from one part to another, from the deep ocean to the surface. As it reaches the surface and it depletes its nutrients, it's carried back around. It basically tries to go up, hits Alaska, Russia, Asia, North Asia, Northeast Asia, and turns back around and ends up finally back in the North Atlantic, up near the North Pole and gets cold and starts all over again. Right. And by the time it gets there, it's basically nutrient depleted and it sinks and it starts to recharge again. That's right. Just like blood in your cardiopulmonary system. It gets depleted, it ends up going past the lungs, it transfers out CO2, it gets in oxygen. This is just the opposite. This is transferring out oxygen and gaining CO2 in nutrients. That's a good way to feel connected to the Earth when you start looking at things like that. Yeah, it's not so different. I mean, we're all connected, man. And again, there's a big nutrient swap meat happening as well with the conveyor belt, like we're talking about, and basically kind of has the same effect as those surface currents do as far as exchanging the oxygen and the CO2 and the nutrients and just moving everything where it needs to be. Yeah, I thought this is pretty cool. In this article it talks about there's also a density driven a thermohaline current in Mediterranean, because Mediterranean is apparently saltier than the Atlantic, and as a result, this gradient, anytime you have a difference in something, whether it's height, temperature, salinity density, homeostasis is the ultimate goal. So it's going to try to go toward the middle, from higher to lower. And this is the same thing. So it creates that oceanic current. And apparently in World War II, subs would run silent by going in and out of the Mediterranean without their engines on just using that current. Oh, really? Yeah. So they would run silent like a glider. Run deep, run silent, run deep. Exactly. Wow, that's frightening. All right. Are we a title currents? You don't have to be frightened. It was years ago. Yeah, we're a title current site. They still do that now. There's no submarines anymore. We haven't been at war for years. They retired all the submarines. Yeah. All right. Tidal currents are generated by the tides. We did talk about, like we said, I think, in the rogue waves and surfing about tides and waves and the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun, but more the moon, because the moon is closer, is what's going to cause that bulge on the. Sides and it's going to drive the water level at that bulge. Basically, it's going to decrease increase where it's aligned with the Moon and decrease at the halfway point between those two places. Right. And it's always changing because the Moon, the position of the Moon and the sun and the Earth are always changing. But they change in a very predictable manner. So we can predict when the tides happen. But if you just took a snapshot at any given point of the title effect right. And if you imagine that the Moon is on one side, the sun is on one side, and the Earth is on the middle, the world's oceans around the Earth stretch out on the sides. And because of that gravitational pull and just imagine that it's always like that. It's always just this elliptical oval shape. The world's oceans are and then the Earth, the dry Earth, is spinning within that. And so the land masses on the Earth are always coming in and out of that bulge and so they're going from higher to lower tide. It just makes it easier for me, rather than to think of the oceans moving around the Earth, to think of the Earth spinning within the ocean. And that causes the change in tide. That does something for you. Does it? All the way. And these are different than the other currents we talked about because it's not a continuous stream and they switch directions. That's the high tide and low tide. And it doesn't impact like the ocean current that much. It's shoreline stuff. Yeah, but it's pretty important. I mean, like, fishies lay eggs and low tide will pull those eggs out into the open ocean. And those fish, they'll hatch. Yeah. It also brings food in from the ocean into, like, marshland, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Or washes up jellyfish and to delight the children on the beach. Yes, but don't touch them. You can just look. And when the tide is rising, that flow is directed toward the shore. That's called the flood current. I've heard about the flood and the ebb. And the ebb is when it's directed back out to sea. That's right. And that makes it all very predictable. Like you said, we can go to the beach and listen to the tide report. That's also a very relaxing thing to do. Oh, yeah. Listen to that. Like the am, like fishing and charts and title reports. Yeah, it's very relaxing for me. I like it. I remember growing up listening to, like, grain future reports and hog reports like that. Pork bellies. Pork futures. Yeah. Chuck, just a couple more things. So there are plenty of other currents and there's also plenty of other wind patterns that drive these currents. They do things like create the El Nino, which basically takes weather, thunderstorms and stuff around the equator and moves them in different places that we're not used to, which can lead to droughts and floods. Depending on where you are. And then also there's a lot of concern among scientists who know about this kind of stuff that changes. Climate change is going to ultimately and negatively affect the global conveyor belt, because as the Earth warms up, more and more icebergs are going to melt, creating much less salinity. And since the water will be less saline and warmer, it's going to sink less. And so that global conveyor belt that relies on cold, dense, salty water to sink to get it started is going to slow. And that could be bad because remember, that's the global nutrient exchange. Yes, that would be good. No, because then the phytoplankton dies. And again, when the phytoplankton dies, the fishes die, the seals die. Polar bears are upset. Well, the poor seals die either way. Yeah, it is very sad. You got anything else? No, that's it. That's ocean currents. If you want to know more about ocean currents, you can type those words into the search bar@housetopworks.com. As I said, search bar is time for listener mail. I'm going to call this French speaker doesn't like our heavy metal music interludes. There's a few people out there who don't. So here we go. I'm going to read this just as it came. I like you very much. Sorry for my bad English, but I speak French, so it compensates. I have a little problem. I feel like I need to tell you. Please don't take it the wrong way. I have had problems to sleep for a while now and I found that listening to podcasts helped me a lot. I put my ipod under my pillow while it plays, or I put only one head sound thing in one ear. I love your podcast because it's very interesting, intelligent, and also your voices are nice and you are never yelling, so I do fall asleep every single time. This is a good thing, I swear. Of course, it takes me three or four times to listen to all of it. Usually I relistened to it in the car. Now my problem. Why do you have to put loud heavy metal music for a break? I always wake up and panic when it starts. I do want to continue to listen to you at night. I really do. So you have two choices. Either you don't change your music and think of me every time and laugh, or you change it for something, let's say, nicer. Maybe in exchange I'm sorry, exchange. I could give you pick up lines in French. I have to say, hats off, Daniel, because I couldn't write that in French. Well, no, you don't speak French, do you? I'm Piquito. Perfect. Thanks a lot, Danielle. We will consider removing the heavy metal music, which we did before and then we brought back because other people are like, bring back the heavy metal music. So we're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place, caught between an amp and a hard place. Yes. If you want to let us know how you feel about our music or anything else, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstudo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastostepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Summer school is out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
d6abc0c0-3620-11ea-822e-c3b29e1282ed	Short Stuff: Cramming	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-cramming	Cramming is no way to study. Learn why in today's short stuff.	Cramming is no way to study. Learn why in today's short stuff.	Wed, 09 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=344, tm_isdst=0)	12766600	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk, and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and on behalf of Chuck, who's here, say hi, Chuck. Hello. Dave C, the producer, and Jerry, the mega meta uber producer. Uber with an Oom. Loud, even. Hi there. That was a good Jerry. This is Short Stuff, the stuff you should know. Short version of stuff you should know, but shorter. That's right. And this has to do with something that I have been guilty of from grades kindergarten through my undergraduate degree, which is to say, cramming for the test. I've always procrastinated when it comes to my school testing, I always crammed. I always did pretty good. I was sort of a B student, and I never thought it mattered much, and now I feel terrible about it. Right. Until that time the cop pulled you over and asked you how to explain Pythagoras theorem, and you were like, oh, man, I knew this. I knew this, and I forgot it. Yeah, because cramming, it sort of works. If you're looking to skate by and make that grade and, like, walking in there minutes after you finish studying, you might do okay, but you're not going to learn anything, and you're not going to remember that stuff. Yeah, that's the point. Yes, you can cram and do OK on a test. You could even get through college or high school like that. And that's why a lot of people who cram say, well, whatever, it works. I'm fine with it. But the point of learning all this stuff is to actually learn it. So when you look at it like that, like, you don't actually learn anything. You just are doing rope memorization. And then it kind of makes sense to look for other ways. And luckily, they figured out that there are plenty of other ways to learn aside from cramming. Before we get into that, let's talk about exactly why cramming is terrible. Yeah. So obviously we're saying you're really not learning much. There have been studies done. There are a lot of people who study this. One of these guys from the House Still Forks article is Dr. Robert Abdul from UCLA Psychology department, and he's like, there's a dramatic forgetting rate after you take that test. And you might think, well, who cares, man? I passed the test. But that's a big deal when that test is a building block for more lessons, like if it's a language class he points out, or math class. All of that stuff matters. You got to learn that stuff. I guess you can cram for a language final or a language test, but it's not going to do any good when the next test comes around. And you never learned the first stuff. Yeah, you'll never be a French major like that. You SAP. What's? SAP in French? Perfect. And then the other part is when you're cramming, too, usually you're adjusting your normal schedule to really debilitating degree. Sure. You're not cramming from 09:00 A.m. To 10:00 p.m.. The day before the test. That's studying. It's 10:00 PM. To 08:00. A.m. Cramming usually involves just squeezing whatever time you have out of the handful of hours right before the test. Maybe you sleep for a little bit right before and then go in and take the test. In my experience, it's always just been going in and taking the test right after you finish studying. Yeah. Just remember this, the Family Ties when Alex Peakeaton took speed, it's so great to study. Every family sitcom has always had somebody take speed, and it's always to study. Remember Jessie Spano? Jessie Spano stay by the bell where she's like, I'm so excited. They were doing a performance of that song and she was like, freaking out about getting it wrong. So she was rehearsing and rehearsing and taking speed. It's like, you're too fast. I don't remember it's great. It's one of the watershed moments in television history. Jesse collapsing in Zach's arms because she's so excited. I think the show is coming back. It is. And the same stars are going to be like, teachers. Amazing. Yeah. You cram right until the last second. No good. You're not learning long term. And there are some interesting ways to combat this, though, and should we take a break now? Yeah, I think that's right. All right. It's a little early, but it's the perfect place, so we'll be right back. All right. Today's episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by SimpliSafe home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family, so they offer advanced whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7 professional monitoring, SimpliSafe agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah. And simplyafe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority. 911 dispatch and Simply Safe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes at SimpliSafe. comStuff. Go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe. comStuff. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year, you weren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right, I jumped the gun. We took an early break. But here's the deal. If you want to study effectively, they say that studying something twice is obviously the best way, even three times and more is the best way to retain something and really learn something. But it gets even more specific. It's called the spacing effect. They say if you study some and then you go and take a break and do something else and then come back to studying that same thing, you're going to retain even more than if you just did it twice in a row. That's right. So this is really important to remember, because if you want to learn anything, there's just a certain thing you have to do, and that is not cram. And this could even be I didn't see anywhere, like how far spaced out it needs to be, but I got the impression that there's a sweet spot too far, and it's basically like seeing the material brand new again, and you don't even remember the first time, but too close. And studies have shown that you actually don't see it differently than you did the time before. Like, if you read a chapter and then go back and read the chapter again, you're not doing anything to help yourself. You want to space it out some. And in doing that, they think you're encoding things differently. Yeah. So like you said, if you do something twice in a row, it's so familiar to you, you're encoding it in the exact same way. If you take that little break, you'll encode it differently and remember it longer. Not only that, but there are different ways to encode, and they suggest changing where you study. Like if you sit down in your favorite fat chair in your office to study your thing, take a little break, go to a different room for the second take, and that will just mix it up in your brain enough so you'll encode it more permanently. That's right. So that's pretty cool. That's a good bit of advice. There are other reasons why they think this works really well. Another one is that if you struggle to recall whatever the information is, for some reason, that exertion of brain power makes you learn it more. And there's a pretty good example in this article from House of forks were like, if you meet somebody and you have to remember their name, like 30 seconds later, that's great. You'll probably remember their name because it's right there in your working memory. But the next day you're probably not going to remember it. But if you meet somebody and then an hour later, you have to recall their name and you really try to recall it, you're probably going to remember it the next day because they think you're struggling with that recall. You're exerting an effort with recall. And it makes sense because if you're like, what's that person's name again? And you don't even bother to try to recall, you're not going to learn it. Or even if you ask the person what their name is over and over again and you're not just getting it in there, you're never going to learn it either. So it makes sense. Struggle to recall might help with this learning thing. Yeah, I'm the worst with names like that, and I know we both are. I've tried all the things I try to remember to think of pneumatic devices, mnemonic devices, not Pneumatic, and I just can't do it. So you hear a lot of hey, man, out of me. And it's no offense, I never forget a personality or a face. So you're encoded. It's just names. I think everyone should wear name tags, but they've done plenty of studies about this. There was one in 2009 from UCLA, from Dr. Nate Cornell with a K and found that spacing was more effective than Cramming for 90% of participants. There it is. There's your proof. Well, yeah, but the thing is, they also surveyed those participants and found out that basically all of them still thought Cramming was effective. And the reason why is because it is effective, but it's not effective for long term learning. So what they figured out, in addition to spacing, that spacing is well, I guess, and kind of in conjunction with spacing is another technique that really helps people learn. It's called interleaving. I think it should be called interweaving, but whatever weird, it's where you take let's say you have 2 hours to study math. You're actually better off to study math for 30 minutes, then go study, say, French or something else for another 30 minutes and then leave it. Yeah, right. And then study model airplane building for 30 minutes and then go back to the math. You're going to do better than you did if you spent two solid hours on math, even by breaking it up, which is very counterintuitive because it seems like you'd be distracted. But hey, man, the studies don't lie. Yeah. There was a 2015 study that tested middle school kids with algebra and geometry, two subjects I had a very hard time with. And a day after their lesson was complete, the students who enter Wove or enter Louis scored 25% better than students who got regular instruction. And then here's the real kicker. A month later, that interleaving group was up 76%. And that's kind of the whole point, which is like, long term learning something rather than just recalling something for a test, right? Yeah. There's your proof right there. 76% after a month. That's all I needed to hear. So from now on, it's interleaving and encoding and spacing for me. Yeah. And I try to do that because our job is sort of like taking a test, in a way. Yeah, totally. And I've gotten into and I know we both have our own sort of methods worked out now. But I've gotten into a groove now where I will read stuff. Like. On the laptop and then not look at it for a bit. And then read and highlight the printed version and then leave it for a bit. And then eventually underline the key parts on the highlighted printed version. And that in addition to just general, like, videos and other ways of learning. That's kind of the sweet spot for me. Yeah, because you're spacing it out and that works. Yeah, I know. Writing something down has always been a suggestion. Like, if you write it out, then you're more likely to remember it. That's a big thing. Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, if there's a very difficult concept that we have to explain, it's way easier to write it out. Yeah, you've already done that. On one hand, you're, like, proving to yourself that you understand it, but you're also definitely, like, re encoding it in a different way. And the other thing I find interesting, too, is if you actually physically moved to a different room or a different location or something like that, just being surrounded by that different stuff, or different sounds, different smells, different sites. Even if when you're learning the exact same information, your brain is encoding it in a different way, I just find that endlessly fascinating. And it makes total sense, too. Yeah. And I've always seen over the years when you said it crossed from me, your signature Josh Clark three point chicken scratch handwriting that no one else on the planet can see without a magnifying glass or read even with a magnifying glass sometimes. Can't I'm? Like, what did I say here? But the point is, it's not even to go back and reread. Almost never is. If it is, then I make it super legible. It's just writing it out. Help me remember it. Yeah, it's good stuff. We have our tricks. Well, that's it. Go forth and stop cramming, everybody. You will be a more well rounded, happier, smarter human being. Okay. Okay. And since I said okay twice, it's the end of short stuff and short stuff away. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
4470fe70-53a3-11e8-bdec-33cda0061812	The Great War of the Worlds Panic Myth	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-great-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth	On Halloween 1938 young radio star Orson Welles scared the pants off of America with a fictional news bulletin claiming Martians had landed and were destroying the country. People across the nation ran wild with panic in the streets – or did they?	On Halloween 1938 young radio star Orson Welles scared the pants off of America with a fictional news bulletin claiming Martians had landed and were destroying the country. People across the nation ran wild with panic in the streets – or did they?	Thu, 19 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=324, tm_isdst=0)	44142849	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles w chuck Bryan over there. It's just the two of us batching it up. Oh, man. I think Jerry's inclusion, we're still batching it up. How do you mean? Does she really ruin the batch scene for us? Sure. She's very maternal and judgy. That's true. Yeah. You were headed down a kind road for a second. I was with Jerry. No, that doesn't sound like me. So for all of you who are just tuning into the first time, welcome. This is stuff you should know. To everybody else who's tuning in for the multiple times welcome, this is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, we never do that. Some shows do that. What? They welcome new listeners yeah. And kind of say what they do. And we've literally never done that. That's fine. That's lame. Hi. Who does that? Any friends of ours? Yeah, I mean, the guys on the Flop House, they've been podcasting as long as we have, and every single episode they say who they are and what they do. Okay, well, do you want to do that just one time? Well, I'm Chuck Bryant and this is Josh Clark. And this is a podcast where we explain things in a light hearted and fun and sometimes even funny way. I disagree with all of that. Oh, boy. So what we're going to talk about today? Because I think we need to talk about this one in a slightly somber tone. Chuck, it's a blemish in the history of America, really, if you think about it. Well, yeah. You know what? I've never actually had listened to it until this week. Same here. And it's a lot of fun to actually listen to. I would recommend it. Yeah. Especially in a dark room where that's all you're concentrating on. Not like a second screen kind of thing, like where you're really listening to this radio play. Yeah. And try to put yourself there a little bit, like what it must have been like in well, not 1898. That's when the book came out. Yeah. But in 19 38, 40 years later, just in that 40 year stretch, think about the difference between 19 82,020 not ridiculously different period. It's just got 98. Exactly. Oh, yeah. It's gone downhill. And don't think that had nothing to do with Reagan's election in 1980, but the difference between 1898 and 1938, it's just like two different worlds, man. Two different worlds. Comma War of the so I guess we should start with the book written by the great HG. Wells. It was the very first alien invasion story to hit the bookshelves, and that's a pretty remarkable thing. It was a serialized thing at first in magazines and Pearson in the UK, and then Cosmo here in the US. And then they finally slapped all those serialized versions together into a book, and it sold pretty well. Yeah. It's never been out of print since that first edition in 1898. That's pretty respectable. I expect as much for our book as well. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be still being published in 40 years or 100 years. Yeah, 140 years. Yeah. Well, let's hope so. In this book and like you said, first alien invasion story ever published, which is just the fact that this is a completely new premise, new conceit made it kind of scary. But in the book HG. Wells describes, like, this alien invasion. And part of the thing that was so scary about it, at least at the time, from what I can gather, is that it was about the breakdown of society. And we're talking, like, Victorian era England society where, like, rigid social rules and customs and mores and guidance for all behavior at all times was, like, the norm. So the idea of that breaking down was scary in and of itself. I think that made the book kind of scary to contemporary readers. Would that be right? Readers back then? And that was one big theme that Wells explored. Another one that he explored in that at least, I think whoever wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article on it said that the main point of this, the main subtext was learning how humans dominion over animals can be cruel and thoughtless because all of a sudden, with these alien invaders who are just wiping us off the map, we were like domesticated animals to them. Yeah. So the shoe was on the other hoof. Sure. At least it was intended to cause people to take kind of a hard look at Pre Animal Farm to make sort of a social statement about how we treated animals. And so that was in 1898. If you flash forward to Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater version, like you said, we're right in the middle or we're in the Great Depression and we're headed towards war. And it's sort of an uneasy feeling in the United States as a whole. So he thought, Perfect time to go in there, put a fresh coat of paint on this thing and scare the bejeebas out of the American public by doing really something that they had never heard before, which was sort of a Verita style production. Yeah. And, I mean, it's easy to overlook today, but radio was still rather new at the time. In 1938, it was like a cutting edge technological medium and it was not fully defined. So the idea of creating this, I guess, hoax broadcast is the best you can call it this fictionalized version that was what would you call it? Man, I hate that word so much. It's really taken on a bad tang here lately. Yeah, it's verita. It's a faux documentary style thing that no one had ever heard. Like, there's no way when people heard this, they would think, oh, I know, Christopher. Guess this is sort of a scary version. I've seen Blair Witch. I know what's going on here. I recognize Lenny from Laverne and Shirley anywhere. I know it's not real. Yeah. So they weren't prepared for this in Orson Welles. He was already a big name in radio as the voice of the Shadow, which was big hit. And his Mercury Theater was pretty well respected at the time. Yeah. It's like a live stage theater. So they'd only had the show for a few months by the time October 1938 rolled around. But their whole jam was they were on CBS. And CBS had them do hour long radio adaptations of classic novels like Treasure Island. They did around the World in 80 days. And so since it was October, they wanted to do something spooky around Halloween. Something yeah. So they were like, well, what's the most boring, scary book there is? And they said, HG. Wells War of the Worlds. So they decided to adapt it. Yeah. So they got together, they're rehearsing. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But there wasn't a strong feeling among the cast and crew and the production group that thought it was going to be awesome, because I think probably because they had never done anything like this. They had never heard anything like this, they thought, Is this even going to be any good? And a couple of different sources in the production went to a radio critic ahead of time, like, thanks a lot. And they said, by the way, this is going to be a real stinker. Apparently two different people in the production said that this will put everyone to sleep. And I don't have the impression that it's strictly because they didn't have any frame of reference to judge it against because no one had done this before. From what I can gather, originally, it was going to be really bad and really terrible. And the production in the cast and crew knew this. They knew that they were marching toward embarrassment with the early versions of the script. Yeah. So, Orson, he's sort of distracted. He's got a stage production going on. He's got his partner in his group, the great John Houseman. You all know from the Paper Chase, kind of a legendary actor. He was one of his original partners. And he got together with Howard is it Cotch? I never know if it's going to be a Cotch or a Coke. Doesn't matter. All right. Koch and he was the writer who was adapting the novel. And they were like, we got to make this thing better. And one thing I think we can do this was Houseman talking. I'm not going to deal with John Houseman, but everyone knows how he sounds, right? When I came across John houseman. Being involved. Like, I can't wait. I don't even remember. I mean, he was just very serious and sort of all I can think of is Paper Chase. And what was the TV commercial? Was it I want to say it was like Schwab or Merrill Lynch. I think it might have been Merrill Lynch, maybe. I don't know. But one of those finance firms he voiced for yeah, he was very famous for having a very high pitch, squeaky falsetto voice and he talked very fast. And actually, I know who it was. It was FedEx and Dunkin Donuts that he was well known for. He was the time to make the Donuts guy. Right. With the Mustang. So Houseman and Cotch Coke went in there and he said one of the things we should do probably to make this a little more scary and a little more believable that it's an actual broadcast time passes in the book and we can't do that here, so let's just get rid of all that stuff so it gives the appearance that it's going down right now. Yeah, that was enormously. A huge change. Totally. And I don't know if you did that to help the pacing move a little faster or what but that would pan out to be a really important difference in the original script that Howard Kay turned in and the one that they ended up doing. And then even beyond that, some of the other changes came just hours before broadcast because apparently if you worked with Orison Wells you should be on the lookout for him to come in at the last minute and be like all the stuff we've been practicing for a week or two. Forget all of that. We're doing this instead. And part of that, from what I can tell, is that he was trying to shake up the actor shake them out of whatever complacency they'd worked themselves into with rehearsal and to get this raw, more terrified performance. And apparently it works. I can't imagine. I didn't hear any rehearsals or anything like that. I would have loved to have compared the week before to the actual broadcast but everyone delivered these really great performances and they really nailed by Showtime the realism in a lot of ways not just in the performances but also in just little details. They were doing a mock radio program which we'll talk about a little more in detail in a second but they were pretending to have news bulletins break in so they were doing the things that news bulletins did. One of the things that stuck out to me was one of the eyewitnesses. So it's an actor, but one of the eyewitnesses is like being interviewed by a news reporter on the scene and they start to talk and the news reporter goes can you speak more loudly and move into the microphone, please? I think the actor actually says, how's that? And the guy repeats himself and then the actor has to repeat himself what he was originally saying. So it has that veneer of authenticity just from little details like that. Really. It stood out to me when I was listening for him but if you're not listening to them, it makes you buy into the whole thing that much more. Yeah. And the other big change that Wells brought along was stretching out the first two halves of the thing such that it went past. It went 40 minutes. And radio at the time, every 30 minutes, like on the half hour, they would check in with a station ID check, and listeners, even though radio was new, were well honed to this station break every 30 minutes. And so when ten minutes passed, the half hour go by and there ain't no station break, that really makes people kind of buy in to what they're listening to is possibly real. And then you add to the fact that there were no sponsors for this show. Yeah. So they weren't cutting to Casper or Me andy. Andys ads. Right. All of a sudden, I couldn't remember any sponsor. Can you imagine John Hausman saying made with modal? No, I thought it would be made with model. That's a much better house. I had something in my threat. So, yeah, there were no sponsors. So basically it really came across as something that was super realistic sounding. Right. So all that is to say that they had really by the time this broadcast aired at 08:00 p.m. On Sunday, October 30, 1938, they were not going to be the laughing stock, and this is not going to be embarrassing. It was going to be pretty awesome, actually. Should we take a break? I think so, Chuck. And then we'll come back and we will reveal the broadcast after this. Okay, so we've reached show time, airtime 08:00 P.m., sunday, October 30, 1938. Mercury Theater on the Air began broadcasting its adaptation of HG. Wells War of the World. And at the very beginning, it's introduced as much. There's an announcer who says that I think that losses probably to time somewhat, because everyone probably thinks that they just tried to trick everyone. But no, they actually introduced it as what they're doing. This is a radio place one year in the future rights. So it's introduced by an announcer. Orson Wells comes in, does the introductory essay, and then they did something really smart and interesting, especially for the time they went to a musical program that was supposedly being broadcast from the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza. So if you were just tuning in right then, you would have no idea that this was Mercury Theater on the air. You'd have no idea that this was a teleplay. You would think that you were listening to something that was pretty regularly broadcast, which was live music at some ballroom in a hotel somewhere in New York that they set up like a radio transmitter to transmit out over the radio. That was pretty frequent. But this was part of the show. Like if you had paused it. That is right. Right, exactly. But that was a huge part of the show because that lulled listeners into kind of complacency. And listeners who tuned in late and missed that introduction thought that this is what they were listening to. And then the first news bulletin hits. Yeah. And that's where things start to get really interesting. They break in one of these interrupt your previously scheduled programs kind of things, right? And they come in with these bulletins, but they're not super long at first because they treat it kind of how it would be in real life. It's just sort of a breaking story, something's going together. It was fairly obtuse. And they didn't, like, say, Martians are attacking us right now. Everyone from the get go, you sort of left it up to the listener to kind of piece it together little by little. They would go back to the Meridian Room for a bit, and it wasn't for very long because they couldn't waste too much time, but it was long enough. It wasn't for, like, 10 seconds. They did it for, like, a minute, a minute and a half. Right. It made it seem right then like that was what you were listening to. That was the program, and the bulletin was, in fact, the bulletin, rather than the opposite being true. Yeah. So eventually you start to piece together what's going on, and you have this attack in New Jersey, of all places, and Princeton University, they had, like, a Princeton astronomer on. They have government officials, and they kind of dole it out little by little until about the 17 minutes, 17 and a half minute mark. And then that's when it really kind of gets super scary and people really see the full picture of what's going on. So, Chuck, I feel like we should read a little bit of the script. There's this one part starting about the 1730 minutes mark, I think you said, where, as I like to say, they tore the lid off the sucker. Do you want to be announcer or Philips? I'll be the announcer. All right. Okay. But I want you to do Phillips as Sammy Davis Jr. So here's the announcer. Wait, hold on. I'm getting on my tap shoes. Okay. You ready, Candy? Ma'am sure, baby. I'm not going to do it that way. Okay. All right, so let me give you a little bit of background real quick. So these news bulletins up to this point have basically said there's some weird thing that landed they thought it was a meteorite at first that landed in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. And then later bulletin said that actually there's some weird technical, weird things emerging from this thing we thought was a meteor. Right. So now we're back at Grovers Mill. So I'm the announcer. We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what's happening on the Wilmoth Farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey. And that was kind of like they were breaking in to let you know that. And then they go back to more piano for some reason. And then we now return you to Carl Phillips at Grover's Mill. Ladies and gentlemen. Am I on? Ladies and gentlemen, here I am, back of a stone wall that adjoins Mr. Wilmot garden. From here, I get a sweep of the whole scene. I give you every detail as long as I can talk, as long as I can see. More state police have arrived. They're drawing up a cordon in front of the pit, about 30 of them. No need to push the crowd back now. They're willing to keep their distance. The captain is conferring with someone. We can't quite see who? Oh, yes. I believe it's a Professor Pearson. Yes, it is. Now they've parted. The professor moves around one side, studying the object, while the captain and two policemen advanced with something in their hands. I can see it now. It's a white handkerchief tied to a pole. A flag of truce. If those creatures know what that means, what anything means. Wait, something's happening. You can cut it anytime. Who can take a rainbow? Oh, wait, sorry. A hump shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What's that? There's a jet flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on. Good Lord. They're turning into flame. Now the whole fields caught fire. The woods, the barns, the gas tanks, the automobiles spreading everywhere. It's coming this way, about 20 yards to my right. Very nice. Okay, that was great, Chuck. Or I should say Phillips. The reporter on the scene mentioned Professor Pearson, and he ends up being the main character. And he's an astronomer that was interviewed earlier on, and he's on the scene, as it happens. And the program just keeps going like that. There's a main announcer who I played I thought rather well. Great job. Thank you. And same to you. Quite a future as a foley artist, if I may say so. Thank you very much. I've been practicing. You want to hear my machine gun? I've been doing that one since I was, like, six. Right? How about walking through the forest right now? How about a good punch to the face? Oh, wow. That was good. Thank you. I thought I punched myself in the sand. Okay. That's how dedicated to the art of Foley. So the announcer just keeps bringing in more and more news as this thing goes on and unfolds of. Like, now, these things aren't just in New Jersey, they're in Chicago. They're like out west. They're starting to invade everywhere, and they're killing people left and right. You said there was a government official that reads a statement. They say that it's the Secretary of the Interior, which I thought was particularly genius because probably not that many people were familiar with the Secretary of the Interior. Yeah, totally, Harold Icks. But they had them sound like FDR so that it would kind of play on everyone's, I guess, unconscious, or I'm sure there are people who are like, the sun, just like FDR. But at the very least, it would kind of evoke that government authority, the reality of a government figure, you know? Yeah. So meanwhile, on the other stations, there's one that's running opposite, which is a really popular radio show at the time, probably the most popular Chase and Sanborn Hour, which had the very, very famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. And we talked about that on our ventriloquism episode. Remember that? They started out on radio. Yeah. Which is hysterical. I don't even know why they would even bother with the dummy part just due to it. That's what he did. You wouldn't even have to wear pants. No. Sit around in your spaghetti stained under shirt, naked from the waist down, maybe some socks, doing a couple of voices. Here's your contract. Edgar Bergen. What do you think about that, Charlie? Don't get me started. That's it. I could be a famous pentroller sit on the radio. You just did it. I think Hollywood is going to come and calling. But the real sort of interesting factoid here, I think, is that people were channel surfing back then when you cut the commercial, just like we used to do when we didn't have pause buttons and fast forward buttons. Why is this pause button you keep mentioning? I've never heard of this. You've never paused television? No. Wow. You need to I don't believe I've ever paused anything in my life. It's funny, Emily and I have been watching that German Sci-Fi series Dark, which is very challenging to follow. And there's a lot of rewinding, like, wait, who is that? What did they just say? And we rewinded a bit and do that again. Or, you know, of course. I got to go the bathroom. Let me deposit and I was thinking about how not too long ago, if you missed something, you missed it. You just peed the couch. You peed yourself on the couch. Yeah. There was no clear like, let me go back and clear this up. What did you say? I have no idea. Yes. We'll never know. There's no Internet. I guess I should probably stop watching this show altogether. You go walk up to the VCR and press the jack. But at any rate, back then, let's say Charlie McCarthy goes to break. I know, words from our daughter, and they flip it over to War of the Worlds at this point in the broadcast when the s is hitting the fan and it's going to scare the pants off of people in 1938. Well, yeah. Even more that I think that they would have dialed over even before that. So they might have caught, like, a news bulletin and then maybe some of that music from the Meridian Room. So it really would have caught them. And there were supposedly a substantial number of people who did dial over and were like, wait, what is going on here? And now we come to the reaction, the response, because if you picked up the paper the next day in America, just about anywhere in any major city, you're going to find huge, blaring headlines like the one that the New York Daily News printed in tall, bold letters, fake Radio War Stirs Terror Through the US. Yeah. Stories of shock and hysteria. Stories of people taking their own life. Stories of people dying from heart attacks. The AP said a man in Pittsburgh found his wife with poison in her hand and said, I'd rather die this way than like that. And talking to Wells afterwards, in the aftermath of this, he apologizes publicly because they didn't intend to do this. We didn't know it was going to cause a panic. And then if you look over the years, more interviews, it sort of seems like Wells is a little more like, we thought it would be pretty fun to scare people. And I didn't know if it was going to cause a panic, but we definitely intended it to have this effect on people, whereas Housemen in Cotch were like, no, we really didn't mean it. So it was sort of conflicting reports from the production on what they thought was going to be the result. Right. And I read an interview with John Landis, the great director who worked with Wells on a project that never got made towards the end of Wills life. And he didn't say that Wells admitted to him that he meant to, but he got to know him enough that he was like, yes. If you watch this initial press conference where he's apologizing because the whole country was ripped apart in chaos and were running wild in the streets and nearly rioted because of his broadcast, he's just as happy as a lark that this all happened. Of course, even though he's pretending to apologize. And he said, this is awesome. Wells, did you just say apologize? It's a new version I'm testing out. I like it. It's good. It's at least as good as I apologize. So this was just a couple of days in the news cycle. It wasn't the biggest deal in the world, even though it was fairly sensational story writing for newspapers. And it might have just gone that way had it not been for a Princeton University social psychologist a couple of years later named Hadley Cantrell. And Cantrell released a book on the real effects of this thing and basically said that people were praying, crying, they were frantically trying to escape death from the Martians. 6 million people listen to this thing, and at least one six of them were frightened or disturbed. And I have the evidence right here. Yeah, the evidence that he had was based on a series of interviews with 135 people. Almost all of them were in New Jersey. Which remember, that's where the crux of the invasion and destruction being described took place, because Grovers Mill, New Jersey, is actually a real town in Jersey. So he went to Jersey because he was in Princeton. So he went where he was and interviewed 135 people. And he said, Were you scared by this broadcast? And the participant would say yes. And he'd say, you're in my study. And he'd ask the next one, were you scared by this broadcast? And he'd say, no. He'd be like, you're not in the study. That's crazy. Yeah, he said in the methodology that he selected 100 out of the 135 because they had been scared by the broadcast. And so he took these interviews of people in New Jersey and he extrapolated it to the rest of the country. And he said, yeah, this is real. This is a really great example of people being fooled into terror and panic and the responses. When this happens, as we saw after the World's broadcast, people will run out into the street. They will flee the city. They will call their friends and neighbors. They may attempt suicide. They may die of a heart attack. Like the New York Times reported, 20 or so people in New York alone needed to be treated for shock and hysteria. This is what happens when somebody toys with the public trust. And yes, it's pretty nuts. The end. That was the end of Hadley's book, right? Yeah. Not the end of this episode. So this specific study is what, if you've ever taken a mass media or communications college class, you've probably studied War of the World largely because of this study. Basically. It might have just come and gone if it weren't for this academic paper that were put out. And all of a sudden, for decades and decades, it's reported on as like a cautionary tale almost, of responsibility in media, even fictional media. And as recently as 2013 PBS American Experience Documentary said this was the case. Our old pals at Radio Lab in 2008 did an episode about this where that was the case. But there were a few problems with this paper beyond the supremely bad methodology behind just getting scared. New Jersey people to go in there and give their report was they found that they ended up finding real ratings for this thing, and not a ton of people even heard it, it turns out, right? So his 6 million estimate was way off. Way off. And they did a survey during the program that said 2% of respondents said that they were listening. And some markets, like big cities like Boston, even preempted this thing for local programming. So it wasn't a ton of people it wasn't a ton of people being scared and just literally losing their minds with fear and panic. And things swing so far the other way that the narrative became, you know what? No one was really scared at all. And what newspapers. Really did was they put out hit pieces on a competing medium like radio, and how you shouldn't trust it anymore. So what happened over the last summer within the 21st century, sometime in the myth that America lost its mind, went bonkers and ran wild in the street because they were panicked by the War of the Worlds broadcast was shown to be a myth that it didn't happen. And that was the new understanding for a little while, just a few years, until another guy came along and said, you know what? Actually, both are right and both are wrong in a lot of ways. Should we take a break and talk about the truth always being somewhere in the middle? All right. I said the truth is always somewhere in between. That's not always the case with everything in life, obviously, but that's a saying for a reason. And that definitely seems to be the case in this case with a gentleman named A. Brad Schwartz. He's probably the leading War of the World scholar. And he went back and he went and investigated the letters and the cables that came in. They were at the University of Michigan archives. And these are the letters that actually came in two wells and the Mercury Theater in the days after the broadcast. And what he contends, and I agree, is that this is what you need to be reading, is what people were really thinking at the time that weren't just cherry picked in the town that got attacked in New Jersey, who were obviously they were going to be freaked out more than anyone in the country. Right? So one of the things that he points out is since around 2010, or maybe a little earlier, everyone had been wailing on Hadley Cantrell for his terrible methodology, but the revisionists were also kind of doing the same thing. They were making all sorts of suppositions, like the idea that the newspapers had basically conspired to target radio with its rival to show how irresponsible it was and how it shouldn't be trusted with the news. There's really newspapers that should be handling the news, and maybe you can listen to Little Orphan Annie on the radio, but that's about it. That was all supposition. That was as much supposition as Hadley Cantrill extrapolated his findings in New Jersey to the rest of the country. And A. Brad shorts. One of the reasons I think he's doing a good job, because he's saying no. If you actually sit down and read these letters and these cables that were coming in and the days after, they really probably paint the most accurate picture anyone's ever found to this point of how it was actually received. Like you can see almost in real time at the time what people were saying about this by in their letters to Orson Welles into the Mercury Theater on the air. Yeah, it was a range of feelings. It was everything from people who said, you know what? We knew it wasn't real, but it was really scary and super awesome. I don't know if they said things like super awesome. He said that a number of people wrote in who actually made fun of the people who fell for it and said that they're gullible, they're rubes. And one writer even said they should be sterilized and disenfranchised. Yeah. Because they'd shown that in an actual emergency, they were undependable. They would just run around like chickens with their heads cut off in the streets. Yeah. And swartz. Sort of draws a line between what was going on back then to us today with this whole fake news hoax garbage that we have to listen to day in and day out, and basically said this was the first viral phenomenon in media was the War of the Worlds broadcast. And it was a mixed bag. Some people loved it. Some people did think it was real and panicked, but it certainly was not this widespread panic across the country like you were talking about. Yeah. He said less than a quarter of the letters described what he would consider panic, but even most of those weren't actually angry when they were writing the letter. A lot of them were thrilled, like, you got it. Right. But he did say that, yes. There are cases that you see in these letters and cables that describe people panicking. So that did happen in some cases. Most of it seems to have been isolated in New Jersey. So if Hadley Kentrill had not extrapolated his findings and had interviewed more people who had different reactions to the broadcast, but if it had just been like an investigation into the reaction in New Jersey, that study or that book would have been much more useful. But the fact is, he just screwed the methodology up so badly that it's basically useless. But he didn't make up the panic that he described necessarily. He may have exaggerated it, who knows? But it does seem to have actually happened in some cases. But it was sporadic, few and far between, certainly not organized and certainly not seen across the rest of the country like it was reported on by the papers the next day. Yeah. Which sort of leads us to the story of the poor pulses of Manhattan. This Manhattan couple, they did fall for it. They were very scared, apparently, as the story goes. They got their last $6 together and got on a train to get the heck out of New York, assuming not going west into New Jersey. They went north toward Connecticut, got as far as they could on what little money they had, get off the train, and there's a bunch of other passengers that they're telling you they're warning everybody of what's happened. Right. And this one guy there goes over and gets just pictured this in the movie. It's like, no one's listening to this guy. And he picks up the newspaper. Basically the TV Guide. It's the Dunkin Donuts guy. Hey, guys, it says right here where the World's Broadcast is supposed to be on at that hour. It just says right here in the newspaper, it's a radio play. Everyone nobody okay. And then he just goes and gets on the train and leaves. But they feel bad for them that the other people that had gathered together, they loaned them or gave them, I guess, some money and chipped in and got them back to New York City. And then later, Estelle Paul wrote a 15 page letter the next day to Orson Welles that was very admiring and said how thrilled she was. But I can't imagine what else is in that 15 page letter. It's a lot of know, hell of a story, I think is what she just kept over and over. Right? That was one of the letters that Abrad Shorts turned up in that trove. And it very clearly describes a couple of panicking because they mistook the War of the World's Broadcast. But again, this is not like across the nation like the papers reported. And Schwartz actually explains the papers basically as a combination of a couple of things. One is a bias. I can't tell if it's selection bias, volunteer bias, or confirmation bias, but the bias is as follows. If you're in a newsroom and all of a sudden your phone starts ringing off the hook and you're getting 150% more calls that night, and all of them are people asking about this Martian invasion and what's going on, and is this real or is this a hoax, or have you guys heard anything about this? And some of those calls are even from the local police who are also getting similar calls. And now they're calling you to find out. Then it seems like there's a lot of people calling and freaking out about this Martian thing. But if you step back, if you zoom out and look at that number of people that actually called the newsroom, it's just a minute fraction of the population of whatever town it is. So it wasn't a bunch of people freaking out, but to the people answering the phone in the newsroom who are getting swamped with calls, way more calls than usual, it did seem like that. So that combined with anecdotal reports that no one followed up on from the wire services, that people were attempting suicide or having heart attacks or whatever, that just being reported and relayed as fact, led everybody to believe that this was actually happening out there in the country, that people were running. Well, maybe not my town, because I stuck my head outside of the newsroom and I didn't see anything. But I hear they're going crazy in Chicago right now, or I hear they're really going nuts in Milwaukee or whatever. And that's how it got reported. And that's what everyone thought happened. People who lived through this thought that this happened the next day. Orton Wells thought his career was in jeopardy the next day because he accidentally made America go berserk. And that's how that myth began, and that's how it stood. And Brad Shorts basically traced it back to lazy reporting. So mythbusted, thanks to Abrad Schwartz and us. And us, for sure. I'm glad you included us. So there's an interesting footnote here, though, because this actually did kind of play out that way eight years later. Was it eight years later. So this is in Quito, Ecuador. These broadcasters recreate the Orson Wells radio play, and they did a version that went a lot further than his did and got other radio stations to join in and add to the reporting, which is really pretty brilliant move there to increase. Like, you turn the station and it's happening over there, too. Right. And this really did scare people. They really did take to the streets and panic. There was public panic going on. And then the crowd finds out that it's fiction, and they get angry and actually turn into an angry mob and burn down the local newspaper building that had the radio station inside of it, killing six people. Yeah, six people died. 15 people were injured. Like, they knew that the staff was in that building, and they set the building on fire to try to kill them. A bunch of people escaped out of the back, but a lot of people didn't escape. And the two people who were responsible for the broadcast, including Ecuador's most beloved and trusted presenter, were indicted for it. Like, they're more safer, basically. Yeah, exactly. And they were indicted for their role in this. Like, people died because of it. And this actually does seem to have happened in Ecuador. Amazing. Yeah. So there you go. The idea that America fell into chaos and panic after the war of the world's broadcast in 1938 is largely myth. Go forth and spread the gospel, everybody. Unless you're in Ecuador, and then you're like, no, it actually happened here. And since I said that actually happened here, I think Chuck is time for this in the mail. So this is from Tom in the UK. Did you see this email? I don't think so. It's great. It's one long sentence, and I'm going to try and read it and how I think Tom speaks as Tom from the UK. Because just the way he wrote it, I think Tom probably talks a little bit like this. This isn't Tom from the UK. Who was our tour manager when we did our UK tour, is it? No. Well, shout out to that Tom. This is an engineer, and this is what he has to say. All right, SUP, josh and Chuck, tom, engineer from the UK. Stocks on Trent, big fan of the show. Been binging for about two years and got through all of them. All of you lot, even Jerry, have got me through a lot these last couple of years, and I put a few people onto your podcast, wanted to email you lot for a while, and finally managed to get round to emailing a load of things to people about stuff that really doesn't matter. Emailed a TV show about one of their actors, a particle physicist, about using a light year of lead as a frame of reference. The company super noodles for the excellent job they've done with their super noodle pot. But I'm not much for the peas. And I just wanted to say, I know you like the Japanese mayo, but you really need to try the Polish mayo. Spot on. All the best, Tom. Boy, oh, boy. Tom, that was great. And Chuck, that was a fantastic stoke on Trent accent. The most accurate I've ever heard, and the first. Tom, that was a great email. You're right, Chuck. I love that email so much. I had so much fun. You were right to choose that one. So thanks, Tom. Thanks for writing in. Thank you for including us in your list of people you harass via email. And keep listening. Okay. And keep writing in. Maybe we'll make this a regular thing. Chuck, I would love that. Yeah. So, Tom, write in again. And if you want to write in too, we want to hear from you. You can send us an email mail to Stuff podcasts@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show."
https://podcasts.howstuf…microlending.mp3	Could microlending develop the world?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/could-microlending-develop-the-world	Microlending is a practice that provides funds for entrepreneurs in developing countries who couldn't normally get loans. Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss the pros and cons of microlending in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Microlending is a practice that provides funds for entrepreneurs in developing countries who couldn't normally get loans. Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss the pros and cons of microlending in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:29:31 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=15, tm_min=29, tm_sec=31, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=253, tm_isdst=0)	26490075	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the Josh and Chuck electric Freakout Feature Ring. Matt, guest producer. Matt standing in. You may also know it as stuff you should know. Right. Matte of Lions and Scissors playing sooner band. They have a MySpace page, right. Shot. Yeah. We collected before. Yeah. So we're not going to do it again? No. Which I think we just did, buddy. Sorry, Chuck, I don't know if you're paying attention or not, but the United States pretty much dominated the 20th century in every way. Conceivable, USA. USA. Exactly. That was chained quite a bit. You remember Rocky? Oh, yeah. Beat the Russian guy. Yeah, sure. That was just one accomplishment of maybe four. Five, rocky four. Right. So, yeah. We successfully fought just about every war we engaged in. Our economy just thrived. Did you know that the per capita GDP in 1900 for the United States was $4,096? Not bad. Not bad. By 1999, it was $9,671. Doesn't seem like that much of an increase. No. Think about the population increase. So actual GDP in 1900 was $28.6 billion. Wow. In 1999, it was 9.26. $8 trillion. Wow. Yeah. So basically, we rock the hissy during the 20th century. Right. Now it's 2009. It is. We're engaged in land wars with insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, we are. Still, and I guess you can report place engaged with myd the dollar is being abandoned, or considered being abandoned as the universal currency in favor of a basket of currencies. Right. Which spells trouble. A cornucopia. Yes, that's another way to put it, buddy. And our housing market caused a worldwide financial collapse. So America is not quite as bright as we used to before. We get tons of email saying it wasn't just that, it was a lot to do with it. So this has caused a lot of people to wonder whether the turn of the 21st century was actually the end of the American century. Right. Especially with the rise of Brick, Brazil, Russia, India and China, and specifically India and China, the enormous development has made people think, well, China is the next United States. Right. Well, I know everyone always thinks that it's hard to not be in the moment and realize that the greatest civilizations always fall at some point. Sure. It's going to happen. I mean, it may not be anytime soon, but fast forward 1000 years in America might be a barren wasteland like The Matrix or something. Was it a baron wasteland? Yeah. I remember when he showed him on TV and it was just destroyed. Matt in the building with the general consensus this is the real world. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, we'll have our day. I'm with you. I say that the United States century, the American century, is not over yet. I agree. And the reason why is. I think that during the 20th century. The American dream. This idea that everyone has an equal shot at pursuing his or her own goal under the free market capitalist system. Which is not true. But it's a nice thought. But I think that thought. The American dream. Whether it's possible to realize it or not. Was so successfully packaged that it was able to be exported to the rest of the world. That kind of caught up. Sure. Have you ever heard of Thomas Friedman's Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention? Does it have to do with McDonald's? Yes. Then I have heard of it. So, yeah. Back before, I think, the Balkan war, no. Two countries that both had a McDonald's engaged in armed conflict against one another. That's great. After the point that both of them had the McDonald's until the Balkans because they were pretty stoked about their fries and their Big Mac. You could say that. You could also say that correlation does not prove causation. But still, it's pretty interesting, and it makes a good point that it's a symbol, actually, more than anything, it is just like a Coke machine. Like, you can find Coke machines in the most remote countries areas of the world. Right. And you can say that that's basically you're exporting democracy through successful capitalism. Right. Happy juice. That's also going on right now, that continued export with this thing called microlending. That's the longest setup we've ever done. Yeah. But dude, it was good. Yeah. Microlending is pretty cool. It's a good article, dude. Thank you. Well done. Thanks a lot, buddy. So, Josh, as you know, because you wrote it, micro lending doesn't necessarily refer to the size of a loan. It's not necessarily an itty bitty loan. It's not the size of a loan. It's how you use it. Right. That's actually very true. Thanks. It refers to the qualifications of the borrower. Right. Although it usually is a small loan. Right. One of the big flaws in that American dream, that capitalist free market system where supposedly everybody has an equal opportunity at obtaining success with their own hard work sure. Is that you usually need startup capital. Right. Right. Even if you're selling hot dogs on the street. Yes. You got to buy the car. You got to buy the dogs. Like my Bloody Mary Stan, last year at the golf tournament, I was not there for that. To my front yard. Yeah. I had to invest in the oh, yeah. That's the one where the cops came and busted it up. I lost all that money that I invested in the Buddy Mary. That's what happens when the fuzz turns up. But startup costs. Sure. Yeah. The thing is, where do you go for startup costs? You generally go to a bank and well, banks are run by capitalists themselves. They're looking to turn a buck, of course, so as they should. They have certain criteria that people have to meet to be accepted for a loan application. Right, right. So the problem is there's huge masses of people, generally the working poor, who are usually excluded from this. They don't have collateral. Of course not. They might not have an education to back up this entrepreneur. Probably no credit history or loan history to begin with, so they're not meeting the criteria. They can't get the loan, and therefore they can't obtain self sufficiency through their own hard work or achieve the American dream. It's a flaw. It's a caveat to that system. Right, right. So what microlending does is it kind of fills that gap between these excluded groups and selfsufficiency by loaning to people who I put it in the article that traditional lenders would consider mindlessly risky. These loans are mindlessly risky? Yeah. That's why a dude like Muhammad Yunus deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah. Eunes is a Bangladeshi economist who founded this micro lending institution called the Grameen Bank. Can I read his quote? Yeah. I love it, man. It's inspiring. He said, if banks went to the rich, I went to the poor. If banks went to men, I went to women. If banks required collateral, my loans were collateral free. Right. Here's your Nobel Prize. He also lent to the illiterate by not having too much paperwork and poverty. Rural areas. Rural areas where there were no banks. I mean, think about how little access you have to start up capital. There's no bank anywhere near you. So he sent people out to these villages to sign people up for loans. And he did it pretty aggressively, but aggressively in the favor of these other people. Right. Rather than aggressively trying to make money himself. Right. So he found Graham Bank, I think, in the it's actually successful. Yeah. I love the business model. It's so cool. Yeah. Just the whole thing you pointed out about what he counts on to get the loan repaid is almost like honor. It is. In traditional societies, there's a lot at stake with a good name, and when you borrow money, you're putting your good name on the line, which is how you got the money in the first place, usually your family name. Right. So if you don't repay it, you're basically damaging your whole family's image. Right. Yeah. It doesn't go so well here, I bet. No. Be like, hey, thanks for the money. So long. Yeah. So they use social pressure, traditional social pressures that are already in place to ensure loan repayment. Right. Which happens on a weekly basis. Is that correct? Yes. People make weekly repayments because it's usually much more affordable. And the bankers on bikes, I love that these guys ride around on bicycles and visit them, and they give them their little payment for that week. Yeah. They're collection agents, and they'll have maybe several in each village or whatever. So these people are also these people's neighbors. Right. But they're not, like, threatening collection agents. Not necessarily. I don't think this Grameen bank is very threatening. Right? But yeah. So imagine a guy who's a collection agent that's also your neighbor, who works for a lending institution that you borrowed from, showing up at your front door every week. In a society where your good name is on the line, you're going to make those repayments. And it's successful, actually, not just grabbing bank, but across the board with micro lending in general. They have a 97% rate of repayment, which is traditional banks. It's proof that it works. It is proof that it works at least 97% of the time. So let's talk about how it works. Grabbing bank and other micro lending institutions aren't running around and just grabbing, like Pedro and Shoshana off the street. These are just two names that came up with I could tell you were flailing about searching. They don't grab them and say, hey, here's some money. Take some money. Right. These people actually have to have business plans or at least ideas of what they're going to use. These are entrepreneurs without an opportunity. Basically, what it is, is they're funding people in developing countries, which, as I said before, is kind of an extension of the entrepreneurial spirit that the US. Is founded on. And it's happening overseas now. Right. Spreading a little bit of that capitalist love worldwide. Right. Which is love. Love. Chuck like I said, let's talk about how it works. If you wanted to go and make a loan, how would you do this? Would you go to Graham Bank, fly to Bangladesh, go, here's some money, give this to this person? You need to get a loan to get the plane ticket, though, right? Now you would go online is one way to do it. And I like the model used. Well, there's two ways. There's the not for profit model and the profit model. Right. But should we talk about Kiva.com first? Yeah, that's a good one. That's the not for profit model, correct? Right. And basically, you will present your business plan as an applicant from places like Lebanon, Tajikistan, Mali all over the place. All over the place. Nicaragua has a lot of people on there. Yeah, Nicaragua. And then there's users on the other end that sign up and actually contribute toward this loan in good faith that you have a 97% chance of getting your money back with no profit attached. But it's a goodwill gesture. And basically people contribute as little as $25 until that loan amount is full. Right. So it will be like somebody's picture and then like the name of their business and then what their business does. Looks like adopting a person in a foreign country. Very much like that, actually. And you're kind of adopting their business temporarily. Right. So it will also have a description of what they plan on using that specific loan for. Right. So it'll be like maybe purchasing timber for resale or purchasing agricultural supplies like seed or whatever. Right. And it has like a little bar and it has the loan amount, the total, what they need at the end, and then it'll fill up as people contribute. So a lot of different people can contribute to a single loan. Then it reaches 100%. And in a lot of cases, a site like Kiva will use a third party bank lending institution like maybe Graham Bank in Bangladesh. But a local community bank usually issue the loan, right? Yeah. You can't just send them a check because they wouldn't have anything to do. No, sometimes they do. Some sites actually do issue these loans themselves, but for the most part they serve as an intermediary between a uri who's contributing our money, which of course we don't too. Which we could, though. I'm just kidding. And actually the cool thing about Kiva is that you can contribute as little as $25. I'm going to sign up for this. And also check they have gift certificates too. So the cool thing about the gift certificate is like, let's say you give a gift certificate to me and what you've done is you've made it, you better do this. You've contributed $25, basically in my name to whoever's business in Nicaragua, and I get the $25 back. Oh, really? Did I write it off? I don't think so. Okay, if you do, your cheap bastard. The distinction is that you don't get any extra money back. Well, no, there's no interest return on your investment. No, there isn't. But these people are paying interest. The average interest on a microloan worldwide is about 31%. Does that just keep the whole thing afloat? Is that what they use that money for? Supposedly. We'll get to that in a second. Okay. Because there's actually criticism of micro lending, believe it or not. So that's the not for profit. And it's really just a socially responsible investment where you can usually expect to get your full amount back, but not any interest. Right. Then there's the for profit model, right? Yes. Like microplace.com that's on par with Kiva. Those are the two big microlending sites. And this isn't a bad thing because people are trying to make a profit. It still works out great. They get their money and you can get a yield as high as 5%. Which I was reading an article and some guy was saying, compare that to CDs. I know you get a CD that's giving you 3% interest. You got a great CD right there. And a CD doesn't give some poor Bangladeshi a leg up. No, it doesn't. For his petty cab business. Although there are if you have four hundred and one K and you start looking around, more and more investment banks are creating mutual funds that loan to micro lenders like Grameen Bank, that kind of thing. Personal story about this, actually. I want to hear it, buddy. You didn't know this, did you? No, I did a Voiceover for a Friend's documentary. He did about the tsunami survivors. And he works for a nonprofit agency, like missionary work type thing. And I did the narration for it. And one of the guys, he focused on four different stories. One of his stories was a guy who had a petty cab, the little bicycle cabs, and he got a microloan I don't remember who it was from after the tsunami to buy a second and third petty cab. And then the money he got from that, he opened a little store, like a little small hut store. But the dude was able to build a house and restart his family. He lost his whole family. He met another woman, and they ended up having kids and cool. Just like the coolest story. It is a great story. And I don't think he had to borrow more than, like, $100 or something, man. Well, that's a point, actually. Yeah. The $25, I think in the article, I compared it to the Peruvian solway. Yeah. So $25 on August 10, 2009, when I wrote this article, the exchange rate was, I think, $25 to 73 Peruvian soles. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, if somebody gets $1,000 loan, that's almost three grand in soles, which that's a ton of cash. You can buy a lot of timber and petty cabs. I have a personal story about microlending. Really? I borrowed some money from my dad once, and I still have an outstanding balance. Is that why your leg is broken? Yeah. Well, my thumb that's funny. You should bring that up, my friend. That was a great set up. You may notice that this is actually bears a striking resemblance to loan sharking right. Which still exists in a lot of countries. And actually, I read that micro lenders are starting to give loan sharks run for their money because there is no attendant threat of violence driving them out of business. And their interest rates are much, much lower. Yeah, I looked it up, actually. I couldn't find what a loan chart rate might be. Often like 1000%, 300%. Just astronomical amount. Unreal. Yeah. And you will have your legs broken. Yeah. Muhammad Yunus. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. He's not really into leg breaking, I don't think, not anymore. And you can tell look at him. Did you see him in the article? He's got his little neighbor jacket on, and it looks like you can trust me. I hope the poor, here's $25. Go build a business. Yeah. So, yeah, that little amount that you contribute really has a huge effect in the developing world. Right, right. So that's pretty much the nuts and bolts of how it works. Like I said, there's mutual funds. Right. The back fees. Right. And supposedly it actually does have an impact. A lot of people, as we were saying that export of capitalism, of the American dream. Yes. I like the tie you made there, or that other people have made that you highlighted. Well, there's a theory that globalization prevents war. Yeah. It hasn't been fully panned out yet. A lot of people thought that the interdependent economies of the 1920s and 30s would prevent war and we still had World War Two. That kind of undermined that. I personally think that we just weren't at the stage of globalization yet that we are now. And I think globalization can prevent more just because money trumps ideology any day. Especially if you are in such a position of power that you are commanding armies or economies or nations or whatever. Right. You're probably going to go with your economy over ideology. Right. I got another quote from your own article. Let's hear it. Well, this kind of backstage, this is what the Nobel Committee said when they awarded Unis the prize in six. Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. And dude, that's pretty succinct. Yeah. A lot of people were surprised when unions won the Nobel Prize. Yeah. But how can you break out of poverty is by getting a microphone and starting a business. There's another theory that terrorism is bred by poverty rather than religious ideology or dogma. I could be down with that. You go, Whoa, whoa, let's stop this jihad and maybe we can explore some business opportunities instead. Wouldn't you rather open up a jihad stand and blow yourself up in the middle of that market? Right, yeah. And if you have a stand in that market, you're not going to want suicide bombers there's. Bad for business. Yeah, sure. Well, a lot of people say there's not a lot of evidence though, right. On the other side of the coin. Yeah. There's a Yale economist, I quote in this saying we are utterly devoid of evidence. Right. And there's some studies that have shown that it doesn't necessarily help. These people may repay it, but there's no follow through on them actually using the loan for what they say they're going to. Right. If you suddenly have 3000 soles yeah, you could easily do that. Or you could pay rent or something like that. Things come up, how much money have you spent? That was marked for something more important, but you had to deal with something that was an emergency that came up. Right. Or if someone knows, if your neighbor knows you got a loan and you get robbed or something, I'm sure other things happen. And apparently microlending is still young enough that it requires injections of capital like these lending institutions themselves to stay afloat. They themselves aren't selfsufficient right. Which you have to have that self sufficiency to help other people become self sufficient. I think the jury is very much still out and theoretically it's such a noble idea that I can't imagine it won't be given more and more slack or whatever it needs to continue to grow. Sure. And at a 97% rate. I mean, you can't argue with that. No. And that 97% rate, though, has actually led to some really despicable plots. The Mexican banks. Yeah. Graham bank has actually pointed out that this vastly overlooked segment of the population are dependable to repay loans. Right. So as a result, people think banks have come up to create to issue micro loans, but not to help poverty, but to make money. Right. Specifically lent to the poor, though, still. Yeah. There's a guy in Mexico who owns they're kind of like the Walmart of Mexico, and I can't remember his name, but he's a multi billionaire business guy, and he said that his father taught him, if you want to make money, sell to the poor. Right. Mainly because there's so many of them. Right. Right. So he started his business and made a bunch of money selling to the poor, selling cheap consumer products through his retail stores. Well, he found a bank very much like Walmart. He founded a bank called BanKo as TECA. Right. One of two. Right. That does this yeah. They are a micro lending institution that this guy owns, and they issue these small loans to the poor, the working poor, but at really astronomical interest rates. Yeah. They drive them further into debt instead of pulling them out of the Meyer in the muck. Right. And they're still issuing these loans in these traditional societies that have these social pressures. They also use a lot of micro lending practices, like bankers on bicycles. Right. But these guys are the ones who come into your house and write down the serial numbers on all of your stuff. Right. And so we'll repossess this and they do. Right. And it's a perversion of microlending. Right. It's expiration. Yeah. That Apr is up to 100%, you said, or more than 100% sometimes. So if you borrow $1,000, you pay back $2,000 plus. The problem is Banco As TECA specifically lobbied the Mexican government to be exempt from a law that forces lenders to state the terms of their loan, including the interest rate on a loan on the loan before they issue it. So a person goes up and goes $1,000. The bank issues it, and the person walks away with their $1,000 with no idea how much they actually owe. Right. Legally, they don't have to do kind of like an arm. And you could make an argument either way. Right. Who's responsible for those arms that you just mentioned? Was it the aggressive, predatory lenders? Was that the people who were greedy and said, wow, I can afford a $600,000 house even though I only make $40,000 a year? The terms of their loan. Close enough. Everyone's to blame. Everyone is to blame. But Mohammed unis. Right. But I did want to point out it's not just Mexico. We're not picking on Mexico. This is happening in other places, too. It is happening in other places. And there's a lot of companies that we're familiar with, like Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, zurich Financial and I guarantee you a lot of the people who run those mutual funds that are heavily invested in these micro lending institutions that are for profit and exploitative. So I think if this has piqued your interest in micro lending and you want to go on and maybe contribute a few bucks, do a little extra research to find out exactly what the terms are for repayment of those loans, who they're going to who they're going through. Right. Especially if you're going to do it through a mutual fund or something like that. Yeah. I love it. I'm going to scrape together $25. You can do that. Yeah, I'll scrape together 50, pay 25 to my father, and then give 25 on kiwi. You only owe your dad $25? No, but it's something I got you. Yeah. You can find this article, How Microlending Works, and a whole bunch of we have some really cool economics articles on the site. Did you know that? We do. Yes, we do. You wrote a lot of them. I did. So did James McGrath. Kicked it on money for a while. You can find those by typing in probably economics in the handysarchbar howstep works.com. Which, of course, friends, neighbors, loved ones, leads us to listener mail. So, Josh, this listener mail is actually very relevant. I saved it for this episode. Our buddy Stefan, who sent us our signs, folks, we have people that are actually sending us things now. It's awesome. We've gotten some beer. We have beer from a microbrewery in St. Arnold's Brewery in Houston. Oh, God, that was really good. And we've gotten some little gifts here and there. And of course, fan art is always coming in, but tangible things have been sent to us, and we're very grateful for that. I got a Michael Jackson shirt from Ben Ivy that he designed. Really? It was cool. You didn't show me that. I'll show it to you, jerk. So, Stefan, I'm going to go and say his name because he wanted me to. Stefan Brahm. He is in Newark, Delaware, and he and his wife are a two person team and opened up their own small business in January 9 called Alliteration. A-L-L-E-T-T-E-R-A-T-I-O-N. Nice spelling. Thank you. You've forgotten to finish it with Alliteration. Alliteration. And he sent us these signs to go in our studio. It has our studio name, and underneath one of them it says, where twinkies are revered and moonshine is respected, which we thought was great. Darn too. Anything. His daughter helped him come up with that. Yeah. And then the other one says, where badass knowledge happened. Yes. And we've got both of these hung up on our studio, and they look awesome. And we just want to thank Stefan and say good luck with your business. Yeah. Big thanks. Stefan and his daughter and his wife to us. And he said that he also wanted us to mention, if we could, that they try to use recycled wood and stuff to make it a more green business. And these signs were actually taken from, like, a children's bed or something like that. Poor kid. What? He said no. Now his daughter's on the floor. I know. He's like Josh and Chucker. If you want to support Stefan, he says his website isn't completely finished. You can go to alliteration etsy.com or email him at info@alletration.com. It's two L, two TS. And Stephen's a great guy. We wish him all the luck in the world. Yeah, quality business. Well, Chuck, also, you opened this up for me to say this. If you want to send me, Chuck, some cool stuff, you can get our information by sending us an email. Or you can just say, Hi, unicorns, torpedo, whatever, or go to the website and click on the contact button at the bottom and it has the address, and you can just send it straight to us. Yeah, but we won't hear from them. Then I can include a written note, a handwritten note okay. And a glossy photo. Well, then I still have to give the email here. Just go ahead. All right, whatever. If you want to say hi or whatever, just send an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the Housethefworks.com Homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight is longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder. From exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before or you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…sk-road-rage.mp3	Road Rage: GRRRR!!!	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/road-rage-grrrr	About half of all people experience rage on a daily basis when they get behind the wheel. What is it about driving that ticks us off so badly?	About half of all people experience rage on a daily basis when they get behind the wheel. What is it about driving that ticks us off so badly?	Thu, 23 Jul 2015 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=204, tm_isdst=0)	50291845	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transaction against thousands of compliance controls? Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there eating some soup and crackers, which means this is stuffy Schneff. Yeah. Jerry's following too close. Well, she's sitting down at the desk, but it's okay. It's dangerous to eat soup and crackers right on someone's bumper. Right. You could set somebody off, and they may go crazy on you and shoot you. That's right. I would like to just, right off the bat, say that in Chuck's book, Driving, there are three kinds of drivers. Okay? I thought about this. There are good drivers. Okay, that's me. Which are generally just capable, confident. You make mistakes, but you're just in control of your vehicle. Defensive driving, that's me. There are bad drivers. That's me. Nervous drivers. Have you ever been in a car with someone that just doesn't feel confident behind it? No, this is not me. That's the worst. It's scary. Sure. It's not the worst, actually. That's coming. Okay. But also, people who are just in their own. Like I say, they have their heads up, their fannies. I say that a lot in traffic. Get your head out of your fanny. Right? So that counts as a bad driver, just in your own world, basically not even thinking that there are other people around you. That's still the second one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm not number two. And then the third is jerks. That's me. And I think we can reach people in the first two categories with this read of this podcast. Yeah, you can't reach jerks. I don't know, man, because I definitely consider myself a jerk. In traffic, you can't reach jerks. And this reached me in a lot of ways. Well, then you're not a jerk, because jerks are ones who feel completely justified to get up in front of someone and slam on the brakes as punishment. That is a jerk. So I wouldn't slam on my brakes. That's just stupid and juvenile. But I would go around somebody who cut me off and maybe cut them off. Really? Which would make me a jerk. Right. That makes you a dangerous driver. Okay, well, I agree. And I realized that being a dangerous driver is a really stupid, dumb thing to do. And this article, I was already on the road. Yummy hates the way I drive a lot of times, right. So she's got me on a short leash as far as driving goes. And so I'm already in the mindset. But then reading this article helped drive it home even further. Like, yes, this is really stupid. The thing that the light bulb that went on over my head was like, if you drive aggressively, it's bad enough. Right. It can be dangerous. It just takes a very stressful situation. It makes it worse for yourself and everybody. Yeah. But then one thing I hadn't considered is you might run afoul of somebody who is like a genuine psychopath that will run you off the road and kill you. Yeah. Pull a weapon on you and try and shoot you. Right. There's a video, a cellphone video of a guy who was driving, and there was a guy, road raging next to him or whatever, and the guy was just filming him. And in the film, the guy pulls out a gun. Wow. And all of a sudden, a puff of gray smoke comes out of the end of the gun that's being pointed at the guy shooting the video who is driving in the other car that's been fired. Unless that gun just burped. Right. That guy was a doctor in Kentucky, the guy who shot at the other dude. So you never know who you're going to run afoul of. And that was one thing I hadn't considered that now I'm like, oh, yeah, I should probably add this to the pile of reasons why I shouldn't drive like a jerk. Well, and here's my caveat. Here is I think that any of those three drivers I described, you can be any of those, given certain circumstances on any given day. Sure. But what I mean by jerks are people that are just out of the car. They're jerks. Personality wise, they are jerks. Right. And that's just who you are. And that's not who you are. Thanks, man. I was just about to put you on the spot, but you took the initiative. How about that? So this is written by Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff, who ironically, does not have a driver's license. No, he doesn't drive. But you can tell that Strickland wrote this because he talks a lot early on about how dangerous and stressful driving is and how basically you could sort of extrapolate you're a fool if you drive a car. Pretty much, yeah. That's why I don't right. And road rage. What we're talking about here is of a fairly recent providence, which means it's kind of one of those, like, since cars have been around. Yeah, but even more recent than that, as far as I can tell, they've traced the origin of the term back to only 1988. And it didn't really become like a nationally renowned thing until the there was this idea that there was an epidemic of road rage going on. I think a lot of people still suspect that there's plenty of road rage, but you don't hear the word like epidemic used any longer as much. I think now everybody just calls it driving. Yeah. But it's also contextually bound. Right. There's not like a strict definition of it. No, but you can't have road rage without having a car. And more and more I looked into this more and more, I realized that road rage is not you can't just extrapolate it onto other conditions. It is a very unique, very specific type of mental malady, basically. Yeah, agreed. Because people behave in their car and we see this over and over when they talk to psychological experts or psychologists that you behave in your car much differently. Like the things you would do in a car. Right. You would not think of doing like in an elevator. Yeah. The car bestows on you, a sense of not invincibility. But there's a little bit you can see the other person, but there's a barrier between that person that gives you the confidence and the arrogance to be like, here's my middle finger. Whereas, like you said, if you were in an elevator with somebody, you would not do the same thing. I said floor too, get your head out of your face, middle finger. Right. So the car sets you up for a certain sort of psychological aggressiveness. It's become okay. But it's also when you're in a car, you're almost always plopped into a set of stressful circumstances. And so all of this together leads to the potential for road rage to just kick in. Yeah, well, there's someone and boy, what a name. Doctor Leon James studies this a lot, and he is even known as doctor driving because he has been an expert witness to Congress on traffic psychology. That's all it takes to get a name like doctor driving. I bet he never gets honked out with that vanity plate in traffic after driving. So he believes, and I tend to agree with him, that one of the big causes of road rage isn't too many people or traffic or whatever, but the way our culture views aggressive driving. And he pointed out that children who see their parents are nice and sweet folks. When they get in a car, they see them driving aggressively and yelling things and saying things. And this brings kids up with this idea that, wait a minute, when I'm in this weird tin can on four wheels, or when my parents are their personality changes. Yeah. I get to flip the bird at people. Yeah. And it's fine. You can yell, scream and cuss. We would never do that in real life. Right. So children see this and then it becomes or if you just watch TV or movies, aggressive driving is the norm. Yes. Have you ever seen the Transporter? Yeah. Or Bullet? Yeah. Or Fast and Furious? Twelve. Or the best car chase ever. Bluff brothers. That's a tough one. No, that's it. That's the one that's tough. That's the one. Fridge Connection. Oh, Ronan, go to sleep now. Better than the Blues Brothers. Are you kidding? There's some great car chases. So you have children seeing their parents acting hostile and aggressively in the car, learning that, right? Yes. You have, like you said, fast driving being glorified to a certain degree. Sure. And then also it's married with this idea that was around for a very long time. Our friend Sigmund Freud came up with this, that if you have some sort of base emotion like anger or whatever, it should be vented. Yeah. And that's not the case. They're finding. There's this thing called catharsis theory that basically is what I just said, that if you're frustrated, you just shout and bang on your steering wheel and you'll feel better. And studies have found that, no, actually you're just practicing to be a better at being aggressive in real life. Right. And that supposedly the best way to do it, is just ruminate on it, just basically sulk until it goes away. Or meditate. Sure. A couple of other things that come into play are, especially here in the United States, a tendency to not back down because that's cowardly. We talked to Stan Firm and a sense of justice. That's a big one for me. Well, plus, also all of that is psychological. You can take it even further down to the neurological and biological levels where when you are in a situation where you perceive that you are being encroached upon or threatened or something like that, your Fight or flight syndrome is going to kick in. True. And you're going to react badly. You're going to have the opportunity to feel aggressive because, again, your flight aspect is probably diminished because you feel protected and separated from that driver by your car and their car. Yeah. Like, this is my area. So fight is probably going to be the one that kicks in the most. Right. And when that happens, anger kicks in. And anger, as this article puts us, a very seductive emotion. Yeah. That adrenaline. It might not feel good in the moment, but adrenaline, it's a rush. And yes, it is seductive. People, I don't know if they seek it out, but when it happens, it's not like that felt bad. No. You're like, I feel like a million bucks. I'm going to go tell my boss what's what. And if you're kind of getting that, like, this seems like something of a hodge podge or a kitchen sink of pop psychology. It is. It very much is. Yeah. But I think one of the things that has kind of been pushed to the wayside is the idea that road rage is made up by the media or that it is just nothing but pop psychology. It does appear to be a real thing. Sure. It's very situational and context specific, and yet, because it isn't fully understood all of the mechanisms and processes, there's a lot of room for morning talk show host to interview fraudulent experts on it, and then that become factor theory or whatever. Yeah. My advice is to not watch those shows ever, unless we're on it. And two, if you need proof, look around. Drive in a big city one day and just do that for an hour right. And you will witness some kind of road rage. Well, I read this article from the late 90s by this, I think, a sociologist or something. He was like, this is completely fabricated road rage epidemic. Road rage itself doesn't exist by this guy. And the person who interviewed the guy went about just totally disassembling his argument. He was like, strictly and he didn't drive, rode a train. Admitted, he'd never experienced road rage or what it must be like, or what people are saying is road rage, and he was just sure it didn't exist. Sort of dope. He did back it up a little bit with police reports and all that stuff. But no, road rage definitely does exist. Yes, it happens. So let's take a break, Chuckers, before we go on, because I'm getting excited and I need to call him out. Okay. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? Now you're making smarter decisions faster, operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the award winning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org, which is out now. Yeah. Listed in as host, Veritude de Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. All right, I'm feeling calm. All right, good. Let's talk a little bit about just what goes on. In a typical incident, what you're looking at is usually, almost always an escalation, a trigger and an escalation in aggressive action. Right. One person does something, someone else does something back, like a punishment, and it escalates from there. Hopefully not too much, but like you said, it can lead to murder. Well, yeah, man. There's a guy out there who's called the road rage Killer has apparently killed multiple people, including this guy, Timothy Davison, who was chased for 15 miles in Maryland, through Maryland and Pennsylvania crazy. Before the road rage killer forced him off the road and then got out and shot him to death while he was in his car. This person probably thinks they're making the roads a safer place. Right. I think they're also just a serial killer who has an unusual Mo. That too. So doctor. James. Doctor driving. Excuse me. He identified a bunch of aspects of driving that can contribute to this, and they all make sense. One is immobility because you're stuck there. If you're at home and you're stressed out, you can go take a jog or something or go hit the boxing bag, which has again, been discounted the heavy bag. And when you're behind the wheel of a car, you can't do that stuff unless you have a speed bag, like hanging in the driver's seat. Then similarly, you're also feeling a sense of constriction. Right. Like you're on the road and it's the open road and it's a big road, but I mean, really, it's just several feet across. You got to stay on it. Yeah, you have to stay on it. You're boxed in. So that makes sense. Lack of control. Even if you are one of the good drivers, like I mentioned, in control of your vehicle, you cannot predict or have any control over the drivers around you or traffic or construction or weather or anything else that can add up to a credit commute. Right. And what's more, you don't have the option of just abandoning your car when traffic gets bad, so you are stuck. Oh, you can't if you're Michael Douglas and falling down. Right. But that's what made the act so radical and kicked off and established his character. He just leaves his car in traffic. People don't do that. Which contributes further to that lack of control. You're stuck there whether you like it or not, unless you want to give up your car. That's right. For a lot of people, like, the car is the most expensive position they own and so they're not going to abandon it. So that, to me, the lack of control that is probably the most deaconed situation or aspect of driving that can lead to aggression and hostility and stress. If you need to be somewhere and you left in time and you made sure that you got up early and you got out there and everything's great on your end, but then you pull right into traffic and you know you're going to be late. Well, that's not fair. It's unjust. That's right. And it's everyone else in front of you's fault. That's right. Territoriality is a big one. Like I said earlier, this is our space, and if you infringe upon that space, there's trouble. Denial and loss of objectivity is a pretty obvious one because no one is never your fault. Right? Yeah. It's not you, it's the other jerk. Yeah. Although that's not true for me. In case I do a bonehead move or when that happens, I'm always very quick to say I'm sorry, but I will get very mad if they continue to yell at me. If I'm like. Oh, I'm sorry about that. That was my fault. Right. And then they're still yelling at me. Oh, yeah. They've got half a second. Right. Then I'm like, they have a half a second to accept your apology or ignore it if they escalate. Right, yeah. What do you want to put me in stocks and flog me? Right. I'm saying I'm sorry here. And I do the same thing, Chuck, if I do something stupid, like almost every time, I'll be like, Sorry. Throw the hand up. Sure. Just all fingers sticking up. Yeah. Right. Unpredictability. You never know what's going to happen out there, so that can make it stressful if you're not confident. Yeah. Especially if you're not confident. I imagine that's a terrible way to drive. And then ambiguity. I never really thought about that. But Strickland points out there is no mutually agreed upon way to say you're sorry. I've always kind of thought it was throw the hand up. A nod the hand. And I think people are perceptive enough to tell when you're sarcastically waving, like when somebody wouldn't let you in even though you had your blinker on. And finally you're like, I'm forcing my way in front of you. Yeah. And then you give them that sarcastic wave, like, thanks so much, I'm in front of you even though you didn't want me to. I think people can distinguish between that wave and, like a sorry shoulders hunched, sorry kind of or the appreciated wave is a great one. You're up. Sure. You're waving, you're turning about in your seat. Maybe you turn your windshield wipers on and a salute to the people. Yeah. You can tell the difference. Yeah. Let someone over. I found more and more people intentionally don't let people in. If someone's like, oh, I missed my turn. Such a jerk, can I get in there? And people like, what kind of psychopath? What kind of sociopath? Well, it's the same thing. It just depends on whether you no, I should let you in, but I'm not going to do it. The roads are lousy with those people. You know what? When I see somebody else do that. I'm just like I'll be like, you piece of garbage, to the person who wouldn't let the other person in. But then every once in a while, and I'm really shocked and dismayed when this happens, like, somebody will be trying to go ahead of me and I know they're going to get in front of me. And I'll look down and I didn't realize it, but I've been accelerating rather than just going the same speed I was before. Unconsciously, I'm like, oh, you're not getting in front of me. So I'm like speeding up and it's just such a horrible thing to do. When I realize it, I'll stop and let them go or whatever. But yeah, it's almost unconscious sometimes. Some people, you can tell that it's very much conscious. They're just not letting the person in. But I think sometimes it's also unconscious people don't want to be behind somebody. Yeah. And I'll also point out, too, that you should let people over and stuff just to be nice and pay it forward. Yeah. Why is that so funny? You never heard that term makes it funny. Oh, I didn't even see that movie. That's a real term. You wouldn't use that term if you've seen the movie. No, but sometimes if someone has missed their turn and they're blocking an entire row of traffic that is trying to turn, sometimes you just got to be like, you missed your turn. Take the right, turn around and start over right. Like there's 40 people behind you that didn't miss their turn trying to take that right, man. Totally agreed. And those people are like, no, I'm just going to sit here, or blocking the box at an intersection. Yeah, you just set everybody back. Big fines in New York City, not Atlanta. It's a free for all here in Atlanta. Anybody can pull into an intersection anytime and block as much traffic as they want. The traffic planners are partially responsible for this. Chuck, there are plenty of dumb lights out there and dumb intersection systems, sure, that need to be improved. But one rule is you don't block the box. If everybody agrees not to block the box, then traffic will actually move a lot faster for everybody. Yeah, well, actually take a step back. The real rule is don't enter an intersection if you cannot get completely through the intersection. Well, that's the thing. Don't block the box. Yeah, but sometimes people think like, oh, well, I think I see traffic moving. I'll just go ahead and get out there. Then that light turns and then you're sitting in there like a jerk. What we need is just driverless cars do the thinking for us or people without their heads up their fannies. All right. So is it road rage? Is it aggressive driving? It's hard to determine that because you ask 100 people and you're going to get 100 different answers. Like some people say, like, no driving 40 and a 30 is fine. That's not aggressive. Yeah. Supposedly 47% of Americans consider driving 10 miles an hour or more over the speed limit to be a type of aggressive driving. That's part of the problem, is you have wildly different opinions on what aggressive driving is. Right. Not only do you have different opinions on what aggressive driving is, even if people all agree tailing somebody or following way too closely is aggressive driving, I think pretty much everyone can agree on that. There's still no quantifiable way to say that. Is it like 3ft? Is it a car length? Well, can you judge a car length? Like, there are actual laws that say the amount of car lengths you're supposed to be behind someone. How many? Well, it depends on your state. What state? Georgia. Well, I haven't taken the driver's test 30 something years, but if I remember, like, they teach you in driver's ed, like, two car lengths is safe unless it's raining, and then you're supposed to increase it by one. But I mean, there are rules, okay? It's not just indeterminate. People don't follow them. No, but that's where you'll get a ticket if you rear end someone. Right, once you rear end somebody. But people very rarely get pulled over just for following closely. Of course. Not unless you're following a cop too closely. Okay, agreed. There's no real definition necessarily of road rage, although Strickland points out that a lot of people say what would constitute aggressive driving is road rage. Right. And he kind of sticks to the definition of road rage is when aggressive driving triggers a situation where people are committing acts of violence against one another, either using their cars or because their cars are around their cars. Yeah, I guess my definition would be more than one interaction, like one person cutting someone off and flipping a bird. Not nice, but I don't know if that's road rage. But if then that person reacts to them back and you have a situation going on between two people, that's road rage. To me. My definition of road rage is when something just sets you off and you go with it. Even if the person doesn't see you and you're not trying to get the person to see you. But you're pounding on your steering wheel because somebody cut you off or they didn't use their blinker. Or they're sitting there on their cell phone at a green light or something like that. And that moment of basically temporary insanity, that can just be a one off to me. It doesn't even have to necessarily overtly include two people. It can be one person being set off by the behavior of another person. That, to me, is road rage. Yeah, I've gotten much worse, I have to admit, about when the light turns green, it used to be just a politely, like someone doesn't notice just a little beep the light screen. But now the person is invariably looking down at their phone. And I don't just do a kind little beep anymore. I give them a hawk. And the other day, oh, man, I had a lady sitting at the green light on her phone texting. I can see her. I hawked good at her. She flipped me off and continued like, I'm going to finish my text. Oh, my God. Oh, dude. I had to channel every Cat Stephen song on the planet running through my head to not go nuts. Yeah, because I fall into the trap, too. I'm not perfect. I was so angry at the injustice of her being like, no, I know it's green. Yeah. Shut up. I'm going to finish this text. Or similarly, I'll notice people who are not quite that hostile, but you'll beep and they'll look up and they'll see like, oh, it's green. And then they start to do both. They're still on their phone, but then they start to drive, but they're going, like, a half a mile an hour. And it's not that much better than flipping you off and sitting there, continuing to text. At least that lady knew where she stood. Yeah. Maybe I should give her credit for just being herself. Yeah. All right. So doctor driving, he divides aggressive driving up into three areas that I think are pretty emblematic of what you see every day. There's impatience and inattentiveness, which is sort of what I was talking about earlier. You're rolling through stop signs. You're blocking the box. You're sitting there on your cell phone. You're speeding. You have your head up your fanny or your other excuses. I'm super late. I'm sorry, but I'm really late. Yeah. These are almost two opposite sides of the same coin, but they constitute doctor driving, lowest level of aggressive driving, or road rage, depending on your definition. Don't you find that a little disconcerting that after all these years, we still don't have a distinct definition for road rage? And if there's a guy named doctor driving at the vanguard of the study of this yeah, all right. It escalates into number two, which is a power struggle. And this is a big deal. This is when you are flipping someone off, they're flipping you off. You've rolled your window down. You're making that eye contact that they don't recommend you make. Right. I'm much more passive aggressive. I never make the eye contact. Right. Do you, like, scratch the side of your face with just your middle finger? No, I don't do that. I don't flip anyone. The bird. I'm just like you never know who that person is. I don't want to have someone run me off the road and try and kill me, basically. Right. See, that never even occurred to me. And I'm a passive aggressive Southerner. Got you. That's really probably why tailgating people, cutting them off, acts of retaliation. And basically, he says that this is people with an unhealthy mentality. When you think that you're the target of. Someone else. Like, that person is after me, which can be the case. That happens to me a lot. Like, anyone who's driving slow in front of me in the fast lane is purposefully not getting over because they don't feel like they have to. And it doesn't matter that I'm behind them. They don't have to do it. They don't care. They're right to be in the fast lane just as much as mine, even though they're driving slower. That is one of the greatest challenges in my entire life, is just dealing with the left lane. Yeah, that's one of your big peas. You know, Georgia has a law now where you can be fined for driving slow in the fast lane. Yeah, we actually talked about that on an episode, and I think we were talking it up and we got some mail from people like, that's a ridiculous dangerous law. I'm like, no, that's a great law. Yeah. Our response to all of them were, get out of the left lane. Problem solved. So that one's mine where it's like, I have to remember there's nothing personal. And even if that guy is like, well, it's my civic right to be in the fast lane to jerk. It has nothing to do with me. The person doesn't know me. It's not anything to do with my day. And I was reading this thing in Pacific Standard. Did you read the article? Yeah. It's called the Psychology and Biology of Road Rage. And they were talking about how potentially one of the things that people with road rage have is called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, where you basically disproportionately rage toward a stimulus. Right? Yeah. To any given stimulus. So they were saying, like, I got the impression it's a bit of a stretch. They were saying that people with IED, it doesn't necessarily mean that if you have road rage, you have IED. But they were saying that road rage could be a symptom of IED. But the thing that I got that's part of this Intermittent Explosive Disorder, the thing that stuck out to me was hostile attribution bias. Yes. That seems to come up a lot in road rage. Yeah. And I think I guarantee you that's tied to narcissistic Personality disorder. Oh, good. It just sort of goes hand in hand. Yeah. Basically, like, the injury or threat is not an accident. It is purposeful and personal. Right, but that's what I'm saying. When somebody's driving fast in front of me, me being a narcissist, apparently, I have to say, like, whatever. I can just go around them. It doesn't matter. Even if they are like, I know who you are. I know in front of it really changes nothing. Now, we're still going 70, 80 miles an hour down the highway in metal boxes, which means safety first, no matter what. Yes. Do you get up in front of them and then do the old douse them with your windshield wiper fluid? No. I don't do that. I've seen people do that before. Like, all right, I guess I got to turn on my wipers for a second. Now, I've never taken that as a hostile act, although I'm sure people do it's. The thing I've seen people do that someone will cut you off and they'll get in front on the highway and squirt their because it'll blow over the car at a high speed. Yes, I know what you mean. Children basically acting like children. I have gotten to the point now. I've gotten way better. Chuck I really have learned to just keep my aggressive driving in check. Yeah. And just let it go, and I'll still be a spark there. But I've gotten to a point where I can be like, it doesn't matter. Just go around them. Bite your lip right until it bleeds, until the teeth work their way all the way through. I see you come in the mornings, you're just bleeding bloody in the face. But if it's really bad, if somebody is clearly just being, like, an arrogant jerk, like, this is my fast lane, too. My taxes pay for this. I don't have to get around you. And it's a real thing. I've got this thing now. Whereas I'm passing them, pass them slowly and calmly, and everything is safe, but I'll just be, like, staring forward with this huge over bite, like, clear the slack job. Yoga. Exactly. And it works really great, and it feels pretty good to me, too. It feels more clever than, like, shooting someone. The bird. Yeah. Anyone can throw out a middle finger. Sure. Unless I guess you don't have the middle finger. That's the problem. So the final bit, the final category is recklessness and road rage. And that's when it escalates to full on violence. Like, I can use my car as a weapon or I have a weapon. Yeah. And the same Pacific Standard article referenced an article in the sexy journal accident Analysis and Prevention. Yeah. From Harvard. They found that the presence of a gun increases road raging, aggressive driving behavior. Even if the person doesn't pull it out, just knowing it's in the glove compartment makes them more likely to be hostile. Yeah. It says they're more likely to make obscene gestures at motorists and follow aggressively behind other cars. And they're saying, does that mean that you have a gun? You are going to drive more aggressively. They can't say that, of course. Or if you're an aggressive driver, you're just more likely to be the same type of person. Haven't gone right. Exactly. Interesting study, though, for sure. And that same guy, actually what's his name? Or this other dude, emil Kakaro or Kakaro. He's a professor, probably. Kakaro. Kakaro. He's a professor at University of Chicago. And he makes a great point. His advice is don't assume the other person is like you. Yeah. They may be crazy. Don't assume they don't have a gun. Don't assume that they're rational and reasonable and that it can stop escalating at some point. Yeah, that's what I tell Emily all the time. I'm like, I trust you, but you don't know, if you flick someone off, that may be it for you. And that would really be upsetting if I lost you to road rage because you hung some crazy guy bird. Seriously, like, that's one of the more sensible ways to die, don't you say? Yes. Okay. Which leads definitely up there, which leads to preventing road rage. Chuck, which we're going to talk about right after this. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the award winning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org, which is out now. Yeah. Listed in as host, Barrette A. Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Josh, we've vented a lot here today. I know. Even though they say that's not healthy. No. I do feel a catharsis, though. Boy, pair this with our traffic podcast and that's driving goodness. That was the breaking bubble. Yes, the breaking bubble. So how can you avoid road rage? Everyone makes mistakes behind the wheel. And actually, there was a little sidebar in here about these guys that came up with a vehicle signaling system to say, I'm sorry. It's not a bad idea. No, because horns, depending on the horn in your car, it can sound aggressive itself even when you do not mean it that way. Yes. Even the tap tap the wrong horn sounds like, honk honk. Sure. Yeah. That wouldn't be a bad idea to have a little light that pops up that says sorry, and then if they don't forgive you, another one that pops up. I said I was sorry. One last chance. But people will figure out how to use those sarcastically, like cutting someone off and slamming on the brakes while flashing. I'm sorry. Someone would use it like that. I would have three lights. One that says, I'm sorry, two that said I just said I was sorry, and three that says, you're dead to me. And then they would have one that says, I don't care. But then, like, the to me would burn out without you knowing it. It would just say you're dead. Yeah. Oh, God. The road rage killer. All right, so everyone makes mistakes. Oh, hold on. I did read an article about, I think, a Ford executive who's in charge of the horn oh, really? Like trying to figure out how to make different types of horns. So, like, in Europe, apparently they have horns available to them. Yeah. That wasn't just Europe. That was Europe in 1910 that you just did. So, what are you saying? It can become like when you go to buy a car, you say, I want this kind of horn. Yeah. Or it comes equipped with a horn that has different functions and capabilities for different situations. That's a great idea. Like, supposedly Tesla has one that's, like, muted for use with pedestrians so you don't scare the bejesus out of them. Yeah, sure. So there's other ones, like a chirping one that's supposed to be friendlier. Right. And then there's the semi truck air horn which you can get it put in your car. That liquefies your ear canal. Yes. My problem is, with rental cars, their horns are always lame. Oh, yeah. They're tiny. Like, not even much of a sound. Supposedly, Hyundai released the Sonata and it was a great car. But everybody hated the horn because they found it to be too wimpy. They had to rerelease it with a better horn. I believe it. Do you remember? Did you watch a little Miss Sunshine? No, I never saw it. It's a good movie. There's a running gag that their old beat up VW van has a horn that will go off occasionally, just without but it sounded exactly like my old VW Beetle had a horn that was, like, cut in and out. And it would first time, whenever I took a hard left turn, it would go off well. But it wasn't allowed. It was just like it sounded like a dying person gasping for air. A death rattle. Yeah, a death rattle horn. That's a good movie. You should check that out. Death rattle? Well, that death rattle two and three and then Little Sunshine. Got you. You should check out Pay it Forward to see why you should stop saying pay it forward. I have no desire. All right, so everyone makes mistakes back to that. But you can avoid this escalation in conflict if a, you don't do the eye contact deal. They say that's just like a wild animal. They'll look them in the eyes. Yeah. Wait, I thought they said do look them in the eyes to stare them down. No, I think it depends on what animal yeah, all right. Like, if it's a rat, stare it down. Okay. But it's a sign of aggression. You pull up someone and you look them hard in the eye, you're saying you're on. Yeah, exactly. Let's rumble. Keep control of your temper. That's a no brainer, someone. It is a no brainer. But that's tough to do. It is to that situation. It is. Especially if your justice bells are ringing like mine do. Right. Like, that person shouldn't get away with us. Right. Lady in front of me should not have gotten away with that. Right. All right. They have done surveys even, that showed that drivers don't think that. They think they're being assertive and not aggressive. So basically, there can be a lot of mixed communication, and your goal is to just I don't care what they're doing. I'm not going to match what they're doing. Right. It's also called being the bigger person. Yeah. Just let it go. Don't let them make you hit the gas pedal. Just think about all the gas you'll save by not driving aggressively in return. Yeah. And Strickland points out that will seem unnatural to you even to just say, you know what? They're driving like that. It's not my problem. They're a sad, angry person. Well, he also points out that they're probably under as much stress as you are. Yeah. They may be late because apparently in follow ups to aggressive driving incidents and road rage incidents, people frequently say they were under stress outside of their car already. Work stress, life stress, that kind of stuff. Right. So when you carry that into the extraordinarily stressful, unnatural situation of driving a car, especially in traffic, you're just already set up for it. Yes. So if you step back and think maybe that person is having a rough time in their life, it will make it easier for you to just let it go. Yeah. And be the bigger person. Yeah. It's a win win, and we've all been there, and I think you can admit, like, if you're just having a great day and everything's coming up Josh, you're probably much more laid back behind the wheel. Sure. But if you're super uptight about something, I think all of us fall into that trap. Yeah. So there are steps you can take to prevent falling into that trap. There's one in here that cracks me up, but it's totally true. Listening to relaxing music. I listen to easy listening music, like, basically Radio Lobotomy, and it actually helps quite a bit. Really? Yeah. He says, concentrate on breathing. I can't do that. Yeah. I get bored anytime I try to just focus on my breathing. Yeah. You're either good at that or you're not. Right. So I've opted for relaxing music instead. He recommends to get enough sleep. I guess that makes sense. Here's one that's you have to give yourself plenty of time to where you're going. Sure. Don't leave late and expect to just have a pleasurable ride. Right. You just can't you expect the worst. And if you show up five minutes early, whatever, that's fine. People love punctual people. That's nice, right? If it's out of your hands, though, then you should say, okay, I'm going to be like, not, oh, God, I need to cut through all this. Which is kind of like you me is rolling on the ground laughing right now, hearing me say that. Yeah. Because I'm like, we have to go to the airport. First of all, we have to leave two and a half hours before our flight, and I have to drive like a maniac on the way to get there, even if we have plenty of time, because there's a flight. Sure. You got a deadline. Yes. You don't want to miss that flight. Nope. I get it. I get super stressed when I know I have to fly that day. Yeah, because you don't know. You can look at the traffic map, but sometimes it feels like you can't leave early enough. Right. I've actually gotten a lot more relaxed on that, too. Now think about it. You meet, like, this little walking volume for me, right? She told me, chilled me out in traffic. She chilled me out about missing a flight and all that stuff. So, yeah, I have chilled out tremendously. I still do drive aggressively sometimes. That's right. I'm a work in progress, Chuck. I do too, my friend. It happens. And we've already talked about avoiding venting that can actually increase your sense of danger and frustration. Instead of calming you down and they're screaming and yelling. That's really not alleviating. Anything I do know, I can tell you afterwards, whenever I do it, I feel terrible about myself. I was just like, why don't you just let that go? Now you look like a jackass to anybody who saw you, like, going and you feel like a jackass, too, don't you? Yes, I do. That's what I say to myself. So let's talk a few statistics here to close, shall we? Oh, wait. Doctor driving does point out one thing that I think is probably right. What's that? One of the best ways to deal with road rage, to prevent road rage, is to teach little kids from an early age how to drive safely, how to avoid road rage, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I remember going to Safety City. Did you ever go to Safety City? Have you ever heard of it? Never heard of it. It might have just been, like an Ohio thing, but we had Dangerous City. Nice. That sounds kind of fun. Yeah, Safety City was the opposite of that. There were dangers there, but it was all like plastic, miniature stuff. So there's a jail in the center of town. What is it? It's like a tiny city with, like, streets and sidewalks and all that stuff, and then buildings and all that. And then you're on your Big Wheel riding around learning what traffic laws are like. Really? So it's to teach kids how to drive? Yes. But also how to cross the street safely, all that stuff. But you learn about the danger of walking out in front of a car by being a car yourself and having one of your peers walk out in front of you. And like the first couple of times you try to run them down, but then you learn like, no, that's not cool because they send you to jail. Was that part of school? I don't remember what it was. I was pretty young. I just remember my dad taking me to it being like a decent drive away from our home. Yeah. So I'm not exactly sure where it was when I went to it. I just remember I got to bring my Big Wheel and I thought it was pretty great. That's awesome. Yeah. It's funny to think about parents and it still happens today, but it seems like in the stuff, what was going on in the car. Oh, man. Far from teaching experience. Yeah. We were looking at old child safety seats. They looked like they were worse than nothing. Like this metal bar that would just cut you in two if you hit it fast enough. I mean, these things couldn't have been safe. Like an old rusty spring, like pointed at your temple. Yeah. Just bad news. Yes. I mistakenly flew in on this last tour to Baltimore instead of Washington, DC. So I had to take a cab. I was going to take like a bus and a train that was like, no, I'm running late, I need to get in a cab. And I got in a cab to go from Baltimore to DC. And it was the grumpiest, oldest cab driver I've ever met in my life. This guy was in his mid seventies and immediately started honking at the cab in front of him at the airport. They do that and dude, it was the perfect guy for what I needed because he drove like a bat out of Hades to get me there on time. And it was comical and scary and awesome. Yeah, awesome. Do you have your seatbelt on? Yes. People who don't put their seatbelt on because they're in a cab, it's like, use your brain. Yes. I used to not wear much in the back seat, but I've gotten better about that. You need to yes. I always figure, like, I'll just hit the seat in front of me, right? Maybe so. But you might go flying over the seat and kick the person in the front seat to death. Yeah. It's not just you kicking to death. Yeah. Can we talk stats? Yeah. You dug out this cities that are the most courteous and least courteous. Last year Auto Vantage survey, they did one in 2009 and they did one in 2014. And this varies from year to year, but in 2014, they listed Houston texas, our own Atlanta number two lease courteous, baltimore, DC. And Boston as Lease courteous. Right. And that changed from 2009, which was new York, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta. The only holdover was Atlanta and Minneapolis, which surprises me. Yeah. And then how the mighty have fallen. Baltimore in 2009 was the third most courteous. In 2014, it was the third least courteous out of, like, 25 major cities. It makes me wonder what kind of study this is, to be honest. So they surveyed 2500 drivers who drive in rush hour traffic at least three times a week and then ask them questions that pertain to aggressive driving and driving courtesy. Not terrible. Yeah, it was a phone survey. Each participant spent about six minutes or whatever. But it's about as legitimate as these kind of things get because it's the study of road rage and apparently no one's serious about it. No doctor driving. And he can't even be serious enough to just call himself Dr. James. Well, he used to be Mr. Driving, so he's definitely taking a little more serious. He went back to school most courtesy cities last year. Where Portland is number one. Pittsburgh, St. Louis. But Portland was also number one in 2009. Yeah, so they're chill people out there. That's been my experience. Portland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco and Charlotte, North Carolina. It's the most courtesous cities. How about that? You got anything else? No. One thing I did see, though, I was surprised, strickland sites study that found that women and men are pretty close in aggressive driving behaviors, self reported aggressive driving, and road rage experiences. It's like 54% of men, but 44% of women. Yeah. I would have guessed the disparity would have been a little more, but apparently road rage strikes both genders equally. I definitely see angry women out there and angry dudes. It's both. Yeah. So that's road rage, dude. If you guys want to know even more about roadbridge, type those words into the search barhousedoforce.com. And since I said search bar is time for listener mail. Yeah. And if we didn't impart it. Settle down out there. It's dangerous. Yeah. We're all trying to get by here. Everybody's got their own life stresses that they're bringing to the road. They didn't mean it to you personally, so don't take it personally. Yeah. Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I've seen her drive. Oh, yeah. I've never seen Jerry drive. Is she like, an aggressive driver? No. Jerry drives very safely. I don't remember. She takes crazy routes. I remember that, like, I've cut through this parking lot because this light stinks. Really? Yeah. The commute route, she had mastered it from bucket. I will do that, too. Oh, yeah, me too. All right, I'm going to call this wow signal from a pro. Cool. Hey, guys, I'm a radio astronomer. Right. Actually, my subfield is radio transient. I e. Radio signals detected once and never again. Wait, is this person going to debunk the wow. Signal right here. No, it's actually a nice email. Okay, good. I felt like I had to write in about the wow. Signal. I'm really glad I listened to the episode. She almost didn't, because you guys really did a great job nicely balancing the science and speculation. So thank you. And when I get asked in the future, I'll be sure to refer people to your wonderful coverage. Well, thank you. I thought I'd give a few more details on it if you're interested on the it might be real side of things. It's also worth mentioning that the Big Ear Telescope used to look at two points on the sky at the same time, separated by a small distance, like two separate pixels. The wow. Signal was detected in one but not the other, which is another good indication that it might indeed be coming from space on the it might be nothing side. However, some recent work that I've done actually showed that some unexplainable signals that we detected at a radio telescope in Australia turned out to be coming from microwave ovens at the telescope site. Manmade signals can sometimes interfere with radio telescopes in ways we don't expect, so it's hard to know if something like that could have also produced the wow. Signal. It's hard to say either way. I don't have a strong opinion, to be honest. I mainly study things called fast radio bursts. But I just wanted to say great job, and thanks for making my job easier. Rock on. Thank you. Rock on. And that is from Emily Petrov, originally from Portland. Thank you, Emily. Oh, courteous driver. Probably now living in Melbourne. I don't know about Melbourne. Driving and moving to the Netherlands in January. If I pass my PhD defense in October. Oh, man. Good luck, Emily. Way to go. I hope to see you in the Netherlands in my mind. Got you. If you want to tell us that we did a fantastic job on something that you're an expert in, we would love to hear from you for a change. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S kpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshow. You can send us an email stuffpodcasterhousefworks.com. And in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our super dope home on the Web stuffyoto.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetoftworks.com. Hey, everybody. If you have extra space or maybe you travel a lot, you should consider hosting on Airbnb. Just think about all that extra income. You could contribute more to your retirement or pay for a big trip. And if the thing that's holding you back is that you're worried about your stuff, well, don't be. Airbnb gives you air cover for hosts, damage protection that's free every time you host. Learn more and host with peace of mind@airbnb.com. Aircoverforhosts. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-08-24-sysk-personality-tests-final.mp3	How Personality Tests Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-personality-tests-work	For millennia, we have tried to put human personalities into neat types, an effort psychology took up early in its history in an effort to legitimize itself. But is the idea of types – which all personality inventories are based on - flawed to begin with?	For millennia, we have tried to put human personalities into neat types, an effort psychology took up early in its history in an effort to legitimize itself. But is the idea of types – which all personality inventories are based on - flawed to begin with?	Thu, 24 Aug 2017 14:49:52 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=14, tm_min=49, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=236, tm_isdst=0)	54736012	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Gerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. A couple of itJs, I don't remember what I am. We've taken it before, how Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do you remember? Yeah, we had, like many companies do, as you'll see, when we were under Discovery's Tinder Wing, they paid for someone to come to our office and administer the Myers Briggs personality test at gunpoint. Yeah, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was in ENFP. I don't remember what I was. I'll probably say, like, three different things as we go through this one. Like, just looking at it again, I'm pretty sure I was in ENFP. Okay. He stands for PISCES, right? Or Pooper. Yeah. Let's see. Extroverted intuitive. Okay. What is the F stand for? Feeling Pooper. This is a spoiler. Yeah. Feeling Pooper. So what we're talking about, it sounds like we're saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said. The Myers Briggs type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have been a part of corporate America for more than probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that you've taken the Myersbriggs type inventory. For sure. Like, it's really widespread. Yeah, people love it. I saw something like 13% of companies in America use it. That's a lot. Yeah. Was it 89 of the Fortune 100 use it. Right. And then I saw another stat. It was from 2001, though, so I'm not sure how current it is. Well, 16 years old. Right. But they said that I think British companies, somewhere between 10% and 40% of British companies use them. All right. Who knows? It's a pretty wild guess, it sounds like. I wonder if they have their own no, the Myers Briggs test. They don't call it a test, as we'll see, but the test is worldwide. It's translated into tons of different languages. No, it's the Myersbriggs test and there's tons of knock offs. Oh, sure. There's tons of personality tests in general, which really is the larger umbrella the Myers Briggs test falls under, but it's probably the most famous of all time, at least as far as pop culture goes. Yeah. We're going to hit on everything from RoarShack to the Myers Briggs. Sure. But we're going to hit on them. But the Mvti definitely is more of the focus of this one because of its Ubiquity. Right. Because most people know it, and because it's one of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take potshots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure. It's fun. So categorizing one's personality is nothing new, and that's what these tests aim to do for various reasons, which we'll go over later. But going back and this is a Grabster article, correct? That's right. So you know it's good and Grabster was just our show in Toronto. Yeah, he was. For the second time, he stood up and did that victory shake. Did he do that? No, he did. I'm a big fan of that. That's old school. Oh, it is. It's a good way to go. It looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts and just having crossed the finish line, and you're doing that. So yeah, it's nothing new. Trying to categorize personalities way back in the day. I know. In our grave robbing live grave robbing episode, we talked about the four humors, and we talked about them before. Medical science was kind of a real thing. There was an early attempt. Yeah. They talked about the four fluids, the four humors, black, yellow, bile, phlegm and blood. And an imbalance in those will cause disease. But they were also this is something I didn't know. These are also linked to corresponding personality types, right? Yeah. So, like the word melancholy in English, it's an adaptation of the Greek words, I believe, for black bile. There it is. And melancholy personalities were associated with an overabundance of BLACKBILE. And basically you're melancholy. You're a depressed person or you're very reserved or quiet. And for thousands of years, people thought, he's got a lot of black bile. Yeah. That explains his personality. The other ones are pretty interesting, too. Like phlegmatic. Phlegmatic. I've heard flagmatic. Oh, really? I've seen it, too. So, like, when you cough something up, you call it flag. It depends. If it has a lot of extra chunks in it, it's flagged. Oh, gosh. But phlegmatic. I say phlegmatic. That's very laid back. Did you know that? Well, yeah, because I looked all these up. Okay. Because sanguine is one of my favorite words. And this is hypocrites, by the way. He kind of further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and what is it? Calrich. Yeah, calrick. Calrick is like irritable and short and terse and curt. Yes. But the thing is, there's something weird here. Right. If you are a thinking human being who is not in a vegetative state right now correct. And for all we know at this point in medical science, maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're probably thinking, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever met is just phlegmatic or just choleric or just sang wine, or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things. Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day, depending on how weird the day is. Sometimes I go through all four of those within the course of one happy hour. Sure. Okay. Right. And that's kind of the point here. And it's also the basis of any criticism from this moment in the podcast here on out is that this whole thing that started back with the four humors and continues on to this day in the guise of personality test is an attempt to take a human personality and say you're this, you're this one type. You're this type. This is your type. This is what you're like, right? Yeah. And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy, too jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that. Yeah, we'll get into all the criticisms, but that definitely is the leading criticism that is well, we'll save that. Okay. That was a tease. It was good tease. There's a phlegmatic one. All these classifications, though, that we talk about now, or most of them at least, are derived late at defeat of one man, one Carl Jung, who wrote a book called Psychological Types. How do you say it, though, in German? I don't know. Where is it? Let me see. There it is. I can't even begin to do it. Psychologish typing. It's not bad. It's so tiny. That was a problem. Yeah. I do ten point. I don't like the waste paper. Well, you know me. You do, like, 16 point times New Roman. I love paper, and I don't want to waste it, but I also have to do my job. Sure. Maybe I should go double sided, but then my highlighter gets in the way. Oh, yeah, it'd be a problem. Everything would be highlighted. You might as well just dip the whole page in yellow ink or something. Yeah, exactly. So, anyway, Young wrote this book, that book in 1921 in German, and had it translated to English a couple of years later. And he created these four categories sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Right. So those were his four. That kind of most of these modern tests are based on in some way or another. Yeah. And it's really almost impossible that I guess we could just save all the criticisms for the end and just pile them on. But it's really tough to talk about this stuff and not like, as you present one fact, talk about the problem with that fact as it relates to modern incarnation. What do you think we should do? Should we just save them, like you say? Because I can bite my time. Yeah, let's save them. Okay. And then you can just like I'm not going crop circle here. I'm just saying there's a lot wrong with this. But even before Yung, who created the concept of the modern concept, I should say personality types. And he created the idea of introvert and extrovert, which, say what you will about Yoong and a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and extraversion is so widely accepted inside and out of the field of psychology that if that were his only contribution to the field, that's enough to engrave it on your tombstone. For sure. Yeah. And each of those four psychological types he was talking about are modified by whether or not you are introverted or extroverted. Right. They all kind of work together to box you in. That was the main thing is how you approach life as introvert or extrovert and everything else is like a kind of a subsection of that or something. Yeah. And one of the issues with this and I don't think this is part of the criticism, but I was going to say, I thought we were saving them. This was based on his ideas. It wasn't like he had all this research and all this data. He was a deep thinker and he sat around and thought of these things. Right, exactly. And then he wrote entire books based on them. Yeah. But he's a very well respected psychoanalyst, and he was part of the early movement for psychoanalysis. With Freud. They were colleagues. Jung was much younger. But they eventually said, I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways. But as psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself. And if you want to know more about that background and the origin of psychoanalysis, go listen to our How PR Works, the live show. We talked a lot about that. But as this was going on and it was starting to kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a whole other movement, a parallel movement that said, you know what? We think all that's a little mushy. We like the idea of being able to quantify psychology. And so even before Young, there were guys like Alfred Bennett, who was one of the indirect fathers of the intelligence test, IQ test, a pair of researchers named Gray and Wheel. Right. And plenty of others who wanted to say, no, you can study psychology, you can study things like the human personality, and you can type a fire and you can add numbers, you can quantify this stuff. And in doing so, we will prove psychology as a science as well. So this whole movement to typify people and put them into convenient, almost numerical categories came out of this urgent need to establish a scientific basis for psychology. Yeah. And Young, he kind of laid the table for this. And many years later, although not that many, there was a woman named Catherine Cook Briggs, and she was working on this with her daughter, one Isabel Briggs Myers. I think you see where this is going. This is post World War II, when the women were kind of, for the first time, really going into the workforce in full and en masse. And so they thought, well, maybe we can put together some personality types to find out what kind of jobs these women might be suited for, what types of jobs they might enjoy. Right. So they started working together on this. And as legend has it, the mom, Catherine Briggs Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing and then saw Young's works and said, I got to start over. This is the stuff. She had already been working on a personality test. Yeah. But apparently, according to the legend, through her working to the fire, said, I'm starting from scratch because she was a voracious reader, especially of the psychology the new psychology books that were coming out of Europe. Right. She didn't read Young. She did well, eventually, but yeah. And then seems like kind of came along later. Well, yeah, there's kind of a weird discrepancy in the history and I don't know if it's just it hasn't been covered. Right. Or if there is a weird discrepancy, but supposedly she initiated it. And so it would have been contemporary or shortly after. Young's psychology or personality types was translated into English in 1923. But it was her daughter Isabel who really took it and ran with it because of World War Two and the need for women in the workplace. Correct. So they kind of kept some young stuff built on that kind of stripped some of it away. Most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff they might have thought that was a little too weird for the modern American workforce. So what they ended up coming up with was the MBTI Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Very famously. Yeah. And they had a publishing arrangement with one group I can't remember what they were called, but they thought it didn't do very well. And then in 1975, they went with another publisher, CPP. And they're the current publishers of the Myers Briggs type indicator. And since then, that's when it's Ubiquity, like, just really spread, was starting in the it's basically married to corporate America. Should we take a break? Sure. And go get married to corporate America. Yeah, as if we aren't already. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about personality tests in general and then focus in a little more on the MBTI. All right. So personality test is just there are many ways you can get evaluated psychologically by a professional. This is just one way you can get your head measured with calipers in Back in the Day they did that and give you a bunch of drugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways. But these tests generally, as Grabster points out, falls into a couple of types projective and objective. Projective tests are things like the Rorschach test where you're shown something, some kind of stimulus, and it's open to interpretation and you tell them what you think about it and someone sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of paper and makes an evaluation pretty into it. And then objective are more like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use. And while it's subjective what you put down, they are then evaluated again by professional. Right. But ultimately, that objective name is a bit of a misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted by a person, which therefore makes it subjective. Right. Depending on who you ask is the fatal flaw of all personality tests. It should be like good songs from the 70s had a little parenthetical at the end of the title. Right. It should just say subjective, also in parentheses. Baby. So the big five are and the big five, I get the feeling, are the psychological tests that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something like the MBTI. Is that right? Yeah. It's not just there's tests to suss out the big five. The big five are the personality types of the field of psychology has come up with. Well, yeah, but the tests that utilize that right. They kind of think are more legit than the MBTI. Yeah. There's not a psychologist alive who uses the MBTI in their regular practice. I bet there are nothing that are speaking up. I guarantee you there's someone out there. Yeah, sure. It's a freewheeling type. Was she? So the big five are extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Right. Sounds like it could be like a dating site thing that you fill out. It's funny, every time I see or hear the word neuroticism, a bell goes off in my head, like, ding. Just a silent bell? Yeah. I don't know what that means. I don't either, but it draws my attention too. So some of these tests, it depends on what it is. They might not all call them by those exact words, but they're generally using they call them, like I said, the big five. Yeah. And I was looking into that big five, and this site, I can't remember what it was called, but they were basically they were going over it like extraversion is, again, just part of the scientific literature at this point, agreeableness is like, whether how sympathetic or kind or affectionate you are, conscientiousness, are you organized? Are you thorough? Are you the type who shows up on time? That kind of thing. Yeah. Neuroticism, which is sometimes called emotional stability. How tense are you, how moody, how anxious? And then, like, openness to experience. Right? Yeah. They sometimes call that intellectimagination. Do you have wide interest? Yeah. Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful? And this site really went through a lot of pains to point out that what you would call these things, the big five personality traits, are, as far as the psychologist is concerned, just one dimension of you, the human being, and that to get a clearer picture of you. They would also need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes, your abilities, your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories, your life stories. And if you start to put all these things together, then you can start to kind of approximate the person's personality. But it takes a lot of study of an individual and these different components that make up their personality to get a clear picture. So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around saying the big five personality types are, like, the beginning and end of a personality. It's just if you put them together, you have just a sketch of somebody's personality, and you should go much deeper if you're analyzing someone. Yeah, I used to think this stuff was a lot neater when I was younger, and now it kind of gives me a little anxiety. Oh, yeah. I don't know. As far as doing this to myself and I still enjoy therapy, that's different. But I don't know because every single one of these my answer would be, well, it depends. Well, I think also, though, and I don't mean to speak for you, but one of the issues that comes up for me is if somebody goes to you and says, you rate pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism, obviously you're going to obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if they're right, it can make you neurotic. But yeah, it's a boundary that somebody has just established for you that you may need feel the need to stay in, because that's the boundary that you're bound by, whether you are or not. Like, this is my box, right? We all live in it. That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me. Yeah, my whole thing, like I said, though, it just depends. Every single question that I would get asked well, not everyone. Sometimes I'm pretty, like, set on something, but usually I'd say, I don't know, it depends on the scenario, right? Am I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y? Maybe, right? Maybe not. It depends on my mood. So with these other personality tests in the whole field, in psychology, of studying personality traits in a quantitative way, it's called psychometrics. So with these tests, the more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you, they're designed to get around that. So they're going to ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing, but in different ways, coming from different directions, so that eventually, if you put all of them together and run them through statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another, right. The other way that they get around that kind of hemming and hawing, I guess, is by placing it on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one category or another. Here's one end of the spectrum. Here's the other end of the spectrum. And based on your interest, you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost everybody does, right? If you look at psychrometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test is going to basically look like a bell curve where most people are going to be distributed toward the middle. Yeah, I think that's why it gives me anxiety. It's like, what's the point? Don't box me in. It's a great question. Well, I think the second half of this is a lot of what's the point? So looking speaking on these tests to see if it's actually if there is a point, if it's a valid thing to do, there are a couple of measures that one must look at and that psychologists do look at, is it valid? And is it valid in the sense that it really is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever, and is it reliable? So if we take this test tomorrow, or a different test that's just maybe different questions, will it reproduce the same result? Right. And that's a big deal. Like, if you're talking science and you're trying to have a foundation that says, no, this is science. It's not just a bunch of questions and hippy dippy questions that we're asking. If you really want real data and science behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it. Right. One of the other things, too, that these tests are designed to do is to weed out fakers. Right. We'll talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory, which is one of the big ones, probably the most taken personality test in the world. And it has a lot of built in mechanisms. And apparently it's really good at detecting people who are faking they're faking a mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they aren't suffering from a mental illness. It's really good at detecting that because it's so exhaustive. And using statistical analysis, if somebody skewed really far one way or skewed really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as gaming the test as best they can. Yeah. In one way they do that, which is in its own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is by telling you, we have ways. Right. Like you will be rooted out and we will know. Exactly. And they tell people that beforehand. So you're more inclined to just be like, all right, let's screw it, I'll tell the truth. Right. Especially when they're sitting there, like clearing the air out of a syringe. That's creepy. It is. All right, so let's get back to CPP and the MBTI, the consulting psychologists press. Right. And the Myersbriggs will just keep calling it a test, even though they say it's not a test, it's a type inventory. Yeah. So we'll just go ahead and break down the deal here. The object is to sort you into one of 16 different types, personality types, based on which side of four pairs or dichotomies that you're going to fall on. And those are at the very base you're either introverted or extroverted. Like we said, ear, I sensing or intuition, S and N. And these words, they sound a little confusing. Like, what the heck does a sensing person mean? Yeah. It means you like the big data and empirical data and a lot of information. Right. Whereas intuition is like you just go with your gut. That's how you prefer to be, correct? Right. The next we have thinking and feeling. Thinking being more focused on logic. I say logic with a T, sure. And objectivity. And then if you're feeling you're going to be more interested in relationships and harmony among your group. Those two are pretty straightforward. Yes, I think so. And then lastly, there's judging and perceiving. That's a dichotomy. Judging is where you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness. That's how you kind of approach life. And perceiving is where you're just kind of like, whatever. Yeah. I'm not too worried about it. Yeah, that's almost kind of like the difference between the type A and type B personalities, which, by the way, was made up by a pair of cardiologists oh, really? Whose work was later secretly funded by the tobacco industry, who are looking for anything to explain heart attacks besides smoking. So they funded type A and type B personality research for years. Interesting. Yeah. Really? Just as an aside, there's a really interesting price, I think. Price? Nomics article on type A and type B? Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name. All right, so when you sit down to take one of these not tests with a series of questions that you answer I think they call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which are basically a series of questions on a piece of paper. Sounds like a test. They will say things like, it has some good examples here. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance or would you rather just take each day as it comes, do whatever you feel like? Pretty straightforward kind of stuff. Right. And then they also have things like word pairs, just to see literally what word you like better, like compassion, foresight. Which word do you like better? Carrots or fruit? Fruit. Fruit. It's just prettier. It is. So I'm looking back here, I just want to say so I think trying to figure out what you were. Yeah, I think ENFP. Maybe that's what I was. We weren't the same thing. I don't remember. You mean I got the same thing. She found an old email, but she forgot to tell me what we were. Oh, really? I don't know. Problem is, we still be the same today. Yeah. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we have this up on a big board in the office for a while? That seems like Jerry's nodding. That seems like a breach of protocol. Sure. Like privacy. Yeah. Well, again, being forced at gunpoint to do it was from the start, I remember. It was kind of fun. I had a fun day. We'll talk about that as well. So it's going to cost you if you just do this as a single individual, not married, but just a person, about $50, although they should charge more if you're married, or complex death, about $50. If you want an hour feedback, that'll cost you an extra 100. If you want a career report all typed up, that'll be 1695. This is $1,500 for an onsite training class. Is that like what we had? So this is not very well explained. If you want to administer the Myers Briggs Personality or Type Inventory, you can get certified four day training course. Okay. You pay $1500 to $1,600. You cannot legally administer this test, or you're infringing on their copyrights. Right. Unless you are certified by CPP to do this. We should do it with one another on the air and risk a lawsuit? Yes. Well, you probably got a suit already with that one question you asked out loud. Which one? Just the one. Yeah. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance? I just made that up. Oh, good. I got that from Travelocity. Nice. Okay. Yeah. That little gnome whispered it in your ear. That's right. You would go and get certified, and then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey, do you want to know more about your employees? You want to know who's good at what? Let me come give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your employees and it'll put them all in. It'll be wonderful. Right. So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to become certified, and then you go become something of an evangelist for the Myers Briggs test and you sell the test. You basically become a salesman as well. It's very interesting dynamic that they have going. That is good word, dynamic. They want to point out that the person taking the test is the expert. And they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I didn't fully understand. They say things like, it feels more comfortable to sign your name with your dominant hand, but technically you can sign with your nondominant hand if you need to. Right. I'm not sure what they're trying to prove. They're trying to say that despite the MBTI pigeonholing, you fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum. They're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is actually just your preference. It's not you specifically, it's just your inclination. Yeah. You tend to be an extrovert, but of course, everybody likes their own personal alone time, so, yeah, you're going to be an introvert once in a while, but you're an extrovert more than other times. Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand. I didn't like that analogy because I can barely hold a pen with my left hand. I'm seeing you're doing it right now. Wow, that's pretty bad. If I tried to do it, it would look like a three year old with arthritis has tried to, like, scribble it out. Mine looks like Udum. Unum UDM. Udom? Yeah, udom. My signature with my left hand. And they do try and point out, like you said, that it's interesting because they box you in, but at the same time they're saying, but as you said, it's just predisposition. Don't really think of it about you being this type of person, even though you are an ENFP. Right. Like you said it was earlier, it was almost numbered. I mean, It is. It's lettered. Right. It's just a different way of quantifying it. Yes, but without numbers. You want to take a break and then come back and maybe do a little criticism? Yeah. Okay. All right. Chuck, like I said, it's kind of a pastime in the United States to tee off on the Myersbriggs type inventory. Yeah. This is not us here. No, this is us talking about other people. Yeah. It's widely been criticized over the years from psychologists and amateur know nothing like us. Sure, one of the big criticisms is that companies use this stuff and hiring and firing and promoting. But even the Myersbriggs people CPP say, don't do that. Well, I know, but they say that, but then don't go to an office and get hired by a corporation to administer it. Right. Or go sell your services. Yeah, I agreed, and that's part of the problem. To me, that is more the corporation's fault. Well, sure. Like, if you have an HR person who's, like, die hard believer in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based on their MBTI type, fire that person, because you have a real dumb dumb on your hand. They're a DD, and they should not be responsible for people's livelihoods. Yes. I don't think they would put it quite in those terms. But even the Myers Briggs people say, like, you shouldn't use this for hiring or firing. And yet, yes, some people do. Some people swear by this. The impression that I have is that the Myers Briggs people tend to think of this as more like a team building exercise, right. Or where, like, a certified MBTI administrator can come to your place, get all your employees together, and they find out, like, all their personality types. And by the way, there's not a single negative personality type, and all personality types are equal. So everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of their personality type. But at the same time, and this seems to be the crux at the same time, everybody's finding out, like, oh, you're a little different than me, and I'm a little different than you. And we all have differences and different perspectives, so let's celebrate that and let's respect one another's differences. And there is the actual point, from what I understand, of the Myers Briggs type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting, that's what stands out to me is what happened with us was I remember it kind of being a fun day. They were like Tootsie Rolls. Yeah, we all goofed off and had a good time. And the person leading it, if they're good at what they do, which this person was always kind of a fun person and cracking jokes, and they don't take it too seriously. None of us took it too seriously, and we all had a good time, and it was very much like a team building thing. Right. So as long as there's, like, a wink wink nudge nudge kind of thing. And the people who actually take it seriously are taken off to the side by their HR rep to say like, no, this is a less serious than you're taking it, then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's fate based on this, then you have real problems. Because as just about anybody will tell you, the Myers Briggs type inventory is based at best on some shaky science, if at all. If you go back to the very beginning, it's based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have never been based on science. They're basically personal observations by young, and the psychology community has disavowed Young in large part, so therefore anything based on his teachings and theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that weren't enough, psychology as a field loves going after the Myers Briggs type inventory, just loves it as totally baseless scientifically. All right, so we've got shouldn't use it to hire and fire in corporations or give promotions. We have not based on real science scientific data. Right. These four dichotomies are problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum. You can't say like, you answered these ten questions, you're either this or you're that. Right. And when one of the rebuttals because I think Ed interviewed someone from CPP, right? Yeah. One of the rebuttals about being a non repeatable experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday I was in ENFP and today I'm this. They'll say, well, you know what, if you have different answers, that means you are sort of on the cusp right there in that center line on some of these questions and you might have just leapt over to that other side, which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet they don't have a categorization for down the center. Yeah. Because depending on, as Ed puts it, you could answer all 24 questions on the feeling side and you're going to get the same result as somebody who answered eleven questions for thinking and 13 questions for feeling. Right. Same thing. You're still both an F in that respect. And I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short. Yeah. You could say, well actually I'm right there in the middle. And they'd be like, well that's short. Right. Or for you it's short for the guy who is the same exact height they're tall. Right. And trust me, nobody's 510 likes to be considered short. Right. I can say that from experience because you're not. You're average. I'm average. Right. The fact that there isn't a spectrum is one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of other much more widely accepted psychometric instruments. For sure. It also points out too the grabster that the construction of the instrument itself is problematic because one, like we talked about, it's self reporting. Anytime you're self reporting, there's going to be some weird bias in there. Sure. Just almost impossible to avoid. 100%. That's right. The other one is that he says a couple of these dichadomies are entangled, which I never really thought about that, but that's a pretty good point. Yeah. So judging perceiving scale are correlated with answers on the sensing intuition scale. And this should be separated out. For sure. For sure. I don't know why they don't. I don't either. Because they've really put a lot of work into this. Yeah. It's not baked in stone from the 1940s and is it? No, it's not. And even while they were creating, it was an ongoing exhaustive process that Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Meyers engaged in. Yeah. They spent decades on this. Yes. It wasn't like something they threw together. No. The problem is they did it backwards. They came up with the personality types and then set about creating the test that would detect these personality types rather than going out and testing people, seeing what personality types emerge and then figuring out a test to find that. And other people, they did it backwards. That's a good point. It was based on young, but it was not for lack of trying. As a matter of fact, one of the first things they did after they started to really establish the test was they managed to administer it to, like, 5000 George Washington University medical student. And they took those results and tracked the students to see what fields of medicine they went in. They really worked on this. I read an article in The Washington Post where I think Isabel Myers son remembers their vacations were basically like fact finding missions all around the country. Like, they would go administer test. Everything was about this test, and I worked on it for decades. So yeah, the problem is it's not based on science. They didn't follow the scientific method. Yeah. So science kind of poopoos the MBTI. But wait, get back here because a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on every other psychometric test around. Well, yeah, and that's one of the things that I can't remember who was interviewed in here. But in one of those other articles you sent, one of the Myers maybe it was a Rorschach defender. Right? Said. Yeah, it was Rossack. Everyone's always picking on Rorschach. When all of these psychological tests are subject to criticism. They are. I think it's really easy for to tee off on Rocheck as well because we're talking ink plots, man. It is the epitome of subjective self reporting. You're saying. Let's see. In this one, I see mom's boobs. Yeah, mom's boobs in that one too. Dad's boobs. Right. Exactly. And then from that, it was strictly up to initially Roshack who I think came up with this test in 1915, 1917. What's the name? Herman, I think so. He's a Swiss psychiatrist. Hermann Warshack. It was initially up to him and then later on his followers to interpret this, which is basically like interpreting dreams, and so subjective, totally subjective from beginning to end. And then in I think a guy at Bowling Green State University, which is right outside Toledo, came up with this, a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify Rorschach answers. Yeah. John Eksner and it was a test called the Comprehensive System 140 components. And in this article, they said that Rorschach was probably going away had it not been for Exeter's accompaniment with this other process. Right. And even today, he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to the Roshack test. Right. So one thing I've noticed from researching this is each of these personality inventories has its adherence and its detractors. And just judging from the outside, it looks a lot like colts gathered around their various idols right. There's like, the original figurehead who came up with it, and everybody worships them. And he's attacked by these other followers who have a very similar figurehead who came up with something very similar, but it's just different enough that there's a huge chasm between the two and there's a lot of dogma surrounding it. But the Rorschach test in particular is apparently well known to give wildly inaccurate results. I took one today. Did you? Online. How did you do? I got two out of ten, which means I was only two away, whatever that means, from being labeled like a psychotic. So, yeah, there was a four out of ten, I think. Oh, really? I think that's what it said, yeah. That's close. And this is an online test. I don't know if it's, like, how true it was to the original I got you. Or maybe the original. Yeah, it could be. And then they have an algorithm that runs the analysis. I kept seeing all kinds of things when I looked at it, and I've never done an ink plot test. I would say, oh, that looks like a bat. And then I was like, no, it's like two bunnies. And then now it looks like a cool Mardi Gras mask. Did they move to you? Did you see colors? Well, some of them were colored. Okay. Most of them were black. And they had the one I took had a one and a two. Like, what do you see? And what's, like, a secondary thing that you see. Right. Supposedly people who are supporters of the Rosette just say, no, man, we don't know how it's working. But if you see movement in the Rorschach ink blot, it's suggestive of depression or something like that. And they say statistically it's correlated. But like I was saying, it's also notorious for giving incorrect results. Yeah, like saying you have a mental illness. Right. Okay. So there was a study in 2000 that was given to like, 100 mentally sound elementary school kids, and some high percentage of them came back as borderline psychotic because of the Rorscheck test. Right. And it's hilarious to hear stories like that I'm laughing inside right now. But the problem is you are at the very least, being labeled as psychotic. Sure. Not a label you want in society. And it was because of this inkblat test that's 100 years old. And then, secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted as evidence in criminal trials. That's the biggest part. Child custody cases. Yeah. They're still given real weight, and lives are changed and ruined based on looking at 100 year old ink blot. Yes. And a person subjective analysis of that, that's not okay. No. This Howard Garb, in this one article you sent, he's a co author of what's wrong with the rorschach, and he is head of psychologist at the time of this article, he may still be head of psychological testing for the air force. He said that even with Exeter's comprehensive system, he said only 10% of his system even meets the most basic scientific standards. And they did examine data of over 30 different Rorschach studies. And he said they all have a tendency to label healthy people mentally ill. Right. And if you're trying to get custody of your kid or if you are on trial as a criminal, that's the last thing you need is somebody's subjective opinion of is it a bunny or is it a bat? Oh, he said a bat. Take that, kid. Quick. Kids like I like bunnies. Another one that we have to talk about is the MMPI. Now, the MMPI two. I think as of 2012, they revised it dramatically. Yeah. Is that right? It has over 500 questions. Yeah. Wow. Some of them originally were about, like, your bowel movements. Okay. Really nut. So questions that supposedly really got to the heart of whether you were mentally disturbed or not, right? Yes. And it was created at the university of Minnesota in the 40s by a psychiatrist and a neurologist, I believe. And they hit upon a pretty clever idea. They said, we're not going to interpret the results right and say, oh, this person said that they do feel like smashing something sometimes, and that means this. Instead, we're going to come up with this test of, like, 504 questions, and we're going to give it to the patient or the family and staff of a mental hospital who we're sure are saying, and we're going to take their answers, and they're going to become our control group, our baseline. So then anybody who takes this test, we're going to compare the test, takers answers to the same control group answers, and depending on how it relates to the same control group, they're either mentally ill or not. You better have gotten a control group. Right? Well, that's the thing to begin with. So a group of family and friends in Minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is the basis of this test. That's a huge problem with it to begin with, but apparently a lot of people say, like, no, it does a pretty good job of sussing out mental illness. It's also really good at detecting faking one way or the other. But it's too invasive. And when companies use it for hiring and firing, it's way too invasive. And apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using it. Well, I think that most people are far more troubled than they ever let on in life. Sure. And part of success in life comes down to how good you are at covering that up or hiding it or dealing with it and processing it. Yeah. The terms with it. It's just to find a core group that are sane, normal people. Right. It's just you're starting off with a problem, if you ask me. A faulty premise. Right. Yeah. There's no way. Like, everyone has their issues. They're deep, dark things in their brain that they don't want anyone to know. Sometimes even the people closest to them don't even know. Yeah. And actually, you're in agreement with this sociologist named William White who criticizes the MMPI as a tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group. Think of Midcentury organization, man, where it's basically like, here's what we think is normal. Anything outside of that is abnormal. We're not going to hire you because you don't fit into this picture of normalcy, which is basically White crew cut Minnesota from the 40s. That's the picture of normalcy. That's highly debatable. The other thing I thought was interesting is a lot of skeptics and critics point to things like the MBTI and saying, this is just like astrology isn't really no different than reading your horoscope because it's all positive psychology. At the end of a Myersbriggs non test, no one walks away feeling bad. Usually it's all sort of positive wording, and like, this is what you are. You're just this. So kind of don't worry about it. The same way you read your horoscope in a given day. I mean, how many horoscopes say, like, today, you will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all about. Right. Maybe you should work on your core character because people don't like being around you that much. You don't hear that kind of stuff, but they taps into what's called the forer effect. Forer. There is a psychiatrist named Bertram Fourer. This is so interesting. He will take it. It's pretty interesting stuff. Well, I mean, basically, didn't he give the same he had people take these tests and then gave all of the people the exact same assessment, but telling everyone it was tailored for them, their own personality assessment. And I think the people who just thought it was favorable, we're like, this is great. Well, it was favorable. He actually called it from daily horoscopes. Well, yeah, but what were they responding positively to? Well, whether or not they wanted to feel that way. No, it was a positive assessment. There was nothing negative in there. So it was all positive stuff. Like, you have a lot of unused potential, that kind of stuff. Stuff people wanted to identify with. Right. So the more flattering it was, the more likely the people were to say, this is an accurate assessment of me. Okay. So despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class, he took their answers and threw them out and said, here's your assessment. It's the same one for everybody. That's about right. It got, like, an 85% accuracy from the class as a whole. Well, that's what I wondered. It was about the 15%. Were those people just super honest? Maybe. And, like, no, this is really no, people actually don't like being around me. I'm using all of my potential, and they still don't like me. Yeah, that's what I couldn't figure out. But I guess it makes sense. There are people out there that are I think I would be one of those that would be like, this isn't right. Yeah, I'm not like that. Sure. Yeah. Anything else? I think not. It's a good one. We've been wanting to do this for a while. Yeah. This is a special request by me and others. If you want to know more about personality tests, well, you can go take them online. They're kind of huge right now. Find out what kind of hobbit you are. I don't know. What box do you live in? Yeah. And in the meantime, you can type personality test in the search bar housetofworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listing or mail. The only thing that should live in a box is temporary housing for a pet frog. That's not bad. Or the stuff you find in a tree hole that Boo Radley left for you. Yeah. Hey, guys. Feel compelled to write you today to tell you how grateful I am for your show and praise your good work. Recently became a listener, and I'm working my way through the entire archive. I think a lot of folks might be able to relate to this. Until recently, I found it really hard to relax and suffer with anxiety. Two months ago, I read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with being productive and associated guilt is a modern phenomenon. I think that's for sure. Yes. Although I had heard this before, something really clicked in my head. So I decided to abandon guilt and embrace relaxation, taking control of my own stress levels. You guys have been a big part of this. I have taken the time to slowly hotter around my flat, go for walks while listening and learning to your fascinating podcast, and they've looked at my mood. I feel mentally healthier than I ever have before. Nice. Although the content of what you discussed might not always be positive, the way in which you explain them and your own views personally revive my hope in humanity. That is ridiculously flatter. Isn't that nice? Yeah. I guess I should also mention that a big part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon watching television and Fitzfells of psychotropic drugs. I would be really interested to know if there's been any research conducted into the effect TV has upon our lives. I'm sure there has been. Sure, I haven't owned a TV for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to an online provider. I realized how watching TV does not help my anxiety. Also remember reading that after TVs became mainstream in Bhutan, their crime rate went up something like 700%. Might prove an interesting topic for a future show. Yeah. Anyway, sincerely grateful. Keep it up. I'm now recommending your shows to as many people as I can. Big love from the UK. Mac. Thanks a lot, Mac. That was great. We hear from a lot of people actually say that we help them with their anxiety. No idea how, but it doesn't matter. So thank you. If you want to get in touch with us like Mac did, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. Or Josh Clark. You can hang out with us on Facebook at Stuff You Should Know or Charles W, Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuffpodcastuffworkscom. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstopworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining, the daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…rth-capacity.mp3	Was Malthus right about carrying capacity?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/was-malthus-right-about-carrying-capacity	Thomas Malthus concluded that humanity is bound to outgrow Earth's carrying capacity. The prediction was based on humanity's exponential growth and the linear growth of the food supply -- but was he correct? Tune in to find out.	Thomas Malthus concluded that humanity is bound to outgrow Earth's carrying capacity. The prediction was based on humanity's exponential growth and the linear growth of the food supply -- but was he correct? Tune in to find out.	Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:16:11 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=19, tm_min=16, tm_sec=11, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=160, tm_isdst=0)	23116580	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me, as always, as Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. And that makes this stuff? You should know the podcast. There you go. The only incarnation thus far. Is there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now, huh? Yes. So, Chuck, right? It is Chuck. Yes. Still, have you noticed how often I say right? Yeah. It's mind numbing. Plus someone will write in and say, do you know me? Say right all the time. Or it says, it sounds like I'm eating hard candy all the time. I know that's not the case. You've never eaten anything in here? I can attest to that. Yeah. I'm overly salivatory. Okay. Yes. Chuck, as you know, I was a student of anthropology. Still consider myself sure such. And I first came upon this term called carrying capacity when I took this life changing anthropology class. Right. And I don't remember the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time, the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Right? By Jerry Diamond. Awesome stuff. By Dustin Diamond. By Mike Diamond. Okay. By Jared Diamond. The guy who wrote Collapse and Guns, germs and Steel and stuff. That's required reading, in my opinion. Yeah. I just think you should that essay not necessarily his book. Okay. But I was also introduced to carrying capacity, and there's a really cool video he showed us to get the point across. And it's just a map of the world, right? And there's red dots. It shows population growth. Yeah. And each red dot equals, I think, a million people. And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I believe, the cradle of humanity. Sure. And it starts there very slowly. It's time lapse, obviously. The years go by like that, and the red dots start appearing very slowly, start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, Europe, all that. And then it starts to pop up around North America and South America. And then all of a sudden you get to the, I think, like the 16th century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution, and all of a sudden this map just goes red. And it's really jarring. It really gets the point across how quickly population has grown in the world and the impacts of it. That's why I coupled this with carrying capacity, because it's like, well, yeah, population and growth, who cares? Then you say, oh, well, there's a limit to the amount of resources we have, and that limit is called the carrying capacity of Earth, meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's supposedly a point to it, right? Yeah, I got some stats. There's my intro. That's great. Take it from here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh. The United Nations Population Division estimates because five babies are born every second and baby is right there, you're, like, crying all that poop. The world is going to have 7 billion people by years end, I think. 7 billion? Yes. We're at 6.92 and change right now. Yeah, we're close. And to illustrate your point there about the red dots spreading like a disease that is humans. Yeah. Fewer than a billion people in 1800. Yeah, it was like 800 million. 1800, dude, it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago. Yeah. 3 billion people in 160 and only 6 billion people as recently as 1999. Yeah. Between 1950, Chuck, and 1990, the global population doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. That is Kora Aziz. And behind this, that's what they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like a million people a year, slow and steady. You're adding a fixed number. You're adding populations doubling in 40 years. That's exponential growth. And that is the basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus, an 18th century English clergyman, predicted in an essay on the principle of population, basically saying human growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the growth of food is not. It's linear, and we're in trouble. And he was fairly controversial at the time. He was debated by a lot of people, one of which is this dude named William Godwin. And he had a theory called the perfectability of society, which is basically, we are humans, and no matter how much we grow, we will be able to counter that with advances in technology to allow us to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was one of the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked about eugenics way back then, before it was eugenics, he said, I could see something like this being possible, but he said it's probably not something we should do. And he also, incidentally, was one of the first people to support or popularize the economic theory of rent. Really? Yeah. Well, he was just all over the place, wasn't he? Well, but it all kind of ties into population because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about controlling population. Sure. And rent, he theorized, was only possible with a surplus of resources which allows you to own a second place and rent it, I guess, or rent a tool or whatever people rented back then. So what Malthus is talking about is generally classified as economics. Yeah, right. But also it stretches into all sorts of dirty, nasty little areas like greed, ecology, population control. So eugenics, family planning, abortion, infanticide, all sorts of stuff. It has a lot of implications. Far reaching implications. Right, yes. And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who was a contemporary of him that argued like, no humans will use technology to outstrip, to outpace this malthusian curse is what it's called. Right, yeah. There was more than God when there was a few people, too. I didn't realize that it was at the time, but I know that over the centuries people have been like, Malthus, that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark and we're going to use you as an example of how badly somebody can get it wrong. Right, yeah. Because it wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the demographic transition, which is basically, as we get better with this technology, one of the things we come up with is birth control. And while our mortality rates are lowering, so too are fertility rates. Right. And we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate, which is 2.1 children per household leads to zero population growth. Right. And I think they said in Western Europe the number was 1.4 in the late 90s. Some people are afraid that Malthus was correct at this point and other people say that, like in Europe and Asia, they worry about the opposite because they have a problem over there that they're not enough young people to take care of the retirees one day. Exactly. It's negative population growth. So who's right? They do estimate who they is, I don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population is not going to level off until mid century at about 9 billion. Well, that's at best that's if we do level off, we could continue to keep growing. The rate we're at now, the replacement rate, that leads to zero population growth, which is 2.1. Right now we're at 2.6 worldwide. And with Africa skewing us the other way, sub there in Africa has about a 5.1 fertility rate, which means for every household there's 5.1 children born. That point. One child always feels so bad for us to knee down on one leg, but if we can get the zero population growth and we're not going to really have to deal with the Malthusian curse possibly ever, right? But we're not. But that's one thing that Malthus didn't account for is things like as societies become more educated, fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. Sure. So that's another way to put it off, too. So he was scoffed at. Like you said, there's a lot of people out there who think he missed the mark, but people have been doing a little bit of math lately and have figured out that it's entirely possible that he's right, that somewhere down the line he's right. Yeah. And at the basis, we should say, of Malthus's whole thing is a lack of food and water. Really? We need air, food, water, shelter, and all that stuff. But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the food growth will not match up with the population growth, and a billion people go hungry every day already. So some might argue that that's already the case. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. 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And start taking charge of your future today. So let's talk about carrying capacity. Chuck? Yeah, this is cool. If we had not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the positivist camp that we can be technological, if we hadn't transitioned from hunter gatherer to agriculture, the carrying capacity of Earth would have been reached at about 100 million people long time ago. Yes, because there's just so many animals running around that we can kill. There's only so many berries that are going to occur naturally on the vine. Right, but we did transition to agriculture before we hit the 100 million mark. Possibly, maybe not farming. And we began to use technology, which is growing crops to feed ourselves and animals. And then we reached another point, right. Where we hit what was called the Green revolution. You remember that? Yeah. Remember that, Norman Borlaw, where there was a lot of people who are saying about a billion people are going to die because we're not going to be able to provide food for all the people here. Right. We've come up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's lowering the mortality rate, but that just means people are living longer and they need food longer over their lifespan. Right. So what are we going to do? Norman Borlaugh comes along and says, you know what we're going to do? Tapioca pudding. Exactly. Tapioca pudding for everybody, for the elderly and a Care Bear in every garage. No, but go ahead with what he said because he was a genius. He said, we're going to maximize the yield that we get out of arable land. We're not just going to plant some seeds and be like, hope you grow. Right. We're going to apply tons of pesticide, tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the size of your torso out of every plant. Right? Yeah. He wasn't some awful mad that makes him sound like some awful mad scientist, though, in the eyes of a lot of environmentalists. Well, I mean, think about all the runoff, all the soil depletion. Didn't he also win a Nobel Prize? Sure. Yeah. He's credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to starve because he came in just in time because the Earth would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. Right. So we've had at least two different events where we were able to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse, right? Yes. So there are people out there who say, well, we're going to avoid it again, but what will that be? Sure. And come up with another one. So I'm sorry, Chuck, we would have hit the carrying capacity 100 million where we hunter gatherers, right? Yeah. What are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is what I think is really interesting and completely sad, is that we have a potential carrying capacity of 2 billion to 40 billion. We're clearly past the two. So one might ask, how can it be that big of a range? And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad stat. If the entire Earth live like middle class Americans, not the super rich, who probably consume more energy and the like than your average human, just regular middle class American folks consume about 3.3 times the subsistence level of food and 250 times the subsistence level of water. Clean water. Yeah. And that means the Earth, if everyone was like us, the Earth could only support about 2 billion people. So what's going on is 25% of the Earth is consuming. I don't have the percentage, but the other 75% of the Earth is left with what's left. Right. Which is really crappy. It's just a disparity in the allocation of resources consumed. So that's why it can be a range of 2 billion to 40 billion because of the different lifestyles. If everyone lived like the 25%, there would be plenty for everyone and no one would be starving. No. If everybody lived like the 25%, we would be no, like the 75%. Right. Sorry. Well, yeah, that's where the 40 billion number comes in. I've seen 30 and I've seen 40 on the high end for the carrying capacity. And that's where every square inch of arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield. Right. And all people live in high rises that are as high as we can build them right now. Right. And we're mining asteroids for minerals and all that. We're no longer going to the Earth, we're going to outer space. Like forming Mars, maybe. Possibly. Don't think that shouldn't have started about 50 years ago. Right. But that 40 billion prediction is based on the absolute minimum requirements and everybody 40 billion people living on the planet, all using the minimum amount, which is 400 liters of water a year and about 300 food a year. Mostly grains. You can basically kiss meat goodbye because we need that land to grow our grains rather than just grow grains to feed cows, which is another way that the west consumes resources more than it's fair share through a meat rich diet, which is you're not only eating the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right. So, Chuck, let me ask you something. Okay. If you went home and turned on your tap and there was hot water and it was flowing and it was as much as you liked right. Would you care how you were getting that? What do you mean? How it's being delivered through my faucet? Yes. Is this a trick question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase. Okay. If you went home and I'm answering it wrong, and turned on your hot water and there was as much hot water as you wanted yeah. And you knew it was coming from a sustainable source, would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah, I guess not, but I'm kind of like a water saver. So you're water saver? What if you knew you didn't really have to save water because it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care? No one cares as long as we have the luxuries that were afforded. You don't care if it came from burning banana peels. Right. No one cares. The problem is that the problem with the course that we're on apparently right now is that we are using technology not to get more from less, but to get more from more cheaply. Right. Yeah. It's a uniquely human thing, they call it in the article, which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this point, everyone would be on solar, and the massive companies would be solar powered and all that kind of thing. That's another great point, is you don't care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if it comes from a solar panel or wind? No, of course you don't. You just want your electricity. So if we had invested, or if we could invest our technological advances into getting what we have now from less from solar radiation or wind power, then that's true. Cutting edge technology, rather than figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which is the way we're going. Yeah. Like thinking of, let's say, a more efficient oil driller, or a more efficient way of getting coal from a mountain. I e. Mountaintop removal. So they're using technology, but they're using it in ways that are also destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's the conclusion I came to from reading this, right. The argument from the Positivist camp. I don't even think I'm using that word correctly, but the people who are the optimist camp sure. Duh. Right. They're saying no mouth was incorrect because he failed to account for human ingenuity. And as population grows, so too do the number of geniuses. Sure. And that's where innovation comes from. Yeah, right. I think the optimists are missing a point in their model, and that is greed. You can't really sway greed to benefit human ecology, can you? No. You can't convince an entire population of people to change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's what I'm saying. You can't, because they don't care. Right. But if you could deliver them that same amount of hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from a sustainable source, no one's going to fight that. It's having to get them to fight that fight to get the people who are controlling it to change over. They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp has over the optimist camp, and that they don't account for greed. Yeah. Have you ever seen who killed the electric car? No, I never did. I encourage people to see that. That's pretty scary. The EV One was I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the EV One was ready to go. There were TV commercials. You can look up EV One commercial on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric cars are here. They're not coming. They are here. And boom, it was gone. Really? Yeah. I'll check it out and I'll give you a few guesses as to why it left so quickly. Not only were they gone, dude, they literally gathered them all up and crushed them. Really? Like so many Et Atari game cartridges. Exactly. Yeah. Sad. But go rent it's. Cool. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems. You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics. Students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. And powerful lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man. This is a good one to chew on for people, I think. I think so, too. Just encourage people like we always do. We're not saying quit your job and go, like, build solar panels for a living and live on a wind farm. You can do that. That'd be awesome. But little things, little positive steps, save a little water, save a little power. I disagree, man. What? I don't think the onus is on the people. I think the onus is on the people who are misdirecting technological advancement. I'd say it's on both. I disagree. You don't think Venus is on the people that can serve? No, I think it is. I think we put it on the people, but I don't think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right. I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I think it's on. I think it's on both. Okay, well, that's a debate to be played out on the Facebook page if you ask me, right? Yeah, man. We should take a form. So if you want to learn more, type in has the earth reached its carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus. M-A-L-T-H-U-S in the search bar athowstepworkscom it'll bring up some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Well, then that means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh. I'm going to call this how to make my Teenage Son Listen to your show. From Portland, Oregon. Hi, guys. And Jerry, when you have a teenager, you will quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to do and expect them to do it. I remember those days. It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that your kid will love something and get lots out of it, but you can't come right out and say it or they will never ever try the thing you told them to try. For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact, like I know that it will rain in Portland, that my 13 year old son Ethan would really love Stuff You Should know because I love the podcast. I've turned other people onto it and they love it. But I knew I had to be sneaky in order for my son to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer and at the time was also working on a research project about Renaissance jousting in tournaments. So on Saturday I was working in the kitchen. I played how nights work to catch his interest. Every time he came in the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he leaves, I'd hit pause. I would figure he would just think, man, these guys take a long time to finish. He would hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time. And I could tell I almost had him on the line. Like I was noodling. Although you would say I had him on the arm. Yeah. There's no line. When it was over, he said he already knew everything you talked about in the podcast. But I could tell he was intrigued. Then I hit him with the Scuba Doo show and that was it. You had another fan. Now he has downloaded the app for his ipod. Nice. And listens each night as he's going to sleep. Wow. And that is my recruitment. Yeah. That's from Aston Inn. A very sneaky mom thank you. In Portland, Oregon. Thanks, Aston. That also kind of ties into the cult and brainwashing episodes, too, didn't it? Yeah. And she said when she replied I asked her if I could read this, she said sure. And she said, I guess he'll know my little trick now. But he'll get such a kick out of being mentioned. Ethan defenser. Yes, he will forgive that. Yeah. And at least he can rest assured that she's not like putting anything in the soup to get him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle tactics than that. Right? I wish you could put something in soup to make people listen to that. I'd be putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. I'd put it in all soups. I'll tell you what, if you have any suggestions of what we can put in people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you should know and to get them to go, give us a review on itunes. Yeah. That helps us out. When you do that, you should send us an email and you should send it to a specific email address. That is stuffpodcast@houseoffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, stuff from the Future. Join House of Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Dog Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-black-death.mp3	How the Black Death Worked	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-black-death-worked	The Black Death was gruesome: Symptoms included tumors, purple splotches, fevers and vomiting. But how did this disease manage to spread from the Gobi desert and kill approximately one-third of the population of 14th-century Europe? Tune in and find out.	The Black Death was gruesome: Symptoms included tumors, purple splotches, fevers and vomiting. But how did this disease manage to spread from the Gobi desert and kill approximately one-third of the population of 14th-century Europe? Tune in and find out.	Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:16:33 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=19, tm_min=16, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=41, tm_isdst=0)	30071405	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charlie LW Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know. The podcast, the audio podcast, nothing more. Got it. Not a lot less than comparably sized podcasts. No, this is chock full of good stuff. This one's got to be, man. You think so? Yeah, I liked it. You like this one? Yeah, I like some of the historical stuff we did. Man, I love it. You know, as a history major at one point. Yeah, I love history. Me too. Yeah. Chuck? Yes. So we're talking about the Black Death. Yeah. Right. Not Black Sabbath, black Death. Well, I'm going to need some more time. Okay. So we'll wait. Hold on. Alright, I'm back. Yes. Okay. You understand now what we're talking about. Great. Chuck, I was researching this to find out, like okay, what's newsy about the Black Death? Like, how am I going to find that intro? I actually found one. Really? Yeah. It's from 2006. February 2006. Sorry, that's not very easy. But there was a study that came out of you Tricked University. Have you ever heard of the Little Ice Age? No. There was a period in world history, global history. I think it may have been kind of localized to Europe, so let's say European history in about the 1500, where there was this inexplicable period of cold just right. It's called the Little Ice Age. Harmful cold. It got cold. Our conception of why Vikings wear pelts and everything, they're always walking around it's very cold. Not just because they live in Scandinavia, but because it was cold then. Okay. Yeah. So this Little Ice Age, like I said, inexplicable no one had any idea why it happened. And these Utrecht researchers got a hold of some tree samples, some leaf samples from eras before the Little Ice Age and after, and they started counting stomas. These are the pores on the leaves. The more stomas you have, the more carbon dioxide there is in the air. Leaves develop these stomas so they can absorb more CO2. Right. All right. So if so facto, the more stomach you have, the more CO2 in the atmosphere. Sure. And what they found by counting the stomas was that there was a lot of CO2 prior to the 1340s in Europe. Okay. That means that there's not that much CO2. There was a lot of CO2 in the air, in the atmosphere. Okay. One reason there's a lot of CO2 is because there's not a lot of trees to soak that CO2 up. Okay, one reason there's not a lot of trees is because humans are cutting down the trees to farm land. Right. Or to stay warm. I say that there's fewer trees deforestation brought on by human activity. Okay, so what they find then is that after 1350, roughly, there's suddenly fewer stomas, which means that there's less CO2 in there, which means that there are more trees. Do you know why there are more trees? Do you? I have a pretty good guess. It's because in between that time, the 1340s and the 1350s, the Black Death happened, and so many people died that it had a measurable effect on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of not that many trees. And then suddenly lots of trees because there was no one to tend this farmland. Isn't that interesting? You know what else? This is the Tidbit from the end, but we might as well say it here. They think that there is a lack of genetic diversity in the UK today because of the Black Death. They were much more genetically diverse than the 11th century. Right. It represented what's called a population bottleneck. Yes. 25 million people died, about a third of the population of Europe. Which is mind boggling. Yeah, it is. All right, let's do it. Well, I was reading this one historian, his name is Skip Knox, and I don't know where he is now, but when he wrote that it was at the university no, Boise State, and he said, Broncos, he goes, It's worth saying this has never happened before or since. Like death in an event like this, where within about two, three years, 25 million people died, it's never happened before. Yeah. I mean, no war can account for that. Yeah. No other pandemic. Yeah. This is it. This is as bad as it gets. And it was bad. It was bad. And it was bad not just because of the ultimate devastation, but it was bad because of how gnarly the Black Death is. Why don't you talk about some symptoms? All right? If you had the Black Death, this is what you had to look forward to. First of all, you had no idea what was happening to you. Neither did your doctor, neither did your local cardinal or bishop, and they didn't know a lot back then, but they had their cockeyed theories, at least. They didn't even have cockeyed theories on this. They had cockeyed theory that everybody went along with. They developed some, but initially I don't know what this is, right? But you have these big tumor lumps. You've got them on your body, you got black spots. Well, tell them about the tumor. Somewhere small, but they could get pretty big. Yeah, some as big as an apple. And they said in the article here that if you had one on your neck, it could permanently cut your head to one side. Permanently, meaning like the five days you had left to live. I know. I hope it's okay to laugh a little bit. This. Now, surely you had pusing out of open source. You had a nasty smell because you were riding from the inside out. Your breath was awful. It was gruesome purple splotches. God's tokens. Right. Yeah. They call them God's tokens, because once you get these, that means God's going to take you off the earth pretty soon. Right. That's God's token fevers that could fry your brain, send you into delirium, vomiting, coughing up blood. Blood and pus. Oozing. I've already said I think you did, but it's for saints. So those are some of the symptoms. And once you start having these symptoms, you are pretty much done for within a matter of days. Right. In our modern day, it takes a little while to bury somebody, even with this machinery that we use to dig modern graves. But back then, it took even longer to dig a grave, to hold the service, to bury somebody. And when people die within days and suddenly there was like a third of the population dying off, there was no time to bury anybody. No space. Yeah. They're literally stacking up dogs eating corpses. It says in here, children, hungry babies beside their dead mothers. Yeah. Molly Edmonds really went, yes, but that's the truth. I mean, that would be crazy. That was the raw truth. It was an ugly, ugly, ugly scene. And of course, anyone who see Monty Python knows that there are people who operated carts and banged on pots and said, Bring out your dead. And, well, we'll get into the flinging, of course, too. Well, let's get into the flinging, because that's kind of how it started. And first, I want to point out the Black Death gripped Europe. It did not only impact Europe. It's so funny. It's so eurocentric the way we approach the Black Death. It started in the Gobi Desert sometime in the late 1320s in Asia, in China. China lost 35 million people in the 14th century from the Black Death. No one ever mentioned that. Yes. They always hear about the Europe. The Black Death in Europe. So it was localized, and it was actually in Asia and Central Asia for a decade or two. But they blame it pretty squarely on the genovese for bringing it to Europe, right? Yes. How did the genovese get it? Well, in 1347, in KAFA, which is modern day Ukraine, it was a genovese trading post. They were attacked by the Tartar army. Tartar started to die off by the plague. And the genovese are like, Sweet. God is punishing our enemies and they're dying. Let's have a big party and celebrate. And then the Tartars are like, well, we're going to start flinging our dead corpses over the wall at you because the smell is so awful, you will die from the smell. They weren't too far off. It was a stupid idea. It was a stupid idea, but it worked. Because what they were doing was germ warfare, very early germ warfare. Right. They had it wrong, though. They thought it was a smell, actually. It was this pestilence. And so the Genoes said, oh, we need to get rid of these nasty bodies. But it was too late. They were infected by that point. The Genouise fled to Sicily, and then from there it took two pass. Where was the first one? Well, the first one went up through Austria and Germany. Right. And then the second path went through Italy to France, to the UK. Yes. At a speed which doesn't sound fast, but it really is if you're talking about black death, about two and a half miles a day. And not only is it fast, like, even by today's standards, this is before this is when people were riding horses and carts and stuff. It's lightning fast. It's bullet trained fast for that time. Yeah. Why is it called the Black Death? Actually? Do you know this? I do. So there's a mistranslation at some point. What do you mean? Well, back in the day, people called it the big Death or the Great Mortality. The big Death. That's bad. That's what they called it as it was happening. Right, okay. And then later on, it came to be known as the ultra morse, which is Latin for terrible death or black death. At some point in time, somebody decided that they liked the Black Death better, and sometime in the 18th century, when they were using it to differentiate the plague of London in 1665. But they mistranslated. It wasn't originally called the Black death or the terrible death. It was called the big death. Got you. And then it just kind of went from there. All right, well, at the time, King Philip the 6th of France turned it over to the Paris College of Physicians, who were they were like the Mayo Clinic at the time. And they said, here, we need to figure out what this is. What is it? Smartest doctors in the world. And they said, we figured it out. It's all here in the report. This happened when Saturn and Jupiter and Mars lined up in Aquarius and Jupiter's Role, wet and hot, and it soaked up the evil vapors from the Earth. And Mars is dry, so it exploded those vapors, and now it is a fog of death. And they very smugly pinpointed the time that it happened, 01:00 p.m. On March 20, 1345. And they just shook their head like, yeah, but they did say it was a fog of death. My guess is that it was probably pretty foggy for some reason. Some weather system happened or they were onto something, like it was being transmitted through the air somehow. Sure. Which they might have been actually onto something there with an airborne pathogen. Right. Possibly. Instead, they went with the fog of death from the planets aligning. And another term for a fog of death is a miasma. It's a corrupted bit of air. And this is what Europe went with, right? Yeah. Okay, well, these are the smartest guys as far as medicine goes. They have the longest crows, beak, masks of anybody, and we're going to go with this fog of death thing. So how do we combat it? And what they figured out was, well, since you're breathing this fog, you got to keep the fog at bay. And one good way to do that is to fight fog with fire. With smoke. Sure. So there were fires everywhere. Yeah. They were recommended to burn aromatic wood, and people would even carry the stuff around rosemary, amber, and musk. The pope even stood between two fires when he addressed people. Yeah. They kept them burning on street corners. And then the fact that it was coming from the south and it was a fog of death, they started putting glass in their southern windows so that the southern wing couldn't penetrate it. See, that kind of smart. There it is. They weren't all hokey. Now, that seemed kind of smart. What didn't seem very smart was don't bathe. Don't have physical intimacy, although it's a good way to spread disease. So maybe they're onto something there. Don't sleep during the daytime. Avoid that had nothing to do with spreading it. They're like, just don't be lazy. Yeah. Avoid sad thoughts about disease. It's up to that. If you believe in the mind. If you believe in positive psychology. Exactly. So some of the little hokey, those little substance to a bit of it. I have a little cocktail tidbit for you, though. Okay. I know. It is so awesome. I know. The word quarantine actually comes from the black death in venice, Italy. They were pretty smart, and they said, you know what? We should start isolating some of these ships of people that are coming in, not let them come on land until we know that no one on board is sick. So let's do this for 30 days. And then they went, now, that's not long enough. Let's do it for 40 days. 40 days or quarantine. Quarantine. That's where the word came from. Well, it's not as much of a stretch as somebody besides chuck is pronouncing it, but, yes, that is where quarantine, if you look at it, it looks like the word quarantine. Yeah. So that's pretty smart, too. There are some smart people. Still, 60% of the population of Venice died within, I think, 18 months. Yeah. So the quarantine, while practical and useful, didn't protect everybody. Yeah. And we don't know what the doctors were doing that much, because all we have here is just recorded documents of what was going on. Well, there wasn't even documentation. It was popular writers, church writers. Yeah. It wasn't like, science journal. I mean, not a lot of people knew how to read and write during this time, and the ones who did normally were affiliated with the church, so they would have had a very religious view of what was going on. Right. Yeah. They're probably blood letting. Yeah. The physicians that were working the crows mask guys were bloodletting. They were opening up these boobos, which is almost like a textual representation of a pussy tumor, a Boobo. They would open these and then drain them, because that made sense to get rid of whatever is in there, I guess. Very smart. Yeah, we still do that today. Pop and zips. Yeah, every Tuesday, religion comes into play pretty heavily there because a lot of people said, let's turn to God and pray for help. Well, a lot of people thought that this was punishment from God. Oh, yeah, the flagellants. So only he could do anything about it. Or she depending on New York. Sure. So, yes, the flagellance chuck ticket. The flagellants of Germany. Yeah, the brotherhood of the flagellance had already flagellants had already been around. Not flatulence, though. No, very big difference. They were already around, but they rose up, like you said, in Germany in the mid 1340s, and they thought it was punishment from God, and they thought, you know what? We're going to do something about it. So you've heard of self flagellation. That's where it comes from. They would walk barefoot across Europe, whipping themselves with their little, whatever, cat of nine tails, scourges like what have you, that had, like, sharp kind of barbed ends. It didn't work, though. And a lot of people turned against God because of that. They also kill a lot of Jews. The flagellants did. Flagellants. They killed Jews. They would kill clergy that opposed them, except for the Pope. And the Pope was like, you're officially denounced, I think, 1349. That was it for the flagellance. Although they popped up again in later plagues and pestilences. They did, but they stopped for the Black Death, like, immediately when they denounced them. Well, they killed Jews because there was a pretty bad rumor going around that the Jews had were poisoning the water supply. And because at the time, Christians and Jews lived separately, largely, a lot of Jewish communities were effectively quarantined, so they didn't get hit as hard. So all of a sudden, Jews are on and prospering is the right word, but they're not dying like the Christians are. So the Christians started burning them alive. Started burning them alive. Apparently in Strasbourg, more Jews died in Germany than anywhere else, at the hands of Christians who are upset about the plague. And in Strasbourg, in, let's see, I think 1348 on one day, 200 Jews were burned alive at the stake. Wow. Just that one city on that one day. And apparently entire communities used to be walled up and set on fire with everybody. Or Jews would convert to Christianity on the spot, or they would set their own houses on fire, which is kind of sensible, like, oh, look, my house is already on fire, but I should probably take off. Right. Keep on walking. See you guys later. Well, a lot of Jews fled to the countryside, didn't they, too? Yes, because they were able to. Yeah, good for them is what I said. Well, I don't think it was just you. I think anybody who had the means of going to the countryside, which is crazy, because going to the countryside means stepping out your back door, I thought in the 14th century yeah, but apparently there were still the wealthy went out to the country once in a while and they would. Yeah. So, needless to say, it was a really rough few years for Europe and by 1352, it was largely gone. Yeah, it just took off. But it's not like, all right, black desk gone, everything is cool now. There are huge effects. Apparently the self flagellation works, right? Yeah, sure. That's what it was. Well, yeah. You have to imagine if a third right. So that means that between you, me and Jerry, one of us dies. But it would clearly be me. It's not necessarily true. I'd set myself on fire. Okay, so then two of us would have died. Right. A third of this population of the workforce within seriously, like two years, it's just gone. People are being eaten by dogs or corpses are being eaten by dogs in the streets. Families are just completely abandoning one another once they get sick. The whole social psyche, the collective psyche of Europe just kind of crumble a little bit. It took a pretty big ding. And one of the places that took that thing was in religion. A lot of heretical societies sprung up because it was like, either this was your work, God, or you didn't do anything to help us. So we're not coming to church anymore. Yeah. Instead of being like, really thankful that they survived, people partied. Like it was 1999, basically. Big time crazy parties. Yeah. Lot of debauchery. Lots of debauchery. There was an economic impact too. A huge one. Well, yeah. I'm sorry. If a third of the workforce is gone, you've got no one working, so labor is going to skyrocket. The price of labor is price of labor is cost of goods. The little silver lining there, food was in supply because there weren't as many people to eat it. Exactly. Sadly. Isn't that depressing? The other cool thing, though, is potentially we saw the birth of modern science and medicine because of the Black Death, because the leaders were like, this whole planet's aligning thing was pretty stupid, now that we look back at it. So why don't we found some schools and do some real research based on physical science and give that a whirl? Yeah. And they've started it. It worked. Which is kind of ironic as well, because the population is so decimated that even after they had this idea, they had to wait a little while to reopen schools because they couldn't staff them. And also, Chuck, there was an almost complete loss of any illusions about death and whether or not it's coming for you. There's a whole allegory in art that sprang up at the time called Dance Macabre, which is the dance of death, which is basically like showing living people in skeletons working side by side or hanging out or partying together or whatever. And the point of that is that death can come at any time, and it's coming for everybody. So art and poetry and things like that just took a real downer turn there for a while. Yeah. Because that was clearly what everyone was thinking about at the time. That's right, Chuck. What caused it? See, this is where I get a little confused, because there's conflicting information, even to this day. Well, it's one of the things where we thought we figured it out, but modern techniques and modern investigation have kind of led us to think did you like that? Have led us to think that maybe that first idea wasn't right. Yeah. First idea came out of the third pandemic, which was in 1894 in Hong Kong and India. Right. Yeah. And two bacteriologists. Alexander Yerson and Shebasaburo. Kita Sato. Nice. Thanks. They worked independently and isolated the cause of that third pandemic, and it is what we know today as bubonic plague. Yeah. It's a bacterium called Ursina pestis, named after Alexander Urson. Right. Yeah. And it lives in the foregut of rodent fleas that feast on rats. Yeah. This was interesting, I thought, because the flea, regular flea, bites rat and drinks blood, and it's like, oh, man, that was fantastic. If you're infected with the urcenia pestis and your fleet, you bite the rodent and you eat the blood, but it gets stuck in your foregut, and so you never feel that quench of that tasty tasty blood in your stomach if you're a flea. So you keep biting more and more rodents and infecting more and more rodents. Yeah. Because you're, like we talked about with the fleas, regurgitating it back onto rodents, and all of a sudden you're killing all these rodents, and then when there are no more rodents, then the fleas will go to people. Right. And so they thought that's how it was spread. Right. Which makes sense, because it's not like conditions were really sanitary in the Middle Ages. Sure. There were plenty of rats before the Middle Ages, the 14th century. Right. Yeah. There were plenty of rats, plenty of fleas. The problem is there's a lot of discrepancies between bubonic plague or Yersinia pestis and whatever the Black Death was. Right. So you've got, like, a big discrepancies. You've got bubos, right? Yes. With both. But boubos under the bubonic plague tend to spring up around the groin area only. And descriptions of booboos with the Black Death were that they were all over the place, all over your body. Right. Bubonic plague doesn't cause purple splotches. No. It doesn't cause delirium. No. Yeah. Or the vomiting blood and pus and all that stuff. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that was documented widely by different sources during the Black Death that doesn't have anything in common with bubonic plague. Well, the big one to me was the fact that bubonic plague, even if you don't treat it, has a mortality rate of about 60%. Yeah. And from the sounds of the Black Death, it was near 100% taken down entire villages. Right. So they did figure out that the third pandemic in 1894, was caused by eurcinia pestis, bubonic plague, but they erroneously, possibly attributed it to the Black Death. But for about 100 years, that was the premise that everyone went on was bubonic plague was the Black Death. Right. Until 1984, when some researchers who have been dubbed plague deniers really? Yeah. Have started to come up with competing theories. And there's some interesting ones. Yes. Sociologists Susan Scott and biologist Christopher Duncan think that it is a hemorrhagic fever. Like Ebola. Right. Makes sense. Sure. Some say anthrax or maybe some just disease that is not around. Some extinct disease. Right. Like it went extinct somehow after the Black Death. The thing, though, is this DNA study in the 1990s, they dug up some corpses from mass graves in France, tested the teeth, because I guess dental pulp is about the only thing you can test at that point. And they did find that the Y pestis in the samples. So they said, oh, yeah, see, it was the plague. But then they apparently looked at other bodies from other grave sites, and it wasn't conclusive. No, they didn't find it. Yeah, they didn't find it at all. So what does that mean? I don't know. What do you think? Well, Skip Knocks, that historian referred to earlier, his theory is that it was bubonic plague working in concert with a mnemonic plague. So it was respiratory, which is buboneneumonic. Yeah, which is basically his idea, is that there are two plagues working at once. Or that's the theory he subscribed to, which, I don't know, it seems likely to me that there's probably some bacterium that's either extinct or worse than that, dormant. Right. Let's hope it's extinct. Yeah. Dormant is not the word I want to be hearing right now. Oh, and there's one other thing that was a problem with the fleas. There were two other problems that we didn't mention. One was that there should have been a die off of rats, because, remember, they jump from rats to humans when there's no more rats. There's no documented die off of rats in Europe before the plague ever. And then secondly, what was the thing? Winter should kill fleas. That's right, Chuck, but it didn't. It does kill fleas, but it didn't have any effect on the side of the Black Death. Yeah. Well, the other problem, though, is, like we said, it's all stuff that's written down, so it's not like you said, the bubos are near the groin area, but at the time, with the sensationalism of the day, people could have been riding sores all over their body, and they could have exaggerated some of the symptoms because of fear. I just don't know how much I trust the records of the 1003 hundreds in Europe. Well, plus, also, there was no standardized medical jargon either for them to use that's true, too. Or that they could use that we would understand. Yeah. So we're cobbling together what we think they meant, what this one person meant, but they think the numbers of deaths are pretty accurate. Really? This is pretty crazy. One third. Oh, and we were talking about how it's so Eurocentric in Cairo. 7000 deaths a day at its peak. The bubonic plague or Black death. Sorry, the Black Death. Wow. That's it for Black Death. If you want to see some pretty cool pictures and read more about it, I strongly recommend this one type in Black Death in the search bar@housedefworks.com. And it's time now for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this our second Mafia mail. Sometimes we get so much mail from one topic that we feel like we should read more than one email on that topic, especially when it's accompanied by physical threats. That's right. So this is from Kate. The Kanuk Stewart is what she calls herself, which I thought was kind of funny. Hi, Josh. And Chuck and Jerry. I'm a huge fan of the podcast, but have never written in before because I never had much to say besides, oh, my gosh, I love you guys. It's a great reason to write in, by the way. Sure. However, after listening to the Mafia cast, I just had to write you an email to have some info from my family's past. My grandmother, on my mother's side, is a second cousin to the infamous Lucky Luciano. Most of the men in her family were made, and although she was largely kept out of the loop when it came to the wheelings and underdealings of her family, like Diane Keaton and The Godfather, there was one event that really brought home the kinds of things her brother and cousins were up to. When my mom was only a baby, my grandfather ran out on my grandma. When my great uncle heard about this, he and his cousins asked my grandma if she wanted them to take care of him for her. She really didn't know what that meant, but responded, maybe even jokingly. Well, don't kill him or anything. The next day, she got a phone call that her husband had been admitted to a hospital, badly beaten, with both of his legs broken. Well, clearly it wasn't prudent to mess around with members of my family. There are other rumors swirling around about different ventures that my great uncle and cousins were involved in, but they were notoriously tight lipped about everything. As far as I know, no one in my family is a part of the mob anymore. And no one has the broken legs. No one has broken the legs of any of my ex boyfriends. But I wouldn't date you just to be on the safe side. Huh. That is Kate. The Kanuck. Wow. Thanks a lot, Kate. Appreciate that. And all you canook is listening out there. Thank you very much. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click in the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The house that Forks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you?"
c3759772-5460-11e8-b38c-77d5833e32a2	SYSK Selects: How the Black Death Worked	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-the-black-death-worked	The Black Death was gruesome: Symptoms included tumors, purple splotches, fevers and vomiting. But how did this disease manage to spread from the Gobi desert and kill approximately one-third of the population of 14th-century Europe? Find out in this classic episode.	The Black Death was gruesome: Symptoms included tumors, purple splotches, fevers and vomiting. But how did this disease manage to spread from the Gobi desert and kill approximately one-third of the population of 14th-century Europe? Find out in this classic episode.	Sat, 03 Aug 2019 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=215, tm_isdst=0)	31163964	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey there, everyone. It's your old pal Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I chose how the Black Death worked. It's a look at a fascinating few years when a mystery disease we still don't know what it was so wept across Europe and Asia and killed a significant portion of the world. Check it out and enjoy. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know. The podcast, the audio podcast, nothing more. Got it. Not a lot less than comparably sized podcasts. No, this is chock full of good stuff. This one's got to be man. You think so? Oh, yeah, I liked it. You like this one? Yeah, I like some of the historical stuff we did. Man, I love it. You know, I was a history major at one point. Yeah. Love history. Me, too. Yeah. Chuck? Yes. So we're talking about the Black Death. Yeah. Right. Not Black Sabbath. Black Death. Oh, well, I'm going to need some more time then. Okay. So we'll wait. Hold on. All right, I'm back. Black Death. Yes. Okay. You understand now what we're talking about. Great. Chuck, I was researching this to find out okay. What's newsy about the Black Death? Like, how am I going to find an intro? I actually found one. Really? Yeah. It's from 2006. February 2006. Sorry, that's not very newsy. But there was a study that came out of Utrecht University. Have you ever heard of the Little Ice Age? No. There was a period in world history, global history. I think it may have been kind of localized to Europe, so let's say European history in about the 1500, where there was this inexplicable period of cold. Interesting, right. It's called the Little Ice Age. Harmful cold. It got cold. Our conception of why Vikings wear pelts and everything, they're always walking around it's very cold, not just because they live in Scandinavia, but because it was cold then. Okay. Yeah. So this little ice age like I said inexplicable no one had any idea why it happened. And these Utrecht researchers got a hold of some tree samples, some leaf samples from eras before the Little Ice Age and after, and they started counting stomas. These are the pores on the leaves. The more stomas you have, the more carbon dioxide there is in the air. Leaves develop the stomach so they can absorb more Co, too. Right. All right. So if so facto, the more stomas you have, the more CO2 in the atmosphere. Sure. What they found by counting these stomas was that there was a lot of CO2 prior to the 1340s in Europe. Okay. That means that there is not that much CO2, or that there was a lot of CO2 in the air, in the atmosphere. Okay. One reason there's a lot of CO2 is because there's not a lot of trees to soak that CO2 up. Okay. One reason there's not a lot of trees is because humans are cutting down the trees to farm land right. Or to stay warm. I see. There are fewer trees deforestation brought on by human activity. Okay. Okay. So what they find then is that after 1350, roughly, there's suddenly fewer stomas, which means that there's less CO2 in there, which means that there's more trees. Do you know why there are more trees? Yeah. Do you? I have a pretty good guess. It's because in between that time, the 1340s and the 1350s, the Black Death happened, and so many people died that it had a measurable effect on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of not that many trees. And then suddenly lots of trees because there was no one to tend the farmland. Isn't that interesting? You know what else? This is a tidbit from the end, but we might as well say it here. They think that there is a lack of genetic diversity in the UK today because of the Black Death. They were much more genetically diverse in the 11th century. Right. It represented what's called a population bottleneck. Yes. 25 million people died, about a third of the population of Europe. Which is mind boggling. Yeah, it is. All right, let's do it. Well, I was reading this one historian, his name is Skip Knox, and I don't know where he is now, but when he wrote that it was at the university no, Boise State, and he said Broncos, he goes, It's worth saying this has never happened before or since. Like when the black Death In an event like this, where within about two to three years, 25 million people died, it's never happened before. Yeah. I mean, no war can account for that. Yeah. No other pandemic. Yeah. This is it. This is as bad as it gets. And it was bad. It was bad. And it was bad not just because of the ultimate devastation, but it was bad because of how gnarly the Black Death is. Why don't you talk about some symptoms? All right? If you had the Black Death, this is what you have to look forward to. First of all, you had no idea what was happening to you. Neither did your doctor, neither did your local cardinal or bishop. And they didn't know a lot back then. But they had their cockeyed theories, at least. They didn't even have cockeyed theories on this. They had cockeyed theory that everybody went along with. They developed some, but initially they were like, I don't know what this is, right. But you have these big tumor lumps. You've got them on your body, you got black spots. Well, tell them about the tumor. Some were small, but they could get pretty big. Yeah. Some as big as an apple. And they said in the article here that if you had one on your neck, it could permanently cut your head to one side. Permanently, meaning, like the five days you had left to live. I know. I hope it's okay to laugh a little bit this now, surely. No. You had pusing out of open source. You had a nasty smell because you were riding from the inside out. Your breath was awful. It was gruesome, purple splotches. God's tokens, right? Yeah. They call them God's tokens because once you get these, that means God's going to take you off the earth pretty soon. Right. That's God's token fevers that could fry your brain, send you into delirium, vomiting, coughing up blood. Blood and pus. Oozing. I've already said I think you did, but it's worth, saints wise. So those are some of the symptoms. And once you start having these symptoms, you are pretty much done for within a matter of days. Right. So in our modern day, it takes a little while to bury somebody, even with this machinery that we use to dig modern graves. But back then, it took even longer to dig a grave, to hold the service, to bury somebody. And when people die within days and suddenly there was like a third of the population dying off. There was no time to bury anybody, no space, even. There's literally stacking up dogs eating corpses. It says in here, children, hungry babies beside their dead mothers. Yeah. Molly Edmonds really went this one. Yeah, but that's the truth. I mean, that would be crazy. That was the raw truth. That was an ugly, ugly, ugly scene. And of course, anyone who see Monty Python knows that there are people who operate at carts that bang on pots and said, Bring out your dead. Yeah, well, we'll get into the flinging of corpses, too. Well, let's get into the flinging, because that's kind of how it started. And first, I want to point out the Black Death gripped Europe. It did not only impact Europe. It's so funny, it's so Eurocentric, the way we approach the Black Death, it started in the Gobi Desert sometime in the late 1320s in Asia, in China. China lost 35 million people in the 14th century from the Black Death, but no one ever mentioned yeah, they always hear about the Europe, the Black Death in Europe. So it was localized, and it was actually in Asia and Central Asia for a decade or two. But they blame it pretty squarely on the genovese for bringing it to Europe, right? Yes. How did the genovese get it? Well, in 1347 in KAFA, which is modern day Ukraine, it was a genovese trading post. They were attacked by the Tartar army. Tartar started to die off by the plague. And the genovese are like, sweet, god is punishing our enemies and they're dying. Let's have a big party and celebrate. And then the Tartars are like, well, we're going to start flinging our dead corpses over the wall at you, because the smell is so awful, you will die from the smell. They weren't too far off. It was a stupid idea. Stupid idea. But it worked because what they were doing was germ warfare. Very early germ warfare. Right. They had it wrong, though. They thought it was a smell. Actually, it was this pestilence. And so the genouise said, oh, we need to get rid of these nasty bodies. But it was too late. They were infected by that point. The genouise fled to Sicily, and then from there it took two pass one. Where was the first one? Well, the first one went up through Austria and Germany. Right. And then the second pass went through Italy to France, to the UK. Yes. At a speed which doesn't sound fast, but it really is if you're talking about Black Death, about two and a half miles a day. And not only is it fast, like, even by today's standards, this is when people were riding horses and carts and stuff. It's lightning fast. It's bullet trained fast for that time. Yeah. Why is it called the Black Death? Actually? Do you know this? I do. So there's a mistranslation at some point. What do you mean? Well, back in the day, people called it the Big Death or the Great Mortality. The Big Death. That's bad. That's what they called it as it was happening. Right, okay. And then later on, it came to be known as the Ottramors, which is Latin for terrible death or black death. At some point in time, somebody decided that they liked the Black Death better. It's sometime in the 18th century when they were using it to differentiate the plague of London in 1665. But they mistranslated. It wasn't originally called the Black Death or the Terrible Death. It was called the big death. Got you. And then it just kind of went from there. All right, well, at the time, King Philip VI of France turned it over to the Paris College of Physicians, who were they were like the Mayo Clinic at the time. And they said, here, we need to figure out what this is. What is it? Smartest doctors in the world, and they says, we figured it out. It's all here in the report. This happened when Saturn and Jupiter and Mars lined up in Aquarius and Jupiter's Role, wet and hot, and it soaked up the evil vapors from the Earth, and Mars is dry, so it exploded those vapors, and now it is a fog of death. And they very smugly pinpointed the time that it happened 01:00 p.m. On March 20, 1045. And they just shook their head like, yeah, but they did say it was a fog of death. My guess is that it was probably pretty foggy for some reason. Some weather system happened or they were onto something, like it was being transmitted through the air somehow. Sure. Which they might have been actually onto something there with an airborne pathogen right. Possibly. Instead, they went with the fog of death from the planets aligning. And another term for a fog of death is a miasma. It's a corrupted bit of air. And this is what Europe went with, right? Yeah. Like, okay, well, these are the smartest guys as far as medicine goes. They have the longest crows, beak masks of anybody, and we're going to go with this fog of death thing. So how do we combat it? And what they figured out was, well, since you're breathing this fog, you got to keep the fog at bay. And one good way to do that is to fight fog with fire. With smoke. Sure. So there were fires everywhere. Yeah. They were recommended to burn aromatic wood, and people would even carry this stuff around. Rosemary, amber, and Musk. The pope even stood between two fires when he addressed people. Yeah, they kept them burning on street corners. And then the fact that it was coming from the south and it was a fog of death, they started putting glass in their southern windows so that the southern wing couldn't penetrate it. See, that kind of smart. There it is. They weren't all hokey. No, that seemed kind of smart. What didn't seem very smart was don't bathe. Don't have physical intimacy, although it's a good way to spread disease. So maybe they're onto something there. Don't sleep during the daytime. Avoid sad boss that had nothing to do with spreading it. They're like, just don't be lazy. Yeah. Avoid sad thoughts about disease. It's something to that if you believe in the mind. If you believe in positive psychology. Exactly. So some of those little substance to a bit of it. I have a little cocktail tidbit for you, though. Okay. I know. It is so awesome. I know. The word quarantine actually comes from the Black Death in Venice, Italy. They were pretty smart, and they said, you know what? We should start isolating some of these ships of people that are coming in, not let them come on land until we know that no one on board is sick. Right. So let's do this for, like, 30 days. And then they went, no, that's not long enough. Let's do it for 40 days. 40 or quarantine. That's where the word came from. Well, it's not as much of a stretch of somebody besides Chuck is pronouncing it, but yes, that is where quarantine if you look at it, it looks like the word quarantine. Yes. So that's pretty smart, too. There are some smart people. Still, 60% of the population of Venice died within, I think, 18 months. Yeah. So the quarantine, while practical and useful, didn't protect everybody. Yeah. And we don't know what the doctors were doing that much, because all we have here is just recorded documents of what was going on. Well, there wasn't even documentation. It was popular writers, church writers. Yeah. It wasn't like science journal. I mean, not a lot of people knew how to read and write during this time, and the ones who did normally were affiliated with the church, so they would have had a very religious view of what was going on. Right, yeah. They're probably blood letting. The physicians that were working the Crows mask guys were bloodletting. They were opening up these boobos, which is almost like a textual representation of a pussy tumor. A Boobo. They would open these and then drain them because that made sense to get rid of whatever's in there, I guess. Very smart. Yeah, we still do that today. Popping zits. Yeah, every Tuesday, religion comes into play pretty heavily there because a lot of people said, let's turn to God and pray for help. Well, a lot of people thought that this is punishment from God. Oh, yeah, the flagellants. Yeah. So only he could do anything about it. Or she depending in New York. Yeah, sure. So, yes, the flagellants. Chuck, take it. The flagellance of Germany. Yeah, the brotherhood of the flagellance had already flagellants had already been around. Not flatulence, though. No, very big difference. They were already around. But they rose up, like you said, in Germany in the mid 1340s, and they thought it was punishment from God, and they thought, you know, we're going to do something about it. So you've heard of self flagellation. That's where it comes from. They would walk barefoot across Europe, whipping themselves with their little, whatever, cat of nine tails, scourges like what have you, that had, like, sharp kind of barbed ends. It didn't work, though. And a lot of people turned against God because of that. They also kill a lot of Jews. The flagellants did. Flagellants. They killed Jews. They would kill clergy that opposed them, except for the Pope. And the Pope was like, you're officially denounced, I think, 1349. That was it for the flagellants. Although they popped up again in later plagues and pestilences. They did, but they stopped for the Black Death, like, immediately when they denounced them. Well, they killed Jews because there was a pretty bad rumor going around that the Jews were poisoning the water supply. And because at the time, Christians and Jews lived separately, largely, a lot of Jewish communities were effectively quarantined, so they didn't get hit as hard. So all of a sudden, Jews are on and prospering is the right word, but they're not dying like the Christians are. So the Christians started burning them alive. He started burning them alive. Apparently in Strasbourg, Germany, more Jews died in Germany than anywhere else, at the hands of Christians who are upset about the plague. And in Strasbourg, in, let's see, I think 1348 on one day, 200 Jews were burned alive at the stake. Wow. Just that one city on that one day. And apparently entire communities used to be walled up and set on fire with everybody. Or Jews would convert to Christianity on the spot, or they would set their own houses on fire. Which is kind of sensible, like, oh, look, my house is already on fire, but I should probably take off. Right. Keep on walking. See you guys later. Well, a lot of Jews fled to the countryside, didn't they, too? Yes, because they were able to. Yeah. Good for them is what I see. Well, I don't think it was just you. I think anybody who had the means of going to the countryside, which is crazy, because I mean, like, going to the countryside means like, stepping out your back door, I thought in the 14th century. Yeah, but apparently there were still countries. So the wealthy went out to the country once in a while and they would. Right. So, needless to say, it was a really rough few years for Europe and by 1352 it was largely gone. Yeah, it just took off. But what I mean, there was it's not like, alright, black desk gone, everything's cool now. There were like huge, huge effects. Apparently the self flagellation worked. Right, yeah, sure. That's what it was. Well, yeah. You have to imagine if a third right. So that means that between you, me and Jerry, one of us dies. Well, it'd clearly be me. It's not necessarily true. I'd set myself on fire. Okay, so then two of us would have died. Yeah. Right. A third of this population of the workforce within like, seriously, like two years is just gone. People are being eaten by dogs or corpses are being eaten by dogs in the streets. Families are just completely abandoning one another once they get sick. The whole social psyche, the collective psyche of Europe just kind of crumble a little bit. It took a pretty big ding. And one of the places that took that ding was in religion. A lot of heretical society sprung up because it was like, either this was your work, God, or you didn't do anything to help us. So we're not coming to church anymore. Yes. Instead of being really thankful that they survived, people partied. Like it was 1999, basically. Big time crazy parties. Yeah. Lot of debauchery. Lots of debauchery. There was an economic impact too. A huge one. Well, yeah. I'm sorry. If a third of the workforce is gone, you've got no one working, so labor is going to skyrocket. The price of labor is price of labor is cost of goods. Food. The little silver lining there. Food was in supply because there weren't as many people to eat it. Exactly. Sadly. Isn't that depressing? The other cool thing, though, is potentially we saw the birth of modern science and medicine because of the Black Death. Because the leaders were like, this whole planet aligning thing was pretty stupid now that we look back at it. So why don't we found some schools and do some real research based on physical science and give that a whirl. Yeah. And they started it. It worked. Which is kind of ironic as well, because the population was so decimated that even after they had this idea, they had to wait a little while to reopen schools because they couldn't staff them. And also, Chuck, there was an almost complete loss of any illusions about death and whether or not it's coming for you. There's a whole allegory and art that sprang up at the time called Dance Macabre, which is the dance of death, which is basically like showing living people and skeletons working side by side or hanging out or partying together or whatever. And the point of that is that death can come at any time, and it's coming for everybody. So art and poetry and things like that just took a real downer turn there for a while. Yeah. Because that was clearly what everyone was thinking about at the time. That's right, Chuck. What caused it? See, this is where I get a little confused, because there's conflicting information, even to this day. Well, it's one of the things where we thought we figured it out, but modern techniques and modern investigation have kind of led us to think did you like that? Have led us to think that maybe that first idea wasn't right. First idea came out of the third pandemic, which was in 1894 in Hong Kong and India. Right, yeah. And two bacteriologists. Alexander Yerson and Shibasaburo kita Sato. Nice. Thanks. They worked independently and isolated the cause of that third pandemic. And it is what we know today as bubonic plague. Yeah. It's a bacterium called Ursinapestis, named after Alexander Urson. Right. Yeah. And it lives in the foregut of fleas rodent fleas that feast on rats. Yeah. This was interesting, I thought, because the flea, regular flea, bites rat and drinks blood, and it's like, oh, man, that was fantastic. If you're infected with the urcinia pestis and your flea, you bite the rodent and you eat the blood, but it gets stuck in your foregut, and so you never feel that quench of that tasty tasty blood in your stomach if you're a flea. So you keep biting more and more rodents and infecting more and more rodents. Yeah. Because you're like we talked about with the fleas, regurgitating it back onto rodents, and all of a sudden you're killing all these rodents. And then when there are no more rodents, then the fleas will go to people. Right. And so they thought that's how it was spread. Right. Which makes sense because it's not like conditions were really sanitary in the Middle Ages. Sure. There were plenty of before the Middle Ages, the 14th century. Right, yeah. There were plenty of rats, plenty of fleas. The problem is there's a lot of discrepancies between bubonic plague or yosemia pestis and whatever the Black Death was. Right. So you've got, like, big discrepancies. You've got boubos, right? Yes. With both. But bubos under the bubonic plague tend to bring up around the growing area only. And descriptions of boubos with the Black Death were that they were all over the place, all over your body. Right. Bubonic plague doesn't cause purple splotches. No. It doesn't cause delirium. No. Or the vomiting blood and pus and all that stuff. There's a lot of stuff that was documented widely by different sources during the Black Death that doesn't have anything in common with bubonic plague. Well, the big one to me was the fact that bubonic plague, even if you don't treat it, has a mortality rate of about 60%. Yes. And from the sounds of the Black Death, it was near 100% taken down entire villages. Right. So they did figure out that the third pandemic in 1894 was caused by Yersinia Pestis bubonic plague, but they erroneously, possibly attributed it to the Black Death. But for about 100 years, that was the premise that everyone went on was bubonic plague was the Black Death until 1984, when some researchers who have been dubbed plague deniers really? Yeah. Have started to come up with competing theories. And there's some interesting ones. Yes. Sociologists Susan Scott and biologist Christopher Duncan think that it is a hemorrhagic fever. Like Ebola. Right. Makes sense. Sure. Some say anthrax or maybe some just disease that is not around. Some extinct disease. Right. Like it went extinct somehow after the Black Death. The thing, though, is this DNA study in the 1990s, they dug up some corpses from mass graves in France, tested the teeth, because I guess dental pulp is about the only thing you can test at that point. And they did find that the Y pestis in the samples. So they said, oh, yeah, see, it was the plague. But then they apparently looked at other bodies from other grave sites and it wasn't conclusive. No, they didn't find it. Yeah. They didn't find it at all. Yeah. So what does that mean? I don't know. What do you think? Well, Skip Knock, that historian I referred to earlier, his theory is that it was bubonic plague working in concert with a mnemonic plague. So it was respiratory, which is boobonenemonic. Yes. Which is basically his idea, is that there are two plagues working at once. Or that's the theory he subscribes to, which, I don't know, it seems likely to me that there is probably some bacterium that's either extinct or worse than that, dormant. Right. Let's hope it's extinct. Dormant's. Not the words I want to be hearing right now. Oh, and there's one other thing that was a problem with the fleas. There were two other problems that we didn't mention. One was that there should have been a die off of rats, because, remember, they jump from rats to humans when there's no more rats. Right. And there's no documented die off of rats in Europe before the plague ever. And then secondly, what was the second winter should kill fleas. That's right, Chuck, but it didn't. It does kill fleas, but it didn't have any effect on the spread of the Black Death. Yeah, well, the other problem, though, is, like we said, it's all stuff that's written down, so it's not like you said, the bubos are near the groin area, but at the time, with the sensationalism of the day, people, they could have been riding sores all over their body and they could have exaggerated some of the symptoms because of fear. I just don't know how much I trust the records of the 1300s in Europe. Well, plus, also, there was no standardized medical jargon either for them to use that's true, too. Or that they could use that we would understand. Yeah. So we're cobbling together what we think they meant, what this one person meant, but they think the numbers of deaths are pretty accurate. Really? Yeah. This is pretty crazy. One third. And we were talking about how it's so Eurocentric in Cairo, 7000 deaths a day at its peak. The bubonic plague or Black Death. Sorry, the Black Death. Wow. That's it for Black Death. If you want to see some pretty cool pictures and read more about it, I strongly recommend this one type in Black Death in the search bar@housedefworks.com. And it's time now for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this our second Mafia mail. Sometimes we get so much mail from one topic that we feel like we should read more than one email on that topic, especially when it's accompanied by physical threat. That's right. So this is from Kate The Kanuck Stuart is what she calls herself, which I thought was kind of funny. Hi, Josh. And Chuck and Jerry. I'm a huge fan of the podcast, but I've never written in before because I never had much to say besides, oh, my gosh, I love you guys. It's a great reason to write in, by the way. Sure. However, after listening to the Mafia cast, I just had to write you an email to have some info from my family's past. My grandmother on my mother's side, is a second cousin to the infamous Lucky Luciano. Most of the men in her family were made, and although she was largely kept out of the loop when it came to the wheelings and underdealings of her family, like Diane Keaton and The Godfather, there was one event that really brought home the kinds of things her brother and cousins were up to. When my mom was only a baby, my grandfather ran out on my grandma. When my great uncle heard about this, he and his cousins asked my grandma if she wanted them to take care of him for her. She really didn't know what that meant, but responded, maybe even jokingly. Well, don't kill him or anything. The next day, she got a phone call that her husband had been admitted to a hospital, badly beaten with both of his legs broken. Well, clearly it wasn't prudent to mess around with members of my family. There are. Other rumors swirling around about different ventures that my great uncle and cousins were involved in, but they were notoriously tight lipped about everything. As far as I know, no one in my family is a part of the mob anymore. And no one has the broken legs. No one has broken the legs of any of my ex boyfriends. But I wouldn't date you just to be on the safe side. Huh. That is Kate the canuck. Wow. Thanks a lot, Kate. Appreciate that. And all you canook is listening out there. Thank you very much. If you want to get in touch with Chuck or me, you can get in touch with us via Twitter. That's right at Fyskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, stuffychano. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, go check out our home on the Web. Stuffyhoodnow.com. Stuffyheanow is a production of iHeartRadio's. How Stuff Works. For more podcast, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio, ApplePodcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite show."
https://podcasts.howstuf…nline-dating.mp3	How Online Dating Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-online-dating-works	No longer weird, possibly still desperate and approaching normal, online dating's been around almost as long as the Internet itself. So what exactly is the best way to find love online if one were so inclined to do so? Josh and Chuck hook you up.	No longer weird, possibly still desperate and approaching normal, online dating's been around almost as long as the Internet itself. So what exactly is the best way to find love online if one were so inclined to do so? Josh and Chuck hook you up.	Thu, 06 Mar 2014 14:08:53 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=14, tm_min=8, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=65, tm_isdst=0)	45690537	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your city Advantage Platinum Select Card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage miles. Actually, you earned Advantage miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you. And you could be anywhere with the city advantage Platinum Select Card. Learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with Cityadvantage summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. So it's stuff you should know. That's right. The online dating edition. We are all in committed relationships in this room, and so I doubt if any of us have ever online dated. Probably, right? I have not. I have not. Jerry. You probably haven't. We're all like long term monogamous, but I mean, we're also good at research, too. Sure. I haven't been to The Sun, but we did one on The Sun. Yeah, that one stunk. Yeah, that's a bad example. I do have to say, though, if I were single here in this modern age, I would be into online dating. Well, it's normal now. I was not ever skilled at wooing the ladies, like out in bars or whatever. I would do fine set up or like at a dinner party or something. But this would have really benefited me back in the day if it was like a legit thing in the early 90s. Well, and there were some legit sites, but it was more like member of the movie singles, like the video profiles. Right. Great Expectations. Was that what it was called? Well, that's in real life, there's something like that called Great Expectations. Yeah. Well, should we talk about the history? Did you have a better intro than that? No, I didn't. Okay. I just figured we'd go into the history of it because it does have a surprisingly long history. Yeah, I guess using computers not necessarily online, because there wasn't such a thing as online. Right. It started in the 60s with a guy named Jeff Tar, who was a mathematician at Harvard, and he was interested in the girls. He was a little bit girl crazy. I said. He was so desperate to meet girls. And I think if you're a mathematician at Harvard, it's probably not like, bustling with hot chicks. So prepare to have your socks knocked off, because the lady who wrote this Slate article did a miscarriage of justice in describing Jeff Tar and his operations. Yeah. First of all, apparently the computer that they used, the circuit board spelled out the word sex. Yeah. Just for fun. Yes. Okay. No, because that was the point. Right. And he was desperate to meet them because he was desperate to get his brain and hers as he could. Apparently, this guy had no problems whatsoever. Really? Yeah. You saw Mathematician, Harvard, sixty S, and you thought, hey, I read a contemporary article and another one that written years later about this thing. It was a thing, it was called Operation Match that he set up. And basically for $3, you submitted a questionnaire, and Jeff Tar fed your questionnaire into a computer, and you are guaranteed to get at least five names of people who the computer decided were a match based on your questionnaire answers. And he was doing it mostly in New England for the New England colleges. It was probably back then, it was probably names, addresses, and how they like to be touched, pretty much. But they got kind of a tepid response, and then somebody mentioned it on, like, an interview on TV, and it took off after that. And then a few months, they had 100,000. Wow. People in this database for the 1960s. Yeah. And these were undergrad college students charging $3 a piece. So in a few months, they made, like, $300,000. Wow. Coming up with the first computer dating service whatsoever, did he go on to do anything great? He's a mathematician. From Harvard, I'm assuming. Yeah. Okay. Well, in the 70s, Great Expectations is what you mentioned, was founded by Jeffrey Olman, and he's the one that did the video presentations, like, they made fun of in the singles movie, where you would just do your little video profile and people would watch it and say, I like that girl. She plays guitar, and look, she's drinking coffee. She likes dogs. Can you imagine anything more clunky than getting, like, a video tape in the mail of video profiles of people couldn't imagine it. It's not a sustainable system or making one man, especially in the day when you had to you know, it would take me, like, two weeks to do a video thing. And that's with modern computer editing. Right. Yeah. Being one that felt good about Burnout editor who had to put those things together. Yeah. Well, in singles, it was Tim Burton. He had a little cameo as really as the director of her dating video. Have you seen singles recently? No. Wow. It really made quite an impression on you. I was about to say, it's one of my favorite movies, but it's not on my top 100 favourite movie list. Oh, I might have forgotten that one. Great movie. You're going to have to do 101. Yes, perhaps. So. I like the story about Jeffrey Olman who found a great expectations. He was apparently on Montel Williams show. Yeah. And Montel Williams updates it. He was basically saying, like, doesn't your service just prey on lonely people? And Olen said, yes, just like restaurants pray on the hungry and doctors prey on the sick, and talk show hosts pray on the people who are too bored to read a book. Love that guy. I know. And I remember I'm old enough to where I remember these early services and it being like an embarrassment. Like, God, what a desperate person. So here's to sign up for something like this. I read an article that made that point that there is still that stigma surrounding online dating. Now, a certain percentage of people polled still feel that way, for sure. I think like 13% of people who are involved involved in online dating consider themselves desperate for online dating. And this author was putting this assertion out there that just the very structure of online dating, the privacy settings, just general embarrassment surrounding it, just the way it's set up. It's treated like it's an embarrassing thing, and as long as it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing, it's never going to become real dating. It's going to become some hybrid of it where only sad people are the desperate or people who just want to hook up or the dregs of humanity. That's where they go. It will never be the de facto method of dating as long as it's structured as an embarrassing thing. Do you think it's still structured that way? Yeah, I think it is. I think the privacy settings are in part for protection, to keep creeps at bay. But I think it's also so that the average person can't see that you're trying online dating even still today. I guess I see that. I think there's nothing to be ashamed of. No, I agree entirely. A very efficient way to meet a like minded person. Right. I would be way into it. I think maybe like, in five years there will be a moot point because so many other people will be using it. Yeah, because apparently it started to wane in 20 04. 20 05 well, that was more to do with the economy, I think. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They did a study from over a ten year period and it definitely waned in the mid 2000s, but now it's booming again. Dating services report earnings of $2 billion in 2013 and they said that they're growing at a rate of 3.1% per year now. But it did when disposable income was in shorter supply. That was definitely one of the first things to go. Yes, and now it's back. But I think in addition to that economic hitch upward, there was an attendant acceptance, social acceptance of it as well, that accounted for a growth in it. Between 2005 and 2013, the number of Americans who said that they know somebody who online dated doubled from 15% to 30% of Americans. And like 11% of all Americans use or have used online dating services. So it is definitely becoming more and more widespread. But again, I do think that there is still just some tinge of whatever. Yeah, sure. Like some people might be a little reticent to say that in mixed company. Yeah. Which is weird, because it's like people aren't ashamed of dating. No. Or not dating. It's just adding that online to it changes everything for some reason. Yeah. And of course, with the advent of smartphones and apps and GPS locators, that has helped a lot, too, to increase revenues. Right. So thanks to the technical revolution that was the advent of the Internet, in 1995, a little site called Match.com came about, which is interesting because that was the first online dating service, and Match was the name of that one from Harvard in the noticed that. I wondered if he got any juice out of that. Probably not. Probably not. No. It is a harder mathematician. Right? He's doing all right. Yeah. We assume. Yes. And then a couple of years later, another one that's still around and very prominent, JDate. Was created yes. For the Jewish community. Yeah. And then the original version of Facebook was called Face Match. And it was basically an online version of the way to check people out, basically. Right, exactly. Now, Chuck, like you said, there's sites all over the place. There's apps. It's just becoming more and more prevalent. Yes. I made a list, if we can go ahead and get to this of my 20 favorite niche sites, please. Because you can go to the general ones like Eharmony or Match or the Big Daddies. Or if you're really specific, you can go to likewise for fellow book lovers or farmers only. City folks just don't get it. Exactly. There's one called How About We Dot? Which is basically instead of some huge profile that you have to set up, it's very short and casual. Like, how about we go eat at a great restaurant tonight and someone can just respond to meet you. If you're an Ivy Leaguer, you might go to Ivydate. That's a site. Equestriansingles.com. I'm sorry, that's an obnoxious dating site. Oh, totally. Obnoxious equestrian singles. If you're into horses, there's one called Cupidino.com for fans of Apple products. Oh, man. Because they found that Apple people tend to be alike. Veggie date if you're a vegetarian muscle of pets. Our time is just one of many for people over 50, which is kind of cool to see. Geek to geek. There's obviously political ones. Republican meet and Democratic republican people meet. And Democratic people meet. I don't know if there's a Tea Party people meet or not? I would guess Trek Passions. Yes. Do you like to hike? No, man. My lovely parent is for single parents. Sea captain date. I think my favorite one. That's for real? Yeah, it's just for people looking for their first mate. That's awesome. Find your face mate. That's for people who think that want to find people that look like them. It's a little creepy. WealthyMen.com stashpassion. If you're into mustaches. Okay. Not like drugs on you. No personals for cat lovers waiting till marriage for the virgins among us. Yeah. I found one that was founded by a woman who had had cervical cancer that's nice. Who founded a site for people who are incapable of having sex. Well, but still want to find love. And apparently it's gotten a pretty great response. That's awesome. And the last one was Tall Friends that I thought was kind of interesting. Like, they're just tall. You're just into tall people. I've heard of that from a lot of tall people. Especially tall women oh, yeah. Who don't like dating short guys. Sure. And have a hard time finding dudes that are six three. You go to tall friends. Go to tall friends. I saw another one called the Gaggle. Have you heard about that? Yeah, that one's interesting. So for a woman to date all of the various prized parts of an individual's personality, but broken out and distributed among a whole group of men, like, I want to date an athlete, so I'll go on a date with this guy, but I like a brainy guy, too, so I'll go on a different date with a brainy guy. Right. And so on and so on. A tall dude. Yeah. And then the woman. But she's dating all these dudes at once. Hence the Gaggle. A gaggle of dudes. Yeah. We're power g, I guess. Yeah. And then, of course, the kids. As weird as your imagination can get. Weirder than Farmers only. Oh, yeah. Or Trek Passions. Way weirder. Or Sea Captain Date. Even weirder. All right. Yeah. So that's some pretty good stuff, Chuck. Thanks. That was some good digging. Well, those are, like you said, one of many, many, many. But we're going to be talking about sort of the basic online standard online dating scenario, and we're going to talk about that right after this message. 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Yeah. So the first thing you're going to want to do, there's different kinds of sites. They're typically broken out into two categories sea captains and tall people. No, I kid. It's free sites and pay sites. No, that was serious. That last one. No, I was still laughing at. Okay, sounds good. So you got your free sites, you got your pay sites and both of them, it depends on the site. But for the most part, if you are thinking of creating a profile, you will be able to go on to just about any dating site and give a very minimal amount of information and start browsing. Yeah, because they want you to check out the site and get the hooks into you and they don't necessarily say you got to pay right away or you got to give us all this information. Just browse around the shop, see if you like anything. Right. So you're going to give a little information like whether you're a man or a woman or whether you're seeking a man or a woman, maybe the year you were born and then maybe your zip code. Yeah. You're not going to get full profiles if you're browsing unless you may not get pictures either. It depends. So if it's a free site, you may yeah, true. If it's a pay site and we'll talk about the pros and the cons in a minute of each, if it's a Pay site, you might be able to see a profile without pictures, or you might be able to see both, but you can't contact anybody unless you pay. But for the most part, when you're going online, you can check the people out with just a tiny bit of information. Once you join, though, you're going to have to start building a profile. And it kind of starts out easy and broad, and then as you go through creating the profile, it takes a minute. Yeah. And I guess we should point out, too, that you're going to have to input some kind of email address. It's up to you if you want to create an email address for free, just for online dating. If you're really super freaked out about privacy, might not be a bad idea. But most of these you're not allowed to be emailed directly at first. It's either anonymous through the site or the site has their own messaging system. Right. So it's pretty safe these days as far as protecting your privacy, you shouldn't get too freaked out. Right. It's not like this 1970s where there wasn't even with straight expectations. Oh, yeah. This is my address in the background. Right, exactly. Your next step there is probably writing down some physical attributes about yourself, because as much as people like a good personality and a sense of humor, a lot of people are probably looking for something specific. Right. Or maybe just general physically. So you've got height, weight, hair color, eye color, body type yeah. Whether you have tattoos or piercings, that kind of thing. Sure. And then it gets a little more involved. And all of this is you're just clicking bubbles or selecting from drop down menus, but it gets a little more granular, like, what are your interests? And these are people snooping. You're doing this for yourself to have a more complete profile. Sure. If you're in there going, well, why do they want to know what kind of movies I like? Then you don't get online dating. Yeah. But maybe you should go to Suspicious Minds or Suspicious Hearts online dating services. You don't give out any personal information because you're off the grid. Yeah. Or the drop down menu says, I like this, this, that, or none of your business, and everyone just picks none of your business. Yeah. So your interest in activities. You play guitar, do you play sports? Are you into reading? Who's your favorite filmmaker? What do you like to do on the weekends? All that kind of stuff will give someone else a good idea of kind of what you're like. Yeah. Your income level, whether you have pets, how you feel about having pets, if you live with your parents. These are all things you can lie about. Oh, that's the thing. I read somewhere that one in ten profiles online are made up. Yeah. In fact okaycupid. Says the top four things people lie about most are height, income, their photo, and their sexuality, which I thought was weird. Yeah, it is weird. I didn't get that one. You're not doing yourself any favors if you're lying about your sexuality out of the gate. No. And supposedly also, Chuck, 54% of people who submitted to a poll about online dating said that they had somebody met up with somebody in life who, quote, seriously misrepresented themselves in their dating profile. Well, we might just like, yeah, we should go and talk about that with your photo. You want to represent yourself. Well, obviously. Right. But you want to be accurate because, again, you're not going to do yourself any favors. You're not going to get a second date if you show up looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and you put a picture of Tom Sellek up there. Hey, hunchbacks need love, too. Sure they do. That's why there's Hunchbackmate.com. Like, really? We could just sit here all day and come up with feasible names for gaining sites. Goiter. Touch. I think Jerry's grossed out. You know, goiters. Right. It's from hypothyroidism, which is the result of an iodine deficiency. That's why there's iodine salt to prevent goiters. I should have told my grandmother that. Apparently also the most preventable form of mental retardation is treated with iodine, or it results from an iodine deficiency, which is the main reason why they started adding that to salt, supposedly. And they think there's this thing called the Flynn effect, where inexplicably the intelligence, as mapped by IQ over the 20th century rose like three points across the board in the west. And they think it's possible that it's from iodine salt. We actually talked about that podcast a couple of weeks ago. Did we really? Yeah, I'm just very fascinated by that. Apparently so fascinated that it knocks out all memories of speaking about it. Why do you put that in an online dating profile and just watch your computer light up? What do you think I talk about for you and me? Drives her crazy. She's like, Tell me about ayade salt for the 8th time. She loves that stuff. All right, so where are we here? You're going to list all these things, you're going to fill out your profile and then you're going to do that again, but under the notion of what you're looking for in someone else. Like what's your ideal mate do and look like. Yeah. They're trying to match you. Yeah. The computer takes this stuff, chews it up like carrots and apples and poops out some matches. True. Is that true? Because I think it's made up, frankly, no, we'll get to the science of it. I saw that you mentioned your photo. Did we say don't put any personal information on there? No, that seems like a no brainer. They won't ask for that stuff, but there are times where you can write things about yourself. So don't feel free to say, this is where I live and this is my Social Security number. Right. Or this is where I work. Yeah, true. Which is one that I mean, I could see overlooking that. Yeah. That seems inadvertently I work at Discovery Channel, something like that. Where? Oh, in DC. Oh, cool. I'll be right there. Which floor? I want to show you how I can hold a knife on my teeth. You're going to love it. That would be pirateslove.com. No, that's Sea Captain. That's a sub branch of that one. Right? Yeah, probably so. All right, so you mentioned free versus subscription. They both did have their pluses and minuses. Free is good because it's free and we like that. Yes, but so do twelve year old boys. Exactly. Who poses other people? Yeah, exactly. That is one of the problems with free websites like this, is that you will get impostors, just jokes, ads, scams. Scams. There's like a whole Nigerian prince scam that's going on, actually. Apparently there's something you can do. If you see a photo of somebody that you're interested in, you can put it to the test. Oh, yeah. You can drag and copy it onto your desktop and then drag and drop it on Google Image Search. You can search by image. Does it reverse? Look up. It looks up that image, and it will show you all the stuff. And it may say, this is a scam. If that same picture shows up all over the place under different names, different aliases, whatever, that's a scam. If I did that to your picture, would it say, this is Josh Clark? Yeah, probably. Wow. It's a pretty smart computer they got there. Yeah. That's pretty creepy, though. But I guess it's good. It's creepy on one hand to be able to find out who someone is from a photo. Not like that. Sorry. No, if it were, like, on a dating site and it was just supposed to be somebody's photo I got you. If it came up as like, yeah, here's this photo that you found, here's the place that you found it, and here it is on these 18 other profiles with 18 other names. Got you. Then you know it's a scam. Okay. But you can go back it's kind of like a backdoor way to figure out if the person's made up profile. All right, so I guess that's good. My brain is not quite functioning today. Really? I'm saying things just a little out of syntax. Josh is going on vacation tomorrow. You're in vacation mode. Last day of school, I told him to rip up his research and throw it up in the air and run out of the building after. I'm pretty psyched. You should do that. All right, so the free ones, like we said, are good because they're free, but bad because of all that other stuff. The pay ones you got to pay for, which isn't great, but a lot comes with that, which is like an identity verification process, because they're going to be using your credit card and stuff. Right. So your information is going to be valid and safe with a paid site, supposedly. Or you can see through the pants off of that paid site for failing to verify correctly. Yeah, I guess so. You can also access other features if you're a paid member. Like, maybe they'll bump you up in search or you'll have access to more information. It seems wrong. Like paying for your profile to come up higher. The basis of the Internet, I guess. Search, referral. So, Chuck, we talked about making a profile. Let's talk about making a good profile. Yeah. And by the way, this is Edgarbanowski, right? The grabster? I believe so, yes. An early grabster. Yeah. I think reading some of his examples here, I think we're learning about the grabster. Oh, yeah, for sure. I think he's talking about him, so I think totally is. But he does have some good ideas, and I go out with him, some good examples. He's basically saying, like, don't be a hack when you're coming up with your profile, especially when you're free writing stuff. Choose a cool picture of yourself. Right. Choose a picture of yourself where there's not other people around, and you have a shirt on and you just don't look like a sleaze bag. Use humor. Don't just say I'm funny. Be funny. Yeah. Don't just say, I'm interested in something. Demonstrate how you're interested in it. And he said, Begin with the subject line. And he used two awesome examples, frankly. Yeah. Bogart fan seeking unusual suspects. Okay, well, it was a half awesome example. The next one is awesome. I agree. Go ahead. Come sail away with this boatinginthusiastics fan. I think that is the Grabstrum. I bet you anything that's yeah. How would you come up with that? Just using your imagination. I'd go out with that person. You want to make sure that you fill out your whole form, everything. Don't be lazy. If you're lazy, it sends a very clear signal that one, you're lazy, which is not a good prospect for anybody unless people are into that. Well, then you go on lazy date. Yeah. And then it also says that, I'm not really that into this. This is half hearted. Yeah. And definitely don't say my friends put me up to this. I usually don't do things like this. Right. I'm not a loser, so I don't normally do that. Because you're insulting the very people that you're reaching out to. Yeah. Not a good idea. And like we said, you want to not just talk about yourself. You want to demonstrate yourself. Yeah. And Ed again says, instead of saying, I enjoy Stanley Kubrick film, say, the other night I was watching A Clockwork Orange, and I found myself thinking, it'd be a lot more fun to watch and discuss with someone else to suddenly punch as we're walking down along the water. This movie about random violence and rape and torture. It'd be a lot more fun to watch it with someone. Or instead of I'm funny say, I love quoting Monty Python or Simpsons lines. Yeah, that could be us. Well, we do that all the time. He says, another way to be successful is to just know who you are and know what you want and know what you're looking for. And that's a big plus for people who get fixed up on dates. Like, your friends might think someone's perfect for you, but who really knows best but yourself? Who's perfect for you? Yeah. So you can avoid all that. The clap trap of getting set up on a bad date. Well, that's the whole role of online dating. Computer algorithms and apps and individuals have taken over from these traditional roles of family, friends, coworkers yeah. Of matchmaking it's people taking it into their own hands or relying on a computer algorithm to do it, which is I mean, that's the whole basis of online dating. That's the whole point of it. To me, it makes sense. It's just a time saver. Like, who's got time to go through. Just the random maybe I'll meet someone thing. I think that's probably what ultimately, 100 years from now, historians, anthropologists will look back on and explain the prevalence of online dating. Yeah. That's why it's just more efficient, I guess. And then lastly, this one's extremely important, too. When you're creating a good profile, use grammar wisely. Check for misspellings punctuation. Put some thought into it because you'll look like a dummy if you have a poorly worded profile. Yeah. Or again, if that's your thing, if you want to type the letter U instead of y ou, then go to Dumdumlove.com. Do that and find fellow Dumdums. Yeah. If you're into finding like minded people, you should be honest. Yeah. All right. You can also go to the Rivalside.com. So check before we go on. I like lazydate.com. Pretty soon you're going to be getting ready. You're going to put on some aftershave your very nice ruffled tuxedo shirt, some pomade in your hair and your high waiter pants with your white socks. It's time to go out there in the big wide world and actually meet somebody. Yeah. And this is after you have pinged this person. Yeah. And that's after this message. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. It automation. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right. For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity. Support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. And we're back. Chucking, it's time to go out in the world. Yeah. Like I said, this is after you have been pinged or pinged someone else. That's right. So we should probably talk about that first. It's not just like you make a profile and all of a sudden you have a date and you go out like there is a first contact procedure. Sure. And it doesn't necessarily happen very quickly. Yeah. And some people choose to make contact. Apparently you don't have to say much in your message when you're making contact with somebody. The Grabster says something like, hey, I saw your profile and it seems like we have some common interests. Take a look at my profile and if you're interested, send me a message. It's probably sufficient. And he says, you might send a message to several people at once, one at a time, and then after you send your messages, there's nothing you can do but wait. Yeah. And that, I think, goes back to how you are generally as a person. Before online dating, you're the kind of dude that would go to a bar and try and get like 15 phone numbers. Then you might want to scatter. You might take the shotgun approach. Or if you're not that kind of guy, if you're like me and never talk to girls at bars because you were just into hanging out with your buddies, then you might want to be a little more singular in your approach and say like, this lady sounds really nice. Not, these twelve ladies sound really nice. Let me see if one of them likes me back. Sounds like such a super lady. It depends on what kind of a hurry you're in, I guess. Yeah, I'd be a little more methodical, but I've known I have friends that take the shotgun approach. And I shouldn't keep saying that because that implies like, you're killing somebody. I just mean you're spreading a wide net, casting a wide net. There you go. So that's the capturing people in Nets approach. That's right. And we should also point out too, that there are a couple of ways to go about it. You can either get matched with someone through their algorithms that we talk about, or you can just do the searching yourself. Like they can narrow it down for you. And you could do it just search through until you find someone you like. Right. And there's a lot of sites out there that have no algorithm whatsoever. It's just that questionnaire you filled out is matched up with other questionnaires. And the more similar answers there are on the two questionnaires, the higher the ranking of the person who is suggested that you contact. Like you've got twelve things in common with this person. And then there are other sites which we'll talk about a little more, that do use algorithms that have like basically proprietary algorithms. Supposedly do a lot more than that. Just comparing similar questionnaires. Yeah, which one is that? Well, eharmony does they compare 29 dimensions of compatibility? Key dimensions? Yeah, that's right. I believe MatchCom uses algorithms. Chemistry.com, which is apparently a subset of Match.com, uses a personality inventory that the anthropologist Helen Fisher came up with that supposedly is kind of worky. I don't know if that's the thing. No one has any idea how well this stuff works. Well, each side is going to tout their own method and say that we're really pairing you with someone who's like you. But I think in general, they probably do a decent job. If you're filling out all these things and someone has a lot of similar interests, it's not brain surgery to pair those people up and say you might like each other. Well, supposedly like people who are professional personality inventory, that's a real thing. Now have sat down and taken these things and still are only scoring about 75% and grabster points out like, these people are professionals. If they sit the average person down in front of one of these personality inventories, we have a terrible ability to express what we want and who we are. Inability. Right. And as Helen Fisher was pointing out, like, we're terrible at that kind of stuff. But if you can pay attention to people's behavior, then you can start making predictions very accurately. Right. So they were saying, and in this article and from other places I've seen, those algorithms don't necessarily do anything more than just comparing inventories would comparing the two questionnaires and finding 28 similarities. And there's your match right there. Yeah, but like you said, the other way to go is to browse. Yeah. And I would recommend and this is just how I would do it is there are sites that give weighted answers to certain attributes. Yeah. It's too black and white to me to say I like blondes. I want a girl who's 25 and who's a Democrat. You might feel really strongly about like a political belief. So you can say that one is super important to me, but hair color really is not that big of a deal. So then that's thrown into the algorithm and you get a little more specific. Like they're not going to pair some super liberal person with a Tea Party person if they both say that's really important to them, if that's one of the values that they stick by. Or I hate dogs and they paired you with a dog lover, like you need to tell someone, I really hate dogs. Well, that goes back to being upfront and knowing what you want and saying it. Yeah, because apparently that saves a lot of time as well. All right, so you've made contact with some people, some people have gotten in touch with you. You've messaged back and forth and you said, hey, let's meet in real life. The next step that you have to take, unless you're insane or just a dummy and you're on dumbdum.com, is to talk to this person on the phone. Go to a payphone, have them go to a pay phone, it doesn't matter. Good luck finding a pay phone. You have to talk on the phone because right then and there you're going to find out if it is a twelve year old boy that we talked about earlier who made a joke profile on a free site. Yeah. It's a good way to root out just some the biggest piece of dishonesty. Sure. I also imagine that you could probably find out pretty quickly if they're actually boring. Yeah, sure. You can learn a lot by talking to someone, and if you think you can learn to everything you need to know from emails, you're wrong. Yeah, I mean, it's not true. We've figured out by now how to perform online. People just know how to be online and what's expected of them online. It is much more difficult to talk. Yeah. As we quite often find ourselves saying, things aren't good. Right? Good. So then you want to go out in the real wide world, and you're going to arrange for chuck a very public meeting, a crowded place, lots of people, aka witnesses. And you should set up a date that is going to last no more than about an hour. Quick dinner, meet for coffee, maybe a movie, but a short one. Yeah. And we'll meet for a TV show that is for your own safety and for your own sake, because sometimes you get it wrong or the dating site gets it wrong, and you end up with someone who's not a match. And you don't want to waste each other's time. So make it quick. I have a feeling if you're having a great time you both are, you can always extend that date. Sure. Say, hey, let's go hit that wine bar, too, because dinner is great. I'd like to keep talking to you. Right. It's harder to shorten the date. Right. Like, remember how we were going to go to that wine bar after this? Let's not do that. I found out I hate your guts. Yeah. And it's real easy to say, you know what? I lied. I don't have to go help my mom clean out her sock drawer. I really like you. Let's keep the state going. And it's super easy to say, no, I really do have to go help my mom. Queen Under Stock tour. It's crazy. Yeah. You also want to meet in public, like we said, for your safety as well. There's a woman from Las Vegas who's suing Match.com for $10 million right now because there was a man who she met and dated for, like, eight days, who four months later came to her house and stabbed her a bunch of times and kicked her head and neck and left her for dead. Was this after their relationship had gone bad? Yeah. So they dated for eight days. Four months later, he shows up at her house, and this guy apparently confessed to murdering another woman he met on Match.com, too, and then killed himself in jail. Wow. Yeah. And it happens to men as well. There's a man who arranged to meet a woman and was beaten and robbed by the woman and her son. So you don't want to invite people to your house and he's like, you didn't tell me you had a son. I don't like kids. That's nice. So you don't want to meet them at your house, you want to meet them in public? Yeah. Just protect yourself. Use common sense and caution. Don't be a dummy. Ed suggests a college sporting event because Ed wants to take a girl to a college sporting event, not prono. He doesn't like pro. If I like Pro, he would have written Pro. Yeah, that's true. You got anything else? Yes, I totally do. Okay, so we were saying that this online dating thing, the sites themselves, they're still growing, and it's becoming more and more normal. Sure. But then apps are becoming a little more prevalent as well. Yeah. Like, there's one called Tinder where you can see based on GPS. Is it Facebook profiles? I don't know. Or maybe you have to make a Tinder profile. I don't know of the people who are literally right around you at, like a coffee house or a bar or a club or whatever. And you can basically say, I'm interested in this person. I like how this person looks. I like this person. And if those people on Tinder say the same thing about you, then you can communicate with one another. Right. Apparently that's a big thing now. Yeah. Some of them are less about dating and more about just kind of hooking up. Maybe like, hey, I found someone who's two blocks from me. Do you want to go kiss each other for a little while in the alley? You can do that. I don't know if that's an online dating site, but it's a thing that exists now. Yeah, dating. It depends on your interpretation of the word date. Good point. And then lastly, Chuck, Wired got together with Okcupidandmatch.com and did some data mining and came up with some tips for how to optimize your online dating profile. So, for example, are these real? This is real. Okay. This is based on Okcupidandmatch.com figures. And apparently that's another surprising byproduct, is these dating sites. The raw data they do have are serving the fields of, like, anthropology and sociology. They're starting to open up their raw data archives and say, go get whatever you want from us. And it's helping. It's helping things. Like wired. Yeah. So if you're a guy and you have a tattoo, it's cool. If you're a woman, you have a tattoo, you're going to have a harder time getting a date. Really? Statistically speaking, yeah. I got mascara and okaycupid. All right. If you talk about karaoke, you're going to bomb. Really? Yeah. Wow. This one says, Be hotter than you are. Now. That's a good tip. Send a picture that under represent yourself. Oh, yeah. Slightly. And then show up and be like, oh yeah, actually dropped \u00a310. Check it out. If you are a female, you want to talk about London, New York City, yoga, surfing, and the word athlete. If you use those in your profile, you are likelier to get dates, you want to always refer to yourself as a girl, never as a woman. Okay. And if you're a boy, you never want to use the word girl when referring to women. Sure. You always use the word women. Interesting. Someone took us to task the other day in an email about saying female. Like we should say or should you should not say female. Saying you guys don't say male. You say female, though. And I was like I didn't know that was a bad association. About what? I would have think saying like dames or broads would be super offensive, but I thought female was like kind of the straight and narrow way to go. Sure. With identification of someone's gender. Yeah. I'm confused. I was too. I didn't get a response so maybe I misunderstood it. Apparently Wired says men who use the word whom get 31% more contacts from women. The word what? Whom. WH? Yeah. Even when it's used incorrectly. Yeah, I guess that's an impressive thing to say. Whom. Yes. If you are a man, you can talk about crafting and your children. If you're a woman, don't ever bring up crafting and never bring up your children. And that is just so wrong. It is very wrong. This is what I'm talking about. Anthropologically speaking, misogyny is alive and well. Yeah. What else you got? Radiohead is the only band you should ever talk about, apparently. Let's see, that's funny. The word retirement is attracted as far as it's related to men's profiles, but not women's. Yeah. If you're on WealthyMen.com and you see the word retirement, that's probably pretty good. I'm sure. And then also if you have a shirtless pick of yourself, you're not going to do very well if you put a shirtless pick of yourself. Yes. As a man or a woman, I imagine either way, but probably it's even worse with men. Yeah, but it is true. I mean, like even if you're a girl and you just put up like kind of a smutty selfie or something like that yeah, it definitely says a certain amount too. And you're going to attract like a certain kind of guy that you might not be interested in. You just said smutty selfie. Yeah. It's almost like the golden rule, treat others as you want to be treated. It's represent yourself how you want to be viewed. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you want to represent yourself as a smutty person, then put a smutty selfie. Yeah. But the people you get you know what you're going to be getting, right? That's exactly I think that's well put. Like you're asking for it in that case from the dregs of society to send you a date request at that point and to try like hell to find out your address. That's right. If you want to learn more about online dating, go give it a shot. There's free sites and stuff. You don't have to listen to us. We've never even done it. Or you could also look up this article from Ed Grabanowski for some pointers and tips by typing online dating in the search bar@houseofworks.com. And let's see, everybody I said search bar which means it's time for listener mail. You said smutty selfie, so it's time for listening. Is there something wrong with it? Just think it's a funny pairing of words. Well, it's the adamanta PIA. No, the alliteration. Yeah, alliteration. It sounds funny. Anamona p would be like smutty popping, right? I think so, yeah. Is that when the word sounds like the sound? Yeah. Okay. Hey, guys. I'm going to call this pinged from Sacramento. Hey, guys. I just finished the podcast on robots replacing human doctors. There's a reason I don't think we'll see that soon. Doctors are trained scientists who specialize in human health. All reason we need trained scientists and doctors is that human physiology and chemistry vary enough that it's not sufficient to treat each patient the same way. If we could treat all patients the same way, nurses and diagnostic manuals or computer systems would be sufficient. Because all humans don't respond the same to the same treatment, you actually do need a specialized scientist actively involved in the process. Still, I think robots or computer systems will replace many human doctors in time, though. We just need more intelligent robots, ones that are capable of thought beyond a simple preprogrammed response. Our current tech, as you indicated, is suitable for initial screening and such. With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors, as you said. With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors, and as you said, they'd be more current on their medical knowledge. The big question would be whether such machines would consent to serve humanity as our current automatons do. That is from Andy Ping in Sacramento. Nice. Thanks a lot. Andy Ping. That's the kind of name you say first and last. Yeah. Never just Andy or Mr. Ping. Andy Ping or Dr. Ping, maybe. Is he a doctor? No, I don't think so. Is the evil supervillain? Yes. Okay, then, Dr. Ping it is. If you want us to make a nickname for you, or just say your first and last name together, because that's how it should be said. You can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheanow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, check us out at our home on the Web stuffyoushodenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey. Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device or game console. You can get a 30 day free trial membership. Go to www. Dot. Netflix. comStuff and sign up now. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free amazon music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics. For digestive health, find us at chewy amazon on and halopets.com."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-peace-corps.mp3	How the Peace Corps Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-peace-corps-works	Since its inception, the Peace Corps has sent 200,000 members to 193 countries to deliver aid and good will through know-how rather than direct funding. Learn about the successes, criticisms and dangers of the Peace Corps in this gung-ho episode of SYSK.	Since its inception, the Peace Corps has sent 200,000 members to 193 countries to deliver aid and good will through know-how rather than direct funding. Learn about the successes, criticisms and dangers of the Peace Corps in this gung-ho episode of SYSK.	Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:44:16 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=14, tm_min=44, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=279, tm_isdst=0)	40405027	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"The Neogen device developed by Rst Syndnexis is a Wellestablished advanced quantumbased medical device using electric cell signaling technology. Treatment is noninvasive safe, effective, and used in managing pain associated with neuropathy and other painful conditions. It helps improve circulation, offers better rehabilitation through pain relief, and activates the recovery processes, giving better patient outcomes. Visit Neogenreleasepane.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen System come chat with us. That's Neogenreleavespane.com. Your patience will thank you. With no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with Capital One's top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One NA Member FDIC brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry it's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Bears. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yes. There we go. We were caught off guard by guest producer Casey. He gave us the yeah, Casey is amazing. The Quick Punch. What's it called? The Quick Punch. The Haymaker. The Haymaker. So we're calling it now. At least he was like, we're recording. Yeah. He's like, okay, we're rolling. Be funny monkeys. So rather than start over, I did my cheeks afterward. Yeah. All right. It's unusual. It's an unusual reversal of order, but we're going to have to go with it because we are low on tape. No one's going to Staples, so we just have to use this one. We can't record over it again or else it'll snap. That's funny. That used to be an issue. Yeah. We're running low on something now. There's an abundance of everything. We have all supplies out the yin yang. That's right. Remember the ad for ETrade? He's got money coming out the wazoo. It was like this Er team who were hustling this guy in a gurney to the emergency room, and they're like, what's wrong with them? They're like, he's got money coming out the wazoo. And it was coming out of his bottom. That's good. His bottom, Chuck. Yes. I think we should say that this is a special episode dedicated to the countless Peace Corps volunteers who listen to stuff you should know and who have written in over the years to say hi. Yeah. You guys were my best friends in Benin, Turkmenistan, Guam yeah. Wherever. Sure. Yeah. And we're finally doing that episode how Peace Corps works. Yes. We've had quite a few right in over the years, and they're all super nice folks and seemed to really be enjoying their time wherever they are. Yeah. They're good hearted. Hustlers is how I would describe them. Really? Yeah. Okay. As of right this second. All right. So let me take you back a little bit, Chuck. I don't think we need to go in the way back. Machine not far back. It's not that far back, but we're just going to go to october 1960. Chile night, 02:00 A.m. In Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the University of Michigan, a young senator named John Fitzgerald Kennedy was working the campaign trail as his father worked to buy votes in other states. And he gave a little impromptu speech, again at 02:00 a.m. At the University of Michigan, unprepared remarks in front of 10,000 Wolverines. And he said, Chuck, as follows how many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers? How many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your days and your lives traveling around the world on your willingness to do that? Not merely to serve one or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute parts of your life to this country? I think it will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. So I pressed the wrong button. I accidentally pressed the Catherine Hepburn button, but that was what JFK said. And that was the outline. That was very good, Chuck. I'm kidding. That was the outline, the initial outline. The first time you ever spoke publicly about his idea for the Peace Corps, mayor Quimby. I wish I could say my favorite one. Shout out which one? Calm down, everyone. I know you're all frightened and blank. Oh, yeah. It was close. I almost said it for you. Fans will recognize it. We have plenty of those crossover fans. So that was the first time we ever spoke publicly about what would become the Peace Corps. And two weeks later, he gave another speech in San Francisco at the famous Cow Palace. Grateful dad played a pretty good show there in 1974, I remember. I think the Almond brothers did, too. Yeah, I'm sure you were there drinking beers at age 18. And after that second speech two weeks later in San Francisco, he said, hey, basically let me know how you think about this. And he got 25,000 letters in response saying, I would do that. Wow. So one of the first things he did when he gained the presidency was to sign an executive order saying, okay, now there's officially a Peace Corps. It was on March 1, 1961, that he wrote the executive order, and it was placed into the budget, the 1962 budget. And Congress passed the budget, officially enacting the Peace Corps by default. 50th anniversary. Yes. This year. It is, isn't it? I didn't even think about that. Yes. They had some the graphics all over the website that didn't sync in that I was looking at all day. The big cake with 50 candles. Yeah. And then shortly after that well, a little while after that, nixon, who JFK, suddenly beaten that presidential debate, the televised one said, Well, I've always hated JFK, so I'm going to take his little pet project and just put it over here. And Jimmy Carter came in and went, Hold on a minute. And he made it its own independent federal agency with an appointment by the president. And it's part of the foreign aid budget, usually about 1%, right? Yeah. This year and last year, I believe, $400 million, which is not chump change. Not only is it not chump change, they asked for 373,000,000 and they got 400 million. Oh, wow. Yeah. I didn't know that federal agencies got more than they asked for in the budget. Well, Bush W. And Obama have both pushed for expansion of the Peace Corps. I think Bush wanted to double the number of volunteers. He wanted to double the number of CIA agents in the field. We'll get to that in a little bit. Why is Obama want to double it? I would assume everyone has pure intentions here, Josh. Okay, maybe not. All right. It's been a resounding success. Over the last 50 years, there have been 193 countries served. Chuck, I believe there's been more than 200,000 volunteers total. Yeah, 18 directors. The guy who's directing now, Aaron S. Williams, he is the fourth director to have been a Peace Corps volunteer back in the day. I figured they all were. I would have, too. One of the more famous ones who wasn't was Paul Coverdell. Remember the statue just behind us? Yeah. It says Peace Corps somewhere on it. Yeah. You know what I like about the Peace Corps site, when you're trudging through it is when you see, like, an Aaron Williams or whoever, they have their service in parentheses next to their name, like Dominican Republic. 67 to 70 was where he was. Right. Pretty cool. Probably the most famous Peace Corps volunteer was Chris Matthews from Hardball. Was he really? Yeah, he did. Swaziland, 68 to 70. Well, I thought you were going to say Evangeline Lily of Lost fame. Oh, yeah, I guess she's but I know Chris Matthews. I'm not familiar with the other lady. She may be the hottest. Which one was she? Was she like, the main female lead? Yeah. Okay. Very pretty lady. Although she was Canadian, she must have gotten her citizenship, because you have to be American. Yeah, that's a good point. Something's fishy that we may have just uncovered in this podcast. Or maybe she just flashed her smile and they're like, who. I don't care where you're from. Hey, everybody, if you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look in Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo PayPal. 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Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. So the purpose of this as you said, you assume everybody's intentions are good, and I think that that's a nice thing to assume. The purpose of establishing the Peace Corps is threefold. It's a type of foreign aid, right? And we have huge, enormous foreign aid packages in the way of surplus food and just straight up money, supplies, equipment, weapons, whatever, building things. But Peace Corps is unique in that it's a supply of foreign aid in the form of know how and hands on. Get it done. It's like the Toyota Tundra. Foreign aid. Give a man a fish, Josh, and you'll feed him for a day. You know what they say? Yeah. It's based on this, right? Teach him to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. Yes. If he gets good at fishing. Unless he stinks. Should we say what their three part official mission statement is? Yeah. Help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women, helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the people served, and to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the Americans. That's a bureaucratic mission statement if I've ever heard it is. And I just read something on NPR from a couple of years ago called The Peace Corps Blues, and each country has their own director, and the former director in Cameroon said that he thinks one of the things we're failing on now is that a lot of people in these countries don't realize that it's actually a US government program. Like, they know they're volunteers, but I think they think it's some great nonprofit or like a mission group. Yeah, so that kind of fails. That one aspect of the mission statement in his eyes. That these countries one of the big deals is for these countries to know, hey, this is the US government coming over here and helping us out it's your Uncle Sam exactly. Who you now owe a favor to. He has some other problems, but with the program now, but I'll go over those later. So right now there you have programs in 76 countries, but overall, I think 193 countries have had programs at one time or another, including countries that don't exist. The first two to join the program, the interested countries, as you mentioned in the mission statement let me see if I got this right. Tangon. Okay. Which later got together with Anzaar to form what we now recognize as Tanzania. Sure. Do you know that? Yeah. And Ghana was the other two who JFK mentioned in his speech in University of Michigan. So it had, at the very least, a widespread impact. We'll talk about measuring the impact later, but let's get down to nitty gritty. Right. I think just what we've said already has caused some people to be like, where do I sign up? Josh and Chuck are endorsing this, so let's just skip to the end. Well, the first thing you should know if you want to sign up is that you're going to be committing to 27 months of service of volunteerism or a tour. A tour. You're going to be living for free. They're going to provide your living accommodations while you're there and give you a small stipend to spend money, which evidently, though, is more money than most of the people you'll be helping him. Yeah. It's like that old thing where if you have $100, you can live for ten years in Peru or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And when you come back home, they're going to give you $6,000 to get you back going. They don't want to leave you broke because you haven't had any real work for two and a half or 27 months. So they give you six grand to get you going again, put that down payment on the apartment yeah. To get you back in the swing of things. Yeah, right, exactly. And by the old thing, of course, I mean the strength of the dollar. Yes. So when you are applying checkers, you start out online. Apparently you can do it in writing if you'd like, if you're like an Amish kid who wants to sign up for traditionalists. But for the most part, you do this application online, and I looked at it and it is extensive. All of your education background, any criminal history, how much you like to drink. Really? Oh, yeah. Any military service. Because one of the first things they try to root out is whether or not you have any intelligence background, and if you did sorry, I wonder when you fill that up for the drinking, if you just put like, a lot I don't know. There's even a section where they say, like, well, let us just define what we mean by problem drinking. How many drinks per week is one of those deals. How many sexual partners do you have a night? Things that you lie to your doctor about. Right. There's also any financial obligations you might have, eg. Student loans or mortgages, car payments. Basically, they're like, you can't just use us to escape your creditors. So they want to know not only what you have, but how you're going to arrange to pay them, and any kind of documentation you need. References this is like the first application, and it is very extensive. Well, they want to weed out as many people as possible right off the bat. Right. And if your application is selected right, you're lucky, first of all, I think, yeah. I would imagine it's a fairly low percentage because there's just so many red flags that they're looking for so many alcoholics. Right. So many problem drinkers is what they call it. If you raise one, they're going to be like, there's ten other people who are applying who don't have that red flag. Right. So if you make it through the initial application process, they're going to ask you to come in for an interview and they weed out more people here. Basically what they're trying to figure out mainly is if you are likely to complete your term of service. What they don't like is people that have to leave I'm sure that's highly discouraged to leave the Peace Corps during your tour. So they want to know if you have, like, if you're in a serious relationship. They want to know stories about your childhood where you've motivated others to complete tasks. Sure. They want to know how you medical yeah. Any medical conditions. I think that's in the initial application, yes. But it's sort of like the army and that you can be denied because of medical conditions, obviously. Right. One of the interview questions I saw was, tell us about a rule that you have trouble following. And the correct answer for that is the rule I have trouble following is the rule that asks me to stop when I've done just enough. The bare minimum. That's the right answer. Would you modify your appearance to fit in with the local culture? Like, would you shave your Mohawk or take out your piercings or whatever? How will you stave off board them? The correct answer to that is an ipod full of stuff you should exactly. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. So there you go. There's all your crib notes for the interview. Yeah. And if you pass the interview, it gets really exciting from that point, because if you get an official invitation, it's pretty neat. You get ten days to decide, and it's fairly vague. Sent some guy there, he's like, Come on, come on, what's your answer? Because basically they want to know if you're in for the P score, not if you're in to go to Indonesia and teach English right. Or surf. Or surf. Because exactly. There might be other reasons. So what they do is they give you ten days to decide. And they leave it fairly vague to give you. Probably not even a country. Probably like a continent, right? Like Asia. Yeah. Where we're going to send you. And they do detail a little bit about what job you'll have, but they basically want to know, are you in for the Peace Corps no matter where we send you? And if you say yes, then you're going to get your departure date, and then that's when you're going to get some more specific information. A guy who's like, Come on, high fives. He's like, alright, I'll be back in like a couple of weeks with another letter. You're going to Turkey? Yeah. Sorry. No surfing in Turkey. Although there probably is, you think on the Bosphorus. Surfing Turkey. Yeah. All right. Surf Turkey, man. You get a little orientation appointment and then you get sent off to that country for a three month training period. Yeah. If you're 18, if you're a US resident, no upper age limit. You can be no dependent, really old and still get the Peace Corps. I guess you pass everything. No dependents. I just noticed that. I didn't realize. I guess they're like, yeah, we want you to not just abandon your family. That's a nice move. And you have to have a high school diploma. Yes. Josh. And you do need that diploma. And you also can be married, but it's a pretty small percentage. Think about 3% are married couples, right? Or is it 7%? Yeah, 7% married, 693 percent single. I think it waffles. So 1% is undecided. And they will send you with your married partner. They can there are some assignments where they'll send both of you to the same place to work together, but apparently those are kind of few and far between. But you can't put in for your girlfriend or boyfriend. No, you can't at all. And you both have to be accepted fully as Peace Corps volunteers who could be sent to different corners of the earth. I think they like to help people out now. I'm sure they do. But you can't have any kids and you can't take your pets. No, not a surprise. Little field mouth. Not a surprise at all. You can't take your pets. So if you have pets, like, you got to look at your life. If you are a homeowner with pets, then you probably shouldn't volunteer for the Peace Corps. No, you can volunteer here at home. I don't know. AA. But if you are single and you're living in Brooklyn, you don't have any cats, and you got time to kill in a heart that wants to serve the world. Yeah. And you know about, I don't know, repairing motorbikes in Indonesia. Yeah. Or you speak a foreign language. These are all things like these hobbies, they really get into that. And it's not like when you put down your hobbies for a college education or a college application. No one really cares about that. I hate to break it to you. The Peace Corps does. They really do. In the Peace Corps, if you have skills as a gardener, they want to know about that or if you were like, a landscaper or something like that. And they're going to say, Here are all of our programs. Choose. Then you're going to choose. And then they're going to be like, okay, now this is where we really need you. And they will send you where they need you. Ultimately, based on your skills, your background, your hobbies, you could always get sent where you might like to go. And if you know that language, that's a big leg up in that direction, I think. But I think you should be prepared to know that they may send you wherever part of it, but you're doing this for the love of helping others. And really it doesn't matter because there's only one race, the human race. I just think that's really exciting. Yeah. To not know where you're going to go and to be I wish I would go back and do it all over again. I would do it different. I would join the Peace Corps for a couple of years. You know what I always think of when I think of the Peace Corps? I think of Julie Hagerty and the lead guy from Airplane when they went and told him, yeah, she has, like, a wear party, and he's teaching him basketball and Harlem Globetrotters dancing. That was different. I was thinking the disco scene when he was yeah, that's different. That's what I think of when I think of Peace Corps. I think of the Tom Hanks movie. Volunteers. I never saw that one, but that's where he met his wife, Rita Wilson. Oh, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I never saw that because I always hated the Tennessee Volunteers, so I refused to see that movie in case it helped them. Anyway, I still do. Right. Oh, Josh. Packing. Yes. They only allow you to take two bags for 27 months, which doesn't sound like a lot. Well, not only that, there's a weight limit. Yeah. \u00a380. Right. Aka 36.27 kg for our non imperial measurement friend. So what they suggest is take things that you cannot get elsewhere, and then when you get there, you can buy some of the other things. Don't bother packing a crock pot because you can get a crock pot in Benin. Yeah. Or can you? Well, there's going to be some other cookware that you don't wear for fine. Yeah. It's just stupid. That's going to take up everything. But they said bring some good old fashioned American undies and rain gear and hiking boots and stuff like that you probably can't get in these other countries. Yeah. So you want to blow your weight on the essentials that you're not going to be able to find anywhere else. Maybe that ipod. They said you can bring a laptop, but one thing you're not guaranteed is electricity. Yeah, there's a pretty common misconception that it's like all thatched huts and no municipal water supply, no electricity, and that's not true at all. The no, thatch hut thing is not true at all. The no municipal water supply or no electricity thing. That's extremely true in a lot of cases. Well, so is the thatchtut here and there. Okay, but you can volunteer to go to those places. You can you can also be sent to those places, but you can also say, I want to go to a place that has no running water and no electricity, and I want to help there. But there are a lot of assignments where even if you say no, I don't want that to be like, yeah, I think they call those people the hardcore. Yes, that's the Peace Corps. Yeah. Like, you know what? I signed up for this. Send me to the edge of the cliff. Here's my ipod, even. It's crazy. A lot of these people teach in these in local schools, though, that they have power and water, and it's not as third world as you might think it is in many cases. Yeah, I would imagine in a lot of cases. It's like some of the places we went in Guatemala where they didn't have anything resembling a municipal water supply. Yeah, true. It was just like there's a pond over there, but it wasn't primitive. No, I mean, there were buildings and structures and people wore clothes and things like that. It's not like living with the Yanu Mamo. Exactly. So what's day to day life like, Josh, if you're a Peace Core volunteer? Well, day to day life is actually a lot looser than you would think. Basically, they give you an assignment like, say, we want you to teach agricultural techniques, modern agricultural techniques, or maybe sustainable agricultural techniques to these people in Guam. Great. Would Guam even qualify, though? It's a US. Territory. I would think it'd be outside of the US foreign policy scope. Let's just say someplace in Africa. Then let's go again with Tangayaka. Okay. Tanga. Yika. Yeah, Tanguyka. And you go and you say, okay, well, here's some ideas for how I'm going to teach these people sustainable agriculture in Tanganyka. And you get there and they're like, there is no Tanganyka anymore, Jackass. It's all Tanzania. And you go, well, it still applies. So here's what I'm going to do. And your day to day, your hours, how you interact with people, what you teach them, probably it's a lot up to you. There's nobody looking over your shoulder like they pretty much just give you a parachute and drop you off and say, see you later, good luck. Not true. You do go alone, though. And depending on how remote you are, you may be the only American face you see for a while. Although in other places, there might be other volunteers that within the town, but you're still technically sent alone. One of the things I think we skipped over is you are allowed to receive friends. Your friends can come visit you on their own dime. I didn't know that. I didn't either. But they can come hang out with you if you want. Yeah. If you need to see a friendly face or whatever, you can get packages. You can go travel at your own expense. You can go to the capital city. You can go wherever there's WiFi and load up on your stuff. You should know episodes. That's right. You can do a little site seeing whatever you want. Again, you're setting your own hours. But I think for the most part, they imagine that if you are the kind of gogetter who volunteers for Peace Corps, you're not just going to, like, lay around all day. True enough. Although hopefully that same guy mentioned earlier, robert Strauss, who was the director, former director in Cameroon, said he does feel like these days some volunteers use it as, quote, employer of last resort, and that some recruits use it as an extended spring break from college. I can see that, and I think that's rare. But he says that is a problem, and he wants the standard to be what you talked about. Well, you know, that's Peace Court's problem, their process is not rooting them out. Are you a pothead? Yes. No. There's your rooting out system. And depending on if you were a Pothead, it would depend on where they would send you. Yeah, like, just how bad of a pothead exactly? You mentioned packages to Chuck. You can get packages, but our good friend Grabinowski, who wrote this, he says that there is such a thing as, quote, corrupt mail workers who pill for your packages sometimes it could take forever. So he recommends that you have friends and family start sending you packages and letters before you even leave the US. So that when you get there, you'll get some stuff in the first few months and it'll keep you from being so homesick. I would send myself a bunch of stuff. I wouldn't count on my family to do it. \u00a380. Because they'd be like, yeah. And I wouldn't get any packages until, like, the end of year one if I left it to my family. It's not true. I don't know. I didn't get a lot of college packages. Let's just say that. Neither. Care packages? Yeah. I was like, do you even know what that is? I want you to send me one of these. And I basically just walked my dad around the store, like, Put this in there, put that in there. It's getting a little heavy. We can take the canned goods out, right? But of course, I went to school 60 miles from where I lived, so if I would have gone, like, across country, I might have got more care packages. Maybe you just keep telling yourself that. Yeah, exactly. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look in Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, Squarespace is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. Comsosk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code s YSK and you'll get off your first purchase of a website or domain that's Squarespace.com sysksksksquarespace. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflow so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate cover goodness with real time data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. So, Chuck, there are some advantages once you return your tours over. There are some advantages to being a Peace Corps volunteer. Doesn't hurt any resume. No, it shows a lot of stick to it ness and get uptoed and beyond the fact that it proves your commitment as a human to a task which is huge, you also get the inside scoop on getting a government job, if you're interested in that kind of thing. Yes, you're available to list that other people might not see. You're privy to information. You're also given priority, hiring priority over somebody who may even have better qualifications than you, but wasn't a Peace Corps volunteer. Sorry, sucker. Which is one of the reasons our government functions like it does. So what has this done? Chuck, how do you measure the success of something like the three points of the mission statement? You said Strauss criticized one of them. Let's talk about the accomplishments. Well, that's one of the problems, is it's tough to measure that in any sort of sort of statistical way. The only way you can really measure it is to talk to the volunteers themselves. And usually when you talk to them afterwards, they're like, you know what? I learned pretty quickly that I was going to have to kind of reset my goals and make them a little smaller in scope, like going from I want to help the world to I want to help this village yes. Which is good. And that's helping the world. Yeah. Because there's 7000 people doing that in villages all over the world. So combined, collectively, it seems to be doing that. Yeah. But it is tough when you have a $400 million program, even though it's a scant fraction of the budget. You still have to show metrics, I imagine, and it's pretty tough in this case. Yes. But like you said, there's no quantitative way to spell it out because you can't I mean, I guess you could go pull people where there have been Peace Corps volunteers and ask them, you like America more or less now. Yeah. And if it's more than awesome. True. There you go. Quantified. There's a check right there. They do say that most volunteers come back feeling like they gained a lot from it. For sure. So that's one of the three, right? Yeah. There you go. At least one third of it is accomplished. There are also a lot of criticisms, as I think we've kind of leaked out here there, of Peace Corps, which is any noble experiment is going to result in criticism. There's always going to be poopooers people who don't put their money where their mouth is, but you have plenty of time to point out all the problems with something. Eg me. True. So what are they? Well, sadly should we go ahead and get to the crime thing? Sure. One of the criticisms is that there has been crime committed by and against Peace Corps volunteers over the years, and that the Peace Corps hasn't done a very good job of backing these people. And some allege they've even tried pretty hard to cover up a lot of this stuff. Yeah, it was, I think, last year, this year in Washington, there was a bit of a stir when Congress was basically forced to start inquiring into how the Peace Corps handles reports of, say, like sexual violence against volunteers. A group of volunteers was organized by a former volunteer named Casey Frasey, and she started First Response Action, which is basically like a group of former volunteers who were subject to sexual violence and who were mistreated by the Peace Corps. When they returned, a lot of them reported basically it being implied that it was their fault. What had they been drinking? What were they wearing? Had they been sleeping around? Basically. Were they asking for it just not what you do to your people? No. And statistically, every year, on average, 22 Peace Corps women report being victims of rape or attempted rape, and more than 1000 from 2000 to 2009 reported sexual assaults. And a lot of these go unreported still, so that number may be higher. And we're not trying to poop or anything, but that's really sad. And Obama and the new guy, Aaron Williams, have said that they need to take this way more seriously and make it a more victim centered approach to a victim centered approach to this. One of the reasons that's going on, apparently, is because there's a clause from the 1965 Peace Corps Act that says if you're a Peace Corps employee yummy. Was a Peace Corps employee. Do you know that? No. She worked at HQ. No way. Yeah. Was that in DC? Yeah. You can't work there for longer than five years, and the whole point is to keep the place young, keep the ideas fresh. Sure. Keep it really rolling with the punches. But one of the problems with that is that it has no institutional memory. Right. If no one has been there longer than five years, there are some who are grandfathered in, but if no one's been there for longer than five years and your director comes aboard, like, every three, four, five years, maybe, there's no memory on how to handle big problems like this. So things can very easily be brushed under the carpet. And sadly, Josh, there have been, by my count, three murders of Peace Corps volunteers. One. Just in 2009, Kate Puzzi was murdered in Benin. And this one drew a lot of attention because Kate was essentially ratting out a local employee of the school she was working at who she believed was sexually assaulting the girls at the school. She wrote the Peace Corps office, and somehow this got back to him, and he tied her to a porch and slit her throat. And the parents were pretty upset that this was leaked. And although I don't think they verified if the Peace Corps leaked it, surely they wouldn't do anything like that. But they're pretty upset that it wasn't as confidential as it should have been and that it led to her murder. And then, most famously was in the deborah Gardner was stabbed to death by another volunteer in Tonga in 1976, and he is still walking the streets of Brooklyn. Dennis Proven. Yeah, I've read a New Yorker article on this. It was really interesting. So there was a series of legal quirks that led to him basically getting acquitted. Yeah. What happened was she was very pretty and he liked her very much, and she did not return the affection. One night after a party in the town where there were some other volunteers, she got a little too drunk, apparently fell down a couple of times on the dance floor, and one of her ex boyfriends who was there, took her back to her hut and put her to bed. Five days later, Prin comes into her hut and stabbed her 22 times. And it was supposed to go a little different. He had, like, a pipe and a knife and cyanide, and he was supposed to knock her out and torture her. But she woke up when he got there and fought him off, and it just led to a brutal stabbing. He was trying to pull her out of the hut when people saw him. He fled on a bike. She was able to name her attacker before she died. And they had a trial in Tango where the American government said he had schizophrenia. And if you let him go here, we're going to commit him to an institution in Washington state when we get back. And the problem is, when they got back to Washington State, they didn't accept, like, you couldn't commit someone at that point, so it was basically not a ruse. But they got them out of the country, and then basically there was no recourse. They couldn't try him in America, and they couldn't commit him involuntarily. And he went, you know what? I don't want to go. I'm going back to New York. And that's what he did, and that's where he still is. So had he been diagnosed with schizophrenia? I think that he had by one doctor there, but then later on, he did volunteer to go to this hospital and get tested. And they said that he suffered from psychosis at the moment. I can't remember what they called it, but basically went nuts that night. Got you. But he's not schizophrenia. It doesn't have schizophrenia. Wow. He's walking around New York still, huh? Yeah. Wow. They wrote a book about it, and he keeps a pretty low pro, but I would imagine he's got a pretty good job. He worked for Social Security as, like, an $80,000 a year computer guy. Wow. So it's really sad. Yes. But that is the exception. We don't want to paint a negative picture here, but they have called on the Peace Corps to clean up their act for sure when it comes to crime. Yeah. And the Peace Corps first part says, we do not place Peace Corps volunteers in unsafe environments. That's what Aaron Williams said. Yeah, but he also said we to need handle any victimization. That does happen way better than we are. Chuck. Josh, there's also the CIA allegations. I don't know much about this, basically, since it's inception, just the value of having 7000 kids being placed in local environments, gaining the trust of people interacting with other nationals from other countries in a third place, a neutral setting. The intelligence value of them by default is incalculable. But from the outset, the two have been intended to be separated. Right. Peace Corps has nothing to do with intelligence. Like, if you have an intelligence background, sorry, you can't be in Peace Corps. Right. If you're in Peace Corps, you have to wait four years before you can get any kind of intelligence assignment in the military. Okay. So on paper, they're very much separate. Right. But everybody, including people who live in these countries that are being served by Peace Corps, have always assumed peace Corps volunteers are often asked to do intelligence fieldwork. In 2008, some kids came forward in Bolivia and said, hey, while we were down there, the government told us to start keeping reports and filing reports on Venezuelan and Cuban nationals who were living and working down there. Really, they wanted to know all about these people. That's intelligence fieldwork, was that proven? Yeah, well, yeah, the Peace Corps said that this was an error, that it was in violation of Peace Corps policy, but basically that, yeah, enough of these Bolivian volunteers came forward that they couldn't say that it wasn't true. Wow. So, yeah, it was kind of a thing. So apparently it has happened at least once, and it's not like wet work or anything like that. I don't think the Peace Corps volunteers have ever been asked to grease a dictator or anything like that. Wet work? I've never heard of that. Yeah, that's like hands on destinations. Oh, wow. Yeah. What does wet mean? I imagine blood and gore tissue wet from blood. Yeah. Wow. So those are the criticisms again, though, Chuck, I think we should say that my hat is off to Peace Corps and the volunteers for the work that they do. Absolutely. And if you're a female Peace Corps volunteer, be really careful. We encourage you to be very mindful because you're alone in these countries and bad things do happen sometimes. And just be vigilant and take care of yourself. Oh, yeah. And I think that goes for all Peace Corps volunteers. Sure. Women are a little more susceptible to that kind of crime, obviously, but yeah. Got anything else? No, I think that's it. Man happy 50th Peace Corps. Yeah. Hats off to you, and thank you to all of our listeners who are Peace Corps volunteers or have been Peace Corps volunteers and who have written us to say thanks for being there. Well, we thank you back for taking us along on your trips. That's pretty cool. Kennedy's children. That's what they call them. Really? Or they used to. I don't know if they still do. Can it be legitimate children? Well, that's a whole different batch. Okay, that's Peace Corps. If you want to know more about it, you can type in Peacecourt in the handy search bar@howstuffworks.com, and that will bring you this fine article. And I said handy search bar, right? You did, dude. It is time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this from an Irish listener. And I think I've said before I love me some Irish and Scottish people. You mean? I read an Irish bar the other night. Were there any Irish people there? Yeah, there's always at least a couple. So like I said, I love me some Irish and Scottish. They're great fault. So I've had some good friends from that part of the world. So I'm going to read this now as a long standing recruit to the stuff you should know for me. Me, I always expect to hear something new and interesting when I listen to you guys, though I never expected to be singled out and spoken to directly. Breaking the Tenuous Podcast Reality barrier. But that's exactly what happened yesterday. A little relevant in detail. To begin with, my name doesn't invite nicknames, John being too normal and killing awkward to manipulate into anything else. The best that 14 years of school could give me was the nickname JK, which is stuck for most of my life. So anyway, I was stuck in traffic in Dublin the other day, and the Government Watch List podcast was coming to an end. I was beginning to think about how orwellianirishglobal society really is. It started to give me that weird feeling that someone who I couldn't see was watching me, or that people were talking about me. Then Josh decided to confirm this paranoia and said, if you want to know more about the terrorist watch list and probably end up on the watch list yourself, JK. I genuinely panicked, convinced that the US. Government was after me. Apparently, my reaction to a foreign government pursuing me is to break sharply and almost caused an accident in the middle of the city. I came back to reality and kept driving sheepishly, avoiding looking in my rear view mirror at the angry driver behind me. So thanks and kudos, and if you read this out loud, I'd love to give a quick shout out to Luke and Andrew, two other members of the Irish Battalion and great friends. So, Luke, Andrew and John and Ireland, thank you for writing in. Go eat some shepherd's pie and drink beer for me and me and Josh. Yeah. Thanks a lot, JK JK. If you want to let us know about the time we've spoken to you directly, or if you want to tell us about your Peace Corps time, that's pretty cool. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1238072265523hsw-sysk-dead-bodies-mt-everest.mp3	Are there dead bodies on Mount Everest?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-there-dead-bodies-on-mount-everest	Every year, adventurers brave the elements and attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Yet dangers abound, and more than a hundred bodies litter the mountain. Listen in and learn more about Mount Everest in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Every year, adventurers brave the elements and attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Yet dangers abound, and more than a hundred bodies litter the mountain. Listen in and learn more about Mount Everest in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:06:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=13, tm_min=6, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=85, tm_isdst=0)	24079213	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetheforkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. That's Chuck. How are you doing, Chuck? I'm great, man. Let's just stop right here, Chuck. We've got something to shamelessly plug. I want to just get it over with. I feel really bad about it. Why call it anything other than what it is, right. Okay, so everybody, Chuck and I just made and Jerry. Jerry was a huge part of it. Agreed. Our producer, Jerry it would have just been steaming had Jerry not been involved in this. Right. Agreed. Chuck and I just recorded our first spoken word album. Right. We have joined the likes of Jack Carwack and Barack Obama, except our spoken word album is on the economy economics, right, Chuck? Yes, indeed. We took the Pathless Travel did something that's kind of obscure, and people aren't talking about much these days. Right. And what's it called? Chuck. It is called the Stuff You Should Know, super stuff to guide the economy. And it is super stuffed because it's long and detailed and it's got interviews with experts. We go on site. We live in the studio. Chicken farm. It's not the spoiler alert. Don't worry about it, but yeah. So it's up for sale on itunes right now, right? And it is for sale. It is. I know you folks are always saying, I can't believe your podcasts are free. Well, we took your advice. Yeah, thanks for that. Hopefully this will allow us to keep doing what we do. Yeah. So have we reached the end of the shameless plug? So if you want to go buy it, that would be totally fine with us. That would be great. Okay. So now we've reached the end of the shameless part. Yes. And it's time to get into your shameless segway. Yeah. Which is this. Have you ever mountain climbed? I know you've repelled, but were you ever on a mountain? To repel mine, one must climb. Now, I've never actually rock climbed, but I've done plenty of hiking in the mountains. I got you. But not rock face climbing. Was there snow in any of these mountains? Were you up so high that there's, like, perennial snow? Oh, yeah, sure. Really? Yeah. Where, like, Colorado, stuff like that. Wow. It's pretty impressive. That was shocking. I see you wearing your little shorts and hiking boots with, like, thick stocks kind of pushed down. So far, so good. Yeah. And just kind of hiking along what most people would call, like, a hill or something like that. Certainly not, like, where there's, like, Kennesaw Mountain kind of. Yeah. I can't say anything because it's way out of my league. Kennethaw mountain is, let alone the Rockies. No, I mean, trust me, dude, you won't think I'm a Sherpa, like, scaling the Mount Everest or anything like that. Yeah. And I think at this point, I can tell you, left untoward behind. And sherpa is now my favorite word right now. Okay. I love that word. It just rolls off the tongue. Sherpa you're cute little guys. Yeah. Agreed. Okay, so you have done some mountain climbing, so you can speak to what we're going to talk about with reasonable authority. Yes. I can defer to you when I get confused, inevitably. So, Chuck, have you ever read Into Thin Air? I have not. But I did read into the Wild, which is John Crackhower. Is that his name? Yeah, John Crackhower. He is a journalist for Outside magazine, and he knows how to take an outdoor advance and turn it into a good book. Into the Wild is a great example. Chris McCandles, who actually went to school down the road at Emory right. And decided that he was going to go to Alaska and basically just didn't quite do it. Right. Yeah. Died after three months of exposure to the elements. I think there's some varying theories on my diet, but that's not what this is about. Okay. Well, no Endothin Air is much more pertinent to this topic. Okay. So that's actually about an expedition on Mount Everest, and that took place in May 1996. He was actually on this one, right? Yes, he was. Which is one of the reasons the book is so incredible. I bet. And it was a complete cluster of an expedition. Eight people died, accounting for more than half the deaths on Everest that year. Really? Just one expedition? Wow. There was a rogue storm that whipped up, and it killed some people, and others were lost, and then they died. But then other people went after them to try to rescue them, and then they died. And it was just more like, let's get out of here whenever we can. You basically just have to write everybody off. Right. Like I said, it's a very good book, but one of the things that I took from it is that, number one, Mount Everest is a total bear as far as mountains go. Completely inhospitable for humans. Yeah. You want to talk a little bit about Everest? Yeah, I guess we should get a couple of stats out of the way. All right. Everyone knows it's the tallest peak in the world. They call it the rooftop of the world. They do. And good reason. Quick aside, there is a Discovery Microsite on Everest, and it has a 360 deg panoramic view. You showed me that, like, my first week here. It's amazing. It was unbelievable. And I said to myself, that is awesome. And this Josh dude has it going on. That's all it takes. That's how I've collected all of my friends. That's how the magic starts. You send them the Everest photo? Yeah. I pay it out a little bit at a time. Start with the Everest photo. It's really cool. You're sitting up at night. You actually feel like you're there when you look at this panoramic picture? And so much so that I don't feel like I need to climb it. You can almost hear the wind whipping. Yeah. Okay, so give me some more stats. Yeah. Tallest peak in the world. Shared What's The Peak? How Tall Is It? 29,035ft. Which is 8850 meters for our friends who don't live in the US. Or Liberia or Burma. Correct. Right. Very Well Done. Little shout out, insider shout out to our listener mail. Or she wrote in with that. And the mountain itself shares a border with Nepal and Tibet. But the actual peak is in Nepal. So India is not involved. Not as far as I know. Huh. Why did you say that? You're trying to throw me off my game. Yeah. Don't worry about it, Chuck. No one can throw you off your game. Right. Not Even Me. Josh messes with me sometimes people, but it usually gets cut out. I have a feeling this will make it in. So, Chuck, I have a question for you. Shoot. What is the worst season to go on Everest? Well, really anything outside of May and June. May To June? Yeah. That's when you want to climb Everest. So May June is the time you want to go. Yeah. Okay. Got You Josh an Average Day if You Want To Talk Weather an Average Day in May Of 2008 Was -17 Degrees Fahrenheit, which Is -27 Deg Celsius True and Winds Of 51 Miles An Hour 81 Km. Right? Very Good. So that's during the most hospitable time of the year barring no like, freak storms and unusual activity yeah. Other times of the year, the jet stream passes directly by the summit, which is in May of June. The jet stream does not do that. Which is why that's the time to go. Got you. And you can get winds up to, like, 120 miles an hour. I've had 118 miles an hour which would be 189 km an hour and -100 degrees fahrenheit which is -73 degrees celsius right, so you cannot imagine. Have you ever been up in a tall, tall building in the wintertime? No. Outside? No. Okay, Chuck. There's no mountain climbing. Certainly. No Colorado Hiking. No tall buildings in the wintertime. Right. But. You've been to Malta? That Is True. Just a few years ago, emily and I were at the top of the Empire State Building around Christmas time. Nice and dude, that's the Empire State Building. And I thought I was going to die. The wind and the cold. Really? And that's the Empire State Building. So imagine Mount Everest at 29000ft. Were you properly outfitted on the roof of the empire? Yeah. You established a base camp by then. Yeah. On the ground floor. If our security guard comes out like, what are you doing? Right? Yeah. Okay. So, Chuck, I think we got it down. Mount Everest is not the place to be. Especially with your Empire State. Allegory that's pretty good. Thanks okay. And we've also established that people die on Everest. How many was there? 189 so far. Yeah, that's the current count. And you said that 2000 people have died or have successfully summited Everest, right. That was as of a few years ago. That was the count. The BBC told me $1300. So somewhere between there, for every stat, there's another stat when it comes to stuff like this, an equal and opposite stat. Like some guy might have snuck up to Everest and not officially logged it with a BBC. Well, the problem is that if you die on Everest, apparently you stay on Everest. Pretty much, yeah. Which is what your article is about, right? Yeah. It's a suicide mission to try and bring a body down from the death zone. And the death zone is above 26 0ft. That's, like, the final area above the final base camp where you go to reach the summit, and that's where most people die. Okay. Not everybody who's died on Everest is still there, but a significant portion is, like, of the 189, there's 120. And also, we should probably say, before you sharpen your pencils and email us, we're working off of what, like, 2004 stats right here. Yeah. So at least several people have died since then, I think. I know at least one guy died in 2006 on Everest. Right. The thing is, you can't even bring your oxygen canister down. Not basically a trash. A dead person and an oxygen cancer. Not the same thing, but it kind of puts it in perspective, like, you are going up there and getting back down, and you're lucky to escape with your life, basically. Exactly. Yeah. And from what I've read and been described to me, to try and bring a body down is a suicide mission for everyone involved. So it's like you can't save this person because you put your entire crew at risk. So you just have to march on. Right now, that's kind of the predominant view of people who climb Everest. But it seems like it's starting to change. Like, technology is advancing enough, and people's gear and oxygen equipment, it's getting good enough. So that sentiment is almost being outlived. It's already been outlived. Obviously, Sir Edmund Hillary is the guy who summited Everest for the first time. Right. There are debates about that, too. Did they think Norgate beat him? Well, George Lee Mallory actually is another climber, and there's some speculation as to who actually got there first, because Mallory was found dead. Right. And actually, in the article, there's a picture of his I know. Petrified frozen headless body. It is a cool picture. Yeah. His head just pretty much withered away. The weird thing is, if you look at his left hand, it's totally intact. Right. It looks like he's just laying there. If you just look at his arm. Yeah, true. But where did they find him? I mean, did they find him at the summit? Or they think he made it to the summit and started to climb down and died, maybe. Exactly. I think that's the speculation. They found him beneath the summit, and there's speculation as to whether what you said, whether he made it all the way down and died on the way back, or whether he never made it all the way up. Got you. And he would have been before Hillary, so that's a pretty big deal. Yeah. He was in the 20s, right. And it looks like he was running around in, like, a burlap sack. That's not good climbing. It weathered some over the years. Got you. Okay, well, either way, the first person to document their place at the top of Mount Everest is Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa. He did it with Nepalese sherpa. Tensing Norgay. Right. Who's just got the best name. Yeah, he's got Sherpa right there and then tensing and Norgay. I love that guy's name. That's your fake name when you check in the hotel says Tensing Norgay. I tell you things in confidence. Thank you, Chuck. I need to change my name. This brings up a point, though, that he's obviously the most well known Sherpa ever have you ever heard of any other Sherpa? I have, but I never retain their names, like tending Nor George. Well, they get a raw deal is my point. Like, you always see the guy, the white dude in the Jan sport north Face gear. Right, sure. On top of Everest, and you don't see, like, there's, like, two Sherpas outside of the frame. Yes. Their third trip up that week, they're like, big deal. Do you ever see that episode of The Simpsons where Homer climbs mound springfield? Yes. And they're, like, doing cartwheels on the way down and dragging him up while he sleeps at night. I imagine that that's probably I think it's a thankless job is what I'm saying. Yeah. I think of the world. They need to form a union or something. So how did we get on Hillary? Well, you said that he was the first man okay. He did not perish I know what I was going to say. He lived until 2008, so he lived to see a lot of people follow in his footsteps and die. And in 2006, this guy named John Sharp, I believe he died on the mountain. I think of exposure, maybe as many as 40 climbers passed right past him. Not, like, past him and didn't see him, like, past him. Noted he was dead, dying, and just kept going because that mentality is still around, like, hey, it's too dangerous. Right. So Hilary came out and publicly criticized the people who didn't even do anything, really, or make an attempt. And then the thing that really kind of drove that criticism home was the following year, a Nepalese woman was successfully rescued by an American climber, a very experienced American climber, but she was in virtually the same spot under virtually the same condition, and he got her out. But 40 people walk past this guy just under the assumption that and I can imagine it's drilled into your head, like, if you die or you're dying, we're going to leave you here. But I don't think that necessarily has to be the case anymore, as that American guide proved by saving the Nepalese woman. Right. And this is me speculating here. But I bet a certain amount of this. Too. In addition to having that drilled in your head. Is it's so much effort and a lot of money to go on one of these expeditions. And some people climb it more than once. But a lot of people. This is their one shot. And they hear this. And they might see someone dying. And they think. I can't ruin my opportunity to climb Everest and potentially die in the process to rescue this stranger. So it's pretty sad. I know there's a lot of controversy. Well, there's definitely one guy who has probably received the most public eye of anybody who's let somebody die on Everest. His name is Ian Woodall, and he actually figures as basically the villain in the Thin Air. He was on the mountain when Crackower's expedition went pear shaped, and so Crack tower. These expeditions were very close together and oftentimes, like, coming into the same place at the same time, and they try to stagger it kind of like golf, except much deadlier. So everybody's not hitting the same points at the same time as the sharpening bottlenecks. Right. Yeah. Well, Woodall apparently was not down with waiting for anybody. I think his famous quote in the book is, we'll make it to the top anytime we damn well please, or something like that. Interesting. So he's unwilling to coordinate with other expeditions. He wouldn't allow another expedition, I think crackhart's expedition, to use his radio to call for help for whatever reason. I don't remember. I read the book, like, a decade ago. Right. But Krakhire definitely doesn't like this guy, and basically, if he doesn't say in so many words, he insinuates that people died on the mountain because of this man's action or inaction. Right, right. And there was actually another climb that would all went on where he was with a dying woman. He and his partner, Cathy O'Dowd, his wife, actually, I think they're climbing partners as well, were going on their initial ascent right, right. And came upon a woman, and what is her name? Her name is Francis Arsentiav. Okay. Yeah. And she was laying there dying. Yes. And so they went over and hung out with her for an hour and tried to see what they could do. And what happened? Well, they left her behind. Yeah. And she said apparently the last words she said was, don't leave me behind. And they were forced to leave her behind. Yes. And I didn't know that part about the end of Thin Air that he figured into that book, but apparently he went back in 2007 to bury her body up there. He did? With a couple of others. He was wrecked with guilt, apparently. Yeah. I read an article in the Daily Mail about him doing that, and it was right before he was actually on the mountain. They were interviewing him via satellite phone, and apparently Fran, as everybody called her, had become kind of this ghoulish landmark. I think Kathy O'Dowd put it like, you get to Fran and turn left. Yeah. Because she was right there on the trail. Awful. And apparently in kind of a really horrible frozen state. And also her husband was on the climb with her, and he died. They assumed they never found him again. Going to get help. So, yeah, it's a horrible story. They both left their son behind, I believe. But yeah, so Woodall wanted to go barrier, and he ultimately ended up lowering her down and dropping her down the North Face instead. Oh, really? Yeah. But yeah, he's not a very well liked person among a lot of climbing circles, I get the impression. I know there's certainly a lot of controversy around that. I know that there's also been efforts. It's a big trash dump, too, which is what's really sad, because, like you said, people will just dump their gear to make it easier on the way down. And I got a good stat for you here. We're talking 120 tons of trash each year are left behind on a risk by climbers. Wait, each year? I thought that was total each year, says ABC News. Holy cow. And climbing teams in China. They lead expeditions now to go up and clean some of the stuff up, and they're trying to get some of these bodies down that are within safe reach. Think about it. There's 120 bodies on Everest. The ones that are up in what you call it the death zone. Yes. They're pretty preserved, like you can see in that picture of George Mallory. Right. So they're close to trails generally. I mean, imagine that. Imagine climbing Everest knowing that your own mortality is at risk and then having, like, these reminders along the way. I felt that way. The Empire State Building. Were there a lot of dead bodies on the Empire State Building? Like, up the stairs, every couple of lakes. It's an elevator, so I got you. I really had nothing to complain about. There's no stairs in the Empire State Building. There's, like, a violation of well, no, I'm sure there are stairs, but you don't climb them to get to the observation deck. I got you. That's why you're still just doing the Rockies, buddy. Yeah. Okay. Well, Chuck, I guess we've answered that question. 120 dead bodies. Hopefully less as they retrieve them, if they can retrieve them, and hopefully less as time goes on, because I know that every year that goes by, fewer and fewer people are dying because of climbing technology, satellite phone and stuff like that, and possibly maybe a change in mentality about what happens to you if you get injured or you get exhausted. It's a new bang up generation of surface as well. Yes. There are no tensing, Norgays though he's the one last the breed. Yeah. Well, again, thank you for listening to that. Are there dead bodies on Mount Everest? You can read more about it the Chuck article, which means it's the market quality you can type in dead Bodies, Mount Everest. And it's going to come up in our handy search bar on how stuff works.com. And while I'm sitting here thinking about a new pseudonym to come up with when I check into hotels right. Chuck is going to talk about our blog. Yes, our blog is up. It's been up for a little while now, and we've gotten some of you find folks leaving comments, and we'd like to see more of it. And I just want to say, every Friday, I do a little podcast recap on the blog where we just mentioned the shows that were released that week, and that's a good chance for you guys to chat with us about. If you have any comments about that week's show, yeah, we log on, we'll answer you back, we'll answer your questions, and it's a good way to reach us. You want to mention the cartoon? Oh, yeah, even better. For Friday the March 20, there's a blog post where Josh and I are actually have been made into a comic strip by an artist named Greg Williams for the Tampa Tribune in Tampa, Florida. And it's regarding our junk mail podcast. And it's up on our blog now. And it's awesome. It's really cool. It is very cool. He found the one moment of scatological humor out of all of our podcasts and amplified it, like a million times. Right? He did a good job. And also, I never realized how round my head is until I saw it in cartoon form. And he clearly used a compass to draw me. So, yeah, I have a big round head. That's good. Yeah, it looks nice. But yeah, that's up on our blog. And thank you to Mr. Greg Lane. Yes. For doing that. We feel very honored. Yes. And now and I know tied to this listener mail, so Chuck, the bring has occurred. It would be toned down bring as per the request of some listener MailChimp. Let's do it. This one wait, there's no haiku in here, is there? Well, there's a brief one. All haiku's are brief. All right, let's go. I said no more haiku's. But this one is funny because originally I called haiku that were corrections correction cousin. I thought that was kind of funny, but Jonathan M. Pesky of Redlands, California, wrote us this one. Correction coup. No. Such a clunky moniker. Try high correction. That is a little more clever, much more better. Yeah, it's much better getting on with the correction coup. I know. And I think last week we mentioned the listener mail. Someone wrote in about the MKUltra video game. Yeah, the guy who's on Asset while he wrote it. Right. Can we listen to a little clip of that real quick? Let's do that. Because it was funny. In it, you were a weird costume demand with a gun for an arm and you went through and violently killed everything in your midst. The world you were in was very interesting. Different colors, the walls moved, weird sounds. There was a talking dog at your sidekick, so right. He wrote us in and I was really disappointed to find out. We had quite a few people email us and tell us that it was not a game called MKUltra. It's a game called MDK. And while there was a weird costume man with a gun on his hand and a talking dog and lots of weird trippy things and dark sense of humor, it apparently had nothing to do with MKUltra. So I was just going to learn that. But I want to thank Rue from Atlanta. Yes, Ali. You think you practice this, Ali? That's not bad. No. Robbie. Yeah. Alejandro. Okay. Charlie and Michael. And they all are video game guys, I guess. And they wrote in to tell us that they had played MDK. It was a PC game and it looked pretty cool. I looked at it on YouTube. I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, it's pretty rad, but there's no MK Ultra going on. Well, thanks to everybody who wrote in. And if you want to write to us about your video gaming experiences or just to say hi or to suggest a new pseudonym for me when I check into hotels, send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing pool site, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Kevin here in Kilgara and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
45860726-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-abbfafaf5c85	Short Stuff: The Number 23	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-number-23	There are people out there who believe that there’s something special about the number 23. Exactly what? Who knows. Exactly why? Because it pops up a lot. But does it? Who knows.	There are people out there who believe that there’s something special about the number 23. Exactly what? Who knows. Exactly why? Because it pops up a lot. But does it? Who knows.	Wed, 01 May 2019 21:31:10 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=21, tm_min=31, tm_sec=10, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=121, tm_isdst=0)	13321305	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, there's Josh. Put the three of us together. This is short stuff. It's so short. Yes. And we should mention that Josh's in here with this guest producer, and he asked, what you're recording on? And I said, the number 23. And he said, oh, I'm into that. And I said, Well, I apologize because I'm probably going to make fun of it a lot. That's funny. So, Josh, then you're a 2030 in is what they're called, the number two, the number three, the letter R, the letter D, the letter I, the letter A, the letter N, and then because there's more than one, the letter S, and we know that's real because there's a Facebook page. Yes. Facebook basically legitimizes everything. So we're talking about the number 23. Apparently a lot of people put some stock into this number. Yes. Not just Josh. No, he's not the only one. They made a very bad Jim Carrey movie called The Number 23. Did you see it, or are you just presuming it was bad? I'm presuming it was bad. From all the people that said it's bad, I have never seen it, and I presumed it was bad, too. But I have gotten just desperate enough on, like, Netflix and Amazon Prime to try it. There's so much good stuff out there. And you're going to watch that, is there? I don't know. Does everything stink? I don't know if everything stinks. I don't want to say that, but I think I am at the number 23 level right now. All right, okay, let's follow up. I want to hear about it. All right, you got it. All right, so the number 23, you've seen it on Michael Jordan's uniform. Sure. He picked it, apparently, because that was as close as he could get to half of 46, which was his older brother's number. I think his older brother's was 45. 45, yes. 23 would be exactly right. And then, of course, since then, other people have tried to emulate Michael, like LeBron. And so the other twenty three S you see in basketball and even some other sports sometimes are a tribute to Michael Jordan. Yeah. Like David Beckham's 23 when he went to Real Madrid was an homage to Jordan, too. So, yeah, Jordan was the first. Every other 23 was an homage to Jordan, which is great. But that's not where the number 23 ends. That's not where the number 23 started. No. Well, it did. It started elsewhere. The number 23 has been with us for as long as Arabic numerals have, but the obsession with the number 23, they've tried to trace back as far as they can. And there's actually a guy who came up with a book that came out in 2013. This guy's got one of the better names I've heard in a while, barnaby Rogerson. Yeah. And this book title is just out of hand. Rogerson's Book of Numbers the Culture of 1001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. That's the end of the title. It has a colon and a hyphen. Yeah. He should have ended that with an exclamation point. Right. Because I think you have to when you say the Seven Wonders of the World yes. I don't know anybody who says it, like, without an exclamation point. Yeah. So Barnaby Rogerson traces the obsession with the number 23 to a little writer that was drugged out named William S. Burroughs. Yes. The man who shot a million bucks in his arm says Matt Dylan. Oh, really? Was that the thing? The quote? Yeah, it was from drugstore. Cowboy. William Estabrus played an old aged heroin addict and Matt Dylan said he must have shot a million bucks into that arm. See? Watch that again instead of the number 23. Okay. All right. You got it. That's your assignment. Okay. So supposedly in 1960, this story has many, many holes and probably because of all the drugs. Burrows was in Tangier. Probably because of the drugs. And said he met a sea captain named Clark, not me. Who said he'd never been in an accident in 23 years. Yeah. Later that day, Clark sank his ship and died which will perk your antennae up, for sure. And then supposedly, later that same day, that night, Boroughs heard a radio story, news story about a Flight 23 that crashed in Florida, also piloted by Captain Clark. This all sounds very interesting until you realize that that didn't happen. Well, there was a Flight 23. I didn't see whether it was piloted by Clark or not. So it's possibly heard a story from 27 years earlier. Yeah. Like maybe they were recounting the story or something like that. You know what I mean? Sure. We also have to remember, again, he's hopped up on Smack. Right. Either way, I think smack was just one of many at any given time going through his bloodstream. But he is usually the guy who is first credited with becoming obsessed with the number 23. Yes. And he was, you could say, fairly influential in the underground scene in the then into the on. And one of his friends was named Robert Anton Wilson. And Robert Anton Wilson went on to co write the very famous Illuminatus trilogy. Have you read any of those? I haven't, but that's Josh's main interest. Okay. They're fascinating books. They're wonderfully written. They're hilarious, they're engrossing. They're really interesting. But he was friends with Burrows. And so the number 23 is a major foundation of the Illuminatus trilogy which also draws from another kind of underground school of thought, I guess, in the which is called discordianism, which is kind of like a made up, parody religion that actually makes a lot of sense. So much so that it kind of blurs the lines between reality and non reality when you look into it. And number 23 is a holy number for discordianism. So if you kind of take all that together, discordionism the Illuminatus trilogy and Williams Burroughs and put it all together, that seems to be where the kind of cult like awareness or obsession with the number 23 came from. All right, so we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk about more 23 coincidences right after this. So I should mention when I said that that's our guest producer Josh's Main interest, I didn't mean in life. As far as the number 23 goes, he was like, yeah, I read Robert Anton Wilson. Yeah. So I thought it might be fun just to kind of tick through a bunch of the things you might find on a 2030 and Facebook page where people are like, look, man, 23 again. Darwin's Origin of the Species was released in 1859. You add up 185 and nine and you get 23. That's one of the more interesting ones. Some of them are just pictures of, like, a truck with the number 23 on, like, there it is again. Those are a little right after 22. But there are some interesting coincidences that pop up when you look around. Like Kurt Cobain, he was born in 1967, and if you add those up, it comes to 23. He died in 1994. And if you add those numbers up, they come to 23 as well. Okay. Much more interesting than a truck with the number 23 on it, for sure. Conspiracy theorists will point to the 911 tragedy. You add up 911, 20, zero and one, and you get 23. That's a good one. Shakespeare was born and died on the same day, April 23, but years apart, obviously. Julie Caesar was supposedly, if you look at detailed reports, stabbed 23 times. That's not bad. I like this one. There's one called the Birthday Paradox. Have you heard about that? I did see that, and after reading it four times and not fully on understanding it, I just walked away in tears. It's really fascinating. I was like, oh, we should do one just on that. But it's actually too simple. So the Birthday Paradox is where if you get 23 people into a room, you now have enough people to where there's a 50 50 chance that two of them are going to have the same birthday, which makes zero sense since there are 365 days in a year. You would think that you would need that times two to have, I guess, 365 to have a 50 50 chance. But no, because each of those 23 people have the opportunity to be compared to the other 22 people. You get a number way more than 23, a number of comparisons way more than 23, and it turns out it's enough to have a 50% chance of having the same birthday among two people. And has that been proven out? Yeah, it's mathematical. No, it's very well proven. It's interesting once you look into just the probabilities of you like, oh, it makes way more sense. Okay. I took statistics in college. Actually, that was one of the maths that I took. I took statistics. Chuck unto quart time. Did you get? An F and F and a D. Yeah. The last time I got a D because I had the same instructor all three times. The last time she's like, D, just go, just go away. You're never going to get this. Yeah, you and I were liberal arts guys. I was an English major. And before that class, they actually had a math class called math for Poets was the nickname. And it was basically like the math class all English majors took because it was very simple arithmetic. Not bad. Let's get back to a couple of 23 things. Oh, yeah. Princess Leah Josh in the very first Star Wars home is held in detention block AA 23. Okay. And apparently in George Lucas's first film, THX 1138, there is another 23 in there. So some people might think that was his little way of giving a nod to that number. I would guess so. And George Lucas wouldn't be the only person who's a famous 2031 of the most famous is John Nash, the guy who's the mathematician whose life was dramatized in A Beautiful Mind, both the book and the movie, which is a great movie, if I remember correctly, but he was obsessed with the number 23. He said it was his favorite prime number. That's not where the obsession ends. He also says that he or he said that he appeared on the cover of Life magazine once disguised as Pope John the 23rd. Right. And Pope John the 23rd really did appear on Life magazine, but it was him. John Nash was saying, well, that was me. Yeah, I shouldn't laugh in the Bible, which is a book, I was about to call it a chapter, but I guess they aren't called that. The book of numbers and the verses, it's numbers 23. 23. If you look that up, what hath God wrought? That is also the very first message sent by Telegraph in Code by Samuel Morris in 1843. So if you take all of this and you look at it a certain way, it becomes plain that there's something very special about the number 23. If you look at it a different way, it becomes plain that people have invested a lot of mystical significance to 23 that isn't actually there. It could be any other number, especially any other number that is within one to 30, because a lot of people ascribe dates significance to dates. I should say John Nash died on the 23 May in 2015. And so that just proves it to people who are 2030, obviously 23 means something, but it could also be 15 or seven or three. There's a lot of numbers that we ascribe a lot of significance to. And if you ask a cognitive psychologist what's going on they will just basically say that our brains contain a mechanism for detecting patterns. We search out patterns. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we save brain energy. It's finding patterns so we can predict things and just make sense of the world around us. And sometimes we force patterns onto things that don't actually have any significance, that don't actually mean anything. And that could be things like the number 23 popping up suddenly or randomly. Yeah, when you look at the clock and it's 1111 and you make a big deal about it, it's more likely that you just don't make a big deal about every other time of day that you look at the clock. Exactly. Chuck, I got nothing else except for 23 chromosomes. Hey, with that short, stuff is out. Stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
3fe35c36-5461-11e8-b6d0-af4f4264dcb8	Selects: How Pet Psychics Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-pet-psychics-work	In the early 21st century a trend of people who claim to be able to telepathically and clairvoyantly communicate with animals has grown. Today, the concept of visiting a pet psychic to find a lost pet, find out why a pet is behaving badly or even to learn if a pet is ready to be put to sleep is becoming more commonplace, but is there any basis to pet psychics' abilities? Join Josh and Chuck as they investigate the pet psychic phenomenon, in this classic episode.	In the early 21st century a trend of people who claim to be able to telepathically and clairvoyantly communicate with animals has grown. Today, the concept of visiting a pet psychic to find a lost pet, find out why a pet is behaving badly or even to learn if a pet is ready to be put to sleep is becoming more commonplace, but is there any basis to pet psychics' abilities? Join Josh and Chuck as they investigate the pet psychic phenomenon, in this classic episode.	Sat, 21 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=233, tm_isdst=0)	35467262	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Everybody. I'm throwing back all the way to January 16, 2014 on this one, how pet Psychics Work. Boy, oh, boy. This one was not great, but sometimes I like to pick those just as a reminder of the peaks and valleys of this show over the years. So here we go with how bed psychics work. It's really not that bad. You'll probably enjoy it. Just give it a listen and then give us a review on Yelp. Three stars, please welcome to stuff You Should Know, a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. That's me. I mentioned myself already. Have I mentioned Jerry? Yeah, I think so. Things just keep getting worse and worse, don't they? Jerry's over there. We're on the Christmas spirit. I think this is the last show we're recording this year, right? Yeah. We're ahead of the game a little bit, so we can have a cushy couple of weeks. So we're hammered. Not true. Not yet. You got your coffee? I got my soda water. Laquois Lacroix soda water? Yeah. My coffee is neither Spanish nor Irish nor anything like that. No. What is Spanish coffee? Oh, it's the better of the two. What is it? Well, it depends on your recipe, but you get a little bit of rum. Okay. You get a little bit of or I can't remember the other name for it, but good. Triple SEC. Yeah. Put them together in a tempered Snifter or an Irish coffee glass fire. Tempered. Make sure it's tempered, or else you're about to hurt yourself. Yeah. It'll bust on it. You light it. It's got to be high proof rum. You light the rum triple SEC combo. Just let it burn out for a second. Or you can blow it out if you don't want to burn off too much of the alcohol. Yeah. And you add some espresso, some kalua, and then top it off with a little whipped cream and nutmeg, man. It's good stuff. And that's just one version. There's plenty of other versions of Spanish coffee that makes Irish coffee look silly. There's, like, I don't put down Irish coffee or someone's in the coffee and drink pretty much. It's also called the eye opener. Yeah. I love the simplicity of the Irish just doing that. I love that. Have you seen a great country? I don't know if it was a new one. Last week I started watching The Simpsons again after, like, years off. Yeah. And it's awesome, man. It is. Back there was one I don't know if it was new or not, but Krusty syndicated himself around the world, so he could make a lot more money. So there's, like, a Jamaican crusty. There's, like, all these and then the Irish one was just, like, this depressed alcoholic who would sit at a table on a chair in, like, the spare room. Didn't even do that. Really? Yeah. Would just drink and say, like these really bleak, depressing things is perfect. And he ended up with his own stage show on Broadway and everything as the irish crusty. Yeah. Oh, awesome. That's a good one. I have to check that out. Yeah. That was my intro to pet psychics. All right. You know that cat sitting over there knew everything I was about to say. Oh, yeah. Not many people know we have a studio cat. Man, I wish we did. How awesome would that be? Studio cat. Yeah, that'd be great. You get gaming in here, wouldn't it? No, it's already pretty warm in here as it is. A cat would love that. Yeah. All right. So pet psychics fact or fiction? They're fiction. Are we debunking right out of the thing? Well, I am of the ford dan, ilk. All right. I think that using science as a means of avoiding scientific investigation of something is a slap in the face of science. Yeah. And that science should be used to exhaust all avenues. And just because we can't currently explain something using science doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Sure. I think there's a whole echelon of stuff out there that does exist that we can't quite explain yet. Yeah, sure. I don't know if pet psychics fall into that one, but I'm not one to just overtly poopoo something out of hand. Okay. That said, I had a hard time taking this entire article seriously. Yeah. Well, you want to know something? Yeah. Emily just went to a pet psychic. I thought that there was probably, like, an 85% to 90% chance that something like that was going to come up. Yeah. We had to put old lucy down, and emily went in the following week. We have a local pet psychic. I'm surprised they haven't built one. There probably is. Yes, but one near our house. And she went and talked to this lady. Was it comforting? She said it was really interesting. And there was less talk about Lucy and more talk about, like, me and our other animals. And she wouldn't tell me a whole lot because she didn't want me to poke fun at it. And I tried to be super supportive, and I was sure, of course, I fought every instinct I had to you're. Like, that sounds like a great time. Neat. How much was it? But Emily and she asked me not to say this, so of course I'm going to say it. She is getting books now herself to read because she feels like she is very intuitive with animals, and she is very intuitive with animals, and so she's going to poke around there and not to do it for a living or anything. Right. Just to do with your own dogs at home. Yeah, just to see if she can become more in tune with our animals. And they are called animal intuitive sometimes, or communicators, not necessarily pet psychics, because that makes you sound a little crazy. Maybe it seems to be, like, a whole gamut of people that would fall under the umbrella of pet psychics. Yeah, like a horse whisperer or Caesar Milan, some people might say is an animal communicator, that they're just maybe more in tune with the signals that animals send out. And they can send signals to animals. Yeah. That I fully believe. Okay, so that's totally different from what a person who claims to be a pet psychic says is going on. Well, yeah, but not always. Like, this lady Emily went to sounded more like an animal intuitive and communicator than a medium saying, I'm talking to Lucy. She's in a better place. She's playing with your grandfather in heaven. Right, but there are pet psychics that claim to do that and charge people money for that. Yeah. Just like real psychics. Sure. All right, so let's get into it. Well, I thought we already had. Well, I guess we have. I just wanted to go ahead and drop that bomb about Emily. I think you're in trouble. So pet psychics? No, she doesn't listen. They claim, depending on who they are, there is a spectrum of pet psychics, like you said, that claim certain abilities, but some claim that they can actually telepathically communicate with animals in their mind. Right. And, like, one step beyond intuition. Like, we're actually talking. Right. Not only are we talking, we're transferring images from one mind to another. Yeah. In some cases, they are talking. Like, there's a pet psychic who claims that when she speaks to animals, they respond to her in a childlike voice. That animals have childlike voices? Yeah, they speak like children. They do in Disney movies. Yeah. So why not? But basically, at its most supernatural, I guess it's most extrasensory. Pet psychic, what they're claiming to do is a convergence of clairvoyance, which is far side, and telepathy, which is mind reading, and they're putting these together, and then if you already have a hard enough time swallowing that, you may have an even harder time swallowing it when you realize that they're saying they're doing this with animals, which may or may not even be self aware. Yeah. It's hard with humans to believe that someone might have ESP and telepathy and we speak the same language. Yeah. So it might be even a deeper reach to say that you can do that with a dog, let's say. Yeah. Okay. Emily went to a pet psychic. She went after Lucy passed on, basically, to find out how Lucy was doing. Yeah. I think she was just curious about the she had been curious for a while, and this afforded her an opportunity to go see a pet psychic. It gave her a good reason. Okay, so that's one reason people go see pet psychics after the death of a pet. Sure. Another one is when a pet is sick or injured or ailing. Tell me if it's time to go. Right? Yeah. Which, man, that's got to be a lot to put on a pet psychic. That's a lot to put on a vet. Sure. Although I think vets are kind of like, yeah, let's just go ahead and do it. No, that's not true. And then what if the pet is acting like a jerk all of a sudden? That's another reason people, why is my dog acting out? Or maybe my pet is lost. Can you tell me where my pet is? Right. That's a little more of a niche thing. Not all pet psychics will take on those cases. My guess is because the success rate might not be great and they don't want to charge somebody for something and not provide the service that they said they can. Yeah. Because unless you can talk somebody into giving up their bread for you just to say, yeah, your dog will be home in a couple of weeks. Yeah. Then how are you going to work that? You can't. But there are anecdotal success stories locating pets this way. If there weren't, this wouldn't be around. And a skeptical say that's just luck and coincidence. Yeah. Like the dog was on its way home anyway. Exactly. This pet psychic didn't call to it with her mind. That's right. Pet psychic say they use electromagnetic energy to accomplish this. There's this energy field in the universe that science hasn't quite figured out yet, but it exists, and we are able to pick up on that energy and use that energy to speak to your animals, whether it's a childlike voice or I think most of them generally do it in pictures, which makes a little more sense to me. Yeah. And this thing, this electromagnetic energy, there's this guy who wrote a book. His name is J. Allen Boone, and he wrote a book called Kinship with All Life, and it apparently is the pet psychic Bible. And it's kind of his relationship with this German shepherd named Strongheart, which was a Hollywood dog that he cared for starting in, I think, the 19th, and who he became telepathically linked with, intuitively linked to. Right. And basically Jay Allen Boon wrote this book on how to communicate with animals, and in it he mentions that all things are connected by this thing called the primal cause mediclorians. Right. And I think that's what a pet psychic would say. Well, it's the electromagnetic energy. Right. The point is, since it binds all things, we can just kind of use that to connect to the mind of another thing, human or animal. Right. Because we're all connected by this. Right. It's a lovely thought. It is. Animal Planet actually had a show for a little while about ten years ago called The Pet Psychic. And the lady on there, what's her name? Fitzpatrick. Yes. She claimed that she picked up this in childhood as a result of a hearing loss, although other people say they pick it up as adults after studying it and not necessarily born with a gift, but they just studied how to be more in tune with animals. Right. And apparently a lot of them discovered that they had this gift after they saw the pet psychic on Animal Planet. Is that right? That's what Tracy says in this article. Okay. I wonder what that sounds like, one of those statements. Did she do research on that? I don't know. Did she do a poll? Well, I think that it definitely did kick off a trend. Okay. If it didn't capitalize on it, it definitely kicked it off. All right, so you go to your pet psychic. You're going to go into a room, and they're going to do something like this. Not exactly like this, depending on their methods, but they're probably going to just relax and tell you to calm down, and they will make contact with the energy of the animal, and then they will actually try and contact the said animal telepathically. Right. Like ask a question of the animal, or they'll call its name or something and get its attention, too. Yeah. Or have a picture. A lot of times you don't need the animal there, necessarily. In fact, a lot of times I think the animal is not there. Right, because why do you need the animal? No, you don't. You've got the great cause, the primal cause. Exactly. So they go like this with their mind. They do. And then they will accept whatever response they get, relay that back to you, ask you some more questions, or if you have any more questions, and basically act as the go between. You communicating with your pet, just like you would think it goes down. Your pet is saying that they're not happy with the new couch, and that's why they're peeing on it. Right. Or ever since you took that promotion into middle management, you've changed, man, and I'm not happy with this new you. That's why I keep chewing your suits. Exactly. It's pretty controversial, as we pointed out, because there isn't any hard science behind it. There's no proof of this electromagnetic energy. I know a lot of people believe in energy. I mean, electromagnetic energy does exist. Yeah. Not this kind of electromagnetic energy. Yeah. I just want to make sure everyone knew that we believe in electromagnetic energy, but they haven't picked up they haven't proven that there's any actual sensory organ in people or animals that allow them to tune into this energy. Right. Does that make more sense? Yeah. So during these pet psychic sessions, when the purpose of this normally is to get to the bottom of a problem, say, like we said, or to get some sort of comfort or even for decision making, the problem is when a pet psychic asks an animal what's going on, and the animal is thought to respond, well, I'm doing this because of this. Beyond the telepathy, beyond the clairvoyance involved, there's still the question of whether an animal is capable of that higher level of reasoning and thought that it would be aware of its own reasons for its behavior. That, in and of itself, is a controversial aspect of this whole topic. Yeah. That self awareness. A lot of animal intuitive believe that animals are basically kind of like people that just can't talk. They experience the emotions, they're self aware, and they're just not trapped. But they're in an animal's body. Right. And when you look at your pets, you may think they're experiencing emotions, and it's a controversial subject because it's not something you can prove. Well, it's become more and more proven over the years. Yeah. Nowadays, it is accepted that animals can feel certain emotions. Yeah. Especially the basic ones. Yeah. Like stress, fear. Fear, upsettingness. Yeah. Rage, I think, is one lust, separation distress. Yeah. But it's hard to define an emotion period, much less in an animal. Right. But the idea that emotions just belong to humans or even humans in higher primates is definitely faded. We are aware that animals can experience basic emotions. They can probably experience even higher emotions, too. Like, if you look at a dog and your dog looks sad, and it's sad because you're leaving, you may be correct. You know your dog pretty well. And we've reached the point where science is starting to come to grips with the idea that, yes, animals can experience some higher emotions as well. Sure. And there was actually a conference at Cambridge University in 2012, and it was a pretty heavy hitting conference. The people involved were no slouches, and they came up with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. Interesting. And they basically said that the components that you need to experience emotions and consciousness are not relegated to the cortex. Meaning it's not just humans that have that are capable that have the hardware for experiencing consciousness. Right. They also said that if you artificially stimulate the neural circuits that are responsible for different aspects of consciousness in humans, you can stimulate the same things in animals, too, which suggests that they have the same equipment. You can also disrupt those circuits using hallucinogens in humans and animals. Okay. And since they have all the equipment, all the science point to said, this group of neuroscientists and other professionals, they said there is a pretty good chance that it's not just humans who are experiencing consciousness. The trappings of consciousness, like higher emotions, self awareness, the things that make us human animals might have that make them animals. Right. But the people who think that if your dog is sad, you're probably right. Are right. Dog likes you around, and it might be happy when you're home and sad when you leave. And the whole reason that this has been a thing is simply because humans haven't been able to figure out how to accurately test what is an emotion in an animal. Right. Because animals can't say, I'm feeling like this right now. We can be like that's love. You're feeling love? Yeah. Like when a mother cares for her puppies, it looks like it's showing love. Or is it oxytocin, a hormone in the body that says you need to care for your young? Is it love or care, or does the animal realize it's love or care? Well, that's the big one, because you can say we have that same exact neural circuit and we react to oxytocin the exact same way. So if it's love for us, why isn't it love for the animal? Well, the key is we think about it. We're thinking, I feel so good about taking care of my baby. That means I love my baby. That makes me even happier. That's called metacognition. Right? That's where most people are drawing the line with animals these days. They might be able to experience some pretty high emotions. They may be self aware, but the ability to think about their emotions and the implications of their emotions, or think about thinking, that's metacognition, and not everybody agrees on that one. That's the new threshold that we're at, it seems like, oh, really? For animals, whether or not they're capable of metacognition. So if an animal sees itself in the mirror and notices itself, is that self awareness? Yeah. Which would be a form of metacognition. Right. But that's not proven. That's where a lot of people you'll lose a lot of people now. Whereas ten years ago, even saying that an animal could experience happiness or joy would have lost a lot of people. So who knows? In ten years from now, maybe everyone will agree that animals experience metacognition. Yeah, grief is definitely one I've seen firsthand a lot. Yeah, we talked about it in the grief episode. Yeah. And when we put Lucy down, they recommend that we did at our house. They recommend that the pet not see that act, but then they come in afterwards, so they see the body and so they can understand what's going on, and so they don't spend time looking for that animal. And we did that with Buckley and Charlie and let them back in. And Charlie was stressed. We didn't think about it. She was a feral dog, so she gets stressed when other people are in the house. So we forgot this vet lady was in there. So Charlie is just stressed, running around. Buckley goes up. Smith's lucy. And it was really sad, I'm sure. And he was different for about four or five days. Seemed depressed to me. And when we would take him on walks and come back, he would still run around to all the rooms, I think, looking for Lucy, because he never had done that before. Yeah. He usually just walks in and lays down, but he literally would go to each room. So I definitely think there are things like grief. Whether or not the dog realizes it's grief, like, who cares? That's what I think. Yeah. I mean, it's still experiencing on that virtually the same level, right? Yeah. And it's most profound level, that gut experience of grief. I think the fine line here with investigating or talking about whether or not animals can experience these things is you're walking this edge where on one side you have anthropocentrism, where you're just like, no, they can't. Only humans can. Humans are the greatest ever. And you're forgetting that we're animals as well. Right. Then the other side you have anthropomorphizing where you're attributing human attributes to animals unduly. So it's kind of like you have to write down luckily so happy because we're putting up the Christmas tree. Exactly. Luckily is happy because we're in there having a good time and drinking some eggnog and like, the music is on, we're dancing. Right, exactly. So you have to resist both of those temptations to just kind of keep plodding along down the line scientifically. But I think ultimately, as we go down that line, we're going to finally come to, as a species, hopefully, the idea that animals should not be in zoos or tested on or whatever, because they are a lot closer to us consciousness wise than we currently understand or want to admit right now. Agreed. All right, well, we're going to talk a little bit about pet psychics and contradictions between them and what might be going on here right after this message break. Okay, so there are some contradictions. If you go to ten pet psychics, you're probably going to have ten different eleven opinions. Yes. Eleven different stories about what's going on, which is one reason it makes it hard to swallow for some people. Again, I feel like since we went to break and came back, this is a good time to read it. Right. I'm not poopooing intuitiveness. No, I'm not poopooing. Some people's ability, greater ability than others to really kind of connect to animals and understand them or deal with them, however you want to put it. It's when it strays into telepathy and clairvoyance that I start to become skeptical. Yeah, I know what you mean. And I think some people are more in tune with other humans than others. Some people have their heads up their butts and are completely absorbed in their own little universe. Other people, I think, seek out input from other things. Whether it's people or animals, they're always looking for something. Right. Justin, his mom, Kerry, one of my favorite people, is one of the most in tune, intuitive people I've ever met in my life because she's a studyer of people. Like, you can see her, man, when there's a party going on, she'll be sitting back and watching. Yeah. Is she weird? No, she's not weird at all. She's awesome, but she watches, and I don't know if it's a gift as much as it is something you can work on. Yeah, I think it is. Remove your head from your butt and pay attention. So some contradictions, like you might see a Fitzpatrick that says your animal rattled you out about something. You might go to another pet psychic that says, animals would never do that. They're loyal. Right. So what's the story? Supposedly, according to Sonya Fitzpatrick from the pet Psychic Show, animals are very gossipy and they like to tell one another all your secrets. That's hilarious to me. And she told the story. She wrote a book called what the Animals Tell Me. And she told the story about a turtle that she was communicating with, and the turtle told her that it would love to have a fish friend as a pet. Right? So Sonya Fitzpatrick introduced a fish to this turtle's tank, and the turtle was like, thanks, chump, and ate the fish. She said, Why did you eat the fish? And the turtle said, Well, I knew that if I asked you for a fish to eat, you wouldn't give it to me, so I just tricked you, basically. Okay, so animals are gossipy and wiley and have the potential to lie. Yeah. You should not trust animals. Debbie McGillivray. She wrote The Complete Idiots Guide to Pet psychic Communication. She's the one that said, no animals are loyal. They're innocent. They would never rat you out. They would never lie to you like that or embarrass you. So it makes it tougher to swallow when you have people saying these wildly different things, not about what they're picking up, but the fact that no animals do this. No animals do this. Which is it, right. But you could say the same thing about humans. If you hang out with certain humans, you can be like, some human like, humans gossip. They'll tell other people all of your terrible secrets. True. Other people might have hung out with the Waltons, and they're like, no, humans are all loyal. It's all about your perception and your experience. That's right. So what might be going on here is what's known as a cold reading. Yeah. Any success? Or what appears to be success? Yeah. Telepathically among pet psychics. Cold readings. Yeah. ESP. People use cold readings to explain that. Fortune telling, tarot, card, palm reading, crystal balls, you name it. A skeptic will say that. What a cold reading is is the following they are maybe stating the obvious. Your cat is telling me it loves to lay in the window and look at the world outside. And the person goes, oh, my God. The wizard loves that. Right. All cats love that. Exactly. So that might happen in your reading. They might also use very vague language like, your dog says, something has changed around here. And you go, oh, yeah, I just accepted this middle management promotion. And the pet psychic says, yes, exactly. That's this new thing that's changed. And you said earlier that your dog was chewing up your new shoes, and that's why your dog is not happy with this change, so he's chewing your shoes. I am a psychic. That's how they finish every reading, too, by the way. They throw their arms up in the air and shout that. Well, it's interesting because what might be happening there is your dog might be chewing up your shoes because you did get that job, because you're working an extra 15 hours a week, and your dog has separation anxiety. Yeah. So ironically, it might be actually on the money. The disconnect comes in when the psychic says that your dog told them that. Exactly. What else? How about this? Here's another way to state the obvious. Your dog I'm looking at a picture of your dog, and they chew on their paws all the time and say they itch. And that's because in the picture, they have a bandage on their paw, or you went in and forgot you said, my dog is chewing their paws all the time. What's the deal with that? They'll glean these bits of information without you maybe even necessarily recognizing that by asking you questions, and then they make that part of their cold reading, but then asking questions is another one, too. It's fishing for details. It's like, I see that your dog is wearing a red green, and then you say, blue, blue collar. Your dog is wearing a blue collar. So every time something is that you indicate something is correct, it will be restated, rephrased, respoken, as if the psychic is saying it right. And you're so enrapped in this whole thing that you're just missing the fact that you're feeding them the information that they're giving to you as a psychic reading. Yes. Because this isn't just pet psychic. No. Generally, if you go into a psychic, you are there because you want to believe and you are seeking an answer. If a dude like you or I went into a pet psychic, we probably wouldn't have much luck, because we would go in there looking to shoot holes in it. And I did encourage Emily. I was like, going there with an open mind. I would go in there with an open mind. See. I don't think I could. I would. That's why I wasn't invited. I would try, at the very least, if I were going to go in there just to poopoo, I just wouldn't go. Well, yeah, because who wants to do that, jerks? There are plenty of them out there, too. No, that's true. But Emily did say that she made a point to not reveal too much and just sort of watch out for those cold reading tricks. And she said I didn't reveal a whole lot, and she gave me back something. So she's a believer. Well, whatever she spent on that. Yeah. So drop in the bucket. Compared to what people spend on their pets these days, it's a little crazy these days, not just for pet psychics, but just in general. Americans spent $61 billion billion with the B dollar in 2013 on their pets. $61 billion. And that was up. From 36 billion in 2005 and 17 billion in wait, what's the current number? 61 billion. Wow. I don't want to say gotten out of hand, but you definitely notice in the past decade, more doggy spas and stuff like that around. Well, there's supposedly more disposable income. Yeah. And there are more people who are not having kids. Oh, so they're just dumping their money into their pets. Well, good. Get them off the street, people. That's what I say. The point is, if we're spending $61 billion on our pets and it keeps increasing, almost doubling every few years now, every 8910 years, pet psychics are not going anywhere. No, they're not. They're here to stay. I've got one more stat for you. There was a poll in 2008 that found that 67% of pet owners say they understand their animals purrs or barks or other noises. And 62% said that when they speak, their pet understands them, or at least their intent. And one in five owners claim their pets understand each other completely, like the two pets do. And one quarter of cat owners say they completely understood their pet sounds. Only 16% of dog owners said they were fluent bark. So I guess those are two different polls that are wildly different in their numbers. Yeah. I think people can and animals since a lot of subtle micro expressions and body language, and that is communication, don't you think that's just a result of proximity around another living being? Just living with something, whether it's a person or an animal? Like you get to know them and their mannerisms and you can read them. And that is like I said, micro expressions is a form of communication. I think. So it's not like I think, sure you can communicate with your dog, sure. But it may not be telepathically like a conversation, but if it feels as easy as a telepathic conversation, then you got it going on with your pet. Yeah. And again, if you want to go out and drop your dough on a pet psychic, more power to you. Probably get something out of it. Same here. If you want to know more about pet psychics, type those words into the search bar@howstoughforks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this go figgy puddings. Remember that? Yes. In our live pike. Well, I'll just go ahead and read it this semester, guys. I'm studying abroad in the UK at the University of Hertfordshire. During my travel exactly. During my travels, your podcast has helped me past the time of plane and train rides while learning new things and hearing the American accent I miss so much. I just listened to is there a scientific for me? For funny? You mentioned Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire and Josh said, go figure pudding, which was very funny. I couldn't have thought of that. You could have. Not that quick. I was a little taken aback guy, since you're always dead on with your university team names, I regret to inform you that Eh does not have a team called the Figgy Pudding Zone. They're actually the University of Hurtford or Hurricanes. This guy's joking, right? No. I knew I was joking. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I think so. Okay. Boy, I think so. Andrew, you knew Josh was joking, right? Please. Andrew I think so. We have the Hurricanes, which is a little weird since they have more figgy puddings here than Hurricanes. There's not a lot of Hurricanes over there in there. No, I don't think so. They tend to come this way. Yeah. Uh, Hurricanes are actually one of the best British American football teams around with four national championships. But I think he corrected himself in a subsequent email. I think there are 512 division titles since 1997. Just want to set the record straight. Also wanted to thank you guys for such a consistently great show. And that is Andrew Millian cocaine. And I hope he knows you're joking, but he said he was taken aback. I think he was kidding. I hope I don't know that he was joking. I'm just confused with that. If you want to pull one over on me and Chuck, that's fine. We'll see what you got. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepfworks.com. Stuffyouseanow is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
8b972e7a-c8b1-4ae5-a9bc-ae6000d48815	Short Stuff: Magnet Fishing	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-magnet-fishing	Magnet fishing has nothing to do with fish. It's more like metal detecting in waterways. Please enjoy our take! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Magnet fishing has nothing to do with fish. It's more like metal detecting in waterways. Please enjoy our take! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Wed, 23 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=82, tm_isdst=0)	13205881	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is short stuff, as I said already. And this is short stuff. So let's go. So when I was a kid, I don't know if your dad ever did this, something tells told me your dad may have had a brief foray into metal detecting. Yes. It seemed to be maybe a little bit of a I don't know about fad or craze if it was that widespread, but I know quite a few of us in our age group whose mothers and fathers, for some reason, more fathers than mothers, and there were generally more mothers going, Seriously? Like, you're going to spend 3 hours on the beach doing that, roaming around the beaches and forests of America with a metal detector, hoping to in my dad's case, I think he was probably hoping to strike it rich with some rare find. Yeah, I think all of them were secretly some of them might have tried to play like they were really just in it for the science or whatever, but they were hoping to find some roaming horde for some reason in Indiana. And I thought it was cool at the time because I would do anything to try and get my dad to pay attention to me. So I would tag along and I would metal detect right alongside of them. And I thought it was pretty cool. And I found myself when I heard about magnet fishing just recently, I learned that this was a thing saying, oh, wow, that looks like something I might want to try. And then I went, oh, my God. I've become my father. Were you like, Maybe I'll strike it rich? No, but I just think it's kind of cool and fun. Well, I think you can get into it, and it will be easy to get into because the barriers for getting into magnet fishing are purposefully kept low so that everybody can get into it because it's supposed to be a really fun pastime and we should tell everybody what magnet fishing is if there's ever been a term that we needed to define it's magnet fishing. Are you fishing for magnets? Yes. Are you using magnets to try and get a fish out of a lake? Yeah. There's so much mercury in fish now that you can use magnets to catch them. No, that's not what magnet fishing is. Magnet fishing is having a rope tied to a Dope, very strong magnet, which will talk about what these magnets are and how they work and stuff and that and dropping it in a canal or a river or a lake or off of a bridge into any of these bodies of water, dragging it along and hoping that you pull up something cool or valuable or both. Where does the dope come in? I don't know. I guess you should well, never mind. I can use my imagination. So from looking at on YouTube. What I've seen more often than not, what comes out of the lake or the river or the canal is not anything most people would want to touch. So I think, like being a magnet fisherman, you have to be fascinated by icky things, rusty things that were once not rusty or icky. And that the fact that they're underwater now makes them by nature interesting to magnet. Fishers yes. And this, by the way, comes from our old colleagues@housestepworks.com, and they aptly point out that it's caught on here in America pretty well, especially during the Pandemic. They did interview someone in our own state of Georgia who opened a magnet place to kind of furnish supplies for people. And he was like, man, it's like during the Pandemic and during lockdown, things really blew up because you can socially distance it got people out of the house. It really passes the time, something you can take your kid and do. So it's really been booming in the States in the past couple of years. But it's long been popular in Europe, and for good reason, because Europe is older and there are more interesting finds. And you're way more likely to find some old unexploded munition that you might want on your shelf, even though it's very dangerous sure. Than you might in America. Yeah. We should buzz market that dude, too, because he seems okay. Sure. But brute magnetics in North Georgia. Yeah. Clay Copeland so what they've put together he's actually the reason that I said that this hobby is being kept accessible purposefully, because he said that the most powerful magnet that they sell, the top of the line, the Blue Ribbon system, can pull over \u00a32000 of metal out of whatever waterway you're fishing in. It's still only like $200. Yeah. Not bad for a hobby. No. And if you stop and think about it, there's a 2000 pound piece of metal that's getting close to like a car, isn't it? I don't know how much the cars weigh. I don't know. Like \u00a32000 is what I'm guessing. Probably the topped out at \u00a32000. So like a Hummer probably weighs \u00a32000. Okay, I think that might be wrong. But the point is this. There's a 2000 pound magnet or a magnet that can pull \u00a32000 for $200. That's a good deal. Okay. That is a good deal. Any kind of hobby when you're buried in trees, a couple of can spend hours and hours, like with your kids or something. Not bad at all. You should be sure of a few things. One, that you're really good at tying knots. Because what you don't want to do is lose that magnet sure. And then have to get a magnet to fish out that magnet. So be really good at tying knots. You want a rope that's 50 to 100ft, depending on if you're obviously dropping off of bridges, you're going to want the longer rope. And I saw that nylon paracord is a really good option because it's like a thicker one, because it's got that perfect mix of toughness and elasticity. And the magnets that you would buy two are not your normal refrigerator magnets, which are made of ferrite, the ones that Mr. Copeland cells are made of. Neodymium is how I'm going to say it, I think that's right. And neodymium is a rare earth metal, and they mix it with a boron and iron, and it's just, again, super strong. Like, you're not going to pull anything approaching \u00a32000 with a refrigerator magnet, even if it's super big. And that's the point. You want a fairly compact magnet that is also designed in a streamlined manner, so it's not going to get hooked up on all sorts of muck and kelp and seaweed and all that stuff, too. Should we take a break? I think so. We're really just getting started with magnet fishing, everybody. All right, we'll be right back. Hi, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. By the way, during our break, I just looked it up. The average weight of a car is about \u00a34200. Okay. So I think one of the Smart cars, maybe about \u00a32000. Sure. I'll take Smart Car. It's basically the same thing as a homer. And before I forget, the other thing I meant to mention on what you might need to get started is a tetanus shot. It's kind of funny to say, but that is no joke, because you are pulling old rusty things out of the water, inevitably. And that's the nature of magnets and metal and being underwater. So you do want to tighten a shot and to have some gloves and stuff like that. You also want to have some common decency, because one of the reasons that some magnet fisher people have a bad reputation in some places, like the UK. And Germany, are apparently two places where they kind of frown upon magna fishing because people magnetic pull out some metallic junk that they don't want and just leave it on the side of the river or the sidewalk, like the walking path alongside a canal or something like that. I get the impression that if you haul something out, it's up to you to either keep it or throw it away, not just leave it there. Yes. Or turn in. In the case of unexploded munitions, if you find an old World War II hand grenade or bullets, I mean, it seems like I looked up a lot of these fines and stuff, and it is disturbing how many weapons are in bags and rivers. It really makes you wonder why it's in there. But lots of guns are found. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of bullets are found. I saw one where this little six year old girl and her parents pulled 600 bullets out of a lake. Like I said, like AK 47. Someone found a tommy gun. Wow. That's a pretty good find. That's a war revolver. Pretty good find, sure. But people are dumping dangerous things like Civil War era swords. Pretty good find. Sure. But there are dangerous things down there, and if anything is unexploded, I think the assumption is it's always dangerous, so you should probably get in touch with somebody about it. Yeah, and that's especially true in Europe, where a lot of World War Two artillery and ammunition is still laying around. Yeah, I saw a blog post Chuck, that I guess I hadn't heard about the Tommy gun because it was called, like, the greatest magnet fishing finds of all time. Oh, really? And one of them was like a bench, like a park bench. And the caption was, who couldn't use a free bench? They were really trying to sell it. So I guess the Tommy Gunn hadn't been found yet. I saw one guy who there was a picture of him holding up a machine gun standing beside no lie. It was either eight or ten of those stupid rental scooters. Electric scooters. People just throw those in bodies of water. Yeah, and shopping carts, too. You know who does that? Affected teenagers. I saw one guy found a human body that had handcuffs on. No. Yes. No. Yes. Boy, he's the wrong search terms for magnet fishing fines, because I didn't see anything like that. I just searched for, like, most interesting finds. A body with handcuffs? Are you for real? Yeah. I mean, that's what this one goofy website said. Goodness to be gracious. Wow. That was pretty much my worst fear when I was a youngster vacationing in Lake Erie. Yes. Yeah. Just bumping into a body that I just knew was out there, 5ft away from me, headed right toward me. The idea of finding one magnet oh, my God. I'm going to have to go, like, chill out for a little bit before we record our next short stuff. Well, could you imagine they're pulling this thing out, and it's coming up handcuffed first, so either around the ankles or around the wrist. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a pretty cruising discovery. Yeah. Good Lord. Well, thanks for ending it like that. Sure. Well, we're not quite done. I just wanted to say how discouraging it is that people are pulling out so much trash. It's great the people that are doing this to pull out the trash and dispose of it. Well, yeah, but as I was researching this yesterday, emily texted me that our house is next to sort of this bamboo forest with a creek, and she saw a truck pull over and throw a gigantic microwave into the creek and speed off. And now I have to go fish that microwave out. She got his license plate, and I'm like, what are you going to do all over that? It'd be like the cops in The Big Lebowski. Oh, yeah. We got a whole team of guys working on it. But now I got to go fish this microwave out. There's no way I can let it sit there. You're going to get yourself a $200 magnet for Mr. Clay Copeland of Brute magnetic. I probably should, because that would be the easiest way to do it, and it would be legal in Georgia. Legality wise, we should mention that it's everywhere so far, except for South Carolina. It is legal because in South Carolina, it falls under the South Carolina Underwater Antiques Act, which prohibits you from collecting things with equipment deployed from the surface of the water. And that even means magnets. Yeah, especially magnets is what I heard. Yeah. In Europe is a little more controlled, not controlling. But they have more restrictions and things in place. Right? Yeah. Again, there's a lot of unexploded ordinance that's just the right age to blow up in your face accidentally when you're inspecting it to figure out what it is. That's right. So it makes sense. So that's magnet fishing. Go forth, check out Brute Magnetics, get yourself a magnet, and throw away the stuff you don't want. Don't throw it back or just leave it on the side of the road. Okay. Agreed. That's it for short stuff since Chuck agreed. That's official. See you later. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
45065558-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-f7f697a49e37	Short Stuff: Grandfather Clocks	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-grandfather-clocks	If you've ever wondered why a grandfather clock is called a grandfather clock and you have 12 minutes to spare, this is your lucky day. Listen in to the brand new Short Stuff series. It's everything you want from Josh and Chuck, and less!	If you've ever wondered why a grandfather clock is called a grandfather clock and you have 12 minutes to spare, this is your lucky day. Listen in to the brand new Short Stuff series. It's everything you want from Josh and Chuck, and less!	Wed, 03 Oct 2018 13:30:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=276, tm_isdst=0)	11953860	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff, the very brief podcast on Josh. There's Chuck. That's Jerry. Let's get going. No time for laughing, Chuck. Welcome, everybody. And just as a very quick explanation, we had this idea because we often come across cool little interesting tidbits that certainly don't warrant a 45 minutes episode. And everyone else on the planet is doing little shorty episodes on their podcast, and we thought, well, hey, in year ten, why don't we give it a shot? Yeah, let's try something new for once. Yeah. So I hope you all like it. Great. Well, we've just wasted a lot of time. We might not get to the end of this episode. Now, I thought we agreed there was no ticking clock. So you've seen a grandfather clock before, right? Yeah. What is the smaller version called that hangs on the wall? Actually, I saw those called wagon the wall clocks. This is the original ones. Okay. We had one of those growing up or it's just like an exposed pendulum swinging back and forth. Yeah, three ish feet. Three ish feet in length. Yeah. Okay, I thought you meant, like, off the wall. That sounds dangerous. My dad rigged up a hovering mechanism. It was pretty advanced. Right. And the pendulum was super sharp, so you better watch out. But you're familiar with the kind that are tall and staying on the floor? Those are actually, you know, and love them as grandfather clocks. Sure. But the name grandfather clock didn't come around until about 200 years after grandfather clocks were invented. Yes, and it's funny, when I saw this, that they were invented about 350 years ago. And when I saw that they were originally called long case clocks, I immediately would like that name better. Long case better than grandfather. Okay. Yeah, I think it's cool. I'm ambivalent toward both. I do like cookie clocks, for sure. But the name grandfather clock, we'll find out where it came from. But the grandfather clock itself or the long case clock, was actually one of the first clocks. And it kind of makes sense, because if you think about it, when you start out inventing something new, it's huge, it's enormous. And then as you get better at it over time and find, like, workarounds and shortcuts and stuff, you can make it smaller and smaller. So it makes sense that some of the first actually precise clocks were giant grandfather clocks. And again, they were originally they just had the pendulum swinging back and forth. You could mount them on the wall. They were called wagon the wall clocks. And the first person who really tried to invent this thing was none other than Galileo Galilee. Yeah, he's the one that discovered, hey, a pendulum swings at a constant rate regardless of its size. I think we've got something here, boys. And unfortunately, he died before he could actually make a legit clock. Yeah, but he tried for his whole life. Yeah, that's what killed him. It was a sharp pendulum. He's like, I regret everything, but a Dutch astronomer named Christian Higgins nice. Built the very first pendulum clock in the 1657. And this is when, apparently, this is the most accurate timepiece ever in the history of the world. Yeah. Before that, clocks were accurate within 15 minutes every 24 hours. Pretty good, sure, for the early 17th century. But then Hughes comes along, and his is accurate within a minute every 24 hours. Great. Finally, what he produced was something that you could actually use for scientific purposes, which, again, as you said, he was an astronomer, and you need precise clocks for astronomy. So he kind of made a scientific instrument for himself more than, let's make something that everybody sets their watch, too. Yeah. So his wasn't a long case clock, though, but because people like to invent and build on other work, of course he's got bigger and bigger. And eventually in London, not even too many years later, three or four years later, the very first long case clocks started, like, 6ft tall, started to be released into for purchase. Yeah. And there was a dude named Clement I can't remember his first name, but he basically made the pendulum so precise that all of a sudden, there was a clock that was accurate within a second over 24 hours. And so they added minute hands and second hands and really started to show off. But at the time, in the late 17th, early 18th century, you had to literally be royalty to afford a clock like this. And then over time again, they figured out shortcuts, and there were improvements in manufacturing. You just had to be somewhat rich to afford them. And they started to spread, and they started to kind of encase them in wood. They started really kind of tricking them out and everything. They made the pendulum looks really beautiful. And then what you know, and love as a grandfather clock really kind of was developed between, I think up to about 1850, I think, right from the late 17th century up to 1850. That sounds about right. And then that was like, kind of the golden age of the grandfather clock. And then they just stopped progressing. They said, this is perfect. This is the grandfather clock, although we don't call it that yet. And we're going to just leave it as is and say, we're happy with this model. Yeah. So put a pin in that, and then we switch on over to the story of a man named Henry Clay Work, who was born in Connecticut in 1832. He was a musician, singer songwriter, very emo, from what I understand, a little bit. I got that, too. And it was back in the days when you would write, like, war songs. That doesn't happen much today, unless you count, like, Toby Keith, whatever work he's doing, whatever good work he's doing. But he was a champion of the north. And he had a song called Kingdom Coming, a pro union ballad, which gave him a music contract with a publishing firm named Root and Katie or Katie. And he started pumping out hits over, like, the next decade or so until Hard Times fell. He made some bad financial moves. Two of his kids died in the 18, and so he kind of fell on hard times, but he would come back with a big, big hit called Grandfather's Clock. Right. And this is actually where the name Grandfather Clock comes from. It's from this guy's song, and it's a pretty sweet song, actually. Very sad. He basically sings about how his grandfather, his great grandparents, bought a long case clock on the day his grandfather was born. What a great baby gift, right? Exactly. Here you go, kid. Maybe someday you'll be this tall. Who knows? Here's a grandfather, a long case clock, and a whoopie. Don't let it fall on you. Yeah, I guess now that you pointed out, it's weird baby gift, but it was a great, sturdy, reliable clock, and it worked through the grandfather's whole life until the day he died. And the day that the grandfather died, the clock stopped as well, and it still hasn't worked since. Yeah. Here's the lyric. My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf, so it stood 90 years on the floor. It was bought on the morn of the day he was born and was always his treasure and pride, but it stopped short, never to go again when the old man died. Yeah. And America was like, oh, God, this is the greatest song anyone will ever write. We can just stop. We can stop improving on Grandfather clock. We can stop writing songs now. And the two come together in this writing by Work or the song by Henry Clay. Work, right. Yeah. It was a big, big hit. He sold close to a million copies, made the equivalent of about $95,000. Nice. On the song, johnny Cash would record it. Prairie Home Companion. Spoofed it, I think. Skrillex. Just kidding. It was in a video game called Five Nights at Freddy's Remix. Yes. And if you look at it up in the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary, if you look up grandfather clock, it attributes the etymology of that term to work. Henry Claywork, his name does not stick to the brain. No. Even having Henry Clay in it. I know you think that would do it for us. Yeah. But Henry Clay work, it just does not stick. So it was a huge deal. And it's pretty much undisputed. I think it's 100% undisputed that Henry Clay work was the person who came up with the song that later became the name for long case clocks. Grandfather Clock. Right. So we're going to take a very short break, and we're going to come back and tell you about what inspired Work to write that song himself. All right, Chuck. So that was a pretty good cliffhanger. I think so, because you think, like, sure, Henry Clay Work came up with this song, and it had the effect of renaming the longcase clock the grandfather clock. But any thinking person's brain is going to keep going and say, but wait a minute, where did Henry Clay Work get the inspiration for this song? And there's actually two stories for that. Yeah. So one of them is, there's a hotel called the George Hotel. I'm sorry, the full name is the George Hotel of Piercebridge. Yeah, I get it. Right. In North Yorkshire, England. And they said, and they still claim that dude wrote this in the lobby, he stayed here in 1874, saw our long case clock, sat down and started writing a song about it. Because our clock is frozen in time at eleven five, with a story that is likely what I call BS and what others would call folklore. Well, if it's not BS, then I would say yes. These people, they have the claim to inspiring the Henry Clay Work song because it has basically the same story. There was a clock bought for the hotel owner's sons, and when the first son died, the clock started to slow, and when the second son died, it stopped altogether. And if Henry Clay Work stayed at that hotel, heard that story in 1874, it's a fact that was done. But yes, there is. A lot of people are like, those people are lying through their teeth. And people in their town won't speak to them, actually, because they so detest the lie. That's right. And the other version of the story, of course, has to do with the family. But not his family, his wife's family, sarah Parker, they said, no, we have the clock. And then he wrote the song about our clock. And he wrote it because he married our daughter. And we had this great long case clock that belonged to Sarah's grandfather. And it really has nothing to do with a haunted clock that stops when people die. Right. But it doesn't work anymore. Sure. So there you go. And then when people ask the family, do you have the clock? They just say, yes, and then leave it at that. All right. And there's our story. I've got one more thing. It's actually different. So a grandfather clock is 7ft. A six footer is called a grandmother clock. Okay. Five footer is called a granddaughter clock. That's cute. So there you go, Chuck. And anything shorter is called you're not even a family member clock. That's right. I guess that's it. Yes. If you want to find us, you can find us on the web. And we're both at STUFFYou know.com? So look us up and we'll see you next time, right? That's right. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…exoskeletons.mp3	Exoskeletons: How's it coming?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/exoskeletons-hows-it-coming	Since the 1960s, the Pentagon has called for a suit that can make a soldier jump higher, run faster longer and generally be a badder dude. It's only now that the materials needed are coming of age. Listen in to learn the state of exoskeleton technology.	Since the 1960s, the Pentagon has called for a suit that can make a soldier jump higher, run faster longer and generally be a badder dude. It's only now that the materials needed are coming of age. Listen in to learn the state of exoskeleton technology.	Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:46:26 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=18, tm_min=46, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=299, tm_isdst=0)	28907810	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Are you looking for? An escape? An immersive getaway experience? Well, there's a place for all your wildest dreams. Perhaps you enjoy wrapping along the paperboy. Or you believe that blessed be the fruit. Or you dream of one day smashing a glass while stealing. Who's. Ah. Whether you're sworn to Team Kim or you just want a good old fashioned, mysterious murder, there's a place that has it all. From Atlanta to only murders in the building, it's all on Hulu. So check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription is required. Terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. The continuously, endlessly ill Josh Clarke, reminiscent of 2010, ish nine. What's? Craziest, dude. I take such good care of myself, though. I drink so much juice. Like fresh juice, you mean. I juice almost every day. Well, that doesn't mean you're impenetrable to sickness and viruses. I don't smoke cigarettes at all. It doesn't mean you can't get a virus. No, it should. I am like a fortress here, man. I exercise a lot. I spray lysol in my face three times a day. That's probably what? Did it work? I know I feel bad for you. Anyway, that's me. Chuck's Fine. This is Charles W, Chuck Bryant. So you did it across with me. He's totally fine. It is a little. And something I noticed about Chuck today was a little stirring. Chuck is the spinning image for Tony Stark. Please. You look exactly like Tony Stark. Like Robert Downey, Jr. Yes. Now you do. You've got the hair. Looks like I ate Robert downey. You've got the hair. You have the facial hair. You've got the glowing chest. Yeah. You have the whole thing going on. All right? For the uninitiated. Tony Stark is Iron Man. He's billionaire, industrialist, turn, playboy, superhero, iron man philanthropist. Yeah, and that was clearly just said to introduce our topic. That is not true. I patted you on the shoulder and reminded you that you look like Tony Stark before we were ever recorded. All right, but we are talking about exoskeletons, which is the Iron Man suit, for all practical purposes, is an exoskeleton. Yeah, because one thing I learned reading this article is that an exoskeleton is also known as a wearable robot, which falls under the category of human augmentation. Yes. And one of the Japanese versions of the how one that we're going to talk about. Yeah, I saw some video today that they had one that was in the color of the Iron Man suit. Is that right? Yes, of course. They're going to do that at some point. Sure. But did you see the one on the page zero of this article? Yeah, it's awesome. It's pretty cool. It's like an army exoskeleton. And next to it says future soldier. And there's a nice track lighting above it for some reason. Claymore with claymore. That was grim. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. But still grim. Okay. Yeah. I saw some Exoskeleton videos, too, that were pretty awesome. It's pretty amazing where we're at right now. Yes. Because this is not new, but it turns out the US. Military, the Pentagon, has been like, give us an excess skeleton. We want one bad. Like the 60s. Sure. And pretty much nonstop. People have been trying to do this, and we're finally getting to the point now where they're becoming viable. So it's awesome. It is awesome. So let's talk about the history of this. We're saying an Exoskeleton is a wearable robot. Yeah. It's also human augmentation, but you can't confuse it for armor, because armor is not really augmenting anything. It's protecting. Although an Exoskeleton would customarily provide some sort of protection, like armor. There's a distinction between the two. Yes. Although these that they're making now don't have any armor that I can see. No. It's coming, though. Yeah, I'm sure. Yes. Other than protecting its own systems. Right. Yeah. But yeah, I guess if your arm happens to be behind that, it's protecting it as well. It's a win win. So, like I was saying, this has been around for a little while, this idea or the Pentagon's quest for this. But Kevin Bonds or Patrick Kyger point out that this idea goes back to the 19th century. Have you heard of the steamman on the prairies? Steamman of the Prairie? Yeah, have you seen that? Yeah, I looked it up. It looks like a robot. WC. Field. It does. Actually, that was pre WC. Field. Yeah, it was a book. It was a little dime store novel in 1868 by Edward Sylvester Ellis, and it was a big, giant WC. Fields robot that pulled, I guess, the creator of said robot in a little cart, johnny Brainer, like a rickshaw of sorts, pulled by a robot of sorts. Yeah. So really, you could like it into a robot more than a wearable robot. He was basically a robot that pulled a cart. But for 1868, for someone to be dreaming this stuff up, it's pretty remarkable. I say that the 19th century had a deep pool of fantastic imagination. Agreed. From the mid 19th century to the 30s, that's where it all happened. I mean, that's where it all began, at least. Yeah. And then the 70s happened. And that was cool. We went back to it a little bit, but the 19th century to the 30s, it was right there. Man, if they could have thought of up something like the Internet, they would have. And also, you can look up the Steam Man of the Prairies. There's images of them all over the Internet. And if you're interested in that kind of thing, the entire books on Project Gutenberg. Oh, cool. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. He's doing great work, Steve Guttenberg these days. Yeah, he's killing it. What a project. I mean, who would have thought that, like, post police academy, he would dedicate himself to something like that. Noble. I think some people might think we're serious. So after that, let's flash forward a bit to 1961. This is actually a couple of years before Iron Man. It's kind of remarkable. Even in 63, the Iron Man as a comic made its appearance. Well, I wonder if this inspired Iron Man. It probably did. Probably. So those Marvel guys, they had their finger on the pulse and stuff. The Pentagon had a couple of proposals for the wearable robots. And the AP even reported on the quote servo soldier. The Tom servo Soldier. And it was a human tank equipped with power steering and power brakes, run faster and lift heavy objects immune to germ warfare, poison gas and even a nuclear blast. Because that's the whole point. They're thinking big. It's basically like we need to come up with some sort of outfit that a person can wear that will help them be bigger, faster, stronger, jump higher, punch harder. Yeah. What's astounding Chuck is, within just a couple of years, cornell scientist named Neil Misen had something that he called the man amplifier. That looks remarkably similar to the stuff of today. Have you seen it? Yeah, it sort of reminded me of the you saw aliens, right? Yeah. Remember the little forklift thing? It sort of looked like that on top, but the base of it, instead of legs, had, like, a tank. Caterpillar tracks. Like a tank. I didn't see that part. Yeah. The ones I saw looks just like that exoskeleton from Aliens. That might have been the Superman suit. I think it was the same thing. Well, the man amplifier that I saw from Popular Science was like a machine. It was on track. Tank tracks. That's pretty cool. But even so, it had the big grabby robot arms. Crush, kill, destroy missiles. So this guy, Neil Misen had the idea the concept down pretty quickly in pretty short order, right? Yeah. He wasn't the only one that kind of set off this Pentagon call for Exoskeletons set off like a fervor. GE came up with something called the Pedigula. Did you see that one? Yeah, it looks like a modular. Like you could hook some together. Yeah, it looked like sort of like the cab that you ride in. Looks like one of the big bulldozer cabs. Right. But it had four legs and actually walked. Did it have four legs? Yeah. So the one I saw again looked like an Ad At. Right. From Empire State had two legs. Yeah. Interesting. But they were strung together. There was, like, four of them. I had four legs. No, I had two. No, I had four. You're thinking of the taunton. No, the Taunton is the beast. No, the Ad At was the big four legged. Okay. I'm thinking of the smaller version that's on two legs in the same scene. Just the at. I'm sure there are Star Wars fans out there going it's called the me, and we're going to hear from them. Yeah. I don't remember what that's called, but you could combine these things and form basically like a human exoskeleton centipede. Yeah, but none of these, to me, look like exoskeletons. They look like machines that you sit in and ride. Okay. Then I saw something that said, this is Neil Myson wearing his man amplifier, and it looks exactly like the stuff that they test out today. Wow. Yeah. Well, good for him. Good for Neil. I get the impression that he was ahead of his time. So most of these things, unfortunately, of course, he was ahead of his time, ended it in somewhat of a dead end. Why? There's some really good reasons why. Well, yeah, I mean, the reasons, you would probably guess, which is it's way too expensive. Computers aren't fast enough, especially in everything's too heavy. The batteries we can't design batteries that will last long enough. Big deal. Sort of the quest with all technology is, like, you got to make it affordable and light enough to operate, and I guess affordable will be cost effective, but all these things and then technology is just the limits of technology. So material science basically wasn't where it needed to be, and it's only just now starting to get there. One of the other big problems, one of the other big hurdles with making a decent exoskeleton is the actuator, which are the little muscles that move, the electromechanical muscles that move in place of the human muscles. That's right. But we're starting to get there. I mean, computing power is getting smaller and more portable and incredibly powerful. That was the word I was looking for. And wait until we get into quantum computing, man. It's going to take off like a rocket, I'm sure. Our battery life is getting more portable, smaller, more durable, and apparently, actuator science is really starting to come around. Well, that's good. So that means that we have all the stuff in place, and apparently, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, aka the secret Area 51 people. Yeah. I think Morgan Freeman heads up that division. Is that right? I think so. Okay, so, what's his name? Somebody fox. The Fox. I don't even remember. In the Batman movies. Yeah, I can't remember. Okay. He's red to me. Yeah, always, but not red Fox. No. So, DARPA was apparently well aware that the materials science and computing power was starting to come around, and they put out another call for exoskeletons, and this one's starting to pay off. Well, a call in the form of $75 million worth of funding. Meaning, hey, we can actually put a little dough towards this. And they said they started a division called the Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation, which doesn't smell anything cool. No, they kind of drop the ball there. I agree. And they wanted something that would accomplish five things. They had a directive. They wanted something that would allow just a regular soldier to carry, like, hundreds of pounds of gear without much exertion. Right. And this is one of the big applications. It's not to fly around and shoot people like Iron Man. A lot of it's kind of boring. It's like lifting supplies all day long, doing the work of three soldiers, basically loading missiles. Yeah, really heavy stuff that you might need a machine to do. You can now get a man machine. The second thing, they wanted to be able to handle heavy weapons that would require two people. Now you can do it with one. They wanted to be able to carry soldiers off the field, which is a huge deal. And one of the reasons my brother in laws, who is a Marine, says that they don't allow women in combat is because you need someone who can throw a soldier over their back and trudge through the desert for a day if you need to. That's a common obstacle that's thrown up against female firefighters as well. I get that I'm all for equality, but you got to take care of the people, you know what I'm saying? You're in dangerous watershed. No, man. I mean, I'm all for it. If there's a woman who can throw me on her back and carry me 3 miles to the desert, I'm all for it. Yeah, but just don't leave me dying out there. Right. They wanted it to be impenetrable to gunfire, which is pretty key, too. There's the armor thing. The armor thing. And then finally, I think this is the little kid and all of them, they wanted to be able to jump really high, really high and make it jump really high and say cool stuff. And actually, there's something called the Springtail Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle. Have you seen that one? Yeah. I don't know about hovering motionlessly thousands of feet in the air. I don't think they're at that point yet. And this was not even exoskeleton. No, it was like a GI. Joe machine. And it's not a jet pack, either, which was in this article. No, what it is is it's a couple of turbines, kind of like two fans. Yeah. Off to the side with a ladder in between. So you're standing under a ladder, which is bad luck to begin with, and then connected to the ladder are two turbines on each side, and you just hang on and you take off. Which, again, I don't think it's a combat exoskeleton, but it would be very cool if your exoskeleton could fit inside. So you run 500 miles carrying \u00a3500 for 24 straight hours, and then you get in this thing and fly off. Yeah, that would be cool. I think that's where we're trying to head here. It's like a little personal helicopter at this point, though. Yeah, because if the company can crack this code, they can make all manner of cool little things right, and make them all compatible and then tell the army, like, collect all eight. But you have to buy the Happy Meal. Okay. And the Happy Meal cost you. We should talk about Sarcos, which would later morph into Raytheon. They're one of the leaders in The Exoskeleton racket. Guy named Steve Jacobson was the robot maker at Sarcos. I don't know. Is he still at Raytheon? Do you know? I don't know. Okay. Well, he's what started it there, though. And he basically devised a system where sensors would detect these little minute contractions in your own muscles. Like, if you go to grab something, your muscle is going to contract a little bit. And then there were a series of valves which regulate the flow of this high pressure juice to these joints. Those joints powered cylinders attached to cables that were sort of like tendons. He sort of made a very basic mechanical version of how our own muscles and tendons operate. Well, like an extension of it, an augmentation of it, where basically these sensors go, oh, I know what you're about to do. Let me right. And you will pull your arm off if you try to pick this up. But me, The Exoskeleton knows what you're trying to do. And then after, I'm sure, training for a few days in this thing, it just becomes second nature. Yeah. Did you see the ironman guy? The dude from the movie? No, I didn't see that video. I was looking for it. The guy was Clark Greg. He was like the agent from The Avengers and the Iron Man movies. Okay. And he tried this thing on and punched wood blocks and lifted these big weights and did push ups, and it was pretty remarkable. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's amazing. And they call this the exos. This is the first prototype. And the XOS well, it's actually the XOS Two now. Well, yeah, The Exos is the first prototype, but this is kind of like the leading edge. Like, I think the Pentagon and DARPA are putting a lot of funding behind Raytheon's XOS. Yeah. They predict by 2015, they could have a tethered module going. What does that mean? That means it's tethered. Do you not know what tethered means? That means it's attached to something like a cable. Right? So, like, it's attached to a power source or something like that. Something like that. Okay. And then by 2018, they're hoping for a non tethered version. Because, I mean, it's like, hey, bad guys, come over here. Yeah, exactly. I can't get to you. Well, the Tethered one would be fine for dudes like loading trucks and things like that on Bay, sure. But not in what they call the theater of war, by the way. Winston Churchill. Yes, I think so. I think we forgot to mention that flying vehicle thing. That thing actually goes over 100 miles an hour now. Yeah. And The Exos runs at least 10 miles an hour. And I remember reading that first and being like, whatever. And then I think, oh, yeah, I can't run 10 miles an hour at all. So this thing running 10 miles an hour. And the point here is it's endurance, because as long as it's battery is charged, how fast can we run that back? You could get up there, but for like 10 seconds, and then your heart pops. I'm talking myself. Right. 10 miles an hour. Is he walk 4 miles an hour? He walked pretty fast. No, not typically. No. That's getting into speed walking. Well, that's all we do not walk 4 miles an hour. Like, we walk maybe two, 2.5. Really? Yeah. Well, whenever I did hiking, we always base it on a four mile an hour pace. Maybe I was 4 miles in an hour? Yeah. That's really fast. I guess I was a champion hiker then. I guess you are. I should have kept that up. You're like I used to do it on my hands. So like we said, Sarcos turned into Raytheon, and then there's other competing firms. Arcos was bought by Raytheon. What did they say? They turned into it. I mean, there's a distinction. Then Berkeley Bionics is another company. Yeah, they're civilian peace time. They're in, basically helping out the people who can't walk under their own power any longer. What they're getting really good at is energy consumption, solving that problem. And they had something called the Human Load Carrier, which ran for about 20 hours without a recharge, which is a big deal. That's huge. Yeah, it's a big leap forward. Did you see there's another one? Argo Medical Technologies has something called the Re walk. Yeah, these are pretty cool. And it's like 150 grand, which sounds like a lot, but at the same time, if you're paralyzed, this thing lets you walk. Yeah, it's basically just mechanical legs attached to your regular legs with a little backpack on for the power. And it's based on the segue as far as, like, you lean forward and it walks forward. You lean back and it stops. Which is good because as long as you're not paralyzed, as long as you have mobility from the waist up, I would think you'd be able to use it because you lean above your waist that you're sparring. Yeah. And actually, we should point out a lot of these exoskeletons that even the army and the military are working on, some of them are just ways down. Some of them are made for punching and lifting and potentially flying and shooting. But they have a lot of waist down work, too, which they said helps you lift things anyway because you're supposed to lift with your legs. Right. It just transfers the load to the ground. Exactly. And yeah. These don't look like pants. No, just exoskeleton pants. Remember fleece pants made of teddy bears? You don't remember that? No. You should look it up. It's pretty awesome. The bass player? Yeah. From red hot chili peppers. They're just kind of like braces with maybe a foot that you just step into. Like you can step into these things. Yeah, it looks like sort of like a high tech leg brace. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, except it walks for you. But pretty soon it's going to look like an awesome suit of armor that you can run and jump and just hover and just do all sorts of cool stuff. Like really reading this, I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this stuff is really good. Yes. And then you see the videos and you think, well, I bet it's clunky. And then you see the video of a guy that's never walked get up out of a chair and walk. And you think, man, I bet he doesn't think it's clunky. Exactly. Because he's not trying to kill anybody, he's just trying to walk. Exactly. Now we just need to get the price down for the average person who can't walk. Yeah. Well, how much were those? 115 grand. 150 for the re walk device. Still not too bad. No, that's what I'm saying. Especially if your insurance will chip in. Yeah. So there's a company in Japan called Cyberdyne and that sounds like a name that James Cameron would make up, but it's real. And they have made a real breakthrough in a couple of ways. One that they don't their Hal machine. H-A-L-I wonder if Kubrick was alive. I'm sure he's tired of people naming everything Hal. It's like, enough already. Did you know someone impersonated him? Yeah, they made a movie about it. Yeah. Did you see the movie? Wasn't it great? But John Malkovich always great except in that movie. So they made advances in a couple of ways. One is that they don't require the muscle contractions anymore. They pick up on your brain sensors, your electrical messages being sent from your brain. That's an enormous breakthrough. Huge breakthrough. Yeah. Because think about it, you don't have to have any mobility whatsoever. Like, you could be Stephen Hawking and run around and pick up stuff and people and throw them. If you can think it, you can do it. Yeah. That should be their motto. The other breakthrough is I'm sure you saw the how it's, like, really streamlined at this point. This is the Japanese for robotic design. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty sleek. Yeah. They know what they're doing. Yeah, very much. And now we can flash forward all the way to 2010. You know what would be really cool? If they made an Exoskeleton, but they made it look like an android. So you put on this kind of rubbery face, too, and it had facial expressions and things like that. I think that would be better than this really cool suit to go into battle, just terrorize anybody who saw this weird plasticy, human like thing coming at you with 50 caliber machine gun holding it like it's nothing. My guess is the way the war is going down today, people are already pretty frightened by these soldiers coming in. Yeah. I guess they can see in the dark and have laser sightings. Sure. I think you're probably frightened anyway. Even old Timey War was probably very frightening. Agreed. Maybe we should not make it more frightening, now that I think about it. Okay. Maybe we should make them look like little lambs. All right. So we're in 2010. DARPA has made some serious headway. Now, their suit weighs about \u00a355, which is like I think this is the Exos. Is it Exos, too? Yeah. And can carry \u00a3200. And with no fatigue going on, like you said, 10 miles an hour, it can run. And that's pretty impressive. I think it's good enough, especially if the thing can run. Yeah, because this thing is running for you. You're moving, but you're just barely moving, and you're not going to get fatigued at running 10 miles an hour now. And I can imagine, like, you can cover some ground in 10 miles an hour. Think about this. You cover 10 miles in one single hour. That's straight. That's true. That's a lot. That's very true. Eventually, they're going to hook GPS systems up to this. It says one of the uses for soldiers would be to obtain info about approaching terrain. So I guess they could send them out ahead or whatever. My friend, have you seen Predator? Yeah, the first one. Don't think that that's not going to be inserted into this whole array of which part technology. Thermal. Yeah, thermal imaging. Yeah, sure. So you're just running along 10 miles an hour, and you have been for 20 straight hours, and you're running through, say, the desert, and you see everything thermally. You're fine. You're going to be just fine. Yeah, that's a good point. Especially if you can jump really high. Really high. And then they're also working on some computerized fabric that they would wear that would like to monitor all your systems. So I guess the point there is it would be light. I'm sure they can monitor your systems now, but it might be too bulky. So you're going to wear the computer as you wear the robot. Pretty amazing. Yes. We're not very far off from this. 1015 years, maybe. Yeah. And it's not all soldiers, like we said, they're using. A lot of the research is for people with spinal injuries and stuff like that. Yeah. So Pacifists can get on board, too. Exactly. Rich Pacifists. Also, I want to say, like, I came across a really cool website called Cyberneticsou.com, and if you're into old timey popular science drawings and stuff like this, that's cool stuff. It's covered up in it, so I would recommend checking that out. You got anything else on Exoskeletons? I want one. That's what I got. Just give it a few years, man. I'm going to get you one that looks like WC. Fields. Okay. It looks like a cross between WC fields. If WC. Fields mated with the Jetsons robot made, this is what this thing would look like. Roxy rosie. Rosie I think so. I think rosie okay, if you want to learn more about exoskeleton, you can type it into the search bar@housestepworks.com and it'll bring up this awesome article to check it out. I said search bar. This is your mail time. This one is kind of a downer, but I feel like we should read it because we need to get the stuff out there. I'm going to call it abusive grandparents. Oh, man, I saw this one. Yeah, we sort of made some jokes in our time travel cast about the grandfather paradox and like, are there abusive grandparents? Because they're also sweet and there are. Of course there are. It's very sad. I think we do that. Yeah. Hi, guys. Today I was listening to the podcast and you brought up abusive grandparents. You both sounded like it was a tough concept to swallow, and I agree, it is. That being said, I'm writing you to say that, yes, sadly, there are abusive grandparents. I was raised from the age of five by my maternal grandmother who was physically, mentally and emotionally abusive most of my life. She was abusive to every child, whoever came to her house, her children, me, her nieces and nephews. She herself was heavily abused as a child by her mother and father that went on to be married twice to abuse of husbands. Unfortunately, she wasn't strong enough to break the cycle and in fact, she encouraged my own mother, her daughter, to hit me. She kicked me out often, and at the age of twelve, I was sent to live with my deadbeat father and his wife for a summer. At 14, she kicked me out to go live with my mother and her husband. I lived there for a few years, then back to my grandmother because her home was close to my school. Two weeks before my 18th birthday, she instructed my mother to beat me because I stayed home from school to go to the doctor for tonsillitis. I ran away that day and never went back. I moved in with my now husband and his parents, where I lived through the rest of my high school senior year in college. It has been ten plus years and I have no contact with that grandmother. I've been in therapy for about four of those years. And so I just want to say, yes, there are abusive grandparents. In fact, you have another girl my age who is also being raised by an abusive grandmother, and that is Amanda in North Carolina. And I wrote her and she said that she has a nine month old girl and she is going to be the first one in the family to break the cycle of abuse. Good for her. That's how it happened. Yeah. So sad all the way around. The grandmother that was abused and then had abusive husbands and took that out on her grandkids and nephews and daughters. And it's just the cycle of abuse is horrific and it's up to you to break it. Well, thank you very much. Amanda in North Carolina. Yeah, we appreciate the candor. That's awesome. Agreed. And congratulations to breaking the cycle. Agreed. Well, let's see if you have a story that you want to share with us when we were flipped with something we shouldn't have been, we'd like to hear about it. You can tweet to us at scisk podcast. You can send us a Facebook. Comstuffyknow message post on our wall there. That was a clumsy way to put it. You can also send us a regular old email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstyle Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…n-earthquake.mp3	Can humans start an earthquake?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-humans-start-an-earthquake	In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss reservoir-induced seismicity and the conditions under which human activities and projects like dams can trigger earthquakes.	In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss reservoir-induced seismicity and the conditions under which human activities and projects like dams can trigger earthquakes.	Thu, 27 May 2010 19:48:20 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=19, tm_min=48, tm_sec=20, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=147, tm_isdst=0)	23790889	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporzcom. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by GoToMeeting. We all have have to meet, but the average cost of a single business trip is $1,000. With just one click, you can save time and money and have your meetings online with affordable and easy to use GoToMeeting. Use GoToMeeting for sales, presentations, product demos, training sessions, collaborating on documents, and more. And at $49 per month for unlimited meetings, it saves time, money, and travel. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit. Gotomeetingcom stuff that's gotomeetingcom stuff. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me always is. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You know, it says Chuck and Josh. We debated this. It's Josh and Chuck. It's Chuck and Josh now, dude. What do you mean, now? Well, it was Josh and Chuck, and then it became Chuck and Josh. I'm sure in the future, it'll just keep rotating. It's like the wheel of time. Right? Josh and Chuck has a ring that I enjoy. How about CHOs, Chuck and Matt? Yeah, with special guest producer Matt. Jerry's not here to spank us when we err. No. Which means we can get away with a lot of stuff. Although I think we're self regulating these days. Yeah, we're doing pretty well. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Chuck? Yes. You want to get into it? Sure. You remember the earthquake in May of 2008 in China, the Schwan province? Yeah. It killed, like, 80,000 people, I think. Right. Awful. 7.9. Yes. In the old Richter scale. Right. Is that how you pronounce it? That's how you spoke German? I just thought it'd be funny if we mispronounce, like, even things that everybody knows, because we have a reputation for mispronouncing difficult things. All right, let's start doing it. The Richter scale. Okay. Well, on the Richter scale, can we do that? Sure. It hit what did you say? 7.9%? Yeah. Thereabouts. And like I said, kill 80,000 people. It was an enormous, horrific earthquake, and very quickly, I remember NPR was there because they were, like, covering the Olympics, so everybody went to Sichuan instead. Because it was right before the Olympics. Right. We were here. We were here. But MPR did, like, a month of coverage on this earthquake. Like, everybody was talking about it. One thing that flew under the radar, at least my radar, was that there were and still are allegations that the earthquake was actually manmade, at least hastened by a manmade structure. Yeah. Specifically, you're pointing at me, the zipping poo dam, something like that. Zipping poo? Zipping poo. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Blue below my radar, too. I had no idea about this. Did you see that? Like, on a search? There's, like, tons of articles on it. They just got no play. What we're talking about is something that's called reservoir induced seismicity. Yes. Right. And to a certain degree, inducedize missidi to a greater extent. I don't know what you just said. Not only reservoirs. I got a couple of other nuggets. Yeah, chuck dug up some other man made earthquake phenomena, right? Sure. But let's start with reservoir and do seismicity, right? Or let's start with dams. How about that? Well, that's a good place to start. Or should we start with earthquakes? Actually, if you want to know about earthquakes, go listen to our how earthquakes work podcast, which is pretty good. Did we do that? Yeah. I'm getting old. I know. These are just kind of melting together. I was honestly thinking we should do one on earthquakes. Yeah, we already did. You remember the s waves? Yeah, sure. All right, so we'll talk about dance instead. These things are well, dance are getting bigger and bigger as our engineering prowess is not ours, but humanity is getting better and better, and our needs are growing. Right? Sure. So I think constructing a dam in the first place, what you're doing is you're just putting a wall up in front of a river and letting the water backfill. Right. Pretty easy. But by doing this, number one, you're changing the river hydrology downstream. Eg. The people downstream are in big trouble. Sure. But you have to take into account the area around the dam, what was normally once just dry land with a river running through it and probably some villages. Lake lanier, I think. There's no natural lake in Georgia. They're all manmade, from what I understand. That's what I understand too. But lake lanier specifically has a town beneath it, and when the reservoir lowers decreases, you can see a gulf 76 sign popping up out of it. Have you ever seen that? No. Really? It's creepy. That is creepy. That's why also, they can never find somebody who dies in lake lanier because they get caught up in, like, power lines or in a convenience store or something like that. Shopping? Yes. Under the water, shopping dead. But around this area, in what used to be dry land, there's also dirt and rock, and oftentimes mountains sometimes fall lines because you want to use the natural geography of the area to hold this water. Right. You ever been to the hoover dam? I haven't. I've flown over it. Does that count? Well, sure. I got a good gander of it at like 10,000ft. Yeah, if you ever go a lot of people drive over the hoover dam, or they stand on the edge of the hoover dam like bob mold suggests. But I suggest that if you're there, take the time to pay the dough. I don't know how much it is. $10 and go down and take the tour. Wow. That's my only tip of the day. I've seen it on the TV. It's really cool looking, and you can stand there and marvel at it, but when you get down in the guts of it is when you're really like, whoa. Yeah. So it's a marvel of engineering. Absolutely. Right. And like I said, it utilizes the surrounding geography to hold the water. But when you do this, you're applying a lot of water that didn't used to be there to the surrounding same mountains, and all of a sudden you have something that we call landslides. Right. Yes. And that's what usually you think of. You don't think of earthquakes when you think of that kind of activity, you think of landslides. Right. You want to tell them about the Italian landslide because you love to do the accent, but do it in a really somber tone. Well, I'm not going to do it in Italian accent, but it is one of the deadliest in history, and it was in northern Italy in 63 and it killed 2500 people. An entire village was wiped out when 400 million cubic yards of mountain rock fell into the reservoir. I'm not going to pronounce that. The violent dam. Yeah. It looks French. Yeah. Well, it's in the Alps, so it's close to France. Yeah. And it basically created tidal wave 856ft tall. Right. So this 400 million cubic yards of rock goes into the reservoir, displaces all that water. And the wave I read this wave that was generated by it crested over the top of the dam. Yeah, the dam was 856, so it was higher than that. It was equal to a 28 story building. Imagine that on top of the dam and it just came down crazy and washed villages away. You're just sitting there in Italy in 63, enjoying your grappa, having a good time. Not for long now, but apparently it took a full two minutes to get down there to wipe out the village. How long? Two minutes. Wow. From what I read, that's like the mudslide in Guatemala. No warning. No. And there's also some in China that apparently have been pretty disastrous thanks to a dam. There the Three Gorgeous Dam, which is pretty famous. Dam. It's on the Yangtze River, right? Yeah. They were kind of worried about that one. Yeah. And they kind of should be. From what I understand, whenever just about any time they raise or lower the reservoir or when they initially filled it, landslide started happening. And there was one in 2007 that buried a bus. I guess it just kind of caught him unawares. What a horrific death to be buried in a bus. Well, to be buried alive in any way but bus would probably be bad, especially in a bus. You ever taken a bus trip? Yes. I would not want to be alive on a bus trip. Nor would I. No. Because you're like, I can't believe I'm surrounded by these people while I'm alive. Exactly. Not to make light of it. No. Okay. Don't want to come across as insensitive. No. So, Chuck, these are just landslides we're talking about? That's totally different. Destabilizing the dirt that holds up mountain rock is totally different from an earthquake. Right, indeed. So how do we get to the reservoirinduced seismicity? How do we get to a dam creating an earthquake? Well, in the case of the one in China, the Zipping Poo Dam is 50 stories tall. It can store more than 1 billion water from the Minjiang River. Right. So all of a sudden, you have a regular river, and then all of a sudden, it weighs a billion cubic meters more. Wow. That's not a weight, but you know what I mean. Right. So that's going to create some a lot more pressure on the ground beneath it. Right. If there's a fault line there, then you're in big trouble. Yes. And we don't really know whether there are fault lines there when we're constructing dams, it turns out, apparently, there was a survey in 1990 by the World Bank that found that 49 projects, like, more than three quarters of them that were surveyed, all had unexpected geological activity. Right. Yeah. And apparently it costs millions and millions to do a survey of an area, and you may find that yeah. There's a fault line there that we didn't know about. So companies who build dams oftentimes don't want to know whether or not there's a fault line there. I've seen that not a lot of research goes in well, I don't want to say not a lot of research, but many times not enough research goes into the underground situation. Right. And for the Three Gorges Dam, actually, it's built over two fault lines, and they're just waiting for this thing to blow, apparently. Yeah. And they said it might be a big one, too. So with the 2008 earthquake, china kind of got into this issue of reservoir induced seismicity, and it's already kind of cloudy. It's kind of one of those walks like a duck scenario. Sure. Because you have increased seismic activity in areas as reservoirs are being filled. Right. You have earthquakes that people weren't expecting, obviously. But even geologists weren't expecting seismologists with an epicenter under the dam. Right. Yeah. So it's like, yes, dams are creating earthquakes. Right. But again, there's a lot of money at stake. If people become more aware of ris, which is what people in the know call it, then people who live downstream from a dam right. Are going to want their houses earthquake proof, which is going to raise the costs through the roof. Yes. They're not going to do that. Right. And like I said, with China now, it's become obfuscated even further. Yeah. Because in the case of China, there's probably a lot of houses that need to be retrofitted. Well, not just that. The government is politically in the hot seat right now, and the earthquake in 2008, they tried to distance themselves because it was a government project. And building a dam in and of itself, it's very utilitarian pursuit. If a dam can create an earthquake and kill people or their landslides. And that kills people because you're helping x number of people. Like, the Zipping Pool Dam generates like 760,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. Yeah. You need dams for sure you do. But at the same time so it's kind of like, okay, well, there's a bus full of people that just got buried, but we have all this electricity. Right. So when you throw that in, when you throw the money in and then a paper in the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation, do you get that? It sounds like a laugh a minute. It concluded that people in other countries who were affected by reservoir and due seismicity from American built dams had legal grounds to sue those people in the US. For damages. Right. Basically, there's a lot of people out there who are like, ras doesn't exist, but it does. Right? Yeah. And it's not just the water pressure sitting on top of these plates that can cause it. What also happens is the water seeps down in there and fills up all the little cracks. And if there's way more water doing this, then that can cause fractures to become larger or to shift around. And that might be one of the reasons, too. Right. And it also lubricates. It doesn't it goes down to these fault lines, because you think about it, you have tectonic plates. You have fault lines where the earth is basically sitting, like just on the tiniest ledge of one plate over another. And if you get some water in there and lube it up, then they slip and you have an earthquake. It's called poor pressure, my friend. Nice. Poor pressure is the fluid pressure in the pores and the fractures of the rocks, and it acts against the weight of the rocks. So when poor pressure is low, the imbalance of what they call it in situ earth, have you ever heard that phrase? Does it mean like stable bedrock or something like that? Sort of. It's Latin. It can mean a bunch of different things. But in the case of earth, it means in the place is in water or oil that hasn't been extracted yet. Oh, yeah. Or gas, whatever is down there, any kind of natural earth. So the imbalance of the Institute earth stresses will cause the occasional earthquake. And if the poor pressure is increased, then it takes a lot less of an imbalance for these to get out of whack. Got you. And one of the reasons that might happen is if you inject something into the subsurface or if you extract something from the subsurface, like maybe oil right. Or water. Right. Or gas. Yes. And that all made sense because I've often posed the question, does the Earth need its oil? Like we're extracting oil, but maybe it has a really vital function down there. Maybe it's a lubricant. I kind of found out that that wasn't necessarily true. That if we pull out all the oil from the well, we can't pull out all the oil. I think it leaves about a third. They leave at least a third in all reservoirs because we just don't have the technology to get really? Yeah. But what I gathered from researching this a little bit today is that it doesn't necessarily it's such a small amount still compared to the density of the earth, that these small empty pockets might make things move around right. And cause like some minor trimmers. But it's not like we're going to have the big one one day if we tap the oil out of the earth. But we also use water injection technology, too. Bingo. And that can cause an earthquake, right? Yeah. And that's when you inject, like, steam or water or CO2 to either move the oil around or heat it up, make it more viscous. And that means it will flow to a channel where it's easier to tap it. Or they do that for water wells, too, right. To make water more readily available. I think there were some earthquakes, some surprising earthquakes in Colorado in the 90s that had to do with natural gas drilling. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, do you know the other thing they do is they inject wastewater into the earth. I did not know that. I didn't either. I always wondered where it went. I assume we were all drinking it. Well, I think it's a certain amount. We do, but there's way more wastewater than there are mouths to drink it. So evidently they'll drill down into the earth and inject they will supposedly clean it. I say supposedly they clean it. Yeah. I've never witnessed it. But why would they lie? Why would they lie? I don't know. I mean, who would lie when money is at stake? So they inject the wastewater back into the earth, and that hasn't created any problems thus far yet. Who knows? I remember we talked about, like, carbon sequestration once where we were talking about taking CO2, remember capturing it from smokestacks and then putting it into the and we were wondering what effect is that going to have? Who knows? Probably. Well, we'll all find out when we do hit the big one, right, from removing oil and then injecting carbon CO2 into the earth, right. We'll find out what happened. So many of these studies are all like, oh, no, it's not doing anything. But I'm of the belief that holding a cell phone up to your brain is going to cause some damage. Another saying, no, it doesn't. But we haven't studied anyone who's done it for 30 years every day. Right? Yeah, it's a good point. And then iPhone is like a little computer, you know? I know. It's like I think we're going to see some fallout from that in about 25, 30 years. Brother, you know, conger over at a stuff mom never told you. Wrote an article on cell phones making a sterile keeping in your pocket yes. Next to the boys. Yeah. Don't want to do that. So, Chuck, one more thing. We should say very specifically that even though people it seems like there is a consensus that Ris does exist, right? Yes. And there's a lot of people who want to downplay it. Like the Chinese pointed out that prior to this earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, the biggest Ras linked earthquake happened in 1967 in India, and it was like 6.5. Right. They point that was the biggest ever that was induced by a dam. Right. So we're not entirely certain how big these things can be or how much dams can contribute. But again, we don't really know what we're doing building dams either, do we? Right. Mining, too. That can cause them. And I also read that building construction, like that tower in Taipei that caused some minor earthquakes because it was so big. That's kind of put hair on your chest if you're the project manager of a project that causes earthquakes. Sure, yeah. Press on. And we should also point out, lastly, dams can't create earthquakes all by themselves. There have to be a bunch of factors present. Like, it has to be built on a fault line. Right. It has to be huge. The dam, I think, has to be at least 100 meters high to create earthquakes that really register. But pretty much anytime you build a dam, like around a fault line, seismic activity increases as you fill it up. So it's going to happen. Yeah. We're not anti dam. We should point that out. We love dams. Yeah, I guess that's it, right? I think so. I don't have anything else. All right, well, if you want to read a little more about this and see some gripping pictures, you can type in Humans and Earthquakes. I think that will probably bring this article up, right? Probably. So this episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by GoToMeeting, the affordable way to meet with clients and colleagues for your free 30 day trial visit. Gotomeeading.com stuff. And this is a short one, chuck, wasn't it? Yeah. I have some stuff to inject here at the end, into our subsurface, we have some announcements about New York, right. And T shirts. Yeah, New York. We're going to New York. We're going to throw our hat and do a little Twirl in the middle of Time Square, because we made it after all. We're going to be at the Knitting Factory. We're having a stuff you should know. Meet and greet happy hour fans. Happy hour. Come hang out with us. You pay for your own drinks or whatever, but we're not charging anything to get in. We may or may not be wearing shirts. And it's going to be at the Knitting Factory. We're going to have shirts. We're going to have T shirts. We can go ahead and say that. That's right, we are. We will have shirts. Stuff You Should Know. T shirts. The very first ones. And Josh designed it. That's how awesome. Oh, go on. You did? Yeah, it's pretty cool. Anyway, that's at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn on Monday, June 7, from 530 to 730, right? Yes. And a concert will follow in the main space sponsored by The Onion newspaper, who are buddies now. And I think that's like ten or $12 if you want to get into that. And we'll be hanging out all night. Yes, we'll be there. And then Wednesday, June 9, we're doing an all star team trivia. Yes. Featuring us, Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of The Onion, and a couple of other famous type nerdy famous people that are funny. Very nice. But we can't commit to those just yet because we don't want to disappoint you in case they don't show up. I guess we should tell them where it is, right? You don't think they should just like, drive around New York looking for it? Yes, it's at the bellhouse. Josh. And that is in Brooklyn, New York, and it goes from seven to nine as Trivia starts at seven doors at 630. Right. So show up early and rub elbows with us and drink adult beverage with us. And Trivia starts at seven, is game on for the next 2 hours and should be a really fun time. Right on, Chuck. Sounds good. Yes. And we'll also put this on the Facebook page, too, just so people know. And if you're not a fan of ours, or if you don't like our fan page on Facebook, go check it out. We're on there a lot, actually. Chuck is just killing it, talking to people. He walks around shaking hands, kissing babies. Crazy. It's awesome. And we have a Twitter account. S-Y-S-K podcast. You're killing the Twitter. You're very funny on there. And one last thing. If you listen to our Guatemala podcast, part one and two, you know that we worked with an organization down there called Cooperative for Education, and they have a text donation drive going. And if you aren't a super cheap skate, then you should give a measly $5. $5 to get textbooks for life for Guatemalan student. Yeah, you don't even have to actually spend any money. Just pay your bill plus $5 at the end of the month. You'll never even know, right? You just text the word stuff. Stuff. Two two. You'll get a text back and it'll say you sure? Or something like that, and you text yes back and there you go. But a bing. And what, data and wireless rates apply, maybe? Yes, they definitely do in certain cases. And if you live outside the United States, you can go to the website Coed UC Coeduc.org. And you can donate there if you live outside the United States. Booyah worthy cause. Let's see what's in the mail now. Do we do T shirts? No. T shirt contest is officially on. Has been going on. It closes at the end of the month, may 31 at midnight. And Eastern time. Right. Eastern time. If you submitted once, you got to resubmit do a one sided design, not on both sides, and that's pretty much the only limitations at this point. Except you have to be American. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, you can't be a part of this. You have to be a bystander. An innocent bystander, we hope, but, yeah, a bystander if you're not American. Right. It's an American stuff you should know. T shirt throw down. Yes. And we would love for it to be everybody but the laws of Earth, is what I've been saying. And I can't win a contest in Africa. Well, Chuck's going to night school right now to study international law. Once he gets his Masters, we will be holding contests elsewhere. Right? Indeed. If you want to send us a listener mail, you just shoot it in an email to stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the House of Works.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?"
https://podcasts.howstuf…6-sysk-duels.mp3	Duels: A guide to throwing down the gauntlet	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/duels-a-guide-to-throwing-down-the-gauntlet	Pretty much everything you know about duels is true - it's a challenge to violence to defend honor. But did you know the U.S. Navy used to publish detailed guidelines in its midshipmen's handbook? Learn all there is to know about dueling in this episode.	Pretty much everything you know about duels is true - it's a challenge to violence to defend honor. But did you know the U.S. Navy used to publish detailed guidelines in its midshipmen's handbook? Learn all there is to know about dueling in this episode.	Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:39:04 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=16, tm_min=39, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=66, tm_isdst=0)	40633669	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Doug W, Chuck Bryant. And you've got stuff you should know ongar. Yeah. Cliche. It means touch in French. I thought this was one of the funniest openings of an article ever. By the way. Did you like it? I thought that very first part was hysterical when I read it. Well, you know what? It just so happens I don't have an intro for this one, so I think you might want to read it. Should we just read it? Yeah. Ed Grabinowski never lets us down. No, he's good. The Grabster. This is how duels work, ladies and gentlemen. Pistols at dawn. The challenge is issued. To turn it down would leave you marked as a coward for life. You meet at the chosen spot, facing your opponent at a distance of 20 paces. Your dueling pistols are loaded. One or both of you could be severely wounded or killed. Today, doctors are standing by to men in the damage, if possible, while your friends eye each other wearily. Why is this all happening? Because you made fun of his hat so good. That's about right, too, as we find out in the rest of the article. Yeah. Well done, Grabster. It's not much of an exaggeration. Apparently, throughout the history of people, or ever since we've had swords, at least, men have challenged other men to duels, and other people have died as the result. Yeah, I thought this is a great article. I thought so, too. This is definitely something I knew, like, virtually nothing about. Yeah, officially. Me too. But I did find out that things like Wild West dual shootouts yeah. Very close to reality. Sure. They apparently happened to coincide at a time when dueling was very popular in America, and that's all it was. It was the old west version of Pistols at dawn. And as an aside, probably the best dueling movie of all time. The quick and the dead. The quick and the dead. That's exactly right. If you have not seen that, pause, pause this podcast. Get off your treadmill, put your ice cream down, whatever you're doing, go watch The Quick and the Dead, and then come back and resume this podcast. Yeah. You know what I always appreciate about that movie was that there were how many quick draw shootouts? Like 500? Let's say there were ten in the movie. Let's say 500. Each one of them was different. He filmed them different. It had a different feel. Like, I just thought that was so creative. Like, each one had its own little flavor. That's our Sam Raimi. So good. Man. I love that movie. He's got something new coming out, doesn't he? Mr. Hollywood Guy? Come on. He's got something coming. He's not doing the new Spiderman. I don't know. I think he might be working on another Evil Dead, like a modern remakey uptake, or you might just be producing that. If he does that, that'll be the second time he's remade the Evil Dead. Evil Dead too, is a remake of The Evil Dead. Pretty much. Okay. All right. So chuckle, for anybody who doesn't know, is basically a one on one battle, as is evidenced by the etymology. And apparently we said entomology before. I don't know, like, some eleven year old kid called us out on that. I think he might have misled us a because I definitely think the difference between etymology and entomology etymology. Etymology. The word dual is, I think, Latin. Right. Duello. Yeah. I'm sorry. duellum, which is a contraction of duo two and bellam, or obviously antebellum pre war. Oh, okay. I never realized that. Yes. Okay. But duo, too. It's basically a war between two individuals, is a duo. Yeah. And it's been around for quite a long time. I guess we should probably just get to the meat of it first. Let's talk about duals, and then we'll talk a little bit about the history. Yeah, let's just throw down the gauntlet. So somebody does throw down the gauntlet, and the gauntlet is a glove. And when you throw down a gauntlet at the feet of somebody that was at the height of dueling enough to issue a challenge, you and I are going to try to kill one another for a little bit. Or not necessarily. We'll get to that. When you went to a duel, you had a second, which basically was the guy who came along, a friend, a trusted individual, wingman. It was like the best man at your death. He was there to help you prepare your firearms or your sword. He was there to basically make sure you weren't ambushed. He was supposedly neutral third party. A second. Supposedly, yeah, supposedly. We would try to talk it down and defuse it. That was the first role of the second, but I don't know how much I buy that. And it even points out, like, more times than not, the second would actually fight the other second. Yeah. And sometimes there was third and fourth that would fight the other third and fourth. Right. I looked at this as it's the same as, like, a bar fight today. There's always usually, like, a friend nearby. He's got your back, but it's really between you and that jerk. But if things get out of hand, he, like, gets a beer bottle all of a sudden. Then you get involved and his friend gets involved. Right. So it's sort of like that, I think. Yeah. If he tries to get in the middle of the two things, he ends up like River Phoenix at the end of Stand by Me and takes a knife to the neck and dies in a bar. That was so sad. It was saddest ending or River Phoenix's character, let's say, since he really died, then we should point that out. He had a sad ending in real life as well. Yeah, big time. So, Chuck, when you declared duel, you could use any weapon, but for a very long time, basically all you have available to you is a heavy sword. Yes. And you had to use the same weapon, and depending on what code of dueling you were following, the challenger or challenge, I would pick that weapon. Right. And you mentioned dueling codes. There are several dueling codes, and the one that became the most widespread was the dueling code of 1777, the Irish code, which is cited extensively in this article. And I believe you're prepared to give everyone a treat and read some of the rules from the code. Yeah. The code duelo replaced the Floss duelaium, which was in the Il duela. In the Germans had their own dueling code, which was set by the Fech Schulin dueling schools. I imagine theirs was just because they were German. It's probably a little more hardcore. Sure. Although everything was pretty hard core back then. It was. But if you look at the dual codes, a lot of the rules appear to be set up so that you don't kill the other person. The whole point of a duel is not to kill the other person, it's to regain honor. Dueling is the result of an insult. When somebody insults you and you challenge them to a duel, you're seeking to say, I'm going to get my satisfaction from you. Basically, you punked me out in public and that can't happen. That's another way to put it, because I would be looked at as a coward, and that would be a knock on my family's and my ancestors honor, even. Yeah. You had to protect the honor of your ancestors backwards and forwards in space or time on either side of you. That's right. As I was saying, some of the rules are intended to prevent harm or injury. Like, you see people facing away from each other and turning and firing. That was designed so that when you're using a clumsy 17th century firearm, the chances of you hitting anybody, but bystander way off in the distance is pretty low. Yeah. From what I gathered after reading a handful of these rules, is that the code duel encouraged injury but not death. Yeah. What they didn't encourage was purposefully firing in the air, as sometimes happened when neither one of them really wanted to get hurt. They didn't really like that because that sort of takes all the chutzpah out of the duel to begin with. Sure. Very excited to read these rules, aren't you jumping ahead a little bit? No, we're not there yet. Okay. But one of the rules was that the winner could pretty much do whatever they wanted once you've won the duel. Let's say there's an injury, you could kill them if you wanted. Yeah. You could just humiliate them if you wanted. You could be a good guy and say, you know what? My honor has been assuaged. It's great. So let me give you a hand up, little buddy. And you were a good person for doing that? I would say so. I could see you totally doing that, Chuck. There's no way I would have been doing to begin with. You could also cut the other person's head off after finishing them off, or maybe finish them off by cutting his head off and then posting it in a public place. Right. I said also that the Irish code is very widespread, so much so that this, to me, is one of the facts of the podcast. Agreed. It was reprinted in full as part of the Midshipman's Handbook of the US. Navy up until 1862, when the Navy outlawed or banned dueling among officers. But up until that time, it was like, hey, you're probably going to get a duel at some point in time, and here's what the Navy says about that. And what the Navy says is what the Irish say. Women typically did not duel, and when they did, it says in the article here, it was viewed on as an oddity and a strange, amusing spectacle, which, like foxy boxing is today. Well, it's kind of like the first cat fights. Yeah. Is that sexist? Totally. But, I mean, that's apparently what they viewed duels among women as. It was an amusement for men because women are just so stupid. Right. Except if you were dumb enough to make that kind of judgment about Lamo Pen yeah. You probably would have had your head cut clean off of your body. She was a genuine dueler swordswoman, and depending on who you talk to, it's either her father, who trained her, or a lover who was a great fencer. However, I think she liked the ladies as well, because later in her life, after performing in bars and dressed as a man, but not to say, hey, I am a man, I think it was just like, hey, I'm more comfortable in these clothes. It's easier to move in these clothes. Exactly. She dug up the corpse of a dead nun right. Put it in a dorm room, set that room on fire to fake her own death so she could escape the convent with her female lover. Yeah. Lamo Pay. She was a pretty progressive rock and chick back then. Yeah, she was pretty cool. And that was after she retired from the opera, early 1700. Yeah. So she was pretty cool. No foxy boxing there? No I don't even know what that is. I haven't seen that. It's exactly what it sounds like. All right. Yeah. It was kind of big in the, I think the 80s, maybe, the just women boxing one another, but not really. It's incredibly sexist. There were a lot of fights at my high school. I mean, not like a lot. Like, it was a rough school, but it always struck me, even as a youngster, that when guys would get in a fight, it was always horrific. And then when girls would get in a fight, the dudes would be sitting around laughing at it. I saw a girl fight in high school once. It was really disturbing. It was more disturbing than any guy fight I've ever seen. Because girls fight dirty. Yes. Both of these girls were fighting very dirty, and it was really horrible. I think the assistant principal jumped in and got smacked around and ended up backing off. Wow. Yeah, it was a bad fight. So there was nothing funny about that one? No, not at all. Really? Is there anything funny about anybody fighting? No, I don't think so. Unless it's like, I don't know, clowns. Yeah, clowns fighting. Yeah, that'd be funny. Clown fight. That's hilarious. Unless one of them dies. That's right, chuck so we mentioned that seconds are in charge of issuing apologies. Yeah. And you can't just go over and say, hey, man, guys, sorry, he'll never do it again. Can he have his gauntlet back? That just doesn't work. There's standards. There's rules to issuing an apology. And as I understand, you're prepared to explain the rule from the code duello for issuing apology. I think even it's rule number one. Very first rule, as it should be. Let's hear it. The first offense requires the first apology. Though the rotor may have been more offensive than the insult. A tells B he is impertinent, etc. And B rhodes that he lies. Yet A must make the first apology because he gave the first offense. And then after one fire, b may explain away the retort by a subsequent apology. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you very much. So basically, no matter how bad the report is from the first insult yes. Whoever insults the other person first has to apologize first. Right. Then they shoot at one another, and then the second person can apologize. You also have rules to whether or not or how an apology can be accepted, or if an apology, a verbal one, is even worth anything at all. What situation that is, won't you? I point you to rule number five. Josh azure blow is strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen. So no hitting? Evidently, yes, no, or if you do, that's it. Yeah. There's no going back. No verbal apology can be received for such an insult. The alternatives, therefore, the offender handing a cane to the injured party to be used on his own back at the same time, begging pardon, firing on until one or both are disabled, or exchanging three shots and then asking pardon without proper of the cane. Right. So if you wanted apology after smacking someone in the face but you didn't want the cane, you guys had to shoot at each other three times or I imagine maybe deal three blows with a sword. Right. But by this time, 1777, firearms were all the rage for dueling. Sure. Which we'll get to. So you've got a dual. All the apologies have been either not offered or rejected, and it's time for the duel. There's certain etiquette. Right? Yeah. You mentioned that there's rules against not really doing this wholeheartedly like, if you're going to get into a duel, you have to do it wholeheartedly as far as the code duello is concerned. But this is also one of the more frequently broken rules because most people who are in duels didn't really want to die. And they probably didn't want to kill the other person either. Because I imagine when you're in a duel with somebody and that's your reality at that moment. And it's not just some guys and powdered wigs out in an apple tree and it's avoiding graving or wood carving. Right. But it's really what's going on in your world right then. Yeah. I'm sure you are acutely interested in not killing and not dying at that moment. Yeah. I would have applied them with alcohol. I would have been the guy being like, come on, man, you would have made a great second. Like, can we just have this ale here and talk it over and laugh about it? Yeah, right. It's funny, right? Yeah. But they took it way more serious than defined. So there's this rule that says, man, if you're going to get in a duel, you have to do it all the way. It's called rule 13. No dumb shooting or fighting in the air is admissible. In any case, the challenger ought not to have challenged without receiving offense, and the challenge ought, if he gave offense, to have made an apology before he came on the ground. Therefore, children's play must be dishonorable on one side of the other end is accordingly prohibited. Very nice. So you've got all these we need strickland. No, I think this is great. Okay, so you've got this rule that says you do this all the way, but that's not necessarily how a lot of tools work. Guys would agree ahead of time, like, hey, we're actually going to do the duel, but we'll both shoot into the air. Yeah, but you don't want to die to you. Which, by the way, is what happened is how Alexander Hamilton died at the hands of the treacherous Aaron Burr. Let's go ahead and talk about it. Well, they were political rivals. They were in a law firm together, and that's where they first learned to hate one another. And then they were in a very small country at the time. They were very big fish in the same small pond, and things got out of hand. And I can't remember who challenged to do a duel. Do you? Yes. It was a series of insults. And this was at a time where the losing presidential candidate would become vice president. Yes, but could you imagine that these days? Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. I think it'd be nice. It would temper things. Well, I guess it was for balance of power. Sure. I don't know if it would work. It was a constellation prize. That's true. So they disliked each other. There were a bunch of insults, and Burr challenged Hamilton in Weehawken, New Jersey, and there are varying accounts on what happened, but what we do know that happened. Hamilton got shot, bird didn't. Whether or not Hamilton fired in the air as a good guy, that's what I heard. Or got hit and was like and fired up in the air. Never is debatable. Alexander Hamilton was a crack shot. He had great timing, he had catlike reflexes. Aaron Burr shot Hamilton. Hamilton fired in the air. Aaron Burr was actually, I think, arrested for murder, wasn't he was charged with murder and basically acquitted in the end. But this is the time when it was, like, kind of on the outs. They were beginning to outlaw dueling anyway, and it ruined his career, basically. It ruined his political career from that point. Yeah. People are like, who's on the 20? And by 20, of course, I mean who's on the ten? Yeah. $10 bill. Jackson's on the 20. But Alexander Hamilton is on the ten. Stop emailing. You got nothing but 20, though, in your role. I can't even tell you who's on the ten. Yes. And do they even make dollar bills? Right. So, Chuck, let's get to seconds, which, again, I want to say that before I got ahead of ourselves, I'm sorry. Also, you should never duel at night. The only time when you can legitimately hold a duel at night, meaning that the same night of the offense was when the person was going to be leaving town before yeah, day break. No need to even read that one. That speaks for itself. And that makes good sense. Basically, their cooler heads prevail generally the next day, which is a great rule in marriage and life. I'm always a big fan of sleep on it. Why don't we sleep on it? Yeah, you're absolutely right, buddy. But sometimes the wife will still wake up just as angry the next day. It happens. But most times the worst is waking up in the middle of the night angry. Yeah, that's pretty bad when the rage is seething? So, Chuck, do you want to talk about seconds? Yes, seconds. They had very specific rules for the role of the second. They had to take care of the guns in the same way and load in the presence of one another. I can't shake the feeling that we're both in trouble by now. They would have to, like I said, load the guns together and in front of each other. And the gun was already agreed upon. They have a smooth bore. Yeah. And I think the rifle bore would be a more accurate, longer distance shot. So they said, we can't use that. Yeah, it's like shot putting a football or throwing it in a tight spiral, which one's going to get further with more accuracy. Exactly. That makes sense. So you want to load in the presence of one another. Yeah. Saying, look, see, the board smooth, and we're doing it right here so everyone can see it's forced. Everyone pay attention. And we also mentioned how they are bound to offer or to try to get an apology generated to avoid a dual. They're supposed to according to the code. And then Rule 25, if they can't come to any kind of resolution in the seconds, clearly are eyeballing one another, like, oh, dude, you're going down too. It's on between us. They had rules for that as well. Like Rule 25, where seconds disagree and resolve to exchange shots themselves. It must be at the same time and at right angles with their principles. I don't get the right angles thing. How is that physically possible? I don't know. I took that to mean they shoot from the same angle. That would be parallel, not right angle. Well, I don't think it meant right angle in the geometric sense. I think it meant the correct angle, as in the same angle. Maybe I'm wrong. You think it meant, like geometry? I think the authors had put in a full day by the time they got to this rule. Or maybe at right angles, it meant if these two are shooting here, then they have to shoot there so there's no crossfire coming at them. Okay. Yeah. So they make a square. I don't know. We'll have to look into that. And then how do you know when a duel is over, especially when it doesn't necessarily result in the decapitation of one? When you cut somebody's head off and post it on a pike in the town square, the duel is over. It's over. But there's also more nuanced endings possible. Right. Rule number five. If shaw are used, mr. Trebek, the parties engage until one is well, bloodied disabled or disarmed, or until after receiving a wound and blood being drawn. The aggressor begs pardon. Right. Unless the person who's disabled insists that it's only a flesh point. Right. He does have a did you notice his Monty Python reference in here? No. That's definitely not the only article with a Monty Python reference from him. What is it? Well, later on, he's talking about how nobles weren't allowed to work and they made money off of rent from their huge tracks of land. That's for money by then. I don't remember that part. You remember that she's got huge tracks of land? I don't remember. That's a good part. Good for you for noticing that one. Sure. The crabs are he's always sneaking them in. And also, any wound sufficient to agitate the nerves yeah. Or makes a handshake must end the business of the day. That would be it's kind of a loose, if you ask me. Yeah, but that does mean that the duel is over. So if you want to know more, if you want to know all the rules, you can get your hands on a pre 1862 US. Navy midshipman's handbook. Apparently PBS has all of them as well. On frontline site, we don't. I'm sorry, but Chuck dueling was, for a very long time the pursuit of nobles. Right. As a matter of fact, it was used to differentiate nobles from common people. Like in a lot of medieval European countries, commoners weren't allowed to duel. It was illegal. Yeah. And before guns, a lot of commenters couldn't even afford swords because swords are expensive to make and even more expensive than firearms once they came around, so a lot of them couldn't duel in the traditional sense. Although the Grabster points out that there were plenty of dual like circumstances among commoners, too. It was probably just the bar fight. You just can't let the local fuzz find out what you're doing. Yes. And noblemen were expected to duel. Right. And the whole point of dueling was the protection of honor. And honor as a concept, as the Grabster points out, is not what we think of it today. I didn't know this. Honor is basically like, if you are rich, if you have a title, if you are a member of an important family, you have honor automatically. It's attached to you. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you were a good, upstanding guy. It just means, like, this is your station in life. You're blessed basically by being born rich and white. Exactly. It's like the 1%, and you have honor, and it's fragile. Extremely. At all times. It's prone to be insulted at the drop of a glove, especially. Very nice, but even the drop of a hat. And not only is your honor at stake, but the honor of your family for generations forward, generations backward, and any schmo of noble rank. I imagine if a commoner came up and insulted your family, you just cut their head off right there. There's no duel. It's just death for the commoner. Right? Yeah. But if another person of nobility comes up and insults your family honor, then you say it's on. I challenge you to a duel at this point, and you've mentioned cowardice already, but at this point, the other person has a choice. Very socially speaking, they don't really have a choice. But they do have a choice. Sure. They can either accept the duel, or they can be a coward. And in the same vein, the person whose honor is insulted has a choice. They can either issue a challenge to a duel, or they can let it slide. Either way, if you let it slide or you shirk a duel, you're a coward. And that was a big deal back then. Yeah. It wasn't just like Jimmy's assistant, because he wouldn't fight me at school, which haunts you for the rest of your life. You know what I'm saying? It's true. But your family was insulted, you could lose your honor. Like, they would take it away legally. Sometimes they could publish an account of it to the church and you know, in the church, they're going to tell everybody. Coward. Yeah. It was not an abstract thing. Kings who would not uphold their honor could lose their noble ranking. They would just take it away. And you could actually be punished and excommunicated and your voting rights revoked for cowardice. Serious stuff back then. You could also be imprisoned and killed. And it's generally bad things fed the dragons, probably. I don't know if you could be killed. I just said that. Well, if the dragon's eating you, you wish someone would kill you. Good point. I think probably this whole code, this whole dueling code is and how refined it became was out of the frequency of dueling. Right? Yeah. Apparently, like you said, these people sat around with their huge tracks of land. Well, they couldn't work. No. Like you couldn't work if you wanted to work. You couldn't if you were of noble blood. Yeah. I mean, you literally could not hold a job even if you found you're really good at something. But I really like blacksmithing making these shoes, these horse shoes. You're a nobleman, you have to make your money off of rent. So the end result of that is after a lot of sitting around and fox hunting and mead drinking, you get a little bored. And so dueling kind of became a sport for bored nobleman. Yeah. These young guys were like, well, got nothing better to do, so let me go down to the pub and throw down the gauntlet on someone. Or just be really easily irritable to where anything that happens to me, you bump me in the bar and like, all right, it's on. Or you looked at my lady. That was a big one. Yeah. The other aspect of it wasn't just boredom. It was also that you were the better person. In a field where there is a definite set hierarchy, earls are equal to earls and dukes equal to dukes and equal to viscous. Viceroy is equal to viceroy's, that whole kind of thing. I could continue. Please do. I can't continue. You call my bluff, but this is a way to differentiate yourself among your rank by saying, I challenge you to do and I won. And the reason that differentiates me is not only am I the winner, but that means that God favors me. And apparently that was used. That was the predecessor to the legal systems we had today. Well, yeah, let's get to this. This is the commoners would duel early on in the 11th and 12th centuries, you would have trial by combat. Sometimes it was like dunking a witch. Like if the witch floated, she was a witch and then she got burned out of the stake. If she drowned, then she wasn't really a witch and she was pure. Of heart. So if you win the duel, then you're, in fact, innocent of your crime. Yes. Because God favored the winner of the duel, and more importantly, the guy who accused you is now dead, so you must be innocent. Although you may also fight a court appointed, really professional duelist. That's awesome. And I can't imagine beating that guy. Yeah. What was the guy in the MedMax Three? Master Blaster. Yeah, Master Blaster. You bite Master Blaster? Yeah, you kill them. Boy, what a reveal. That was when they took off his mask. Yeah. Terrible stuff. A lot of times, if you were good at dueling, you would just use it to get out of stuff like, hey, I don't want to pay this bill, so let's duel about it, and that'll settle it. And I know I'm really good with the sword, so you don't stand a chance. Yeah. It's all over. Not just debts, but also, like, if you had a political rival that later became really big in Missouri. Yes. If you wanted somebody's land anything, anybody who had something you wanted or who you owed something to, you could just challenge them through a dual, kill them, and they're problem solved. This is one of the reasons why I think that noble classes were eventually removed from the face of the Earth. Well, you mentioned Missouri. Between 1816 and 1824, the territorial elections became so fraught with dueling to get rid of your rival that the first governor of California, Peter Burnett, said peter Berg? No, Peter Burnett said it became desirable to kill off certain aspirants to get them out of the way. So in Missouri, you would just killed the dude before election day, and you're all set. Yeah. Can you imagine? Like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney dueling one another. No, because no, I couldn't. So you've got dueling evolving from an early legal system sure. To the board noble classes, to the elimination of political rivals. And it comes from even further back than that, though. Like, the duel, the idea of one person battling another person in some sort of combat in a formal, rule driven way, grabster goes back to jousting competitions in the Middle Ages. I think you can go back to gladiatorial combat. Sure, further back than that. But in Europe. In Western Europe. Northwestern Europe. It came from Jousting, right? Yeah. And it makes sense to me. Like you said, the joust is pretty much a duel on horseback. Then you had the chivalry code, which sort of lines up with the code of the duel. And also you skip right past what to me is one of the facts of the podcast. Oh, no, I didn't. That was coming, but go ahead. You go ahead. Well, when nights only noblemen were allowed to be knights and to joust against one another, so they would raise their visor at the beginning to say, hey, look at me. I'm not descending along my assistant, who's a lot better at this than I am. As Heath Ledger did. As Heath Ledger did. What was that? First Night. Yeah. That was a good movie. That's all right. So they would reveal their identities. And that, Josh, as you know, was evolved into the military salute years later. Yeah. The lift of the visor evolved into the hand, I guess. Yeah. Pretty cool. Very cool. Eventually, though, firearms came around. Sure. And they found that. Yeah. These incredibly heavy suits of armor that can protect you even from a joust generally are no match for this musket. The smooth board musket with terrible aim and accuracy, which, if it hurts you, it'll kill you. Yes. In our Nights podcast, that's kind of the end of the night. Exactly. It was also what the end of Samurai had to do with the demise of Samurai as well. Yeah. Guns ruined everything. Yeah. Well, it changed everything for the worse. And then, as a result, no more need for a heavy sword. Right. Because there's no need for armor or armor doesn't work. No heavy swords. We still do an evolution in sword making. And you have at least in Europe, I think Japan already had far lighter, more better swords. Right. But in the west, the evolution of swords led to the sport of fencing as a direct result of dueling and the loss of armor. And it became more contest, especially after the Italians said, I don't want to die. Let's put a little rubber tip on the Internet thing. My sister is in the fencing psychology. Interesting. My oldest sister. I've always wanted to try that. Well, I think you should go to town. You can take classes, right? Totally. I think it's a kind of expensive startup. Sure. Like the whole get up and a decent sword and all that. But a foil in the vernacular. But I'm sure once you got all that stuff, you're fine. Yeah. That would end up being like my venture into ice hockey, though. I could just end up having a closet full of gear really good to use. I didn't know you're into hockey. I was at one point when mid twenties, I learned gear. Yeah. I learned how to ice skate pretty well. And then me and all my friends got hockey gear and we're like, hey, let's play nice. And that was pretty much where it ended. There you go. Yeah. Pistols. Oh, Josh, when did you get into pistols? Well, no, I didn't get into pistols ever. But when pistols came along, basically, it leveled the playing field because pistols were actually cheaper than swords and cheaper than getting trained in fencing. You get to practice shooting Coke cans in the backyard. So all of a sudden, it democratize it. It was no longer the sport of noblemen because anyone could do it. Right. And this is a time when the word cocktail was invented to describe the strong drink you had in the morning. Like an old fashioned. So America was super drunk. So dueling seemed like a really good idea, and it took off as a sport. Well, not as a sport, but basically as a socially accepted pastime, because America doesn't have kings or dukes or anything, and there were a lot of guns at the time, and everybody started shooting one another in duels. Well, which is one of the big reasons dueling began to die, I thought, and pointed out that I was wrong. I thought it may be because people called for the end of it and said, this is wrong. We shouldn't be doing this. But since Dueling began, the church and other legal bodies said, we don't like this, because it kind of cripples the legal system because you're taking it to your own hands. And the church didn't like it. They were like, we want to judge these people on their crimes. And it also kind of violates one of the bigger commandments. Absolutely. Forget about the Crusades for that one, but sure, exactly. Military leaders didn't like it because it was killing off able, young bodied men. And then later on, war itself, like the Civil War and the First World War, really were like, hey, there's more serious things going on. People really die in battle. It sort of became a bit of fool's undertaking. I think it also hit home to the horrors of combat, made people not want to kill one another as much. Yeah, like real deal combat. Yeah. And the Civil War and the First World War, like you said, were linked to declines in the US. And Europe, respectively of dueling. And I guess also one of the other reasons Dueling declined was because when it was exposed to the middle classes, it wasn't just super rich people killing each other anymore, which was the original purpose, which is why the lower classes are like, who cares? Dueling is fine. That's fine. We're doing our own thing. And then once it, like you said, democratized and spread to the middle and lower classes, it became a problem. And then eventually we were left with Dueling Banjo's, and that was about as serious as it got. I think that is an excellent way to end this podcast soon. Great. I'm not even going to ask if you have anything more. If you want to learn more about dueling and you want to see some of these cool rules, you can type duel into the search bar@howstepworks.com. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to say, whoa. From now on, apparently, Chuck, before we do this in our mail, we should announce our big south by Southwest extravaganza two days. Two days in March, we'll call it. Okay. March 11, we will be live podcasting. And this is for south by Southwest attendees and badge holders only, unfortunately. Driscoll Hotel, Maximilian, room 330. P. M. Live podcast done. What's happening the next day? The next day from five to nine at Bodot Irish Pub at Austin. We are going to be having a stuff you should Know variety show. It's open to the public. You don't have to be a badge holder. Free, no cover. And as a matter of fact, if you're one of the first 100 people through the door, you get a free ticket for a free drink. That's right. Yeah. And this is going to feature the likes of Hodgman. Eugene Merman is going to do some stand up for us. Awesome. The musical stylings of Lucy Wayne, Ryan Roach, who plays Jerry in our TV pilot, which we're going to premiere. And let's see Crooks, local awesome band. And then the Henry Clay people are going to play some music as well. And again, we're going to be showing clips from our TV pilot that's going to air on Science Channel. And this is the public debut. That's right. So if you are in the just let's just say the west, from Texas to California, actually, you could go from the east. Just make a point to be there. That's all I'm saying. You can crash on my floor. Actually, you can't, but you can crash in your van. There you go. All right. Back to it. Okay. Yeah. Josh, this is a shoutout. Remember Joanne Stanley, who nominated us to get nominated for a Grammy Award? Yeah, we were Grammy nominated nominated. Right. We didn't make it because we're not a celebrity reading our autography, which is the only people who get nominated for spoken word hub. We're not Bill Copy, but Joanne is the founder and CEO of the Amazon Institute, which we've talked about before, and she's doing a lot of great work to help preserve the Amazon. It is Amazoninstitute.com. And they are having a little contest where you can win two round trip tickets to Bogota, Columbia. Awesome. And this is how you do it. You go to Amazoninstitute.com. Any listener who wants to can participate by clicking our projects in the navigation bar. And basically what you do is create a page on Razoo.com to fundraise for them. And between now and the end of June, June 29, at midnight Eastern, the page with the most funds gets to choose between two round trip flights to Bogota or one ticket to travel with her as your guide. Sweet. And it just covers airfare, but she says they'll hook you up with all the information and cheap places to stay. And flights depart you got to be over 18 flights depart from New York, DC, fort Lauderdale, Miami, I guess only. Okay. Because there are limitations. You can always get a connection to one of those cities. Sure. And travel dates are August through December of this year, tickets provided by Abyanca Airlines. And they use Razoo because it's very transparent. You can see where all the money is going. Very cool. So, Joanne, thank you for your participation with our show. Yeah, we appreciate that. And with the Amazon Institute and go out and win tickets to Columbia People. Give them the website again, it is Amazoninstitute.com. And you create a page to help them raise money on Razoo. What's the tab that you click? Our projects. Awesome. And you could win a trip. Well, as always, Chuck, remember we put out the word for NGOs and nonprofits who need a good plug. We're always looking for those. Yeah, we want to hear about them. Send them to us. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. That's our Twitter handle. You can also reach us on Facebook@facebook.com stuff. And you can send us a nice lengthy email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House department staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?"
https://podcasts.howstuf…-color-final.mp3	How Color Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-color-works	Science doesn't have a good explanation for why we sense color, yet it is everywhere and affecting us all the time. But why should minutely different wavelengths of light have such an impact on our moods and motivations?	Science doesn't have a good explanation for why we sense color, yet it is everywhere and affecting us all the time. But why should minutely different wavelengths of light have such an impact on our moods and motivations?	Thu, 21 May 2015 14:44:09 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=44, tm_sec=9, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=141, tm_isdst=0)	39724161	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And it's stuff you should know. Technicolor. Yeah. Which is really something to see. Technicolor. Yeah. Imagine what it was like back then. Oh, man. I debuted just melting people's eyes out, probably. Did you're like, wow. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. How are you? Good. I'm tired, but I'm good. Yeah, I got a pretty early to study. Oh, yeah. I had to get up early to make the cheese. What? No, it's just the same way. Who's saying yes? Make the cheese. Make the sausage. Make the doughnuts. I've heard make the doughnuts. You never heard make the sausage? I've heard. You don't want to see how the sausage just made. Yeah, just pick anything. Make the cheese. I don't think so. Cut the cheese. Milk cow. People get up early for that, so I guess there's that association. You ever milked a cow? No. Have you? No. I was talking to Emily about that the other day because we went horse riding, and I had never ridden a horse before. Oh, yeah. It's pretty neat. It's my new favorite thing. Yeah, it was amazing how awesome it was. Did you jump over anything on the horse? No, but we, like, trotted up a hill. Did you shoot a bow and arrow? No. Almost fell off, though. Yeah. When he trotted up the hill, like, kind of loosen the saddle, as they say, I was like, Whoa. Okay. Well, that's exactly what you should have said as well. Well, now he was going uphill, so I had to just keep on trucking. Really? Yeah. I didn't want to stop him. Good for you, man. He was carrying a load. I felt bad for the horse. I'm sure he was fine. Yeah, he was all right. What was his name? Man, now I'm kicking myself like a horse because I called this horse by his name the whole day, and now I can't remember Kelvin. I thought we'd bonded. I guess I was just pretending. That's cool. The horse probably can't remember your name either. Yes. And you took a big dump. They do that. Right. And they just stopped, and I was like, what are you stopping for? And I was like, oh, you're lucky even stop. Sometimes they just walk and do that. Oh, really? All of the ones on our little ride stopped to poop, which I thought was maybe I'm confusing them with another animal, humans just walking poop at the same time. Anyway, it was my favorite new thing. I loved it. That's cool, man. I felt very at home. What color was the horse? One of the spotted ones, which I love, and I was hoping you're going to say, like, blue or red or something. Easy. Did you smash the table? Let's go with blue. Okay. Blue. It was a blue horse. So allow me to explain why your horse appeared blue. Okay. As Newton figured out, that horse is not inherently blue. There's nothing inherently blue about that horse. It's all in our perception. Yeah. Because color technically doesn't exist. It exists in our minds. Well, yeah, the perception of color does. Exactly. But like, an apple isn't just there's nothing in the apple that's red. Exactly, Chuck. And there's nothing in your horse that made it blue. No. What happens is that color is basically our perception of a specific wavelength of visible light. That's right. Invisible light is just part of the electromagnetic spectrum that includes everything from microwaves to radio waves to gamma rays to ocean waves. Not quite, but visible light is part of that. Wave pools? No, just those things that I said. Okay. So along that spectrum is this very narrow little slice that's visible light. And invisible light, which we see, is like white light. Sunlight is the presence of the rainbow, which are called the spectral colors. It's right. On one end, you have the short wavelength, which is blue. On the other end, you have the long wavelength, which is red. Technically, file it on the other side. Well, red has a bunch of different names. When you start reading in the color well, no, blue on the blue side. It starts at violet, but we don't perceive it very well. Oh, well, I'm talking about what humans can see. Right. Yeah. And then everything else is in between. Right. And what's really in the middle, like yellow, maybe. Seems like yellow is kind of in the middle. Yeah. What do you think you told me? Well, on the other end, beyond violet, you've got ultraviolet, and beyond red, you've got infrared. Yeah. These are things we can't see. No, we can't. Some animals can remember. They think monarch butterflies are able to migrate all the way to Mexico using ultraviolet detecting ultraviolet light. Remember that? Yeah. That was a good episode. Pretty amazing. So this band of light, this visible spectrum, contains the spectral colors which we perceive, right? That's right. And for a very long time, everybody just thought, well, that apple is red or that horse is blue. That's just how it's born. There's nothing that can be done about it. And then, like we said, along came Newton, and Newton said, no, something weird is going on here. Like you said, color doesn't really exist. It's in the eye of the beholder, almost literally. Yeah. Right. And the reason why an apple seems red or your horse seems blue are because of natural chemicals found in, say, the skin of the apple or the height of the horse that are called pigments. So in an apple, specifically, it's anthocyanins that make it red. Yes. In the case of a carrot, it's carotenoids. In the case of grass, it's chlorophyll. And these pigments have the capability of absorbing some wavelengths of light and reflecting others back. And the wavelength that it reflects back are the colors that we perceive. That's right. And that's if it's an object that is opaque. Oh, yeah. That's a big one right there. Yeah. Apples are pretty opaque. Yeah, I would say so. Unless you're a superman, maybe. Yeah. He's invisible. See through apple. You can see right through that. Oh, yeah, he can. Candy, I get your joke now. So, yeah. With an opaque object where light doesn't pass all the way through, some lights reflected back. So in the case of anthrocyanins, this pigment absorbs all the other wavelengths of light except red, and it reflects red back. That's right. And so red is reflected back. So what you see when you look at this apple with all the red light reflecting back at you is a red apple. That's right. That's how we perceive color in the world around us naturally. Yeah. And if it's transparent, it's not reflecting that light, but transmitting it. So it depends on the color of light that's passing through it instead of reflecting back to you. And again, it's that chemical makeup. It operates in sort of the same way. Right. It's just not like in an apple skin, let's say. Yeah, exactly. But it comes down to basically pigments or whatever natural, chemical, or mineral that either absorbs or reflects certain wavelengths of light. That's right. So here's the thing, though, Chuck. Like, that can happen all day long, and as long as there's not a human or a monkey or a dolphin or a dog because dogs are not color blind. That's right. They see different colors than we do, but they're not colorblind. I always wonder how they do this. Test animals. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I'm sure it's pretty easy to find out, but I just didn't have time to look into it. I'm with you. Yeah. This is like a massive black hole of information. Like, you could just keep going and going and going with color. It's such a huge, expansive topic that we could just do nothing but color episodes for the next several months if we wanted to. Do you want to kill me? I may not make it through today's. So you're doing great. This is fine. This is great, Chuck. It is a very big subject. Yes, it is, man. We're providing a brief overview of it. That's right. So, as I was saying, things can reflect color all the time, but as long as there's not something there to perceive it, is there really any color there? Well, that's a philosophical question, but there's an answer to it, and the answer is no. If the tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? No, actually, my opinion on that one is yes. Okay. But with color. Yeah. It doesn't exist without being perceived. I think sound to me is different than that. It's a bit of a brain melter, but I see what you're saying. Okay. So that leads you to the question of how do we see color? And that wasn't figured out until the 18th century, and it wasn't proven, I think, until the there were a pair of guys who were a dynamic duo, if I've ever heard of one before. And what were their names? Well, Thomas Young. I thought he was kind of the main guy. I had never heard of the other guy. Herman von Helmholtz. Yeah. Thomas Young. What I read was that he was the first to propose the trichromatic theory, basically, that we see everything through red, green, and blue channels. Because that's how our eyes pick up on color. Yeah. Because we have specialized cells in our eyes called cones. Right. Yeah. I think we have something like 100 million or some ridiculous amount of rods. And rods are the things that we see in fine detail, black and white, typically. Right. Cones are color perceiving cells, and each cell is specialized either attuned to wavelengths at red, green, or blue. Yes. You have way more rods than cones. About 120,000,000 rods in each eye, and only about 6 million cones in each eye. And those cones are concentrated mostly in the front of your retina. Yeah. In the middle. Right. Which is why you don't see color peripherally quite as well. That's right. So these cells are tuned to different wavelengths. Right. The long wavelengths are red, medium is green, and short is blue. I thought you said medium is yellow. No, that's in the middle. Okay, right. The medium is not in the middle. Well, as far as our RGB goes. Okay. Got you. Okay. Yeah. And so with these cells, Chuck, if you're looking at your blue horse what was his name? Calvin the blue horse. Yeah. Sounds good. So if you're looking at Calvin the blue horse, you're getting a lot of information from short wavelength light. Yes. Not so much that the long or medium wavelengths. Right, right. And so there's probably a little bit it's not a true blue horse. Right. Which would mean that it was a totally saturated blue, which is only that blue wavelength. True blue wavelength coming to your eyes. There's probably a little bit of green, a little bit of red. Right. And so all the cones in your eyes are getting all this information at once, and they're reporting to your brain via electrical impulses about the quality of the wavelengths of light that they're getting. That's right. And so your brain takes it and basically becomes a color mixer and creates the color blue that you're seeing Calvin as. Yeah, that's how we detect color. And from the R and the G and the B, you can put together, supposedly, the Commission on Illumination, a European Commission on Illumination, back in 1031, determined that humans can see something like $2.38 million. Oh, it's up to 100 million now, is it? Because I've seen all over the place and the 1931 CIE findings are the ones that people say, this has the best science behind it. Oh, really? Yeah. 100 million? No, I'm sorry. 10 million. Okay. The other thing about the CIA is that people say, well, this is only under certain types of illumination. I think three different types of illumination. Right. So it is entirely possible if you change the intensity or whatever, you're going to have brand new colors. So 10 million is reasonable. Okay. That's a lot of colors that we can see, all from the red, the green, and the blue cones coming together and your brain adjusting them and seeing oh, well, that's Bern Sienna. You're going to say that, did you? Yeah. This sort of the go to joke color, right? It is pretty jokey color. It's a good one. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. 10 million colors, or let's say it's 2 million, if you're going by the 1931 model, the CIE naming convention. Shall we talk about some of the characteristics of color? Yeah, but let's take a break first. This is getting heavy. All right. Okay. All right. Actually, you can do this on your modern television as well, but it seemed like most TVs now kind of come fairly set up. But in the old days, when you had those little wheels to try and get that color right, you might have noticed things that said hue and intensity or value or tone and all that stuff. Right. Those are all color characteristics. Yeah. And Hughes specifically, that's basically what the color is. It's not the lightness or the darkness. It's the greenness or the redness of the blueness. Right. That's the hue. Yeah. You can interchange that word with color. Yeah, exactly. I like how they refer to it as the identity of a colored. Sounds kind of personal. The intensity is how pure it is. So, like we said, most colors are mixes. They bleed one way or the other on the wavelength, but in its purest form, a single wavelength, which is really rare. That would be the purity or the intensity of the color. Right. You're not going to see that very often, though. No. And I was wondering that's pretty cool. There's some physics lab somewhere that can produce pure, saturated green, like unadulterated a blue. There is. Are you just saying I'm there has to be yeah, probably. That has got to be really something to see to know you're looking at green like nothing but green. I would like to see that sometime. Yeah. I'm not color blind, but I have a more difficult time picking out other hues in a color, whereas Emily's really good, like when picking out paint colors, that gray has this and this and this in it, and I'm like, really? Like, I see gray. Well, supposedly a lot of people have a color deficiency. I might have a slight color deficiency. And a lot of people, without being colorful, don't realize it. Well, yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. They think that this color just looks like this and thinks everybody sees it that way, and that's not the case. And then it comes from a conversation where they're like, oh, wait a minute. What do you mean you see a distinction between those? Well, yeah, but in my case, it's Hughes. It's not like I see a completely different color. Right. Or black or everything looks gray. Yeah. I did a brain stuff on color blindness. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. I went to research that one time for a show, and it just, like, bent my mind so much, I quietly filed it away. So I'm sure you'll pick it next week. Color blindness. Yeah. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color, and that basically has to do with light, the energy of the light that makes it up. So Hughes is really just kind of a very finite number of colors of Hughes. Right. Yeah. And you think of primary colors, which we'll talk about soon, but when you adjust something, when you adjust the value of it, that just creates a whole new range of colors. So if you add a little black to a color, what you're doing is shading it. Yeah. If you add white, you are creating a tint. And then if you add black and white, a gray, you're toning it. Yeah. Right. And I think people interchange those words without understanding what they mean. Yeah. But they are definite distinct things. And we should probably say there's a lot of really neat sites on the Internet. Pantone is a really good one, where you can go look at color wheels and things like that and see the distinction between these things and be like, oh, you mean pastels. That's another word for its own. Yeah. A lot of people really get into it because it's the basis of printing and art and photography and every sort of art form well, not every art form, but many art forms boil down to color. So if you go to art school, you're going to study color pretty deeply. Yeah. And one of the things you're going to study is color theory. And color theory is based on the idea that certain colors contrast one another, certain colors complement one another. Certain colors should never be used together. And not that it's just your instructor Sarah saying, no, these colors don't go together. It's not just Serge's opinion. These are objective facts as far as color theory goes. Sure. And it's all based on the idea that all colors fall into one of two categories. You have additive colors and subtractive colors. Yeah. And there are two distinct applications for both of these. If you're talking about a computer screen or a television that's using light. So it's additive. If you're talking about paint or photography, that's subtractive. Right. So you can think of it this way. With additive colors, you're starting with black and you're adding light to it. And ultimately, when you add all these additive colors together, you're going to have white. With subtractive colors, you start with white. And when you add all these colors together, you're ultimately going to have black and they subtract by absorbing one another's colors. Yeah. That's created another color mindbender, too, because with subtractive color, you're still adding colors, but it's not additive. Right, but you sort of have to wrap your head around that. Yeah. But they're subtracting wavelengths by combining colors and absorbing them. Right? Yeah. It takes a hue out. So a really good example of subtractive colors is if you take cyan, cyan absorbs orange red. Right. So if you take cyan and you mix it with yellow, you produce green. And the reason that cyan and yellow produce green is because the cyan absorbs the red light and the yellow light, the yellow absorbs blue violet. And so the only color that's not subtracted or absorbed is green. That's right. So green is produced from these other pigments, absorbing all the other wavelengths. And with additive pigments, it's quite the opposite. You have light combining to form new colors rather than absorbing, you're adding to it. Yeah. And like, the apple is an example, like we said earlier, of a subtractive color system, and again, like a TV screen would be additive. Yeah, I think we got that. Yeah. I mean, it is mindblowing a little bit. Some of the stuff I have to read like ten times, and then it sinks in. But the reason that all colors can be turned into either additive primaries or subtractive primaries is that these are the six colors. They're the six spectral colors. They're the rainbow colors. Right. So additive primaries are what, red, green and blue, correct? Yes. RGB. Yeah. And then the subtractive colors are cyan, yellow, and magenta. Yeah, I was going to say magenta. They're almost like bizarro colors. They're the bizarro world primary colors. When you think of primary colors, you think of like the red, yellow, and blue is what most people think of. Yeah. Red, yellow, and blue were the traditional primaries, and they still are, but when it comes to painting and printing, they've been replaced with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Right. CMYK. Yeah. When you go to your clubhouse printer, that's what you're going to be seeing. CMYK. Or you can select RGB as well. Red, green and blue. So Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, right? Or Crosby, stills and Nash. Yeah. Okay. That's the difference. It's a good rule of thumb, man. Right. So we mention primary colors just a second ago, and then we have our secondary colors, green, orange, and purple hues, which you get from mixing the primary colors. Right. And then you have something called tertiary colors, which is furthering the color hues by mixing primary colors with secondary colors. Right. So the six tertiary colors and the two sets of primary colors, or the six secondary colors, I think. And the two sets of primary colors form the color wheel. There are twelve colors in the color wheel. Yeah. And tertiary colors are the ones that you'll hear, like blue green or red violet. Yes. It's like, literally named the two colors. And color naming is another rabbit hole that you can go down. There's a site man, I wish I'd written it down, but if you type in who names colors or color naming or something like that in Google, one of the first page entries is the site that you go through, and it shows you different colors and you write what you would name that color. Interesting. Butter yellow or something like that. Right. Well, that was as far as I got. I would call it Butter yellow. When you got hungry, had other things to do, but you can go through. I think it's like ten or 20 different shades that they show you. Colors that they show you. And the whole purpose of all this is to find some sort of commonality to create a universal naming convention for colors. Yeah. Makes sense, because there is a lot of distinction among languages for naming colors. But at least one study that I found decided that all colors universally for societies that do recognize individual colors, rather than these are just warm colors and these are cool colors, which is universal. The more primary the color, the shorter and easier to remember the name of. It is, like, across cultures. So not all cultures will call it blue, but a culture is going to have another short, monosyllabic name for that color. Right. For the same thing that we would call blue. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Just because it's easier to understand. It's just basic colors appear to be basic universally. All right, I think we should take another break and maybe come back and talk a little bit about how colors can complement each other and live in harmony and what that all means to us. Okay. All right. We're back. We sure are, man. So we talked about the different primary colors, secondary and tertiary, and there's also something called complimentary colors, which are basically contrasting colors that make a neutral color when put together. Right. And they are really far apart in hue, as far apart as they can be. And if you look at the color wheel, they're on the complete opposite side from one another. Right. And when you place them next to each other, then their hue is like I guess it's just more robust looking because they complement one another. Right. Yeah. Complimentary doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, they look great together under all circumstances. Right. So some complementary colors, like red and green, if you place them next to each other in the same intensity and the same size, it's another one. You are going to have what's called an eyesore. I have a shirt like that. It's just too much. Equal amounts of bright red and bright green. Trying to think of that shirt. It's just a Christmas shirt. Oh, is it retired? Yeah. Well, it's for the holidays. Yeah, it's a holiday shirt. Okay. But the whole point of having colors and using colors together isn't just like, well, these two are opposite the color wheels, so I'm going to use them in equal amounts and equal intensity, and everything will be great. You have to achieve what's called color harmony. And in doing that, you want to choose different shades or different tones or different tints and also different amounts at once. So, like, you're going to use a bunch of red and a little bit of green as an accent that would be much more harmonious than equal amounts of intense red and green next to each other. Yeah. And again, when we say it's not a matter of taste, like picking something out is a matter of taste. But again, these are like scientific rules, right? You can't just throw two colors together and say, that looks great, or that they're harmonious. I guess you could, but you'd be wrong. You would surge would be like, you're wrong. This is objective stuff. And then with complementary colors. Getting back to that, there's this really cool thing that they bring up called retinal fatigue. So you can do a little experiment at home that's kind of blows your mind, but it really illustrates how color works pretty well. If you look at a bright red spot, for about a minute, your retinas are going to soak in all that red, all those cones are. And then when you go immediately and look at a white surface, you're going to see green briefly, not forever. Right. And the reason why is because your red cells have just been basically overstimulated, and they're going to respond weekly to the information that they're getting from that white. Right? Yeah. And your blue and green cells are going to be functioning just fine, so they're going to easily overwhelm your red cells. And so what you'll see is this ghost image of, like, a cyan square. Yes. Which is why and the reason why is because red is the complement of green. It'll always be that opposite. Right. It doesn't just, like, randomly pick out a color. I know. And if you start adding all this stuff together that there are objectively complimentary colors that you see when you see too much of the opposite one, doesn't it all seem to fit so cleanly together that you're almost like, what is going on here? What is color? Why do we see color? Yes. It's a really good question, and evolutionary biologists have not been able to explain it fully. Yeah, I guess I really never thought about that. Well, I mean, there's probably some evolutionary benefit, right? Sure. Like, green things are generally good to eat. Yeah. But green is also the kind of a universal color for disgust or sickness or illness. Like you're green because you're green around the gills or something like that. Yeah, that's true. Green is often like the color of rot. Gross. But it's true. I mean it's both. So how did we evolve to understand the nuance? Clearly, if we didn't evolve to see in color so that we could do this, we have as a byproduct of it, but we can very easily tick off whether something is healthy for us, dangerous. We get a lot of information about an object in our environment's, quality and desirability based on its color. It's almost like a shorthand that our brains pick up. Yeah. And part of that is because we're conditioned after years of using green for go and green for safe passage and like red or orange for hazard signs and stop signs. So part of that is conditioning. But as far as like going back many years before we made stop signs, I have no idea. Yeah, it really makes you wonder. And even like the idea that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, that's a fairly recent development. Prior to, I think, the early 20th century, it was the opposite. Did we ever do that as a show or did no, it's too short. I think we did like a video on it or something, didn't we? Maybe. I seem to remember that. But it was the opposite until like the 1900. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. Totally. Is that's why you rock your pink shirts? Well, yeah, right? That's exactly why. That and fashion. So getting back to harmonious colors, if they are side by this is if you're like picking out colors in your house or whatever, if you're not very good at it, there are a few hard and fast rules that are and get your little color wheel out is really handy. If they're side by side, they're going to harmonize well. And as we mentioned, colors directly across from one another, complimentary ones also go well in the right proportions because like you said, the size of it makes a big difference. Right. They point out in the article, I don't know if you ever seen someone who's like painted their room red like in college. Some stupid roommate would do that. It's an assault on your senses because you're not used to seeing that much red. Right, but maybe an accent wall and a shade of red matched with a complimentary color. You wouldn't want a red and green room though because green is complimentary to red. No, but you could conceivably say use the complimentary color for the trim or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And then tints and shades and tones of the same color are always okay together. It's never going to clash, but you're just going to have to mess around with how much of one compared to the other and what pleases your eye. Right? Yes. You can't clash though. No. So again, surge is saying like no, there's objective truth. As to complimentary colors and harmonious colors, but there is also personal preference. Oh, sure. And this is kind of like the thorn in the side of the whole idea of color psychology, that people use colors to manipulate other people into buying a product or whatever. Study after study keeps finding that color preference and color symbolism is extremely personal. It's based on past experience, on your upbringing, on your culture. Like, for example, here in the west, we wear black for morning, while in the east, white is the color for morning. Right. So there's a lot of culturally bound ideas about color, too, which keeps it from being like universally symbolic or whatever. But that being said, there are some that just from being exposed to it time and time again, like a red stoplight that you come to identify symbolically with other stuff. Yeah. And colors will also affect everyone differently, mood wise. But there are some generalities there, too. Like, blue is generally a soothing color that will calm you down. Too much, though, could actually have the opposite effect, like too much blue on some people. Or it can really depress you. What, blue can? Yeah. I wonder if that's why they say you're blue. Yeah. I mean, think about it. We describe our world like that. Green with envy. Blue means you're down in the dumps. Red means you're angry. Yeah. Red face. Yeah. Or redneck. No way. That's different. A little different. Warm colors. Reds and yellows can also lift the spirits if you're less excitable. And they say that most people want to just strike a balance between the cool and the warm. Right. And that's when it comes to personal preference. Yeah, but the idea behind this is that a lot of people don't realize this is going on, that they're being affected by color even though they are, that it's on a very unconscious level. Yeah. And it also depends a lot on light, like how much light a room has coming into it. Because sunlight is different than artificial light. Your shirt is going to look a different color outside in the sun, as it might. And I remember when we did the TV show, there was a lot of with colors and stuff, things would look different outside than they would under studio lights. Right. What's neat, though, is we humans have developed this trick called color constancy, where if you look at something, even if it's in the shadow or in the sunlight, it should conceivably look like different colored things because of the illumination. But to us, we're still like, no, that's still green. Just because there's shadow blocking it now, I still see it as green. Doesn't make any sense. And it's kind of perplexed, I guess. Biologists for a while trying to figure out what this is or neurologists, and they figured out that, yes, it is in the brain. And there was this one guy who had some sort of brain damage I think from an electric shock. And he also went, for all intents and purposes, blind, but he could still see color. What? But he didn't have color constancy. So they figured out that this guy was detecting wavelengths of light color. Even though he couldn't see anything, he could see color still, but color constancy wasn't there. So they figured out well, that means that it's a trick of the brain. Very neat. It's very cool. They also bring up in the House of Works article something I think is pretty interesting. How certain, because of conditioning, certain colors can just appear to be wrong. Like, if you were to pull up and see a green stop sign, it would freak you out. Yeah. Or the example they used in here is if you cracked an egg and there was a green egg yolk, that would be really freaky, too, because you're just so used to that yellow. Right. You'd think, well, this is diseased or something. Yeah, or Dr. Seuss. Right. What else you got? Did you look at that thing on pigment? I did. There's some wacky ways people have made pigments. Yeah, I mean, pigment as far as making paint and things. Now they're synthetic. They are synthesized in laboratories, which makes sense. But throughout all of history, up until they started doing that, there were actual real things in the ground and on the Earth that they would grind up into powder. In the case of blue, there was a semi precious stone called or there still is called lapis lazuli that was found all over the place in Afghanistan, and that's how they made blue. Azureite is a blue mineral of copper. So most of them have a few different ways they can make it red. I think we've talked about cinnabar before. The mineral is where you get vermilion red. And carmine. Carmine is bright red, and that comes from aluminum, salt of carminic acid. So it's just crazy that they found all these things in the world to make. And I know blue is the toughest one because you don't see blue very much in nature. I think blue is the one you will see lease in the primary colors as far as nature goes. Right. Like some insects. But there's no blue food. Yeah, that's true. Blue horses? No. Well, what about mine? My favorite was India yellow, where they would feed cows nothing but mango leaves and then collect their urine and then boil it down, then filter out the concentrated muck and then make balls out of it. And there was the basis of your pigment. Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. So those are just a few if you really get into pigments and you can go crazy trying to figure out where they all came from. Definitely. And I mean, again, this is like really just the surface of color. There's so much to it, and I strongly advise you to go out and learn more about it. Color. It's everywhere. How about the one last factoid, why is the sky blue? Oh, it's a good one. Sky is not really blue. No, it shouldn't really have any color. Yeah, but the angle of the sun coming down on the upper atmosphere encounters things like water vapor and other tiny particles, and they tend to scatter blue wavelength light more than the other colors. Right, that's it. So that's just bouncing around at all points. Which is why the sky is blue. It says like noontime, but while the sky is blue at noontime, over here it says sunrise or sunset to the east of the west. And since all that blue light is getting scattered over you where it's noontime in the east or the west, those reds and yellows and pinks are making it all the way there and the blue is not, which is why sunrise and sunset tends to appear reddish, whereas like midday appears blue. Yeah, which it makes total sense. And when your kids ask you why is the sky blue, you can tell them. You can tell them like the real reason you can be like color does not actually exist. Yeah. It's all lie. Good luck with that. Go to sleep. If you want to know more about color, just type that word in your favorite search engine or howstaffords.com, and it will take you on a wild ride. And since I said wild ride, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this something I've never heard of before. Precocious puberty. You ever heard of that? Yes, we talked about it. Early puberty. Okay. Did we talk about that? Yeah, we said, I guess this is in girls, so maybe that's why got you surprised. Me. I'm a long time listener and thanks for helping me and my commute every day. Really enjoyed and giggled my way through the episode of male puberty. Thanks so much for mentioning precocious puberty. Well, there you have it. I was diagnosed at age two after my mom came to wake me before school one day. Before I had a full beard? No, before preschool. This is a lady and she had started her period at two years old. Wow. And as you can imagine, my mom was terrified. It took a long time to get a correct diagnosis since it is pretty rare. My treatment started out as daily shots that my mom gave me at home, but then went to weekly, monthly, and annually. As the years progressed, I also had intermittent stays in the hospital for testing. Ah, they're poor kid. I know. Treatment was stopped when I reached twelve years old. Essentially pressing play on my puberty that have been on pause for almost ten years. See that's cool treatment. Yeah. I mean it's amazing that they figured out how to stall puberty. Yes, they're like, stay. Okay, got it. I have only hazy memories of this, of course, as a child, but I do remember that missing shots caused quite a bit of pain since my body was growing out of control, essentially. I've never been able to find out what the long term effects might be. But I've had a pretty decent health into my adult life and I'm now 31 years old. Awesome. So thanks a lot. And that is from Lauren in California. Well, thanks a lot, Lauren. I appreciate that. We love hearing from people with real life experiences of stuff. We just talk about that's, right? If you want to let us know about your real life experience, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at sciskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshotnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at home on the Web stuffyshaw.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com."
https://podcasts.howstuf…sysk-subways.mp3	Subways: HUH! What are they good for?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/subways-huh-what-are-they-good-for	As ubiquitous as they've become, it's easy to overlook the marvels of engineering that are subways. Chuck and Josh go boring as they explore these systems of tubes that must circumnavigate rock, rivers, cables and more to get you where you're going.	As ubiquitous as they've become, it's easy to overlook the marvels of engineering that are subways. Chuck and Josh go boring as they explore these systems of tubes that must circumnavigate rock, rivers, cables and more to get you where you're going.	Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:26:58 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=20, tm_min=26, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=271, tm_isdst=0)	42249493	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Just sitting there normally, right. Not doing anything unusual. I think we should have started this with Taking the A Train. I think we should have changed up our music. Let's do that. Okay, how about this? All right. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Take the air, find the quickest way to get to Harlem. We did. Okay. Thanks to the magic of post production. We did. So that was taken to a train. Who made that song? Oh, boy. I don't know who originally composed it, to be honest. Well, I think we should find out who just performed it. Well, there's many versions. Well, what's the one you selected, like, a week from now? I don't know. The Cheryl. Do they do a train now? It's a jazz tune. Oh, John Coltrane. Did he do it? Let's go with Coltrane, man. Or maybe I should just do it. Oh, is that that song? Yeah. Taking the ATrain. That's a good song. Is it instrumental? Because, you know, a lot of those instrumentals actually have lyric what DOL Jaztunes? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Taking the A Train. But you're right. Okay. Let's go with Duke Ellington's version. Duke Ellington did the A Train at the beginning of this episode. I hope everyone liked it. The Duke we haven't heard it yet. That's right. So, Chuck, I know that you know what a subway is because we've been on the subway together. Yeah. Do you remember when we were in New York? I believe it was for ABC. Go. Our first little opportunity there. And we were going to meet Yumi. Oh, yeah, I remember. I met Yumi afterward. Right. Well, I mean, I worked with her, but then I was like that was the first time we were hung up. Yeah, exactly. So we were going and that was my first time in the New York subway. And I remember we were looking at a subway map, and the whole thing just turned into, like, a series of confusing lines to me, and suddenly I was blind and holding your arm, and I had the mind of a child, and not even, like, a really bright child, either. It was just kind of like, what does it say? And I can report, after being back in New York with you me, several times, that I do that to her still. Oh, really? That we're enabling you, is what's going on. I think it is. I think if you guys had thrown me in and be like, figure it out, figure it out. I could have, but I don't have to. Right. And it's kind of nice because it's really confusing. So when you go to New York, you just kind of like just go with Yuumi's wind wherever she blows, kind of but the wind is coming from her heavy size that she's the one who has to read the subway. But now that I've read this article, how Subways Work, I don't understand the New York subway system any more than I did before I read this article, but I can tell you that the rails are made of 35 foot long pieces of carbon steel that are five and a half inches tall and one and a half inches wide. And you could run any train on the world. In the world on those rails. Not in the world, but at least in New York, because I guess there's different cages. But the New York subway system was designed so that you could just kind of if you wanted to go to Cleveland on a subway train, you could yeah. How it's designed? Yeah, they could put it on just a regular railroad track right. And go to Cleveland. And then you get to Cleveland and you go, jeez, I want to go back to New York. Cleveland is where the first stoplight in the country was. Did you know that? Really? Yeah. I like Cleveland. I'm just kidding. It's where my home away from home is now. They're in Akron, but it's a suburb of Cleveland. I never realized that. And I'm from Ohio, and I didn't realize that it was a suburb. Yeah, it's like half hour or so. I always thought Akron was more toward Dayton. All right, so Dayton, let's talk about it. All right, let's talk about subways. The metro in France and Pelosi. 547 yards. Every 547 yards, you're going to find a subway station. Yes. That's pretty good. No, not even there's no building in Paris that's more than 547. I bought that one. No, but it really you helped build up the drama. Okay. Yeah. The tube in London, mind the gap every 1275 stations, and our dear beloved New York subway system, 468 as of now, packed into like, 260 sq mi. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. And that's why the New York subway system looks like a plate of spaghetti. Man, it's really tough to read. It's not just me. It can't just be. You just have to zero in on your area, and then you're like, oh, you got to blur your eyes and block out everything else. And then everyone behind you is looking at you like tourists. Yeah, exactly. Got his eyes crossed. And why does that guy next to him looks like Ronnie Milsap all of a sudden? Because I saw him walk down here just fine. The London Underground is the oldest, opened in 1863. The Metro was next in 1900, and New York not far behind in four. And Tracy, who wrote a very thorough article. This is Tracy v. Wilson Joy. Yeah. You know, it's going to be good. She points out that this day all kind of happened within pretty dense space of time because the Industrial revolution, people are out in Farming and they're like, screw this, I need a decent egg roll. I'm going to move into the city where I can get a job in a factory. Yeah. And before that, there weren't jobs in factories because there weren't factories. Part of the Industrial Revolution was the rise of factories. That's true. Everybody threw down their agrarian tools like signs. Forget this ho, I'm out of here. Right. Clever wordplay. Thank you. And they moved to the cities. And when they moved to the cities, all of a sudden, there was a lot of people who needed to move about, and they didn't have cars, partially because cars hadn't been invented yet. That was one reason. But also, even beyond that, not everybody could afford a horse, but they still need to get some place. So it's a good point. City fathers in these areas, paris, London first, because I think it was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and then New York said, all right, we need to figure out how to move a bunch of these people at once. And what they came up with was mass transit. But it was all above ground. Mass transit. Yeah. And it involves horses. Remember the Wingcries Typhoid Mary episode? One horse produces \u00a320 of poop per day, and New York had, like, 100,000 horses or something like that walking around. Yeah. You know how much poop a subway train produces? Zero. Yeah. There's probably a couple of guys pooping on the train. Yes, but that would contribute that to the guy on the train. It's not really the subway. That's true. It is not exhaust, as you would call horses poop. I wouldn't call it then. So you're right. They had horse drawn carriages and these cool things called omnibuses, which were longer or strong carriages. Now they're known by their slang term bus. Yeah, that's what a bus is. I'm glad you brought that up. Okay, people in New York, tourists in New York, if you're in New York, you got it all figured out. But tourists in New York, I would recommend that you occasionally take a bus trip. Don't be afraid of the bus. Like a regular bus or a tourist bus. No, double decker bus. Don't take those. No. A regular busy little Metro card. You might even know this if you've just been in New York, like, once. It works on the buses as well as the subways. And a lot of times if you're uptown at the park, man, I can't find a subway stop near me. I need to get downtown. Just walk to the edge, and chances are you're going to see a bus with its own little lane that's just going south, and you get a nice views of everything you're out and about up above ground. And that's just my advice to tourists. Don't be afraid of the buses in New York. It can be a great way to get around. There's also cabs. Yeah, but those are expensive, man. Yeah. I mean, not in Discovery channels. When I'm there on my own dime, I take a lot of buses in subway. Do you really? Yeah, sure. It's subway. Yeah. But I didn't realize you took the bus. Yeah, buses are great. I had no idea. Yeah. So you take the bus and you know where your local electorate lives. That's right. That's pretty impressive, Chuck. So what happened with these buses, though, and with all the horse poop, as they said? This is getting out of hand. We need to go underground because there's no more room up here. Yeah, we'd love to build trains, but we can't because there's too many people, so too many bagel shops. So London did it first, right? Yes. Is when it opened. Yeah. God knows when they started construction. I bet someone knows God besides God. And then within 40 years, I guess Paris opened theirs because it was such a huge success. It was just brilliant. The problem is it was also, planning wise, it was a brilliant move, but construction wise, it makes almost no sense whatsoever. It's like, hey, where's the hardest place we can put this mass transit system? I've got it. Through a river. Like, under bedrock. Right. And basically through every obstacle that we can create. That we've already created. Yeah, it's a good point. Let's talk about this. These days they have this really cool machine called a tunnel boring machine. Yeah. Did you see these? Yeah, it looks awesome. Pretty amazing. It's basically like a tremor worm. Yeah, but a mechanized one that won't turn on you. Exactly. And I hope people caught that little reference. Which one? So this TV tunnel boring machine has disc and scrapers. It crushes rock into pebbles and sand. It has, like, a conveyor belt that comes out the back. So it is kind of like reading. Yes. And then, dudes, get rid of that stuff. And it actually supports the tunnel as it digs and does a really great job. But we all love the TV. They're fairly new, though. They didn't have this back in the day. Yeah. So back in the day, they had to do it by hand picks, shovels, dynamite or TNT, depending on where your preferences lie. That's true. Yeah. So this is kind of a problem in that you didn't have a conveyor belt. You had to use a pick. You frequently ran into rock, and sometimes you had to dig into the bedrock. Which bedrock? That's the actual earth surface. Everything else, like mud and dirt that's just like, runoff. Yeah. Did you realize that? Yeah, I just recently realized that. I've done that for years. But that bedrock. It's kind of tough to get through. Yeah. New York City alone had 8000 laborers to work on this project, about 60 of which died. And I don't even know if they have account on the injury sustained. I'm sure it was like 60 a day injured. You think? I don't know. Thousands of injuries. Let's just say that. Did you look up the new Austrian tunneling method? I did I want to know about this? I didn't have a chance to I can't tell you. Please tell me. It had, like, eight different tenants. So it's not so much a method of digging as it is, as Tracy points out, a collection of techniques for digging and finding out where to dig. Yeah. Where to dig and how to dig. What are they like? Never dig on a Tuesday. Are they random like that? No, they're not random like that. But we should do an article on tunneling, period, because it's pretty amazing. Okay. And the reason they called it the new Austrian method was to distinguish it from the old Austrian method. Was there really an old Austrian method? I guess they must be the king tunnels. Like Charles Bronson. Is he Austrian? No, but he was the tunneler in Great Escape. I didn't know he was the tunnel expert. I got you. So that was from Reservoir Dogs. That was a line at one point, someone says he's like Charles Bronson and Great Escape. He was digging tunnels. Really? Great line. How did they miss that line? I don't know. Well, so you just referenced the reference of a movie. I did. The method that they used for a long time was the cut and cover method, which is crazy. They, like, literally rip up a street, put a subway there, and then build the street back on top. It makes utter and complete sense for a couple of reasons. Number one, subways are meant to serve, like, areas, streets. Right. It's basically like a street that happens to be underground, that moves a bunch of people at once. Yeah. Okay. So following a street makes a lot of sense, especially if you're a planner. The problem is you are completely ripping up a street temporarily. Yeah. Because what you're doing is you're digging a trench and then rebuilding the earth above it. Yeah. But the good thing is you can rebuild the earth above it even stronger. It's like Steve Austin or something like that. Right, yeah. Like, you dig a trench as far down as you want your subway to be, and you put in pilings. You drive them down. Right. Preferably into bedrock, if you can. And then you put, like, tresses and beams over those nice spatulas every now and then. Yeah. And then you can rebuild the ground in the road up above it. You can also reroute any sewer lines, any power lines, any anything through these tresses and beams. Frankly, I'm a cut and cover method guy. Well, it also makes sense because the streets are probably not going to probably not going to run into as many obstacles. Right. Like a basement of a major building. Yeah, exactly, because there wouldn't be a major building in the middle of the street. There was a cool part in the Devil in the White City. Did you ever read that? Oh, man, that's on the list. I need to get to that. You'll like it a lot. Were they talking about how Chicago built the first skyscrapers? Oh, yeah. And basically they figured out how to float the foundations of the building above the bedrock because the bedrock was really far down and there was, like, this sandy, shifting soil. Wow. I can't remember it specifically, but it's like, wow. I'm riveted by this description of an architectural technique, a building technique that they figured out. So you didn't even need the murders. I found them superfluous. Really? Yeah. It was a good book. And I'm not one for, like, popular fiction like that either. Popular semi fiction. Historical fiction. Yeah. I like it. So we're talking about obstacles, and that is a big problem when you're digging tunnels, especially under a city that's already has an infrastructure in place, you're going to run into things that you can move sometimes. You're going to run into things that you can't move sometimes that you have to move around. So, like, if you ever been in a subway, especially New York, that really slows down and takes one of those hard turns. It may be because that's the direction you need to start going now. But more than likely, it's because they had to reroute it. Especially if it's an old section of the subway. Yeah, very true. Because now you can just put the TVM on that thing and it's like, whatever you need, guys, I'll go get it. Well, yeah, but I'm talking more along the lines of man made obstructions, like gas lines, pneumatic lines, no water line with those. Water lines are probably very tough, but all of those can be rerouted. Yeah, you can basically reroute the line rather than reroute the subway line. It probably depends on which one is more cost effective, is what they go with. Sure. You can also, like I said, if you're doing a cut and cover method, you can basically hang those same lines from these. You can use the beams and trusses as support for those same lines. That's true. That makes sense. Sometimes, as Tracy pointed out, you see lines that aren't on any blueprints. You're like, Wait a minute, what's this big pipe doing here? It doesn't show up on any registry that we have for the city. We got to find out what this is to see if we can move it. Yeah. Maybe it's old and unused and you can just throw it away. That'd be great. Maybe it's full of dangerous gasses, which is not great. Or full of water. Or maybe hit an aquifer. Yes, water is a big one. If you hit an aquifer. Well, you know what that is? That's just a bunch of water pooled on top of the bedrock, which is really the surface of the earth. You can hit an aquifer. You might have to say cross a river like the East River. And when you do that, you have to generally tunnel under it, which is extremely dangerous, because then not only you don't just have a street that can collapse on top of you, you have a river that can collapse on top of you. And rivers tend to weigh more than streets. Yeah. And you can drown in a river. You can't drown in a street. Right. Unless it's full of water. I thought this was pretty clever. Was it Paris in the sand before drowning? So they basically put down, like, pods and then sent compressed air into the pod and blew all the water out. And then men went into these pods and worked. And they use the same thing, or a similar technique in building the Brooklyn Bridge pylons. But the problem was people would come up and get the bends from working beneath the water surface, but in a dry area for compressed air. Wow. Because they were down so far, and they just come up without thinking about it and get the bends. Well, the good news is, if you're working under the water like that, you're probably going to get a little pay bump, like hazard pay, as they call it. And the other cool thing they did in Paris, too, was they found that some of this mud and like wet dirt, which is mud right. Was too hard to deal with. So they froze it with calcium chloride, and all of a sudden, they removed it like it was a big chunk of clay. Yes. Pretty neat. It was very clever. And that was old timing construction, too. Was that back in the day? I believe so. Wow. I didn't realize that they were that clever back then. It's pretty smart. You can also basically use the cut and cover method. You're big on that. I love that. I'm going to make you a T shirt that says Cut and cover, but I wouldn't wear that. It just makes sense to me. Yeah, it does. You can use the cut and cover method across a river. That's what they did in the San Francisco Bay. They basically just cut the tunnel they wanted and prefabricated the sections of the subway tunnel and put it in the trench and then just cover it back up and I guess, like, waiting for the water to leak out. Over the course of several decades, right. In the very old cities like Paris, they've also uncovered some pretty interesting things, like catacombs full of human bones. Yeah, there's a whole documentary on that. Really? Catacombs cannonballs. Cory. Very deep. Corey this is kind of cool. I thought this is very cool. Some of the quarries in Paris were so deep that they had to actually build bridges, underground bridges for the subway to get across. It's an elevated train underground. Yeah. Across ancient Roman quarries. Man. I mean, that is crazy. Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff like that, like abandoned subway stations, if you're into that kind of thing. And I know a lot of people who listen to us are there's a website called nycsubway.org, and they have little reports on stations when they were built, when they were decommissioned, why photos taken of them after they were abandoned. And there's actually a little trick, Chuck, where if you were on the 6th train I know you're talking about do you? I think so. The City Hall stop. Yeah. So if you're on the 6th train and you're headed toward the Brooklyn Bridge stop and you stay on right. The train will actually go around a loop to turn around and go the other way. That loop goes through an old abandoned metro stop or MTA stop. And it's this incredible stained glass architecture, like, preserved turn of the century subway station that's just, like, frozen in time. It was in operation from 1940, 1945, and they used to make everybody get off at Brooklyn Bridge, but now they'll let people stay on. Do they? Yeah, because I couldn't find recent information. I saw an article today that said they did that for a while. Now they're not. Oh, really? And then I saw another one that said, no, you can. I wonder if it's just arbitrary, like, depending on who's watching. I know that they cleaned it up in 2004 and made it I don't think they put tons of money toward restoration, but they cleaned it up really nice and allowed light to come through the stained glass. And for a little while, they let people stop and get off and kind of tour it. Oh, really? But, no, they shut that down. Yeah, because the whole reason one of the big reasons they shut it down is because there's such a tight curve that the modern subway cars can't sit flush up against the platform. So there's a pretty big gap that people would have to jump over to get off. So I can imagine you can't get off, but from what I saw, it was a 2010 article. Okay. It said you can stay on now. Well, I've been meaning to check that out and go into November. I'll check it out. Yeah, do let me know. Report back. I will report back. Okay. So rolling stock, or what these trains are actually called, and in some cities, the rolling stock is automated. Like, Denmark, the one they're building now, doesn't have drivers, which is kind of neat. They have, like, laser beams and all these crazy surveillance systems to drive the train. The computerized. What? No. Yeah, they do. And they navigate it. They use brake heat to generate power. They will even let you know someone stuck in the door to open the door back up and did not drive away. Not drive away while someone stuck. Yeah. In New York, they're actually trying out some of these now too, actually. Yeah. I didn't see when this article was written, but Tracy made mention of the addition that's being made to Long Island. Is this going on still? And, like, just this revamping that's going on? I imagine it's constant. Well, the revamping, I think it was a $17 billion bid in 94 and they're adding new lines or trying to spruce up the trains and replace the old cars. They're improving the air circulation. Which she points out just because it's open up top and a little bit of air can get in doesn't mean you don't have to have like a massive air circulation system. Right. If you've ever been like deep within the bowels of the subway system then you might be wondering if it's working properly. But it is. Or you'd be dead. Yeah, you'd die. It takes a tremendous amount of air to be recirculated to allow humans to live underground. I think she said something. Was it? Yes. 6000 cubic feet of fresh air per minute is what they're shooting for. I don't think it's there now, but that's their goal. Should we talk about some of the signals? Yeah. Train signals. Yeah. So before a long, long time ago, when a driver reached a stop light and had to come to a stop, they had to put a key in and turn it to reset the stoplight and be able to drive. And there's a term called keying by that they still use. They do still use it now. It's much more automated, but there's still a set of signals where it's like, stop, proceed with caution. Green light, go as fast as you can. Yeah, they do have speed limits. Yeah, of course. Yeah. They're posted too, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, the driver can see them, at least. Imagine if you were looking and you're up front, you could probably see them. You could. And tap the driver on the shoulder and be like, we are going way faster than that. Yeah. I mean, Marta here in Atlanta, which is sort of a subway, you can ride right up front by the person. And I've done this many times and just kind of spied in on how you drive the Mardi train. And every time I look, I'm like, I could totally drive this thing right now. Yeah, it's just like it's got a little forward lever and a neutral and a reverse and a brake and then that's pretty much it. I could go do it right now. You could drive with your arms crossed. Right. Have you seen it's been going around Facebook, the Marta map compared to the rest of the world? I haven't seen it on Facebook. It's like New York, London, Paris and they all look like a plate of spaghetti. And it's Atlanta with its little plus sign. It's got two branches. But I will argue that it does suck in a way. But I will argue that Atlanta didn't build its subway in 1863. They built it in like 1970 something and stopped. Yeah, it stopped. Okay. I was going to say this isn't a work in progress. Now, they've added some stuff since yeah, a little bit, but really, it's pretty bad. It does suck in every way. It's great if it goes from the one place you need to go to the other place you need to go. Sure. And chances are that's not the case. And sometimes it does, though. Especially if you live near a rail line. But even still, you make one big L. Yes. I mean, it's great for me on, like, Falcon's Aim Day. Right down the street. Hop on. There my brown bag. Hop off. I'm right at the stadium. Yeah, it's nice. Your brown bag for hyperventilation. In case something bad goes down. In case the 600,000 cubic liters of air isn't moved through. No. Most of Atlanta is above ground subway. Really? I'm saying it sucks in every way. These things run on electricity these days. Not like the old steam train days. Yeah. I don't even know that was worth mentioning. Well, I think so, because you have the third rail that everyone knows is very dangerous. Yes. 625 volts in New York, and you have 120 coming into your house. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. So it'll get you it'll fry a rat. Like they're not kidding. Yeah. Sometimes the third rail is between the two tracks. Sometimes it's on the outside. And then you generally have a brush or a shoe, sliding shoe or a wheel that connects to that and that supplies power to the train. And they used to have its own power plant to run the subway system in New York. In New York, yeah. I guess these days they just muoch it from everyone. If you follow a cord in the subway, it's actually going into somebody's living room. It's coming through the window. Yeah. All right. I think the fact of the podcast I'll give it to you, but to me, it's the geometry train. Yeah. I've seen these before, but you have? I've seen ones that were just there. It looks like a little platform or something like that going by. Or I dreamt one in the diagram, like, full of computers and people. I haven't seen that. But basically, a geometry train, like, if you have hundreds and thousands and millions of miles of subway track and some of it dates back 100 years thanks to seismic activity, fire, weather, people, heavy trains. Yes. All this stuff is going to basically pull your tracks out of alignment. And tracks need to be fairly precise to keep trains from, like, hopping off. Right. So to basically keep or find, I should say, the rails that are out of alignment, they have this thing called the geometry train which have your lasers that you're so fond of. And it basically just goes down the track, every track. And these things are running, like, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah. The one in New York runs at all times. Right. Pretty cool. And you would think it would have to yeah, sure. I wonder how long. It takes for a geometry train to hit every township track? Yeah. And that's a good question. I got to take years. But anyway, it just rides along and takes precise measurements of the alignment of the tracks and anything that's over 1.25 inches out of alignment, there's a report that's filed and says, go fix that track. And they also, just as an added bonus, the geometry train finds hotspots using heat sensors and shoots them with fire extinguishers. Right. Like if there's something flammable near the track that could combust. Yeah. Whether it's, like, a doritos bag. A cool ranch doritos bag. Right. Any kind of doritos bag. Well, the dude's probably already toast anyway. If he's on the third rail. He is. And that's a good reference for spontaneous combustion podcast. That's right. In New York City and in many cities, the fare does not cover the cost of running this massive system. Take about half yes. In New York. So if you're complaining about the price of a subway in New York, just remember it could be double yeah. If they were to cover all the costs. So count your blessings, New Yorkers. Yeah. Don't complain to me. And thank New York for big government. Do you like the subway? Tracy points out that the subways and at least the tunnels over the years have been the site of refuge and terror. That was a great set up, Chuck. It's true, though. Yeah, it is. During World War One and Two in London and Paris, I believe, people sought cover against air raids in the subways. By World War I was like that's when they were dropping bricks on each other. Like, really? That's how you would take down a plane? You fly over another airplane and drop a brick and just go right through a wing. And that was that for the plane. Is that it? Yeah. I thought they at least had the little tube, like the and it would shoot something, like, somewhere that's a mortar, but that's ground based. Those are mortars. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess you would still need to take refuge against a mortar. It doesn't have to be a plane. And a mortar comes through an air raid. You want to get technical, but yes. World War II for sure? Yes. During the blitz of London, there are a lot of people underground in the tube seeking help in shelter. That's right. As are the mole people. If you haven't seen the documentary Dark Days, I highly recommended. Is that about the mole people or this is like it's a group of homeless people. They don't identify themselves as mole people. I think mole people is one of those terms that the people above ground made up somewhat sensational. But there are people living underground. Some haven't been up in a long, long time. And this dude made the documentary. I think he actually went underground and lived there for a couple of years to do this oh, yeah. Yeah. So he wasn't like, I'd be down there for a few hours on Wednesday, but then I had an appointment after that, so I need to get back above ground. And then in 1995, everyone remembers the Tokyo sarin gas episode killed twelve people. I'm sure that was incredibly frightening. London, 2005. It was July 7. Oh, yeah. Was that significant? No, that's just how they refer to it. Like, we refer to 911 as 911. Interesting. And then in our own 911, it destroyed subway station and damaged some of the track. I think we talked about that in the 911 Memorial episode. I think you're right. Didn't they preserve it somehow? One of the trains is going to be in the museum. I think so, because that rang a bell to me. I'm going to hit that up in November as well. Oh, man, I can't wait to go to that. Yeah, me too. It's going to be something else. Originally you had tickets, then that became coins. These days you might have an RFID ticket. I think I was in Switzerland. It was like an honor system thing. Really? Yeah. I remember being there, looking around, like, I don't see where you put the ticket in or anything. I think it's just honor system. It was either Switzerland or Sweden. I think it's Switzerland. And I just remember thinking, these people are crazy. Right. You just didn't pay a cent just to teach them a lesson. Yeah. No, I paid my fare. So Chuck? Yeah. Train car. If you are a trained car, how many axles are you going to go through if you're in New York, if you're part of their system in your lifetime? Well, you're going to live about 40 to 50 years. You will go through 24 axles and 24 motors over the span. So that'll be two years. Right. You're going to get gussied up a little. You're going to get 48 wheels over that time. Yeah. Not bad. Not at once. And at the end of your lifespan, they will dump you in the ocean off the coast of South Carolina. Have you seen pictures of it? Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. I found a whole little gallery. It's only like ten pictures on fastcodesign.com. It's called surreal photos of subway cars being thrown into the ocean. It is surreal. It's really neat because you look at that and you're like, no. How can you yes. And then oh, it's good for the environment somehow. Right. As long as they took the gas out first and the oil. All right. So I got some more little fun things. The overhaul and repair shop on Coney Island is where it all goes down. They have over 500,000 shop space. You just counted that fast? Yeah, I wasn't counting each square foot. I got one. And this is where everything goes to get work done in New York. Everything. They can even work on regular trains. They can store 1800 subway cars there. And they have a car wash. Subway car wash, yeah. Okay. They're making extra money. It cleans the exteriors of over 1000 cars once a week. That's 50,000 washes in a year. It's a lot of washes. Then they just came out with a new survey on the New York subway system, and the queue line was ranked. The number one line. Which, where is that? I'm not sure. The queue runs between Coney Island, Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn and Astoria, ditmas Boulevard and Queens. So, in other words, that's the one no one takes. So it's very clean. It's very clean. And for the fourth year in a row, the C train was ranked as the worst. It failed in all four measures. Amount of scheduled service delays caused by mechanical breakdowns, cleanliness, and announcements. Whether or not the announcements, like, or even something you can hear makes sense, or whether it's just garbled mess. See, this is why I can't do it by myself. Yeah. Well, you certainly don't get any help most of the time from the conductor. Yeah. Driver. Yeah. We should know this, I would think. Conductor. Ticket taker. Ticket taker. And then New York ranks number seven in ridership in the world. Tokyo is first. Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Kwang Zhao Where is that? China. Is it? I would imagine that's a Chinese word. I haven't heard of that. Paris, Mexico City and Hong Kong. London is not even in the top ten in ridership, and that's the number one. But you know why? Because World War II happened and everybody got cars afterward. Yeah, that's true. And a lot of subway lines just kind of fell into disrepair and like a whole generation was raised without really using subways. Yeah. And black cabs are so roomy and private. But not just in London. In the United States especially. That's true. Yeah. Because we talked about the La and why the cars become the predominant form of transportation. Yeah. Number of miles traveled by an average subway car in between repairs in New York, 2011, $172,000. Wow. But I think that means they're taking better care of them. Not that they're just shirking their responsibility. Right. New York in 2011, all the subways combined traveled 342,000,000 miles. And in total, New York's 468 stations are only 60 fewer than the rest of the subway systems in the United States combined. Wow. Pretty cool. That's my favorite, for sure. And end to end, they always have these. If you laid the track end to end, new York City would go from New York to Chicago. That's it. I thought for sure. You're going to go around the bars or something. No, just New York to Chicago. Really good, though. Yes. I'm a little disappointed. And the lowest station, if you've ever felt a little weird at 191st street in Manhattan, that's because you are 180ft below ground. Is that crazy? Probably shift ran into a shift problem. They had to go down. You should tell people what that is. Well, it's very hard rock. It's a metamorphic rock, and it tends to flake rather than break, so it's very hard to get through. That's my motto flake don't break. We came up with, like, three mottos and catchphrases in this one. Cut and cover, flake don't break. And I guess don't take the C train. Is that was the issue? Maybe. And the C train is, like it's insult to injury, because I think the AC and E are like the blue line, and the A and the E are doing pretty well, and the C is like, the ugly stepchild. Where is it? Where does it go? Oh, it goes all over. Like, you can get it down in the West Village. And then I believe it goes north and then cuts over somewhere around Midtown, then goes up the East Side, I think. It doesn't go into Brooklyn. I don't think so. Is it the L train? I don't remember. Okay. You know more than I do, man. I missed the old, and I guess they still have some. But the seven train I remember had those old red trains that look like trains. They didn't look like subways. They look like regular locomotives to me. I like my subways to look like subways. Trains should look like trains, smell like poop gum. Apparently in New York, the gum is so bad and some that you can lose your shoe. I can see that. You actually get mired in the gum. Yeah. You got anything else? No. Give up your seat for the ladies. That's what I got to say. That's a big one. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Good going, Chuck. That's a fine ending. If you want to learn more about subway etiquette and the tunnel boring machine and the cut and cover method, you can type in Subway S-U-B-W-A-Y-S into the search bar@houseovers.com. And it'll bring up this fine article by Tracy V. Wilson. And since I said search bar, it's time for listening. Now, this one is an anniversary of two young people in love. We had something to do with that. Okay, guys, I've never written in before. I just thought it would be appropriate, seeing as my boyfriend and I are celebrating our three year anniversary is partly due to you guys. A few years back, Nathan was trying and failing to win over my heart, and then he began striking up conversations about the weirdest things, like abandoned cities, blood pressure, and robots I found this odd at first, but then began to love this quirk of his. It's like she fell in love with us. Let's get real. Yeah. Nathan, he brought up the blood pressure episode. Yeah, well, that's what she says. That's what she said. Long story short, he ended up winning me over. Not long ago, I was poking around his itunes library yeah, that's dangerous. And discovered the source of his information you too we both love the show now and sometimes sneak out of our houses to make spontaneous midnight trips to McDonald's and listen to your show while eating Big Macs in the car. Young love. So sweet like that. Yeah, sweet and terrible for your arteries. From time to time, I'll make him pancakes for dinner and we'll listen. I love that. And we'll listen as we really I do all the cooking. He does, however, get a little agitated whenever I mention that Chuck has a sexy voice. Can you just see him, like, throwing his pancakes and stomping around the apartment? Josh is sexy. And that is from Monique in California. And congratulations, Monique. Yeah. Nathan pancake for dinner. That's right. A couple that listens to S-Y-S-K together stays together. Exactly. Let's see. If we brought you together I want to hear about that, right? Sure. If we brought you and a loved one together or it's strange to you from your family, either way, we want to know about it. You can tweet to us at syskast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstudo. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howard. Stuff works.com."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1231267074262hsw-sysk-body-armor.mp3	How Body Armor Works: A Special Request	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-body-armor-works-a-special-request	Body armor has used by bodyguards, celebrities and soldiers for thousands of years. Tune into this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn how the constant innovation in weaponry has led to a similar evolution in defense and armor.	Body armor has used by bodyguards, celebrities and soldiers for thousands of years. Tune into this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn how the constant innovation in weaponry has led to a similar evolution in defense and armor.	Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=8, tm_isdst=0)	17111833	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. What if you were a major transit system facing cyber attacks so you partner with IBM to keep your data network and apps protected? Now you can tackle threats without coming to a halt. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. Chuck. I was just caught by surprise. How about you? I was caught by surprise as well. I mean, the push of a button and here we are. Stuff You Should Know is what you're listening to and what we're actually doing. A special request. Our first one is fairly rare for us. Okay. Well, yeah, if it's our first one, then it's exceedingly rare. We got a letter from a soldier in Iraq, right. And he says he says, hey, guys, I'm deployed to Iraq right now and just recently subscribed excuse me, to your podcast. They're great to listen to my downtime. I just listened to the newest one about where it's best to get shot. One of my favorites. I think the hands and feet are the best also. So he agrees with us and he wants to request to do one about body armor. We wear the stuff out here in Iraq, and some of the guys would kind of like to know how what we wear works. Donald Anderson and Baghdad. Thank you, Mr. Anderson. It doesn't say, like, Corporal Anderson or whatever battalion. So that's all we have to do. Can we go so far as to call him Donald? Sure. It seemed like a fairly casual email. We're civilians. I think we can do that. Well, we're doing this for two reasons. Number one, he legitimized our theory that the hands and feet are the best place to get shot. Sure. What with him being a soldier in Iraq. If he agrees, then, yeah, we're legitimate. Secondly, Chuck really wanted to do this because he's trying to make up for the fact that his father was a draft dodger. But other than that, that's pretty much the criteria for us to do a special request. Right. My father doesn't listen to these, so I have no chance of being called out on that. Okay, good. And neither do the Quakers. This is actually a thank you to the soldiers over there. Yeah. That's much more succinct. It is. Let's get into it. All right. So we started researching a couple of articles on body armor on the site, and this is what we came up with. Chuck, do you want to lead off here? Sure. Little history of body armor, I guess it's been around for a long time. We're talking thousands of years. It's nothing like the body armor today. No. It's like animal hides or tree bark or something. Right. Yeah. Early on, I think man figured out that hurled objects hurt when they hit your body, and it might be a smart thing to put tree bark or just whatever I can get my hands on. And that evolved eventually into metal. Of course. They had for a really long time. Yes. It worked really well. Because all you're defending yourself against, if you have, like, chain mail, I don't know how many of you, or if you Chuck, ever played Dungeons and Dragons. I did. There's all sorts of different kind of males sure. Armor. Right. And you get more hit points, I believe. I haven't played since it's been a couple of weeks. Right. But anyway, it works because all you're doing is defending yourself against the sword. Right. Sword loses to chainmail every time. Right. But we came up with something, we invented something, and it kind of made armor obsolete. Right. Because armor clearly is bulky, heavy, hard to maneuver. It is. And also, if you get shot with a bullet, it's probably going to go through a metal plate. Right. And so once we really got gunpowder under control, armor isn't. Anybody wearing armor like that is in trouble. Right. But people were running around getting shot, and not necessarily just in the hands or feet. So we needed to come up with something. And finally we come up with modern body armor. Exactly the kind you see Jamie Foxx running around a Baghdad in that one movie that I never saw. Yeah, that one. Like a Kevlar vest. Right. Not bulletproof. No. People call these bulletproof vests, and that is incorrect, actually. Bullet resistant. Right. Bullet resistant is preferred. There's no proof to it. Okay. It's not 100% all the time. They do their best, but they can't claim to be bulletproof. I think Donald's going to find this kind of discomforting. Right. I think they know. Okay. Well, we also probably shouldn't use the word kevlar as a catch all, because that's actually a specific brand name made by Dupont. Right? It is. So that's like calling any copy of Xerox or any kind of pain reliever tylenol. So Kevlar is a specific type of thread, right? Right. It's a fiber. It's a fiber. And pound for pound or ounce per ounce or gram for gram, however you'd weigh it, it's five times stronger than a similar steel strand of fiber correct. Of the same weight. So basically, this is all woven together. Right. I think in the article, it uses a good frame of reference to help understand it. If you think of a soccer goal with the net in the back, when you kick the ball into the net, every piece of the net reacts to it. So even though it hits a very small part, because it's woven together vertically and horizontally, it all absorbs the impact. And it's kind of a similar concept. It's like a big, very tightly woven net that you're wearing. And I guess kind of like if you've ever played tennis, when you hit a ball into the net, the loose net, it's going to go onto the other side, into the net further. Right. But if you keep that net really tight, it's going to bounce off with barely any movement whatsoever. Right. How's your net game these days? It's not so good anymore. Not that good? Yeah. I haven't played in a while. Okay. So there's both a tennis and a soccer analogy, which I think is more than enough, but with Kevlar and other kinds of soft bulletproof vests, we'll get into hard bulletproof vests momentarily. These weeds are so tight that the impact of a bullet is distributed across them. Exactly. So it's layered. There's different layers. They're covered in plastic film. Yes. Sometimes there's a resin there's woven in as well, and then there's sandwich. Each layer is made more rigid with a plastic layer on either side of the Kevlar weave. And then that's that's a layer. And then there's layer upon layer, maybe 14 or 15 layers, depending on how thick it is. Right. The problem is it's like a piece of paper. If you take a piece of paper, you can easily fold it. If you take a ream of paper, it makes it much more difficult to fold. Correct. Such as the case with layer upon layer of bullet resistant material. But obviously, the more you have, the better off you're going to be. Although you want to still be able to draw your gun. You don't want to be like Randy in A Christmas Story. You can't put his arms down. I can't put my arms down. Exactly. You're going to be in big trouble. Yeah. So we've reached the point here's the point of contention. You want protection that can stop a bullet or fragment. Sure, in the case of war. But at the same time, you want flexibility. You want motion. Absolutely. And when we're talking about hard body armor, these are actually like ceramic plates. It's not like ceramic, like a coffee mug. That would be almost useless. Yeah, I would say so. What's it called? Chuck. It's like alumina or something like that. It's a type of ceramic. Right. Let me check on that as you continue. Anyway. That's right. So, Lumina yes. It's a type of ceramic plate, and it's exceedingly hard and it doesn't shatter like a ceramic coffee mug would. And these things, they will stop a bullet. Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed. The problem is they're thick and you only want to wear them when you know somebody's going to be shooting at you. Right. I think the key here to the ceramic plates is they will stop a rifle bullet, whereas your average Kevlar vest soft vest will stop a nine millimeter pistol round. So, like you said, if you know you're going to get shot, which is probably not a good feeling, or if you have a hunch that you're going to get shot, they make a lot of these soft vests now with pockets that you can slip the ceramic plate into and out of, which is good. Right. So if you're walking around Detroit, you can just wear the soft vest. If you're walking around Baghdad, you should probably keep the ceramic plates in at all times. I would say that's a good idea. Okay. All right. So that's the soft body armor, the hard body armor. And Chuck, I actually went a little off. I found another article called liquid body armor. Really? Yeah. Okay. The problem we were talking about flexibility, but also strength. They may have it licked. How's that? There's this stuff called shear thickening fluid. Okay. STF. And basically what it is is it's these tiny little particles of silica. Right. And they're suspended in some kind of slick, oily substance. Polyethylene glycol, I believe is what it's usually used. And so the particles are just sitting there and they're actually repelled by one another. They don't want to be around one another, just kind of taking up space. Okay. So they slide over one another very easily. So it's kind of liquidy. Right? Right. But an impact, actually, it overwhelms the repulsive forces, and all of a sudden, the silica particles form the shield. Really? Yeah, and it happens in a few milliseconds. So, I mean, the moment the bullet starts to touch that vest, it turns into the shield. Wow. But the beauty part is that after the bullets been stopped and bounced off or whatever, this liquid, the silica particles start to repel once more. And now this average ordinary Kevlar vest body armor, it goes back to being stuck on and easy to move in. Wow. How cool is that? That sounds like some Batman stuff. It totally does. And it does, actually. I love it when you bring in the supplemental stuff that you don't even tell me about. Josh, we'll get it. Like, I'm learning. I like to keep you on point. You know you're a pet mom when your camera roll is all pics of your pet. At Halo, we get it because we are pet moms, too. And just like you, we know their nutrition is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Halo is natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science and thoughtfully sourced. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Find Halo at specialty pet stores and online. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? 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You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. Apparently in tests of this what is it? Shear thickening fluid. And actually, our colleague Tracy Wilson used a great example. It's like cornstarch and water. If you put in equal parts, they just kind of it's still liquidy. Right. But you can make it into a ball because you're applying pressure. But when you put the ball back down, it's going to go back into more of a liquidy state. It's very much the same, except not quite. Right. Okay. The beauty thing about shear thickening fluid is that in tests, from what I understand, you need four layers of Kevlar to get the same stopping power with the STF on it to get the same stopping power as 14 layers of plain old, also called neat Kevlar. So it's much more flexible. Right. But it works. Now, is this in use right now or is it still in development? I believe it has exited development and started to go into production. That's great. Yeah. So if you can get your hands on a Kevlar vest, piece of body armor with STF, right. That's the one you want. Right. Because you can draw a gun faster than anybody. Sure. And that's important. I know they say a lot of times that with heavier vests, police officers are less likely to use them. So what good is the vest if it's in your police car? So they try to make them as comfortable as possible so the officers of the law and military be more likely to put them on. Yeah. Well, there's one other aspect that we have to take into consideration that we don't necessarily but manufacturers of bullet resistant body armor should, and that is blunt force trauma. Right. Okay. So both the tennis and the soccer analogy had a commonality. When that ball hits that net, the net gives some sure. You don't want your kevlar. I'm sorry. You don't want your body armor to give. Right. Because it's still touching your body right. And even if it's not piercing, it could do some serious internal damage, I would imagine. Yeah. When we were talking about best place to get shot, we talked about cavitation. Right. And I imagine this would be kind of similar. It'd be like cavitation without a puncture wound. You know, it could probably do some serious damage to soft tissue, maybe even create enough of a shock wave to break bone. Right. They've got this problem lick, though. Body armor manufacturers have this exceedingly tight weave sure to take advantage of, like you said, the horizontal and the vertical weave, and it so efficiently distributes the force of the bullet that you'll feel it, but you actually won't feel where the bullet hit. Your whole torso will feel the impact. Right. They actually twist the wires to fibers I'm sorry, as well. So they're twisted and woven and twisted. So what you get is a really dense, dense weave. Yeah. They go to a lot of trouble. And for good reason. Exactly. All right, so there's some other stuff that's on the horizon, I understand. Things like chicken feathers. Yeah. Did you hear about this? I did. Kevlar works pretty well, but people are always searching for better and better ways to protect our soldiers and officers of the law and citizens. If you'd like one. Yeah. You can definitely walk around with one, if you like. Well, there's one called fiber called vectran, and vetran is about twice as strong as kevlar, which is five to ten times stronger than steel, which is good. They're experimenting with spider silk, believe it or not. Yeah. They've actually genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk. Maybe their hair grows like that. I have no idea, because I don't know where the silk would come out of. The poor goat. Yes, we'll look into that, and I think that's a question of the day right there. Yeah, we'll touch on that. How do you go to these? Spider silk and chicken feathers, as you said, is a possibility. Researchers in Nebraska are spinning these feathers into a cloth, and it turns out it's really sturdy because of the honeycomb texture of the feather. Very cool. Go figure. One day your body armor might be the same thing that's in your pillow. Yes. And to find out how bullet resistant chickens are, you could shoot them with a gun. You could conduct your own field test. I guess you could. All right, well, Chuck, that's body armor, and actually, there's a lot more to it. I would strongly recommend Donald or anyone else who is very interested in it to check it out on our handy search bar. I think this body armor will do. We'll probably bring up some stuff. Absolutely. Well, but before we let you go, how about some listener mail? Sounds good to me. So today, keeping with the bullet thing that we've got going on the body armor, we're going to read a couple of suggestions for where to get shot. Yes. This is one of our recent podcasts. We left one part off. We did both. These are pretty good suggestions, so I'll read them real quick. William Hartel, who is a dentist in St Louis, writes and suggests the mouth is a good place to get shot. He is a dentist, like I said, and during his hospital training, he treated a man who had been shot in the face. When he examined him, it became clear that he had been shot at close range in the cheek. And it basically went through one side, went out the other, never hit any teeth and only did slight damage to the Dorset of his tongue, he said. And obviously two holes in his cheeks. Where's the door from? I don't know. Maybe William can write us back, let us know. The exit side was Valley Bruce, he said, which I would figure, but they basically stitched them up a few stitches and that was all I needed. So the mouth, if you can manage to get shot through your cheeks without it touching anything else, I would agree, except the Dorset. And then we have Lewis from North Carolina. Parenthesis born in Ethiopia. Very interesting. He said the handle for Theot was the best place. I'm sorry we said that, but he suggests the buttocks. And he's not the only one. There was another person who suggested the buttocks. Right. And I know in the podcast we mentioned the bundle of nerves in the Pelvic region. Yeah. And he said if you could manage to get shot in the buttocks and avoid this region, presumably again, like the cheek, maybe from the side, it would go in this cheek and out the other. I would say that's probably not a bad place to get shot either, other than the fact that you wouldn't be able to sit down. You'd have to lay in your stomach for a while. The Dorset of your tongue would remain intact, however. True. So those are both pretty good suggestions from our readers for a good place to get shot. Yeah. And so if you can manage, if you're held at gunpoint to get the cheek in there, or whether it's on your backside or your face, then you might be doing well. I'd still take a foot any day of the week. I'd like that. Not to be challenged. Right, so we want to thank them for writing in and we want to thank Donald, especially our friends in the military serving the United States and Iraq. And all of our friends in the military thinks exactly. Thank you very much. I hope you get this podcast and I hope it finds you well, along with your fellow soldiers and maybe you know what you're wearing. Protecting you right now. Yeah. And if you want to, send an email to us and let us know what you're doing at any given point in time, whether it's walking the streets of Detroit or the streets of Baghdad or whatever, you can email us at stuffpodcast. HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural, science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo elevate at Petco Pet Supplies plus and select Neighborhood Hood Pet stores."
402691fc-121b-11eb-ba6a-43e860b9362d	Short Stuff: Friendly Floatees	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-friendly-floatees	In 1992 more than 28,000 rubber ducks got loose in the ocean and began a decades-long experiment in oceanography.	In 1992 more than 28,000 rubber ducks got loose in the ocean and began a decades-long experiment in oceanography.	Wed, 03 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=307, tm_isdst=0)	10316950	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Ahoy, Mady. This is Short Stuff. This is a fun story. Yeah. You've heard of this before, right? I have. It's about as funny on as an ecological disaster can get. And we are talking about an ecological disaster, and it's one that happens kind of frequently, which is the loss of a shipping container at sea. There's this insurance company, a marine cargo insurance company called TRG, and they estimate that every year, anywhere from 2500 to 10,000 shipping containers you know those big giant shipping containers that double is like an entire semi truck. Up to 10,000 of those just fall overboard into the sea every year. Did they get those out? No, they're gone for good. Up to 10,000 years are falling in every year. That's a problem at some point, right? I guess not. I think we ship that much stuff that they're like. These people are going to have to wait a month and we'll get them some more. No, I mean a problem for the ocean. I thought you meant a problem for the consumer. I mean, over ten years, it's up to 100,000 semi truck shipping containers. 10,000 lying on the ocean. 10,000? What did I say? 100,000? No, that's it. Over ten years, though. Sure. Yeah, I'm sure. It is a problem. Or they always say that a problem is a benefit in disguise. Isn't that the thing? Sure. So they probably make lemonade out of lemons down there. There's a window open. They didn't know about all those metaphors. So you do make a good point. Shipping affects nature. I mean, we talked about it in a noise pollution episode, just how bad the shipping industry is for marine ecosystems. That's right. But we're here to talk about one specific container that had the cutest little ecological spill in history. The Ever laurel was at sea. There was a bad storm. It's January 1992. It made it to port, but it lost a container along the way. And that container contained 28,000 rubber duckies, frogs, beavers and turtles yes. Called friendly floaties. And the doors opened and they were all released into the ocean. Isn't that amazing? So these friendly floaties there was some point, moments after this disaster happened, where all 28,000, almost 29,000 friendly floaties, rubber duckies, rubber turtles, we're all just floating together in this one very local area of the sea. No human, as far as we know, saw this. So you have to imagine it in your mind's eye, but it's easy to do. And it's delightful, in a way. It is delightful. But then they started to disperse, of course, because they're in the ocean. And of the 28,000, 19,000 went south and started showing up in places like Australia and Indonesia. Some others went across the Southern Pacific and west to South America, and the rest headed north. And it's cute, but it is an environmental disaster. Somebody wrote a book called Moby duck, which is even cuter. But another guy named Dr. Curtis Ebbsmeier said, you know what? I'm going to make some lemonade out of this because I study ocean currents and all of a sudden I have 28,000 little specimens floating around and I can see if I'm right about what I think the currents do down there. Yeah, because those oceanographers usually use, like, buoy transmitters, and those things are expensive and difficult to distribute and put out to sea. Now, they had 28,000 of these things that they could basically use as stand ins for those buoys as long as you could kind of keep track of them. But Ed Smyer went the other route. He's like, no, I'm going to make predictions based on my models, and then we'll see if these things turn up where the models predict. And starting in 1996, he predicted that the first friendly floaties would start showing up in Washington State. I think he was a UW professor, so he talked about Washington specifically, and he was correct. They started showing up in 1996. And that definitely caught the attention of the media from that point on. I wonder if when it happened, he was like, oh, man, I've been wanting to release 30,000 rubber duckies for years now, and they just won't let me do it because it's not safe. I would guess he had those fantasies in his darkest moment. So let's take a break and think about that and come back and talk more about the cutest ecological disaster of all time. So they found the first ones of these in Citcalaska at the end of and then I think it took months and years for these things to kind of wash all over the world. And this was that guy's big chance what's his name? Dr. Curtis Ebbsmeier. Ebsmeyer's. Chance to see if his predictions are right. You're right. And he was right. Remember, he started predicting them that they would show up in Washington. He was right about the first one. I didn't see how right he was about the rest. He was right about the rest. Almost exactly. Like one of the great triumphs of the friendly floaties saga is that Dr. Curtis Ebbs. Meyer's models were like, these things are dead on. It actually advanced oceanography, as far as I can tell. Nice. So a lot of them ended up, like you said, all over the world. But the ones that really kind of gripped everybody the most were the ones that ended up in the North Atlantic, up near Scandinavia, and then eventually down to the UK. And the reason that these are so gripping is because they think that those are the ones that move northward from this wreck site. And they went up past Alaska, where the first ones were found, up into the Arctic where they became frozen in ice. And because of the conveyor belt by ocean currents, even up that far north, the ice eventually moved its way eastward, and then as the ice got into warmer and warmer waters, it started to melt, which freed those friendly floaties, which means that they made their own kind of reversed Northwest Passage through the Arctic, which people have been trying to do for hundreds of years now. The friendly floaties figured out you just have to get trapped in ice for ten years. Yeah. They should not probably have gone north to come south into Europe. Normally. There's no way he predicted that, right? I believe he did. Really? Yes. He predicted that they would start showing up in the UK about ten years after the disaster, and they did. And I think it was because he had predicted they would go north and it would take that long to make it across. Well, another good thing about this whole thing was that it did bring some more attention to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, something we talked about in the very early days of stuff you should know that may not have even been me. No, it was. Of course it was. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. And we've talked about that garbage patch a few times, I think, but some of them obviously made their way there and just became a part of that disaster. And so anytime a little bit of media attention is going to come that way, that's a good thing. Yeah. Between that guy Donovan Hohn's book Moby duck and Curtis Ebbs. Meyer's Press that he got from his models and predictions, I feel like that might have been what introduced the average person or the media to the Great Pacific Garbage Path. Oh, yeah. Did I pick it up? I think this may have been what did it actually, because it really alerted people to just how long plastic lasts in the ocean, because those ones that entered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, they're never going to make land, they're going to stay stuck in that circular current, and then over time, they're just going to break down further and further into smaller and smaller plastic. It doesn't biodegrade, it photo degrades. So, chemically speaking, it never breaks apart. It just gets smaller and smaller and then it enters the food chain. And once it's in there, it sticks around for a really long time, like hundreds and hundreds of years, which that's where that ecological disaster part came from. Right. I think that these things were supposed to I think he said, besides those that are out there forever, he said, I think the last ones will probably wash up somewhere in the UK. And he looked into his crystal ball and said, Maybe 2007. And there was one found in Cornwall in 2007, so he's right about that. And they become kind of hot tickets on ebay, right? Yeah. I think at least a grand is the most that's been paid for one. That's definitely a first year's friendly floaty that was in that shipping container in 1992. What do you do with that thing, though, that you paid $1,000 for? You hope somebody comes over and notices it on the shelf and just conversation starter, I guess. I don't know why else you'd want to possess it. There's like a whole group of beachcombers. It's like a really big deal that I think that would be a prize. Okay. But I think being a beach comer, you'd want to find it yourself rather than buying it on ebay. Who knows? Yeah, I'm not going to yok anyone's. Yummy. No, definitely not. If you need that to get a good conversation going in your life, then more power to you. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, that's it for Short stuff, everybody. And that's it for Friendly Floaties, because they've all made land or photodegraded into almost nothing by now. Since I said that short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…psychedelics.mp3	Can you treat mental illness with psychedelics?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-you-treat-mental-illness-with-psychedelics	Hallucinogenic drugs are currently illegal, but they were once commonly used in psychological treatment. In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the rise and fall of psychedelics in treating mood disorders -- and why they're starting to gain favor again.	Hallucinogenic drugs are currently illegal, but they were once commonly used in psychological treatment. In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the rise and fall of psychedelics in treating mood disorders -- and why they're starting to gain favor again.	Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:33:08 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=16, tm_min=33, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=294, tm_isdst=0)	40470250	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Whoa. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Cheeks Bryant. Cheeks. Yeah. Man. I wanted to start this one out like a twelve year old, so that's what I'm going with. A twelve year old on acid, maybe. Which has happened before in France, actually. Really? Thanks to our old friends at CIA. Oh, those kids. They dust the whole town wow. To see what would happen. And one kid came at his grandmother and tried to strangle her. Really? Yeah. I can't remember the name of the town. You find that funny? Well, no. People were, like, showing up at the hospital. A lot of it was funny in that all these 1950s Frenchies are losing their stuff for no apparent reason. Right. But the suicides that resulted from that not very funny. Before we get started, I think we should do an official COA for this one. I think that is a very good idea, because what Josh and I are about to talk about are illegal drugs, and we are not endorsing the use of these. They are illegal after all. We'll probably say this later on, too. Yeah. But we just find it fascinating that they used to be used for certain things, and they're starting to be used again in certain scientific research labs for these things. It is extremely fascinating. Which is what we're talking about, right? Exactly. I guess this could be a follow up to our MKUltra cath. It's a follow up and it's an epilogue and a prologue. Yes. Very nice, because we kind of came into the CIA LSD MKUltra podcast, like, right in the middle of the history of LSD. Pretty much. Yeah. Well, we toured the beginning, but one of the things after 1943, when Albert Hoffman right. Yes. The chemist who created LSD LSD 25. Yeah. It was his 25th attempt and tried it on himself intravenously, as I understand it, he injected it. It says first he took it by mistake. Yeah. Because it was the blood thinner. And then he took it for real. Yeah. After that first bike ride home, he was like, Got to do some more. Can I read his quote, please? I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature yes. To create dr. Hoffman. Yeah. And he was just some Swiss guy, some chemist. He was the first person to come up with a synthetic hallucination gym back in 1914. A German chemist who worked for Merck, the pharmaceutical company, came up with MDMA, better known as Ecstasy. That far back, huh? Yeah. And here's a tip for you, Chuckers. Anytime. According to the Associated Press, you write about a designer drug and use it by its designer name, you capitalize it. So Ecstasy is always capitalized the word ecstasy when you're talking about the drug. Yes, sure. Yeah. And not just the euphoric feeling you get from life. That's different. Yes. That's lower case. Okay. But it should be all caps. Yeah, sure. So it was MDMA was created. It's crazy. Yeah. And I guess it served as a it's not a catalyst because I think it's changed, but it was to be used in the synthesis of other chemicals. Right. And it kind of sat on the shelves for a little while until somebody along the way, and then I wonder what happens if I take this stuff? And they did. And the CIA again looked at it, wanted to see what it could do, passed it up. And a guy by the name of Alexander Shulgen, right. Yes. He's a Dow chemist. And in 1978, at the age of 74, he published a study on the euphoric effects of MDMA. It was the first time anyone had ever published a study. What year? 1978. Wow. But he was 74, and he first noticed the euphoric effects because he liked to take it and go to cocktail parties. Of course he did. Yeah. So he's like, hey, man, this stuff is the bomb, and here's my study on it, here's my findings, and lets everybody start taking this. So he starts giving it to his friends, including some psychiatrists. Did he give out Pacifiers? Not yet. Okay. That's coming, though. That's very close. 1978. Past fires came about 1988. Okay. So shelgan gives some to a friend who's a psychiatrist. Right. Some of the more avant garde psychiatrists start giving it to their patients, and it gets called Adam for a little while. While this is going on, it's being used by established psychiatrists. A mysterious financier in Dallas, Texas, finds out about this stuff and starts taking it, hires an underground chemist and has it made himself, and then starts selling it at clubs all over Dallas. And so this illicit use of this substance, simultaneous to its emergence on the club scene in about the mid 80s, led to the outlaw of MDMA. We'll get into it more, but the point is to this very long and rambling intro. Both of these drugs and others were legal at one time. We're put to good use, beneficial use, and then outlawed, possibly unfairly. And then now we're starting to see them come back into use. Hallucinogens being used to treat mental illness and mental harm in legitimate circles. Very legitimate. Quick question. Was that Dallas person? Was that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones? I don't know. I don't think anybody knows who it is. Kind of start, maybe. Yeah. I think, to begin with. So, Josh, you mentioned the CIA. I do want to point out it wasn't just the Americans, the Canadian government and British. It works. Britain's. Mi Six also experimented with LSD. And between 1950 and 65, 40,000 people all over the world had been treated with LSD and treatments. Yeah. Kerry Grant. Yeah. Can we go back to Hollywood? Yeah. So a couple of guys set up shop arthur Chandler. What was the other guy's name? Hartman. Mortimer Hartman, who was a radiologist, took acid Hartman and said, you know, I'm going to get into psychiatry. These guys set up a shop called the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills. Yes. Right in the middle of Beverly Hills. And this is back in the day when things were clean living going on aside from the rampant alcoholism and cigarettes being smoked. Yeah. Adultery. Probably some marijuana going on here, there. But that was among the hop heads. Yeah, exactly. So he sets up a couple of rooms with a couch and starts booking patients at a rate of, like six or 8 hours a session, depending on what was going on with the person. And five days a week they were book solid $100 a pop. Which is a lot of money back then. Sure. And I guess that included the drugs. The drugs and the time that you were there, right? Yeah. So they would sit with you. They would give you some blinders to block out distractions and then you would go into sort of like the more meditative sort of acid trip, essentially. You were trip tripping Hard because you were on pharmaceutical grade LSD produced by the Sandok Company. Yeah. We're talking about Alice Huxley, novelist. And actually he died tripping. Did you know that? Really? Yeah. He had throat cancer, I think. And the last thing he ever wrote was a note to his wife requesting such and such milligrams of LSD or micrograms of LSD injected intramuscularly. Really? And that was about 6 hours before he died. So he died tripping and a Grateful Dead record. That was his last request before the Grateful devil's Around Chucking. Screenwriter Charles Bracket took it. Director Sidney Lumet. Is it Lamet or lament? Lament, I think. Okay. I always said lemay, but I think I'm wrong. He took it a few times, went through sessions, called it wonderful. He reexperienced his own birth, which apparently a few people did. I'd never heard of that. I haven't, either. And Claire Booth Loose was a playwright married to Time magazine publisher Henry Lewis. She was also an ambassador and possibly an agent for the US. Government. And they both took acid so much that Henry Lewis in Time magazine said, we need to write about this. This is awesome. Yeah. There's a lot of good press that Time magazine gave LSD in the 50s as basically a cure all. And again, Carrie Grant got into it big time. Apparently. He had at least 100 trips, I believe. Yeah. Let's talk about him for a second. Because he was one of these guys that carefully constructed his persona. He worked very hard. Apparently the line he always gave us, a lot of people want to be Carry Grant and I'm one of them, indicating that this suave Mr. Cool persona was completely fabricated and created by himself so he could get the fame and everything. But deep down he suffered as a human until he started taking acid. Right. Well, he had some pretty interesting revelations, one of which I read, that somebody thought to write down the stuff, that some of the insights he had, some were kind of deep. Other were like, if I have to look at a man, he should be required to comb his hair and brush his teeth and wear a clean shirt. That was an acid revelation. Yes, it was interesting. So it kind of ran the gamut, but, yeah, he became a real devotee of LSD. Ex wife, too. Yeah. Betsy. Well, she got him into it, right? I think so. Who wrote part of this? We're basing this part on a Vanity Fair article. Really bad article. Yeah. It's called carrying the sky with diamonds. But he was a huge advocate for LSD. He wasn't the only one, but he lived to see it outlawed and public sentiment turned against it. Right. Yes. It's like MDMA, psilocybin, magic mushrooms. And you could say that Timothy Leary almost single handedly led to the tremendous suffering of a lot of people who might otherwise have been helped by LSD. Ironically, with his naive bravado of the establishment, just needs to get over its hangups and we should all take acid, whether or not you agree that that's a good idea. It's a stupid thing to say. Sure. Leery was originally a Harvard psychiatrist, right? Yes. And he started taking, I think, mushrooms. And then he eventually started taking LSD and was fired from Harvard because he turned into a hippie. And that was pretty much the beginning of the end of LSD. Yeah. They may have continued to use LSD as treatment for mental patients, mental illness and depression, if not for Timothy Leary, who was trying to spread the word about acid. That's right. Back to Kerry Grant real quick. He was so into it, Josh. He had a couple of stories written about him in 1959 in look magazine, the Curious Story Behind the New Carrie grant gave a glowing account of LSD. And then this is the best. The following year. The Good Housekeeping magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval in the 1960 issue and they called it the Secret of Grant second youth. I want to get a copy of that magazine. How awesome would that be? Yeah. And that's kind of like the theme of this podcast is so weird, that these things were considered incredibly wonderful and benign, and now they're just viewed as just so they're evil and they're outlawed simply because they were made illegal or prohibited. Right. And again, there's kind of a movement toward saying, hey, maybe Timothy Leary did give this a bad name. Maybe that underground chemist in Dallas really kind of put a terrible spread on this. And we should look at these again. Right. Can I tell one more story? Yes. From Hollywood of the 1960s. Yes. Esther Williams, famous diva actress from the NGM studio friend of Kerry Grants, called Carrie Grant up after these articles and said, hey, can you introduce me to your doctor, Dr. Hartman? He did. So at the time, she was aging, just had gone through a divorce. Her husband left her with huge debt with the IRS, and she was still struggling with the death of her 16 year old brother. She goes in the office, she takes acid, does her session, goes home to her parents, still on acid, has dinner with them, and then goes into the bathroom mirror, says good night to her parents, looks in the mirror, and I'm going to read this quote. I was startled by a split image. One half of my face, the right half was me. The other half was the face of a 16 year old boy. The left side of my upper body was flat and muscular. I reached up with my boy's hand to touch my right breast and felt my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm. And I understood perfectly in that moment when my brother died, I took him into my life so completely, he became part of me. Yeah. That's a pretty huge thing to understand and pretty jarring way to come to terms with that, right? Yeah. But that's what they're finding out now, though, is that these people are having these breakthroughs in the throws of their final days of, let's say, cancer, and they have these epiphanies before we get to that. So LSD is outlawed we're following a timeline here. Yes. LSD is outlawed in, I think, 65, something like that, at the latest. 1970. Yeah. They shut down the shop in Beverly Hills. Yeah. And Sando stopped making it. It was outlawed and pushed underground. MDMA made it until 1985. And MDMA's story is linked very closely to a guy named Doctor George Ricuarte, who is Johns Hopkins researcher. This floored me. So in 1985, about the time the DEA is reeling from being caught totally unaware by the crack epidemic, and basically a lot of people think looking for a whipping post. Sure. They start considering outlawing MDMA at that moment. This guy, Dr. George Ricardo, publishes a study that he says, this drug depletes your serotonin levels permanently causing brain damage. Right. It can kill you. Yeah, that came out later. Yes. Okay, so this guy, who is unknown at the time, publishes the study, starts to get National Institute of Drug Abuse funding. So basically, this is his job. He starts a career creating scientific evidence in favor of banning drugs. Leads to the outlaw of MDMA. Right? Yes. That wasn't quite enough. They scheduled it. The feds went after MDMA even harder. And in 2002, they came up with this thing called the Rave Act. That's okay. What does Rave stand for? Reducing Americans vulnerability to ecstasy. I wonder how long they sat around looking at the word rave, saying, we got to make it fit. We got to make it fit. Yeah. So the rave act basically said, if you are a club owner and somebody gets caught taking ecstasy or has ecstasy at your club, we're going to shut down your club. Right. It was a huge law. And it was bolstered by another study by Doctor George Ricardo that found that he tested on ten monkeys. Yeah, this is a big one. He injected them with MDMA. A bunch of them went psychotic. Some of them showed early signs of Parkinson's all of a sudden. And two of them died almost immediately after being injected. Yeah. So people started asking questions about this, like, what are you talking about? People have been taking this drug forever and this has never happened. Right. So they started kind of going after recording, and they found out that he had actually injected them with methamphetamine, not DMA. The first thing that tipped them off is he injected them because people were like, well, you don't inject ecstasy. So that's kind of a weird way to do it. Right. And then they found out it was methamphetamines, which he blamed on a mislabeling of a drug shipment, which they traced back and they went, no, the label right here. Yeah. The drug provider is like, don't blame us, pal. It's pretty clear. So by this time, the rave act has already passed. The reveal didn't get passed, but something that included that was passed. By that time, the study that Recorder produced was published in Science, the journal Science. That's as highbrow as you get as far as scientific journals. Right. And finally he gets beaten up enough that he prints a full retraction. Yes, it came clean. Science runs this retraction, saying, the whole study that I produced right. Just forget it ever existed. But that doesn't happen much. No, it doesn't. That's very unusual. Yeah. So required a I get the impression is kind of this it just kind of seems like the scientific community views him largely as a show for the government. Yeah. There's a couple of articles that he shows up in on Reason, in Reason magazines we're checking out. Yeah. And you know, the other interesting thing about that whole story about the big fake study he did with methamphetamines as ecstasy is that the Parkinson's Foundation, parkinson's researchers said, I don't think that that's true. That doesn't make much sense to us either, that they would show signs of Parkinson's. Right. So they looked into it. People went about reproducing a study, and the people who run the Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a statement saying, ecstasy does not do this. So they basically came out in favor of ecstasy. It's kind of neat to watch from the outside because there's this guy who's, again, kind of viewed as a shill for the government who's beating up on this drug that a lot of people who are also in the scientific community feel as being unfairly outlawed. Sure. And so they're kind of beating up on him and retaliation. It's kind of neat to see egg heads beat up on one another. Yeah. Nerd fights. And the Nida went so far that the Nida just kind of quietly pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy, and I was like, let's just take this down off the website. After the retraction in 2003, we'll rewrite it. I'm sure it's back up now. Sure. As something else. But it doesn't include immediate death and Parkinson's disease, I would imagine. That's. Right. So Timothy Leary dies. He gets shot into space. He's out of the picture entirely. Everybody gets sick of hippies, generally. Yeah. George Ricardo, basically the guy who's single handedly getting ecstasy outlawed. His work comes into great question, and people start going back and looking at MDMA again, and they start looking at LSD again. And that's where we find ourselves right now. Slowly but surely, people are starting to run studies on whether or not you can use these hallucinogens to treat mental illness. And the results are pretty astounding, actually. Yeah. And you know where they're leading the charge? In Switzerland and Los Angeles. Yeah. All these years later, same place. Yes. Hippie freaks. Josh I think in Switzerland, in solothern Switzerland, they have been experimenting with LSD psilocybin, which you might know is magic mushrooms. Yes. Ketamine. You might know Special K. That kind of surprised me that that was in there. Yeah. I hadn't heard much about that one either. And they're getting these studies published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience and other leading industry peer reviewed publications. Yeah. It's not all under the table backroom experiments. Oh, no. These are very heavily overseen. You have to be a very legitimate researcher to get government approval. They're not funded, though. They say they're still having a hard time with funding, and they're just sort of looking to get some restrictions loosened. They're not saying, make all this stuff legal. Right. They're not battling a legalization front at all. No. But the reason why so many people are kind of starting to put their reputations on the line, it's because the results that they're seeing so we have antidepressants, right? Yeah. They take weeks to kick in. Sure. They have all sorts of side effects. Sure. And what we're seeing in these studies now are that the things like Ketamine, MDMA, LSD are having, like, a huge impact right out of the gate. There's one study that came out in July, I believe, and it found it was a study of twelve people who were diagnosed with PTSD. Post traumatic stress Disorder. Yeah. That's one of the big ones. Yeah. That's huge that they're looking at. It's what we used to call shell shock. You go through traumatic experience and you relive it over and over again, and it's debilitating. They found that of the twelve people in the study, ten of them, after going through the study, after taking MDMA, no longer met the criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD afterward. Ten of the twelve? Yeah. And from my understanding in most of these studies is it's not like you have to stay on ecstasy your whole life. A lot of people have these epiphanies and they quit taking it and they have changed their outlook. Is that right? Yes. That's the impression I'm getting, too. Ketamine, apparently, is good for depression in the same way. Just a very tiny dose. I can get you over severe clinical depression or that's the results, the early results, we should say. Yeah. And everything from quitting smoking to suicidal thought. Yeah. Cluster headaches. Yeah. Harvard studying. Those are migraines for men, right? What they call migraines. I think so. I know they're so debilitating that you consider suicide, or not everyone does, obviously, but it's just this awful, awful pain. You can't leave your house. You get to sit in a dark room, and so it's helping there. And what I thought was interesting johns Hopkins, you might have heard of them. Sure. Little reputable institutions those are required from was it they did an experiment where they gave psilocybin to emotionally stable individuals like this wasn't even people that were mentally ill, people that had never taken hallucinogens before, which is interesting that you would be I think they had a 64 year old that signed up for this. Yeah. It's crazy. And they said age is 24 to 64. And they said the experiment a year later, they said the experience is one of the most meaningful and spiritual experiences of their entire lives. Yeah. And those were mentally stable folks. Sure. And this is a year on. Right. It still had an impact on them. They're also finding that OCD and basically mood disorders are the primary target of hallucinogenic treatment. Right. Psychedelics for treatment. And the reason being, we think, is because they target serotonin in the brain. This is another reason why they're not addictive. They don't employ the reward circuit in the brain. Right. Which is how we become addicted to things we're flooded with. Dopamine remember? It just affects the mood circuits. Is that right? Serotonin. And we don't really have a very good grasp on serotonin and exactly how that works, but we do know that there's correlations between high levels of serotonin or low levels of serotonin and depression. Right. And we know that using antidepressants, which block the re uptake of serotonin reduces symptoms of clinical depression in people. So we know that serotonin is in there somewhere. Yes. We know that the more serotonin you have, the better, generally. Or low serotonin bad. Right. And then we also know that hallucinogens target this somehow. That's pretty much where the research stands right now. It makes you wonder, where would we be if LSD and MDMA hadn't been in the wilderness for the last few decades? Well, yeah, they may have a pill, like a low dose pill, because a lot of these studies, just so you know, back in Carry Grand State, that means it was full on acid trips, but a lot of these, like the psilocybin pills, they'll give you a very low dose. So I get the feeling that it's not like this huge mushroom trip that a lot of these patients are going through, because it said 80% of the people recognized when they did not have the placebo. So if it wasn't, then it was probably a pretty low dose. Yes, would be my guess. If everything was legalized and MDMA came to be prescribed for just happiness. Right. Would you take a happy pill that was legal and didn't have side effects? Not to say MDMA doesn't have side effects. There's like, basically the three days after a depression that follows when your serotonin levels are replacing themselves. I don't think I would, because there are quote unquote, happy pills now and it's not like I'm against antidepressants or things like that, because people definitely benefit from those who need them, but I don't need that kind of thing, so I would not. Sir, you are not alone, Chuck. There was a survey conducted for this BBC series on Britain of British people that found that 79% of them said that they would not take a happy pill that was legal and had no side effects. It's interesting. Yeah. Because I think that for a large segment of the population, the idea of synthesizing happiness is untoward. Yeah, it's a little weird. I mean, that's not to say I'm a square and I don't like to get down. Another aspect, Josh, we're talking right now about literally the effect it has on your brain and your serotonin levels and your moods. Right. They've also found that patients, cancer patients in particular, who consume hallucinogens or people with just traumatic events from earlier in their life, they have the ability to relive some of these memories and events from their past. They can unlock buried traumatic episodes, deal with them psychologically, put them to rest and come out the other side with a new understanding, free from these demons. Right. You remember in the Hypnosis episode where we were talking about how the way it's viewed now is that you're accessing the subconscious more easily, like popping open a control panel. This is what they're seeing with MDMA, apparently, you are able to access things from a very empathetic way. I think the term I've heard for it is called a psychotherapeutic catalyst. Kickstart right things. And I think one researcher called it it's psychotherapy sped up what a psychiatrist called it. Yeah, it's like psychotherapy on acid. So LSD specifically hasn't been the greatest friend to everybody who's ever taken it. Yeah, sure. And what's funny in this article that's on the site, can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? Tom Shepherd's has to go to the 60 psychedelic rock scene to find examples of people who have had a bad time on acid. And apparently what the conventional wisdom is, if you are predisposed to mental illness, LSD can exacerbate that if you have a bad trip, you're going to have a really bad trip because you're already predisposed of mental illness. Yeah. He's brian Wilson and Sid Barrett as the two examples. Yeah. And those are stellar examples. They really, I got to say. But they're also counterintuitive to what we're seeing with PTSD. You are already suffering from a mental illness. So here's some MDMA. Right? Probably LSD would be horrible to give to a PTSD survivor. Yeah, right. I would say so. And what else, chuck, can we talk about Pamela Sakura? Sure. Yeah. It's a very interesting story. This is a woman, aged 57 at the time of this article, who was in the final stages of colon cancer. She had outlived her prognosis. She was anxious and depressed. She was worried about her family, her husband, and what they were going to do without her. It was not a good life. She was living here at the end, and she was prescribed antidepressants, of course, didn't work. Didn't do a thing for her. So she volunteered for an experiment at UCLA in 2005 and started taking psilocybin, the magic mushroom pill in pill form. She had a lot of breakthroughs. They brought her husband in at the end of one of the sessions, and he said, there's my Pammy. She was just beaming with light, and I haven't seen her that joyous in so long. She was totally alive and happy, and she continued to take it until she didn't need it anymore. She had these breakthroughs. And then all of a sudden, her husband and Pamela were going to concerts. They went hiking at the Grand Canyon. They went on vacation. They did all these things that she hadn't been doing in a long time because of these epiphany she had under the influence of psilocybin. And sadly, she died. Well, she had cancer. Yeah, that's what she died from in 2006. And her husband said she died in his arms, but her husband was very appreciative. And they actually did a benefit about a week before she died for the institute that was doing this work at UCLA. So it's pretty interesting. Yeah, definitely. One of the applications that they're finding is end of life care for using MDMA or LSD or psilocybin. Sure. We're Special K, apparently. What about this ibogaine? They're finding the ibogaine works really well. Ibogaine is from a hallucinatory root plant in Africa, I believe. And they're finding that you go on a 36 hours trip, that's a long time. But they're finding that it's really effective in breaking addiction and, like, serious addictions, too, like heroin, cocaine. So being on this stuff just for 36 hours creates a break in the addiction cycle itself. Sure. But what they're finding that's most notable about it is there's a lack of withdrawal symptoms that you see in every other type of crazy addiction removal. Especially with heroin. Like heroin, you're supposed to have physical withdrawal, withdrawal symptoms, and people. Who are taking eyeball gain are not experiencing that like they would if they tried to kick the habit without it. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, it is very remarkable. It's very interesting. We should probably say, I don't know if we have yet, but this podcast is in no way an endorsement of going out and buying yourself some street drugs, seeing what happened. It's a study of what we find to be very fascinating, the fact that there's been a resurgence in this. And these qualified doctors, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, they're saying we should look into this stuff. Yeah. And they definitely are. And they're getting some very interesting results. What about the AA guy? We should mention that real quickly. That was pretty funny. Oh, yeah. Bill Wilson. Yeah. One of the co founders of AA. Yeah. He apparently took LSD in the 50s. Was it? Yeah. This is after long after he was sober from alcohol, I think. Oh, had it. Yeah. So he takes LSD in the it's like, this is really helpful. So I think everybody who comes into AA should take LSD, and they were like, you should probably not do that. They talked about it, but the reason why he found it helpful is that hallucinogens part of a twelve step program is to really reflect on past wrong doings and then elucidate them to another human being. And apparently LSD, MDMA, these other drugs help. They serve as a catalyst for that process, tap into that. That's why Bill Wilson thought this is really helpful, because again, it's like I got therapy sped up. Fascinating. Very fascinating. I will say this, though. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, even though we're not saying, oh, you should go out and do these things, I will say that some chemically created in a lab pill called an antidepressant. What's the difference? The difference is, I think, in my opinion, from what I've seen, one is marketed and legal and the other is illegal. It's as simple as that. One is made by Merck and one is not made by Merck, but Merck used to make this, too, which is ironic. Public sentiment counts for everything. Yeah. It's the same reason the alcohol. You can go into a bar and get completely wasted out of your mind and get in a car, but you can't walk into a bar and smoke a joint. Or shoot heroin. Or shoot heroin. And we're not lobbying for anything. It's just interesting that the things that society has deemed acceptable alcoholism is just fine. Well, it's not just fine, but it's legal and you can do it right. Even though it kills all these people. And this is not acceptable. It's funny how we've evolved to think some things are evil and some things are just great. I wonder what the future holds, Josh. I wonder myself. We'll find out. Yes, we will. If we live that long. That is about it for this one. You should probably check out. Can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? On the site. Be sure to check out Carrie in the sky with Diamonds. Vanity Fair article. Type in George Ricuarte R-I-C-U-A-R-T-E in the Reasons website. That will bring up some cool stuff. There's a killer Time magazine article from, I think, 2000 or 2001 on Ecstasy on MDMA. It's called the Happiness and Appeal. Something like that. Josh from the future, we are in New York right now, but tonight, Thursday, the 21 October, I know that our producer and confidant and then mother Jerry will be at a fundraiser for the co ed, the Cooperative for Education, right? Today. Yeah. Tonight, if you're in Atlanta and you are about to pop another chef Lonely Hearts frozen dinner for one and drink a bottle of wine for two by yourself and you're looking for love in the Atlanta area, stop what you're doing, grab $20 and go to the Metropolitan Club in Alfareta. Yes. From seven to 10:00 p.m.. Tonight, Thursday, October 21, coed is holding their Fall Fiesta atl fundraiser. And it's going to be awesome. Right? The $20 buys you that wine that you're going to drink by yourself. Better wine, probably, yes. And you get to drink it amongst friends. Meet Jerry. There's also going to be food. Better food. Yes. Entertainment and all sorts of chances to win or auction bid. Right. That's the proper verb. Yeah. They're auctioning off cool prizes like African safaris and signed sports memorabilia and stuff like that. Yes. And you never know, you could find love there. We're making zero guarantees whatsoever, but it's worth a shot, isn't it? Yes. If we weren't out of town right now, we would be there tonight. Yes, we would. So again, if you don't remember who Coed is coed is the great nonprofit that took us to Guatemala and we did a two part podcast on it, which is awesome. And they pull money together to buy books for schools in Guatemala, which then in turn rent the books. And that rental fee is put into an escrow account, which after five years is substantial enough to buy all new textbooks. So what? They start as a self sustaining system of ownership of textbooks and it has a huge effect. It's not just textbooks. They do computer labs, too. So if you want more information on Coed or the Fall Fiesta atl tonight, go to their website, www.coeduc.org. Right? That's right. All right, let's do this. That's it, man. Nice job, buddy. I guess it's time now for a listener mail, right? Yes, I have a listener mail. Josh from RIA. And this is about octopus or octopi. We were corrected. The octopus is not right. But she says it. Octopi is so right. Well, we have these people saying actually the Latin thing. Hi, guys. Your podcast on octopi made my day today. Thank you. I work as an aquarist at a san Francisco Aquarium. And one of my favorite responsibilities is our cephalopod gallery. Nice. I get to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods, make sure all of our eight legged friends stay out of trouble. And I'm currently teaching a two spot octopus how to open a jar to get his favorite food, which is live crabs. I'm right there with you, Mr. Octopus. It was great to hear someone besides myself get a little too excited about these critters. We got great feedback on this. People love the octopus. These guys are so freaky. The story about Lucretia medieval especially, cracked me up. I work with the GPO. That's the giant Pacific octopod that might give her a run for her money. For the past few weeks, I've been walking around with what my colleagues call octopus kisses up the length of my arms. But I'm afraid my husband is getting a little suspicious about the number of ickies I've been acquiring. So that's from the little suckers, right? The little suckers. Clearly, these were given to me while I tried to remove the individual from blocking the flow to his tank and stop his flooding of the entire aquarium. It's never a boring day with cephalopods in your life. Guys, thanks for all the great podcast. If you're ever in San Francisco, one of my favorite places, Josh, yeah. Let me know, and I'll see if I can't work out some behind the scenes cephalopod goodness. Nice. And that is from RIA. And she says, and don't worry, by the way, I have trouble pronouncing hectocodolis as well. And I've taken the calling in the sperm tentacle. Sperm tentacle works. Spermical is what she says. She says it's time to rename that organ. Yeah. Well, thanks. RIA, right? Yes. Thank you. My dad always said life is better with cephalopods in it. Really? Yeah. If you have a fantastic saying that your father, mother, grandfather, some old timing person told you we want to hear it. Wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom, and then send it to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by The Reinvented thousand and twelve. Camry, it's ready. Are you? Yeah."
3fe52316-121b-11eb-ba6a-138116e81819	Short Stuff: Calamity Jane	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-calamity-jane	Calamity Jane is group with the legends of the Wild West. Who was she really? A tough woman who made her way in a tough world from the age of 12.	Calamity Jane is group with the legends of the Wild West. Who was she really? A tough woman who made her way in a tough world from the age of 12.	Wed, 04 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=216, tm_isdst=0)	12567656	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Dave. And this is short stuff. So giddy up, partner, or else Calamity James going to shoot you in the foot. Did you watch Deadwood? No. I tried, tried to, and I was like, I don't have the emotional investment for this. Okay. Calamity Jane was one of the great characters on the TV show Deadwood, great character of the Old West. And this is a tough one to research because when you're researching some of these people from this era of the Old West, you start to realize and historians admit as much that it's hard to get to the real truth because nobody really knows. A lot of the information we have on these characters from back then are very much written by people who wrote their BIOS for the Wild West shows they did, which are obviously going to be changed and pumped up and it's just hard to get the real story. But Calamity Jane is worth talking about so far as how much we know about her. Yeah, and she actually wrote an autobiography, which apparently was even more pumped up and full of it than the dime store novels that were written about her. But the point of that is that she was a legend in her own time, quite honestly. In actuality. Yeah, I'm not going to use the L word, but she was born Mary Jane Canary, which is a great name in and of itself, but she does have one of the all time great nicknames, calamity Jane, or Calamity Jane, depending on where you come from. I'll go ahead and spoil this. It's interesting you said the L word because that was a Showtime show, I believe, about gay women. And it is very possible that Calamity Jane was a gay women at a time where you could not live as such. There is speculation about that, and we'll kind of get to that here and there through the thing. But I read a few articles that said, yeah, Calamity Jane was probably gay. And then the 1960s, she became a bit of a gay icon in some circles and very tight. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's very interesting. So, yeah, born Martha Jane Canary in Princeton, Missouri, and her family went to back in the Old West, people traveled around a lot. So we're not going to mention every time she moved this article does. It does. It felt like the whole article is just like, then she moved here, then she moved there. But they moved around a lot, as people did back then. Her family was very poor. She had two younger brothers and three younger sisters. And then pretty early on, when she was a kid, she learned how to shoot by hunting with a gentleman on these caravans and was really good at it. And in that caravan, that one wagon train in particular, where her family moved from missouri to Virginia City, Montana. She lost her mom, which was the first step in a turn for the worst for an already hard childhood she had. Yeah, by the time they got to Montana, I think her mother died. Her father was like, let's just keep going on to Utah. And again, we're not going to say where she moved every time, but the point of it is her father died within a couple of years of her mom. Right. So she loses her mom when she's maybe nine or ten, and then her dad dies when she's twelve or 13, and all of a sudden she's the oldest of five siblings. Or maybe I think she actually had five additional siblings. So she's the oldest of six children and she's in charge now. She's at age 13 now, charged with keeping her younger siblings alive and clothes and fed and is basically cast into the Old West in this role. And this wasn't a place where you could go to social services or the local church or something like that and get help. She had to figure all this out herself. And as far as figuring it out, she definitely did. And also she developed a pretty pronounced taste for whiskey starting around that time, too, from what I understand. Yeah. Throw out what you think about Deadwood and these great old stories. Like, I really needed to hit home that this is a twelve or 13 year old young girl who is literally on her own with five younger siblings in her care. And she didn't just blow them off and leave. Like she had to figure this out. And worked as a nurse and worked as a dishwasher, by all accounts, worked as a sex worker when she needed to. And this whole time, like you said, she started to drink a little bit. She was sort of rough housing with the older men in the towns where she lived, shooting up things. And as we said earlier, it was a really good shot. And her legend kind of started to grow, so she started taking on additional jobs, especially with the military, as a career, as a writer, as a scout, I guess. Got a lot of work with them, including working with General Custer. But it wasn't until she started to she first moved to Deadwood as an orphan, 13 year old in charge of her siblings and then moved away. And then she moved back about a decade later. In that time, she became friendly with Wild Bill Hickok, and from what I understand, it was about there that her status as a legend really kind of was born just by association with him or standing in the same spotlight as him. She deserved the spotlight herself, but it was his spotlight that she was initially introduced to the world of, like dimesaur novels back east. Correct. And let's take a break. That's a perfect place to start, right. As her legend is growing back. And let's see. Calamity Jean meets Wild Bill. Hickok. They fall in love and settle down and have a family and live happily ever after, I believe. And that was it. No, but they were really close. Everything I read really stressed the importance of their friendship over the years and how he really took her under his wing. And then when I started reading articles about whether or not she was gay and in a situation where she was not allowed to live that way, and speculation abounds because of things like she dressed like a man and she hung out with a man and she never had any boyfriends. There are stories of her getting married later in life and having a child, but I also saw some articles that call that into question saying that maybe that didn't even happen. Well, there's no certificates anywhere on record, but it made me wonder about while Bill Hickok and if he was maybe knew the deal and was sympathetic to what was going on. So he was her beard. Well, not beard because he didn't act as her boyfriend or anything, but just maybe sympathetic to her. That's what I cooked up in my head, at least I got you. I had seen there are plenty of articles that put the two together romantically. Some say that really she was into him and he wasn't into her. And it really kind of demonstrates just how hard it is to pin down fact from fiction in her story in particular. But it is factual that she and Bill Hickok were close friends, at the very least in Deadwood, and that she was there when he was murdered in August of 1876, when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall at point blank range while Bill was at a gambling table in a saloon in Deadwood. Yeah. Which was very tough on her, obviously. So she left Deadwood pretty shortly after that and then again spent the next, it seems like ten or 15 years, really, traveling all over the place. She never stayed in one place for long. I think in the early 1880s, she bought a ranch on the Yellowstone River but only stayed there for about a year, went to California, only stayed there about a year, eventually went to Texas. And this is where she supposedly married Clinton Burke in El Paso. And then they went back to Colorado and ran a hotel as a family. But again, I saw that called into speculation. Yes. Supposedly there are corroborating accounts of witnesses seeing her with a young child in some of these places, so it is possible she did have a daughter. But again, there's no birth certificates or anything. Anyway, apparently some woman came forward in the 50s or sixty s and claimed to be Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane's daughter, but was exposed as a fraud later on. Yeah. No, it's disappointing. I thought so, too. Right. There at the end. They really took the legs out from under it. Eventually, close to 1918, 95, she said, hey, you know, what I can do really good is shoot a gun. And there's this guy out here. She really crossed paths with all the biggies of the Old West. She hooked up with Buffalo Bill in his famous Wild West Show, and she was a sharpshooter for that show, and she didn't do that for very long because that taste for a whiskey she developed as a teenager. I saw more that she would go on big binges, and it wasn't so much a steady alcoholism, but she couldn't help but go into these big drinking binges that cost her these jobs time and time again over the years. Do you know how much of a drinking problem you would have to have to get fired from Buffalo Bills Wild West Show for drinking? Seriously? I can't imagine. Because they could work that into the show for a while. Yeah, she just shoots wildly into the airbod. Exactly. Duck yeah, I imagine it was pretty severe, which is very sad, actually. You can make jokes about her being drunk at a Wild West show, but it seriously disrupted her life. Yeah, for sure. Because not only did she lose that job, she also was later hired on at the Pan American Exposition. I think in lost that job, supposedly for the same things. So she was definitely a hard drinking person, for sure. And it also kind of makes it even sadder when you realize that she went and got those jobs to help support her family, if she in fact did have a family. But even if she didn't, I mean, losing a job because you drink too much is a little sad. Yeah, for sure. As far as the name Calamity Jane, there are a bunch of stories on where she got this name. I thought we may as well read her own account, even though her book is not completely to be trusted. But she was talking about a campaign she was on, and she said it was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where the town of Sheraton is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the post, and we were ordered to quell an uprising of the Indians and were out for several days. And I'm making this shorter. What do you call that? Abbreviating. I'm abbreviating this. When returning to the post, we were ambushed about a mile and a half from our destination. We were fired upon, and Captain Egan was shot. I was riding in advance on hearing the firing and turned in my saddle and saw the captain reeling in his saddle and about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped to back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him while he was falling. Captain Egan, on recovering laughingly, said, I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of The Plains. Very nice. That sounds totally made up, by the way. Yeah, that's quite a story. But again, like a lot of other stuff in her orbit is questionable, for sure. She definitely was called Calamity Jane. It just seems to have been lost to time. Right. And again, what we hope is not lost is this was a young girl who made her way in the west, who lived against all odds and supported herself and her younger siblings. Against all odds. Yeah. Which is worth celebrating in and of itself. Right. Well, that's it for Calamity Jane and everybody. That's it for short stuff. So adios. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
029e3ff8-3b0e-11eb-947e-cba9360c35f3	How Corporate Taxes Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-corporate-taxes-work	There are lots of reasons to tax corporations: as a check on their power, to help pay for infrastructure, as a wealth tax. But the biggest reason economists cite for why they've stuck around is that everyday people think companies should have to pay them too. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	There are lots of reasons to tax corporations: as a check on their power, to help pay for infrastructure, as a wealth tax. But the biggest reason economists cite for why they've stuck around is that everyday people think companies should have to pay them too. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Thu, 29 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=119, tm_isdst=0)	47031769	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chucker's Bryant over there looking magnificent and marvelous. List is always, at least in my head. You're a vision, Chuck. Yeah. We're going to see each other next week. I know. How excited are you? I am pretty on fire. I'm excited, too. It's been well over a year. I don't remember the last time we record together, but it was definitely, I would say, February, probably the last of 20. Yeah. Is that nuts? We isolated, prepondemic. We saw it coming. Yeah, we did. We probably should have warned everybody, but well, we didn't want to cause a stir. Right. We don't like to make waves. So we knew some people would just not believe us. Well, that's true. So we're talking today, Chuck, about corporate income tax, and I'm sure some people just said, well, goodbye, stop. But I feel bad for those people because it turns out that corporate income tax is less eyeballingingly boring than it seems on its surface, I think. Yeah, I think so, too. Economics, as you know, is tough for me. And there is a part everyone it's been many years since I've had to do this, but there's a part where Josh is going to have to teach me, because I read that section four times and told Josh it sounded like physics to me. I'm with you, though. And there's a reason that I figured out all these years of us doing economics episodes. I figured out why it's so hard to understand, because a lot of it is just straight up hooey. Like, economists are wrong about a lot of stuff and they know it, too. So I'm not exactly sure what they're doing to reinvent their field, but it's taken a beating in the last few decades, for sure. So I think one of the reasons why it's so hard to understand is because it doesn't make a lot of sense in a lot of ways, too. Yeah. And economics is one of those things where you can have two very knowledgeable, well respected economists saying completely opposite things and saying that they are each correct. You are wrong. I'm right. And it's not like this philosophical sort of political stuff that can easily be disagreed on. It's just like, no, they're like, no, I'm right about this, economically speaking. And the other person is like, no, you're dead wrong. It's really this. And then guys like us are like, I don't even know who to believe. Right. And then agreeing to disagree solves nothing. It basically just punted down the road. Yeah. Don't you think that indicates that there's a fatal flaw in that science if no one knows who's right? Well, that's, like, a really good point, because that really comes to the surface with corporate income tax, because there's a lot of people out there, typically liberal economists, who tend to think that corporate income taxes are a very good thing and we need them. And the average American typically agrees with those liberal economists, even people who are not liberal in any way, shape or form, because the average everyday American tends to think that corporations should pay taxes as well. Right, and then there's conservative economists who say, no, this stuff is stifling business. It has all sorts of other pernicious effects that we'll get into. We should do away with them altogether. And the fact of the matter is, no one is sure who's right. Do we need corporate taxes? Do they actually harm things they don't even agree on? Who actually ends up paying corporate taxes? Yeah, that was a pretty fun section. It is. So there's a lot to kind of dig into here, which is one reason why I like it so much. Yes. I mean, I guess we'll go ahead and get some stats on the board out of the gate. I think ten of the 195 countries in the world, only ten don't have some kind of corporate income tax here in the United States. And we'll get to how it's been over the years. But I think in 2019 we brought in about 230,000,000,000 in corporate tax compared to 1.72 trillion from people like you and I. Right. And now it's about 6% of the total take. Whereas in the 1960s, it was 40% of all taxes were paid by corporations. Yeah, corporations were paying for a lot of the functioning of America at that time. What's weird is corporate profits were also higher during that time, too. And I couldn't see anything, any smoking gun, where some economists are saying, like, this is the reason why that a decline in corporate tax rates is actually led somehow to a decline in profits. But I don't think there's anything in economics, especially when you're talking about huge, sweeping macroeconomics, that make up one of the world's largest economies, if not the largest economy in America's. It's never just one thing. You don't just push one button and then it just has this one effect. It's a whole bunch of buttons that are creating this one larger effect and they're really hard to disentangle. Yeah. And Congress has been taking corporate income tax since 19 nine, when they said, quote, congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without. What is that? Apportionment? Okay. However, I had the O and the I switched in my mind apportionment among several states and without regard to any census or enumeration. Right. Which is kind of a different thing. Like it used to be where if you taxed one group, you had to tax everybody equally regardless of, say, like if West Virginia had the same population as California, but California had a lot more income. Well, West Virginia had to pay the same amount, not percentage, amount of income tax that all the wealthy people in California had to pay. And so that kept income taxes away for a while. Which, by the way, we don't. An episode on income taxes. And we also did that chapter in the book on it, too. We apparently can't get enough of income taxes. Yeah, we did an episode on Corporate Personhood many years ago, too. Right, yeah. Which really kind of plays into this. It's the reason why a lot of people say corporations should pay their fair share. They're treated as people under the law and people under the law have to pay taxes in the United States. That's kind of a big reason why people want to see it. But, yeah, it wasn't until 19 nine. And I think it was, like you said, the 60s, where that was like the heyday of corporate taxation, where the tax rates for corporate income tax reached almost 53% in the United States. That's a lot. It is. Apparently the UK. Had a similar peak, but theirs came later in 1982, and then Australia's peak came in 1986 at 49%. And that actually kind of points out something that I came across, Chuck, is there's a lot of like one country will change its tax code to kind of attract foreign money, to kind of get dumped into it. Which makes a lot of sense because when you dump billions or hundreds of billions of dollars from all these businesses who find your tax codes attractive, that money is now in your economy. Like your financial institutions can go out and invest it and you can do all sorts of amazing stuff with it. That's why countries have different tax codes at different times to attract foreign investment, basically. Right. Which we'll get into that. I mean, that's foreign investment is one name for it. Hiding money, that's another way to say it. Jackie Channing, it I don't get that. What did he do? Remember the Panama Papers? They revealed this. Panama is a tax haven. And the only person who was basically publicly pilloried for it was poor Jackie Chan. Somehow Jackie Chan ended up the face of that thing. That's terrible. So you mentioned conservative and liberals. It's a little counterintuitive. But under Ronald Reagan, actually, he actually went after corporate taxes to try and increase the corporate tax amount so he could decrease us paying taxes a little bit. And I think that was the tax reform act. They cut the rate from 46 to 34, closed a lot of loopholes. And I think the end result of that was the percentage went from 5% to 10% starting in the 80s until Bill Clinton came along. Yeah, and then Bill Clinton topped it off at 35%. And there it stayed. He just added a percentage point. And there it stayed for quite a while, actually, until, I think, 2017, when it got slashed to 21%. And from about 1993 to 2017, the US. Had one of the higher tax rates in the world because it seems like there's always an outlier like the United Arab Emirates, I think, has 55%. Comoros in Africa has 50%, and then usually it drops down into the 30s. There's a handful of countries in the mid to low 30s, which is where the United States was for a while until 2017. So it looks like, if I'm reading this right, since the 1980s, the percentage of federal revenue from corporate taxes has been under dollars. Yes. Which is historically low. I think it got down to 1% of GDP, which is another way to measure it. Right. For the first time since the very early 80s, when Reagan first came in, because Reagan slashed taxes across the board in 1981, and I think he overstepped it so far that Congress was like, we're reforming corporate taxes in 1986. Right. They're like, you want a paycheck. Right? Exactly. Fellow Congressperson. Right. Maybe we should take a break after that set up. You think? I think so, yeah. It's a little early, but now we can really get into the really fun stuff. Prepare for the eye bleeding. All right, we'll be right back. When it comes to corporate income tax, it's a little different than individual income tax in the US. Right? Yeah. With individual income tax, there are a few things that are kind of removed from your taxable income, right. Like your health spending, account, contributions, just little stuff like that. But for the most part, you're paying on your gross income, which makes sense because you don't have profit and loss necessarily. Although I guess if you think about it, you could just tax people on just what they have left over their what's it called? Your something? Income. Your net. No, your net, but expendable income. Expendable income, right. Yeah. They could totally just tax everybody after housing, after health care, after groceries, all that stuff, just like a business. They hadn't occurred to me, but that's totally how you could do it. And they don't do it that way. That'd be great. But they do it for corporations. They do, because corporations do get taxed on their net. And this is actual corporations, where if you're a sole proprietorship or if you're a partnership, like an S Corp. Yeah, that's not the same thing. This is only for corporations. It says here that if you're like my wife's business, for example, is not a corporation, it's a small business, and she pays personal income tax. So that's like sort of the pass through situation. Yeah, her company is a pass through entity. Right. So all of the profits and all that stuff just comes right to her. Your individual income tax. But with the corporation, it's its own entity again. It's like in the United States, I'm sure not everybody out there understands this, but the Supreme Court, starting in the 19th century and a few times over the course of the last 100 or 250 years, has affirmed that corporations are artificial people. They have the same rights and everything as everyday Americans. It's nuts. It's totally wrong. And it's created all sorts of horrible problems. But one of the things that that amounts to is that you can tax a corporation. They're treated in that sense under the law as a person, but a person with special privileges. Right. And you talked about moving money around. The reason that happens is because here in the United States, they are taxed on money that they make in the United States. So if you're, I don't know, like Apple or Microsoft, let's say, or not, or every big corporation, but many big corporations. Yeah, a lot of them, you might want to say, hey, let's find, like you mentioned earlier, a country with a really friendly tax code. It's called tax inversion. And let's just confuse everybody by using what's called transfer pricing, which is basically creating they're not fake transactions, but their transactions between subsidiaries all over the world just to move profits around. Basically, yeah. Using more biblical terms, it's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Basically. Yeah. It's all like moving goods from one division to another within the same company. There's no reason that the company has to charge that division or the other division or providing a service. Like, let's say you bring your marketing team in to launch a new podcast. You could have the podcast division charge or the marketing division charge, the podcast division. And as far as the company is concerned, it's all internal money, it's all kept in the family. But all of that is just kind of unless you're a podcaster. Right, exactly. And then you're like, I really needed that money. But as far as multinational corporations are concerned, when you do that and it crosses international borders, that's a really good way to move money from the United States to the Cayman Islands where there's no income tax. It's one of those ten countries. And so all of a sudden, that money that you just moved from the US. To the Caymans doesn't count as profit that America can tax any longer. That's transfer pricing, which is a form of tax inversion. There's other stuff you can do, too. You can move your headquarters to another country with a lower tax, which really, from what I can tell, basically amounts to changing the address on your letterhead and maybe some legal documents. I think Burger King did that when they bought Tim Hortons. They basically use Tim Horton's headquarters as the new corporate headquarters for Burger King. So Burger prints could go to school in the right district. Exactly right. Except in this case, rather than going to a school district, it's saving billions and billions of dollars in taxes. Even though it's kind of a joke, because Tim Hortons is just dwarfed by the size of Burger King. So the idea of this giant company, Burger King, transferring its headquarters to relatively smaller Tim Horton's headquarters, it seems a little disingenuous because that's the thing everybody knows that corporations try to get out of paying their taxes. They're just famous for it, especially in the United States. But when you come down to it, that is deeply unamerican and really immoral. And businesses are not supposed to be doing that. They're supposed to be paying their taxes and being upstanding corporate citizens, but they don't do that. And so every once in a while, they get called out on it. And one of the reasons why we still have corporate taxes, as we'll see, is because the average American like you and me thinks, heck yeah, corporations should be paying their taxes just like us. Yeah. And these tax havens, they cost governments a lot of money all over the world. Between 500, $600 billion, which that puts a dent on us here in the United States. But if you're a developing nation or a low income economy, it makes a real big dent. If you're losing a couple of hundred billion dollars, it's going to be a real hit to your GDP. And when Apple moves $30 billion to Ireland over the course of four years and employees, nobody over there, and their taxes are rate of 2%, that does hit the United States, but not like it would in some other countries. Right. But again, you can understand why Ireland would be like I think they actually made a sweetheart deal with Apple for that because Ireland's, corporate Texas, normally 12.5%, they knock 10% off for Apple. But I looked at Ireland's GDP. That $30 billion was 12%, really of the value of Ireland's GDP in 2013. So to Ireland, that was an enormous influx of cash and worth whatever effort they were going to make to get it into their borders. Plus they got to make some money off of it in taxes in addition to having it invested into their economy. And Apple, they got pilloried and kind of called out in 2013 for that kind of transfer pricing or tax inversion technique. Right. Yeah. Because they didn't have any employees in Ireland at the time, and they got called out for it. But if you compare Apple to a lot of the other Fortune 500 companies, they might as well be weblows, for goodness sake. As far as paying taxes is concerned, they are Ned Flanders. Just to the t, as far as paying taxes go, compared to companies like Amazon, it's just astounding they should not be ever be picked on at all in that respect. Just by comparison. Yeah. Let's talk about Amazon. They've been criticized a lot and called out a lot, especially over the past couple of years. In 2017 and 18, they paid $0 in taxes and they made big profits. $3 billion in profits. This isn't the gross, this is that net profit that we were talking about that they're supposed to get taxed on in 2017, I think it was I'm sorry, in 2018, it was $11.2 billion in profits from 3 billion yes, they pay $0 in taxes both years. And not only that check, they got refunds those two years. Yes, $129,000,000 and $137,000,000 respectively over those two years. And then finally a couple of years ago in 2019, they were like, we'll pay some taxes. So they paid 162,000,000 on the profit of 13.9 billion for a whopping percentage rate of 1.2%. Yeah. So Amazon deserves to get publicly berated for it. And I also have the impression that they paid those taxes in 2019 just because politically it was getting bad. Like the press for it was getting kind of ridiculous. So they're like, I will pay 162,000,000. It's not even the combined refunds that we got the last two years, but at least we're paying something. There are plenty of other corporate tax dodgers. Chevron, Halliburton, IBM also paid $0 in taxes in, I think, 2018. And there was a 2018 study that found that of 379 of the Fortune 500 companies that turned a profit in 2018, 91 of them paid $0 in taxes. And I think altogether those 379 paid something like 86 billion, when really had they paid just the 21% that lower 21% effective rate, it would have been 161,000,000,000. So you can make a really good case that the corporations in America are really good at getting out of paying taxes for the most part, even though not all of them do. And going back to Apple, apple paid 16 billion in taxes in 2019 compared to Amazon's 162,000,000 in that same year. Right. And you could also make the case that the 2017 tax reduction for corporations and leaving open of the loopholes did not, in fact boost federal corporate tax revenue like they said it would, which never made sense to begin with anyway. Exactly. No, it was all just a big scam. You mentioned earlier, though, like, we still can't agree on who actually pays this. So you hear Amazon or whoever pays what they pay $126,000,000, I don't know, 162,000,000. Jeff Bezos write a check to the federal government for that. How does that work? And economists don't even really agree on who ends up taking this financial burden on. I think even in the 16 hundreds, there was an economist named William Petty, Sir William Petty, and he said kind of like what a lot of people probably think, which is it's just going to be passed on to the consumer as higher prices. They're going to just raise the price of their goods. Other people say, well, that can't be true because if you're already charging prices where you've maximized your profits, there's a cap. You can't just keep raising your prices over and over to cover yourself because eventually people are going to be like, I'm not going to buy that. Right? Yeah. When you raise prices, it makes people think like, oh, can I actually afford that? And you start actually shooting yourself in the foot. And that's generally the understanding among economists today. Hundreds of years after sir William petty that he was wrong. And that idea is actually borne out among the different states in the US. Right? Some of them have zero taxes on corporate income. Others have relatively high taxes on it. And yet if you go from one state to another state, when you buy a pack of hubbub and bubblegum, it's probably going to be exactly the same price before you pay sales tax on it, which goes to show that they're not going to charge a different price because they're having to pay corporate taxes. It just isn't the way it is. And plus, also, corporations aren't the only ones who sell hubba bubba. Right? Right. If Emily wanted to, she could become a distributor of hubba bubba bubblegum, and I wouldn't blame her if she was because it's about as good as bubblegum has ever been produced. I was a hubbub, a kid that was not bubble. It is. I didn't like bubble issues either, but ultimately, I was bubble yum. And I think there are a couple of things that represent the pinnacle of human endeavor. One of them is lemon lime bubblegum. Remember, it was the green outside and the yellow center. Oh, yeah. Okay. So good. I think I've mentioned it before. Rambo bubblegum. It was BlackBerry flavored, big league chew with rambo holding a missile launcher on the floor for some reason. I definitely never heard that. That's amazing. And then lastly, et. Peanut butter flavored cereal. Well, I'm a captain crunch guy, as you know. But on the gum, hubba bubba to me always produced it, always yielded the best bubbles. And if you are a champion bubble blower and sometimes bubble within bubble blower like myself, oh, wow. Then you reach for the hubba bubba. You need to make a video of yourself doing that, man. Bubble yummy was good, too, though. Bubblegum was good, too. But you're absolutely right. Hub above was as good as it gets with the bubble, for sure. I don't chew gum anymore, but if I was going to, I would get a pack of bubble gum like that. I think hubba bubba is basically unchanged. Bubblegum is a little weird now. It's a little different. I've tried it once in a while. Yeah. I mean, if you want to go get transported back to your youth, like, get some real bubblegum, I'm going to do that. Where were we? Okay. Yeah. States don't charge different prices. It's not like, let me go to Florida and stock up on that gum because it's $0.06 cheaper. Oh, I know where we were. Really? We were talking about Emily becoming a hubba bubba distributor. Sure. She doesn't have to pay corporate tax, so she could sell hubba way cheaper than, say, general electric could sell hubba bubba if they ever wanted to. She could undercut them. General electric wouldn't be selling hubba Bubba any longer because it would be hamstrung by those corporate taxes. Emily's not hamstrung by that right. So we're still left without an answer on who's paying. Usually these days, modern economists say, well, here's what's going on is the burden is going to fall on the owners. But what that really means is it's divided among shareholders of that corporation. And what it really is happening is employees are being paid less and so they're all kind of taking it on the chin. Yeah. Because as far as economists are concerned, if the government is coming in and taxing somebody, then there's three entities that could possibly be paying for it capital, the business owners, the people who, like, own the machinery on the money that's invested into businesses. Capital, employers, labor, the workers, employees, and then customers. And if we've already decided that it's not being passed on to customers, you've got capital and labor left. And so, yeah, it makes sense that it would be capital who is paying the tax in the form of lower dividends than they would otherwise be getting if the pot that the dividends were coming out of was greater because the tax haven't been taken. But economists still say that's not the end of it. We think it's probably ultimately divided, probably not evenly, but somewhat between capital and labor, and that labor helps bear the cost of these corporate taxes by getting paid lower wages. There's just less capital stock involved. And so when you have less money, you can't get like a goose plucking machine. That means you're going to pluck this goose. You can do ten gooses an hour rather than two. That just little Samuel, the ten year old boy with the full chin beard, can pluck by himself with just his hands, even though Samuel is saying, you get this goose plucking machine I'm going to oversee, and we're really going to make some money. You don't have the money to buy the goose plucking machine, so all you can do is just keep employing Samuel, maybe his cousin Ezekiel every once in a while, comes in on weekends, but you don't have that money. They're less productive. So you're making less money in the market, which means you have less money to pay Samuel and Ezekiel, even though they're doing harder labor than they otherwise would be if you weren't such a tightwad and would buy the goose plucking machine. Right. And you could just fire Samuel, to be honest. You probably would, yes. He has been talking back quite a bit lately. I mean, someone could turn on that machine and push go Ezekiel could at a lower rate than Samuel. Oh, yeah. He has zero loyalty to anybody, including his cousin. Let's take a break here and then we'll talk about arguments against and then for after that. How's that? Okay, so arguments against tax incorporation. Some people, and this is sort of the thing you hear all the time is the economy referred to as an engine and this motor that's got to come along and people that say you should not tech corporations are people that are saying, listen, this is what is keeping that engine humming is they're employing people, they're generating money, they're selling things. This is the economy basically. And if you just get rid of corporate taxes then they're going to reinvest that stuff. They're going to pay their employees more, your prices are going to drop, it's going to trickle down to you and that engine is just going to right. I mean that's ultimately what all of the arguments against corporate taxation amount to and you're already taxing those individuals and those shareholders on their personal income taxes so you're double taxing them to cut it out, right? So yes, the corporation itself has to pay income taxes theoretically where they actually, like you said, Jeff Bezos cuts a sketches from the dark crystals check to the federal government for $162,000,000 or whatever, right? And then on top of that, after they pay their taxes, this post tax amount, the corporation sends out dividends quarterly, annually. However, to the shareholders, the shareholders are in some way, shape or form and oftentimes very literally owners of the company. But if you own shares in a company, you are part owner of that company and so you're getting dividends, you're getting a part of the profits, right? So when you get those dividends given to you at the end of the year, you have to declare those on your income taxes and then you have to pay personal tax on that. So it's like you said, it's double taxation. And so the government is saying we'll take a little bit of this capital out of the economy for ourselves. Oh and by the way we'll take it out of your little wealth pot too. And now all of a sudden there's just that much less money to be reinvested in the business. That's a huge argument against corporate income taxes that's been around for a very long time. But there's also like a lot more nuanced ones too. One of the big ones is that like it's a tax on entrepreneurship where if you are a company and you need some money to keep it, say expand your business, right, and you've got your profits and everything like that, but you really want to take it up to the next level and you need a lot more money than you have in the bank. You can issue shares, more shares of your company. That's called equity financing where you're releasing equity shares which your current investors don't really like because all of a sudden there are way more shares on the market and their shares are suddenly worth a little bit less even though they didn't do anything and your business is doing fine, they don't like it very much, then there's another way to do it. It's called debt financing. And that is instead of issuing shares of ownership to your company, you're saying, hey, I need to borrow money from. You, I'm going to issue you this certificate. I'll pay this back in X number of years with interest. Right. They're called corporate bonds. You have to be a massive company to issue debt securities to raise money like that. You just have to have that kind of established business and trust with the public to issue debt securities. But the reason that businesses do that is because you can deduct the interest that you pay those investors for lending you that money. You can't deduct dividends. So if you're a little start up, all you can do is issue shares. Nobody trusts you enough to buy debt securities from you're, an unproven business, but they will buy shares in your company because they think you probably are going to be able to make it. They're just not sure. So you can issue shares and then put out dividends, but you can't deduct the dividends. Your competitors, the bigger guys can do that or they can issue debt securities and then they can deduct the interest. So there's actually a tax, this corporate tax is actually a tax on entrepreneurship in that sense, which again, it's really nuanced and it's really wonky. But once you start to enter the world of high finance and new innovative technology, this is a big deal to you, you know what I mean? Yeah. And there are people that say that the disparity between the taxation. Between those interest and dividend payments is why we're getting all these stock buybacks happening. Which if you paid attention at all to the news in the United States when the 2017 tax laws change for corporations. You heard a lot about stock buybacks. Which is the idea that a company is going to use their profits to buy its own stock off the market instead of doing the thing that they said it would do. Which is. Hey. They're going to reinvest these profits that they're making back into the company. They're going to get new equipment, they're going to hire more people, everyone's going to get a raise or R Amp D is going to pick up. And what really happens a lot of times is they just buy stock buybacks. They just say, hey, we got this extra money now why don't we buy back a bunch of our own stock and consolidate even more control and more power and more money and insert dr. Evil laughing at this point? Basically, yeah. Because allegedly or theoretically, the stock buybacks only come when this company is so flush with cash it can't spend all of it. So it just does these buybacks. But they happen even when a company doesn't have a bunch of cash because it raises the share price a lot more too. It also lowers their non deductible dividend payments as well. So the idea that deductibles are not dividends are not deductible, but interest is. It's also laying the foundation for the stock buybacks, like you were saying. Right. And then you add in just the complex plate of spaghetti that is the US tax code and it's really complex. And some people say if companies weren't having to kind of sift through this tax code then it was a lot simpler. Or maybe if they didn't have to pay them at all then maybe they would reinvest some and not have stock buybacks. Yeah. Not to mention critics of corporate taxation say like we don't even know who's paying this at this point. It's possible that wages could go up if we didn't have this. So when you take all of these reasons together, there's some pretty good arguments against corporate taxation and you can take them all together, put them into a pile and say, hey everyday Joe American, what do you think of this? And watch them urinate on all of your reasons that you just neatly piled together reasons for corporate taxation. The people say, no we definitely should. One of the big reasons is just kind of what we've been talking about is just public perception of your average American is yeah, why do I got to pay taxes and Amazon doesn't? So that's one big reason. Another is people that say, hey look, the government is basically providing the infrastructure for which these companies are getting rich. Yeah dude, the bridges and the waterways and everything that we're maintaining and subsidizing as tax paying citizens, the roads, even these corporations are utilizing that stuff so they need to pay their fair share just to support that infrastructure. And the government is really the engine because they take care of all this stuff. In theory, dude, it is just such a smokescreen that the government is portrayed as just this spend thrift pickpocket that just steps on innovation and takes the rev out of the engine of the economy by taxing business. There's an entirely different way of looking at it and that by maintaining those bridges in these waterways and the infrastructure that businesses use to humble the government itself is a wealth creating engine too. And the government is mandated to use that money as soon as it gets it right. Yeah, a business is not necessarily mandated. There is no mandate. The board of directors and the shareholders might want the business to spend its money rather than sitting on it, but it doesn't have to. And plenty of businesses might just be sitting on a big pot of money. Well, another argument in favor of corporate taxation is that the government says you can't do that, at least not with this percentage is 21% of that money that you made this year because we're going to take it and we're going to put it back in those roads and everything. And yes, agreed, the government is not like an efficient machine by any stretch of the imagination. And plenty of that money also ends up going into other things that I consider very important like social programs that keep people from starving to death, that kind of stuff that don't necessarily have anything to do with business unless you zoom out enough and then realize that if you want a worker to show up to work alive, they need to eat food, right? So if you're not paying them enough, the government's actually taking that money from you and making sure that that worker is fed so they can show up at work the next day if you zoom out far enough. It all has to do with business and it all connects like that. It's just some people argue that it should just be just on its face about business, that anything that isn't obviously overtly on its face about business should just go away and not have anything to do with business and let business deal with business. Yeah. How's that working? Yeah, real well. Thanks for asking. Another reason you might want to argue for corporate taxation is merely to kind of put these companies in check and these corporations in check and to make them tap the brakes every once in a while. Because with that kind of money yields great power, especially in the wake of the Citizens United decision, when now corporations and companies can spend whatever they want to get involved in politics and to woo politicians through lobbying efforts. And you know, some might say that if you at least smash their head with attacks a little bit, maybe that shouldn't be so violent. If you levy a tax on their corporation, if you tickle their ear with a feather that's a metaphor for taxation, then that at least keeps their power and influence a little bit more in check. I'm not sure how much that's working, but that's the thought. I think it's working a lot, actually. Yeah. And it's weird to think of and I didn't think of it before, but researching this, it seems to be it's two sides of the same coin. Some people say, well, a good way to keep government power in check is to reduce its ability to tax things because it depends on that money. It's like a vampire that just sucks money right out of everybody. Right? So it's two sides of the same coin. I think that is the give and take that we see when it comes to the tax code is whatever group thinks that the government is a blood sucker. If they're in charge, then taxes go down. If somebody thinks that businesses need to be kept in check, taxes tend to go up. And that's that kind of seesaw effect that we see. But I think ultimately it does have at least some impact. It's not perfect, but I think it's enough that it's worth doing just for that point as well. Right. You also might say that it provides a backstop basically to personal income tax for the wealthy. Here in the United States, nine tenths of corporate stock are owned by the top 10th of the income distribution. So they're the ones that are running these corporations obviously. And if we didn't tax the corporations they're also getting away with tax loopholes and tax shelters and these individuals might not be paying any tax at all as people and as corporations. Yeah. They might actually form shell corporations themselves and say, oh no, all of this is corporate income. It's not taxable if there's no corporate tax. And I read that that's one reason why most countries have a corporate income taxes too because it's ultimately a tax on the wealthy. Because the wealthy are the largest shareholders in the corporations around the world. And I hadn't really thought about it before but once you see corporate taxes, a tax on the wealthy the picture becomes much clearer of what the battle lines are in that argument and debate over the existence of corporate taxes. Right. So it's here to stay. It's not going to go away. They're not going to completely do away with it. The tax code is a big jumble plate of spaghetti. Like I said, it's a big mess. And there are some people that say well if we want to kind of fix this corporate problem that we have maybe and I think these were a couple of Rutgers professors and there are some different ideas we'll go over but they had an idea I thought was interesting which is let's not rewrite the tax code again. It just gets more confusing and offers more opportunities for loopholes. Let's just lock that in. But then offer a wealth tax on top of everything for these corporations. They said how about 5% of the actual growth of the company for that year? So maybe the federal government here's what you should do subtract the end of the year share price from that share price where it was at the beginning of the year multiplied by the number of outstanding shares on each date and then tax them on that amount over and above the regular corporate tax rate. Yeah and then that captures everything that captures the actual growth in the company's wealth that year, not just necessarily their profits from revenue. And it also says, hey keep it up, keep going. You can find all these loopholes and all these tax dodges that you figured out. This is again, corporate taxes, a backstop to income tax for the wealthy. This is like a backstop for corporations getting out of paying corporate income tax. It's just kind of clumped on in addition to it. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere but it seems like a pretty good idea. Some people say another way we could fix it is to basically treat these corporations like they are partnerships and just let the money flow through and then tax the shareholders individually. Yeah. The problem with that that I saw is that you then would be taxed on your individual income, on all the profit that the corporation made that year even though you didn't see that amount in dividends. Let's say you saw a $20 dividend that year for your one share, but really your share of that profit was $200. Well, you might be taxed on the $200 rather than the $20 dividend, and that would just chase people away from investing in companies. So that's probably a generally bad idea. Agreed. But, yeah, it's like you said, it's not going anywhere at all. It's here to stay, just at the very least, because the everyday American is like, yeah, corporations should pay taxes. Yeah, the everyday Americans that are saying, let's just get rid of it, are not everyday American. Right. They're like Mr. Burns in disguise, sort of wearing a bowling shirt or something. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I'm taking off my ice skates. Finally. You did great, man. You didn't seem like you're hanging by your fingernails at any point in time either. I don't think I fooled you again. Well, since Chuck said he fooled us again, I think then, everybody, it's time for Listener Mate. Yeah. Boy, this is a good one. I need to set this one up. Remember, we did I don't want to bring this up. I know it's a matter of a past trauma for both of us, but remember when we did our feral children live show at south by south? Okay, just so you folks know, you might not have heard this story. We did our Farrell children live show at a bar in south by Southwest where there was a big sort of DJ event before and after, I think. And then we were squeezed in between. And this was a bar with there were probably I don't know, let's just ballpark it and say 400 people in there, and about 15 of them were stuff you should Know listeners that wanted to hear what we were having to say. Let's not exaggerate, Chuck. It's probably like 18 or 19. I just remember you and I locking eyes at a certain point very early on and literally mind reading each other of we're agreeing right now to skip 50% of this material, right? That's right. And we did. Yeah, we did. And it was like we just kind of knew what parts we were going to skip and all that, too. It's pretty amazing. The saddest thing about all this is that a lot of stuff you should know listeners were left out in the hot sun on the sidewalking, couldn't get in, which we had nothing to do with and are still apologizing for it. So that's the setup. Okay, this morning I was listening hey, guys, I was listening to our Farewell Children real, and you started the episode by lamenting how terrible your first attempt was when you did it live in Austin in 2016. We didn't even release that. It was unreleasable. No, it wasn't even close. Like, we re recorded it, if I'm correct, right? Yeah, we recorded it as, like, a regular studio episode. Right? Exactly. After we got over the trauma. I just want to let you know that at least one great thing came from that show. See, I was in the audience that day with an old friend that I hadn't talked to in ages. We were both fans of the show and we're excited for the chance to see you live. We ended up having a great time, decided to hang out again a few weeks later. Long story short, we're now married with an 18 month old. That's awesome. How awesome is that? Not great. You guys have continued to play a huge part in our lives and have kept this company during countless road trips and commutes, including two cross country moves. Our daughter now starts dancing when she hears the theme song and we jokingly refer to you guys as Uncle Josh and Uncle Chuck. I think that's only right. Yes. Thanks for all you do and please come back to Austin. And that is Jenny. And I told Jenny, I was like, this is amazing. I'm going to read this. And I'm a little mad at you for not sending a picture of this baby that we're partially responsible for. I want to see this kid. I bet Jenny. I'll send a picture. I'll bet you will too. Well, thanks to Jenny, thanks to the kid, thanks to the husband, and thanks to all of the terrible bar patrons at that episode that we recorded that time but never released, but thanks especially to all the Stuff You Should Know who were turning around and telling the people at the bar to shh. Do you remember that? Yeah, it didn't work. No, it didn't work. But I was like, hats off to all of you guys trying to shush the people at the bar you've never heard of Stuff You Should Know. Very oh, boy. That was terrible. Yes, but that's great news, Jenny, and thanks again. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Jenny, and take one of our terrible memories and dust it off and make it shine and show it in a different light, we love that kind of stuff. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…cial-jingles.mp3	How Commercial Jingles Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-commercial-jingles-work	You probably can recite five right now. Commercial jingles are designed to hijack your working memory and implant a product or service and they really work. Learn about the history of these insidious and catchy advertising vehicles with Chuck and Josh.	You probably can recite five right now. Commercial jingles are designed to hijack your working memory and implant a product or service and they really work. Learn about the history of these insidious and catchy advertising vehicles with Chuck and Josh.	Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:16:57 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=17, tm_min=16, tm_sec=57, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=297, tm_isdst=0)	33302230	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Have you noticed that Jerry has a more aggressive countdown since we're shooting video now? Yeah, we're shooting video now. Yeah. For those of you not watching and just listening, like old school. Yeah. We have these on video, potentially. Yeah. Jerry's aggressively counting down now. He just yelled at us three to one. And we do two of these at a time. And I always bring a shirt and always forget to change into it. I feel like a jerk. No, I did change once the first time. Well, today you have on your Mystery Science Theater 3000. I sure do. Shout out to Kevin and Bill, guys, if you're listening. You know everybody mike, Joel, anybody who ever had anything to do with that show. TV's Frank, who is now a successful tweeter. I don't know if you follow him. No, he's pretty liberal. Joel went out and did his own thing as well. Like, they're both doing similar versions of their previous job. What is it? Cinematic titanic as Joel's and then Riptracks as Mike's, Yeah, I'm well aware. Robert Lamb interviewed Joel Hodgson. Oh, yeah. And there's, like, a really awesome lengthy blog interview on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind blog. Cool. Check it out. Yeah. So that's the intro for commercial jingles, which is what we're talking about. That's right. I really don't have anything except Chuck. Have you ever heard of a little songwriter named Lynn Duddy? No. I had neither. Apparently, Lynn Duddy wrote the I Love Bosco jingle, which I've never heard before, but it's listed as a famous jingle, so I feel like I'm missing out. Yeah. I didn't know half of these, actually. I love Bosco jingle. That's the one that we list. What's with this? And Barry Manilow isn't in here. No, let's just get that out of the way. Manilow, who I love. Sure. You mean I have seen him. Front row center in Vegas. Yeah, it was an awesome show. He looks a little scary now. He's a great guy. I don't know if I want front Row, is all I'm saying. It was cool. He said something to me. I had to go to the bathroom, and I went and left in the middle of one of the songs. And while he was singing, I didn't miss a beat. He says to my back, don't leave now. It gets better. And I just went into the salt. Yeah. Did you know it was drinking? No, I didn't hear. I came back and she was still like, oh, my God, did you hear? Wow. Yeah. But Barry Mandalo, in addition to his incredible singing career, also is one of the better commercial jingle writers of all time. Yeah. Performed and co wrote jingles like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. That's a big one, man. They're still using that. Stuck on the bandaid because the bandaid stuck on me. That's huge. Grab a bucket of chicken. I haven't heard that one. Grab a bucket of chicken. It looks like seventy s. Yeah. And that was for KFC, obviously. And you deserve a break today at McDonald's. Yeah. Big one. Yeah. And he apparently recently did one for Dodge, I saw. I haven't heard it either. Randy Newman, obviously, he writes whatever pays the most. Right. He wrote a bunch back in the day. And then this guy, Jim Brickman, who made quite a name for himself with ads like, we are Flintstones kids. Oh, yeah. For the vitamins. I used to love those, but every once in a while, my mom would just buy the cheaper knock off one and the difference in taste awful. So there is a spell where she would find, like, sticky knock off Flintstone vitamins, like, in my Lincoln Logs, just stuck to things because I'd just be like, yeah, I just put it in my Lincoln Logs because I guess throwing it away was too difficult. Yeah, that's pretty good. And then, of course, Lynn Duddy and Lyn duddy and Brickman's other big one was GE. We get things to like, do you know how rich these people must be if they had even just a halfway decent agent? Well, it points out in this article I don't know if it's still the case, but if you wrote the jingle, you own the rights to it. I know. I don't know if that's still it seems like it should be. I guarantee you Manelo owns the rights to the ones that he wrote. He didn't need the tour, but he still does. Although he likes to cancel once in a while. He just came. I had tickets for his Atlanta show. Oh, really? He just canceled it. I'm not playing. Sorry days. Oh, really? Yeah. That's pretty lame. Yeah, I thought so, too. Well, I hope he's all right. I was really into Barry Manley when I was a kid. I know. For someone who ended up being, like, fairly cool with my music taste. Hey, I've got great music tastes, too. And I love manly. Yeah. No, I'm just saying. All right, let's get into this. Okay. So, Chuck, what is a commercial jingle? It's one of these things that anybody can define it, but it's actually a little specific. Yeah. Well, it is a song or a snippet of a hopefully memorable melody written about a product. Right. And that's the original jingle. We'll get into how it's changed over the years. Right. So it can have just about anything in it. Like a slogan, like, A good neighbor State Farm is there. It can have a phone number, like, 858 2300 Empire today. Yeah, good going. It can have called letters like NBC. Yeah, I looked into that. That is what they now call audio branding or an audio logo. Okay. Like the sound your computer makes when you open it. Oh, yeah. Apple has theirs. PCs have theirs. Or the ding ding ding from NBC, like you just said. But that's a big business now. Or CBS. That jingle. Like, who can never get rid of that one once it's in your head. But that's a new thing that's even more specific now than jingles are what they call audio branding. And every time I hear the word branding, a little piece of me died. But the dude from the Human League, remember that band? Yeah. He has a company now that's like getting rich doing this. Oh, yeah. Basically, it's a little more complex than a jingle because they're trying to capture like the essence of your brand with a few notes maybe, or in the case of like an LG dryer, instead of hearing at the end, it plays this little melody. It's like laundry's time. No. What is that? No, it's a little melody. Like a little dinging chiming melody. Who was it that wrote the yahoo one? Yahoo. Oh, man. Who was that? We were just talking about that recently. It was the guy who wrote oh, man, I can't remember. Sorry. Oh, well, somebody right in. It was the previous podcast. That's less than two months old. Yeah, it's all gone now. All right, so anyway, that's audio branding. Oh, we left out one other part of a jingle. It can also tout the benefits of a product. Yeah, especially back in the day. That was huge. Like you'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with peptide. Really? You're not familiar? No. Yes, I remember. The Crest Patrol. We make holes and teeth. Remember that? No. Man, I wish I would look this stuff up in the 70s. There was the cartoon of the Crest. I remember that. Yeah. And then there were the bad people in that. I don't remember. The enemies were the ones we make holes and teeth. Are the cavity creeps. No, they're the cavity creeps. Nice. Wow. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right. I'm firing on all sorts. I remember being in third grade, I think, and we got a bunch of promotional materials from the Crest Patrol, and it included a play of which I was, I think, a toothbrush. Oh, really? Talk about infiltrating schools. Seriously, like, we put on a play about the Crest Patrol in school. Wow, that is weird. That's a little weird. So, Chuck jingles, they've been around since the Egyptians, as I understand it. That is not true. Technically it is true, because the Egyptians were around in the 1930s. Funny guy. Christmas Eve 1926, they have credited the Wheaties Quartet was singing about the Wheaties breakfast cereal as being the first, appropriately, first ever jingle. And apparently Wheeze was in pretty bad shape. And they're even going to get rid of it until they notice that in markets where they were playing the song on the radio, wheaties picked up and they said, hey, maybe this jingle, maybe it's got something to it. They probably didn't call it a jingle at the time. And then they put it nationwide and Wheaties was saved. Yes. Did you listen to it? No. Is it pretty bad? No, it's great. It sounds like the B sharps. It's barbershop quartet. Sounds like baby on board. Yeah, except they're singing about weedy. So that whole Wheaties thing is pretty well established, but some still dispute it, and it depends on how you look at what a jingle is, whether that's the first one or not. But there's a song that was written in My Mary Oldsmobile by Gus Edwards and Vincent Brian, and I didn't realize that people were named Vincent back in 19 five. Does that seem like a modern name to you? It seems more like 1940s to 1970s, maybe. You know, there's a website that charts popularity of names and a graph. I believe that. I bet you Vincent's pretty low back then. But those two guys made In My Mary Oldsmobile and Olsmobile used it in the 30s, but it wasn't originally recorded or written for Oldsmobile to use. I think the guys just really liked their oldsmobile. Really? And so the author of this article, Tim Faulkner, points out that you probably more accurately call it the first pop song licensed for commercial use. Okay, that makes more sense. So it's technically not a jingle. So the weedy quartet still stands, right? Christmas Eve 1926, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Is there any place more desolate than, hey, it worked. Yeah, because we still have weedies today. So the whole reason jingles came about, too, is because I'm all about my 1930s consumer history. And in the 30s, consumer protection was, like, way stronger. And one of the things was direct advertising was very strict. That's so funny now. Yeah, it's so, like, noholds bar now, you know, australia is, like, going to town, preventing direct marketing to kids. Oh, really? Yeah, they're really protecting their kids. Oh, cool. It is very cool. Plus fear. You can only market fear. Exactly. Do you remember when there used to be, like, cigarette ads? Oh, yeah. Cutty sark ads and things like that. It's funny to look through. If you go to antique places and they have old Life magazines and stuff, you just look through the ads and it's like these happy people slowly killing themselves. Right. With merits. But in the 30s, like, if you wanted to get an ad on the radio, you pretty much had to buy some time, like a half hour or an hour and put on a program. And hence we have things like the King biscuit flower hour. Oh, yeah. Or the General Motors car thriller mysteries. Right. Whatever. And at first, I think it was really boring and dull and dumb, and they figured out that consumers were a little more savvy and were not really willing to share their time for something that's just an ad, like an infomercial. Right. So they started to make things like The Shadow and the Lore Fanny and they made them so they could advertise. But eventually it gave us radio programming and then ultimately TV programming as we understand it today. We're basically born out of this desire to advertise to radio listeners in the 30s. Pretty cool. Yeah. And I didn't realize this, or I realize, I guess, but it's just hard to imagine these days because advertising is so all over the place. But back then, you had direct to consumer sales one on one. You go to a store or you have a traveling salesman come to your house to sell a vacuum cleaner or whatever. And the ads back in the day kind of bore that out. They were basically real matter of fact and kind of dry and really just bullet pointed how our product is better than the other. Right, exactly. It's very boring, very dry. Like our spats are better than our competitors spats because they're made with virgin baby goat skin. That's right. But with the popularity of radio, things changed and they realized that jingles could make a real impact. And they did, because it's music. As the Weedy's Quartet proved pretty early on and just right out of the gate, people started really paying attention to this and they brought the field of psychology in psychology, started cranking out books that basically guided advertisers and companies on how to reach these audiences, like who's listening, when and how to talk to them. It just basically exploded overnight. And it was all largely thanks to the jingle. Yes, and early on, and I think it still holds true today. If you want to be a successful jingle, it's got to be very simple. You got to have repetition, you got to have rhyming is good. It is. Because it helps stick in your head a little more, and before you know it, it's become part of your consciousness for life. They point out here in the article the Oscar Meyer Bologna song. Anyone who grew up in the 70s can sing that word for word today, unless you just weren't paying attention as a kid. Do you want to sing a little of it? Well, no. Do you? No. My Baloney has her first name. It's Oscar R. Yeah. And the plot is fizz or. What a relief it is. These things get burned into the collective consciousness. Or Castanza. What's that from? Seinfeld. Remember, George gets a girlfriend because he associates his name with that by Men In. Oh, really? But he goes stanza, and the woman doesn't even like them, but she can't get him out of her head because that Castanza is in there. Which you would call an earworm. Yeah, which we've talked about it feels like before, right? I think so. But we may as well talk about the orworm. Is that right? In German, it's orworm. And everyone knows what an earworm is. When a song or a part of a song gets stuck in your head, sometimes inexplicably Inexplicably, something weird gets stuck in your head. Like, you wake up in the morning and the song is in your head. You hadn't heard it in weeks, months, years, who knows? But it's just there. And they don't really know how it works either. No, but a couple of very smart guys in the 70s got together. Their names were Alan Badlye and Graham Hitch, and I think they're responsible for coming up with the idea of the working memory. Badly and Hitch sounds like a 70s pop group. It does. Sounds like research. Well, they went on to write the Hustle. Okay. But the Badly inhale first, I guess, investigated working memory, and they came up with this thing called the phonological loop, right? Which is an earworm or a snippet of music or a sentence, whatever. It's running around. You can almost see it facing this track in your head over and over again. That's the phonological loop. And it's made of two parts, right? The phonological store, which is your inner ear, which hears it, and then the articulatory rehearsal system, which is you driving yourself totally insane by saying it over and over again, repeating it. It's how we learn to talk, right? Yeah. Or learn a foreign language. And they think that this phonological loop is basically an earworm. Hitching a ride on this neurological process that we have, naturally, and basically exploiting it for commercial purposes. Wow. Happens more in women, supposedly. More in musicians, supposedly. And if you have OCD, it might really present a problem with you. That was a really good episode of ours, if you ask me. OCD talks about David Sedaris licks light switches, I think. Yeah, in his book he did. I don't know if that's real. I think it is, though. How to get rid of an earworm. There's all kinds of things you can try, like, actually hearing the song in full. Like, if you can't get Call Me Maybe out of your head. Right. Just go listen to Call Me Maybe sometimes singing it yourself all the way through. Can do it. You could sing. Call me maybe. You can vanquish it from your mind, but there's really no surefire way. Those are just little tricks. Yeah. I heard someone say something about listening to Rush. We'll get rid of it. Rush Limbaugh. Was that what it was? Because you just get so mad. Right? Who's Professor Caloris? So he's the one who's basically the University of Cincinnati professor. He's in the earworm article. Okay. And he has dedicated his career to basically exploring earworms, figuring out how they work, why they courtesy hill I think he's made a name for himself in it. All right. He appears in not one, but Two how Stuff Works articles. So true. He's arrived. So what he's done through surveys, he said it's obviously all up to the person. It's very individual as far as what songs get stuck in your head. But he put together through some surveys what he calls the playlist from hell. And I would have to agree. I'd like to see this updated because it's a little dated a little bit. I mean, I'm sure that one, Party Rock has got to be at the top of the list. I don't know that one. Party Rock is in the house. I don't know that at all. It's literally impossible that you have not heard Party Rock. Is it a song? Yes. I have not heard it. I will play it for you. You'll be like, oh, okay. Is it like a pop song? Yeah. It's not a commercial. It's everything it's inescapable. It is the alpha and the omega. Yeah. It's just not possible you haven't heard it. All right. But his playlist from Hell includes the Baby Beck Ribs Chili's Jingle, which we won't even say out loud. The baja mens who let the dogs out. That's a good one. Queens. We will rock you. That's another good one. That's a good one. But I don't know, that doesn't strike me as particularly your wormy. Give me a break. It's a good one. Kit Kat Bar the Mission Impossible Theme I think it's funny that this is on here because I had an experience with that when I lived in New Jersey. It was when I think the first Mission Impossible movie came out and you two did the update of the theme. That thing was stuck in my head for, like, three days. I was walking around, just going and coming up on corners really quick and looking around, doing a tuck and roll. It was crazy. So it didn't surprise me to see that on here. YMCA. There's nothing wrong with that. I kind of like this playlist. I wouldn't call it from hell. I'd call it maybe from heck at best. Okay. Now. I do hate the lion sleeps tonight. I hate that song. I think that's probably on there for the very first the Weemaway. Yeah. Wimp. There it is. By Tag Team. It's a Small World. I guess that one. Because you go to Disney World and you just hear it over and over. What ride is that? It's a Small World. Is that the name of the ride, too? Yeah, I think so. It's been a while, but yeah. So there's still plenty of jingles out there. I'm trying to think of a new jingle. Well, they're all over sports radio. Oh, yeah. Because I listen to a lot of sports talk and me and my lead guitar is Eddie who. You know, Eddie better. Eddie Cooper. We have been joking around about doing, like, a medley of radio jingles in our set because if you listen to sports radio, man, it's like the same ones. Like what? Well, lookylookylooky, here comes Cookie. Oh, yeah. Cook's Pest Control. Alarm Force. I haven't heard that one. Alarm Force. Oh, man, I can't think of them. But yeah, I mean, there's just like if you listen to any kind of sports radio, it's like the same ones. The ad that always sticks out to me when I think of sports radio or talk radio is that one guy, he's trying to sell some sort of refi. He's a refinance guy. It's the biggest no brainer in the history. I love that guy. Or if you've heard and this isn't even a jingle, but a full on song, have you heard any of the bluebell ice cream commercials? I don't know. It's pretty great. How does it go? I mean, they're all different, but it's all like this guy singing about, like, country morning and the sound of birds chirping and it's like the sound of coming home is what you taste when you eat blue bell ice cream. Right. It's pretty funny, which is a lie. But like you said, they sort of have gone out of fashion a little bit, at least from the heyday, even though they're still around. Yeah. They are viewed somewhat as hokey. I think if you stop and think about a commercial jingle or the concept of a jingle, it's hokey, even though you probably have 500 of them in your head that you could recall at any moment. Exactly. But yes, if you are, say, the company responsible for running VW's advertising campaign, you're probably not going to use commercial jingle. You're going to go the other route, which is to appropriate a pop song. Yeah. In VW's case, they use Nick Drake, which is great. One song, pink Moon. Yeah. That's how I came to find out who Nick Drake was. That's how a lot of people came to find out. And that's what the article points out, is a lot of times they can resuscitate careers. Although in his case, he passed away. But he definitely was way more popular after that commercial than he was before. Yeah. Stereo lab was also VW. Yeah. Who else? I don't think they needed any help, but it was, like, a perfect fit. The Polyphonic Spree. Oh, yeah. They had I can't remember the name of the song. It was like their huge hit. That was on a VW commercial. Like when VW first came out with the New Beetle. Hey. And shout out to Toby, right? Yeah, Toby. He was in the Polyphonics Breeze. He's shooting a feature film right now. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. In Louisiana. Like, he's shooting it. Yes. Toby is a friend of Josh and Yumi who was in the Polyphonics Breed. Yeah, he played theremin and now he is. Oh, did he really? Yeah. I don't think I knew that. Yeah, he was, like, friends with a couple of them and said, hey, I want to be in the band. What do you need? And they're like, how about thermon? And back then, anyone could be in the spring. It was huge. It was expensive. And he went out and bought a thermon and taught himself how to play it and came back. I was like, I don't want to be and he went to Japan and toured the world with the Spree for a while. That's with the Spree? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. He's making a movie now. Yeah, they had that short. He produced one with south by Southwest. Yes. Starring Bonnie Prince Billy. Right. Amazing. Now they're onto something else. It's like a feature film. Same company. That's awesome. Yeah. Anyway, pop songs, getting back to that, they credit the Beatles 1987 Nike commercial when Nike famously used Revolution. Do you remember that? Yeah. It's kind of starting this whole new wave of let's pay a lot of money to use really popular songs because it's not enough anymore. You can't just say, Our brand is better than yours. You want to identify your brand with public consciousness and a lifestyle. Like that cat Steven songwind of my soul. And like the Timberlain ad. That kind of struck me, too. Great song where it's like, put these shoes on and you will automatically I'm surprised he went for that. I am, too. I'd like to look into that. I wonder if he doesn't have the rights. It doesn't seem like something he would do. There's no way he doesn't have the rights to the song. That's true. But you raise a point, like, it is surprising that he would have gone for that. But apparently if you work on artists long enough or just wait for them to grow old and need money, they will eventually cave. Or Sting. He didn't need the money, but who? Sting? No. I doubt if he did it because he needed the money or loaded, I guess. That's right. He has a castle. He did it for a reason now. And it was probably money. So in the 80s, when Sting was still because the Police started out as a punk band yeah. And in the 80s, it was post punk. But Sting still thought of himself as a pretty cool dude. Sure. And apparently I don't know the company, but they approached Sting and said, hey, we want to use don't stand so Close to Me for our deodorant commercial. Awful idea. It's a terrible idea. And he very wisely said, no way. But then Jaguar said, hey, you know this terrible Desert Rose thing you have going on? We want to use that for our ad campaign instinct said, Way. Right. Cheers to that. Yeah. And that's a big. Bands get accused of selling out less these days, I think, because especially smaller bands, people think music is free now, so they're not making money selling records like they used to. They break even on tours, these small bands. So I've done a 180. I used to think, like, I don't sell out. But now I'm like, Dude, make whatever money you can while you can. Yeah, I know. Band of Horses, one of my favorites, and Jerry's favorites, they were kind of taken to the map by some of their fans because they licensed their movie to Chevy. And the dude, Ben Bridwell came out and was like, no, you know what? I drive a Chevy. It's old, and maybe now I can get the AC fixed. He drives an old pickup truck and he's like, what's the problem? Yeah, like, we're trying to make a little dough here. And it's a product I believe in. That part in the movie The Doors where Timurson is off on whatever for a while and comes back and sees that Light My Fire has been used by a Chevy commercial. The Ray Connor Singers or something doing it, and he's like, it's catchy tune and then starts breaking stuff. That brings up my biggest pet peeve today. Okay. Is this new thing. And it's not super new because they've been doing it. But it's like. Worse than it's ever been when they will take a great classic song and bastardize it and have some lady session singer come in and sing like Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones but in a different way and talking about being satisfied with your new car. Right? It's all over the place now, and it's just the worst. Like, I would rather hear someone license their real song than hear them remake it with some awful session singer and change the words to fit their product. You know what I'm saying? But then that corporation would take the Ben Brad and what Ben Bradwell stance and be like, hey, man, we got to make our quarterly earnings. Yeah, that's true. It's not true. I was being totally facetious. It doesn't count. It's not the same thing or the other thing now that the Black Keys are suing Pizza Hut right now. Because what companies will do and Tom Waits is sue people a bunch of times. Like every other year, he sue someone because they'll go in and. They'll say, give us something, tom Waits or boy, listen to gold on the ceiling by the black keys. Can you do something like that? And these dudes that write these songs basically rip them off. And the black keys are watching pizza hut, and they're like, wait a minute, that's my song in a slightly different way, selling pazones. And so we're going to see you and take you to court, and that's when they get in court and, like, compare them side by side. Ray Parker jr. Famously got messed up because he apparently ripped off. I need a new drug that he loses. That's right. And I never really heard it. And then finally it clicked and I was like, oh, wow, that is really sick. Did he settle? He lost. I don't know if he settled or what, but he definitely lost that case, I guess. Finally we should talk a little bit about product placement. Well, we had a whole product placement episode. Yeah, that's right. Well, obviously with TiVo and DVRs now, people are speeding through commercials. So you are going to find some product placement in your shows, quite possibly our own, even if it happens. But there are better ways than others to do it. And if you want a good laugh, go to the YouTube and google soap opera cereal and just watch it's. Great. That's all I'm going to say. I watched that the other day. Did you? Yeah. It's so funny and awful. It's colossally bad. Yeah, but it's so bad that it's earned a place in the pantheon of pop culture now. So it did its job. That's turning. Yeah. I bet you there's a lot of hits on that on YouTube. Honey, what are you doing? Just having some delicious honey nuts. Cheerios. Yeah. Boy, these things are really packed in fiber. The thing is like a seven minute long scene. Yes. They just started talking about cheerios the whole time. Yeah, it's pretty funny. And there was a little product placement right there for your cheerios, so it was all over the place. Bonus. No, I mean just now. No, but I'm saying, jeez, all we did was talk about brands. Oh, yeah. Cook's pest control owes us a check. Yeah, we just come by and get the termites out of my house. I want to check. Hi, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Let's see. If you want to learn more about commercial jingles, you can type those words into the search bar athouseupworks.com and I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. Remember you asked for good causes and the white collar crime. Yeah. This one's for Athens, Georgia. Oh, hey. So it made the cut. I've been there. Love the show, guys. And now a segue into a shameless plug right to the point. For a nonprofit in Athens, Georgia. I represent Free. It Athens Frieda. It's an all volunteer nonprofit and it is a grassroots organization dedicated to reclaiming discarded technology like computers, refurbishing it and distributing it to those in need. That's awesome. That's great. It makes perfect sense to I think. In fact, I have some old stuff I could donate. You know, there's gold in there. There's like all sorts of rare earth and precious metals that like if you and the computer bind them a bunch of computers, you'd have a little cold nugget. Really? Yeah. Well, maybe I'll do that instead. We serve mostly low income populations that cannot afford the latest and greatest technology. We also aim to reduce e waste through computer reuse and responsible recycling. We are currently in need of working laptops for a volunteer program. I know a whole room full of them. Seriously? Laptops are distributed to volunteers that complete our computer refurbishing program. We are interested in laptop computers that have been made within the last five years with little to no damage. Donating your computer can change someone's life. And imagine you can write that stuff off. You know, we really should see what they're going to do with this. See if we can get to that discount. Donating can change someone's life. I already said that. But it can really change someone's life. Competition financial donations are also welcome. So you can visit www.freeitathens.org. And thank you so much, guys. That is from Joel Isler in Athens. Thanks, Joel. I appreciate that. That is a very good cause. We'll see if we can help. If not, we're in addition to hopefully there's a lot of listeners in the Athens in Atlanta area that can help. Agreed. Or people can mail them from all over. I'm sure you could or just go there and give them a little cash. Give them $10. Oh, yeah, you could do that too. What was it? Freeitathins.org. That's right. If you have a commercial jingle, we want to hear it. Send us a link? Sure. Some great forgotten commercial jingle. We want to hear about it. Or the worst one ever. Yeah, let's just start talking about this. Let's get a conversation going. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffytno, and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music my Favorite Murder from exactly right media. My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstone Arc, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ld-unhealthy.mp3	How can some centenarians lead unhealthy lives?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-can-some-centenarians-lead-unhealthy-lives	You'd think that centenarians -- people age 100 and older -- would owe their longevity to healthy habits, but that's not always the case. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to learn more about genes, longevity and unhealthy habits.	You'd think that centenarians -- people age 100 and older -- would owe their longevity to healthy habits, but that's not always the case. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to learn more about genes, longevity and unhealthy habits.	Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:55:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=15, tm_min=55, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=97, tm_isdst=0)	23968386	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. It's free easing in here. It's not that cold. You need to put on a sweater or something. Well, I didn't expect it to be chilly. It is a little chilly. Our producer Jerry's wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a vest. It's kind of a dead giveaway. Well, she's stylish that way. She is. She is. So, everybody, if you haven't figured out by now, this is stuff you should know. And Chuck and I are going to talk about death. It's part of our death suite, kind of. Yeah. We just realized everest bizarre. And then this one. And if you don't know what we're talking about, it means that they've been published out of order. So just look forward to a lot of death from SYSK, right? Yes. Okay. So, Chuck, I'm pretty sure you're fully aware that I don't lead a very healthy life. Yes, I know that. I have certain vices that are disgusting and suicidal. Right. Yes. You smoke. That's one of many. Basically, I shouldn't be walking around right now. Right. And I've come to kind of take hope in someone who's become one of my personal heroes, a woman named Madame Jing Clemente. Right. And Madame Clement was a French woman, as her name would indicate, and in. She died happy and healthy and 122 years old. Yeah. Amazing. And the greatest part about Madame Clement is that she smoked until she was 100. So I've got, what, 68 more years before I have to quit if I want to possibly live to 122? Quit to live another 22 years. Right. And there are caveats to that. Right. I plan on raging against the dying of the light unless I get, like, a terminal cancer diagnosis or there's something that I'm not going to be able to get out of. And it equals, like, horrible death, and then I'm not going to go easy. Well, no, actually, no, the opposite. I'm going to go very easy. But it will be by my own hand. Right. Yeah. So that's my plan. But I'd rather live to 122 and just have the AFP take photos of me and post them on Getty Images, that kind of thing. You just want to be 100 with a smoke in your hand. Yeah, totally. And be like, don't smoke, kids. It's really bad for you. Right. My grandmother lived to be 100. Did she? Yeah. You know what that makes her, right? Yeah. 100 years old. Yes. There's another word for that, though. Is it centurion? That's very close. Did she combat people or anything? No. Centenary. Anybody who lives to age 100 or older is automatically a centenarian. Right. She passed away between 100 and 101. Good for her. Yeah. She made it to the centenarian status. Yes. So was she a healthy person? Did she lead a healthy life? Yeah. I mean, she was from the south, and so she ingested a lot of grease and fried foods over her life, but she didn't drink and she didn't smoke. She grew in vegetables, stuff like that. Yeah. Now, that's generally the rule of thumb. If you're going to lead a very long life, especially a healthy, long life, there's certainly like, you can't drink, you can't smoke, you have to forswear a lot of stuff. Right. So basically, you can lead a long, healthy, boring life. Right? Yeah. But there's people like Madame Clement who kind of fly in the face of this notion she should have been dead many years before. She did die from lung cancer, lung cancer, heart disease, any number of things, and she wasn't. So that kind of leads us to this question of how could people like Kern she's not the only one. She's definitely a rarity. Right. But she's not the only person who's lived that led a slightly unhealthy life, but lived a very long, healthy one. So how is this possible? Right. There's actually a field of research, aging research, dedicated to longevity. So it's not dumb luck, but they're trying to figure out there's got to be something to this. Yeah. And the weird thing is I have a pretty high chance of actually making it a lot longer than I should, although I should probably insert here. As you know, the death clock gives me till 2041. Right. But Aroma once read my palm and told me I had till 87, so I'm not sure which one is right. I think I'm going to go with the Roma later. Well, what would the other one put you at the death clock? 65, I think. Well, between 65 and 87. That's pretty good. Well, the thing is, if I make it to 65, that's not very long. Yes, 87 is definitely long. Right. But I think if you look at it in perspective, by the time I'm 87, 87 will probably be like, 65 is now. True. Either way, I'm going down. I can tell. Yeah, but you look like you're 122. Right, exactly. So how do we get on this one? You'll need you to leave me back there, buddy. Well, we need to go back. It's genes, Josh. Oh, no. First, yes, they're pretty sure that it is genes. Surely there's a genetic cause. And the whole reason why there's pretty much evidentiary proof that genes do play a role is that there are whole families of centenarians. And if genetics didn't play a major role in longevity, then the probability of a family having, like, three or four centenarians is, like, astronomically unlikely. Right. So, yes, genes play a role, but there's another mechanism that kind of a physiological mechanism. The starvation. Yeah. Right, yes. Restricted caloric intake. And I was going to say they're proven right. It is. Well, just through observation and studies in, like, worms, and I think east yeast yeast rats, which is a fungi, not a plant, by the way. We've learned many times over. Yeah, but the rats in particular are the ones who are really kind of giving up the secrets of what genes might lie behind us. But you want to talk about a caloric restricted diet first and what happens with that? Well, yeah, they found out. They did some like you were talking about tests on rats, and they found that the rats ate 40% fewer calories than their beefy counterparts. Called caloric restriction, they live longer and healthier. Evidently too longer and healthier. Part of it is that leanness leads to longevity and health generally. Right. Fat is although our body has a mechanism for storing it in the lean times, if you'll forgive me, it's actually not very good for us. We make much better use of carbohydrates and proteins and other nutrients. Fat, it's the bottom of the barrel nutrient. Right, right. I know when I was doing my survival work, how long can you live without food and water, that kind of thing. That when you start to starve. Your fats are the first thing to go, then carbohydrates the proteins, which means that's your body itself. Right. So we know that a caloric restricted diet is a good thing, but what longevity researchers are trying to figure out is exactly how this keeps us healthy and the mechanism behind it. Right. So one of the genes that's been studied is the S IRT one gene. That's a good one, and it's my favorite. The longevity genes. Yes. Well, mine is the other one, and we'll get to them. Okay. Well, which, by the way, I've dubbed the Ponza DeLeon Jean. Did you like that? Did you notice that in the article? That was all Josh, I believe. Okay, so the S IRT One gene actually, curiously, was studied by two independent studies, one at Harvard and one at MIT. And they both published their findings in June 2004, within, like, 16 days of one another. Yeah. It kind of makes me wonder if they were looking at each other's test paper. Can't you see some egg heads huddled over, like the study? So what one of them found was that the S IRT one gene inhibits the expression of this protein called backs. Right. No matter whether your cells are doing well or damaged, they have a specific lifespan. Right. They have a lifespan, and they could be healthy as an ox. But once they reach the end of this lifespan, this protein backs, comes in and actually creates apoptosis. And apoptosis is program cellular death like it's an execution. Wow. Now, what S IRT One does is it prevents the expression of backs. Right. And so therefore, it grants cells a stay of execution so they can keep working longer. And it's ultimately cellular death that leads to death from old age, non disease, non environmental factors. But just your cells stop dividing and reproducing and really stop functioning about it. Right. So the S IRT One gene has been shown to produce that. Right. But it also creates a process where fat is shed more quickly. So you become leaner, basically, with a reduced calorie diet. Your body in a survival mode. Exactly. And SIRT, one really comes into play. But as you said, you have another favorite gene, which indicates that that's not the only gene involved in this. No, in all likelihood, there's probably more than one gene involved at a time as well. Yeah. There's a guy who's conducting a study in Massachusetts on longevity, and he says probably about 8000 genes are responsible for it. Is that dawkins? No, that's pearls, I believe, is the same. We'll get to dawkins, too, right? Yeah. Promise me. I promise. My favorite gene, Josh, in this category is I don't know how you would say it. FOXO Three A. FOXO Three A? I like FOXO Three A? Yeah, that's what we'll call it. And that when they tested on worms, and it had a definite effect on the lifespan of a worm. They were able to turn this gene on and off by adding compounds that basically target and shut down these specific genes. Yeah. They're called gene silencing compounds. They've used them to create tier less onions. Oh, really? Yes. I need to get some of those. No. Stuff kills me. I know. Prepare to pay $17 an onion, though, pal. Really? Oh, genetic research didn't come cheap. I guess I'll just fry as they cook. Yeah. They found out when they had this gene turned on, the worms lived a lot longer. So they also found that the same gene was in a lot of elderly Japanese. And Okinawa has the largest concentration per capita of centenarians anywhere else in the world. And centurions, right. Yeah. They're still running around, and they also found it in elderly Germans. So that kind of proves that it's not drawn along continental or racial bounds. Right. And there's another gene. It's the insulin growth factor. One gene. IGF One. Yeah, good one. And they found that in a population of Ashkenazi Jews. You know what those are? Look that up. No. Apparently they're Jewish people from medieval Jewish people in western Germany. Got you. Direct descendants of that line. I got you. All right. Yeah. I knew that they were a very specific group. Right. But they found in women in this group that the IGF One gene had a mutation, and IGF One is partly responsible for creating growth hormone. Okay. And these women are generally small in stature as well. Right. And one of the researchers who conducted the study on them, I just found this kind of flawed logic. I mean, it makes sense, but sometimes biologists, geneticists and evolutionists make certain leaps. They go from A to C without hitting B. Right. As we like to say. Which I've done before. Yeah. I was not mad at you by the way. So this one researcher posited that because they're smaller, they're living longer, and a pony lives longer than a horse. And I don't know, for some reason, I was like, Back that up, dude. Right. But I think the more likely explanation is that cancer has been shown to be fueled by growth hormones. Right. So if you're producing less, that would lead you to believe that you have less of a likelihood of dying of cancer. Right. That's an A to C I can get behind right now. The problem is this shouldn't just express itself in women, this mutation. Or should it? Let's Talk About Richard Dawkins. Right. Zoologist. Yes. He has a theory, or perhaps a hypothesis, as we've been corrected, not the same thing, that everything that can reproduce basically is only a vessel for its genes, for carrying out and putting your genes and your son or daughter, and then that goes on in their son or daughter. And it's a vessel, essentially. Right. We're basically like a yeah, we're a vessel for a genetic line. Right. It's so disturbing to look at it like this, but almost like a parasite, you know what I'm saying? Like everything we're doing, every flaw we have, every good thing that's going on with us is genetic. Right. And then we die, but our genetic client gets passed on. It surely does. So if you look at it like that, then genes would only be concerned with getting us to reproduction age. Right. And they wouldn't care whether or not you live long. Right. It wouldn't concern itself with evolutionarily speaking. It's pretty interesting. But the thing is, there is a case you can make for women having longevity genes, but not men. Well, so they could reproduce longer. Yeah. They would have a healthier lifespan, and thus their reproductive age would be greater, so they could produce more offspring, and genetic line would have even more of a chance of survival. Yeah, sure. But women only reproduce for what, like, half their life? Roughly. I don't think even that. Let's say, like, 15 to 50. Oh, well, that's true. Yeah. I was just thinking about the end date, actually. That's probably about half a lifetime. Sure. Yeah. Depending on who you are. Although 50, I don't even know if you can do that. That's probably kind of a freak occurrence if you're 50 and have a kid. Yeah. I think anything over 40 years isn't always guaranteed. Yes. And medically speaking, even 35 is considered high risk pregnancy today in the 21st century. True. Yeah. So that's Dawkins position and the OBGYN Ruth Fetz was the one who posited that hypothesis. Right. The explanation of why women would have a longevity gene and not men. Clearly, though, we don't really have an idea yet, or else this podcast would have been much shorter. We would have said it's the fox three a gene. Right? It could be. It could have a part. It could be. But I think more likely it's a bunch of genes working together. I think you're right. Yeah. And once we figure it out, we're going to figure out how to harness it. We're all going to be walking around at 125, getting in boxing matches with kangaroos. Still, were you going to mention the Hay flick limit? Because I thought that was kind of cool. Sure, you kind of talked about it earlier, but I didn't know this until I read the article. You were talking about cells having a shelf life basically until they can die out or as many times as they can split. Right. And the Hayflich limit, doctor Leonard Hayflick noticed that 50 times is the number that a cell can split and then it stops. Right. But he also figured out that if you take an old cell and put a young nucleus in it, it'll keep going. It's also very cool. Right. And then as it reaches closer and closer to that 50 division limit, it starts to slow down more and more, and then it finally gets to 50 and stops. But yeah, you can replace the nucleus, and it will jam on it. Interesting. Yeah. Much like an old man goes after a younger woman. Let's go out on a morality tail, Chuck. I think that's a good idea. You want to talk about old Tom Par? Old Tom Par? Is that actually how he's known? Actually, they knew him as Old Par, but yeah, tom Parr. Okay. But old Tom Parr. Yeah. I could hardly believe this, but since you came up with it, I will believe it. Par was born in 1483, so we need to point out that at the time, in 1483, your lifespan was what, 30, 32? Yeah, something like that. That's what I read. Yeah. He lived as a single man until he was 80. So he more than doubled his lifespan already, which is amazing. And then he got married and started having kids at 80. Yeah. And at 100, he apparently fathered an illegitimate child with another woman. Yeah. He was publicly chastised. He was three times the age at this point, almost. And he had an illegitimate child. Yeah. He was killing it, basically. Right. Everybody else is just dying around him. He's fathering illegitimate children at age 100. Right. And he became fairly well known in England, as you can imagine. Sure. His birth date is tentative, but they're pretty sure, based on the age that he supposedly entered the service, that he was born around 1483, and they know exactly when he died. So even if it was off, it couldn't have been off by not too terribly much. 20 or 40 years. No, nothing like that. So this guy, he was asked many times, like, what his secret was, and he was, like, a real salt of the earth farmer who liked to father illegitimate children. Sure. But he ate, like, a very steady diet. He drank not meat, I guess he drank ale fairly regularly, but he bid in cider only on special occasions. I guess cider was a lot stronger back. Hard stuff. Yeah. And he just kind of lived as much of a healthy life as people lived in the 15th, 16th and 17th century. The guy made it to see three centuries. Right. Unbelievable. What got him was, at the age of 152, this courtier who had fallen out of grace with King Charles, decided he was going to get back into King's good graces by bringing old Tom Parr to court, right. And basically parading him around like, check this old guy, he's 152. Very bad idea. So old Tom Parr, this is his first taste of court life. And basically he parties like a rock star for two weeks dead. You think 152 now is just unthinkable? Yeah. And this is when the average lifespan was 32 years, so I can't even imagine. He must have been that was a terrible idea. It was. And you have to imagine the King Charles and this disgrace courtier. I mean, it's almost like ending up with some sort of thrill kill cult and then dying because you're totally out of your league kind of thing. Did they feel bad that they killed old Tom Barr? Seriously? By getting them wasted and feeding him pig and duck and stuff? He had never eaten before? Yeah, I bet they did. Yeah, I can't tell. I'm curious. I wonder if the history books write about stuff like that. Well, let's find out, Chuck, and we'll check it out. I'll give an update and we will follow up. Yeah, well, there's plenty more to read. All you have to do is type in some of the world's oldest people are old and unhealthy in the handy search bar@howstuffworks.com. So, Chuck, I have a question for you. Did you know that if you, my friend, went on to itunes right now and typed in super stuffed two words into their search bar, our spoken word album would come up? Spoken word album? We have a spoken word album? Chuck, I know that you were kind of zombie for a while while we were doing this. We had to prop them up like a dope monkey, but he did a great job regardless. I appreciate that. I can only imagine if we get to do another one, which is largely contingent on how many we sell this one, that if you're not doped up, we will be able to really excel at it. Do you want to talk about it for a second? Sure. It's called The Stuff you Should Know super Stuffed Guide to the Economy. That's right. And Josh and I talk about economics on a broad level and on a small level, granular level, and we kind of break it down for the everyday Joe that doesn't really understand what's going on in the world of economics, which makes sense because we're everyday Joe. You got it. Or layman. I think, as we've put it before they are. Yeah. So it's up for, what, 399? It's an hour long. It's got all sorts of bells and whistles. Interviews. Yeah, there's professional or expert interviews. So, yeah, it's not just like our regular podcast times four. It's exponentially better. Right. We get out of the studio, which is nice for us. Yes. I think we cut out a lot of us, which is vastly different from our regular podcast. Much more professional. So, yeah, there's our plug for our audiobook, the stuff you should know. Super stuff. Guide to the economy. 399 on itunes right now. Do you want to buy it? We won't be mad at you. We'd love you. And I'm thinking you want to talk about the blog. Sure, Josh. Let's talk about the blog. Okay. It's been up for a few weeks now, maybe a month, and we're starting to get some good interaction from the fans. It's nice. It is nice. I do a little blog podcast recap on Fridays, and so if you hear something on Tuesday or Thursday that strikes your fancy, just log onto the blog and leave a comment, and Josh and I'll chat it up with you. Yeah, it's been cool. That is cool. And you can find it through the homepage@housetopworks.com over on the right side there. Yeah, it has our mugs, alternately. Alternate mugs. Yeah, check it out. Right? Okay, so, Chuck, how about the blogs? Is it time for listener mail? Yes, indeed, Josh. This one comes to us from a postal service worker named Scott, and he's from Pismo Beach, California. Okay. And remember we did our thing on junk mail? Yes. And how awful and evil it is. Oh, yes. Turns out junk mail is actually keeping the postal service and business really to a large degree. And this is something we never considered. And that's why we wanted to read this, because sometimes there's another side of the coin that we don't really realize, and this is definitely the case. Josh and Chuck, you guys feel like a couple of old poker buddies to me. Very nice. Way to get going there, Scott. I'm writing in response to junk mail. I'm a letter carrier for the US. Postal Service, and I can assure you that on a superficial level, I hate junk mail even more than you. I sometimes loathe having to mess with all that seemingly useless garbage on a daily basis. However, it is a huge source of revenue for the postal service, and surprisingly, it does provide a substantial return for advertisers in these increasingly difficult economic times. We post employees are becoming concerned about the future of our jobs. Mail volume has dropped rapidly in the so called junk mail is providing us with much needed business if it were to disappear so with all of our jobs. So before you can call an all out assault on this admittedly minor annoyance, please take a moment to reconsider. I'm willing to put up a little mailbox clutter to keep alive one of our nation's oldest and most important professions. From Scott. Giddy up, Scott. Giddy up, Scott. And I believe just last week the postal service announced a lot of layoffs. And this was just a few days ago. I think we're responsible for it. I don't think so. I hope not. So what we'll tell people then? Junk mail, apparently, is keeping the postal service open. So do your best to recycle it and deal with things that way. If you want to be taken off a list, you can be taken off a list. But we can't completely stop junk mail or else there'll be no more Pony Express. It also makes for really good artwork too, right? Yeah. Well, if you want to give us another perspective on reality, you can doses by sending an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarke, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon, on music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…environments.mp3	How close are we to holographic environments?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-close-are-we-to-holographic-environments	Star Trek was famous for its holodeck, a completely immersive holographic environment that could be any space a user wanted. Thanks to telemersion technology built for business conferencing, we're starting to get close to that holodeck after all.	Star Trek was famous for its holodeck, a completely immersive holographic environment that could be any space a user wanted. Thanks to telemersion technology built for business conferencing, we're starting to get close to that holodeck after all.	Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:08:31 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=21, tm_min=8, tm_sec=31, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=318, tm_isdst=0)	22314519	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this stuff you should know. Gerry's back there. Chair, we're all set. Got our mics, got the dinosaur. What's his dinosaurs name? Frank the chairs uncle is here. His 97 year old uncle who is in the Olympic. Uncle Merle. Frank the chair. His uncle Merle is the dinosaur. Oh, I was talking about the chair sitting in. Is that a nameless? Oh, yeah. Sit in. Frank. Is it? Mom. Jeez. Frank's on set at our TV show that we're shooting. Unfortunately, we have a TV show we're making. Is it set in? Yeah, it's set in that I had to sit in that stupid chair for 60 hours a couple of weeks ago. Yes. It's hilarious. Yes. They followed us there. I know. Okay, so this is Uncle Meryl the dinosaur. The stegosaurus, I believe. Sure. It's like a stegosaurus cross with a sharpe. Look at all those wrinkles. Yeah, man, that's about it. All right. If you want to get in touch with us hey, buddy, if you don't mind if I plug my movember page real quick. Please do. I am growing a mustache this month for November for cancer research, specifically male prostate cancer research. That's right. And you can donate to my team, which would be pretty cool because you get a free podcast, and it'd be nice to throw a little money toward cancer research. Yeah, Chuck's being nice here. Give him some money. He's growing on facial here to help a charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right. And you can go to Mowbrow Cocharlesbryant that's my page. Or just go to the mobile site, type in Charles Bryant in the search bar, and look for the picture of me. There's only a couple of us out there. Chuck's wearing a red shirt. That's right. Yeah. So what is that again? That's Mobro Cocharles Bryant. Yes. Thank you in advance. Yeah. That's nice, Chuck. All right, let's get to it. Chuck, you selected this one. I did. How do you feel? It sounded a lot cooler. Yeah. We're talking about holographic environments. Yeah. And you hear that and you think, Man, Star Trek comes to life. So I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about, and I went and looked up The Holodeck, and it's apparently just from The Next Generation. It wasn't, like, original. Oh, really? I didn't see anything. I even looked on a Star Trek wiki, and it seemed to indicate the first I'm so nervous right now. Well, let's say this. We'll find out one way or the other very quickly, but it really seemed to indicate from my cursory research that The Holodeck was a feature on the Enterprise from the 23 Next Generation. All right, so what was the holodeck? Have you seen it? Are you familiar Star Trek at all now? I was in a star Trek guy. Me neither. They just kind of got past me. But have you seen it? Did you see it? Yeah. Okay. It's cool. It is a holographic projection room, and it basically is what you would think remember in Star Wars, which I am a fan of, when our two d to spit out the little holographic image of Princess Leia right. Rendering her message. Yeah. Imagine a room of life sized people doing that as if you're interacting. Yes. That's a very important key. Yeah. Because what we're talking about is not just a 3D projection like Star Wars clunked along with, but we're talking about the Star Trek holographic environment where you can move around and you get a 360 degree view, and you can shake hands and maybe have a cocktail or play a trombone or something with someone else in a virtual environment. But you can interact when you walk around the backside of somebody. You're not getting in the way of the projector. Can I read a line from the article? Yes. Eventually, you will even be able to hug other people using this technology. They should have put hug and quote. Yeah, sure. Because it's not a hug. No, they're not really there. I thought that they were talking about, like, having virtual sex. Of course it's going to go to virtual sex. It's going to be the first thing that they come up with. That's what everybody at Microsoft is working on right now. I'm quite sure you'll make a trillion dollars. Is it Total Recall? Yeah. Where you have the virtual reality experiences. And I'm sure it's been in other stuff, too. I'm not thinking of, like, Total Recall, the remake. Yeah, that was the other thing I was thinking of. All right. What we're talking about is telemersion, right? That's the real name for it. Yes. Not the holodeck in it right now is mainly being developed for a few different things, potentially. Video game use. Hugging your family members at Christmas. Yeah. You can't be there. I thought that was a nice one. Sure. But mainly for something that's not quite as exciting. Video conferencing. Right. Which we've seen, like, the pinnacle of video conferencing right now. I think so. Hamburg system. Yeah, man, they owe us a couple of bucks. Yeah, we plugged them, like, heavily. Well, I mean, it's amazing technology. It is. But it's just like, nothing compared to telemersion. The goal of telemersion. True. And this article has got to be outdated, laughably, out of date, because after witnessing the Tanberg in Use, which basically feels like you're sitting in a room, it's HD. It's not like a hologram or anything, but it's really good. And it feels like you're sitting in a room with someone. There's no lag, there's no stuttering. And this article talks about, like, these days there's some stuttering and flickering when you try to teleconference. Right. They figured that all out. They did this article also. No, it's not which I mean, it's kind of, I think, where the telemetry was at when this article was written, where we're at with Skype. It's pretty decent now. Right. But the author, Kevin Bonzer, makes a point. Like, if you walk out of the way of the webcam, nobody can see you any longer. When you're looking at the computer screen, the webcam is getting your eyes, but you're not making eye contact. Like, nobody thinks to do that. All this stuff just kind of goes away with telemersion because you have a webcam that's tracking your eyes to see where you're looking at. That's a big part of it. Yeah. Facial recognition helps with that, too. And then also there's a camera raised since there's one webcam pointing at you, there are cameras around you pretty much 360 deg. So they're capturing everything you're doing so you can't leave the view of the other person. Yeah. You'd have to go into a different room, and then what's the point? Just hang up. Your call is over at that point, unless you just have to pee real quick, you're like, Hold on, I'll be right back. One thing that's in the way right now, I mean, they made a lot of headway that this article points out in 2012, years ago, is when they made their first big breakthrough. The National Telemersion Initiative. Yes. Working together. Chapel Hill. Looks like North Carolina. Did you look up this group? Are they still around? Their website is still around, but they reached their pinnacle in May 2000. Oh, really? Is it MySpacey? Oh, man. Yeah, it is. And it's like, what we're doing? Nothing. Yeah. All right. Well, at the time, it was a big breakthrough because it was the first time they were able to see three dimensional holographic images of, like, colleagues in different cities all sitting in the same room. Right. And it was a big deal. Yeah. And we should also say, like, the point of telemersion is basically to create, say, if you want to telecommute and you have a conference, rather than everybody flying to the conference room, you have a virtual conference room set up to where everybody basically projects themselves into this shared space, the shared room that you can get up and move around and see from different angles. And each user is depicted 360 degree. So it is a sort of telepresence, is what they call it. Yeah. And it's sort of a green initiative, too. You could look at it that way. Yeah. Save a lot on jet fuel and commuting costs and things like that. There's some huge challenges to this. There were back in 2000, and a lot of them are still around. One of them is the kind of bandwidth that we will need. Yeah. Because I think it's for the frame to refresh itself, or the screen to refresh itself, or the projection to refresh at ten frames a second. That would be seamless, but it was hitting at like three back in 2000. I wonder what it's at now. I'm sure that we can do that now but the problem is transmitting that data right, is problematic. It's just up a lot of bandwidth. Yeah. So you're talking about two things. A computers that are way more juiced than they are now, even now. And you're talking about an Internet. Internet too. Basically. Yeah. Now that's still going on. Right. It's basically this initiative by a bunch of universities around the country to wire the US at speeds that are just blistering fast compared to what we've got now. Up to 1000 times faster. That's really fast. They also have enormous storage capabilities and I saw one of the things that they're doing is using this to move out to underserved areas of the country. Oh really? Yeah. It's not just for New York or San Francisco. Yeah. It's for North Dakota. Why can't North Dakota get online? Finally. That's funny but true. You also have well, just basically tracking somebody which Microsoft has done a lot to get past. Are you talking about that new thing, the hollow desk? Yes. Yeah. I just found this today. Did you look at that? The video? Yeah. It's pretty cool. It is. Microsoft is developing something, and this is current, called the hollow Desk and uses an overhead screen to project a 2D image through a half silver beam splitter onto a desktop. Basically what it looks like is it looks like you're working on a desk with a screen between you and the desk. Like a see through clear screen. Yeah. So if you look below that screen you're just going to see your hands doing nothing. If you look through that screen you're going to see holographic images. In this case they were like little glowing balls that you could pick up and juggle and you could pick it up with a piece of paper. You could put it in a coffee cup and swirl it around. Pretty cool. Yeah. That's huge. It's hugely different than anything that this article was talking about or anything we thought of before because you're interacting with a virtual environment. It's reacting to you. I mean yeah, super advanced and it was like you could tell looking at it. It's like the pong of what it will be one day. Yeah. Because it's kind of jittery. The edges aren't clear when you're holding one of those balls. You can still see your fingers through on the other side. But there's a virtual ball and you're picking it up and throwing it from hand to hand and it's reacting to you like it's there but it's not there. That's an enormous leap forward. It's pretty wicked. Right now it's a research project so they're not going to roll this out anytime soon. Right. But the stuff you see in movies of the future where like a surgeon will take a model of a heart and a holographic model and move it around with his hand or something that's coming down the pike at some point. Right. Surgeons is one application, training soldiers is another. When I was doing the research in the article for PTSD, which we need to do eventually, I know it's just going to be like there's a lot to it. We have that source who keeps sending us research up to the date research. I know. And yeah, we need to do it anyway. I found that one way that they were trying to prevent PTSD later on was Immersing Soldiers and basically what they were going to see, like dead bodies beforehand. It's just horrible stuff. Yeah. Beforehand as part of their training. Interesting. But it looked a lot like a current video game now, which is good, but it's not really life. Like if you could nail this and have somebody immersed in it, then all of a sudden they're going to see what they're going to experience and maybe it's kind of like easing them into it a little bit to prevent PTSD further down the road. Interesting. So, like desensitizing them beforehand. Right. Well, that'd have to be pretty real though. Yeah. I imagine even the realest projection, when you still see the real thing, it's like I don't know, I imagine that's still pretty bad news. Sure. It's like missing something. It's like interacting with a robot. It's missing something. Even the greatest robot is missing something. But it could help. Yeah. It could maybe prime your brain to see the real thing at the very least. Even if it doesn't work to prevent PTSD, they'll make a lot of money making video games like that, like using it as a straight up video game. I think that's one of the big goals of telemersioned is to create a virtual world that you are interacting with. Like, look at the Microsoft Connect, the little bar that tracks your movements. So now you can dance and like, the little avatar on the screen is making your movements. Right. You go into the mall and see people doing this, right? Yeah, I think so. I know what you're talking about. Have you seen like, people just dancing in the middle of the mall in front of a TV screen? No, but is it like we fit very much. Okay, but I think Microsoft is the one who really had the breakthrough with this. Connect. Got you. So they've got that. They've got tracking human motion down. Now all they have to do is make it so that you're not looking at a screen, you're in the screen. Yeah, that's the telemersion part. Yeah. And the whole hub we were talking about with being able to hug something or with the hollow deck with Microsoft, you're juggling these invisible balls, these holographic balls, but you can't feel them. But with something called haptics haptic sensors, that's a big one. Potentially, you might be able to at least replicate some of this. It is tactile feedback technology. So if you ever played, like, PS Three, now they have the vibrating controllers. Yeah, that's fine. So, like, when you get shot or you shoot a guy or something and a first person shooter, it like vibrates, right? They also have them so that you get little shocks to stimulate your sense of touch, really, to stimulate pressure, temperature change, and basically just screw with your brain. Then that all of a sudden now, hugging would be virtual. Hugging is like I guess that would be the Holy Grail, but it still needs to be something physical. So wouldn't you have to wear some sort of a suit that's wired to compress arms around you or anything? Yeah, but I mean, we're almost there. I don't even know if you would have to wear a suit would probably be helpful, but I'll bet there's little, like, patches of your skin where if you're wired into that and you electrocute those, you could simulate, like, your whole arm feeling a sensation rather than just that finger that has that electrode array on it. So you're talking about plugging in. Very much so. And that's the haptic part of it. And I think we're already starting to get there. Like, some of the smartphones have this haptic effector is what it's called. A haptic sensor senses you squeezing something. Right. And the haptic effect door would be the array on the person's arm that simulated the pressure of that squeeze right. In between, you have a lot of information being measured and crunched and transmitted because how much pressure are you applying? Like, are you trying to hurt the person? All that has to be tracked and then sent out to the effector, which replicates it. Well, you want it to be exact, right? Otherwise it's just clumsy. Sure. Or it hurts. That's a good point. It's like, stop squeezing hard. I'm not. It's the machine. You always say that. I know. The two pack hologram. Yeah, I looked up actually, the NPR did a great story on how that was done, but I think I should just read real quickly what one of the designers, he sort of explains it by saying sort of a lot. He's one of those guys. He said there's an overhead projector that sort of reflects down onto basically a tilted piece of glass that's sort of on the stage floor. Then that reflects the well, reflection onto a mile or sort of screen. And it sort of projects in this sort of 3D kind of thing where it allows the other performers to sort of walk in front of Tupac and basically interact with him. And he said sort of literally like, six times. Yeah, but that's a pretty basic way of explaining how a hologram works. But we have a really detailed article on that if we ever feel squarely. Holograms. Yes. Tracy wrote it, and I tried to read it today, and it flew way over my head. So it's going to require some more effort, and Blood is going to require, like, a lot of effort. That should be our last podcast ever. Blood? Yeah, Blood. And we should just, like, at the same time, cut each other's jugulars and bleed out on camera. Do you got anything else? Oh, telemersion is still going on. Yeah, at Berkeley. Berkeley has a big telemersion lab. Oh, really? UC Berkeley. Figures. Not the music school. Same school, though. Berkeley School of Music. That's, like, in Massachusetts. Oh, is it? Yes. Oh, I didn't know that. Massachusetts? Yes. I think it's around Boston. I feel like a dummy now. Oh, it's okay, man. And it's not related to Berkeley in California at all? I don't believe so. I will. It's all right. Sometimes you swing in this, but you look good doing it. I appreciate it. Can we be done talking about this? I think so. Look for realistic holographic video conferencing in an office near you in the future. In seven years, your boss in Japan will be hugging you just because he can. Yeah. All right, well, if you want to learn more about virtual environments or Holographs or Holodecks, you can type any of those words into the search bar@housetofworks.com, see what comes up, spin the wheel, take your chances, and then just read them all. There you go. I said search bar. Yes. So do it. Josh, I'm going to call this email from our old buddy Lance Bangler. Oh, for him? No, he's in the military. Okay. I used to write it all the time. Yes, I remember. Do you get hats from I don't remember. I think our traditional Afghani tribal hat. How was that from him? I believe so. Wow. If not, we're going to hear about it. Josh and Chuck in your production assistant. I know he's not talking about Jerry. I think he thinks we actually have, like, a team working for us, which is funny in itself. It is. We've got Uncle Meryl, Pegasaurus. Sharp thing. I always crack up when people email me and they're like, whoever answers these for Josh and Chuck, right? Yeah. I wish it's us. I first discovered you all while working in Iraq several years ago and continue to listen to everything you do. You even sent me some stickers and two T shirts back then. The stickers are no doubt still stuck to a number of buildings from Baghdad to Kuwait. I love that. You missed one testing method, however, in your nuclear devices. In your most recent podcast. Remember we talked about underground outer space and what in the water? Yeah. Yeah. What is currently the world's fastest computer, located in California, has been contracted by the Doe and DoD to run simulations on each device's output, real life versus the estimated design output. The computer is powerful enough that it models the simulators at the subatomic level. Each subatomic particle from beginning to end, is represented. That is crazy because our nuclear arsenal is aging some weapons are 25 plus years old. That is kind of crazy. And any number of treaty restrictions. These simulations are the perfect way to test the device without any nuclear fallout. Even more interesting, these simulations have uncovered some surprises. Some good, others not so good. I guess he's going to keep this private, right? But lest you think this computer is just a mushroom cloud in the skies, they're also modeling the human heart at the cellular level, each individual cell, that is, to determine the effects of various drugs and diseases. All in all, keep up the great work and what you're doing. And as an old television producer, knock them dead with a new TV show. Thank you. What an interesting project to be a part of. And with the kind of brand awareness and the following you have, it's sure to be a success. That is from our old buddy Lance Bangler in Castle Rock, Colorado, who hopefully knocked on wood with that last sentence. We're knocking now, just in case. Yeah. Thank you very much. Lance. Or not. Well, I definitely remember that we sent him stickers and shirts, and now they're in bad days, and I believe he might have sent a picture back of them wearing the shirts. Yeah, that might have been another year. Right? But then we have another guy who's taking pictures of the Flintstone amusement park in Baghdad. Oh, yeah. I think he was the one who sent us the hat. That was awesome. I have a lot off to all our military listeners. Afghani hats off. Let's see if you have a correction or like Lance had just, I guess, a mind blowing addiction. Yes. Thank you, Chuck, because I was really having trouble here. You can tweet it to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshow. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1218576029423sysk-robot-wedding.mp3	Will robots get married?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/will-robots-get-married	Some researchers believe that weddings between a human and a robot could be possible by the year 2050. Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about robot rights.	Some researchers believe that weddings between a human and a robot could be possible by the year 2050. Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about robot rights.	Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:00:26 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=239, tm_isdst=0)	14542699	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things we like to think about. Online fraud shouldn't be one of them. Because with every purchase, visa prevents, detects, and resolve online fraud. Safe, secure Visa. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, staff writer. Here@housedupworks.com with me, as always, is Charles Chuck Bryant, also staff writer here@healthworks.com. What about Staff Writer Chuck? Well, Josh, I think, as you can see, I'm just snuggled up with my real doll here. I did notice, Chuck. I wasn't going to bring it up. She is a looker, I'll give you that. But she is what? Polyethylene? Maybe. I don't ask and she doesn't answer. I'm sure she doesn't. That reminds me of a movie I haven't seen. You I've been told by several people to definitely see it. Lars and the real girl. Yes, I've seen it. It's really good. How is it? It's good. Little indie. It's got Ryan Gosling. He's really great actor. No spoilers, Chuck. I haven't seen it yet. Okay, go ahead. But the basic plot outline is that he plays this lonely guy who gets a real doll. It's a real girl doll, right? Yeah. Is that what they're called? And I'd ask Samantha, but she wouldn't answer. And so he has this doll in the town, kind of just accepts it as being his girlfriend. And it's worth seeing. Yeah, it's really it sounds really creepy, but it's actually kind of a sweet movie. Well, you know, that's actually not too far off from what some people are predicting is going to be part of the future of humanity. Right. Not too far off at all. Robot human weddings. Right. And we're not even talking real girls here. We're talking about real girls that, like, movers and real girls. Yes, exactly. And apparently there's this guy named David Levy who is, I think, some sort of futurist, maybe a roboticist. But he wrote a paper based on research he did in philosophy. Sexology. Which, to tell you the truth, until I read his article, I didn't realize it was an actual discipline. Robotics, of course, all sorts of other stuff. Sexology, it's like the greatest word ever. It sounds like an MTV show. It really does. Or like a drink you get in cancun. Right. So Levy combines all these disciplines together and comes up with the notion that by 2050, some states, starting with Massachusetts deposits will allow human robot weddings. Marriages. I know. Legally recognized. Yeah. In fact, I believe he said, quote, It is inevitable. Yes, he did. Even before that, though, another roboticist predicted that by 2011, you're not too far off from people will be having sex with robots. Right. Which, I mean, once you start having sex with something, somebody eventually wants to marry it. We are a moral species. Yeah. You could argue that we're not. But yeah, generally you're right. Just like in Lars and the Real Girl, he had a lot of respect for his real doll. Okay. And I don't want to ruin it for you. Please don't chuck them. But it was a relationship based on, if not mutual, at least one way respect. Right. But with a robot, it's going to be much more mutual. I don't know about necessarily feelings for robots. I don't think we're going to reach that point. But it will appear a lot more mutual because they can program respect, or at least things that you can say that would indicate respect. Right. Now, one of the things that's leading the way that's going to be allowing things like robots that people would want to have sex with or marry is like the skin that's being developed. There's a guy who used to work for Disney. He was a roboticist who created the skin that bunches and wrinkles. And when you have lifelike skin, you can convey emotions through lifelike facial expressions. Right, right. Once you start having that, you've got a really realistic looking robot. Yeah. I don't think I'll ever go to the hall of Presidents again with the same eyes. No, exactly. Abraham Lincoln with the head of Abraham Lincoln. Right. This whole issue of possibly marrying robots and definitely having sex with robots has brought to the attention of some people the concept of robot rights. Have you heard of robot rights? I mean, the movement behind it. Yes, I know Japan was kind of at the forefront of this whole thing. They are now, but they were lagging for a little while. At first it was just South Korea and Europe, basically. Japan was conspicuously absent from the table, and they're at the forefront of robotics. They needed to be there. So they finally caught up, and now they're all about robot rights. Right. And a lot of people are kind of like, what is this? Why would we even have robot rights? This is ridiculous silly. And to those people, proponents of robot rights. You ever heard of animal rights? Yeah, I've heard of that. Isn't that technically a silly idea in the same vein? But if you really think about it, these are animals, but we humans have established rights for how we interact with them, how we allow them to interact with us, and it's accepted now. And I think a lot of people years ago might have thought the same thing about animal rights. Right. They do about robot rights. Right. And I think with robots, especially with robots that can give a lifelike appearance, really awful things are going to come out of humans. If you have a robot that can recoil in horror or wince in pain, there's going to be people out there who are going to want to kill them. Like a drifter or something like that. Right. The potential for abuse is big and real. Abuse on a robot but there's still something sociopathic about it. Definitely. But I predict that once lifelike robots are available and produced en masse, I think there's going to be a lot of awful stuff. And I think that it's good that we're preparing for this now, because I think the first half of the 21st century is going to see an explosion and advancements in robotics. Yeah. I think South Korea said a robot in every house by the year 2020. Yeah. In that same year, actually, the US has said that it plans to supplement one fifth of its battalions with robots. Right. Which raises a whole other question. I mean, like, do robots that kill people are designed to kill people? Are they afforded any kind of rights? Exactly. Should they be free from harm? That kind of thing. Right. It's too much for my brain, to be honest. Let me get in the driver's seat here, Chuck. No problem. So basically, the main argument is that, no, a robot that's programmed to kill should be able to have harm done to it. Right. Most robots that we're going to interact with aren't going to be designed to kill. If you see a robot that you know is designed to kill, you should turn and run really fast. Sure. Because it only is programmed to do one thing, right. Yeah. Kill. So most of the robots we're going to interact with will be helping around the house sure. Serving in the sex trade. Right. They already have those. Not the sex trade, although they may, but the little robots to clean the floor and do things like that. Yeah. The roomba, the scuba and all that kind of concept. Right. These things are going to look a lot more lifelike. Right. Like, if you want one that looks like Doubtfire, you can have Mrs Doubtfire working for you if you shell out enough cash. So let's say you have Mrs Doubtfire as a household robot, and Mrs Doubtfire is bringing you a hot cup of coffee. Unfortunately, Mrs Doubtfire trips and spills the hot coffee on you, and you get up and react by smacking Mrs Doubtfire across the face. Should you be penalized for that? Should you be punished? Right. And I think that's what Japan and some other South Korea are trying to work out, are the parameters of what's allowed and what's not allowed and whether or not robots should have rights, just like you and I right. Now, let's say Mrs Doubtfire doesn't trip, but she walks up to you and pours the hot coffee on you. Right. Who's responsible for that? What is the legality of the manufacturer of the robot? In my mind, I'm no lawyer. Right. Well, no one has any idea. All these questions are totally up in the air right now, and they're trying to hammer them out, and the whole thing kind of goes both ways, actually. Humans are going to also need protection from robots, which is where Mr isaac Asimov comes in. Right. Yeah. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. I think he was really one of the first people to talk about robots and humans living together and getting along, or not getting along. Right. And he established the three laws of robotics. I think it's one of his short stories, run Around, I think. Yeah, run around, which was actually in a collection of short stories called Irobot, which Will Smith, as you know, made into a pretty substandard film, which he borrowed from a couple of these. And he actually used the three laws of robotics. They referred to those in the film as well. You want to give them the Three Laws? I will. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. Sure. Great. First Law. Yeah. A robot must obey orders given it by humans, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or Second Law. Right. And these laws just sound like there's no way around them. I was reading a critical analysis of Asimov, and basically the author pointed out that he didn't think Asmrv thought these things were watertight. He basically used to like to use them as a theme to show how even these really great cohesive closed system laws could screw up. Which is why nobody is going to go to Asimov to figure out how to program robots in the future. But we do need some level of protection. Like our robots just kept from interacting with humans altogether. Like a robot cannot touch a human. Is that something that we would do? Right. And there's been casualties. There's been death by robots. Happened already. The first one happened in 1982 when a guy was crushed on a factory line by a big robotic arm. Right. Sort of like moderator. Not really, but yeah, kind of. And then since then, a lot of people have died. Actually, one guy, the worst death by robot that I've heard so far was a guy had enough of an amount of molten aluminum poured on him by a robot that it killed them. Wow. I wonder if he was trying to make a little robot buddy. I don't know. Maybe. We're hoping not. We are talking about industrial robots. The thing is, these are isolated incidents. But what happens when there is a robot in every house, and not only Korea, but the world? These accidents could step up quite a bit, and we need to figure out how to address them now before it happens. Right. And also, I think a lot of roboticists are really worried about the moment when robots are equipped with systems that allow them to learn. Right. Right. When that happens, they lose all predictability whatsoever, and we won't be able to tell what they're about to do, what they won't do. They'll be as unpredictable as humans. And when you're on the subway with somebody you don't really trust, you got your muscles tensed in your ribs for a knife. Right. The same thing would happen with humans and robots, I think so. Probably even a little more creepy, because while humans are unpredictable robots, you don't know what they're programmed to do if it's not your robot. Right. And also there's also issues of morality that would factor into that. You like to think that most humans would stop themselves from stabbing you even if they wanted to because they have some sort of moral judgment. How do you program morals into robots? It's a very big, sticky ball of questions. I have to say, I am pretty glad that the people who are trying to figure this out now are figuring it out now. Right. And they're a lot smarter than I am. Exactly. It's kind of one of the situations I would kick back and say, Go to it. Yeah. I would have no idea. Yes. Hopefully they won't use their advantage to make up their slaves, though. Yeah, that's I agree. So that's about that for robot marriages. But there's even more in the article that I wrote on the site. Will Robots Get Married on howstep works.com and stick around to find out how to get water from a beach? If you're ever stranded on a deserted island right after this, Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things to think about, like, say, what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket or whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera? But thankfully, we don't need to think about online fraud, because for every purchase you make, visa keeps an eye out for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that for peace of mind? Safe, secure Visa. Way to stick around. It may save your life. So, Chuck, I'm going to tell these people, I already know you know how to do this because it's based on one of your articles, but I'm going to tell everybody how to get water out of a beach on a deserted island. Right. It's called a beach. Well, yeah, and it can come in really handy if you're like a castaway. A castaway, yeah, exactly. Go ahead and let them know. I will. So basically, you find a sand dune, right. And right behind it, you dig about a three to five foot hole. That's deep, right? Or wide? Deep. Okay. Three to 5ft deep. Probably about a foot wide. Just reach down in there if you can. You want to line the sides of the hole with wood to keep it from collapsing. You want to place some rocks in the bottom of it, right? Yeah. And you basically just walk away for a few hours. Right. You come back and presto. You've got about five gallons of pure water right there. Presto change. O. It's not salt water. No. And you recommended in the article that if it was a little salty, just move back a little further. Right. And if you have a size twelve foot and you ever find yourself stranded on a desert island, just measure off 100ft and start digging there. That's what Chuck recommends, right? And drink out of your shoe. Yeah, that's a good one. Also, you can find a myriad of other ways to save your own life, not only in Chuck's article how to Find Water in the Wild, but on the Adventure Channel on howstephos.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcasts@housetopworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?"
https://podcasts.howstuf…milies-final.mp3	How Circus Families Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-circus-families-work	Don't be confused - this one is about actual circus acts made of family members, not the controversial comic strip.	Don't be confused - this one is about actual circus acts made of family members, not the controversial comic strip.	Thu, 02 Jul 2015 14:15:44 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=15, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=183, tm_isdst=0)	41946459	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. It's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry, which makes this the flying SYSK. Flying Stefanis. Nice, man. Boy, see? Look at that. Took us, what, 7 seconds, maybe even less, to come up with the best name in the history of podcasting circus teams. Yeah, we'll go back and look at the timestamp after this published, and we'll know for sure, but I say less than 7 seconds. The Flying Staffinis. Yeah. Good job, man. All right. I guess we can retire. We've hit it big. We have. You could make some money being a circus family, I learned. Yeah. I have no idea about costs, so you will delight me, because I think everyone well, not everyone. I think some people, when they go to the circus, they're like, what's that guy make for throwing knives? Oh, I have no idea what they make. It's just the question I got from this research. Got you? And I thought you had some hard numbers. No, you're the stat, man, remember? I know, but people don't you know, it's rude to talk about money, so people don't share these things these days. That's why I'm not saying anything. I'm just telling you the impression I had. They're always strutting around with goblets full of really expensive wine. Circus families. Yeah. Every time I think we're all circused out, there comes another topic. Well, we have yet to do how circuses themselves work. We will do that one day. So we've done all of its components, every last one after that. Well, it does have interesting history. So we will save that, then. Yeah, I do want to do how circuses work. And we should also say, I don't want anybody to have the impression that by talking about circus families, we are endorsing circuses in general. I have serious issues with some of them, for the most part because of their treatment of animals. Yeah, but a lot of them don't use animals at all anymore. Not a lot of them. Some of them don't. I have no problem with the circuses. Yeah, like I remember the Big Apple Circus. They have a dog thing. Well, dogs. I mean, what are they going to do? Anyway? A horse thing. And I think that was it. And horses love to show off, so I'm okay with the big yeah, but they wouldn't show like an elephant. Right? Which is funny, because apparently an elephant is equal to a family circus performer. Oh, yeah, I saw that. I should say circus family performer. Family circus is totally different. Yeah, this is a little frustrating to research because I kept getting lots of circular cartoons that weren't funny. You don't think they're funny? Okay. They're terrible. They're not funny. I think they're charming and heartwarming for you. Yeah, sure. Jeffy wrote on the wall, right. Not funny, but it's cute. Their little hair and the nose. They're cute. I have a brief segue here. Initially, that reminded me I was just at Max funcon, the weekend retreat of Jesse Thorne and his podcasting empire. Everybody loved you. That picture of you and Hodgman and Justin McElroy's kid. Yeah. Little baby Charlie. Yeah, very cute. Yeah, I think people love babies. Hodgman, who doesn't even particularly like kids. It's like, Give me that baby. Husband likes kids. At least he likes his own kids. Yeah, sure. So I was just there. And first of all, let me recommend the Super Ego podcast. Very funny. Improv podcast featuring Matt Gorely and Paula Tompkins and Mark McConville and Jeremy Carter. You could have stopped at Paula, Tompkins. Yeah, right. But one man in Province, it's not the best. He can do it. I bet he could. Yeah, he does. I've seen it. So anyway, long story short, we were playing this game one night where we were naming comic strips, and the comic strip Mark Trail came up. Oh, man. Do you remember that? Well, it wasn't even trying to be funny. Well, no, it wasn't funny at all. But it wasn't even, like, interesting. It was literally like, what a beautiful sunset today. Right. That was it. Or tracing the trail of a hawk in the sky, like, through eight panels. Yeah, I thought it was refreshing in a little ways. Like, you just make it all through a hilarious spasm of laughter after Funky Winker Bean or Hagar the Horrible and you needed to win. Chill out. I couldn't remember that. So you'd like read the Mark trail? Yeah. And then you go at it again and just laugh and laugh and beatle Bailey with the stitches. And then maybe you come down a little on Mary Worth three G. Oh, back up on wizard of Dead. Back down with Brenda Starr. Right? Yeah, that's the way you do it. But Mark Trail, I don't want to knock it too much because I believe it's, like, taught kids about nature and conservancy and stuff like that and how to follow a Hawks trail in the sky. Didn't belong in the comic section, but I don't know. It was a comic strip. Yeah, a lot of those comics were like, they started out or a lot of things started out as comics, like Loan Ranger Comic. Oh, really? Sure. The comic strip or comic book. Because some have been both. Well, the both are my point. Let's say comic strip. Okay, great. And it might have actually started out as a radio show, now that I think about it. Hey, that worked out well. I was thinking, how can we kill some time here before we do circuses? That's how. Family Circus tangent. So family. Circus Family. Yeah, circus family. When I first started researching, I was like, what a weird thing to be in a circus family. And then I thought it might be weird to be in one, but not weird that there are circus families, because it makes total sense sure. That it's the family business. Well, that's how circuses largely started out. Yeah. Very familial. It was like some patriarch of a family would find out that, hey, I'm kind of good at juggling. Why don't I try doing it while I stand on the back of a moving horse? Sure. And they go, holy cow, I'm actually doing this. And they'd say, well, let me see what happens when I toss my sons in the air instead of juggling batons. Juggle my sons. Yeah. If I set their hair on fire using some sort of safe flammable material that will burn but not burn the sun, say. Yeah. Like have a flame retardant cap. Sure. Then all of a sudden, you've got a circus family. And like, these people would start out by the whole family would get involved. And this is a time when there were much larger families than there are today. And they would form their own mini circus and travel around. And as circuses became more and more established and entrenched and divided among some very big names, they started basically freelancing for these things. Like they go on a tour or a couple of tours. They'd be with a large circus for a couple of years, and then they go off and get on another tour or something like that. But they would form these family acts. And that's how circuses originally got started. Yeah. And apparently the more you look at it, the more it makes sense. They're on the road a lot, and if you want to spend time with your family, get your family in the family business. Because then mom and dad aren't on the road doing their equestrian act. They are bringing the kids along and teaching them, and all of a sudden they're the writing stuffinos. Right. And they're spending time together. And I read a few interviews with people in circus families. And apparently if you were not from a circus family, this quote from Big Apple Circus guest director Steve Smith said, for those of us who didn't grow up in the circus, there's always a feeling as if we're on the outside looking in on what they call, quote, being circus. Yeah. Like if you're born into a circus family and you're in the circus, you have automatic prestige. You're part of a dynasty. And that's being circus. Yeah. It's like real police. If you're a fan of The Wire, sure, there's cops and there's real police. Yeah. But like, if you were born into being police, which a lot of cops are also another family tradition job. Yes. I don't know if little podcasters are going to come along. We're not at that point yet where, like there's been a generation. Oh, no, not yet. Maybe a little Charlie McEroy will be a podcast. Maybe. And then they say marrying inside the circus also makes a lot of sense because where you're going to meet people, but probably fellow performers, other circus families, and not towners. If you're not like you and I are towners. Yeah. Aka slackjaw. Yokles. Yeah, sure. Light that thing on fire and jump through it. Yeah. There's a pretty neat article on PBS called Being Circus Life in the Family Business about being born into a circus family. It seems like a pretty cool life. I mean, they go to school on the road, and I think it's like one big family, because they say if you're in a trapeze act, you can't be mad at your dad, who is catching you in the trapeze act tonight. I think you got to, like, drop you. Yeah. Well, you can't go into performance, a dangerous performance, like the globe of death harboring any animosity toward your siblings. Right. So you got to work this stuff out. They're tight knit people. Right. And it seems like the custom is that once you are done performing as a member of a circus family, there's a non performing job for you ready and waiting in the circus elsewhere. Like an administration or something like that. I thought you were going to say, break a deal, face the wheel. Long standing tradition in the circus. I know. Welcome to Bartertown. I watched that not too long ago. I told you. I think I watched the whole Mad Max trilogy, the quadriilogy now. Well, yeah, I think it's still trilogy plus one. Like, Durham is our plus one on the northeast tour. Yeah, the lousy people of Durham. Get it together, Durham. All right. So you want to talk about some of these famous families. You marry into it, you're born into it, and then before you know and it seems like they always have a lot of kids, too. Yeah, like seven children. Need seven to complete a pyramid. Exactly. Is that why? Probably. If you think you need help tending to the farm, imagine having, like, a circus act. Yeah, that's the point. And some circus families also kind of expand, especially once they form a troop, they'll expand the family act to include non family members. Sure. Where they're members of the troop, they're not members of the family, but for any outsider, they're like, oh, there's like three dads here. Yeah. But they take the traditional blood oath, I think, just so they fit it and cut themselves with an elephant tusk. That's right. Still attached to the elephant. Yeah, that's right. And then they do a trapeze. That's got to hurt. Yeah. So let's talk about the Clarks, one of the earliest British circus families. Any relation to you? Probably. Can't you tell? Sure. You've seen me on the high wire. I have. You're quite skilled. Yes. The Clarks go all the way back to the very first circus because a man named Philip Athlee is credited as being the inventor of the modern circus in the late 17 hundreds. Right. And he heard about John Clark, who is a horseman. A lot of these people are horse people. Yeah. It's a good way to start in the circus, to be good on a horse. Exactly. John Clark was good on a horse. He caught the attention of Philip Astley, and in the early 19th century, they started a circus act. Yeah, it was an aerial act. At first. It seems like any time you're good, then the Ringling Brothers will come and call in at some point. Yeah, for sure. To snap you up, because they are the greatest show on Earth. That's right. One of the ways also to cement your family act as a dynasty, in addition to having multiple generations that stay in the circus, is to create some new thrilling move that no one else has done before. Like, the Clarks are credited with coming up with the triple back. Somersault in the Clarke family dynasty actually broke up because of World War II. World War II, interestingly, had a really direct impact on a lot of circus families, and the clerks were among them. So the men went off to war. I'm sure some of them died when they returned. I've seen too much to go back into the circus. And it was up to Ernestine Clark, who was a great granddaughter of John Clarke, I believe, to carry on the family business. Yes, single handedly. And daughter of Ernest. Her name was actually Elizabeth Laura, but she looks so much like Ernest, people call her Little Ernie. Yeah. She eventually went by Ernestine. I guess she was like, I might as well just make this a little more feminine. It's like a family circus trip. And she did soldier on after World War II, like you said. It's so crazy to think about these famous people going and joining the army. Well, Elvis did. Yeah, elvis was in the army. I know. He was also probably, like, more protective than Prince Harry is. Sure. But he was still in the army. Sure. And famous athletes. Can you imagine? Like Justin Bieber is in the army. It's a fight in the Middle East. No, I really can't. Just doing his duty. I cannot do an American. Just a different time. It's just mind boggling to think about the mindset back then. Do you know I got my haircut recently by the guy who created the Bieber haircut back in the day? I swear. Is that why you went to him? No, I didn't find out until partway through, and I was like, please don't give me a Bieber. Please don't give me the sweepy in your face. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So he was bieber stylist. Yes. Early on and gave him that haircut. Isn't that cool? I guess. Man. I was like one degree from Justin Bieber. I think we all are. He says, Everybody, I don't know if you found this. I thought, this is pretty amazing. The clark's performance group early on were called the clarkonians. I thought that was pretty good. It's weird. It's so funny. Like, for some reason, if you're a circus promoter, you're like, that name is not nearly Italian enough at an Enie or an oni or something on the end, even if it doesn't work, like Clarkonian or, as we'll hear about later, the Hagenis. Yeah, that's senseless. It is pretty senseless. But you can thank circus promoters for coming up with those horrible hybrids of names. Yeah, I think there's a rich tradition in Italy. So it sounded fanciful. So Ernestine carried the torch. She finally left the circus in the 1950s and had a husband that was a parttime circus performer, part time actor, and her little girls, who he was Barley Baer. He was the mayor. And Andy Griffith. Oh, no way. And if you look up his credits, he made appearances in everything. Like, you would recognize him immediately. Interesting. He's been in everything from Three's Company to the Golden Girls. He was just in everything. Oh, wow. That's pretty awesome. Bewitched. Yeah. Did I say? Three's Company? Yeah, he did. I'll say it again. So she married the famous actor and then her daughters became trapeze artists, carrying on the family tradition. And Ernestine eventually became the first daughter to follow her father into the International Circus Hall of Fame. Nice. And I have a little clip here. Do you ever read the old New York Times articles? Sometimes the PDF ones? Oh, it's the best. The ones with 18 different headlines? Yeah, you just basically read the headline. This has several headlines, actually. So this is about Clark. Ernest Clark in New York City and Madison Square Garden. And the first headline is Trapezeman. Noted for twist and air. Ernest Clark of Ringling Circus turns at right angles and leap for life line broken rib brings panic I'm sorry, pain line and then writhing action during triple somersault starts sweat of agony. All right. And then in the article, it says, clark's feet is apparently in defiance of all the laws of mechanics, for he turns his body in the air and appear wet at right angles to its line of flight with no other leverage than that he can exert by a thrust of his shoulders. That's some journalism. It is. And then later when they're describing him, it says, Clark is a small, almost slight man, but with a large, wonderfully developed chest with a great heart beating inside. Old New York Times articles are just the best. I would say all old newspapers, period. But New York Times, they knew what they were doing. Yeah, you can access that stuff today pretty easily. Pretty neat. You know, I looked up what that line and staying alive means about The New York Times. Don't make a man. Is that in the song? Staying Alive. The New York Times don't make a man. Oh, I never knew that's what they were saying. Yeah. So what does that mean? It means basically at the time, that if it wasn't in The New York Times, it doesn't matter. And this is about a man whose life still does matter, even though it's not worthy of being reported on in The New York Times. Who? John Travolta or the character. Yeah, I can't remember his name. Tony Manera. Right. I think it's Scarface. Tony Marinara. Was it Tony? It's probably Tony. I think it's funny, you know? So that movie was based on an article in New York magazine and it turned out that the guy who wrote it made the whole thing up from beginning to end. I think I heard that made it up crazy. Yeah. But it's still worth reading. Who cares? And especially if you know that he made it up, you're like, how did anybody buy this? It's kind of like on the spot reporting is just done by a handful of people. Sure. And he found this guy that worked in a hardware store in Brooklyn yeah. And then was there was able to almost omnisciently track the people that came into this guy's orbit. It's funny that the editors were like, wow, you did a really good job. You're a fraud. Who cares? Yeah. When I hear things like that, I'm like, Just say it's fiction from the beginning. It's still interesting. Yeah. It's like when the author wrote about his drug rehab, james Fry. Yes. That was a great book. And I remember at the time when it all came out, I was like, oh, man. She just called it fiction. It's a really good book. But I thought I followed that story and thought the same thing. Why would you say that? Every word of this is accurate. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. We will get back to circus families, believe it or not, right after this message. So, Chuck, sometimes if the Family Circus the circus family can get in front of a show promoter, they can have some sort of control over their own name. Sure. The change that comes to it. And that is the case with the Hobsins, robert Hobson, who left England for the US. In 1868 and started a family a circus family act. Yeah. Acrobats a family act. That's right. And apparently he was noted for tossing his sons about like Indian rubber. I don't even know what that means. It means he was basically throwing his sons all over the place and they're just landing places. Well, no, I get that, but I don't know what Indian rubber is. I think that they were very pliable. Okay, got you. So with the name change, they were originally Nelson, but changed their name. No, it was Hobson first. Oh, it was? Yeah, changed to Nelson. Man, it gets confusing. Right. So he called themselves Professor Nelson and Sons. Right. The sons who we talked about like Indian rubber. Right. But it's not like Nelson's no better than Hobson. It's just strange. Yeah. He changed it supposedly, allegedly because he wanted to pay homage to a former stage partner that I guess had died or moved on or whatever. Well, that makes sense. I couldn't find the person's name, whoever the Nelson was, but it was an homage. Well, maybe he wanted some anonymity as well. Yeah, but he's probably on the run from the law. Sure. So the Nelson became the Great Nelson family because they followed that tradition of needing more people more quickly than they could reproduce. Right. So they brought in other performers who weren't family members and they became the Great Nelson family and then ultimately the Flying Nelsons, which is what they became famous as, the Flying Nelsons. Yeah. And here I thought the cool little factoid about them. In the early I'm sorry, late 1920s, granddaughter Hilda was hired to teach LAN Cheney, the actor, how to walk the high wire in a movie called Laugh, Clown, Laugh. And then all of the Nelsons were in a movie called Circus Rookies in 1928. So they still continue, I think, not as the Nelsons, but they said their ancestors some of which still perform. Yeah. They basically retired mostly by 1935. Yeah. But then yeah. Some carried on. Sure. What about the flying melendas? These are the ones that everybody knows, everybody's heard of that. That became part of the lexicon. Yeah. The Flyingwlendas yeah. And funny enough, the Flyingwindas actually got their name from a newspaper headline that dubbed them that because four of them fell from a high wire yeah. In Akron, Ohio. And they said, the flying Melendes. Yeah, they said the quote was the windows, the lindis fell so gracefully that it seemed as if they were flying. But I wonder if there were other flying flying Nelsons. Was this the first one, I wonder, the Orlando's? No, because the Flying Nelsons were called that long before the middle of the 20th century. Yeah, I think it was a natural word to apply to a circus family that did acrobatics. Right. They're flying. And they definitely did acrobatics. Man. They cemented their legacy for the seven person chair pyramid wait for it on a high wire. No nets. No nets, no harnesses. Very dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that Carl Willenda, who was the patriarch at the time, died at age 73 from a fall on the high wire. Yes. They had a lot of tragedy when they had the pyramid collapse in 1962. Two people died and Carl's son Mario was paralyzed. Carl goes on to die. They had a sister in law who fell to her death in 1963. And then in 1944, they were the group performing when the Hartford Circus Fire broke out. Oh, really? So their act was going on. These tents were made of they were coated in paraffin wax at the time. Probably kerosene to keep it waterproof. Right. Paraffin wax is highly flammable. So kerosene and little Tint Sidewalk started and during their performance, a band leader spotted it. And apparently, and they should tell everyone this, the song Stars and Stripes Forever is a warning signal to the circus performers. Oh, really? He said, start playing that. And that signaled like, Big trouble is ahead. And 166 to 69 people died. Yeah. Didn't it only have one point of entrance or exit? I think I don't know. I know that some of the exits were blocked because they had the ramp set up for the lions and stuff to come through, like portals, so they couldn't get out that way. So you might be right. Yeah. That was one of the deadliest fires in US. History. That's a bad fire. Yeah. There were a bunch of circus fires, I read about two or three, I would guess, if you have huge canvas tents, a lot of hay on the ground. Yeah. And they're coated in flammable material. Yeah. And everybody smoked. Sure. Like big cigars. Yeah. And then they still don't know. There was a guy that claimed responsibility as an arsonist, but they don't think he did it. He was mentally ill, though. He was an arsonist. Just not that time. It's not that time. So the Lendas have become synonymous with circus tragedy. Yeah, absolutely. Strangely. But they also hasn't overshadowed their accomplishments. They're in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's first and only ten person pyramid on a tight rope. So consider this. Several of their family members died doing this, and they went on to not only redo it, but to add three more seats, three more willanda. Yeah. That's crazy. So they set a world record, and then Nick Belinda, who has been on Discovery Channel before, I believe he walked over the Grand Canyon. What channel? Discovery Channel. Have you heard of it? Got you. I think he was the one who walked over the Grand Canyon. He definitely walked over Chicago in between two skyscrapers over a 600 foot drop. Yeah. Man, that stuff is just nutty. Which is 200 meters. Crazy. Yeah. On a high wire without a net, you could put a net at the bottom. It's not going to do anything. We talked about this a little bit recently with the movie coming out about man on wire, the tightrope walker between the Twin Towers. How does the wind not just knock them off? Well, that's what that polls for. Who to extend their point of what? Balance point. Center of gravity. Yeah. I mean, I knew it helped him balance, but it seems like the wind could be so fierce. The wind blows me over just walking down the street frequently have to help you out. That's how you found most of your lucky pennies. Yeah, that's a good point. I hoovered them all up. All right. Are we on to the hoginis? Yes, we are. The Hagenis, which started out as the Hodges. Not good enough. Let's make it more Italian. And add enie to the end of Hodges. Yes. Which is what a promoter did to that lovely English surname in the late 19th century. And they have been around for a long time. 350 year ancestry of circus performers. Yeah, it's not bad. It isn't bad. I think that's the oldest in here. The went back to the late 18th century. 1700. Yes. I think the Hagenis might be the oldest one in here. This one lady I saw that was interviewed, I can't remember her name, she was a 12th generation on one side and 7th on her father's side. Man, that's serious. Being circus. Yeah. So with the Haginees, Chuck, they were really good with the horse equestrians. Yeah. They had their own in particular, Harriet, which was one of Albert Hajini's. Well, I guess he wasn't the founder if it went back 350 years. But in early Hageni, early 20th century Hageni or late 19th century, his kid Harriet would somersault and dance on the back of a moving horse. Which is weird because I've seen that before. I've seen footage from the 40s or 50s. So I wonder if I was seeing her because there's probably not that many people walking around on Earth who can do backflips on a horse. That's a good point, but the really notable thing about the Haginee is what they did in retirement. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. Tom and Betty Hagini from Indiana. Peru, Indiana. Not to be confused with Peru, the country. Peru. Peru, yeah. They retired in 1956 and a businessman there said, you know what? Why don't you come and work with some kids and teach them, like, your craft? And that began why are you just like, leave it alone? Seriously? Retired? Yeah. You're welcome. Matt no, because we didn't put one out. Get off a property that began what is now the Peru Amateur Circus, in which kids perform like, ten performances every summer. And it just sounds like a neat little program. Yeah, and it's not that little. Apparently tens of thousands of people show up for it. Yeah, little. And it's actually going on July 8, 11th to 18th. Nice. Yeah. Around I don't know exactly when this one's going to come up, but it will be in time. So if you find yourself around Peru, Indiana, go check out the circus there. July 11, 18th. Chuck we got more don't we? Up our sleeves. Yes. More enemies. And we will talk about them right after this. You remember you said, Chuckers, that a lot of these families started out as, like, a great equestrian family. Sure. The Cognates are probably the premier equestrian circus family around. Yes. They began in a teenager named Leopold Cognate, and they were Hungarian. He did the old, like, right out of a storybook. He said, I'm running away and joining the circus. Yeah. That's another way to found a circus family. Go start your own. To run off to the circus. Yeah. Start having kids. Yeah. And then you won't be circus, but your kids will be circus. Yeah. It's got to start somewhere. Exactly. And it all. Starts by running off to the circus. That's right. Of course, he might have married into circus. Yeah, he probably did. He could have. So not only were they equestrians, and of course, when we say questrian there, it's always bareback writing tricks, almost. Yeah. But this article actually features a member of the Tina Cognaut who was competing for the US. In the 2012 Olympics. Yeah, sure. She got out of the circus and said, what's something super snobby I can go to is that dressage? I don't know. That's not snobby, though. It's actually beautiful and amazing. Yes. I don't want the equestrians. You don't want them after you. Is that a hornet's nest? Yeah, it's a hornet's nest. They're on horses, for God's sake. They can run faster than you on a horse. So like most performers, john Ringling of the Barnum and Bailey Circus caught a hold of them in, said, you're coming to America. And they performed there for a little while, but then said, you know, we're going to go back to Europe and we're going to start our own circus. No, not just a circus. An American style circus and wild west show. Yeah, it's good on them. Yeah, I think it's hilarious. So they're like, okay, I get it. They're going to go crazy for this in Europe. So the equestrian part of the show is really big in Europe. And then what was the family? The Clarks. World War II put a dent in all of Europe. So they said, well, I guess we got to go back to America now. Yeah. And then they kept performing and eventually stopped. At least. I guess the family legacy was to create equestrian centers. Yeah. So they weren't circus performers anymore. But it's almost like this equestrian family had a brush with circus notoriety and then leverage that. Yeah. And then just continued on as an equestrian family, which is pretty neat. Probably make more money in equestrian. I would guess so. And then Arthur Conyat, who's one of the sons of the founder, Leopold He's in the International Circus hall of fame. Nice. So there you go. They're not doing too bad. All right, we got a couple of more here. Do you know how to pronounce this one? T-O-G-N-I-S-I would say Tonise. Tony's. That's what I was going to say. Tony marinar. Yeah, that's right. They are another Italian family in Circus dynasty. And the original founder, Aristade Pony, he was a student, and he said, you know what? I'm done with school, and I'm going to go perform the circus, open my own, have eight kids so I can open my own circus. Yeah. I get the impression that he decided he was done with school. Oh, yeah. So he ran off to the circus. Did you have the impression whether his wife was a circus, was circus family, circus performer? I don't know. Well, she was after they got married, they had kids, and set up their own circus. And it was such a success that in the King of Italy, or the King of that part of Italy, because when was Italy unified together in single country? Was it under Mussolini? Oh, boy. I don't know. It wasn't that long ago. Well, King Victor Emmanuel III created or said that the circo tony was the circumnasinalle. Yeah. And that ran for a while. Again, a circus fire hit the Circo Nazi analyze, and from that, .3 of the sun split apart and formed three different circus factions. Yeah. That fire spread them far and wide. I guess so. But they are noteworthy because not only were they a circus family, they were really smart inventive engineer types and made a lot of advancements in the circus itself. Like the tent. Yeah. Like the big top tent. Yeah. They came up with that. Yeah, they came up with three different design. The round couple in the 1940s, the Oblong in the hugely famous round couple of quarter pole free in the other Sons, too, invented collapsible seating wagons and a metallic mesh cage that I don't know if that's the globe of death or not. No, that's the Uris as it came up with the globe of death. All right. So the metallic mesh cage he invented must have just been like, I don't know, for animals or something. Probably. Yeah. Point is that they were inventors and made some money doing that stuff, like designing tents and the like. And one of the things that we haven't really kind of hit squarely on is the fact that if you're born into a circus family and you are raised in the circus, from what I've read, you're very rarely pressured into being a part of the family. It's more like this is your reality. So you start doing gymnastics and acrobatics at an early age and you're surrounded by it. Yeah. And then eventually age six, seven, 8910, you end up being a part of the family act and then the circus at large. But it raised the question to me, like, about that 10,000 hours myth. Like, is it just from practicing this stuff at an early age, or is this just the result of some people who are born acrobats coming together and producing offspring that are born acrobats themselves? I don't know. It's a great question. It's a good question. I wonder how many times it's happened that you're in a big circus family. You have, like, seven kids, and six of them are in the circus, and one of them is like, I want to be a city planner. Probably not much. No, we got one more. We do. The Urisis, who did come up with that globe of death in twelve? That globe, that metal globe, motorcycles in. Yeah. That was invented in 1912. Yeah. I had no idea. I went back, I was sure that this thing was probably invented in the or seventy s I was going to say 70s. Yeah. Seems like a 70s thing to invent. Totally. Yeah. But yeah, all the way back to 1912. That is nuts. So the actual Globe of Death was a 16 foot diameter metal mesh orb. Yeah. And the idea is, if you haven't seen one of these, a, just look up a video real quick. B, crawl out from under that rock you live in under. And then see when you put multiple motorcycle riders that just gun it and fly around this thing without hitting each other, right. Ideally, yeah. And they would add people who are juggling fire in the center of the globe. Sure. People riding around it going up to 60 miles an hour, apparently. And the Uris in particular were the first to feature female motorcycle riders. The first to feature two female motorcycle riders, because how you're going to top the first one? Put in two, and then there's one where the Jody Urias, who does a neck spin, you know that thing where, like, you just have a harness attached to the back of your head and you spin around. Yeah. So you vomit. Right. Yes. They had her doing that with people going around her on their bikes in circles. Yeah. It's really impressive. The precision is ridiculous. They're still doing this today. I saw another family. They don't have the market cornered on the Globe of Death. But they invented it. Yeah. They failed the copyright or Trademarket, I guess. But I did see another family that was I think they had, like, eight motorcycles in this thing. It was ridiculous. And one where they actually brought the globe apart to where there was a gap that they would be jumping or riding over. It was suddenly filled with crocodiles. No, but these people crashed when was it? Every couple of weeks. No, I looked. There was a crash not too long ago. It was in April of this year at the Washington Fairgrounds. And there's actually a YouTube of it. It's not, like, remarkable. It just said the very end of their thing. They all just sort of run into each other, really. But it was a fractured leg and some broken ribs, but other than that, everyone was okay and got right back up on the horse. Iron horse. The iron horse. The steel horse. You got anything else? No. So that's Circus Families, part of our never ending quest to explain absolutely everything there is on planet Earth and beyond. That's right. It's one of them. If you want to know more about circus Families, you can type those words in the search bar@howstepworks.com. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mayo. I'm going to call this we misspoke on something in the Bridges episode. Oh, I did, Chuck. I take full responsibility, and we like to point these things out. Do you want to set this up? Yeah. In the Bridges episode, I talked about the Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse. Remember you made that lionel richie joke and all that stuff in I believe 114 people ultimately died from this thing, and I said that it was because they were dancing on the skywalk at the time. Totally not true. There is a t dance going on in the lobby below, and people were standing on the skywalk looking at it, and the skywalk apparently in the design. There had been a change in design that nobody did the numbers and crunch the math on, and this thing could barely hold up its dead weight. And then once you had a few dozen people on it, the fourth story skywalk collapsed onto the second story skywalk, and both of them collapsed onto the ground. Got you. It's crazy. If you look up the hyatt regency skywalk collapse and look at some of the images, just the destruction is amazing. Wow. All right, so I guess you just picked out we heard from a few people you picked out. Probably the nicest one, I would imagine. That's what we usually try to do. Hey, guys, I wanted to point out your explanation of the kansas city hyatt regency collapse. Sighted the wrong cause. The collapse is due to a change that was made to the initial design. Two walkways were supposed to be supported by long, continuous threaded steel rods from the ceiling. Design was changed to two separate rods. It should be noted that the original design was determined to hold only 60% of the minimum building code load, and the way it was built would only support half of that. Not enough. Not nearly enough. One bridge failure that should be mentioned is the quebec bridge crossing the st. Lawrence river. This bridge collapsed twice when it was being built, and it cited as a reason behind the idea of registering and licensing engineers to practice something that is a standard throughout the world now. And that is from taylor, who is a geotechnical engineer branch of civil engineering that deals with soils, rocks, and foundations. She said or he, I don't know which, that I make sure the ground can support the structure. Thanks a lot, taylor. It's a pretty neat job, I guess, and very important. Yeah, and thanks for the email. We appreciate that. And I went back and looked to try to figure out where I got that info, but I swear I did not make up. Don't you hate that? I've been called out on stuff that I've read, and I couldn't find the source, and it's still wrong, but it's maddening. It's like, I know I didn't just create this out of my own brain so we believe each other, but thanks to everybody who wrote in and said, hey, dude, that is absolutely wrong, because we want to make sure we get it right. So if we got something wrong that you want to point out and correct this on, let us know. You can tweet to us at siskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com SW to know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffytenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1234215789021hsw-sysk-food-and-water.mp3	How long can you go without food and water?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-long-can-you-go-without-food-and-water	When it comes to survival, food and water are pretty much non-negotiable. How long can you go without them? What happens to your body when you cross that threshold? Lend your ear to this HowStuffWorks podcast to find out.	When it comes to survival, food and water are pretty much non-negotiable. How long can you go without them? What happens to your body when you cross that threshold? Lend your ear to this HowStuffWorks podcast to find out.	Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=41, tm_isdst=0)	21343256	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. This is stuff if you should know. Welcome. How're you doing? The invinok? Yes. I just drank a Coke, and I also ate some chips and salsa. Nice. And it was all in an empty stomach, so I feel like I'm going to vomit. Three of the four food groups. Right. So, yeah, you've got corn and the chips. You got tomato, onion, god knows what else. Is cilantro. Cilantro. Sure. Is that a food group? Yeah. So you've got all the stuff in the salt and the chips and then whatever is in the Coke. Right? Sure. And all of it came to me and in my stomach because I am a member of the wealthiest nation on the planet. Okay. Yeah. Do you want me to get to the bottom of this? Yeah. I don't know where you're going. Well, ironically, I should say, I didn't even pay for this. I found it in the break room and ate it. But I live in America, and America has got the money to pay for food. So food naturally finds its way to countries like the United States, western European countries, developed nations. Right. It doesn't necessarily find its way to underdeveloped nations. Okay. Okay. So you're familiar with the carrying capacity, right? Yes. Okay, well, then I'll explain to everybody else. It's an anthropological term. I think it may also have to do with economics. But basically a carrying capacity is the total number of humans something can sustain. So, like, hunting and gathering, I think, could sustain something like several hundred million people up to maybe 2 billion. I'm not sure. Okay. And right as we were on the verge of hitting that mark, we came up with agriculture out of the blue. Got you. Agriculture can, by estimates, carry 10 billion people. Well, okay. We're coming up on that mark pretty quick. Oh, really? Yeah. I think we're supposed to hit 10 billion in, like, 2050 or something like that. Okay. And it may go shorter depending on if there's any kind of catastrophes or major food crises or climate change. Sure. It could go longer if our technology advances sufficiently. Like we come up with Soylent Green or something like that. Right, right. Grow food in the outer space. That's where we eat humans. Well, sure. Okay. The science fiction film you're talking about. Sure. Right. Soylent Green. Yeah. Okay. So we may go more or less 10 billion, but 10 billion is usually the mark, and this has kind of been on the mind of some people for a while. Right. Especially in the mid to late 60s, there was a food shortage, and there were all sorts of predictions coming out that we were about to be screwed, we were in big trouble. And there is a book called Famine with an Exclamation point for everything. Yeah. And it was an academic book, and they used an exclamation point in the title and basically in it, the author suggests that we need to triage, essentially, who gets food. Right. So the countries that are contributing the most to the rest of the world through advancement and whatever wealth, they should get the most food, and basically the other countries should be left to starve to death. It was pretty grim. It was written in 1967, and obviously no one took that up and ran with it. Of course not. It's pretty creepy, but it seems like price mechanism kind of has come to fulfill that same prediction. Do you think? Yeah, because if you look at the UN world hunger maps, the areas that are the hungriest are the areas that are the least developed. They have the least amount of food. And as if that weren't enough, it's all a vicious cycle. The more hungry you are, the higher your literacy rates are. Unemployment rates, all sorts of mortality rates, obviously. So you can't really break your way out of it unless somebody helps you. And the price mechanism theory, my theory is supported by the recent food crisis we saw in 2007. Right. Okay. Yeah. Food just dried up everywhere. Why? Because fuel prices went through the roof. It got expensive to produce and transport food. Right. And so all of a sudden, it didn't go the way it used to. Care International? No, they're like an aid group. Okay. The food aid group. They have a food aid section. They actually stopped handing out surplus food. They can't get it anymore. Really? Yeah. So food is pretty much a wealthy luxury, sadly enough. And we're kind of hitting that famine 75 scenario one way or another. Wow. I never thought of it that way. Yeah. It is tough to think about it. And I mentioned all this because we're talking about how long can you live without food or water, right. Right. So I guess my goal was to kind of put a human face on this, like what happens when you live in Bangladesh or Chad or somewhere and you are starving to death. And even worse, you can't get any access to water. Yeah. Or fresh water, at least, from researching this. It's a horrible way to die. Yeah. I may reevaluate my dropping out of the sky in an airplane is the worst way to die. Right. Starving to death or dehydration might do it for you. Right. Yeah. How long can you go without food, say? Well, there's a general rule of threes. If you're talking about survival experts, they call it the rule of threes, oddly enough. Let's hear. And supposedly you can go and these are rough estimates. We'll talk about the variances later. But you can go three minutes without air before you die, 3 hours without shelter if you're in a really harsh environment. Three days without water, and three weeks without food 3 hours without shelter. If you're stuck in the freezing cold somewhere, got you. Okay. That kind of thing. Sure. So that's the rule of threes. There's all sorts of play within that though. So if you're talking about food, how long you go food three weeks is actually kind of on target. You can look at political prisoners that have gone on hunger strike. Yeah. The IRA in the early eighty s. Oh yeah. They made it a lot longer than three weeks, right? Well, they did. And you can and Gandhi fasted for exactly three weeks, but he was in his seventy s at the time, so he wasn't in premium condition. Which obviously if you're in the most fit and the most healthy, you can go a little bit longer than someone who's grossly out of shape. Although having an abundance of fat actually would help you survive too. Right. So I guess that gets us into what happens when you start to run out of food, bringing up the fat part. Because your body, what it does is it processes fat, carbohydrates, and proteins as the stored energy. Right. Keep surviving that's energy your cells need for you're to perform the functions that they do. Right. And so if you're talking about those three things and you're starting the process of starving to death, your body is going to burn up carbohydrates. That's the first thing that's going to burn up. Right. Which is good because carbs make you fat. Sure. And then it starts to burn up your fat. Stored fat. Even better than burning up carbs. Right. And if you have extra stored fat, that's why you might could last a little bit longer. I think you and I would make it for a while. I think we'd beat the average. I have a few extra pounds in caring for, if that's what you're alluding to. I said you and I. Okay. And then after that, the proteins start to get burned. And that's bad news because using a protein is basically your body itself. Your body kind of consumes itself in a way. Right. So it's creepy that's like maybe the structure, cellular structure, like you're just eating your own muscles or something like that. I don't know. Sounds pretty rotten either way. Yeah, it's very rotten. Your metabolism comes into play, obviously, right. Which is how your body converts food into energy. So if you have real slow metabolism, you're going to burn your food slower, so you'll last longer, which will also cause you to carry a little extra weight if you have a slow metabolism. Right. But also you would be breaking down the carbohydrate slower and then the fat slower and then the proteins more slowly. Right. Yeah. Josh, I think that's probably the case. Okay. So that explains why you would live a little bit longer if you're starting. Right. Climate plays a role if you're in the freezing cold or in the burning heat. Neither one of those are any good because you're going to die faster, basically, which actually, in this case, may be better. Well, chances are, if you're in extreme heat or cold, you wouldn't make it to the point where you actually starve to death. You would die from the elements before that because it would weaken your body. Right. Tomato, tomato at that point. Right, sure. Yeah. You're probably just whatever hastens death, I imagine, at that point is okay. Yeah. There's different stages and there's different symptoms for the stages of starvation. Right. So at first, I can identify with these, like, weakness, confusion, chronic diarrhea. Got it all the time. I barely ever eat. Right, yeah. Don't you find that significant, that your body starts ejecting stuff while you're starving? You would think you'd be hoarding it. Right, yeah, I guess it makes sense. But that seems to be a common theme, that you have diarrhea, which is just bad, because that will also lead to dehydration, which we'll get here in a minute. Right, exactly. And then advanced starvation. You're really bad off. You're convulsing. Right. You can have muscle spasms, irregular heartbeat, hallucinations, and then ultimately you can die of shock. Correct. Right. Well, your organs will just start shutting down, basically one by one. Yeah. You know, your body is a machine, and they always say that, and that food is the fuel, and so without it, you're literally just going to start breaking down bit by bit. Now, you said Gandhi fasted for 21 days, and he probably did it more than once, I imagined. Yeah, I think so. But when we were talking about the IRA earlier, one of them made it 71 days. I think so. I don't remember the number exactly, but I think the last one made it 71 days, and there were a group of ten of them. They were in prison in Great Britain and they started a hunger strike because they were being pretty much tortured at the time. Everybody hated the IRA and Thatcher, margaret Thatcher, who's Prime Minister at the time, would not budge. Right. She's been very public in the world and she kept repeating that these people are criminals and they're committing suicide, and she had zero compassion for them. But from what I understand, it actually started to kind of turn the tide of public opinion slightly more in favor of the IRA right. Than it had been before, because up to that point, they were just heartless bombers. True. Yeah. Actually, it was 73 days. Thomas Mcawe, he lasted the longest at 73 days, and he lasted a week or so longer than the second full week. Wow. Well, choosing to starve to death is one thing that's pretty harsh. You got to be pretty committed to your cause to do that. Sure. There's absolutely no way whatsoever you're going to last 71 days without water. Right. No. You never see anyone go on a dehydration strike. No. Because even the IRA guys were taking small amounts of water. Right. Which is what allowed them to live that long. Exactly. You have to it'd be a very short protest if you were doing a water strike agreed. And you would not get much accomplished. Agree. What kind of time length are we talking? Well, go back to the three days you could potentially live without water. Again, environment and what kind of shape you're in play a role. If you're obviously in the desert, you can start to be dehydrated within the hour. And you hear about these awful stories about, like, a baby being locked in a car. They can die from dehydration. Just a couple of hours on a car. I think even shorter than that. I think, like, maybe an hour. Yeah. And I guess this is the point where we should say that this is not something anyone should test. This is no laughing matter. Legal department loves you, Chuck. Yeah. I need to say these things. You do not want to test your body to see how long you go without water. You can go on fast. And people do the cleanses and things, as you know. I've done my cleanse, the Master cleanse before. Is that the lemonade cleanse? Yes. With the cayenne pepper, lemon and gray bean maple syrup. I've done that before too. All it did was kick up like chicken pox in me. Really? Oh, I was so sick after, like, four days. Yes. I couldn't hang. I pooped my pants. I'll bet you did. Once. The cayenne pepper moves through you, doesn't it? Yeah. It lends itself to an accidental scenario that is a sign of starvation. It is? Yeah. So, yeah, you can't live without water for very long. You lose water when you sweat, when you urinate, water in your feces. You lose water when you breathe through evaporation. So your body is constantly losing water. Yeah. Even like you said, when you breathe. I found that surprising until I really thought about it. I'm like, of course. It's why you can see your breath. It's water vapor. Right, right. And there's a lot of water. 65% of our body, I believe, is water, and we need water. It runs through the blood to carry oxygen everywhere. It acts as cushions for your joints and soft tissue and helps your food digest, helps you absorb food energy. There's actually this precarious balance going on, Chuck. There's this, I guess, kind of dance between water and salutes in your body. Okay, sure. Sometimes a foxtrot, depending on the state of the Nd. So salutes can be things like calcium, sodium, electrolytes, things that you need, but you don't need an overabundance of them in relation to the amount of water. Exactly. You don't want a high concentration or low concentration. And this is part of the homeostasis, that state of balance in your body's processes. Part of that is an isotonic state, which is a balance in the solution of solitude. And water. Right? I got you. Okay. You're with me so far? I'm with you. So basically, there's two places these solutions can be in your body and the cellular level. They can be outside the cell, which is extracellular, or they can be inside the cell, which is intercellular, and you want to have an equal and isotonic balanced and equal solution inside and outside. That makes sense. Right. If one is thrown off, say, there's a high concentration, which means there's a lot of solutes and not too much water on the extracellular spaces, the water is going to go from inside the cell to outside. It's trying to strike a balance. Right. If you're not replenishing water and the water is being shifted around like this, that's when you're in trouble. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Now, when you start losing water, you get thrown out of balance. Okay. When you get thrown out of balance, basically, dehydration, all sorts of terrible things can happen to your cells, right. So let's say there is a build up of sodium. You've seen what sodium does to your lips. Have you ever had Burger King's chicken fries? No. Okay, well, if they were an ill conceived and short lived they were French fries, but they were made of chicken, so it was a chicken nugget elongated into the shape of and those things, you took a bite and your lips were immediately checked, like you've been skiing for eight days. Really? Yeah. Oh, my God. It's rough. So too much sodium can dry out cells, right. It can wither them. So if you have too much sodium in your cells and not enough water, they can shrink and become destroyed. And also outside of the cells as well, you have all sorts of processes going on. So if there's too much water inside the cells and not enough outside, the solution is too concentrated outside. Then you have all sorts of connections, little vessels and things that can rupture. Right? Yeah. Okay, so this is what's going on with dehydration. Actually, both of those can happen. Wow. So one of the processes that can take place and kill you very easily is cerebral edema. Yeah, that just sounds like a killer. It's not good. Basically, what happens is an osmotic gradient occurs, so it's out of balance and the water is sucked into the cell, which sounds kind of weird because you're dehydrated. So it's taking any available water it can. Right. And if that happens too much, the cell can rupture. And if that happens in your brain, your brain swells. Got you. And you're in big trouble. Sure. Because once a cell is damaged like that, it can't be repaired. Got you. The exact opposite can happen, too. Your brain can. If the balance is off, you have too much sodium, not enough water, which seems much more intuitive in dehydration. The brain can shrink, actually. You remember Terry Shiabo, right? The patient that was on Life support and got so much media attention. I remember her. Right. Actually, when she finally died, she died of dehydration after 13 days. Right. They took her off life support. She was in a persistent vegetative state, which we've talked about before, and she was basically just functioning on her brain stem when they did the autopsy after she died of dehydration 13 days later, it was half the size, half of its normal size. Her brain was it just shrunk because of a lack of water. It's interesting. It is interesting and horrifying. It is. Fortunately, from everything I've read, every medical professional said there's no way she can feel pain. Right. She's not in a state of consciousness where she can experience pain. Right. Which is good, because that would have been a really painful way to die, I would imagine. Dying of thirst or dehydration starvation is not a pleasant way to go if you're obviously not in a vegetative. Right, sure. Yeah. Well, you know, though you've experienced something similar before. I know you have. When you've had a hangover. Right. You know this throbbing headaches that you have with dehydration, your brain is literally shrinking. Right. You're dried out. Basically, you dehydrate when you drink heavily and your body actually shuffles water around itself right. To make up for where it's low. Right. And one great store of water in your body is in your brain. So what's happening is water is being drawn from your brain and sent to other parts of your body's to rehydrate them, which seems like a terrible mechanism. Right. But what's going on is your brain actually doesn't have any nerve endings. There's no way to feel pain in your brain. Right. But the membrane that connects your brain to your skull, it's called the dura. It does have pain receptors. So that's where the headaches are stretched and that's where you get the headache. Which is why you need to replenish yourself with water. Well, yeah, they say if you're drinking alcohol in large amounts for New Year's Eve, let's say toward the end of the night and you start slamming water or alternate the alcoholic beverage with a couple of water. I've always heard that too. I find it really difficult to do. Well, yeah, that's because you have to put down a glass of scotch in order to do it. So what else you got? You got anything else? I've got nothing else. Don't try this at home. If you're in a survival scenario, though, you're going to want to get on the water toot suite. That's first order of business. Unless you're obviously caught in freezing ice storm somewhere, then you're going to want to get your shelter really fast. Right. Also, you've got plenty of water right around you, right. You need to melt it. True. Yeah, you have to melt it. That's a good point. You don't want to eat snow or chew on ice. That will actually dehydrate you further. Well, really? I know that the best way to drink water is at room temperature. That's when your body absorbs the most from it, right? Yeah, but I didn't know you can't eat snow. Well, what it does is it drops your core body temperature so much that you're doing more harm than good. Got you. Well, again, don't try going without food or water if you don't have to drink eight to ten cups a day. I know it varies from different doctors, but I think by and large, if women drink roughly 90oz of water day and men drink about 120oz a day, then you should be doing pretty well. You definitely want to dehydrate. Got you. And when your mom said that you should eat all of your food because they're starving kids in China, she wasn't that far off. So consider that. And Chuck, what have we got? I think we should give some props to some of our podcasting mates here. I know that we have a lot of great fans and some of the other podcasts we do, but we have a great audio podcast if you're into that, called High Speed Stuff. And we have a music one that's been launched recently. It's very cool. Kind of B side. Yeah, stuff from the B side takes an interesting angle on different various music subjects. It's cool. I like it. And of course, stuff you missed in history class. Great. Yes. And what else? Brain stuff from our company founder, Marshall Brain. And then we can't forget Strickland and tech stuff. He would badger us for the next few weeks. Tech stuff. You're into gadgets and technology, then they're your guide. But you can find all those on the House Stuff Works page of itunes. And if you want to learn more about how long you can go without food or water, you can type those words into our handy search bar@houseuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housetopworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?"
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-12-09-sysk-how-much-money.mp3	SYSK Selects: How much money is there in the world?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-much-money-is-there-in-the-world	There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have issued. But that won't stop Chuck and Josh from trying and explaining why we can't be sure how much money e	There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have issued. But that won't stop Chuck and Josh from trying and explaining why we can't be sure how much money e	Sat, 09 Dec 2017 14:00:04 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=343, tm_isdst=0)	34105993	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everyone. It's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects I chose how much money is in the world. It first aired in September 2013. And this is one of those topics that you kind of wonder about ever since you were a little kid. Kid. I know I did. And delightfully. I found that as an adult, the answer was even more interesting than I'd imagined as a youngster. Youngster. That's what adults call kids, right? Well, anyway, this is one of my alltime favorite episodes. I hope you enjoy it as well. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and I'm with Charles W. Chuck Bryan. He's right here with me. So it's stuff you should know. It's also really stuff you should know because Jerry's here too. Oh, but Jerry's not here. It's fake stuff you should know. It's less than vintage stuff. You should know. Got you. It's not bad. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah. I'm sure Matt and everyone appreciate that crap. Yeah, true. Chuck? Yes. How much money do you have on you right now? Cash. $0.00. Well, that's stupid, because you should have $3,800 in cash on you. I never have cash. Well, you should almost never have cash. You should have $3,800 in cash on you right now. So should I, Jerry. I agree, but we don't. Sad. I'd love 300 in my pocket. Okay, well, let's explain why I just said that. Was I supposed to? Sorry. I'll do it. I can do it. If you divide up all the money between all the Americans, that's how much we should all have. We're trying to answer a question here. How much money is there in the world? Yeah, and we'll get to that. There's actually a rough estimate out there that may be right. But instead, first, let's talk about how much American money there is in the world, and not just because we're American, but because it is the standard currency worldwide. It's the closest thing to the universal currency that we have. True. The dollar. The greenback. Yeah, but that's not as, I guess, widespread as it once was. A lot of people have abandoned the dollar and now use a basket of currencies to value their currency against. Very rebellious, sure. But still, the dollar is generally what's used, say, for oil speculation. And imagine the dollar is in that basket, too, though, right? Maybe not. It depends on how much they hate America. Got you. So, what you're talking about, though, is all the money divided up by all the Americans, coming up to $3,800. That's called the M zero money supply. Of course. You know how I read that? Mo. The Mo money supply. I was like, what? And then I read it again and said, it can't be called the Mo money supply. And then I realized that was a zero and not an O. It looks very much like the Mo money supply. I wrote this article, I realize it, and I never saw it like that until you just said that. Really? Yeah. Well, I like the Mo money supply better than the Mo. It's good, but it is Mo for a reason. There's also the M one, M two, and there was an M three, which we'll get to. Right. And the people who came up with this was the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Central bank. The Fed. Right. And they like to track money. That's one of the things they do to amuse themselves. Yeah. Account money and go to sleep on piles of gold ingots. But the Fed came up with this Mow money supply, also known as the Mzero supply, and that is all of the bills and coins, all of the actual hard currency that exists in the world, anywhere in US. Dollars. Yeah. And as of July 2013 hey, that's recent. Yeah. That came to oh, we should say Catherine Whitborn from Coolest Stuff on the planet. She updated this. The fact that this is as up to date as it is, is thanks to her. Okay. But the Mo money supply as of July 2013 is $1.2 trillion. That's all the cash and all the coins all over the world of American dollars. The real dollars that you can collect and put together, that you can light your cigars with or you can throw into a fountain. Yeah. $1.2 trillion. So that's how much money was in the world. And we said also that's 3800 for every American man, woman and child, all 316,668,567 Americans that were alive in July of 2013. Each one should have had $3,800 in their pocket. Because we're not talking checking accounts, we're talking the actual currency that people are walking around with. Since I don't have $3800 in my pocket and I didn't in July yeah, you don't, Jerry? No. Jerry's got more. Where is this stuff? It's a good question. I wonder how that clock ticks, by the way. The population clock. I'd like to see a real time. Like, three people died, four people born, two people died, eight people born. Set of twins. I wonder if it ever does go backwards for a second. Well, it's got to, because people are dying, but more people are being born than people are dying. Yeah, it depends on the country you're talking about. Yeah, that's true. I always drive by the one in Atlanta on the population clock. That's been there forever. When I was a kid, I remember when it topped a million, it was like, Whoa, wow. And now it's whatever. Three point something. Is it? Yeah. I mean, that's metro Atlanta, right? It's not city of Atlanta. All right, so back to it. Where were we? Hard to track. The mooney. No, we were talking about where the $3,800 that should be in our pockets is. Well, about half to two thirds of that is overseas. It's an overseas pockets. That's right. Or overseas bank accounts. No, we're not talking bank accounts. Wait, that's just the Mow money. That's right. Yeah. So that means that there are people walking around overseas with cash on them, American dollars, which makes a lot of sense. And so when you start to divide the amount of money that 1.2 trillion by a lot more than 316,000,000 people. That explains why I have a single dollar bill. My person right now, I have nothing. Right. And Jerry nothing. Man, we're sad sex. Okay, so that's just the Mow money supply. Yeah, the M Zero. The M One is all of the Mow money plus checking account money and other kinds of just accounts that you can track. And travelers checks. Yeah. Very liquid types of accounts. Yes, that's the M one supply. It's funny that you were having trouble wrapping your head around the fact that we were talking about cash outside of banks for the M Zero supply. I had the same problem, too. It's hard to think of money outside of banks in this day and age. Yes. You rarely have cash right on hand. You use, like, debit cards and credit cards and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I used American Express for everything. That's funny that on this audio podcast. You just held it up to your face when you said that. So that's the m one. In June of this year of 2013, the M One supply was about 2.5 trillion. So the Mo money supply was 1.2. The m one was 25. That's all the accounts and checking accounts, travelers checks. Then there's the M Two, which is the M One supply, plus money market fund money, savings accounts, and CDs under 100 grand, which they call small CDs. Right. Where I come from, that's a pretty good CD. Well, CD over 100 grand is called a jumbo. Yeah, I was looking up jumbo rates. They used to be something like four and a quarter. Some of them would be like 22% for a ten year. Really? Yeah. So you get like, 22 grand back over I'm sorry, five years. So you go give a bank 100 grand, say, Keep this for five years, pay me back, and they would give you 22% interest. So you get 122 grand. What was this not very long ago? A couple years ago, before the crash. You want to know what it's at right now? For $100,000.03 year, I believe CD, jumbo CD, you get like, 1.4%. It's not worth your time to give a bank $100,000 to keep for three years. They'll give you $1,400 asinine go to the dog track with $100,000, and you leave a heroin addict crying. All right, so the M Two supply, which, as I said, was the M One supply plus money market fund saving counts, and those smaller CDs, 10.5 trillion, that's virtually all of the American money in the world, pretty much. Because they got rid of M Three, basically in 2006, because they said, it really doesn't tell us much to know what the larger jumbo CDs are adding to this pile. It doesn't change things that much, I guess. I imagine there's just not that many. Yeah, exactly. So about $10.5 trillion in accounts and in cash in holdings in the world in about June, July of 2013. That's a lot of dough. That's a lot of mula. Right. And if you want to yeah. It even says in here, that's a lot of mula. It did. And that's when I looked up. I was like, who wrote this? I was like, Oops, I thought, this is well done. Well and I learned how to spell mula. I didn't know. Don't pay your name. No, I'm serious. I literally thought, oh, that's how you spell mula. How did you think you spelled it? I don't know. Mula? No, I just never thought of it. I'd never seen it spelled out. M-O-O-L-A-H. Is that right? That's AP standard. Exactly. I think we've kind of pointed out it's tough to track money like this. Yeah, it's not the easiest thing. They do a pretty good job of it. Well, the Fed does, specifically, because it's just what they do, and they love doing that. Yeah, but it's an estimate still. Like, no one knows how much cash I have in my house. No one asks me. No, but they know how much was printed. They keep track of that kind of stuff. How much is destroyed, how in circulation. Sure. And there's bank reporting. They know how much a bank has at the Fed. So it's pretty close estimate, from what I understand. The thing is, not every country has a Fed like the Fed in the US. True. And that makes it way harder to say how much money is in the entire world. Not just US dollars, but all the money in the entire world. And more difficult to control your economy. It is. If you don't know how much money you have. It's very difficult to sway your economy one way or the other. Right, exactly. So Zimbabwe is a really good example of why it's so hard to track a lot of money. And also what happens when you don't track your money. Yeah. Or what happens when you decide, in order to fix economic woes, let's just start printing more money. Right. Because if you know nothing about finance and economics, a common thing you might think is, well, they could probably just infuse some cash flow by printing money occasionally. And they do, occasionally. But in Zimbabwe, they did it to such an extent with the zim dollar, which I didn't even believe that was right. It's actually called a zim dollar. Sounds like something from a movie. Not a good one either. Yeah, exactly. They printed so much money that they encountered hyperinflation like the world has never seen before. Yeah. So it's ridiculous numbers. Yeah. This hyperinflation in 2006, it was really bad. In 2000, Zimbabwe started to enter an inflationary spiral. In 2006, it was so bad that not a roll. A sheet of toilet paper cost 417 zim dollars. Okay, one square. Yeah. A roll of toilet paper cost $145,750. I would go broke so quick in Zimbabwe. Well, that's the thing, everybody would have gone broke. But it wasn't that the toilet paper was very expensive, it was that the zim dollars had very little purchasing power. And that was because dollars, just like any other commodity, are subject to the influences of supply and demand. And there's a lot of them on the market, their value decreases. That's how the US. Government has managed to stay afloat so many times. They release a bunch of money, they cause inflation so that the debts that they owe are worth less. So when they pay them off, it hurts the government less. It's a really horrible thing to do to your investors, but it's done. But that's the point. When you have a lot of dollars out there, you have less purchasing power per dollar. And that's what was going on in Zimbabwe. And things got really out of hand because they decided to fight this by printing more dollars. Yeah, they really got out of hand. Some of these stats in here are just staggering. You said that every you didn't say you report that it was estimated that it was equivalent to prices doubling in stores every 1.3 days. Yeah, the most I saw was every 24.7 hours, prices essentially were being doubled by way of the dollar losing value. Right. The kind of inflation that we're looking at right here in America right now is like in the single digit percentiles, and it's being kept low by the Fed on purpose. But we're talking like doubling 100% increase. Like the toilet paper is this much. The next day is twice as much, the next day it's three times. Right. And that's just not going to affect economy. I mean, think about it. If toilet paper costs that much money, people are going to stop using toilet paper. That leads to poor sanitation, that leads to it's just a domino effect. Well, there was a joke that the toilet paper was so expensive, or the dollar, the zim dollar bought such a little toilet paper that it was actually more useful as toilet paper than to buy toilet paper with. Yeah, that's not funny. Well, yeah, if you're in Zimbabwe, it's not. But the annual inflation was estimated like this was watching Zimbabwe. If you were a currency or monetary policy economist, it was like a dream come true. Last time something happened this bad, it was Hungary in 1946. Yeah, I think we talked about that once. Yeah, I think it was in the super stuff guide to economics or spoken word album. But the inflation in Zimbabwe was estimated at 516,000,000,000,000,000,000%. That's by the end of 2008. Okay, that's not even the highest that I've seen now, the highest I saw is 89.7, 689.7 billion trillion percent, or 89.7% to the 21st power percent. That was their annual rate of inflation. And that was probably early 2009. Yeah. Yeah. Because in January 2009, they basically said, you can start using foreign currency again, which helped stabilize things, the tiniest bit. But it didn't obviously work. Well, it ended inflation abruptly because they abandoned these dollars, the currency lost value so much that everybody stopped using it. And they went to the South African rand and the US. Dollar. Yeah. They took four months from January to April, basically, to completely abandon their money. Right. So four months in a country's, money is literally useless. Right. And when they did abandon, it was actually a pretty good move. You couldn't carry the economy with this money any longer because it was so valueless. They're in bad shape no matter what. But at least that was a good move. Right. And the reason it was a good move is because it stopped inflation because there weren't that many dollars and there weren't that many ran around, which means that they were scarce, which means, again, according to supply and demand, they were valuable, and hence they had purchasing power. Yeah. And it's really unbelievable, but it got so bad, they were printing money in larger and larger denominations because they had to because people couldn't carry around. You'd have to have a suitcase full of money to buy your toilet paper. Right. So they ended up producing a 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note that you can now buy on ebay for about $5. Yeah. That's sad. When it was released, it was worth about $30. Yeah. And that's actual conversion rate, like, now it's only worth something on ebay, whatever you'll pay for it. Yeah. There is no conversion rate. Right. I think I'm going to get one, though, just to have it do it. Yeah. Okay, so what is it, 300 no, $100 trillion notes. Okay. Yeah, but that's the fact that the Zimbabwe and government wasn't tracking their money in the first place, and they didn't track it after they kept releasing it again and again and there was no buyback program. They just said, you guys keep that. Yeah. They have no idea how many Zimbabwean dollars were released just in the 21st century, let alone how many are out there on the market. That's why it's virtually impossible to track how much money is out there in the world. Yeah, but that hasn't stopped at least one guy. Well, actually, that's not true. I talked to Catherine Whitborn today, and she was saying that the guy gave up, that the most recent figure she could find was 2010, because he's like, forget this. Yeah. Mike of dollar days with the Z.com. Yeah, I guess he gave up on it. That was his blog, his econ blog, and he was tracking 135 currencies in 167 countries. And I guess December 2010 is probably one of the last stats he has, then if that's when he quit and his Moe money equal to five point trillion in US dollars in circulation, m two was 55 trillion. So $55 trillion. Yeah. That's the value of all the money in the world, according to Mike here in US dollars. The US dollar value. Yeah, US dollar value. But not just US. Dollars. That's everything, right? 55 trillion. Yeah. So there you have it. Okay. So this would be a lot easier to track, and things like what happened in Zimbabwe wouldn't happen. You wouldn't ever have hyperinflation if we all use a universal worldwide currency. Yeah, let's talk about that. No less than John Maynard Keynes has suggested. That and it's been bandied about for a long time. Since World War II. Well, even before then. Yeah. I think it was maybe closest to happening, maybe after World War II, which wasn't very close. No. There were instances of what were to the people who were using the currency was effectively a universal currency. Like the early imperial powers of China and Rome used a single currency and all the lands they conquered, which is why hordes of Roman silver coins are found in fields in the UK still today. Right. But it's still not technically a worldwide currency. But World War Two, we came very close, right? Yeah. Let's talk about some of the pros, I guess, because if you look it up on the Internet, there's a lot of debate still going on. Some of the prospectulators can't short a currency. That scenario you were talking about, like devaluing currency to pay back debts. Right. I'd be gone. Because it wouldn't be a commodity, there wouldn't be any other currency to exchange it against. So therefore it's just a dollar just can be used to buy something. You can't buy and sell it itself. It would be valueless like that. Exporters wouldn't have to worry about price gaps. There would be no conversion fees, which would free up money for health care or whatever. I mean, something good to spend it on. Right. Of course. This is a utopian outlook, like, oh, yeah. Then they could spend it on health care, right? Ideally. But it would free up money. It would end disputes about currency manipulation, like China. So there are some pros for sure. Right. You wouldn't have to stand in line at the combat centers and exchange your money when you traveled? No inconvenience, you mean. I went to Europe this summer and it was nice to not we just exchanged once. Yeah. I haven't been since the Euro. It's like everywhere. And even in places in Croatia, they still use their currency, but everybody accepts Euros. Yeah, I bet they accept American dollars there, too. Probably. I kind of enjoyed the different currencies. Oh, yeah. It's pretty and it's just neat. I didn't see it as a hassle. Maybe I was young, but I always thought it was kind of neat, like let me go turn in my francs for my German dollar. Well, it just sucks to lose money buying another currency. Yeah. Or to come out ahead, though. That's when you're rocking, right? Sometimes. But it's been a while since that happened. This was in the mid 1990s. So the American dollar, we were doing pretty well in Eastern Europe. The dollar was sound as the pound. But we got killed in England, of course, as always. Yeah, because the pound is so awesome. Well, that was the big discrepancy after World War II, like when we came close to adopting universal currency, the Americans and the Brits couldn't decide on what to value it against the pound or the dollar, and so it just fell apart. Well, the Pew Research Center did a poll, and apparently 41% of Americans believe that we will have a universal currency by 2050. But the article, I got that from the guy speculates, that could be because we're sort of programmed to think that the future will be like that, because everyday entirely. Yeah, like every Sci-Fi movie ever. It's like universal credit. It's not even like cash. Right. So people just kind of have that in the back of their minds. So there's a lot of drawbacks to a universal currency as well. There are some clever things you can do if you are in charge of your own currency and it's valued against other currencies. One of them is, if your economy is sluggish, you can release a lot of your currency, create inflation, drive prices down in your country compared to the buying power of a foreign currency, and attract that foreign currency and get your economy kick started again. If you're using the same currency as all these other countries that you're trading with, sure, there's not that gap. Right. That currency gap. But you also can't do that nice little trick that probably would have bailed out Spain and Greece on their own had they not been trading the euro or using the euro the last couple of years. Yeah, it's a good point. Some pundits think that the gold standard, if they were to go to a universal currency, it would be based on something like the gold standard again, or the gold standard, period. But a lot of other people say, no, that's antiquated and just a bad idea. Potentially dangerous. I wonder how it'd be dangerous. I don't know. We should do one on the gold standard. I mean, they got rid of it for a reason. Yeah. So I don't know. Something about going back to something, but it was Nixon who got rid of it, so it makes you think it's inherently evil getting rid of the gold standard. Yeah. The other thing, too, is who's going to run the show is really the big I think that's probably the biggest stumbling block. It's a huge one. There's got to be a universal body, an International Reserve bank, central bank that has the authority on issuing these things. World bank buying them back. And yeah, ever since the Clinton there, everybody's been nervous about that kind of thing. But even if you're not a paranoid type, you may just think that this body, by definition, would be incompetent just from looking at, like the UN has successes. Sure. Peacekeeping missions are frequently very helpful and can add stability to a region. And then you have things like the International Panel on Climate Change, which releases its opinions on climate change based on politics and diplomacy rather than science. Yes. And if it's a World Bank, there's too much at stake to make mistakes. And we already have a World bank. It's just not in charge of every currency. And if it were, it could be problematic. It could be helpful, it could be problematic. I don't really fall down on either side of this. Yeah, I don't know. You know how I feel about economics. As long as I can go buy my stuff and pay my mortgage, I don't care if it's the yen or the dollar or the Communate financier deafreak. Frank do you care if it's that? No, I had never heard of that. I thought the Euro was sort of the only consolidator, but apparently in Africa, eight West African nations do share that West African CFA franc. African financial community. Another six Central African nations share a Central African CFA franc, which is weird because they're interchangeable. Yeah. Two currencies that they can either one is fine. Yeah. I guess it's like when you go to Costa Rica, right, or Mexico, you can use your dollars, you can use your paces. Yeah, I guess so. But apparently from interchangeable, I read that to mean, like, they're valued the exact same, which is like, why I have two different currencies that are so similar, that are the same value. Just make one CFA. Frank yeah, that's a good point. And then there was a lot of talk about hemispheric and regional unified currencies in Central America and South America, and they came very close. But the recent troubles from the Eurozone have made a lot of people back off about it. And in North America, there is going to be the North American Union, which is Canada. Mexico and the United States supposedly were going to be fused together into one. Yes. And Canada was like, Right. America was like, well, we're going to come up with the amaro. Amerio was the name of the unified currency that would have been really yeah. Interesting. Well, it's a conspiracy theory, at least. Okay. There you go. That's how much money's in the world is it kind of weird. That not weird, but that America is sandwiched between such two different countries. It is like Canada, mexico. It's like you can't get any more opposite climate, people, food, sure. Economy, and then America's right in the middle. It's kind of fitting. We're the melting pot of Canada and Mexico. I guess we are or where it all comes together. America's Hat and America's pants. I can't remember what you've called Mexico before. Shoes? I don't think so. Let's just call it Mexico. Okay? So that's how much money there is in the world. If you want to read this article, you can type that into the search bar@householdworks.com. And since it's a search bar, it's time for message break. And Chuck, what time is it now? It's time for administrative again, folks. This is when we thank people for sweet gifts that they send us in the mail. And I have a list of books starting with how why? How we do anything means everything. How Colin. There you go. Why? How we do anything means everything by dove seedman. D-O-V. Yeah, Dove. Dove. Yes, I appreciate that. Dove. They're very nice. It's a dovester. Do you want to say it one more time? No. Okay, let's see. We got a postcard from Madagascar from Carol Levitt. Thank you very much for that. Nice. Another book by Alan Gerstell. Swing the Search for My Father. Louis Prima. Nobody read this one, but it deserves a double. Okay. We got a letter with further insight into the hip hop episode from Bboy Antivirus. Nice. Yeah. How's he doing these days? Doing great. Good science, nearly explained by Dick Maxwell. And that is available on Amazon or Kindle. Nice. We have a postcard with a picture of the pair, which you'll remember from the torture episode from the Museo de Torture from Anna. Oh, nice. Thank you very much. Our buddy Roger Ma sent us the vampire combat manual. Yeah. And he's previously sent us the zombie combat manual. And Roger, we actually finally met him, didn't we? I don't know. Did we meet him? I think we met Roger at one of the Comic Cons. Oh, good. Yeah. Okay. I think you're right. Hey, Roger. We got a postcard from China. From Kerry. Nice. We got another book called trunkless. It's a children's book, and I don't have the author here, but it's called trunkless. I think we did that one before. Did we? All right, double plug. We got another postcard from Bob Rome airfield from Amy Lynn. Thanks for that. We got a book called Verbivores Feast by Christy. The wordsmith and that was sent in by Hillary. Nice. We got a postcard of a bear pooping in the woods from Van Nostrin. Thanks, Van Nostrin. Yeah, we should mention, too, Van Nostrin also sent us his CD from his awesome band, the Bangalores Sasquatch with a mullet. Yes. Thank you, buddy. We got a comic Zen called Happy Trails, Cowboy Poetry by Horace T. Rushy. Beard Stash We got a really cool cityscape watercolor card that was designed and sent by Alex. Thanks, Alex. John Linnemyer wrote a book called how an Average Man Lived an Adventurous Life. And I haven't read that yet, but I'm going to. Good going, Chuck. Yeah, we got some CDs from. Rich Bosek. That may or may not have been all of them, but thank you very much for those. Yeah, and I believe he also sent us a DVD called Forgotten Detroit and a nice handwritten ink rendering of ourselves. Right. Did you see that? Yes. Is it the same guy? I think it's the same guy. Well, thank you very much. Big time. Rich book called Roman Disasters by Jerry Toner and a book called The Life and Times of Swirly vancouver Stuff You Should Know edition. It's a comic, actually, from Aaron Dunbar. Yes, I remember. What else do we have? Chuck? And then we have a bunch of music. You want to go through these with me? Colon blow. Devil in disguise. That's right. Ben from self evidence in his CDs and vinyl. The record. We built a fortress on short notice. We definitely plugged that one before. Yeah. The Lala band sent us their CD. Moonshine still. Yes. The group called forging reverie sent us a CD called Motion Canvas. And that was from Derek. Yeah. Eric Davis and Sam Gray sent us a CD. Table people and some authentic korean junk food. Burkea send us download codes for his CD. Jazz Animals. Right. Katie Sinner sent us a nice handwritten letter. She's doing something called The Letter Project where she sends a letter to somebody who inspires her to ask, what are you pursuing in your life, and how do you know when you've gotten there? Yeah. And we answered. Did we? Yeah, I did. Oh, nice. For both of us. Oh, nice. Thanks, man. I know what you're pursuing. I don't even have to do any thinking. And then we have one more vinyl and CD the shape of beats to come from Bendick Boxes band. Yeah. That is B-E-N-D-I-K-D-A-K-S-A-A-S. Vinyls. There's a couple over there on my desk. Thanks, man. You got a record player? I do. And mine is busted. What happened to your record player? It's up in the attic, and we're three years, so until I get it going, you should just take the vinyl. I will. Yeah. And we appreciate the vinyl, by the way. It's very cool. I believe Benedict backs us. Do we read his name for volunteering? No. Donating to coed. Oh, maybe Benedict. I believe so. Benedict. Yeah. Well, if that's the same person, then thanks for that doubly. So that is administrative details for now. Thanks for the stuff. Yes, we're all caught up. Very nice. I know it feels good. It didn't take like eight episodes to cover it. All right. If you want to send us something, you can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyhow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And you can join us at our home on the web, the awesome website, stuffyoustenew.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite Murder, and Smalltown Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-photography.mp3	How Crime Scene Photography Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-crime-scene-photography-works	Crime scene photography is a crucial aspect of forensic investigation, but it's by no means a new part of detective work. In this episode, Chuck and Josh explore the history and modern use of crime scene photography.	Crime scene photography is a crucial aspect of forensic investigation, but it's by no means a new part of detective work. In this episode, Chuck and Josh explore the history and modern use of crime scene photography.	Thu, 17 Feb 2011 16:56:32 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=16, tm_min=56, tm_sec=32, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=48, tm_isdst=0)	25725054	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, chuck Brown. Right. Snap, snap, snap. That was my camera impression. You get your little iPhone, you could do the little sound if you want. I guess I could. Is that your iPhone camera? My own personal rendition. Did I introduce this yet? I have not. I'm Josh Clark. You did. Oh, I did? You didn't say, this is stuff you should know. This is stuff you should know. The podcast, right? That's right. Have you noticed I'm sorry. To differentiate between the podcast and nothing else, let's see what we got. There you go. Yeah. So, Chuck, had you been in the act of vandalism, murder, theft, or have you done it guy enough and left some sort of scene behind? That picture would have constituted crime scene photography. Yeah. That is not my intro. Okay. Did you notice in this article, again, named Alfons Bertillon? Bertillon, right. Yeah. He was a 19th century French photographer who is credited with creating the concept of crime scene photography for forensic police investigation. Yeah. He's also credited with creating something that any smoking gun fan will appreciate. This guy for mug shots. Yeah, I like mug shots. Mug shots. He created mug shots, I should say, for the purpose that they're used today. Cataloging a criminal. This guy with this face, with these tattoos has done this crime. Yeah. Right. Or has been questioned for this crime, or whatever. It's a way of documenting what a person looks like so there's no mistaken identity, that kind of thing. When Bertillon came up with this, it was kind of a lifesaver for people suspected of being criminals or for criminals, because in France at the time, you may be branded with a hot iron. That's how they identified repeat offenders. Oh, really? Yeah. So that was kind of a save. But Bertillon was also very much interested in eugenics, which was the idea that you could create a fitter, better human race by basically sterilizing or killing people who didn't fit the idea of fitness. Right, yeah. Epileptics criminals, that kind of thing. Sure. And part of eugenics is based on phrenology, or the shape of the skull, the shape of the face characteristics. And Bertillon came up with eleven characteristics that you could measure drawn on ethnic lines, largely. Very much so, but using calipers and other instruments. And he came up with this uniform measurement set. That's the other reason he started doing mug shots. Right. And it actually worked for a while until in the early turn of the century. The last century. Yeah. Not this past one, the one before. Okay. At Levenworth prison, a guy was using this Bertillon measurement. They have a standard procedure by them to book somebody in named William West. And this guy who was doing the measurements, that was his job. So he knew everybody in the prison's measurements by heart? Pretty much. Right. He was like, I've measured your face before. And this William West is like, no, I promise you, I've not been here before. And he's like, I don't know. Let me look. So he looks it up and sees that, yes, he has indeed come up with the same exact measurements for these eleven different distinct characteristics which Bertillon calculated to be one in about 4 million the chances of two people having the same characteristics. And not only that, this Levin Worth forensics guy finds that they are attributed or cataloged with a guy by the name of William West. Here's the thing. The guy he was booking processing wasn't lying. The other William West was still in prison in Lenworth with the same eleven characteristics. So as of that guy's processing, there were two William West with identical facial characteristics in Lebanon at the same time. So was that the beginning of the end of mug shots being used in that way? Pretty much. Because from what I understand with the characteristics, it was sort of like he was using as proof. Like, just look at the guy. Just look at him. Right? Look at the face. Well, not only that. By studying, by creating a catalog of people along these eleven characteristics, like how far apart your eyes were, like how protruding your eyebrow ridge is, that kind of thing, you would conceivably. And then we're very much doing something along the same lines with DNA today. We're conceivably saying, well, this person with this pronounced eyebrow ridge is very much predisposed to acts of murder and violence because, as you've seen, all these other people that we've cataloged have this protruding eyebrow ridge. And that common characteristic shows that you're a murderer, not a very criminal. No, but it's the same point that we're at with these DNA databases that we spoken about, too. Chuck that's right. Let's get back to crime scene photography, shall we? Yes. Bertillon was the first guy to really do that. And he was the first guy to there's been forensic photography, they said, since pretty much the camera has been around. Yeah, but he was the first guy to say, you know what? Let's do some different angles and let's get some real close ups and let's survey the whole scene. And now we have sort of a picture of what the whole crime scene looks like. Right. Scenes methodical. He was the first to really apply a method to it before it kind of grew out of newspapers printing crime scene photos. Like the guy in rode to tradition. Dude law. Yeah, I enjoyed that. It was a good movie. But they would go for the art or the shock value of it, not necessarily the evidentiary value of it. So, yeah, it's very sensationalistic. Crime scene photography is obviously very important because evidence is transitory. You clean up a crime scene, you remove the body lift, the fingerprints, you do all that stuff. So you need to get it while the egg is still in the pan, as they say. I think you just said that. So before everyone else comes in and does their thing, the crime scene photographer, there's a lot of pressure on these men and women to go in first because they've got their CSI guys outside saying, all right, come on, let's get this over with so we can start analyzing it. But they got to be first because you don't want to disrupt the scene. Yeah, and you have to take your time and you have to do it right. And there's standard procedures that you have to come up with very much. But yeah, it's kind of a high pressure job. It's a very important job. You remember when we were talking about blood pattern analysis just a couple of days ago? Yeah. It seems like just no time at all. But you were talking about how maybe some police departments have people pulling double duty with blood pattern analysis, not necessarily so. With crime scene photography. This is not as much an art as a science, even though it's something that grew out of an art. This position is very valuable. So much so that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has its own crime scene photography and videography department. Really? And they dispatch them independently of the police officers. So they'll be two on the scene because they found that documenting a crime scene is so important to closing a case that they have their own peeps doing it. Their own peeps, their own homies. All right, so let's talk about the classifications of forensic photos. There's three of them, and at first it sounds like no doubt, but it's a little more interesting than that. You've got your overview, you got your mid range, you got your close up. You take overview, you think, yeah, they just take the big wide shot. They take a lot more than that. They take pictures of the outside of the buildings. They take a picture entrances and exits. They take pictures of let's say there's a crowd of folks standing around that police tape in the movies. They always return to the scheme of the crime. You can pick them out of that crowd. So they take pictures of the crowd. Not only that, if the police are canvassing the crowd and some people wander off or whatever, you can use that to go find those people who may be potential witnesses. Exactly. They will take pictures of not just the room, but every angle of the room, the corners of the room, the different rooms in like, let's say a murder occurred in a bedroom. They're not just going to stick to the bedroom. They're going to take pictures of all the rooms in the house because they may say, hey, look, in that picture, the phone was off the hook in the other room. Let's go lift fingerprints off the phone handle or trace the last call that was made, something like that. It's coming from upstairs, it's inside the house. That's the overview. That's the overview, right. And that pretty much is like, okay, here's the boring part. And then the oh, my God. Now we're at the mid range, right? Yeah. That's when you zoom in a bit on some of the gruesome aspects of the crime. I've told you before, I think I've mentioned it, that I've seen some crime scene photography that's really like, Guy in the woods. No, thank you. Yeah. Kurt Cobain people are always trying to find that photo wasn't a crime scene, but his death scene. Yeah. Or was it? That's right. Courtney, who was that investigative journalist that tried to pin it on her? There was a documentary. Yeah. It was that guy Nick some or other. Nick Cage. Nick Cave. Nick Love. None of those people. Nick and Jessica. Yes, that's what it was. Okay, so the mid range shots are pieces of evidence, like the murder weapon, if it's there, but you're going to do some different variations. You're going to zoom in on the murder weapon, obviously, but you also want to show it in relation to where it is on the scene, like it was laying on the floor. 3ft from the body. Yeah. And now you can take it away now. Right after the mid range, we come to the close up, and the close up is going to be like, maybe the murder instrument, a tattoo on the victim's body scar, serial number. If somebody used a DVD player to beat somebody else to death with it, you got to catalog the murder weapon, that kind of thing. Yeah, good point. So this is what the close up is useful for. And then when you're taking a close up photo, you take one with, like, an instrument, like a ruler or something like that, to provide scale. And then you also take a duplicate photo, the same photo without the measuring device. So the defense can't be like, oh, well, that ruler was actually covering up incontrovertible evidence that my client was not guilty. Covering up the name of the killer. Right. Yeah. So it's important to take two. You're right. They also have to be really detailed with the photo. Log has all the details. Nowadays with digital photography, you can have the sequence of photo number, the date and time, all that, like, already stamped on. But back in the day, they would use a log in a book to record all this. The filters that they use, like, hey, I used to daylight filter out here because I had to, but it can't be tainted. So you got to let people know that there was a filter use. You got to be honest. I got to be very honest. Chuck we also mentioned that there's a standard operating procedure that you have to come up with one of the big aspects that lends credence to crime scene photography is that sensationalism has been pulled completely out of it, has no place in it whatsoever. And one of the ways that you ensure that your photographers aren't being sensational, or can't even be accused of being sensational, is by coming up with the standard operating procedure method that you are going to employ when taking photographs. Right. Yeah. So you have to have things like maximum depth of field, which is the amount of a photograph that's crisp and clear and in focus. Right. You can't be all arty and do one of those, like, portrait things where the background is blurry. Right. Might look neat. If you're telling the cadaver to make love to the camera, you're on the wrong path with your crime scene photography. Yeah. The last thing you want is for your boss to say, boy, these are really sensational. Yes. Because why? You might say. Well, thanks. That's not what you're looking for. No, not at all. You don't want art school calling you. So other technical specs that should make up this photo taking procedure right. Are you want to make sure that the photos are as sharp as possible and that none of the devices that you're using to measure are blocking anything. You don't want to get creative with how you take the photo. You don't want to cover up anything, leave anything out. No. You can't let anything be blurry that's important, that kind of thing. Right. Yeah. And that's just part of this larger standard operating procedure. Correct. Yeah. And that's for the picture taken itself. Right. But the procedure also includes afterward, you have to have a standard chain of custody image security, because Dexter leaves a crime scene with the camera and what's he going to do with it. Right. Or if he hands it to what's, the one guy? The funny comic relief? Yeah. Have you seen his truck? I couldn't believe it. He hands it to I don't want to get any emails, Chuck. Well, look it up. He hands it to Makusa. Yeah. Makusa. And Makusa should sign something that says, I took custody of this flash drive from Dexter Morgan and my name is Makusa. Exactly. And then he'll make some vague sexual joke and everyone will laugh at home. Right. You have to preserve that original digital image. So let's say you want to blow it up and change the contrast a bit to highlight something. That's all great, that's all groovy, but you have to note that you've done that and you have to have the original in its original form and format as whatever. If it's a JPEG, you can't make it a GIF or a GIF. Certainly not an animated GIF. That's scrusing. That would be weird. There are a lot of times there's image security software to make sure everything stays like it should. You have to store it, like on a hard drive. You have to have backups of it. Right. Just got to be really detailed. It's not like your vacation photos. No. Anytime you do anything to manipulate that photo, you should log it. And again, you have to be completely honest. You shouldn't have any dog in the fight. No, of course not. Your job is to document the scene and extract or prevent any emotion from coming into it as much as possible. Yeah, exactly. Right. Let's talk about the kit, which isn't super exciting, but you're going to have your camera, maybe a couple, if you're into that. You're going to have a variety of lenses that will work for different crime scenes. You're going to have some filters if you need them. You want your wide angle lens. You want your mid range. If you want to zoom in on something and you don't want to get down on the floor, you might want to zoom lens. Yeah, be a good idea. Light meter. Make sure everything looks great. So, Chuck, I noticed the gray card. What's? The gray card. I thought it works with the light meter. Yes, I think you use that to set your meter. Is that right? Like your meter understands this is the gray card. It's the zero value, I think so. I think it's sort of like white balancing a video camera. I got you. Okay. I might have that wrong, though. And generally you're going to use color unless they said things like latent fingerprints sometimes or show up better in black and white. Yes. But most times you get color. Yeah. So we mentioned video since I said that word. Yeah. I think it's become a lot more prevalent since the advent of the video cameras say so. And especially nowadays, the SLRs that shoot great high def video. I've seen it. You can have all in one package here. I know. You don't have to have a couple of cameras. You have to toe around. So is SLR a brand name? No. Okay. It's single lens reflex, I believe that's a guess. All right. Josh, videotape. You know a lot about photography, don't you? My dad's a big shutter bug. Nice. I grew up with it. Videotape is used a lot nowadays and that can do a lot of things that regular SLR photography cannot show you. You can literally walk a jury through a crime scene and show relationships to the body or the weapons. Like a picture is one thing. It's worth 1000 words. Sure. At least. But 24 frames per second, that's worth 2000, 240,000, right? I would say yes. So video is used a lot of times and they say if there's video that they actually video before they take the still photographs. And the CSI guys are out there going, oh, come on, you're going to draw a picture too? Well, that's what they used to do originally, yeah, they would sketch the crime scene. But of course it doesn't get a lot more subjective than sketches. So when photography came along, people sees done it pretty quick. When the video camera came along people are like, oh, this is just as good, if not better. Let's accompany the two. But you need both. They use infrared film sometimes if it's dark and you need to get a blood stain. Yeah. That's when you're super fancy, I think. Yes. What else? Oh, I tell you. The thing I thought was cool was if you video blood spatter on a wall, let's say someone's brains are blown out over a wall, you could potentially photograph that, put a yardstick in there as a frame of reference and then years later, or days later, you can make a slide. If it's a slide, then you can project that onto the wall, even onto that wall actual size. So you can kind of recreate it as it was before it got all cleaned up. Project it right there on the wall. That's really neat. Kind of like Princess Leia. Yeah, I guess so. When R is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Okay. When RTD two was projecting her as a hologram. Exactly. Yeah. Although nothing like that. You want to talk about Ouija? Yeah. Ouiji is one cool cat. What's his deal? Ouija is the, I guess, pseudonym of a guy named Arthur Felic. And he was big from the think the 50s. He was an independent photographer photojournalist and he had a special knack for sniffing out crime scenes. So much so that someone once complimented him that he had the sense of a Ouija board to predict when a crime was going to occur so we would be in the right place at the right time to really get all the photography he wanted out of it. Right. How do you do that? Well, he lived in a shack behind the police station in Manhattan. And he had a police scanner. Right? Yeah. He basically didn't have a life. So he just sat around listening to the police scanner and he would just head on over. He also had a pretty extensive network of informants. Cops, robbers, barb keeps, prostitutes, whoever. I wonder if they based in La. Confidential. Was it Danny DeVito? Was he the photographer? No, I think this guy was way more put together than Danny DeVito's character. Was he? Yeah, although it would make sense because wegee which he adopted that name, but he spelled it phonetically. W-E-E-G-E-E. Just call me Weegee. Right. He did travel to La and he created a spread called Naked City and it became the movie The Naked City. Right. But he was just this famous crime scene photographer. One of the things that he became famous for was not just the crime scene. Any smoke could shoot a dead body and that was something. But he would often turn and just start taking photos like closeups of the crowd in their prairie and ecstasy with these crazy like some would be laughing and others would be smiling and some would be crying. And it was just like it would capture the range of emotions. And he has one very famous photograph called their first murder that was taken in Williamsburg, which is hipster central now in Brooklyn. And it's just this group of people of all ages. They all seem to be white, but they're all just in this weird pose, like almost rising in ecstasy on the scene of a murder. Like before the cops have even got there. Like that crowd that crowds around. Yeah, look at them. Like Ray Bradbury wrote about them. Really? The crowd. They would be there on the scene when an accident occurred. Interesting. It's kind of like that. But anyway, Ouija had some pretty good stuff. Well, and that kind of brings up a point that crime scene photographs have been viewed and this is one from back in the day. I don't think they view new ones as art, but in Hollywood, in La. They dug up in 2001 a box. It's probably more than one box. Yeah, a trove. A trove. A treasure trove, if you will, of old forensic photos. And some of them were some of the most infamous crimes and murders in the history. And Black Dahlia comes to mind. I don't know if that was in there. Yes, I wonder if it was in there. I'm sure it was probably so. And some of these negatives were decomposing and deteriorating at this point. So they said, you know what? We should preserve these because it's historical record. And some of these are really great photographs. And so years later, they actually took it on tour in art galleries. What was it called? I think it was called I know. Ouija did that, didn't he? Yeah. Ouija had one in New York called Ouija murder is my business. I read a quote from him. There's a pretty cool book, Chuck, called Shots in the Dark based on, like, a true TV documentary, I think. But it's a lot of crime scenes photography. But it's an explanation about crime scene photography too. There's a quote from Ouija where, like, gangsters in the like, the big ones, they reveled in their notoriety. But it was the young punks who tried to cover up and pretend they weren't criminals. And he would always say to them like you just wait until you make it big, you punk. Then I'll take your picture. He's a tough guy, really. Yes. Is he still around? No, I think he's dead. He's working in the well, I mean, he knows how old he was. He's immortal. He could be, like, really old. So crime scene photography. I don't have anything else. I don't either. Pretty straightforward. If you want to see Ouija is their first murder. It's pretty interesting you should type in crime scene photography in the search Bar housetofirst.com. This concludes our Dexter Loven series. Valentine Week series of crime and documentation. Indeed. And since I said search bar, that means Chuck, of course. It's time for listener mail. Yeah, we're doing a shout out, and I know I say we never do them, but we're kind of doing them more. We never do shouts out. The only reason I'm doing this is because this lady has been writing me since last summer. August, I think. You really make them wait. Her birthday shout out. No, she broke me in August for this dude's birthday, which is now. Oh, wow. So I thought, persistence pays off. Yeah. Sarah so her boyfriend, his name is Graham Baker, and he is turning 25, I believe, tomorrow. She said she's collecting birthday greetings and he's such a superfan that she thought I think he actually said, if I ever received anything from Josh and Chuck would probably lose my mind. So hopefully he's going crazy right now. And she said, here's some information about him that you should read. He turns 25 on February 18. He's doing his master's in Religious studies at McMaster University in Canada. Ontario, Canada? Yeah. And it's going to complete his thesis this summer. He needs some encouragement, she says, so keep on plugging away there, Graham. He's originally from Edmonton. Josh calls Calgary as home and is in Hamilton until summer of 2011. That's a lot of information. Jesus. I live in Calgary. Oh, there's more. Is this Social Security number in there? No, they both listen to stuff mom never told you and stuff you should know on their road trips. Nice. He lived in Prague for four months to study abroad. Very cool. He really likes Star Trek. He's really funny. And his two favorite bands. Yes. Henry Clay People. No. The Band. No, those are my two favorite bands. Jimmy Cliff. No. Wilco and the national. Todd Rungren and Todd Rungren So Graham. Happy birthday, dude. And tell Sarah to quit emailing us. This has been going on for months. I think you can reasonably block her now. Yeah, she's gone, but yeah. Happy birthday, dude. Thanks for listening. Good luck with the religious studies. Happy birthday, Graham and Sarah. That was very kind of you. So if you have a birthday request, birthday shout out request, don't send it. You can send to something else, though. And if you do, go ahead and email us at stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseopworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House of the Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?"
41dbbdee-53a3-11e8-bdec-778ae6d98f11	What happened to the Neanderthals?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-happened-to-the-neanderthals	As recently as 40,000 years ago we lived among humans from an entirely different species – Neanderthals. About the same time our species showed up, Neanderthals suddenly vanished. Just what happened to the other guys? Did our ancestors do something … bad?	As recently as 40,000 years ago we lived among humans from an entirely different species – Neanderthals. About the same time our species showed up, Neanderthals suddenly vanished. Just what happened to the other guys? Did our ancestors do something … bad?	Thu, 20 Jun 2019 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=171, tm_isdst=0)	48500905	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Oh. Stuff you shouldn't is, though. I'm excited about this one. This just feels like classic Josh and Chuck. I think so, too. Tuktuk is going to make an appearance. Tuktuk might make sweet love, which is always fun. Sure. And watching Tuktuk yeah, we like to watch. He's surprisingly tender. He is. I'm sorry. To all the third graders, or actually, more of the point, the third grade teachers who are standing there right now at the head of class, they're like, oh, what happened to the Neanderthals? Perfect for the classroom. Right. So, yeah, I thought, this is very cool. I love this. We've talked a little bit about Neanderthals in the past and Homo sapiens and Denisovans. That's right. Right. There's an extra N in there, I think. Denisovan. Yeah. Dennis Snowvin sounds like a dude, like he manages the ice cream factory. Right? Snovan. Dennis Snowvan. Yeah. This is good stuff, though. So let's treat everyone. All right. We'll do our best not to put the pressure on. So, Neanderthals, the correct pronunciation is tall, by the way. Yes, I had a teacher point that out, I remember very specifically in the 9th grade. Right. But when you're being correct, you're actually speaking in old German, not even modern German. So it's really just a question of how you want to say it. Either one's acceptable. No, I mean, the pronunciation would still be that in modern German. Neanderthal. Yeah. Okay. Because I saw it spelled T-A-L too. Oh, really? Yeah. Get rid of that h. Okay. I kind of like it. I like how it looks, but I think it's up to the individual to say tall or tall. Okay. But the correct way is Neanderthal. Right, okay. And Neanderthals, I'm probably going to just switch back and forth, if that's okay with everybody. That is our way not to make a big deal out of it or anything, or falls, depending on who you are. They were a species of human beings, of humans, if you think about it. Chuck, you, Jerry, me, everybody out there sometimes. No. Yeah, same species. Yeah, one species of human. That's it. You just don't really kind of think about that. But if you dialed back a little bit, if we got on the way back machine and went back just, like, 40,000 years, there'd be at least one other species of human running around on Earth. They would be the Neanderthals tall. Yeah. So we didn't even know that there was another such thing as another human species until the 1850s, because there was a 400 year gap separating us, and then that's right. So the very first fossils of a Neanderthal was found in 1829 in Belgium, and then again in Gibraltar in 1848. But they kind of were just like, oh, cool, look at these old bones. Yes. What's a big deal. Watch how easy they snap on my knees. Right? They didn't know what they were. No. And then in 1956 in Germany, something pretty significant happened. They found some pretty substantial fossils, I think. A whole skeleton, actually. Yeah, well, they definitely found a whole skull. This was in four or 5ft of clay in a limestone quarry cave in a site called Felt Hoffa. So glad. And this is in the Neanda Valley near Dusltoff. This is where it all comes around. If you hear the word neanderthal or tall. T-H-A-L in old German means valley. And so the scientific name Homo Neanderthalinsis, means humans from the Neanderthal Valley. Yes, because that's all it means. That's where the first one that we realized, wait a minute, this isn't a cave bear. This isn't like some dead person. This is a different species of human. Yeah, they saw that. What we now know is classic Neanderthal oval shape, that big, thick, low, receding forehead and brow, very thick bones. That was brought to the quarry foreman, and he said, It's cave bear. I guess he came over from Alabama, but he said, But I do know a teacher and a guy who's really into fossils. His name's? Johann Carl Fullrot. And here, you can have these bones. He got them, did some impressions. He went, what? Did some castings of these and sent those to Erman Shafalzon, a professor. I don't know why German is so funny to you. I don't either, but coming out of your mouth, it's just hilarious after all these years. Yeah, he's a professor, was a professor of anatomy at the University of Bone. And they both were like, hey, this is significant because this ain't no human, no Homo sapien. Right. But it's a human. Right, we think. Right. It's some other kind of human, some other kind of hominid that we just didn't understand before that's, right? So they presented their findings to the world. They said, look at this, everybody get a load of this. And there was an immediate problem with Neanderthals. This is 1857, when they presented their findings, that was before on the Origin of the Species. So before Darwin, it was like, God created all this, right? God created you, god created the panther, god created the monkey separately. All of this stuff was all separate, right? And then Darwin came along and said, no, all this stuff is actually related. And if you trace everything far enough back, you're going to find a last common ancestor between two things that don't look anything alike, including humans and apes. This was before that. So it didn't fit into the Christian creation story. Right. But then even after Darwin came along, it just so happened that Neanderthals were discovered and analyzed, and it was realized that they were different species of human at a time when biological anthropology was around. Yeah. Phrenology. And we've talked about it on the show a little bit. The very sort of racist practice of categorizing humans in their inferiority of races by the shapes of their skull. Right. Look at this skull. Well, it's not basically Western and European shaped. We think it has some weird ridge. So they're an inferior race. They extended all that onto Neanderthals. Because if you're comparing human Homo sapiens skulls to one another and somehow finding inferiority or superiority in the shape of those, when you compare a Neanderthal skull to a human skull, clearly the human skull is much more refined and developed. Neanderthals must have been these dim witted brutes. The caveman. Like, the whole reason we think of the caveman and Neanderthals as big dummies and oaks is because they were discovered during a time of racist science. Yeah. And that was the view that was held, and it's still held by some people who don't know better. This is why we're doing that one reason why we're doing this episode. But it was held for a couple of hundred years. But in the recent decades, things have changed. Our picture of the Neanderthal has changed because of science sure. And research. And we now know that well, a lot of cool things. I don't want to spoil it yet. Okay. Yeah. I was wondering if that was too much of the beans getting out. I think so. Okay, let's tease that out. That's fine with me. So we'll just sit here quietly for a second as we go past this. Okay. All right. Are you ready? Yeah. All right. So the current story, like the simple version of the current story, is the Neanderthal and the I mean, shall we just say the modern human or Homo sapiens? Sapiens. That's how I was like, how can I because they're both humans. Yeah. But they're just two different species of human sapiens, neanderthal and sapiens. All right. So they separated between a half a million and about 650,000 years ago, and they both diverge from a common branch, h heidelbergensis. I think the G is hard brgensis. I'm pretty sure that's right. H. Heidelbergensis. Yeah. Alright. That sounds right. Yeah. And this was in Africa. Right. That's where the divergence happened. That's right. So either the divergence happened in Africa or some heidelbergensis stayed in Africa and some spread out of Africa. Right. To your Asia. Yeah. Into the old world in Asia. And over time, because of the separation, these groups of humans started branching out and developing into distinct species. One of the species, the first one to develop into a distinct species from this branch, was Neanderthals. And by at least 400,000 years ago, there were Neanderthals running around like distinct species of humans called Neanderthals. Yeah. They were developing independently because they were very far from each other, and they didn't, for a very long time, did not have very much, if any, contact with one another. Yeah. Remember we did an episode on speciation where, like, brown bears and polar bears used to be the same bear, but the polar bears started drifting further and further north and they actually adapted to a different climate, a different habitat, so much so that they became a different species. That's the exact same thing that we're talking about. Heidelbergansis drifted into two different parts, africa and Europe, and the climate and the habitat was different enough that it split into two different species. Yeah. So what you've got in Eurasia is a range from Portugal and Wales in the west over to Siberia. This is for Neanderthals, right? Yeah, in the east. So that was their range in general, and all the way down to the Middle East. Yeah. It was a huge range. Yeah, very big range. The biggest. They were shorter than sapiens that were still in Africa. They were kind of stockier, they had bigger brains. They were by most accounts stronger, more muscular, had wider hips and shoulders, sturdier bones, very sturdy, just stocky, robust things. You would not want to mess with the Neanderthal. No. And they were very adaptable. They lived in very cold environments, they lived in very sort of warm, temperate environments. It depends on the time. This is what they think. They think that range that was so huge for the Neanderthals, there wasn't necessarily Neanderthals living in all parts of that range at the same time for 400,000 years or 350,000 years. They think that over time, some Neanderthal populations died and others came along and replaced them. And then some of them moved down here and some of them are over here, but they may have lived in different parts of the world at the same time, but not necessarily their entire range. Right. All at once for the whole 350,000 years they moved a lot and nor did they move all together as whole population. It was a lot of local extinctions and recolonizations going on. Exactly. So it's almost like if you could look at the map of Eurasia on a time lapse over 350,000 years that Neanderthals were around in the area, you would just kind of see these little populations kind of growing and popping and dissolving and then picking up again. And these are actually new groups going into areas, becoming like dying out for one reason or another. And then 1000 or 10,000 years later, there's another group that says, oh, this is a great spot, and showing up kind of like our real Atlantis episode. Remember, there's like 12ft of 50 different settlements over thousands and thousands of years because they're just like, this is a great place to settle. But each one had no idea that the last one was there. Same thing with the Neanderthal range. So the Neanderthals are doing their thing all over Eurasia. Meanwhile, back in Africa, in East Africa, you've got the sapien doing their thing and then they start to radiate out a little bit the sapiens. The sapiens. And then get obviously, the Middle East would be a pretty logical next place to go from Africa. Right. And they happen upon the Neanderthal and they're like, wow, who are you? And then they were all of a sudden sharing space together. Right. Starting about 100,000 years ago in the Middle East. In the Middle East, right? And then in Europe, they shared space for 200 to 500 generations. Yeah, long time. Just like the Neanderthals spread out, the Sapiens basically followed the same path. But there were already people there. There was Neanderthals. And 200 generations, 500 generations between 4010 thousand years. It's a very long time to share space. It really is like that. Many generations of just living in the same place. The thing is, over the lifespan of the Neanderthals, 350,000 years, 4000 years is nothing. It's the blink of an eye. And around the time about, say, humans or Sapiens showed up in Europe about 42,000 years ago, about 40,000 years ago, something, give or take a few thousand years, neanderthals just vanished. Did they melt? We don't know. Remember that old theory? Yeah, that's right. They melt it. It was like eight, nine years ago. That was great. Good call back. So I think it's a good place for a break. Yeah. We'll talk about what happened right after this. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right, all right. So of sapiens in Europe before this disappearance of Neanderthals, for a very long time, everyone basically just had one of two theories either that sapiens killed them off, or that they were just so smart that they outcompeted them for resources and they went away. And that was known as the replacement model or the recent african origin model. Right. And people were all on that train? Some people still very much are. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. In academia, not just the general public. I say boo to that. I agree. And it seems like there are people who are kind of chipping away at that. But I believe the Replacement Model is the dominant model for what happened to the Neanderthals. It basically says humans, Homo sapiens came along and our brains are so much smarter. We were capable of things that Neanderthals couldn't even dream of. Right. Things like culture and art and all sorts of communication. Right. Language, probably, that the Neanderthals just didn't stand a chance. Once the sapiens showed up, it was like, progress is here. Go ahead and die. And either directly by killing them via warfare, or, like you said, just outcompeting them. That was it for the Neanderthals. And the timing is definitely, well, sure suspect. And I think that's what a lot of people have clumped onto is humans show up a couple of thousand years and the end halls are gone. Yeah, it makes sense on the surface. Right. But in 2010, there was some pretty startling discovery. They fully sequenced Neanderthal genome, which is amazing, super amazing. And we found out wait a minute, us sapiens, some of us have Neanderthal DNA in our bodies, our Neanderthals ourselves. Yeah, about depending on where you're from and your ethnic background. But if you're European or Asian, you have pretty good likelihood of being one to 4% in Neanderthal as far as your DNA goes. Right. In SubSaharan Africa, there's not any, obviously, because that's where the sapiens were all hanging out, doing their thing. Right. They hadn't migrated out and intermixed with the Neanderthals. So you know what that means? That means that time period where they were all sharing space, they were also sharing space. There was, like, a lot of you know what I'm saying? They were making love. Oh, that Tuktuk would make love and create little baby Tuktuks. Right. We have to say, just to keep it grounded, we're not exactly sure what kind of circumstances that making love took. No, you're right. It could have been mistaken identity. And obviously the brutal scenario, which is probably the most likely, is that they came in by force and there was, like, raping and pillaging going on. But the thing is, we don't know that that's necessarily likely. I don't know. We honestly have such a little understanding of Neanderthal, we have no idea. They might have been hippies, but we got to throw that out there. Sure. As one of the obvious possibilities. Yeah. As much as you want to just be like, oh, that's so awesome. The Neanderthals were there. The humans showed up, and rather than humans killing off Neanderthals, saying, Get out of here, you'll archaic humans, they said, let's get it on. Well, not only let's get on, let's share resources. Let's teach each other things. Let's explore life together. Right. Let's try to make it go of it didn't go away. They just got absorbed. And because there were far more sapiens, their traits just sort of got weeded out over the years, for the most part. So this is the rival to that replacement model. That's the dominant model. This is called the multi Regional evolution model. And it says basically what you just said, that Neanderthals and humans did it so much that the hybrid human Neanderthals that were born as offspring, they made it with other Neanderthals or other humans. But because there were more sapiens I'm sorry, more sapiens than there were Neanderthals, the likelihood was that a hybrid would be much more likely to mate with a sapient, and then that hybrid would be even more watered down Neanderthal. And then over time, because of that, we're down to 1%. Exactly. And Neanderthals didn't die off. They didn't get chased out. They just became part of that larger human genome. So there's another theory, too, that's interesting, or another interpretation, I guess. It's not a theory, and this has to do with climate change. They did a study well, this year, actually 2019 in France, and they discovered that all you need over the course of about 10,000 years is about a 2.7 decrease in fertility rates to go bye bye. 10,000 years for a decrease in first time young neanderthal mothers, that population. And they said cut that in half, basically, or close to it, within 4000 years, you would need only an 8% decrease in fertility in that same group. So it makes a lot of sense that with a little bit of climate change and a little bit of scarcity, it didn't have to be anything drastic. But over that amount of time, if you don't have as many calories going into your body and your first time under 20 year old neanderthal mother, you're not going to be successful and you're not going to be as fertile. And then over time, that just means you kind of very quietly and slowly go away. Yeah. I think I found this article from Live Science, and in it they say, by the way, if the human replacement rate dropped to 1.3 babies per mother, we'd be gone in 300 years. Yeah. So just a very slight drop among neanderthals could have accounted for that 4000 to 10,000 year process of just suddenly disappearing. And again, in this interpretation, humans didn't do anything. We didn't war with them, we didn't outcompete them, we didn't do anything. It was just something happened to the environment and it was just harder to be fertile. And it wasn't all at once. Maybe it might have been staggered in different parts of the world exactly over 4000 to 10,000 years. And the reason it wasn't that neanderthals couldn't compete, that they couldn't survive, whereas humans could, because neanderthals, again, their lifespan was 350,000 years. Modern humans have only been around for 50 to 100,000 years, maybe 200 at the outside. So neanderthals have been around for a very long time, had been very good at adapting to a changing climate basically the whole time that they were around. So it's not like they couldn't compete or couldn't adapt, and humans could. What they think is that they were just way more humans. And so our numbers probably dropped at the same rate that neanderthal numbers did. There was just more of us to survive and carry on after things got better. Yes. And in more varied ranges and parts of the world, too. Right. That all kind of makes sense to me. Yeah, I suppose it could be both of those climate change and love making. Right. Very easily. Yeah. They definitely go hand in hand, like, should we take another break? Yeah, all right. We'll take another break and talk about the sort of current understanding of the picture of what the neanderthal was right after this. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know by the way, have you seen or heard of that movie William? No. It was out in April. Did not do well, was not reviewed well. But it is basically a sort of mad scientist. Not a mad scientist, but a scientist with a mad idea. There's a human Neanderthal born. They get the DNA impregnate a modern sapien woman, and she has a Neanderthal boy named William. Okay. And he goes to high school. I did not see that. I had no idea about that movie. Yeah, just check out the trailer. Is it good? Oh, I haven't seen it. It's not supposed to be very good. It did not look very good. Got you. But it was very much like, you know, I just want to fit in. And he's a Neanderthal. He's got the regular haircut and the vans and the jeans and the T shirt. Oh, man, he's got the big forehead and the thick brow, man. Sounds a lot like Casino Man. It does. And it looks like it could be a joke, but it's real. Was there that I feel good in the middle of the trailer suddenly, like, change or that scene where, like a Teen Wolf or something, where he's really good at sports or something. Teen Wolf and cinnamon. William yeah. There's a weekend for you right there. I'm not going to watch it, but I just thought it would be worth mentioning before the emails come in. Okay. So the image we're on a quest, I think, and science is on a quest to sort of rehabilitate it funny you mentioned that, but to rehabilitate the image of the Neanderthal is this hunched over Brute Oath. Part of the problem is they sort of base an entire species on this one hunched over dude skeleton. Skeleton. They're like, oh, look at them. They're all hunched over Oaths shambling. And now they're like, oh, actually, that individual may have had a degenerative bone disease. And what we now think is they just walked around like we do and probably looked a lot like we do. Yeah. They think that from sequencing the Neanderthal genome, they think that at least some of them had red hair and light colored skin. That's remarkable. Which, by the way, by interbreeding with Neanderthals recent arrivals from Africa, their hybrid offspring would have been conferred with thicker, straighter hair, a smaller compact frame, all sorts of stuff that you would need in this colder climate of eurasia from having just come up from Africa over the last few generations. So there was good stuff. There was also bad stuff. They think some of the disease that we suffer from is actually related to Neanderthal DNA that doesn't have a context or a point or a function like it used to and that now it's actually producing disease in us. Yeah, like the same DNA, they could have had the same things that we associate with diabetes and crohn's, but it would have didn't affect them. Like it does us the lifestyle and everything, how we diverged. Precisely. Really interesting. I think there's actually that's the alternative explanation for the hygiene hypothesis. Neanderthal DNA, I did these both sort of linked in some ways right there. Behaviorally. Again, we're trying to get away from this idea of cavemen and things that we thought were strictly sapien over the years. It turns out that Neanderthals were actually good at, like, making tools and this really interesting technique, the leva Loais technique, which is basically I am in the area where I have the resources to make all the tools, but we got to pack up and leave and we don't know if we're going to have this stuff there. Yeah, there's some dinosaurs after us. Yeah. So this is a very raw resource. Like, let's say it's just a certain type of stone. So we're going to pre shape all these things into sort of a rudimentary tool that we can later make into a hammer or a chisel, depending on what we need. But we're going to sort of pre shape them here, pack them up and take them all with us. So we'll have this little factory that we can set up anywhere we want what we need. Yeah, that's smart. It is. And it's a technological innovation that is definitely attributed to the Neanderthals they came up with. That awesome and tool making. We knew that older, archaic humans were good with tools going back probably a million or so years. Chimps use tools, they use termite sticks. So people are saying, like, great, like the Neanderthals created some sort of new technology, some new tool culture. Who cares? It still doesn't make them smart. But there's other stuff we found out about Neanderthals that we started that have really kind of changed our view of them because they're doing things or we found out they're capable of things that are supposed to. Those are the things that make humans humans. Neanderthals aren't supposed to have been doing this, but the more evidence we're getting with the fresher eyes we're looking at existing evidence, it's starting to look like they were behaviorally modern, like humans. There's a really good chance that they were. Yeah, like the safes, they could spark fire. So the old notion like quest for fire, that they just had to sit around and wait for lightning to strike a bush is not true. They use that fire to cook food. They think. They think, which is a big deal. That's open to interpretations, though. What else? They know from studying the injuries on the animals that they hunted, that they were very intelligent hunters and they killed big, big animals at close range, which meant that they were skilled, that they understood risk, that they were brave, and that they will get into communication more. But you got to be communicating too, to do something like that. Yeah, because they would hunt and pack, but they would do it in close range. They do hunt in packs and is that the Velociraptor? Oh, I think so. Jurassic park. Right. While they threw me off. Sorry. You think I'd be expecting it in this episode, though? You know, it wasn't they do hunt and packs, though. I was just appropriating that line, but what was it? Oh, man, they do travel in they do pack lightly. Yeah, that was it. Okay, so the fact that these guys would take on reindeer and bison and mammoths at close range with, like, spears and javelins and some hand to hand combat type stuff has really kind of undermined that replacement model idea that humans came in and just killed off all the Neanderthals. Right. Because they just said, no chance. Right. Neanderthals were tough mows. Yes. One of the big ones here, and this is where it gets super interesting, I think, to me, is the use of symbols. That is something that we thought was very much sapien. Very Sapie, right. It's if we can show that Neanderthals understood symbols and had that kind of higher thought, that would make them behaviorally equivalent to humans. Yeah, the sapiens. Sorry. Yeah, the sapes we're talking anything from making, like, a necklace set of beads to wear, like, an adornment to using pigments on the face, like, the precursor to make up and stuff like that. Yeah. And humans have been shown to have been doing that at least for the last 80,000 years. Safes. I don't know why I can't do that. Sapes have been doing that. The earliest evidence is at two sites in Ethiopia, and this is they think it was, like, for identity or jewelry or something like that, but that's not something you just do. There's not necessarily a practical function to it, and it's a form of art. And there's ambiguous evidence that Neanderthals did this, too, that there was body adornment, that they would color themselves in pigments, put on makeup, basically. Why. Right. So here's the thing. So that would suggest that, okay, if Neanderthals do that and humans do that, too, then that makes Neanderthals equivalent to humans behaviorally. But the people who are big time into the replacement model, that Neanderthals were actually kind of stupid, and humans are the pinnacle in the first example of higher intelligence, they say, well, if you really kind of date some of this stuff that the Neanderthals made, it's probably around the time that humans showed up. And it's really just Neanderthals copying what they saw humans doing. But there's no symbolism to it in that. Like, they could copy a shell as an ornament, but they didn't have any meaning. Yeah. Which is really sort of a snotty approach. I think so, too. Well, they might have done it, but they were just copying. Exactly. No copying. Remember that kid? Yeah. You know what that kid is doing now? He or she is running the company. Is that dennis Novan, ice cream manager. Ice cream factory manager. Caveart. Let's talk about cave art, because this is the one thing that to make art is the one thing that traditionally has always separated sapes from everyone else. Right. Like, if everybody's saying, okay, even if Neanderthals came up with body adornments, that's not art. We're going to raise the bar. Right. This is what the poopoor say. That doesn't really qualify as art. Caveart is where it's at. If you can show me Neanderthals that created caveat, I will agree that they are behaviorally equivalent to modern humans of their era. Yeah. And they found cave art. Modern sapiens, man. They found cave art at the same time there were Neanderthals around caves. But again, it was just like, oh, well, that was the safes. Right. That wasn't the Neanderthals doing that. Right. They think that the sapiens came in and made that cave art. Right. Like, we need unambiguous proof at this point. Here's the problem. Radiocarbon dating gets unreliable after 40,000 years, and it requires organic material to date these pigments. They were using mineral pigments, not organic ones. So that was a problem. That's a big problem. And this is kind of mind blowing. In 2018, they discovered or I guess perfected, a dating technique that measures the rate of decay of uranium atoms and calcite deposits. That's what makes up stalactites and stalagmites in limestone caves. Yeah. So the idea is if you find cave art, sort of like the mosquito caught in amber. Right. It's a timestamp if you find caveart that's underneath some of the deposits that have dripped down over it and encased it and you can date that, then you know how old that caveart is. Yeah. Because the cave arts under the calcite. If you know how old the calcite is, then the caveart has to be at least as old or slightly older than the earliest deposited calcium. And what's the big secret? Well, there's a surprise. There was a study in 2018 that found that some cave art in a cave in Spain was created 64,000 years ago. What? A full 20,000 plus years before Homo sapiens showed up in the area. Which means that it had to have been Neanderthals that created this cave art. Do you know what the Cooper said? What? That's not really art. What? Swear to God. Are you serious? He's like some hand stencils and some dots on the wall. That doesn't count. That's the first art that kids do is tracing their hand to make a turkey. They are really holding on for dear life, but some people are really swimming against this current. Like, they do not want the idea that humans are not uniquely special. I guess in that sense, people have been thinking that it was humans or Homo sapiens that have the ability to create art and think symbolically. And it's starting to look like that's not the case. Not only that it's not just humans and that maybe Neanderthals did too, but that's possible. That this kind of stuff evolved even further back, and that Heidelbergensis, our less common ancestor, running around 700,000 years ago, may have created art and may have been doing all this other stuff, too, that makes us uniquely human. Well, another one is music. They have found bones from cave bears in Southeast Europe that had these holes, and they were like, hey, looks like a flute to me. Plays like a flute, sounds like a flute. So it's jethro tall. That is so good. I'm so glad that they added flute to their outfit. Not many groups, marshall Tucker band had the flute. And here's a little something for you. I may have told this story, but I was in our little local market getting some food about two years ago. Remember that? Yeah. And there was a guy in a band, clearly, and he was like, play flute for Marshall Tucker. I was like, are you kidding? No, I'm not, sir. Like, you're one of the two most famous floutists in rock music. Sure. But it wasn't the original guy, I found out still plays flute for Marshall Tucker. Agreed. Just because he didn't write those flute parts, it doesn't make him any less of a floutist. He could still play. Yeah. So anyway, the naysayers with the flute are just like, oh, no, man, those are just they were bones chomped on by hyena teeth. Yeah. The flute holes the finger holes are teeth marks. Yeah. And sure, you can play Aqua Long on it, but that's just because the hyenas right. And their teeth marks. Sure. Right. There's also really good evidence, cumulative evidence. There's one other thing about the cave art that we didn't say. Oh, the kind of sculpture. Well, that was one thing. They found what looks to be stalactite, like, purposeful arrangements of stalactites in a cave. That's from 176,000 years, that's sculpture. Right. But now there are other similar cave art paintings in Spanish caves in different places. So they think it was an actual part of Neanderthal culture. This wasn't one particularly imaginative Neanderthal who happened to leave it behind. Yes. And it even said, this is artlove tooktook. Right. And they believe it find me on Insta at only. So the other thing that there's a lot of amassed evidence for is that Neanderthals appeared to have buried their dead. This is pretty cool. This is enormous, because, okay, not only can they think symbolically in, like, art and creating representations of things that may or may not exist, they're thinking about something coming after this. You don't just bury a corpse for many reasons other than spiritual reasons. I mean, you can to keep the wolves away because you're going to camp near the corpse. But if you're a hunter gather, you just move camp, and you can leave the person laying out there in the bush for the wolves to take. It doesn't matter, because there's no afterlife. If you bury somebody, it indicates you're thinking about something beyond this life, and that is definitely higher level thinking. Yeah. And when we say bury, we don't mean they just found this body, like, on the floor of a deep cave. They dug a hole and placed a body in there, positioned them in a specific way. Yeah. They found different, like, grave sites, basically, like cemeteries, bodies buried in the same manner. And they even found, in northern Iraq, pollen. Flower pollen, which clearly suggests that they buried them with flowers. It definitely seems to. That's a funerary. Right? Unless it was just an accident and they just dropped a bunch of flowers on the way out, which I mean, it's possible, but it seems unlikely. I don't know if I'm being naive, but I really want to believe this. Yeah. Well, it's nice. It's refreshing to think about. Humans don't have to have or sapiens don't have to have the market corner. We can share humanity. Yeah. Here's another one. If they were just brutes who didn't have any capacity to understand things or take care of one another, they found individuals, and one in particular that was deaf, likely visually impaired because of a blow to the head as a ute, probably from a sapien, maybe yeah. Was missing his right hand and then suffered a disease that reduced his mobility. And they found this person lived into his 40s, maybe up to 50. Yeah. Which there's no way this person would have survived without a community of people taking care of and making sure that this person survived and ate and got around and moved along with them. Yeah. Because they cared for one another and tried to heal one another. Right. Yeah. They took care of their sick. They're injured, they're disabled, they're ill. They shared resources with them. People who couldn't necessarily contribute still got stuff from the community, which suggests tightened social group that cared for one another. And then what about language? So this one just knocked my socks off. There are these Dutch researchers who wrote a paper that argued that Neanderthals almost certainly spoke a nuanced language that we would recognize as a modern language. Right. And that not only did Neanderthals speak their own language, probably Heidelbergensis and maybe even further back in our archaic family line, spoke language too. And that if that's true. If that's the case, neanderthals have their own language, and humans absorb Neanderthals both culturally and genetically. It's entirely possible that there are traces of Neanderthal language that still appear in our languages that are spoken around the world today, unbeknownst to us. Man, if they could find out those words isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's pretty cool. I love that. I like all this. Love you, Neanderthals. Love you, sapiens. Love you, Tuktuk. And I think I used to just throw Tuktuk around in various ways. But then you developed a taste for watching and make love. That's right. But from this point forward, Tuktuk is clearly deep. No, clearly Neanderthal I think I had kind of just threw tuktuk's name around as any kind of early man. Yeah, he could have been Captain Caveman. He could have been the Geico Caveman. Yeah, but he could be William, for all I know. You know, I thought about it. So Tuck Tucked is officially neanderthal. Yes. Okay. The Geico caveman is actually a really good parable for the struggle between the interpretation of Neanderthals today. Like, everybody's like, it's so easy. A caveman can do it, and this guy's playing, like, squash and driving a Porsche. Yes. Do you remember their short lived TV show? I remember that it existed, but I never saw it. One of them drove a Porsche. Yeah. And now we're from Geico. Okay, well, if you want to know more about Neanderthals, start reading up about it. And there's a pretty amazing exhibit funded by one of the Koch brothers, if I'm not mistaken, at the Smithsonian, where you can see a real live Neanderthal skeleton. Really pretty beautiful. What's their angle? Right? Something maybe they're trying to rehabilitate Neanderthals for some reason to bring them back as exploited workers. And since I just said something about the Koch brothers, it's time for go ahead, administrative teacher. Okay, Chuck, as I said, it's time for administrative. Is this like a family guy where you're just going to do that, like, 30 days? No. All right, we're going to start this one off. This is when we thank listeners for sending in kindnesses to us and Michelle from Crown Royal. Oh, yes. Once again, the booze company that just keeps giving. I know they just keep us in booze. Thanks a lot for that. And I just wrote down more booze, but we'll go ahead and plug the Crown Royal ride. What about those glasses they gave us? Those are nice. So they're like the rocks glasses, tumblers, got a good heft to them. Nice shape, size, thick bottom. And then yeah, in that thick bottom, T-H-I-C-C bottom, there is a laser etched Crown Royal 3D logo, which is, like, so classy. You're pinky can't touch the glass. No. It's physically impossible. Yes. It just sticks straight up in the air when you're drinking out of these glass. Oh. A lot of research went into that design to make sure that pinkie was nowhere near the glass. Exactly. Aaron Clark. Speaking of pinkies, aaron Clarke sent us a twinkie the kids statue. Thanks, Aaron. That's right. Yeah. Monica and Kame in Fukushima, Japan, sent us a nice, very nice handwritten letter and some Fuku stuff. Pin stickers, calendars magazine. Where I got it at the desk. I didn't share that with you. No, I need to show that up. And they said things are much better now, because that's cryptic, but yes. I'm glad. So we haven't done this in a little while. I want to say thank you very much for the Christmas cards from Heather K in Sri Lanka and one from renee and Eric Chester. It's very kind of you guys. Here's. 1 may be the weirdest thing we've ever gotten, but one of the most awesome. Scott Bordelon. Remember our Wendy's Chili finger episode? He sent us Wendy's chili from that. Wendy's, wow. I think you're out of town. Yeah. It obviously was no good by the time it got to me, even. And he was like, I know this is not I'm not expecting you to eat this, but eat it. But he taped it up and he was like, this is chili from that very windy. That's amazing. He just thought it would be kind of fun. That is amazing, Scott. You may be right. That may be the weirdest thing. We shipped off chilly, but not even freeze dried. And then there's Brooke Bergen, then a tshirt and stickers of his work. And you can check out his very, very awesome work. I believe his it could be a girl. And you can check out their awesome work at Brooksburgan. Brooksburgan.com. That's right. And that raises a point. If you want to send us the pronoun you identify with, we are more than happy to abide by that. Sure. Claire sanchez sent us. King cakes. Oh, yeah. Very simple. Delicious. Yeah. Teresa sent us really awesome hand quilted postcards. That's right. Yeah. Beautiful. Again, we haven't done this in a while. Sorry for everybody who's been sitting around waiting, having to listen to every episode, just on the off chance that administrative details is gone. So everyone, Jerry just stopped us right in the middle and said, I have one. We always go on and on about Jerry and her miso. Sure. Big ups to Adam. Brenton in Japan sent Jerry some miso. Yeah. How about that? Way to go, Adam. Jerry got her own gift after eleven years. After all this time, got her very own gift. Meaning we didn't also get miso. Right. Sure. And we even asked if she's hoarding it. Yeah. Because we share with Jerry. She doesn't go both ways. We try to. Yeah. So, let's see. Joanna sent us delicious beer chocolates. Remember those? Yeah. She brought them to our Portland show, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. And they were awesome. So thanks a lot, Joanna. You don't remember them because they were beer chocolate tammy and Justin sent us miniature clay figures handpainted, which is very sweet. Along with a very nice letter. We got a postcard from Vienna, probably not viana Georgia. I think it was Vienna, Austria, like the real one. Very nice. From Pauline. Thanks a lot, Pauline. Michelle and Nevin of Smithtown, New York sent us wedding invitation. Happy marriage, guys. Mazel tov. And then we got a thank you note from Mitch. M-I-C-H but it rhymes with rich. So thank you for the thank you note. Mitch. Lowell Hutchison sent us some oh, these are wonderful. Some hand lathe pins. Yes. Remember, Lol is the one who sponsored. She's one of our elephant sponsors. Yeah. Hand painted wood, lathe pins, man. Very beautiful. And on that note, we actually got a lot of pins, and I don't think I wrote all of them down because we did our episode on pins, and people felt compelled to send us their favorite pin and spread the pin love. So if we forgot your pin, big apologies. Yeah, for real. That was very nice. And by the way, also, again, you can check out Lowelle's turned wood creations. And by the way, she donates 20% of all sales to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, too. So go to etsy.com slash shop slash L-O-W-E-L-L-H-U-T-C-H-D-E-S-I-G-N-S. Wonderful. Joe Gathercole sent in his T shirts and CDs from his horror punk band, Headstone. Horrors. It's a great name. Yeah. And then, let's see. I've only got I got three more. Okay. I've got a book from Nick Kemper. Thanks a lot for the book, Nick. That is beautiful of you. Mike Ennis. And it's a box of coffee crisps, and they are delicious. And they are long gone. Yeah, I can attest they are very yummy. Thanks, Mike. And then we got an amazing illustration of us with a peacock by Callie. Thanks for that. It's a great one. All right, I got two more. Adam Russo and s megalodon teeth. Yes. They're pretty awesome. Yeah, they are. And large. Yes. As you would expect. You got another one? I'm done. All right, my last one, then. Kathy Hutton sent us some dog collars. She works for a nonprofit spay and neuter clinic in Washington State. Curly tailed hawk is who makes these collars, and they donate a dollar from every color. Or you can just go to curly tailed hawk.com and get your dog a new collar already, and some of that money will go to the spa neuter clinic, which is great. There you go. Well, thank you, everybody. If you want to get in touch with us, you don't have to send us anything. You can just say hi, go onto our social networks, and you can find all the links@stuffyshow.com. You can also send us an email to stephen podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
45170510-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-8f583ff8d30f	Short Stuff: Exploding Manholes	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-exploding-manholes	If you live in a big city in a cold climate, you should keep an eye out for 100-pound cast-iron manhole covers suddenly launching 50 feet into the air. It’s unnervingly common and we’ll tell you why.	If you live in a big city in a cold climate, you should keep an eye out for 100-pound cast-iron manhole covers suddenly launching 50 feet into the air. It’s unnervingly common and we’ll tell you why.	Wed, 24 Oct 2018 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=297, tm_isdst=0)	12854562	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. So let's get going. You found this stuff. And I think I had heard of this before because I believe I just kind of happened upon it on our website. But this now scares me for when I go to New York. I wasn't scared until you just said that you were scared. Now I'm scared because you would usually be scared. Before I was scared. Yeah, but I guess I hadn't thought it through, actually. The spoiler at the end will leave it's. Not a ton of people actually get hurt. But I read about exploding manhole covers and I think that this is going to land on my head one day. And it will die if it landed on your head, yes, you would die, because we're talking about exploding manhole covers, and they've been known to go I saw 100ft in the air. At least 50 says the House stuff works. Article. And these things are enormously heavy, like 85 to \u00a3300. And for those of our friends who live outside the US and Liberia, that's 35 to 135 kg. So the mere fact that a manhole cover has not landed and killed somebody, landed on someone and killed them by now is sheer luck? It sounds that way, yeah, because it happens a lot, especially depending, like, if you're in New York, it happens in cities all over the country, for sure. But if you're in New York, you're in the home of exploding mainhole coverage for a couple of reasons we'll talk about, and it happens pretty frequently. So it does seem to be what you just said, sheer luck that no one has died from it yet, and maybe someone has and we just hadn't found out about it. Because apparently the FDNY is not required to report the number of incidents. Right. The only source of any numbers on this stuff is Con Edison, and they're the ones who is responsible for this thing. So they may be fudging the numbers. Well, yeah, there's a councilman named Donovan Richards, where there was at the time of this article that has introduced or reintroduced a bill that said, hey, we need more transparency into this and you guys need to start issuing annual reports on how many of these things are catching on fire, smoking, exploding. Right. And the fire chief, the head fire chief of FDNY, leaned into the mic and said, with all due respects, up yours. The fire chief is John Travolta, by the way. And his dalmatian went, right. Now, he did that, like, flicking underneath the chin thing with his paw. Oh, man, I wish I could teach my dog to do that. Oh, man. Yeah. They'd have to be able to turn their paw around. That would be odd. YouTube sensation. Yeah. I think the world would forgive the dog for not turning the Paul around. Like, just doing it anyway would be pretty great. Does Momo know any tricks? She can deal with cards, but that's it. I finally got Nico shaking now, so I consider that a big victory. Oh, yeah, it is a big victory. I taught Mo to give high five. She's pretty good at that. Okay, high five. But then every once in a while, she'd be like a bro thing to do. Yeah. Right. All right, so I think we should talk about why this actually what events lead to this to happen. Yeah. There's actually, like there's science behind it. Yeah. So let's say we're just going to keep picking on New York, because their underground system and their infrastructure, everyone knows, can be quite old and dangerous at times. Again, though, it's the home of exploding manholes. Right. For a reason. So New York has the world's largest and oldest electrical system. Underground electrical system. Underground, at least. Good catch, man. Yeah. So they have the largest and oldest. They have just mind boggling amounts of cables. 98,000 miles of cable and 264,000 manholes. Right? Yeah. Initially, because they talk about vented manholes. To help solve this, I was like, just replace them all. And then I saw $264000. I was like, oh, right. And I imagine each one costs a pretty decent amount. Sure. Because they make them heavy so that teenagers don't make off with them or something. Oh, really? I would guess. Why else would you make them heavy? I don't know. It's a good question. Make them sturdier cars drive over these things. Okay. That's one. They tried Balsaw wood, and it didn't work out. Right? Well, because everybody kept stealing the balsawood. Randall covers, like 98,000 miles of cable or wire underground and hundreds of thousands of manhole covers. So you have a recipe for disaster, considering that that 98,000 miles of wiring, 5% of it is almost 100 years old or older. Yeah. And they're supposed to have a lifespan of about 40 years. So if you've got 100 year old wire down there, you're asking for trouble when it rains or snows or when salt water gets in there from salting streets. And that's basically what happens. Yeah. So this is the science behind it. They actually know what causes exploding manhole covers, at least in New York, right? Yeah. What you have is this very old wiring, and you have even, like, a manhole cover that isn't graded or slotted to allow gases to vent. Like, it's not water tight. So when it snows, New York ices over salts their streets. And so the slush, when the snow melts, becomes saltwater, and over time, the salt water goes and trickles down, and it corrodes the wires, the insulation around the wires. Yeah. And these are wires that these giant New Yorker rats have already been mealing on for years. For centuries. That's another big problem with it, too, right? Yeah. I mean, like 50 pound rats just taking out these wires as much as they like because they love to eat rubber insulation, apparently, because they're stupid. Rats are the worst. So you've got these wires, they're starting to get frayed. They're getting frayed in part by the salt water. But the other thing that the salt water is doing is that when these wires are frayed and the actual wiring itself is exposed, salt water is particularly conductive. Oh, yeah. So because of the chlorine and the sodium ions in there, they have an electrical charge themselves. And water is conductive by itself, too. There's like the whole thing from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where Laszlo wants Hunter Thompson to drop the toaster or the hair dryer in the bathtub with him. He throws a grapefruit on his head instead. Great scene. That's because water is conductive. And Laszlo was hip to that kind of thing. Right. Yeah. And I remember in high school, even, like when we did conductivity experiments, it was always saline. It was always saltwater. Right. Water is conductive. Salt water is super conductive. It's not actually super conductive, but you know what I mean? Yeah. Not in the scientific determine. Right. So when you have this frayed wire, that saltwater comes in contact with the wire arcs, that in and of itself is not good because it's going to short out your electrical system. But the problem is, when those wires are framed, the insulation is worn away, the insulation itself starts to kind of smolder and bubble and flame up itself, which produces gases. Yeah. So that's the big problem. So what you've got down there is gas is being released. Gas is building up, building up pressure. Then you have that electrical arc that's like a bolt of lightning. Basically, those two things meet up and say, how are you doing? And it ignites, and it could lead to and like we said, sometimes it's smoldering and smoking. I've seen them literally just on fire, which is almost as disconcerting. Yeah. It's like, hell. Yeah, it totally is. But sometimes it will actually, if they meet in the right way, under the right conditions, it will cause that explosion and send a possibly 300 pound manhole, cover 150ft into the air. Right. Well, let's take a break real quick, and we'll come back because we got more stuff on exploding Manholes that you're going to love. So the gas goes boom, and the manhole covered goes flying into the air. And the House of Forks article did a really good job of comparing that to an internal combustion engine. Like the pistons in it. Sure. And it's basically the same thing. Like the piston presses air down, and a little bit it takes just a little bit of fuel mixed in with the air to make it combustible because it's compressed. And then when you introduce fire through the spark plug, then that compressed gas air expands very quickly. It explodes is what you'd call it, and then the piston goes up. That's the exact same thing that's happening in an exploding manhole when there's gas buildup, right? Yeah. It's just that pressure of the compressed gas is suddenly released violently, and it explodes outward. And again, it's the same thing that's happening in your car engine. But I'm in New York City street. Yeah. So I'm reading this stuff. I'm thinking, this is cool and a little scary, but I thought, all right, but this happens probably, like, once every few years or a few times a year, maybe. Right. In 2016. And this is manhole incidents just in New York. So is this exploding manhole incidents or just like, catching fire or smoking or whatever? I think anytime a manhole cover goes or a manhole goes Awry, they would call it an incident. Okay. In 2016, there were 1908 of them, and in 2015, there were almost 3800 manhole incidents. Yes. Which is a great band name, actually. Manhole incidents. Yeah. It does all sorts of stuff to the imagination. Or the manhole incident, maybe. Sure. Or Balsa Wood manhole. I saw that in the same year of 2015. In February alone. I'm sorry. In one week in February, there were 600 manhole incidents in New York. Do the math. A lot in a day. And again, this is just what Con Edison is telling the media. Who knows if there's more? There's nobody running around counting all this. The only people who have their finger on the pulse of exploding manhole covers is Con Edison, and they're the ones who are responsible for it. Yeah. So despite this, it turns out, remarkably, that people are usually not injured. It's sort of a rare thing for an actual human injury to happen. And as far as I know, there's never been someone killed by a manhole cover exploding. That is not true. Oh, really? I looked it up, man, but it's not in New York. There has to be somebody who died in New York. Boston has another problem with it itself, I guess Chicago does. Like any major city with an old electrical infrastructure, manhole covers and salty snow melt is going to have exploding manhole covers. DC. Has a problem with it, but theirs comes from natural gas, supposedly, and they only have an average of 38 a year, I think. But Boston has a problem with it, too. And in 2016, there was a freak accident where a high school art teacher was driving in Boston and a manhole cover exploded and rose up just enough to come through her windshield as she was driving from a movie and killed her instantly. Wow. That is awful. Yeah, man. If that happens to you, your number is up. Yeah, that's like when the tree fell on the guy's truck across from my house, at times sitting at a stoplight. Yeah. For the actress who was in Chicago riding her bike through the park and a tree fell over on her. I think we talked about that. Like, if a tree falls on you while you're moving. You're not escaping that. No. Man, that is really sad. It is. What a terrible way to end. Yes, I know. Well, here it gets even worse. She was a beloved art teacher, as they all are. Yeah, well, I don't know. There's the jerk art teachers, too. Mad they're teaching. Well, let's see. Thanks a lot for joining us. If you want to hang out with us, we're all over social media. Just look us up, and you can hang out with us at our home on the Web. Stuff you should know. And we'll see you next time. Watch out for those manholes everybody. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school is out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen than today."
f48614a3-4f26-4894-b085-ae8a00d3a867	The Mystery of Coal	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-mystery-of-coal	There’s a mystery afoot! Almost all of the coal we use around the world was created in the same 60 million year period. Before or after that relatively short window of time, not so much. Just what exactly explains this geological mystery? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	There’s a mystery afoot! Almost all of the coal we use around the world was created in the same 60 million year period. Before or after that relatively short window of time, not so much. Just what exactly explains this geological mystery? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Tue, 03 May 2022 12:55:32 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=12, tm_min=55, tm_sec=32, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=123, tm_isdst=0)	38645413	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is stuff you should know. And that's that's it right there. The Mystery of Coal. You like the title I came up with? It's a working title, but now I guess it's the official title. I like it because I thought, well, what could be The Mystery of Coal? And now I know it's Earth science, so I find it Jasmine tastic. Hey, you know, this is one of the only sciences I can really get into. So did this one suck you in then? I guess it sucked me in like a fallen branch into the depths of a peat bog. Oh my gosh, that was some great forest. I can't wait for 40 seconds from now when we start talking about that part. But first we got to tell everybody we're talking about Cole. The title is correct, it's apt, it's accurate. And there is a mystery to the coal, which we'll get to, but there's a lot more to coal than just the mystery behind it. And actually the way that coal forms is super interesting and it's been forming for a really long time. And it turns out, Chuck, humans have been using it for a really long time. There's evidence that the people who inhabited China all the way back, 2500 years ago were burning coal that they found around the surface as a fuel, which is pretty cool. And tailgating. They were tailgating, sure. Burning coal, cooking up meat. Oh, I got you. Yeah, they were big time. They had wooden pickup trucks where they would cook out of the back. Do you remember the stainless steel pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics? I have still never seen video of that. You just talked about it like it was some I've mentioned it before. Embarrassing. Yeah, for sure. No, you definitely have. Anyway, none of that has to do with wooden pickup trucks is what we're here for. No, it has to do with coal. So let's just say about 5500 years ago, we started taking coal from the ground and burning it. And on a very small scale, that's a pretty clever thing to do. Unfortunately, as we'll see, we've really kind of taken that to the nth degree starting in the Industrial Revolution. And it poses a lot of problems for the atmosphere that we'll talk about. But more to the point, because it takes so long to form coal, the rate that we're burning it at far outpaces the rate that it's being made at, which makes coal a non renewable resource, which we kicked off 5500 years ago. But now, finally, Chuck, we've arrived to that thing you foreshadowed on and that's how coal is made. So if you want to have a grasp on how long it takes to make coal, we're going to explain it step by step. That's right. And I referenced Pete Boggs at the beginning, and people might have thought, what in the world is he even talking about with that? Sure. And why is Josh so excited? Chuck referenced that, and here's the answer. Pete is where cold begins. And Pete is like sort of loose layers of all kinds of plant and mineral gobbledy cook that accumulates in the forest in the swampy, areas called peat swamps. You might call them bogs or myers, depending on where you live in the world. But these are wetlands that have really great conditions to swallow up a fallen branch or a plant or something like that, or a dead animal and have it slowly sink down to the bottom and kind of protect it not completely from erosion, but from erosion that would happen if it was on land. Right. The reason why it's protected from that, from decomp. You know how a body decays, like on the body farm at University of Tennessee, or if you're talking about a wild animal in the forest, or a mouse that got into your attic, or a plant that fell over in your backyard, all of that stuff decomposes, right? It doesn't really decompose in the swamp because a swamp, by definition, has basically stagnant water. Not much goes on in a swamp, strangely enough. Everything is just kind of very slow motion, biologically and geologically speaking. So that water, because it lacks oxygen, it's not a really great place for the microbes that carry out decomposition on planet Earth to live, because they need oxygen to carry out those functions, to eat things and decompose them. And so the swamp water being stagnant and oxygen poor, acts basically as a preservative for the stuff that lived along the swamp and has now died and fallen into the swamp and settled on the bottom, creating what's lovingly known as muck. That's right. And the really important part here, you might be saying, like, big deal, a bunch of stuff falls to the bottom of the swamp and kind of really slowly decomposes, if at all. The really important part here, and this is how we get to coal, which ultimately leads to why we have problems with climate change, is that carbon is locked down in place in the bottom of that swamp with that muck it's just sitting there. If it was on dry land and it was a dead saying, dead deer, dead mouth, sure, it would decompose regularly and there would be an exchange of carbon happening pretty readily. But that's not the case at the bottom of a peat bog. That carbon is staying locked in, and that carbon will eventually become the energy that we need or burn as coal. Precisely. So there is some decomposition that happens, right? Like, if you look at swamp muck that eventually becomes pete, that eventually becomes coal, that swamp muck, you can't really make out like a fish or a tree limb or anything like that after a while. So there is some decomposition. But the upshot of it is it doesn't fully decompose like it would if microbes got onto it on land, like you were saying. And that decomposition that microbes carry out, it unlocks all those chemical bonds that store chemical energy. It breaks up all those constituent elements and compounds that make up those bonds, and then it spreads them out so that other plants can come along and use them. That doesn't happen in swamp muck. It just gets trapped, frozen in time, basically, to a certain part of decomposition. And you still say, so what? How does this make any sense? I'm reeling from all of this information to settle down because we're getting to the next most important part, and that is that if you look at a swamp, say the Oki Phonoki or swamps in Indonesia, if you went back far enough, you would probably be looking at something much deeper and more watery, like a pond or a lake. And those ponds and lakes end up filling in over time, right? Yeah. They start at the banks, like you would think, and stuff drops in in the shallow areas and starts accumulating. We're talking over the course of a long period of time. It's not like you're going to turn a lake into a swamp inside a couple of hundred years. Yeah. Just try it. Yeah, I've tried. Trust me, it's not working. But that just expands further and further toward the middle. Eventually that lake does turn into a swamp and eventually that's going to turn into dry land. But that muck, that deposit and that muck remains there, but it's now got earth on top of it, like dry earth. And that's a lot of compression, that's a lot of weight and that's a lot of soil. And depending on and we'll get to this in a second, but depending on how deep you are and how much weight and how much pressure is on top of you as muck, you're going to turn into different things, different kinds of coal. Yeah, definitely. So that pressure that you mentioned, that's like the key ingredient in transforming muck to pete to coal. We talked a little bit about this in the Diamonds episode I think we had to have. Definitely. Because eventually you get beyond coal to graphite and then ostensibly from graphite on the diamonds. Yeah. For heat and pressure, right? Exactly. Diamonds, I guess, start out as swamp muck, too, and coal is kind of like the middle part of that long, lengthy process. From Muck to diamond, basically the album title, by the way. What was it? From Muck to diamond. Nice. That is good. I think that's like if your band is really terrible at first, but then just gets better and better, there's your greatest hits album title. Or if you're Neil Diamond and you really want to be on the nose. Right. But is there a muck? Does he ever muck? No. Is there like a muck in the music world that he could have been doing? I don't think so, because he started out because that was in another episode as a writer in the Brill Building there for what was it called? Tim Pan Alley. Tim Pan Alley. Neil diamond did. He was a ten pan Alley guy. He was never mucked. How old is he? Like 104. Man, I don't remember that little fact. He's on his way to true. Diamond he is. He's graphite right now. Yeah. Sorry. Neil diamond so as more and more earth just gets deposited through the processes of erosion and deposition and rivers spring up and flood their banks and spread out stuff, like more and more earth builds up over that deposit of swamp muck that got laid down over time. And as more and more builds up above it, there's more and more weight and pressure pushing down and compressing and condensing it, and eventually that peat turns into coal. But you can't just say that coal is like, really old Pete, because the pressure is so tremendous and the heat, it's kind of like it cooks the heat into coal. So the heat and the pressure actually make it go through like a biogeochemical transformation and it becomes a sedimentary rock, something that's not at all peak. It used to be peak, but now it's something totally different. It's undergone a metamorphosis, which is pretty neat. Yeah. I mean, it's awesome. All that moisture is just squeezed out. All the impurities are squeezed out, and you're left, but you're still left with those chemical bonds. And this is a thing, and it's called qualification. And there's no better title thing in earth sciences, I think, than qualification. No. And very straightforward. The process of turning muck to Pete is pedification. Yeah. I think you should just add efficacation onto every word to make it really easy to understand. Right. Neil Diamond Defication. Yeah. Podcastification. Yeah. That's great. We just became an earth science. Should we take a break? Yes. And then we'll come back and talk about the different types of coal. How about that? Sounds great. All right, we're back. We promised talk of different types of coal when you last left us. Pete has been squeezed out underground and we're talking, I don't even think we said about two and a half to six and a quarter miles beneath the earth. It's a long way down. It takes like, that much compression to really start to turn Pete into coal. Right. So don't go digging a ten foot deep hole, throw some sediment in there and expect anything to happen. Right. Because also, I don't know if we said this or not, but this process that we're talking about takes place over millions to hundreds of millions of years, depending on the situation and conditions. That's right. Long, long time. And so there are a few different things that this coal can turn into, or the peak can turn into a few different types of coal. The first one is lignite. It is crumbly still at this point. And it's not black yet, it's sort of brownish. And you can still sort of see parts of the original plant material when it's lignite. Right after that is bitumenis coal. And that's the coal that most people are familiar with. It's far and away the most widely used coal, most widely mined coal. There's just a lot of it on Earth. And that's just coal that's been cooking impressed longer than lignite. Still known as soft, though. But it's not soft, like to the touch. No, it's just compared to the next step, it's soft. Yeah. So, yeah, it's called soft coal. And then yeah, the next step after that coal is left alone for much longer. And then again, you've added some sort of heat source. It's either that original deposit of swamp muck has been moving push down further and further, closer to the Earth's core, so that it's just warmer there than it is towards the surface, or it happened to be deposited near like volcanic activity. So there's that kind of heat. So you got some heat, it's like it's in an oven. And the pressure, after a long enough time, you eventually come up with anthracite. And anthracite is like the money coal. Right. And that is officially hard coal, but it doesn't stop there. I think you mentioned something about Neil Diamond turning into graphite. That is sort of the final thing that it can become. And you might think, oh, graphite, that sounds great, that must be the slowest burning, best coal on the planet. But it's really not true because graphite, their bonds, the energy bonds are so strong that it takes a lot of energy to break those up. So, like regular soft coal, and I think even anthracite, you can ignite it without a ton of energy, but it's going to take a lot of energy to ignite graphite. Yeah. And that anthracite is sweet, sweet stuff. It doesn't take much energy to ignite. It has a low flame, it's low smoke, it's just beautiful stuff. It's just much rare than the bitumenis coal that we know in the bitumen. Yeah. Nobody likes it. No. So Chuck, I think we should also mention at this point, because it's about here where I was like, wait, what about oil? It turns out that oil and coal undergo virtually the same processes. It's just the location of where they started out and then the source material that really makes them differ. So coal, as we've seen, is made in swampy areas from land based plants and oil is just made in marine areas from sea based life, basically. Yeah. It's really remarkable. And I remember when we talked about where oil comes from, it's a bit of a mind blowing thing to understand. And I feel like coal kind of completes the picture for me, at least. Yeah, it just depends on where it is. Right. Or how it started too. Well, yeah, that's where it was when it started. I got you like Tin Van Alley. Poor Neil Diamond. I had a feeling he would make an appearance. I don't know why. I guess because we're talking graphite. Once you talk graphite, you're half a skip away from talking about Neil Diamond, because everyone knows he has gold records, platinum records, and a whole wall full of graphite. That's right. So it's not just us who understands coal, we're just basically reporting what science has figured out. Science has a pretty great understanding of how coal forms the processes. That goes all that. You needed to point that out. So we understand coal enough that we can actually even go back and say, like, hey, this seam actually probably came here and we got a little yarn we can tell you guys about where one load in particular, one major coal seam came from. And the whole thing started all the way back in the Carboniferous period, which was really wet and really warm. I think the average global temperature for the first half of the Carboniferous period was like 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 20 Celsius. It doesn't sound very warm, but consider that 2021 of the I think it was like the second hottest year on record, the global temperature was 58.76 degrees Fahrenheit. So this is a good ten degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average. That's a lot warmer for a global temperature. It is. And it's hard to wrap your head around a global temperature, but yeah, that's everything, right? Not just where you live. Because when I first saw these numbers, I was like, could that be correct? But yeah, when you think of global averages, it's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. Because you're not just taking the equator into account, you're also taking the poles into account. You're mixing it all together, carrying the one, a bell goes off when you finally reach the answer and there you go. That's right. And there were a lot of swamps back in those days, obviously, and a lot of them were around where the equator is, so it was going to be especially hot there. And one in particular near the equator was Straddling. And I know we've talked a lot about tectonic plates and myriad episodes, including the volcanoes one. But one of them straddled a plate boundary right. Where a couple of these plates met, and I guess we should say where it is. Present day Europe, Asia and North America was called Laurasia and then Gondwana, which is present day Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and India. And these guys started banging up against each other as plates do when they meet and say hello and mountain ranges are formed. And we know this is how mountain ranges are formed, but this particular mountain range was formed and then kept moving and kept moving until it eventually became the Appalachian Mountains. Right. And so as these massive supercontinents collided with one another and pushed into one another and created this mountain range as the land that made the mountains went up, the land on either side of those mountains bowed down, which was swampy, if you remember. Yes, and that's really important because when that process took place, and it's not like they just ran into each other like a car crash or anything, it took place over a really long time. But it was enough that it was dropping huge amounts of swamp muck and vegetation deep below the earth at a much faster rate than the succession of a lake to a pond to a swamp to dry land happens. Right. So it was dropping a bunch of swamp muck down on either side of it. And that as that mountain range moved forward and settled in the northeast United States and southern southern part of Canada, it took those deposits with them and then it baked and cooked for a couple of hundred million years. And now you have the coal seams up in the Appalachians right now. That's right. And this is no mystery. It makes a lot of sense. We know why a lot of coal was formed then. It was the first part of the Carboniferous period, which is called the Mississippian epoch. And like we said, it was really warm and sea levels were a lot higher than they are now. And a lot of the land was underwater. There was a lot of sea, a lot of marine environments where oil would form. And this was at the beginning. The Pennsylvania epoch came next. And this is when the temperatures cooled down. And this was kind of the latter half of the Carboniferous period. That seawater is locked up in the ice toward the poles, the seawater retreats, and this is where you got those big swamps. And this is the Pennsylvanian epoch was when basically there was a huge spike in what would become coal. Yeah. So it makes total sense. And we understand why a huge deposition of the world's coal came from this particular epoch of the Carbon at first period, because before that, everything was too much underwater for there to be swamps, and you need swamps to create coal. Right. But the thing is, there's a mystery in that. Shortly after the end of the Pennsylvanian period, or epoch of the Carboniferous period, that deposition of coal just drops off suddenly. So it's almost like there's this one slice of Earth's natural geological history where most of the coal that we find in the entire world was created. There are some before that, there's some still going on today. Coal is still being made, but the bulk of it, the vast majority, happen during this. And why it started then, no mystery why it stopped around then. That has been a long standing mystery. And here is, of course, where we get to the mystery of coal. That's right. And to explain the mystery, I guess we got to get to sort of the second part of why there was so much coal. And that was due to the giant plants all of a sudden that were happening during the Pennsylvania and epoch. It was just a lot of new plant diversity and they were really big plants. They sucked up a lot of the CO2 in the atmosphere, emitted a lot of oxygen, and that made the plants grow biggie, biggie, big. And those big, big plants fell over into these swamps. And so that's sort of part two of if you have a lot of material all of a sudden and a lot bigger material, then you can eventually get more coal. So we know all this stuff and that's all well and good, but scientists started to look around again and say, like, we need to try and figure out and I guess it's an understanding of what happened in the past so we can understand what may happen in the future. It's a meta narrative. It is a meta narrative. And so to get there to the mystery, we have to explain what Lignin is. Right? Yeah. So one of the reasons all those plants were allowed to get so huge wasn't just that they sucked up all the CO2, it's that apparently around this time, lignin appeared on Earth. And Lignin is what gives plant cell walls their sturdiness, their hardiness, makes it difficult for them to break down after they die, after they fall over and hit the swamp floor. Right. And so they said, okay, league, and came around around then. Maybe the reason why there was so much coal being laid down during that period and then it tapered off, is because lignin showed up before anything that could break down lignin appeared on Earth. And then once that stuff came along, the deposition of coal dropped off dramatically. And that's what's called the white rot appearance theory of where our coal came from or went. That's right. And it sounds so boring to the regular person on the street, but if you're an Earth scientist, you think it sounds pretty interesting. White Rot theory. Yeah, I think that sounds amazingly interesting. I feel like it's the theory title that only an Earth scientist would love. But you're also an Earth science wonk, so of course you're going to I guess I'm going to turn your crank. You know what I mean? I guess my crank is spinning a million miles an hour right now. So they have this theory, and they started looking back, and the US. Department of Energy said, and this was in 2012, they came out with the theory and said, hey, I bet you anything there was this new kind of fungus that came on the scene that could take care of Lignin like nothing else before it could take care of. And they said, I bet you dollars to donuts that this made an appearance right about that same time. And they went back and checked, and they were right. Yeah. They analyzed the genomes of a ton of different fungi from a class of fungi called wood decay fungi, which really lives up to its name. It's one of the few things on Earth that is capable of breaking down lignin. But, boy, Kenneth, like, if you've ever seen a bunch of weird shingle, like mushrooms growing out of the side of a fallen tree in the woods yes, that's the type of wood decay fungi. And if you've ever picked up a piece of wood and it's just crumbled in your hands, that was because of the fungi. You can thank it for that dry rot. So they're really good at it, but they're doing that today, and they came along at some point in time, and when they analyzed the genes of one kind, a white rot fungi, which is a mushroom bearing fungus, they said, you know what? I think this actually came along toward the end of the Carboniferous period, beginning of the permian period. And this is probably the reason why all of that cold deposition suddenly dropped off all of a sudden. Right. Because now you have a situation where instead of dropping off, falling into a swamp, largely decomposed and sitting there forever, you've got it falling down, and the fungus is doing its thing, just like we see more of today. Yeah, it jumped on it like the bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That's how they pounce. Is this a good time for a break? I guess so. But I think we need to throw a little cliffhanger in there, Chuck, because there's a lot of scientists out there that say, not so fast. You can take your white rot theory and shove it, because I'm not convinced. I think that's a great cliffhanger. Thank you. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, so some scientists have made the white rot theorists cry secretly in the bathroom at work. Not openly, but they did cry because they weren't very kind about it. They weren't. It was really mean. But they did make some really good points, and one of them is that we're not entirely certain. Maybe white rot ancestors showed up around the end of the Carboniferous period. It's possible. But that's not to say that there's nothing that could break down lignin that existed before that. So maybe there was something already, and you can actually see evidence of it from fossilized plant material that are partially decayed. How would they have been at all decayed if there wasn't anything that could break down lignin before white rock came along? Yeah. So something was breaking stuff down. This may have sped it up or whatever, but something was already happening. Right. And it appears and let me know if I have the wrong take on this. Okay. But it appears what they're saying as an alternate theory is maybe there was not a big drop off, more so than there was just a weird anomalous spike because of these tectonic plates crashing together. And all of a sudden it happened to happen where all this swamp plan was and that just really sped things up. So what we saw then was what we're seeing today maybe is more in the order of just kind of how it normally is. And there was just a big spike because there was a big spike because of these tectonic plates happening. And all of a sudden there's huge deposits of stuff in the Swan plan being buried underground. Yeah, that's precisely right. That we've been looking at it the wrong way. It's not like that was the normal process of coal making. It just so happened that there was this period of time in Earth's history where the conditions were perfectly right to make a bunch of coal all at once. And that window eventually closed and the continents broke up and they took their coal seams with them around the world. See, this is the stuff that really fascinates me about Earth sciences, is sort of the sliding doors thing. Like had that not happened, we would not have had coal on the order that we have today at all. And how would that have changed the world and how would that have changed the Industrial Revolution? Absolutely. Or maybe prevented the Industrial revolution from happening because I guess we'd still be burning wood, I guess. Who knows? We'd have figured out how to burn diamonds maybe. Yeah, it's just really interesting that this tectonic plates millions and millions of years ago ends up affecting, well, as we'll see the Earth's climate today, but how we get around in the world and the energy we consume. And not just tectonic plates, but the happenstance that there was the appearance of lignin which allowed all of this stuff to all these plants to diversify and explode in size. And that's fascinating. Yeah, it took all these different little factors to make the coal that we see today so abundant. Because if that hadn't happened, if we didn't have these abundant deposits, who knows where we would be or what we would be doing for energy. That is the thing, because we are definitely using a lot of coal for energy and as a result, we're wrecking the planet. There's really no other way to put it. It's definitely not just because of coal, but coal has definitely been a huge culprit because we've been using it for so long. Again. It powered the Industrial Revolution. And then also because it is just such a dirty energy source. It is. But here's the thing. When used as an energy source, is a dirty energy source. If that coal were not extracted and the plant matter fell into the swamp and it decomposed very slowly down there and eventually became the three stages of coal, or I guess the four stages of coal, it would just stay, that CO2 would stay locked. Down in there. Yes. It actually acts as a sequester roar, I guess, to keep that carbon locked underground where it would have stayed had it not been for us. Yeah. So that makes it a carbon sink. That's better than sequester. It is a sequester. Reminds me of that kids in the hall eradicate or being a carbon sink, that makes it a really major part of the carbon cycle, which is this shuffling of carbon throughout the Earth, into the oceans, into the atmosphere. And that actually acts as Earth's thermostat. Because like we were talking about when all those plants came along in the Mississippian epoch of the carboniferous period, the more and more plants sucked more and more carbon dioxide out of the air, which actually cooled global temperatures. Right. So less carbon in the atmosphere equals lower temperatures. More carbon in the atmosphere equals higher temperatures. And so over time, as that carbon moves slowly from atmosphere into rock and then released again into the atmosphere, that just keeps temperatures stable, generally, globally, within a range. And coal plays a big part of that. But we have radically accelerated the pace of release of that carbon from the carbon sink that is coal back into the atmosphere by digging it up and burning it and not just speeding it up by setting it on fire rather than letting it erode naturally over time, but also just the massive amounts that we burn have had a terrible effect. Well, yeah, I mean, you make a good point. This coal, like an earthquake might push this coal seam above ground eventually, and that exposes it to the atmosphere, but it's still going to be releasing that CO2 very slowly because it's not on fire. Right. Then the point you made was like, there may be an unlucky thing, like lightning might hit it and light it on fire or something like that. But say that or some human coming along and doing it, it is going to be a really slow sort of natural process and you're not going to see these big spikes of CO2 being released. Yeah. So a good point of reference is volcanoes are like the biggest emitter of carbon from the Earth back into the atmosphere. It literally melts rock that contains carbon, including coal, and shoots that out, is like volcanic emissions back into the atmosphere. On a given year, volcanic activity releases between 130 and 380,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Okay. On a given year, humans release 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Holy cow. So, yeah, and coal is a big part of that, and it just kind of gives you an idea of just how lopsided things are becoming. So hence we reach that point where global warming, even though it's hot or it's cold and there's freak weather and weird weather, and it's like, what does global warming even mean? We are contributing to global warming by releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which warms the atmosphere, warms the surface of the oceans, which leads to ocean acidification. The sea levels rise and a whole cascade of really unpleasant stuff is happening and is about to happen that we're all going to have to adapt to and get used to. Yeah, I think it's interesting. We've never done one solely on climate change, have we? I think we have. We I believe we have. Maybe global warming itself. I don't remember, but I feel like we have all right, because I kind of thought that we had covered it pretty fully in bits and chunks in a lot of different episodes, which really sort of bells very clearly out that there are so many reasons and there's so much history to it. I guess we probably did cover it in one episode, but the tendrils of climate change are so far reaching, it's not a surprise that it's made appearances in dozens of our episodes, for sure. But I think that's one of the things I like about our job is everybody knows that CO2 contributes to climate change, but you and I have the opportunity to kind of take it slow and slow things down and explain it in a little more detail so that people who listen to us can be like, oh, yes, that's true, and I know why. Right. I think it's a very rewarding job that we have, Chuck. It is. We're lucky, dudes. We are lucky. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a fun one. Kind of short and sweet, but dense. Like coal. That's right. Well, if you want to know more about coal, there's a lot of stuff to read. A lot of stuff. Surprising amount of stuff on coal out there, and it's kind of fun. And since I said it's kind of fun, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this from an Aussie friend of ours. Hey, gents. Sending a hello all the way from Australialand. Like many of your listeners, I never really had a reason to write in other than to thank you guys. Until the other day, that is. Recently, in one of your new episodes, Josh made a point to clear any possible confusion about the way people should interpret the title of the show. He explained that he was unsure whether people should be saying it is stuff you should already know or cool stuff we think you should know. It's funny, you're just kind of talking about that. And with that out loud, brain fart of an overthought, I finally had my reason to get in touch. It's like you were speaking to me and I didn't even know it. And here goes the explanation. Okay. Growing up in a home with a single mom and a protective one, there are a lot of very basic yet potentially dangerous things that I was not allowed to do or even learn how to do. The logic being if I didn't know, I wouldn't try it and I wouldn't get hurt. This was just so great until I was an adult out in the real world with no idea how to use a can opener. So now there's me searching for a cool new podcast to listen to, and I see one called Stuff You Should Know. And I swear to Steve Irwin, my first thought was, bloody hell, they might be able to teach me how to use a can opener. Oh, wow. Okay. Of course. Instead, what I found was an absolute behemoth of a discography with more amazing stories, topics, and jokes than I could ever have wished to hear about, or even if I look to be 100 now, listen to all the episodes and can't wait for the new ones through the week. I don't really need to be a listener mail. The fact that it seems you guys genuinely read these is amazing enough to me. Hope you guys and your families are well in staying safe. Keep it up, you bloody F ing legends. Cheers. That is from Jackson and Canberra, Australia. Nice. Thanks, Jack. Canberra, Canberra, Canberra. All right. I really brushed up before our Australian yeah, nice work. That was a great email, Jackson. One of the better ones we've ever gotten, so thank you very much for that. I think practice makes perfect with a can opener. Okay. I just need to close that circle. Yes. And I don't think I could explain it. I'm thinking of it, and I don't think I can. So just give it a copy. Yeah. You mean I have one that goes on the top and it actually breaks the seal between the top of the can and the actual can, and it took me several times. I think I actually went and looked it up online how to use that one, because I'm like it cuts around the side and takes the whole lid off. Yeah, yeah, I've seen those. These are good. Yeah, I'd seen them, too. I'd never tried to use them before, and it's not intuitive. I guess you're right. Yeah. My advice, Jackson, is to just go look up a couple of how to videos on the internet, and they will explain how can openers work. And that means by proxy, I've just explained how can openers work. Or buy one of those great old school 70s peak green electric can openers and set it on your counter. Those are awesome. Yeah. You want to talk about home defense? Just, like, keep a couple of lids laying around like throwing stars at intrusion. Ninja stars. Is there anything in the 70s that wasn't dangerous? I don't think so. I don't either. Remember the strollers back then? Good Lord. Sure. Well, we could go on like this forever, but I can hear John Hodgman rolling over in his grave, and he's not even dead yet. He'd preroll just to get the practice in. Right. So if you want to get in touch with us like Jackson did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more Podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…urity-number.mp3	Social Security Numbers: Less Boring Than You'd Think	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/social-security-numbers-less-boring-than-youd-thin	Do you know that up until July 2011 an ambitious hacker with a good software program could deduce your social security number based on your date and place of birth? In this episode, the boys examine some of the lesser-known details of the Social Security	Do you know that up until July 2011 an ambitious hacker with a good software program could deduce your social security number based on your date and place of birth? In this episode, the boys examine some of the lesser-known details of the Social Security	Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:46:22 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=15, tm_min=46, tm_sec=22, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=110, tm_isdst=0)	36617509	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant aka 286-54-7523. Dude, you can't get out your Social Security number. I just made that up. I thought about that. I thought about what if I, like, ended up when we were describing what the different numbers were? I was like, well, mine happens to be this one. If you listen to the whole podcast, you could put together a Social Security number. And I was like, don't do that, Josh. Don't. We should probably beep out what I said anyway, because that might be someone else's Social Security number. Yeah, I don't I don't want to be responsible for that. Okay, well, we'll go back and beat that out. That's really some COA right there. How do you know that that person like, yeah. Stuff you should know. Called me out. Serial number wise. I want a contest. I can pay for my own hotel in Atlanta to go see the guys, but just me. Jerry like that one. Chuck. Josh, do you know much about Social Security? A bit. You're about to, Chuck? Yes. The Social Security Act of created by our old time before bears, basically created a scheme and not scheme in the way of, like, a carbon trading scheme or something like that. I know you don't like that word, but it's a legitimate word. It doesn't necessarily mean something nefarious. Right. But under this scheme, Social Security is given to retiring workers in the form of a monthly payment, where basically it says, hey, good job. You did a good job working. Go take care of yourself. We don't want you to die on the street. Sure. This should hopefully sustain you in your retirement years. Right. This is before the advent of 401 KS and the like. Right. This is just $35 a month. Right. Well, the whole basis of it is that the workers of today pay into the Social Security Fund, and it is immediately taken and distributed dispersed to workers who have retired today. Yeah. So the workers of today are taking care of the workers of yesterday. That's the whole point, too. This has led some people to claim that the Social Security program is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme where you're taking the money of these people to pay off other people. Yeah. For socialism even. It's totally different. It is socialism, yes. But people cry socialism a lot these days, and they don't think about things like Social Security and all the different ways we do have socialism that people are like, oh, that's fine. Right. Sure. But you can make a case that it is a Ponzi scheme. Sure. But Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security administration, would take issue with that. I'm sure he would. He would say it's not a Ponzi scheme because the Ponzi scheme is not sustainable. Some might argue that Social Security is not sustainable. And as we say here in the south, that's a whole nother show. Okay, well, I won't talk about it anymore. Well, what do you have some numbers on it? Sustainability? Well, we can chat about it. Here's the thing. So if you had zero population growth, this thing would work forever. Right. And it would work completely efficiently with no changes whatsoever. Unfortunately, we don't have zero population growth and we actually had a spike in population that we know of as the baby boom. Right. Which means that very shortly, starting now, I think there will be way more retired workers than there are workers, which means that the workers of today are going to have far greater burden placed on them taking care of these retired workers than any other workers ever have or will. Right. But Stephen Goss, chief actuatory for the Social Security Administration, says this will eventually work itself out. The government's taking steps to address this, and what it's done is raise the amount of money that people throw into this, and they're taking the extra money and the government is buying treasury bonds, investing in itself. Now, here's the weird thing. When they come mature these bonds, the government pays these things off with other tax money. So the government is going to pay the Social Security fund back with other tax money. Now, this will drive people crazy. Conservatives, libertarians, liberals, right leaning liberals, right. Fiscally conservative liberals especially. But Steven gossip shows us it's just a little bump. We're probably not going to have another population spike for a while and Social Security will go right back to normal. It just works for us right now. Right. The other thing that I never really thought about is it could not have been a sustainable program even to begin with because you start Social Security in when was it people started getting paid out a year later, two years later. So they weren't paying in that long. So immediately you've got a problem on your hands because people are starting to get payouts that didn't pay in for 20 years. You know what I'm saying? Yes, that is the case. But the payouts were smaller at first. Yeah, but it still creates a bit of a wrinkle, I think that would wrinkle in time for the future. I think so. But it was a hump that had to be gotten over. And it was gotten over like basically the first people just got screwed. Yeah, well, but they didn't pay in that much either, though. No, and that's true. So they were rightly screwed. Okay, so let's talk about the history of all this, Chuck. And by the way, I guess the takeaway from that intro Social Security is considered a what upon scheme. I think people are just sitting there like, say, I know. All right, well, you already blew the big secret there, the act of 1935, it was coined the name Social Security was coined by Abraham Epstein, who led the American Association for Social Security. And they began paying out in 37, like you said, just for workers. Right. It was the biggest wage earner of a household. Basically, the dad right. Got the money as the retiree. Yeah. And it was a lump sum. Right. They didn't pay it in monthly buckets back then. Tell them what the first guy who got Social Security got. His lump sum. Yeah. His lump sum was in January 1937. He was the first guy to get Social Security benefits. And I looked it up. That's $2.55 in 2010 money. Oh, wow. So even back then, he was just like, hey, federal government got something in my pocket for you. Yeah. Josh just made an obscene gesture. We should just say that in 1939, just two years later, they added survivors benefits and benefits to spouses and children. Flash forward to 56. They added disability benefits. 65. Medicare was signed into law. Yeah. And 61, 62, the Civil Service Commission and the IRS adopted the Social Security number as your official federal ID number and taxpayer ID number right. Respectively. Which is a kind of a thing, because the first Social Security card specifically said on them not to be used as identification. Yeah. But they never made a follow up law to enforce it. And everybody's like, no, this is perfect for identification. Yeah. I'll always remember it because of this card in my wallet. We'll use the mark of the beast as identification the first numbers, because this is not just about Social Security, but more about the numbers, which is more interesting than I thought slightly. Yeah. They were distributed through the post office because they didn't have field offices yet. They were Nascent. Yeah. 45,000 post offices took the initial task to type up these cards. They're called typing centers. Yeah. So basically, this is the part I entitled bureaucracy ho. Right? Yeah. The Social Security Administration contacted all employers in the United States and said, hey, this is a Form SS Four. And on it, you just list the number of employees you have working for you and mail it back to us. And so all the employers filled out I have 15 employees, and then mailed the SS Four back to the Social Security Administration. Social Security Administration opened up the SS fours and they said, okay, this employer has 15 employees, so we're going to mail him 15 SS Five forms, which are basically signing up for your Social Security number. Right. So they mailed the 15 back, probably in one package to the employer, and the employer distributed them among his employees. The employees filled out the SS Five forms and they sent them back to the Social Security Administration. Social Security Administration said, okay, now we have these and we're going to assign Social Security numbers. Right. Right. They said, hey, go to your post office. The post office gave them the Social Security numbers. The Post office then sent that duplicate form to the Social Security Administration, who created the master file of all of these documents put together, which was your Social Security number file. And that was sent to Maryland. Yes. And then in Maryland is where it all came together. That's right. Yeah. Well, what came together there? The numbers, the numbering, the whole thing. Your whole file. Okay. The block file. That's right. So let's talk about the first numbers since we're there. Who has it? It and is one is that the first number? No. Well, we should first say that no one knows for sure who got the very first card and the very first number, because they reckon about several hundred thousand people applied in that 1st November of 1936. So I didn't do the math, but I'm sure you could figure out statistically, and I'd be interested to hear how to do this, but if 100,000 people all got their card that day, and the post offices were open from like eight to five sure. How many people were handed their Social Security number card simultaneously that day? Right. How many first people were there? There's got to be some awesome math equation to figure that out. Yeah. Somebody should do that for us. So they don't know officially who it was, but their first official record, they do know it was a guy named John David Sweeney Jr. And he had the Social Security number 55090, one, and by O, I mean zero, of course, or OTT. And he got his because the head of the Social Security Administration took it off the top of the stack and said, this is the first one. That's right. So there you go. But they did offer that to oh, no. The one number, the lowest number right on record. Right. Before we get to there, though, john David Sweeney ironically died before he could collect his Social Security payments. John David Sweeney is the one with the first Social Security number. So that is very ironic. It is. That's the fact of the podcast, if you ask me. Oh, yeah. Because retirement age was 65 and he died at 61 today, they handle it differently. It's a little confusing, but actually it's not that confusing. You just have to be good at math. Benefits are reduced by five nights of 1% for every month you retire before the age of 65. Lacquer. Yeah. Or rich person. Yeah. Good for you. So back to the number one or whatever. Yeah. The all time low number holder who always will be until we start recycling numbers, if we ever need to. We won't. We may. Her name is Gracie Owen. She is of Concord, New Hampshire. Or Concord. Okay. Yeah. Because we always get mail from people. It's like oh, you pronounced it Nevada. It's Nevada. Or if we say Nevada, they say, hey, you pronounced Nevada incorrectly. It's Nevada. No, it is Nevada. But I tell everyone that writes in from Nevada. Only people from Nevada say Nevada. Everyone else says Nevada. Right. Especially people in Missouri. So Chuck Grace, the Owen of Concord, New Hampshire, got the lowest number 101-0011 with her Social Security number. It was and she got that not because she was first in line, as we've said, different guy got that low number or a different guy got the first number. And it wasn't low. She got it because of where she lived originally. The number Scheming was based on? Well, the first two numbers were based on the state you lived in. Right. Starting northeast, moving westward. Right. And so you had less than 50 possible primary numbers. The first two first three numbers, yeah. Well, they didn't even have 50 at the time, did they? No. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So this is a total waste of digits they figured out very quickly, so they started assigning them to zip codes instead. Right. And we should talk about these numbers. Do you want to? Are we there now? Well, we are almost there, but you didn't mention that Grace Owen got that number. They actually offered it as an honor to John G. WinNT, the Social Security Board chairman, and John Campbell, the Federal Bureau of Old Age Benefits rep for Boston. They offered them both the number one, and they posted no. No, thanks. We are true bureaucrats, and that would be against the bureaucracy's rules. That's right. And Ernest Ackerman the first guy to get a payment. Yes, but item A, Fuller made out like a bandit. This is exactly the problem. This is not the problem. Mrs. Fuller did good things with her money. She bought herself in Edsil. She invested in Webband. She didn't did great things. She did. So IDA May Fuller retired in November 1939, and she was the first person to start collecting monthly benefits. That's right. So by the time Social Security payments or by the time you had to start paying him because another fact is that you can't opt out. Yeah. And the time she retired, she contributed a total of $24.75. Yes. Because of the Social Security scheme. By the time she died at age 119 75, she collected a total of $22,888.92. See? Not sustainable. She wore, like, a bandana around her face, like, the rest of her life. She did, yeah. She was the Social Security bandit. Yeah. Okay, back to the numbers. Is that enough history? I think so. Okay, so the first three numbers, they're called what? The area numbers? Yes. And like you said, they were originally from Northeast to west. So, like, if you lived in New Hampshire, your first three numbers were going to be one. Then they figured out that, well, that's stupid. Like, we're going to have 50 states top. So there's a whole number that we're not using. Eventually we're going to need it because Social Security numbers aren't recycled. They're retired after the person dies. Right, that is true. So then they started assigning them to zip code. So that started using up a lot more numbers. Right? Yeah. Zip code on the mailing address, on the application form, which didn't necessarily indicate your residence. It's just wherever the mailing address was where you applied. Right. Exactly. When you were living. Right. Mailing and residence is not the same address. Most times it is. Sure. But even still, like, the place where I was born, it's not where I live now. Right. So, I mean, you have a lot of weird numbers for the beginning. Correct. In the early 70s, since 72 is when they started the zip code. So I believe that I actually am one of the last years since I was born in 71. Last people to get the one based on the state. Cool. So I'm old timing. Seriously. That is something. Yeah. The next two numbers are group numbers. So you have your area number, and then the area number is broken into groups zero one through 99. Yeah. And this makes sense. So the two numbers in the middle are you are that group of that zip code or that state, depending on how old you are. Yeah, it's just a means to break it up and make it simpler for accounting and filing and all that stuff. Right. Because instead of just one group from an area or what, 999 possible areas, you now have 99 groups of 999 possible areas, 99 groups each to allows for a lot more, because the eight ball that the Social Security number is always behind is basically running out of numbers. I don't think that'll happen. It will. Well, eventually, but there's what they say, a billion combinations. There's a billion combinations. But consider this. There's been more than 400 million numbers issued since 1935. 65, 77 years. Right. I have a feeling, and it does take into account the baby boom that ate up a lot of numbers, but I have a feeling that we could reach that. And what, another 100 years? The US. Will be around, I'm sure, longer than then, hopefully. Hey, you never know. Yeah. China is rising. Well, it'll be at the very least not in our lifetime. Oh, no. Who cares? I would have agreed with you. You qualified it like that. Yeah. What they'll probably do is and I'm guessing here, but they'll probably start reassigning numbers from dead people, which will be weird. I used Social Security number. Yeah. I imagine they'd go back. I mean, it would make sense to me that they would start from the beginning again, almost. So, like, you're using someone's number from 1935 in the year you got a stinky old mothball number. It's like a wicker wheelchair or something like that. Like leather leg braces, something weird like from the are you talking about you know exactly what I'm talking about. Okay. The last four digits are the serial numbers, and they number consecutively. From triple a one through nine nine nine. So it's just saying, well, we're going to extend the possible numbers we can come up with. Exactly. Even more to a billion. And you know what? You don't even necessarily have to recycle. Even if you add, like, an extra attempt digit, how much would that change? Everything. I mean, they'd have to rewrite all their programming and all their accounting, and then we wouldn't have to recycle numbers. Yeah, good point. Okay. Luckily, they have people much smarter than us deciding how to handle that. I don't know. We're pretty sharp. All right. Josh, common questions. These are actually pretty good. Okay, Chuck, here's a question for you. Does everyone have to have a Social Security number? If you're over 18, then yes, you do. And if you receive an income and you're over 18, okay. If you're interested in starting up a bank account, being a deduction on your parents'income taxes, all sorts of things like that, getting medical coverage, taking advantage of government services, then you're going to need that. So there's a lot of people who dispute that. You have to have that. Right. Practically speaking, you do. Like, any bank can be like, I'm not doing business with you, and then you say, okay, well, I can't force you to by law, but I'll try your competitor, and you go on down the line and maybe you find a bank. From what I understand, there are banks that are set up in the Midwest for people who don't have Social Security numbers. Like, who said, I'm not going to have one, I don't trust the government. I don't want to have a serial number, and I'm not going to have this. No, but they're still paying in. Yeah, I think they're still paying in, but they don't have a Social Security number, so that means they're not going to get benefits at the end. I don't think they think they're going to get benefits anyway. I could get that, but yeah, they don't have Social Security number. I think there are people who don't pay Social Security as well. That's like a whole topic along the fringe of whether or not you need to have one, whether or not you actually do have to pay in the constitutionality of it, all that stuff. But for all practical purposes, your life is exponentially easier if you have a Social Security number. Right. And you also said you have to pay because you can't tell the government, you know what, I'm setting up for my own retirement, and I want to take all the available money that I make to do that because my retirement plan is much better than whatever you yokels are working on. Yeah, because you have to pay in 15.3%. I don't know if that's current. I haven't looked, but as of the writing of this article, it was 15.3%. Wow. 7.65% paid by you out of your gross pay and 7.65 paid by your employer. It is staggering how much we pay in taxes in this country. So if you took 15.3% of your gross pay and put it into a 401K over the same course of years, you would have so much more money borrowing another stock market catastrophe before you could get your money out of your 401K. Right. You would have way more than you have from the Social Security Administration as benefits. You know, what I meant to look up is if the government uses this money for other things in the meantime, or is it strictly like here it's in this little pool, and all we're doing is paying people out with it. Well, supposedly before the baby boom problem arose, it was going in and right back out. Okay. And I'm sure any surplus was invested in treasury bonds. Now all of the surplus is invested in treasury bonds, which is just such a shell game. It's so crazy. But no one has any idea if this is going to work. I swear to God. I'm not paranoid. I don't live in the Midwest. I'm not a fringe dweller. This is not something I keep up with a lot. I don't read World Net Daily. There's nothing like that in my life. But I'm telling you, this is like there's no guarantee that this Social Security, I guess, bandage for the baby boom population, if it's going to work, at the very least, it's interesting. Yeah. And the troubling, I would say, at the very least, sure. Okay. They make it real easy for you to slap a number on your little brand new baby. Yes. Do you have to have a number for your child? Well, like I said, if you want them to get medical coverage and open up a savings account in their name for their future college or trade school or travels around the world or you want to claim them as a deduction on your tax filing yes. Then they're going to need one, and they make it pretty easy on you to get one for your new little smelly baby. They do. Again, I'm not a fringe dweller, but they have a very sinister sounding enumeration at Birth program that was pretty bad. Yeah. It was started in 1989, and basically it just made it very easy for you to get a Social Security number for your infant as part of their birth record forms. Right. Enumeration at Birth. I think I mentioned this before. I used to carry my car around in my wallet when I was a teenager because, I don't know, I thought it made me legitimate or adult. Like, it's interesting. Everyone else is bona fide. Everyone else is out drinking. And I was like, no, I got my Social Security card. It keeps the urges away. That's right. Hey, speaking of Social Security cards and wallets, do you want to talk about that lady? Oh, yeah, I can't build a witcher. Yeah. This in 1937, dude, named Douglas Patterson had a wallet company. I'm sorry, H Ferry. Yeah. He was the vice president and treasurer of this wallet company. And he said, you know what we should do? We should include a fake Social Security card in every wallet, but we'll make it look really realistic. By copying your secretary. Yeah. He basically assigned these little fake cards that you get a picture frame with a fake picture in it. Yeah. They gave out wallet or they sold wallets with a fake Social Security card with a real number. I don't know why he thought that was a good idea or why she went along with it. Yeah. What was her name? Hilda Schrader Witcher. She went along with this? Did she go along with her boss? Maybe she didn't know. No, she knew. She did. Yeah. And I guess she didn't feel like she could assert herself at the time. But over 40 years, something like 40,000 people used her Social Security number. Yeah. They gave her new one. Yeah. And people are still using it. As recently as 1977, there are twelve people using that as their own because of this wallet. Yeah. In defense of the dude, he did have the word spitumin on the bottom of it. Spaceman specimen. But it was in small print and it looked like the real deal. It had the little emblem that who was the guy who designed that? Fred Apple? That's right. And what else did he design? The Flying Tigers logo? Yeah. What was that, like a B two bomber logo? Who knows? World War II, I guess. Some sort of gunner plane or something. Okay, that'd be my guess. The Fighting Hellcats. Yeah. The Hellfish the Hellfish was the Simpsons? Yeah. Okay. Josh, can you get a new number? Yes, but only in very extreme cases, like stalking or fraud. A bad case of fraud, I guess. Yeah. I would imagine that the FBI could probably get you one if you're part of the Witness Protection program oh, sure. Which we've talked about. Yeah. You don't have to pay for that. There's no fee from the SSA. But what you should be wary of is companies that claim that they can get you a new number to absolve your credit. Like, hey, have you led an awful bad life? Become a new person, we'll get you a new Social Security number. Which is hilarious if you think that's crazy, falling for that. It's like buying an elevator pass in high school as a freshman or something like that. Except way worse when you have a single floor high school. Because I'm sure they're like, not only do we charge you a fee, but give us your Social Security number because we have to go in and make sure that it's wiped out. Right. The title of the section was why does it matter if someone knows my Social Security number? I think it's pretty obvious. Yeah. Identity theft. Yeah. It's a big problem. These days. Back in the old days, it wasn't as much. It's actually gone down since this article. 400,000 a year is what they said here. Right. It's like 217 now. Oh, that's good. Well, that's the ones that the FTC gets reports of, which are probably the lion's share of them. Right. But it was supposedly increasingly, by some crazy percentage yeah. 40% per year. It's up 11%. Okay. So it's gone down. So I think people have just gotten scared of it and more wary about it. But it's still obviously a pretty big problem. Sure. Part of the problem, though, is that we shouldn't be using Social Security numbers for identification for a reason. This is way too publicly available. Even the last four digits don't use that as, like, your Pin number. No, but I mean, even if somebody asks you your last four digits, how many people have your last four digits? How many companies? A lot. And they also have your birth date. They also have where you were born, your mother's maiden name. It's just kind of like it's all out there. I know. And basically there's no really good scheme to, I guess, use as a passcode basically a way of saying I am me. Right. Because if we all just relied on some other number or something like that, then people could find that out. There's really no good way to do it. But Social Security numbers are definitely not the answer. Yeah, I always get a little creeped out when some business, one of the last, like, comcast or something, like, my cable company will say, what are your last four of your Social? And I'll spit it out. And they'll go, oh, okay. Right. You can say, I don't want to tell you. I want to answer everything else. And they'll run you through your paces, but they know it because they're asking you for verification. Exactly. Because you've given it to them already. Basically, most companies don't have any legal right to ask you what your Social Security number is. Right. But they can also say, well, we don't trust you, so if you don't give it to us when you open your account or whatever exactly. Then you're out of luck with government agencies. You can ask for the Privacy Act of Disclosure Notice, which says, like, hey, we have a legal right to ask you this or we don't. Right. And then you can say, you can't ask me that. Bob. Yeah. All the protection advice I give in here is pretty basic. Don't carry your card in your wallet. Cancel credit cards you don't use. Don't share that one. What don't we just cancel credit cards you don't use? There are things you should do, like keep an eye on your accounts, your credit card accounts, even though you don't use them. But that's not necessarily good advice, especially credit wise, because there's this thing called the available credit to debt ratio. One of the. Ratios that they figure credit score with. And if you have a clean credit card that you're not using that has, like, five or ten grand of available credit on it, sure. That counts. And that makes it very attractive to people who are selling new houses or cars or whatever. That's true. So don't necessarily go do that. Keep them in a safe deposit box. Keep an eye on all your accounts, even if you're not using them. Yeah. Boy, my credit rating is so good right now. That's awesome, dude. It's like, top five percentile somehow. Oh, yeah. And I say that as a testament to you out there who may have bad credit. You can repair it over time. Yeah. You and Emily did good. Well, yeah. She's the one that helped me get my good credit back. That's good. As CFO. Congratulations, man. It's a big deal. Thank you. It is good. And my debts from the past where I don't want to get into it, but they had less to do with me and more to do with, like, bookies heroin, dog fighting bad roommates and getting screwed over by, hey, you were supposed to pay this Georgia Power bill eight years ago and it's still in my name and I didn't even know about it. That kind of thing got you and just being lazy in college kills. Yes. I missed my credit card payment. No big deal. I'll just pay it next month. Right? I'm just going to go buy some heroin instead. I know what you're doing in college, Chuck. Not that. So I guess that's about it, huh? Yeah. One more piece of advice, which is actually good. Every few years, go to the SSA website and request a copy of your Earnings and Benefit Estimate statement. Yeah. Have you heard of this before? No, and I've never done it. And I'm going to go do it today. All right. Let's go do it together. We'll both go do yours together. We'll be like, what? I've been working since I was 13, so I imagine I'm doing pretty good. Nice. Oh, we didn't talk about that. The system is weighted. The whole reason it was instituted was to help make sure that people don't fall through the cracks or whatever, and to help the poor more than the wealthy. Although you get more money out, the more money you put in. Right. Which is based on your income. So the more you make, the more you pay in. But it's also disproportionately weighted so that the people who are earning the lease get a disproportionate amount out to help them. Correct. Amanda which is great. It's socialism at. It's fine. Yeah, that's about it. That's Social Security numbers and pretty much Social Security. I don't think we need to do that again. Okay. Hats off to FDR. Hurrah. New deal. Hurrah. Great Society. Chicken in every pot. That was a Hoover. A number on every forehead. Nice, Chuck. Thank you. We'll end it with that one. If you want to know more about Social Security numbers, you can read this exhaustive article about them by typing in Social Security in the search bar@housesporters.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this following up on zero. That one got a lot more attention than I thought. All the math nerds came out. We're like zero. Very happy that we did that. And one such nerd emailed this Stephen and he says, I think I might be able to put your mind to rest on a couple of those zero properties. And a lot of people try to explain this, and I think he did the best first, dividing by zero. I find it helpful to think of division as separating objects into containers. See, this guy is like talking up my alley. Yeah. I can visualize stuff a lot better this way. So if you have five objects in five containers, you would put one object in each container. You still have the same number of objects, but divided evenly across containers. Okay. Now, if you have five objects in no containers, in other words, dividing by zero, you still have all the same objects, but they have not been put anywhere. You can't say that you'd put zero per container because it's not a lack of items, but rather a lack of containers. So dividing by zero means you have things but nothing to contain them, so a ratio cannot be formed. Awesome. Makes sense, right? Yeah. As for the raising to the zero th power, this is one because our basis of numerology is the number one. All things larger are functions of how many ones it holds, and all things larger define how many need to be combined to form a one. This, combined with the fact that exponents don't describe a multiplication, but rather a number of times a base measurement will be multiplied by a factor, meaning that if the base measurement is never multiplied by the factor, you are left with the base alone. So there you have it. It's tempting to think of these numbers as one to the power, but unfortunately, this is wrong. Can you go over that again? No, I can't. That is from Stephen, a junior software engineer. Thanks, Steven. So I will take him at his word. Yes. He sounds like he's got it down. Yeah, the containers. That makes total sense to me now. Yeah. So there you have it. So, thanks, Stephen, junior software engineer. We are looking forward to you becoming a senior software engineer, likely in the near future from your email. And if you have some sort of illumination about a previous podcast, it doesn't matter how old it is, we always like hearing new stuff about old stuff. Sure, you can send it in an email to well, first tweet to us. Okay. That's why it's AllCast Facebook.com and then the email stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to Fork staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?"
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-12-20-sysk-live-london-grave-robbing-final.mp3	The Golden Age of Grave Robbing: Stuff You Should Know Live in London	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-golden-age-of-grave-robbing-stuff-you-should-k	There was a brief period in the US, UK and Ireland when a dead body could fetch a pretty penny for a person willing to dig it up and sell it to surgeons for dissection. It turns out that there was no shortage of ghoulish types willing to do just that.	There was a brief period in the US, UK and Ireland when a dead body could fetch a pretty penny for a person willing to dig it up and sell it to surgeons for dissection. It turns out that there was no shortage of ghoulish types willing to do just that.	Tue, 20 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=355, tm_isdst=0)	72590436	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"San Francisco. The s YSK treat. Yes. San Francisco, Oakland, the entire Bay Area. And dare I say, all of Silicon Valley. Yeah. We love you. And we're coming back to San Sketchfest this year in January. Yeah. We're going to be there on Sunday, January 15, at 01:00 p.m.. A very rare afternoon show, and we will be ready to go. So you guys better be drunk from the night before or getting drunk for that evening. However it crosses over, I think it will be proof positive that we endorse afternoon drinking. Yeah, a couple of drinks, maybe Bloody Mary. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. We're promoting our show. Oh, that's right. So we're doing that show on January 15. You can go to the SF Sketch website to get tickets. And it's awesome. It's a great comedy festival. Lots of awesome shows that weekend and for the following weeks. So I encourage you to buy lots of tickets. Just buy ours first. Yeah. And hurry. Hurry, because they're selling out fast. No joke. That's not a ploy. That's not a marketing ploy. No, they're really selling fast. We get emails every time. Guys, you told me to hurry. I didn't hurry. I'm shut out. And since this promo is petered out, it ends right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's not here, but we are in beautiful London, England, at Union Chapel. Not bad. Not bad. I have a good feeling about this, you guys. It was the S word. For those of you at home just tuning in, you have no idea what we're talking about. Boy, the acoustics in this room, it's great. It's almost like they built it for that reason. We should have done this from up there, now that I think about it. Oh, I don't think so. No, don't respond. Please come up here and tell the crowd what you just said. So we're doing a podcast. We like to start it out, get you all laughing, and then bring you down. And that's what we're going to do right now because we're talking about gray robbing tonight. Yeah. There's a long, rich history in this country. Actually, there really is, as you will see. You probably already know this. You guys are probably taught this from third grade on or year three. Yes. I don't know. We're from America. I think Germany's landlock forgot. We did a lot of research on this show, and we found that actually, grave robbing is this huge, amorphous topic. Like, the Egyptians were really big into burying people with these elaborate graves, and then they were equally into breaking in and robbing those graves. Right. The field of archaeology is basically grave robbing in academia. There's this really great video that I really strongly want to recommend to anybody who has an interest in gray robbing. Yeah, sure. Okay. But alternately, if you have a very dark sense of humor. You will love Gray Robbing from Morons. It's this weird bootleg video from the 80s, maybe 90s, where this very disturbing young man is explaining how to extort money from people by robbing their family's grave. And he holds up jawbones and stuff while he's doing it just right. When you leave here. Go watch Gray Robbing for morons. But we realize this is too unwieldy. This is like a five hour show. It's not they may sit there for 5 hours, but by God, they're going to be really unhappy after hour or two. So we decided we were going to whittle it down to 2 hours. And it was kind of easy because it turns out that there has never been a period in human history where a dead body has had more monetary value and hence more likely to be dug up from a fresh grave than in the late 18th and early 19th century in the isles and in America. And I like to call it the golden age of grave Robbing. Josh did this research and he put this together and he actually capitalized that. So I thought it was really called the Golden Age of Gray. Robin. He fooled me. I said, no. Well, that's remarkable. I didn't know you could have a golden age of something terrible, but I'll go with it. And you said, no, I just capitalized it. Yeah, well, if you capitalize it, it legitimizes it for sure. Exactly. I bought it. So we're going to go back in time. We're going to all get in the way back machine, which is the stone edifice right here. Everyone filing. There's plenty of room, believe me, lots of room in the other dimension this leads to. So we're going to go back to the mid 16th century and pretty much anything before that to what I don't know what they called it back then. It wasn't called medicine or practicing medicine or being a doctor. In fact, I don't think they had the word doctor yet. Did they or did they? No, they were barbers and surgeons. Surgeons stuck. Barbers did not for obvious reasons. Well, barbers stuck. Yeah, there's still barbers around, but just not in the way that you think of it. If your barber is cutting you open, he's not doing his job very well. And apothecaries and witches and that's who was practicing early medicine. And things were going pretty well for a while. They figured out that the human body ran on the four humors, and they were wrong because the four humors are blood, as we all know. Well, that's right. That was pretty sharp of them back then. Not too bad. Slim it is the thing, we can all agree. And then the two biles, a yellow bile and black bile, and that was it. That was the human body. You had the four humors, and that's how all this stuff worked out. And they figured out that the kidneys made pee. Right? And they were like it was actually this guy named Galen. He was working in the first century Ce. And he figured all this out and said, job well done. This is human anatomy. And for 1400 years, they said, we don't need to go back and double check his work. Let's just take his word for it and see how the human body works. And then finally one day, somebody was like, I'm not sure this is correct. Sure, maybe the kidneys make pee and maybe blood is kind of important, but black bile? I don't even know what that is. I think we need to cut open more people. And they looked around and they said, who are the people who should be doing this? Who should we entrust cutting open dead bodies to? They said, Barbara surges. You guys amputate people without any sort of anesthesia. We should probably let you do it. Yeah. Because if you want to know how this works, you need to open it up and see what's in there. Kind of like just lifting the bonnet or the boot bonnet. Well, what the hell is the boot? I think the boot the trunk. Yeah, we got that wrong in our big tour announcement rumor. That's not surprising. Yeah. I've said a few other words on the podcast. That means something different here. All apologies. Oh, yeah, trust me, I get the emails. I understand these words mean something different now. No offense. So they realize you needed to peek under the hood, as we would say in the States, and see what's going on. Let's just stick to that. Yeah. What we know. So eventually they were doing this a little bit and they realized they needed more bodies if they were really going to advance medicine and learn things. And so in 1540, there was a king you might have heard of, henry VIII famous dude, D-I-I. And he said, here's what I'll do. I'm going to grant the monopoly on cadavers on bodies to the barbers and surgeons. And they said, oh, my gosh, it's great. Thank you so much. How many do we get a year? Four. Four. Thank you. Four bodies a year. I don't know if that's going to do it, but thanks. It was a pretty good start, but it clearly wasn't nearly enough. And these early dissections amounted to not much more than just kind of opening the body up and looking to see what was in there and lifting organs out and showing people because they'd all learn galing. Yeah, pretty much. So, like, the dissections amounted to this? Yes. What was that? The appendix. Appendix, okay. You call it, buddy. And then they get to the intestines and like, this is like magic. It just keeps coming. So it was a little bit just like early surgical theater. They would display these organs and no one really knew how things work back then. It was pretty clear that you needed more bodies if we were going to get anywhere. Everyone wanted to live longer. And they knew, a few people knew that this was kind of the way to do it. Right. So they were like, who do we hate? Who do we hate? Murderers. Everybody hates murderers. And King George III. Another king. King George. I I he said, I'm going to pass this thing called the Murder Act. And the Murder Act basically said, if you were convicted of murder, not only were you going to be hung, but we're going to be hanged. Is it? Yeah. Two different meanings. Yeah. I guess if you get to be hung, we're going to dissect you after your day. Because I'm Georgia third. Is that a fact? No. Okay. I just made that up. As I do from time to time again. I said Germany is landlocked. Donald Trump has small hands, apparently. So apparently it's been recently proven. Somebody figured out to go to Madame Tusod's West Museum and measure the hands because apparently the whole thing is anatomy. Oh, really? Anatomically accurate. Yeah. Oh, wow. Small hands. Yeah. I just realized how we got on that. So you would be hanged if you were convicted of murder, and then after that, they would dissect you as an additional, like, we hate you that much. That's how despicable we find you. So it really kind of opened the floodgates of the bodies a little more. Sure. We're talking like 30, 40 more bodies. And we found out actually, in researching this, that you could during certain periods of time, you could say, I don't want to be executed. Send me to America instead. When you were convicted of murder. And we're like, wait, I thought Australia was a penal colony. No, apparently both were. Did you guys know that? No. Okay, good, because I was going to say they don't teach us that in America. There's all sorts of, like, rebellion, and we're not paying taxes, and you're crazy. We don't like you, you're not hung king and all that stuff. That's how they teach us. We're in a church. Sent me to the coast of California for my punishment. Exactly. You got any sun tan lotion? So eventually things were progressing a little bit medically, and they actually started finding medical schools. The first medical schools rose out of the hospitals. They dropped the barbers. The surgeon said, I think the word surgeon is going to be the one that people are going to think is legit. So, Barbara, you just go cut your hair and maybe do a little bleeding on the side for a little while, and we're going to found these medical schools, and these students were expected to show up with bodies. I don't know how they do it in university over here. When you start school, if you have to buy your books in the United States, you have to buy your books each semester. But back then, it was by OB in medical school, and you had to show up with your own body. And there was a weird loophole at the time in English law, where it was not actually illegal to steal a body. Grave robbing had been going on for a long, long time. But it wasn't for the bodies, it was for jewels or any kind of valuables that the humans were buried with, which happened all the time, because people would like the treasures of the family would be buried with the body. A lot of times other people wanted those treasures. Exactly. So they would steal those. But now, for the first time, bodies were valuable. But there was this loophole. As long as you returned the valuables, you could actually steal the body. And technically, it wasn't illegal because the body couldn't own itself, it wasn't property. Exactly. So therefore it couldn't be stolen. So if you were caught with just the body yes, and it was totally naked and his clothes were back in the grave, they'd kind of be like, hey, no law broken. Students didn't quite dig this, though. They were like, you know, one day this is going to be a respectable profession to be a surgeon. And I know there's a loophole, but something about this doesn't feel quite right. It makes me faint. Faint, fainty. The problem was that all these students are more and more students being attracted to the profession of surgery and of anatomy and studying this kind of stuff. So the more students that came, the more bodies were needed, because back then, there was no embalming, there was no refrigeration. And so after a very short period of time, a body would get gamey, right? So you come in one day with your saw and you go to saw it and like always, and your arm would just keep going and you'd say, I need another body. And there were no more bodies. No, they say, Go dig it up. And then you would say, I'm fainty. And they say, Fine. Who else can we get to do this? Criminals. Criminals would love to fulfill this. We have a black market that's establishing itself before our very eyes. Why not get criminals to steal the bodies and we'll give them money for it? And that is how this whole thing erupted in the late 18th century and early 19th century. This weird convergence of scientific inquiry social mores against the idea of dissection. And a lot of organized criminals that were like, sure, we'll take up your dead bodies and sell them to you for money. And it all happened right here in London. Congratulations. So one of the first gangs that emerged was called the London Borough Gang. Borough Gang. We've been instructed how to say this. Yeah, we were saying Borough like dumb Americans. And our lighting guy last night said, Ellis, come over here. And he said it was a great accent, but I'm not going to try and pull Chuck's beard. He has a great beard, too. So we rub beards together and it spelled barra. It did. So the LondonBorough gang was operating right here, and there was a man who started this gang named Ben Crouch. Any crouches in the audience. That's probably good. No, no Crouches. No one's going to admit it, at least. And he worked at Guy's hospital. And I was right next to that today, by the way. Did I dig around anywhere? No, I didn't realize that. Emily and I were just walking along and I looked up and there was Guys Hospital. That's neat. And I say, I know what used to happen here many years ago. Great things. Sure. But this one dude, he was kind of a rat. He worked at a guy's hospital and he had met somebody in the Peninsular Wars fighting Napoleon, and what they were really good at on the battlefield was ravaging bodies and, like, pulling out gold teeth and fillings and kind of just robbing these bodies. And he said, I think I can take this back home, fellas, and we can get a gang together and we can really make good use of all this stuff. So he got his buddies and they kind of found their go to graveyards and he was, for a grave robber, a pretty underhanded dude, which is super underhanded. Yeah, believe it or not. But he was good at it. He would find out what graves were like other grave robbers were robbing, and he would go to them and he would desecrate the graves and basically draw a lot of attention to those graveyards so they wouldn't be able to operate in those graves. Right. So he was trying to just kind of keep the cottage industry in house, right? Exactly, yeah. And he was really good at it. He actually came to be known as the Corpse King, and he would even make his wife call him that. He'd be like, don't you mean, do you want shepherd's pie for dinner tonight, Corpse King? And she'd be like, yes, that's what I meant. And he'd say, yes. So Ben Crouch was so good at what he did that was good. He was so good at what he did that he actually was able to retire a wealthy man from grave robbing. But that was not the end of the Borough Gang. He passed the reins onto one Patrick Murphy. Any Murphy. Oh, you should have heard it in Dublin. There's one Murphy here. Come on. He's like, no, they're all over Dublin. So Murphy was even a bigger creep. He would do things like he had a bunch of underhanded things he would do. He would, let's say, sell a body to a hospital and then go back in and break in and steal that body from that hospital that night and then sell it to another hospital the next day before I had a chance to be dissected underhanded. He's very underhanded. He also would keep surgeons in line, right? Like, he found out that some surgeon had bought, like, a bunch of bodies for some students, and he and his gang broke into the anatomy school that night and mutilated the body so they would be unusable, which is not cool. And then there was this one anatomist who I've never gotten to the bottom of why they didn't like this guy, but they once delivered a body to the guy that he had ordered, and it was delivered naked in a sack, as they customarily were, because he couldn't steal anything from the grave. And the guy put the body on the slab and the anatomist came over and was about to cut into him and the body sat bolt upright. It turned out it was just a man that the gang had knocked unconscious and delivered and sold to this guy. And apparently he ran out of the house naked, scared to death down the street. I'm not dead yet. You will be soon. I'm feeling much better. That's too many python references. I'm going to go for three more. That was meaning of life, right? The big guy at the restaurant and then he eats the mitten blows up and his rib cage is left. Classic. Well, that's three. Let's try and work in five. Okay, five. Could someone be in charge officially of count money python references? This was happening all over the UK, by the way, and it was also happening right in our own United States. And in fact, it was happening in our very home state of Georgia, in Augusta, at the Medical College of Georgia, which is still there today. And there was a man, well, working there. He was a slave, and he was owned by the Medical College of Georgia. It's all very sad. He was a slave owned by the medical school, and it was illegal to teach a slave to read at the time, which is even more sad. But they taught Grandison Harris to read because they wanted him to keep up with the obituaries because he was really good at digging up graves and bringing in cadavers and keeping them in good supply. This guy had a knack for it, as a matter of fact. Yes. And this kind of points out a thread that you'll see running through this whole history, that as long as bodies were being stolen from minority graveyards and marginalized people or mentally ill like mental hospitals, the white establishment didn't much care. So only when things started happening in the white communities did people really start to get upset. You'll see that a little later. Yeah, but this is definitely what was going on with Grandison Harris, right? So everybody, if you'll reach under your pew, you'll find a little pad of paper and a pen, because this is the part where we teach you how to rob a grave. There is no pad of papers, by the way. You get a pad. You get a pad. Was that oprah? It was a half hearted Oprah, but it's oprah. Well, you don't want to go full oprah. No, it gets loud. That's embarrassing. Unless you're Oprah. So here's how you do it. Typically, this happens at night, and you would think, of course, but there was a member of the borough gang named Tom Light who wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he was actually arrested in broad daylight, walking through London with a cart full of dead bodies. And the cops came up and said, you know, this is highly illegal. Tom Lights like, boy, can't you see they're naked? Yes. I didn't steal any jewels. So you go at night, you use a wooden shovel, because a metal shovel against rock will make noise. Your whole job there is to be really quiet. So you can get away with this. You got your wooden shovel, you're there at night. And I didn't know before we researched this, that I just figured you just dug up the whole grave and raised the casket and pulled out the body. That's a lot of work. No, you want to work smarter, not harder. Exactly. So you would just dig that 1st third. You would find the headstone, which ideally is where the head of the body is, unless your family has a weird sense of humor. And you would dig down that 1st, 3rd only. And you would dig down dig down until you reach the casket, and you would expose the casket and you would pry that up and snap the lid off of that 1st 3rd because all the dirt is on the lower two thirds. And then there's this. I don't think the eyes are open. If they were alive when they were buried. They were. I've seen movies. You do like that. And then the eyes closed unless you bury them while they're alive. So the body's there. Why are the arms like this? I don't know. I'm not sure how they do it. What did you do? That's not bad. They were happy or something. Either way, they would run a rope under the body, under the arms, and they would just pull the body out to the upper third and then you've got your body. I imagine they stole valuables. I mean, come on. I know there's a loophole, but if there are valuables, they probably took them. But the thing was, if they were caught stealing the valuables, they would be hanged if they were caught with the body. No, they wouldn't be. That's right. So they would strip the body down, put it in a sack, put everything back in the grave, and rebury it as best they could so no one would ever know they were there. That's ideally how it would go down. And our buddy Grandison Harris actually was supposedly so good at this that he would memorize the floral arrangements before he desecrated the grave. So that when he re buried it, he could remember exactly what it looked like when he put it all back together. Because if you were a decent resurrectionist, which is what they call these guys, and then I say decent, that's probably not the best word. If you were good at what you did as a resurrectionist, the whole point was that no one would ever know that you'd broken into this grave. Yeah. And we're seeing guys a lot. We try to keep things in our show, like, say, men and women. But let's be honest, women were always way more decent. They wouldn't do something like this even back then, like they're doing it now. I just realized when I said that how that sounded. Most gray barbers these days are women, ever since the 70s. Come a long way, baby. Was that ad? Never mind. Here's what also happened. People were stealing bodies out of graves. That was a lot of work. So some enterprise dude said, here's what we'll do. Let's just forget the graveyards, and let's just find out. When people have died, they kind of live out in the sticks in rural areas, and we'll just go pretend to be a family member, and they're really poor, and they won't know. And we'll say, we'll take care of the body for you. And they would just take the body right away from the family, and then that's it. They would have the body. No musk, no fuss. Right? And somebody would be like, who is that? They took the body. I don't care. They took the body. I don't have to bury the body. So do you care? No, I don't care. Well, I don't care either, then. Shut up. That's how those conversations yeah, we found actual text. You could also go into the hospitals, the big hospitals. Like, guys in London City Hospital had their own graveyard, so indigent patients who died there would just be buried. They're free of charge. And I'm sure the grave robbers were like, what are you doing? Because they would break into these graveyards that were very largely unpatrolled, and they would dig up the body and then go sell the body to a different hospital. So the body would be a patient one day, die, be buried, be dug up, and then be sold into another hospital within 24 hours. Sometimes, yeah. But what that does do is underscores how they revered the body and they respected the dead body, because you would think the hospital would just think, no one is claiming his body. Got a cadaver on my hands. We can use this for medical research. But no, they would still bury the body, which kind of was the tone of what was going on. Sure. Yeah. So I know Murphy's contemporary, or predecessor, at least retired wealthy Mr. Crouch. Murphy himself at one point made \u00a3144 in one day, which is about $10,000 in today's dollars. By stealing twelve corpses in one I guess, overnight period, which was amazing. And the London cops figured they had 200 grave robbers working in London alone, and ten of those were full time grave robbers. They were able to quit their other job, which was probably a big day in the household. Honey, I have really big news. Yeah. You're going to be so proud. I can stop robbing orphans. I can just do grave robbing full time. Stand up, guys. Hey, everyone. 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Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. This was going on way back then, obviously. But evidence of this we have found over the years, kind of recently at the Medical College of Georgia. Well, here's the thing. If you go to renovate the basement of your really old hospital, just get ready for what you're going to find down there. It's not just a matter of tearing up the tile floors and ripping down the drywall. You start digging around in the basement of an old hospital, you're going to find some horrors going on. And they did this in 1989 at the Medical College of Georgia and found 100 bones just scattered in the basement of who knows who. So, like, at some point, the idea that surgery and anatomy was based on stolen bodies was lost to humanity, right? So when this kind of thing comes out these days, everyone's like, oh, they're serial killers. Serial killers. And then somebody who's actually studied history comes forward and says, no, actually, I got some weird news about surgery and anatomy. They would steal the bodies, cut them open, and then just mass bury the bones. Everyone would say, oh, my God, it's crazy. And then they sit there for a second, and then they forget what they just heard and go back to normal. Then a few years later, somebody else would discover some bones somewhere else, like on Craven Street in the house where Ben Franklin rented. For 27 years, right? Yeah. Where is Craven Street? Is there no longer Craven Street? We just assume, because you all live in the city, you know where Craven Street is. It not around. Is there no more Craven Street? It's not crossed. Thank you. I thought they buried Craven Street. Well, they found 15 people, the bones of 15 people in this house on Craven Street that Ben Franklin rented. And of course, everyone said Ben Franklin was a serial killer and the same guy came forward. I told you this before. They used to dig up bodies, cut them open. Basis of anatomy. I'm going back here, look at the bones. Monty Python reference. No, someone that's four. I don't know what that one was, but that was number four. That's from Holy Grail. What part? When the rabbit in the cave member and he's talking about the rabbit with a huge pointy teeth, he goes, look at the bones. That one. All right. I don't know if that's a legitimate quote, like it may have been said in the movie, but it's a quote for me, like we say, neat. That's a quote. Yeah, that's true. Look at the buttons. I thought that was a very funny line. Not tonight. Terrible. But when I saw the movie back then, I thought it was great when I saw that movie 19 times. So most recently right here in London in 2006 at London Hospital. This might have been on the news. They discovered 262 burials at London Hospital and 500 individuals in the yard there that were missing their skull caps. And they had basically skeletons that still had wires connecting themselves. It seems wrong. If you're going to steal a body, articulate the skeleton and then go to the trouble of rebearing it, disarticulate the skeleton, at the very least, just clip the wires off. At least. That's a T shirt. It's not a good T shirt, but that's 262 burials and 500 bodies. You do the math. Not everyone has their own plot, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know what you're saying. Hey, wink. Quick nudge. Nudge. So five. That's five. Oh, wow. Yeah. Good night, everyone. Nice job. So this is going on the States, like we said, but as we implied earlier, as long as these were kind of marginalized people or they were slave graveyards, no one really got their hackles up. But something happened in New York City in 1788. Called the doctor's riot of New York of 1788. That's the full title. And there's two ways the story goes down. One is way funnier than the other one. The first is that these boys were playing at a hospital in New York and they saw just an arm, a white arm, hanging in the window, I guess, to cure or dry or whatever, and they were disturbed and went home. That's the stupid one. That's not very good. The other version is these boys were playing near a hospital in New York and they looked in a window and the anatomist took a white arm and waved itself with it. Hello. Hello, young man. Come here. He's my favorite anatomist for sure. And so that's the version we like to believe. And at any rate, they went home and they told their parents and one of their fathers had just recently lost his wife and he got worried that it might be her because he knew grave robbing was a thing. And he went and found that her grave had in fact been dug up and was a little angry to say that he's fun. In a circle of rage that managed to attract 5000 other people in New York at the time. And they started one hell of a riot. It went over for, I think, like two, three days. 20 people died. And they called it an anatomy riot. And the reason it was an anatomy riot is because they tried to find every dead body they could in the hospital, which they found a few. And they beat some doctors along the way. And then afterwards they went to the medical college and apparently word had gotten from the hospital to the medical college. I on the odds, Bay. And they got rid of all of them. Right? So when they went and stormed the medical college they didn't find anything. And they're like, well, our rage is not satiated. And like a little known footnote to this whole thing. When they got to the medical college, Alexander Hamilton was standing there perfect. They all said, Alexander Hamilton, what are you doing here? He said, Peace brothers, peace, sisters. Go back home. And they push the space out of the way and storm the building. Pretty much. But again, they didn't find anything. So they found out that all the doctors and all the students were hiding out at the jail. And they're like, no jail can hold us. We're 5000 strong. There's a guy circulating in the middle just filled with rage, keeping us going. We're eating stuff from time to time to keep our energy up. It was a bad scene. They were literally shouting, bring out your doctors on Mass in New York City in 1788. Bring out your doctor so we can kill them. This was the tone of the time and this was not an isolated incident. There were like dozens of anatomy riots all over the United States back then. It's really very disturbing. It was kind of a thing. And you guys did it too, but we really did it. You know what I mean? Yeah, we know how Texas style or something like that. All right. So because all this was going on, it became pretty clear that people should take action on their own. If you're going to bury a family member, maybe you should take some steps to ensure that they would be late to rest for eternity. Right? Caution. Yeah. It was a very inventive time it was a Georgian period, and I don't know why I said it like that. You have to the Georgian period, right. No. Drink and tea. I don't have any tea. Drink and gin. I don't have any gin. You lie. I just covered my tooth with a smile. That's a new thing. It'd be funny if you got your finger, like, stuck in there. It's happened. No, but my daughter had her finger stuck in there. No, I'm just so this is a very inventive time. So they thought, let's come up with some ways to ensure this doesn't happen. Let's start kind of basically by just staggering sticks and things as we pile the dirt on the casket, because, again, they're using wooden shovels. Yeah. This just makes it harder to dig up the body, basically, which is pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Sure. Another one was the Mort stone, which was invented by a guy named Mort Stone. And it was just basically like putting a huge rock on a grave. And they're like, well, they'll never get into that grave. And they hadn't thought it through because all you have to do is dig around the stone and downward at an angle and you get to the grave. It's that not too bad. They actually still use more stones every now and then today. Just a few years ago in 2013, on Treadworth Road Cemetery and whoa. That's right. We needed music for that one. There were no music. Too weirdly. That was a weird ringtone. Dude. I still don't know how to pronounce this. You do too. Cluster. Cluster. Is that right? So we did our first show in Manchester, which apparently you're supposed to say mer because we said glow Chester. No, I said it. You're being kind. And like, this audience had been going like this all night. Suddenly we're pointing and laughing like they were townspeople in Springfield on The Simpsons and somebody had just pants us. It was like, that the biggest reaction anyone has ever gotten from a crowded Manchester we got, and it was at our expense. Pointing and laughing because we said, glad Chester, which is just so funny. And then we went to Scotland and they said, it's close off slim came up, but they didn't point and laugh when they did it. So Treadworth Road Cemetery and cluster one, miss Betty Brazil and Henry Brazil were buried together, and apparently the words had gotten around that they were buried with a lot of valuables, so someone tried to dig them up because the jewels down there, and I don't think they actually got finished at night. So the sun started to rise and they put a recycling bin over the hole and said, we're going to come back later tonight. And that worked for a little while, but I don't think they got the body right. No, they worked for like ten minutes until the sun came fully up and someone saw the recycling bin and said someone just tried to rob this grape in 2013. Yeah. Still going on. So the next thing they invented was called the mort house, invented by a guy named no, wrong. It was mort stone. Again, this was basically just a mausoleum that you could not break into. It was heavy stone, and it was a place where you put your body where it was temporarily entered until it could find its final resting place. Right. For like, three weeks. Yeah, because that was the rule of thumb, was it took about three weeks for a body to become unusable by an anatomist, and therefore it was out of danger of being stolen by a grave robber. And if you had a mort house, most people said, impenetrable, maybe. I'm going to guard it and be armed while I do. So a lot of people stood watch in cemeteries at this time, and as a result, cemeteries were places where there were a lot of shootouts between families standing watch and protecting graves. And grave robbers who are so brazen that they wouldn't run, they'd shoot back, be like, no, that's my body. No, it's my aunt. Well, we're taking your aunt. No, you're not. And it would just go like that for a while. Or they would get in shootouts with other family standing watch that they've mistaken for grave robbers, which happened a surprising amount of time. Yeah. Graveyards wasn't a place to be back then at night, if you wanted to remain safe and alive, and it's still not. So they have this other thing called a set gun. It's been around since about the 15th century. And a set gun is basically, or in this case, a grave gun. A gun that you don't need to man you set it up or woman yeah, that's true. You would set it up on top of the grave and it could spin in a circle, like on a tripod. And it had a triangulated trip wire. So if you're walking along with your wooden shovel and you go to steal a body, it would trip it, and then this gun would just start randomly firing in a circle. And I quote the article we're working from, a grave robber who tripped the wire would get an ass full of musket ball. Yeah, that's what it said. An arse fold. Excuse me. This is from the guy who capitalized the golden age of grave robbery. Another version of that was a shotgun inside the casket. So they would pry it open and look inside and literally get shotgunned in the face. If you were like a family who knew what they were doing, you put the shotgun in the courts, which would be that's not what you want to see when you get shot in the face of the shotgun. Yeah. That's your last thing. Believe me. We're from America. And then what does that mean? We got shotguns all over the place. Right. Another little enterprising idea was called the Grave Torpedo. The Grave Torpedo. And our same friend who said, no, it's pronounced Bora Bora, pointed this out to me after the show. He came up to me after the show and said, let me correct you guys on a few things, which I love. Again, he grabbed Chuck's beard, and I just thought it was funny. It's called a Grave Torpedo because what it is is a landmine. You would just go walking toward the grave and you would be exploded. It makes you feel, like, bad for a second, then you're like, oh, wait, this is against grace robbers. Exactly. But he pointed out that the early torpedoes were really just mines, and it just kind of got morphed eventually to be something we would shoot out of a submarine. So now it's a colloquialism torto. The grave. Torpedo coming soon. So one of the things that somebody was inevitably going to hit on was, yeah, it's all fine and good. Breaking into a grave, having to dig past sticks, maybe around a mort stone. I could possibly get a shotgun blast of the face from a shotgun being held by a corpse that I'm trying to steal. I'm getting shot at by the family members. It's an honest day's work, but is it worth it? So, like I said, it's inevitable that somebody was eventually going to be like, why don't I just murder somebody and sell their body? I don't have to deal with any of that other stuff. I just have to kill them. I'm robbing graves already. It's not a huge step to just go ahead and murder somebody. And there were two guys in particular who were really famous for this kind of thing, for hitting upon this idea, and they were named William Burke and William Hare, or the two Bills, as we call them. Someone just wooed in the back. Yeah, you're not supposed to woo those guys. You could maybe woo the Simon Peg film, but we didn't reference that. So Birkenhair, they were born in Ulster and they immigrated to Edinburgh to work on the Union Canal. And they met each other there and said, hey, are you a disgusting creep? I am, too. I could tell. I could tell in your eyes. Let's be pinky swear buddies. And they stabbed each other in the back as they pink before forever. And I think, which one rent the boarding house? Hare owned the boarding house. Burke was a cobbler. Sometimes that rent space there. That's right. So he's working in the boarding house. And he said, I've got this guy living there named Old Donald. He died, which happens to guys name Old Donald eventually. It was a weird nickname when he was four years old, but now he's so wrinkly, now he's living up to it. Old Donald died owing \u00a34 in back rent. He said, all right, here's what we'll do. I know a good body can fetch some money these days. Let's find some other creep who's a doctor that we can sell it to. And they found a surgeon named Doctor Robert Knox. I don't know. You've seen a picture of this guy, right? Have you guys ever heard of this guy? Dr. Robert Knock? He is, I think, the archetype for the mad scientist. The creepy mad scientist. There's one very famous, like, wood engraving of them. He's wearing, like, black leather gloves up to his elbow and those creepy sunglasses from the 19th century. It's like, Where are you wearing those for, Dock? What are you hiding? And he was hiding plenty, believe me, right? So if you look at a picture of this guy, you're like, that's where that came from. And this guy was a real living guy who gained a reputation for being a ghoul eventually. And he was the man who was like, boys, I'll give you \u00a37.10 shillings for old Donald. And keep them coming. I don't care where they come from. Just keep them coming. You see these sunglasses? I don't care where you get them, I just see more bodies. And Burke and Harry are like, that's great. We'll just go back to the boarding house and wait for somebody else to die. Sat around for about, like, five, six minutes, and they're like, Six days. Very sick. Maybe we should just hasten six A s death. Six A is the place where the person dying was living. And so they went in it's right next to Six B, right, but on the other side. No, it just starts there at Six A. So they went in and said, Six A, good to see you. Here's some gin. Just close your eyes while we do something real quick, okay? And one of them I don't know who did one. Well, all right, let's say we're Birken here, okay? I would be the one to lay on the body to make sure it doesn't move. So I would just climb. I would lumber up on the body and just do this. Show them the tooth. Yeah. That is not what you want to see. It's the last thing you see in wink, knowingly you're about to die. And then I would come in, and my job would be to close the nostril as a mouth, maybe say something reassuring like, you're asleep now. This is forever. Get a little drool going. And then that's how these people would die, which is a terrible way to go. And they became so prolific and well known for this eventually, that this process of murdering people and actually murdering people for their body to sell it for dissection became known as birking. Yeah, it's not what you want named after you, a method of murder. Now, if your last name becomes a verb for murder, for anything, unless it's really great. Well, yeah, sure. There's plenty of great things. Name one. Like, somebody coming up to you on the street and giving you, like, a bunch of free candy? Candying? Sure. Well, Clarking. That guy just clarked me. Oh, I love it when I get Clarked down the street. You realize you have to do that to make that happen. I'm going to give a new life mission to make your last name a bird. I need to get my hands on some candy. You do? What do you call candy here? Sweet. Sweet. That's why the joke didn't go over quite as well. Now I understand. The guy just clerked me. He gave me some sweets. Fries are chips, chips are crisps. Candy is sweets. Pudding is all dessert. Right. And pork pies, by the way, are the greatest thing you people have ever invented. You had some? Why? Pie, right? Oh, I can't get enough Somebody Clarked me with some pork pie, please. I'm dead serious. We'll wait while you go to the store. What's up with a pork pie hat? Is it shaped like a pork pie? No. I guess maybe like the pork pie, it was round, but then it folded in on the edges, and I think pork pie hat does that. So that might be it. Who cares? You can't eat a pork pie hat. That's what you think? No, I've tried. I'm going to go to Habitat tomorrow. I'm going to inspect this firsthand. All right. There's another Monty Python reference. Habitatcher? Really? Okay. I thought you would know where I was going with it. And they were I have no idea. I just got lost. Where are we? All right, so they're birthing people left and right. They killed about 15 people, at least in Edinburgh over a ten month period. And they got their girlfriends involved. They each found some nice ladies. They said. Are you creepy? Because we are. And Bert hooked up with Helen and Hair hooked up with Margaret, and they started including them in their little game of death. And they said, here's what we'll do. We'll just go out to a bar and we'll find some old woman who loves gin. Loves gin. And we'll just say, have another drink. Have another drink. And you know what? You know where we have lots of gin is at my boarding house. So just come back with me late at night and they would fly these old ladies and old men with booze, bring it back to the boarding house. I would lay on them and it was a cottage industry, and things were going along swimming for a while until they got a little greedy, as things go, when there's money involved and they started to hold money and murder. Yeah, money and murder. I've seen the movie Shallow Grave. That's a bad combination. I know how that goes. So you guys haven't seen the movie Shallow Grave or have you? No, I used to see it. It's good. There are British people in it. So they started burking people who are actually a little well known in town. And Edinburgh wasn't the biggest city at the time. So people kind of knew one another. And they got in real trouble when they finally picked off this dude named Jamie who everybody knew in the town. And it was bad news. Well, they didn't call him Jamie. They called them daft Jamie. And today you would call them savant with Autism Jamie. But they weren't quite as sensitive as we are today. So they call them deaf. Jamie. Yes. We've advanced since then. And Jamie was actually a very beloved figure in the town. He was just kind of hanging out in the downtown old town. And people would say, hey, Jamie, here's a bunch of matches that just threw onto the ground. Can you count them real quick? And he would calculate it and they would say, that's amazing. Here's a pork pie, buddy. And he'd say, thanks a lot. But he wasn't a beggar or anything like that. He just kind of hung out downtown. It was a fixture in town. His mother and his sister cared for him very well and he was just beloved. So we ended up on Dr. Knox table and he was very recognizable, so much so that a colleague of Dr. An ox is like, that's deaf Jamie. I didn't know he was sick. And Dr. Anna was like, first of all, it's the volunteers and Jamie. Secondly, no, it's not. And he started cutting the head off right then, seriously. And I threw it out and they're like, no, it is. Daft Jamie has a club foot. And Dr. Knox started cutting off the club foot. And then he said, okay, let's begin a great new year, and started cutting open Jeff Jamie. And that was not the only one. There were several other people that were recognized on the table. So Dr. Knox kind of fell under suspicion. But it wasn't that ultimately led to their undoing. They just grew more and more careless over time and more and more suspicious of one another. So much so that it was Burke and Helen, right? Yeah, burke and Helen said, Hair and Margaret, we think you're killing people without cutting us in. So I'm going to go open my own boarding house so we can kill in peace. Burke's House and Murder is what they called it. And then they were like, oh, it's terrible. And they crossed out Murder and wrote fun underneath. And they started attracting borders after that. So Burke's House of Murder and Fun is going on in tea and biscuits and they're drawing in people and they're killing people on their own as a duo. And they're not very good at keeping things quiet. They're good at the killing part, the covering up afterward part. At one point they had a body in the boarding house that they just covered up with straw and hay. And one of the other boarders was just kind of cruising through the house and they said, I've noticed that the big pile of hay has an arm coming out of it. It's a little weird and I'm going to go call the cops. And they said, no, don't do that. Here's what we'll do and here's what we're doing. Let's give you a little dough. We're selling these bodies. It's for medicine and we'll cut you in on this deal as long as you promise to not go to the police. And the lady backed slowly out of the room and said, sure, that sounds great. Just write a check and leave it under my door and I'll be back soon. I have to go mail something. Because shamps.com wasn't invented yet. Right. So she went right to the cops. And the Lord Advocates wait, we get $15 to it? I wish. So the Lord Advocate in charge of Harris case said, you know what? I'm going to give you immunity. Here's a big offer, if you will turn King's witness against your pal. Burke and Hare quickly accepted. And I don't think the words were out of his mouth. He said, sure, I'm on board. I will testify against him. And that's what he did. And to this day, of the four, including girlfriends, only one was actually tried and hanged. Hanged? Just Burke. And he was a very heated figure, as you can imagine. I think 200 people showed up for his hanging. No, just hanging. And when he was hanged afterward, they gave his body to the University of Edinburgh for dissection. Yeah, cruel irony. And 40,000 people turned out to see his dissected body, actually. Yeah. And they just listed the organs out. Everyone. So, Harry, after a few years, he kind of tried to disappear, as you do when you're a creepy ghoul. And he went to work at a lime quarry and the dudes that he worked with found out who he was and kind of a mob justice took over and they shoved him into the lime. Corey, he was blinded for the rest of his life. We don't know if he was blinded from the lime or they threw him into the court and he landed on his eyes on sharp rocks. But either way, he was blinded by the he blinded by the line. You don't know. He actually eventually moved to the streets of London, which is what you do when you're blinded for life, when you're trying to reinvent yourself. And Doctor Knox as well, even he was ruined in Scotland and he moved to the streets of London to try and pick up his medical profession, which he did with pretty poor results. But he did write a very well received book on fishing. It's not a joke. I know that's true. It's hilarious, but it's not a joke. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office, then? You could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. People are being killed. People are digging up bodies. There's anatomy murder years before birkenhair. I think like a decade before, there was a guy named Thomas Wakefield, who was a surgeon and the publisher of The Lancet. The great medical journal that we use is still around today for coming for us. So he was the publisher of The Lancet, and he said, this anatomy murder is going on. This is like, in 1820. And he said, everyone should be afraid because there are dudes out there that will kill you just to sell your body, and so be very afraid. And there are a lot of surgeons too, who are fairly liberal minded, who are saying, we need better laws than what we have now. We need more bodies because people are robbing graves. People are murdering for these bodies. There's this huge demand that's being fulfilled in terribly illicit ways. We have to get better laws. But the problem is the surgeons, as prominent as they were, we're in this weird position where they look like ghouls, like, can we have some more bodies, please? Deliver them fresh to our door. So anytime they were challenged, they would back off very quickly because they all had stolen bodies back in their labs. Right. So the status quo remained the same until Birkenhair came out. And you guys actually should be very proud. You had your own group of Burkers here in London. They were known as the London Burker trio. They killed a bunch of people, what came to be called anatomy murder or Birking. And the one that undid them was they killed a 14 year old boy who recently emigrated from Italy. And they delivered them to, I think, guys hospital. And the porter at Guy's hospital said, it's pretty weird. We don't usually get warm dead bodies delivered to us. It seems a little sloppy. Maybe I should follow up. So he took the boy to one of the anatomists and said, what do you think about this? The anatomist said, well, I think this boy's neck was broken about 45 minutes ago. It's probably. Murder. So luckily, the porter knew who had delivered the body and the cops found the guys they were hanging themselves. And between the Burker trio and Birkenhair before them, the public's eyes were finally totally open to this. There was no avoiding this any longer. People were being murdered to supply bodies for anatomists and they didn't know who to blame. Like, there were some anatomists who were convicted of dissecting cadavers, but for the most part, people, I think, got that maybe the law is a little weird right now. Maybe we have this weird prohibition that we should rethink. Parliament sort this out. And parliament did, actually. Exactly. Who do you turn to? So the house of common get involved, they get things done and they hold hearings. And they said, here's what we'll do. Let's get some of these resurrectionists and trot them up. Let's give them immunity and say, if you testify, get away scot free. And they're like, oh, you mean immunity. What did I say? No, you said immunity. Okay. And they trotted them out and they told the sordid tales of digging up bodies, and it was very salacious in the news, and everybody was like, yeah, the public was very interested. Tell us more. And then they got surgeons and they said, well, let's hear from you. And they talked about the need for cadavers. And it was kind of a big deal because everyone wants to live longer, and in order to do that, we need to cut people open still. So it's like a double edged sword. It totally was. So finally, parliament said, all right, here's what we'll do. We're going to take action. Just picture me in a powdered wig and it'll all make sense. Which is hilarious, by the way. Every couple of months, chuck will just walk into the studio wearing a powdered wig. I'm like, it's. Powder wig day. So parliament says, here's what we're going to do. We're going to provide some legitimate bodies by passing the anatomy act of 1832. It's a very big deal. Yeah, because right out of the gate, on paper at least, it got rid of the black market on cadavers because it said, anyone who has legal possession of a dead body and the body is dead. The body never said while they were living that they didn't want to be dissected. And no spouse or family member is saying, you can't cut open that dead body. You could take that body down to your local anatomist and say, here you go, just roll them up the steps, walk away, and they'll cut them open for you. Right? And this was really radical. It really flew in the face of the sentiment at the time because, again, remember, the murder act of 1751 said, not only are we going to hang you for being a murderer, we're going to dissect you afterwards. That's how disgusting we think you are. And that really took kind of an unspoken social stigma and codified it. And this went a long way to undoing the damage that the murderer had done. As far as the public view of dissection, the problem is, if you are wealthy or middle class at the time, you weren't exactly running out and saying, like, yes, dissect me, dissect me. The whole problem with the idea of being dissected is that at the time you thought that when Judgment Day came and you were in your grave and God stood you up and you're just standing there like, what do you think? Was it so bad? Right. That's not how it works. God would look you up and down and be like, you look all right, you can come in. But if you saw that you're missing your eyes, maybe your guts, or you were just an articulated skeleton, you look terrible laid back down. And that was the sentiment behind not being dissected at the time. So the Anatomy Act kind of governmentalized, this idea that no dissection is actually, okay, forget your religious beliefs, just listen to US Parliament, and it actually kind of works. But at the same time, what it really did and what it was criticized for, was that it put the burden of supplying cadavers to science onto the poor, which is kind of already the process, but in this sense, it really kind of codified the whole thing. Yeah. But like you said, it did make a difference. I think between 1832 and 1932, more than 57,000 cadavers were legitimately donated to medical science in the United Kingdom alone. So it really made a big impact. And science was advancing and medicine was advancing. So it wasn't to the close of the 19th century that dissection really came to be accepted by the public. And people started to say, you know what? This is actually a good thing. Donating organs, donating bodies is something that we should kind of try and embrace a little bit more. Right. And to this day, sadly, it still kind of goes on in a weird way. Right? It does. So, like, if you go into an anatomy lab or a medical school in the United States and you come across an articulated skeleton, those skeletons are mostly made up of individual bones that were stolen from rob graves in India, which means the US outsourced grave robbing. Yeah. And it's currently outsourcing gray robbing. So to finish up the show tonight, and true stuff, you should know, fashion are going to do a top five robbed graves that only has four. I don't know why we do that. One of them doesn't even count. Well, that's true, but we're going to start with a dude named Charlie Chaplin, very famous actor. Born here in London. Allegedly. That's right. Do you guys know that? I think they did. That's good. Born in London, died on Christmas Day. Very sad. It is, because he loved Christmas. He did. He died 1977 and just a few months later, in March of 1978, charlie Chaplin's grave was robbed, stole his body, called his wife, Lady Una Chaplin, and said, I want \u00a3400,000 for Charlie's body. And she said, no. Charlie would have thought this rather ridiculous, was her quote. And they went, oh, they went, never thought of that. No, don't hang up, hang up. I'm thinking this. You have Charlie Chaplin's body now? Let me call you back. Yeah, pretty much. So there were multiple sting operations that the cops would try to set up to try and catch these dudes. Never worked out. They never showed up. They kind of chickened out. And eventually they realized that there was one phone call that they were supposed to make to the police. So they tapped the phone of Lady Una Chaplin and staked out 200 phone booths in the area. And they actually caught the guys red handed, a couple of auto mechanics. One of them had the best name I may have ever heard. Yeah, there were two guys. Roman Wardas and Gancho. Ganev? I want a horse named Gancho. Ganev? One day somebody clarked me a horse name. Ganto Ganesh. Clark, you a horse. Oh, man, I love that term. Now I do, too. I'm making it happen, baby. Why do you want a horse? I love horses, but a horse name Cancho Ganesh. All right. It just fits. Likened the horse. I love it. What's your horse's name? Kanto Ganev horse. Yeah. He was Clark to me, in fact. So eventually they did catch these guys and they led him to Chaplin's remains, which were about 10 miles from the original graveyard. And then they reburied Charlie Chaplin. And you'll see a thread here. When you re bury a body after it's been stolen, you tend to cover it with like seven or 8ft of cement on top. Pretty sensible. Yeah. So the next one, I personally don't think this one counts, but we've included it anyway. Abraham Lincoln. Have you guys ever heard of a president named Abraham Lincoln? From where we live? Again, he was a president from where we live. Anyway, Abe Lincoln died, and something like, I think, eleven years later, some robbers attempted to break into his grave and the robbers had a rat in their midst, and the rat had told the cops that this was going to happen. So the cops staked out the graveyard waiting for the robbers, and apparently the cops were the Keystone Cops because one of their guns went off and alerted the robbers that they were there. And the robbers turned and ran, and the Keystone Cops ran into each other and fell down. It was weird, but it happened. And they didn't actually steal Lincoln's body, which is why I'm like he shouldn't be on this list. Yeah, what's sad is I actually made this list. I didn't think it through clearly. Well, they got away for a little while, and after the robbery, his remains were reburied in the same mausoleum, but in the basement of the mausoleum. Do you know how rich you have to be for your mausoleum to have its own basement? It's like six rooms. Do you guys have basements here? Okay, all right. Well, fine. You can imagine. Pretty rich. Wait, what do you call a basement here? A barsman. A basement. A bars. Do you call it a basement? Actually, in New England? That's what they call it, too. That's where we live. Well, it's north of where we live, but in America. South of New England. What are you talking about? I don't know anymore. So they re buried him in the basement and then eventually in one, his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, said, you know what? Let's take him up from down there and let's rebury him proper and put the steel cage over him and bolt that to the floor. And he's safe. No. And they poured some men over. Oh, yeah. Which is what you do, as customary. So what do you want to hear? I wasn't quite sure. So Gladys Hammond a lady, and this was recently you might have heard of this one. This is in 2004. She was dug up and held for ransom, but not for money, but to get the family to stop experimenting on guinea pigs. They were raising guinea pigs and selling them to medical science. And these animal rights activists stole her body and basically held her for ransom for this family to stop the family bus. And it worked? Well, it worked, sort of. No, well, it did work. The family the group of activists were called to Save the New Church guinea pigs that you may have heard of. And have you guys heard of them? No, you haven't? They just thought it was funny. It's a cute name. But they were dead serious. So they stole the body, held it for anthem, and the family said, okay, fine, we'll get out of the business. We're not going to breed guinea pigs for medical research anymore. We'll breed them to be dressed up like cowboys for children's parties. Surely you have no problem with that. The original purpose for guinea pigs. So they actually did get out of the business. And the people who robbed the grave and stole the woman's body, the family member's body, didn't give it back. They just never got back in touch. They were like, we moved on to Wales now. We don't care about guinea pigs anymore. So it took 18 months before they finally called these people and said, Where's the body? And they're like, oh, she's in some heathland. That's it. What's a heathland country? No, no, heathland. Is it a moor? Yes, it's a moor. What's a more I think there's quicksand on the moors, isn't there? Boggy area? No, a field. Is it a field? Why did we feel the need to rename everything? Those are great work. We renamed it. These guys were here first. No, that's what I'm saying? Those are wonderful words. Heathland is beautiful. We don't know what it is, but it sounds great. Stupid Americans. We're going to finish up the list with Josephine. And by the way, we have a microphone right there. After this, we're going to have about ten or 15 minutes left to do a little Q and A. If anyone has any questions, you can do so. If you don't, you can leave. If you have to pee, you can leave. It won't hurt our feelings. We understand. We both have to pee right now, too. Speak for yourself. I have to pee. Totally sorry. And we're going to finish up with Joseph Haydn. Franz Joseph Hayden. Very famous Austrian classical composer. And he died. This is during the Phrenology movement. We've talked a little bit about phrenology on the show. This is when you thought that you could look at a human skull and really tell a lot about the person and about where the smarts were and where the genius was, perhaps. So it was a big deal to get your hands on the skull of someone like hiding. So they went to the grave digger and they said, we'll give you some money if you cut off his head and give it to us. And the grave Digger said, you have me at money. Pretty much. So he did. So and he gave them the head, and they macerated the skull, which means you make the rest of the head disappear through magic until you're just left with a skull. What maceration? Okay. It's not magic, though. Okay. Pretty much. Just soak it in a liquid. It's really gross. I got you. Eventually, everything goes away but the skull, which is what you want. And the dudes, Joseph Rosenbaum and Johan Peter, looked at the skull and said, oh, my gosh, look at this. Look at the musical bump on that skull. And the other one was like, Wait, did you say musical bump? You made that up just now. Don't I was like, yeah, totally. But it's going to stick. I think it's probably just a musical pump. It's hiding. Of course he has a musical bump. So they have this skull, and they weren't too shy about keeping it quiet. One of them, even for a little while, kept it in his home. He would have dinner parties, and it was hiding skull, and he kept it in a glass case, like, musical notes and compositions and, like, an ink and ink and pill and pen, and it was prominently displayed. And then the cops eventually found out about this. Well, somebody went to go rebury Haydn. Yeah. Because he wanted to be moved to the family plot. Right. Yeah. He died during wartime, and it was kind of hastily buried. And a couple of decades later, they finally went to rebury him. And when they did, they were like, I didn't know heiden didn't have a head. The head, last time I saw him. So they go and someone says, you know what? I totally knew who has his skull, because they're not too shy about it. It's over at this guy's house over at Rosenbaum's. So they go over to Roasted Bombs house. This is really awful. His plan was to hide it in the mattress to get his wife to lay on the bed and tell the cops that she is menstruating. And the cops are like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they all just ran out of the house, pretty much. You keep your skull. That's basically how it went down. And again, we've come a long way since then. And the skull was eventually reunited. Well, they gave them a fake skull at the time, right here's a skull. They knew the jig was up, but they really wanted Hydro's skull. Yeah, so they gave him a fake. They reburied that with Haydn thinking it was Hydn's skull. And then years later, in 1054, in fact, not that long ago. Well, sort of a long time ago, but not in the grand scheme of things. They've eventually find Haydn's real skull and rebury it, but they didn't know what to do with the old skull. So to this day, well, not even not only that. I don't think it was that they didn't know what to do. I think they took his actual skull into his tomb, set it down, went to go shut the door and turned around and was like, oh, right, which one has the musical bump? And then they said, forget it. We'll just bury both of them. Pretty much. So to this day, Hayden skull is still buried. His grave still has two skulls buried in the same grave. If you went and dug it up today, it's very little known fact. So that is grave robbing. And that is the end of our show. Yes. Thank you. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer, school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. 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https://podcasts.howstuf…k-zoot-suits.mp3	A Podcast on Zoot Suits? Yes	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/a-podcast-on-zoot-suits-yes	Few riots can be attributed to passing fashions, but zoot suits are top among them. After originating among the Harlem Renaissance crowd, the zoot suit came to symbolize political defiance. Find out why it's still illegal to wear a zoot suit in L.A.	Few riots can be attributed to passing fashions, but zoot suits are top among them. After originating among the Harlem Renaissance crowd, the zoot suit came to symbolize political defiance. Find out why it's still illegal to wear a zoot suit in L.A.	Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:18:47 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=18, tm_min=18, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=284, tm_isdst=0)	32368093	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckle. Kurz Bryant. And since two of us are sitting together again and it's not lunchtime, it's not leg wrestling time. It's true. This means it's stuff you should know, right? Yeah. What's up, dude? How are you, Josh? I'm good. We just got something in today that I want to give a shout out of thanks for to our friend Martin Van Nostrin. Did that come in today? Okay. He kept emailing us, pestering me. It hasn't not come yet. Like I'm the Post Master General or something like that. Right. But anyway, he sent us each a T shirt and the new CD of his band, The Bangalores. In Vitro Meat is the name of the album, and it's pretty awesome. I haven't listened to it yet. I just got it. I can't wait. He sent us some songs off of it already. Oh, some previous cuts. Yeah, he was the first person to record Stuff You Should Know song, like, in 2008. You remember? Well, yeah. And I think he has a toxoplasmosis song on the new one, right? He does, yeah. We've inspired a lot. I think he released a whole album of Stuff You Should Know songs. Really? Yeah. And like, quick little punk songs, too. Like a minute and a half. So there's like 50 of them. But anyway, thanks a lot to Van Nostrin. We won't say his real name, but we know it. We do. Finally. We didn't for a long time, but anyway, if you feel like checking that out, it's The Bangalores, like, the city in India, and the album is In Vitro Meat. And we'll probably get in trouble for endorsing this. Probably. So, Chuck, you want to get to it? Yes. Have you ever heard of some dumb laws? Yeah, man. There are some dumb laws in this great land of ours. For example, if I may, I've prepared a short list. Awesome. In Alabama, bear wrestling matches are prohibited. It's illegal to sell peanuts in Lee County after sundown on Wednesday. That would be Lee County, Alabama. Did you give a reason for that one? No. There are some. This is from, I think, dumblaws.com, and they have just international laws, state laws, local laws, and then under some of them, they have, like, full text of the law or why this law exists. Got you. It's a pretty comprehensive site in Hawaii. Coins are not allowed to be placed in one's ears for spending only. Okay. All residents may be fined as a result of not owning a boat. You're going to Hawaii tomorrow, right? The next couple of days, I dare you to put a coin in your ear and walk around eating out of a coin and be like, I don't own a boat. I don't own a boat. Right. Jumps back in our fair state of Georgia, it's illegally used profanity in front of a dead body, which lies in a funeral home or in a coroner's office. That's respectful. That's a good law. Okay. In Acworth, which is close to Kenneth Hall, where I grew up, where you had to own a gun. I didn't know this. In Acworth, all citizens must own a rake. Really? Yeah. Not a blower, a rake. Okay. I think a blower. That's kind of like asking a lot of some of the lower income classes in Athens on Mondays, it's illegal for one to whistle very loudly after 11:00 p.m.. What? But on Mondays okay. And then California, of course, is going to have some zany laws. They have tons and tons of wacky dumb laws. Animals are banned from mating publicly within 1500ft of a tavern, school or place of worship. I agree. Women may not drive in a house coat. I agree with that, too. In Fresno, getting drunk in a playground is against the law. That is sounding I don't agree with that one. It's sensible. And then in Los Angeles, it's illegal to wear a zoosuit. Yeah. Still. Still. Still. Wow. So I bring that up and I knew Chuck would like that last one because I'm sure there's stories behind almost all of those zany laws, or at least there's some reasoning. People don't just make up crazy laws like bear wrestling. I'm sure it got out of hand once and now they're just like that's it, it's illegal. So Chuck and I actually know the reason why zoosuits are illegal in Los Angeles County, California, and we're going to tell you about it today. It's pretty neat. This little article started off as a bit of a lark. I don't know, but we thought, zoot suits, those are interesting and cool, but it's more than a suit, as it turns out. It really is. It was at least you should probably mention, like, what is a zoo suit, Chuck? Everybody's seen them before. Yes. Back in the 1930s, they were very much in fashion, especially in Latino communities and African American communities. Coast to coast, though. Yeah, it seems like Caesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Cab Callaway, big band leaders, the jazz scene in New York, all very much associated with zoot suits. Tomcat from Tom and Jerry. Yeah. He was going after a girl and she said she was a square and was corny. And he goes out and gets him a zoot suit and becomes a cool cat. Cool cat, yes. So, you'll know, a zoot suit, they were originally worn, made of wool and then later rayon. But you'll know, it because they're very distinct. They have very broad padded shoulders, very long waisted coats. Suit pants were worn really high, like up over the belly and were very tight at the top, then ballooned out like MC Hammer style. Right. And then tapered back down again at the ankle. Or were pegged. Oh, of course. Yeah, that's not you achieve that look. Right. And the jackets exaggerated contours and colors. A lot of times they would wear the big pocket watch chain that went down to their knee and the hat with the feather, and it was pointy shoes. Pointed shoes. Sure. If it sounds a lot like pimps, 70s pimps to you, not too far off, I guess. I think you could make an argument that was a predecessor of that. And in fact, you mentioned Malcolm X favorite zoot suits. I didn't realize this today, but in researching zoosuits, malcolm X used to be called Detroit Red, who was, in fact, a pimp. And he apparently got his education in Harlem and became Malcolm X. Did you not see the movie? No, I haven't. It was good. From what I remember from the awesome Spike Lee movie was that he was into the zoo scene earlier. And then once he became Malcolm X and not what was his original name? Chabaz. Yes, I believe so. Malcolm Shabaz. So once he became Malcolm X and got serious about the civil rights, he ditched the zoosuit and stuff. And a little more traditionally garbed. Right. Another way. So the zoosuit, you just nailed it on the head. You said the zoosuit scene. It was very much part of the scene, part of the Harlem Renaissance. It was part of the Patcho scene out in Los Angeles, which we'll talk about. Patcho. Patcho. Patuko pachuco. I like slang on top of slang. It was kind of the uniform of the certain kind of scene. Apparently the upscale black nightclubs of Harlem. Like, if you saw an African American man walking around wearing a zoosuit, you're like, that guy is a high roller, and he knows how to get into the good clubs. I thought you were going to bust out some cab callaway slang. Well, you mentioned cab calloway was one of the people who love zoot suits, and he wrote a dictionary of slang, a jive slang. Thank you. I could not be square if I tried. And one of the words that he put down was zoot, which he says means exaggerated. Okay. It turns out that there's a whole lot of mystery surrounding the origins of zoot suit. But if I may, in cab Callaway's, jive slang, describe what a zoosuit looks like. You did a great job in normal, square, corny terms, but if you want to talk like a hep cat from the jive jump zoosu era, you would describe it as a killer dealer coat with a drape shape, real pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic cell. Well, it's interesting that he said drape, because originally they were known as drape suits and even advertised as extreme drapes in newspapers. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. So zoo is hanging out there. It's kind of weird. Ralph Ellison wrote about it in An Invisible Man, his novel. The narrator encounters three young and extravagantly dressed blacks in their zoosuits, and he says that they were the stewards of something uncomfortable. So he's saying, like, it's the same as if you saw a bunch of rave kids wearing, like, the stupid pants yes. In the 90s or whatever, or hip hop kids today. It was the same thing, except this was much more upscale right. Than that. But it was pants today that people have trouble walking in, but they're still going to have that look. Right. Because that's what the cool kids do. Exactly. You could argue the original American version of countercultured dress. Right. And it grew out of Harlem and was later adopted by Mexican Americans or Latino Americans in Los Angeles. Yes. What's this one bit? That it could have originated in Gainesville, Georgia. How about that? Yeah. There's some origin stories. Right? Yeah. And there are none of them are the same. Right. They're all very different. No, but I do like that one you're talking about from Gainesville. What is it? Yeah. A man, a bus driver I'm sorry, a bus worker named Clyde Duncan from New York came back to New York with one and said he bought it in Gainesville, Georgia. And allegedly, he had been inspired by Gone with the Wind and wanted to look like Rhett Butler. Right. And so got a tailor in Gainesville to make him the thing. I'd like to go with that story. Well, The New York Times put that story forth, and they said it basically unequivocally. They did in 1943. And that was the story for many years until historians actually started to put real effort and thought into the zoo suits, and they found that it's possibly true, but most likely it came out of either guys like Cab Calloway wearing them sure. Or guys like Cab Calloway copying people in the jazz scene right. And then basically going forth like that. And ultimately, it seems that it did come out of this era, whether it was this Clyde Duncan fella right. Who had the idea originally or whatever. You can basically say the Harlem Renaissance came out of that got you. And I knew that I did not know of its association within the Latino and largely Mexican community. No. But that's where it really started to it switched when it hit the Latino American community. Before, it was just like, I'm wealthy, I can get into good clubs. I'm part of this club scene in Harlem. When it hit Los Angeles and was taken up by the Pachos Pachucos right. Square. It changed. It transformed. It turned into something political and became ultimately a sign of defiance. Yeah. In World War II, everyone knows that there was rationing going on, everything from food to metals and ultimately wool and cloth. So wearing a zoot suit which required an abundance of cloth was deemed not patriotic because you're basically flaunting. Hey, I don't care about the war effort. I'm going to wear my zoot suit. That's more important to me. Right, exactly. So in the War Production Board basically said, we need to cut back all fabric use in the States by 26%. And to help you, here is the new American suit. It's streamlined. It uses less fabric. As long as you're making stuff according to these sketches, you're patriotic, you're American, you're within the law. Right. Uncle Sam wants square, tight clothes. Pretty much. And if you think about it, if you look at the suits in the after, the classic American suit is narrow, narrow cut. The cuffs are high, skinny ties. Yeah. So I wonder if that came out. I'm sure it did. I bet it did. But you can take what they were saying a different way, and that Uncle Sam is telling you to dress like this, and everybody dressed like that. So zoosuits immediately became a symbol of defiance. Anybody who wore them was saying, up yours, Uncle Sam. And it was ultimately illegal to manufacture or advertise a zoosuit or anything that fell outside of those American suits. So, incredibly, bootleg and underground tailors grew up to make and sell zoosuits. That's true. Yeah. And at the same time, especially in Los Angeles, it had an association with gang activity, criminal activity, and thuggery, largely because of newspapers that would call them suit suitors committing crimes. They would label people in a particular clothing as being criminals, essentially. Yeah. Well, racism is definitely nothing new in this country, and it was hot and heavy in the late 30s, early 40s in Los Angeles. It was mainly targeted, I think, toward Latino Americans. But it's not like African Americans didn't get the brunt of it as well. Sure. But basically, it was white people in California were like, hey, there's a lot of you these days, so you're making us a little nervous, and you wearing the zoosuit is easy to target. It just so happened that the group that they were targeting was actually kind of homogenous people who wore zoot suits, kind of wore them in defiance, but also identified themselves with them. Right, the patches. Yeah. It was a statement of independence, not necessarily thumbing your nose at the United States, but just, hey, I'm independent. I'm Latino. I'm living in Los Angeles, and this is our look. I'm seeing pachos right here. Octavio PA said pochos. Pachos. Yeah. Okay, so the Pochos, they weren't an import from Mexico. They were a real American hybrid. They were second generation Latino American kids who, ironically, because of the war effort, were latchkey kids. Their parents were off working the night shift for war production, and they were basically left to their own devices. They called themselves 24 Hours Orphans, the first latchkey kids, and they were also arguably the first rebels. And out of their emergence in America came the whole concept of juvenile delinquency. Yeah, I love that one quote from Octavio Paz. Can I read that? Yeah. He said, the zoosuit was a symbol of love and joy or horror and loathing, an embodiment of liberty, of disorder, of the forbidden. So it was the single fashion item was at the same time asserting your independence and individuality, as well as what white folks saw as thumb in their nose at the white man. Basically, yeah. And I guess that's exactly what they were doing, because, as you said, they weren't necessarily wearing the zoosuit as a statement. They weren't anti war protesters. Right. But it was more like, you know what? I'm sick of you racist white people, and I'm not going to hide my identity. I'm not going to try to blend in. Right. I'm not going to go back to my traditional routes from Mexico because I wasn't born here, but I'm not going to join the service and wear an American suit. This was the compromise, and it kicked white people off like crazy, especially in Los Angeles. Well, at the time in Southern California, there was an enormous presence of servicemen who were waiting to ship out to the Pacific Theater from California. Yeah. And they were rubbing elbows with these guys that a lot of people thought were gang members and zoot suitors. And they rubbed elbows not in a very good way either, which ultimately led to the zoosuit riots. But there were some pretty striking events that led up to that 1943 summer. So one of the things you said you mentioned was that they were getting negative press. Right. So people in suits were associated with things like, let me see, quote, the record already reveals killing, stabbings in cases of innocent women having been molested by zoosuit gangsters. It's from the Los Angeles examiner. And the article is titled police Must Clean Up La. hoodlumism, which is not a word. hoodlumism. Right. So there's this joint effort of just general racism among whites in the general public and servicemen waiting to be deployed, specifically. And the Los Angeles media kind of fanning the flames. That's right. And then the Sleepy Lagoon murder happened. The Sleepy Lagoon case. Sleepy Lagoon. Josh was a reservoir by the La. River. It's not there anymore. Isn't it? Not there at all. It's like a plastics plant there now. There's no reservoir. Yeah. So don't go looking for it, even though they said it's roughly was it 5500 slots in Boulevard in Maywood. I know where that is, actually. I think it's on the way to the airport. So the Sleepy Lagoon case, at the time, Mexican Americans were denied access to public pools and swimming holes and stuff like that, so they used Sleepy Lagoon as a big hangout where they would go and listen to music and swim and have a good time. In August 2, 1942, the body of Jose Diaz was found at this reservoir. And what I gather, there was a big party, like a big house party, where a fight broke out and one guy ended up getting killed. And as a result, they rounded up three to 400 Mexican American youths had a corrupt trial where they basically denied the many civil rights, cooked up evidence, had no evidence, had no physical evidence, had no witnesses, nothing of the sort. And they basically pinned that murder on twelve guys, is that right? Nine kids. Nine kids, 300. Yeah. But they railroaded nine with no evidence that the guy had even been murdered. And eventually the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee and the US. District Court of Appeals overturned that as a miscarriage of justice. Right. But the damage is already done. Yes. And his killer incidentally was never found. They never singled anyone out. Which is sad. That's kind of lost a lot of times, I think. But at the same time, you can't just cook up a case against dudes that were there and say that they did it. Exactly. So the press attention that the Sleepy Lagoon case received just fan the flames further and further. And then in June, no, May of 1943, that's when things really started to take a turn for the worst. That's right. I guess about a dozen servicemen, I think, navy boys were down in East La. Yes. And a few of them approached some girls. One of them kept walking, and the one that kept walking past a group of pouches who were wearing suits. Suits? The chukka's. And when he passed, one of them apparently raised his hand and what the guy took as a threatening manner. So the serviceman grabbed his arm, and right after that everything went black because somebody knocked him over the back of his head with something and he fell and broke his jaw in two places. Okay. The other guy see this, the other guy see it. But before they even react, the pouches jump them. And these eleven other servicemen fight their way out and fight their way over to where the guy is laying. The guy who's knocked out with the broken jaw. Yes. And get him out of there. So this is not bode well for Mexican American white relations in Los Angeles in 1943. Few days after that, revenge is on the mind of everybody after news of this gets out. Yeah. Big time. Especially in the military community. And basically sort of the same thing happened. Main Street, East La. On June 3, eleven sailors got off a bus and there were words with a gang of young Mexicans. And when I say gang, I should say group, and we shouldn't say necessarily Mexicans. The likelihood was that they were Mexican back in the 40s, but they were Latino Americans. Okay. I tried to get to the whole bottom of the word Chicano as well. I know Hispanic is from Ronald Reagan. Is it? And it insinuates that everybody from Central or Latin America or South America comes from hispaniola. Well, and what I found from Chicano was that it was a derogatory term early on, very negative, but it meant specifically Mexican American. And then later, I believe some of them chose to embrace that word. It's interesting. I don't know where it stands today. Let's just leave that to say it. So they ran into this group of young Latinos dressed in zoot suits, got in an argument. The sailors, of course, claimed that they were jumped, although it's unclear exactly how it started. And the LAPD responded, and with a group of off duty officers and on duty officers calling themselves the Vengeance Squad. And they basically took it upon themselves to clean up the streets of East La. So the cops, rough house style, the cops, including off duty cops, took on the name the Vengeance Squad, and went down to the Latin American quarters, Latino American quarters, and just started beating people up. Yeah. And this really set off what would be known as the Zoot Suit Riots. The next day, on June 4, about 200 US Navy servicemen jumped in a bunch of taxis, went to East La on a caravan. In a caravan. Like a mob, essentially. And started beating up Mexican kids. Twelve and 13 year old boys, clubbing them, stripping them of their clothes, burning their clothes. That was the first group they encountered. And a bunch of adults try to intervene. They got club, too. Then after that, it wasn't just people wearing zoosu, it was any Latino American that they saw. They stormed movie theaters, they stormed bars. They stormed yeah. They pulled them off the street cars. Yeah. And black guys got caught up in it, too. Yeah. African American guy on the streetcar, I think it wasn't Watts who was pulled off and beaten to a pulp by servicemen just because he happened to be sitting there and was black. It was literally a riot, and it was perpetrated by white servicemen for several days. It was known as the Zoosu Riots. Cops were there, but they had orders to not arrest any of the servicemen. Right. So they were kind of given carte blanche for a few days. So for a few days, finally, the Los Angeles City Council comes to its senses and bans the presence of any servicemen in that area of Los Angeles and issues and ordinance whereby zoosuits are prohibited. And in the end, 150 people were injured in the riots. Police arrested more than 500 Latinos on charges ranging from writing to vagrancy. And I don't know if any servicemen were arrested. I think a bagel number of servicemen is probably a good guess. I couldn't find any. It's not say it didn't happen, but my feelings, it was probably zero. Yeah. And the local press got a hold of this and called it a, quote, cleansing effect and said it was a pretty great thing going on in the city, when, in fact, it was one of some of the darkest days of Los Angeles in their history. Pretty sad. It is. It's pretty sad and strange story. Yeah. Is there anything else to this? No. The aftermath is, I'll tell you. One interesting thing from the article was that years later, young Russian Soviet teenagers would wear zoot suits as an act of defiance against communism. Against communism. Yeah. So this article of clothing, this fashion statement, was a lot more than that. It's pretty interesting. And this is one of those weird moments in history where it's not just like, did you know the zoosuit caused this riot? And then you find out that it didn't. Really? Right. This genuinely started it. This was part of this made the pouches easily identified targets. The whole reason they were wearing it was out of defiance, and it just irked the establishment. The zoosuit caused these riots. It's crazy. It is crazy. And it had another lasting legacy, if I may. Sure. Juvenile delinquency. The whole concept of that coming out of this area and this era, I believe, gave rise to a slew of great movies. Rebel without a Cause, the Wild Ones. And If I May, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael Landon, who was a character saddled with a terrible affliction of throwing milk. So there's this little clip I would like to say, okay, I put you out of fight three times myself in the last month. You're just lucky to want any formal complaints. The time before this in the supermarket. It was the checker's mistake. Yes, but you didn't even give him a chance to rectify it. Boom. You throw a carton of milk right at him. It contained bovine growth hormone, and he turned into a giant cow. So that was the Mystery Science Theater 3000. Take Michael Landon, of course, and his milk throwing problem. Awesome. Which probably wouldn't have existed had zoot suits not come about. I'd never heard of that movie. I Was a Teenage Werewolf yeah. I wonder if they picked him because of his huge mound of hair. Maybe because he did the kind of werewolf he write out of the gate. Close. Yeah. Even without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys discussing it. I guess. Just fun to watch. It is. It's kind of a cool movie. Yeah. Look for a podcast on the Stonewall Riots. We're going to cover that soon, too. That's another overlooked blight of American history. Yes, we like to point this out. If you want to learn more about all the stuff we talked about, like Cabcallaway Jive Dictionary, you should search for that on your favorite search engine. It's pretty cool. Yeah. You could also search for zoot suits. Smithsonian. That will bring up a pretty cool article from, I think, like, 1984. It's pretty comprehensive. And then, of course, the article on our own beloved site is excellent as well. You can type in Zoosuits Z-O-O TSpace S-U-I-T-S. If you haven't known what we've been talking about this entire time, you want to type that into the search bar athouseupworks.com and since I said search bar friends, neighbors, it is time for listener mail. You know, some of that Cab Calloway jazz jive is still, like a few of those words I recognize is still being used. It's kind of cool. Yeah, he established a lot of them. I'm not nearly old enough to speak like this on a regular basis, but that's all I want in life, really. Like, corny came from this era. Really groovy. Okay. I say groovy a lot. Mood juice for milk. Never heard that. You've not heard that? No. There's, buddy g. As a guy like, thanks, buddy g. I've heard that, but it's G-H-T-E. Okay. Crumb crushers for Keith. Nice. Freebie, no charge. Really? Give me some skin. Check hands. It all came out of this era pretty soon. Yeah. And we would not have one of the better parts of the movie Airplane if Cab Calloway and his cronies had to come up with this. And I wish I had one cell of my body that was as cool as Cavcalloway was. He was a cool dude. You know, Minnie the Moochir, like, has a lot of drug references in it. Oh, really? Yes. Smokey is cokey. He likes cocaine. And they talk about kicking the gong around, which apparently is smoking opium and mini, actually, in the extended version, is taken to an asylum where she died. And that's why the song ends with poor men, poor men, poor men. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this polygraph inside scoop. Oh, yeah, it's a pretty good one. Did anybody ever offer you a polygraph test? No. Okay. That's right. Now I just listened to podcast. Oh. He said, Dear Josh, Chuck, and Gary, I just listened to your podcast on polygraph. Thought my personal experience might add a little to the discussion. I was asked at one point in my life to submit to polygraph exams as a witness and a crime. I was interviewed by two different polygraphers at different times. One piece of equipment I did not hear you describe was a pad that you sit on, which registered whether or not you fidgeted during questions. I'm glad you said fidgeted instead of what. Okay. This may not be standard, though, because only the first examiner used one. I was not given a pretest like you described in either case. However, they did tell me all six of the questions in advance, which is sort of like a pretest. I guess he just didn't have to answer them. And the polygrapher asked him to make sure he understood all of the six questions. The first was something like, are there lights on in the room? And in both cases, there were questions like, are you worried I will ask a question we did not go over? Then I got different versions of the same question. For example, did you see a man in a blue jacket, or was a man wearing a blue jacket at the scene? After the questions were done, I got a break from the machine. Then I got all the questions again in a different order, followed by another break and then another round of the same questions. Asking each question in a different way multiple times was apparently to reduce the possibility of reporting a false reading. But I did notice a couple of Hanky things, guys. For example, the first examiner had me closed my eyes so that the readings would be guaranteed to be in response to his questions. The second guy did not ask me to do so, and when I asked him if I should, he said it didn't matter. Pretty interesting. You also mentioned techniques for fooling a polygraph. According to a sign in the waiting room, these techniques can actually cause false positives. More than false negatives, though, it's probably a biased source. Although also they ask you to keep your feet flat on the ground through the test, so the tact trick wouldn't be possible. That is for Matthew. And Matthew says, i, by the way, am one of the few listeners who would be thrilled if you included tribal drums in the background of your episodes. Oh, yeah, with you reading list or mail throughout the whole time, combined with the track of us just doing our thing. Right. So is that why we're hearing this right now? Weird. I hadn't noticed it. Interesting. When did that start? I don't know. Here it is. Okay. Well, thank you, Matthew. Also, we want to thank our house band of tribal drummers, and we want to thank our producer Jerry for bending to our every whim at the moment. Yeah, if you have any info about a cool little piece of history that may be overlooked, we want to hear about it. And we may even podcast about it, and we may even be courteous enough to give you credit for bringing it up. Yeah, you can tweet it to us, although it would have to be pretty short as far as history goes. But if you want to, it's s yskpodcast or on Facebook at facebook. Comstuffyshonow. We also have a couple of spoken word albums up on itunes and stuff you should know. Super Stuff Guide. They'll cost you, but they're worth it. And you can reach us by email. Tough. That's right at stuffpodcast@howstworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join Houseofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon. Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it, listen to new episodes of my Favorite Murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-negotiation.mp3	How Hostage Negotiation Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-hostage-negotiation-works	In this episode, Josh and Chuck explain the finer points of hostage negotiation, including the symbolism of hostages, the negotiator's goals and tactics, Stockholm syndrome -- and what happens when people refuse to negotiate.	In this episode, Josh and Chuck explain the finer points of hostage negotiation, including the symbolism of hostages, the negotiator's goals and tactics, Stockholm syndrome -- and what happens when people refuse to negotiate.	Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:41:04 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=23, tm_min=41, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=330, tm_isdst=0)	27023649	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is is Charles w punkin Bryant. Yeah. Doing his cheek. You know, I'm in the Hezzy. That's twice right there, Julio. This is double good luck. Okay, well, good. Then this should probably be a pretty good podcast. Which means we are doomed. Yes. Josh, before we get going, can I just mention a little TV show coming up? The road to punk and chunkin and pumpkin chunkin itself, naturally. Yeah. And that, Josh, is Thanksgiving night. You're bored after your turkey on the Science Channel starting 08:00 P.m. Eastern time, right? Yeah. So insert clever intro. Chuck, have you ever been a hostage? No. Nor have I. I would remember that, I think. But you would. Yes. Have you ever seen Inside man? No. Which one was that? Denzel. No, I didn't see that. Clive Owen. I wanted to. In my opinion, I haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon, but I think it's the greatest hostage movie ever made. You haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon? No. Chuck, I'm not 70 like you. Oh, I forgot that they burned all the copies in when you were born in The Great Fire started by Al Pacino. Dog Afternoon was gold. You should check it out. I will check it out. A 100 year old movie? No, I'm sure it's good. That was Patino's Prune. Sure. Before he just went absolutely nuts. Well, okay. Neither one of us has been a hostage or seen each other's movies. Right? Now we both see more games. Yeah, true. But I can imagine that if either one of us were a hostage there would be a hostage negotiator outside. Right. I would be dead pretty soon, I think, if I were a hostage, a pizza delivery person could have delivered that segue better than me. Yeah. In 30 minutes or less. Yeah. So, yeah. Josh, let's talk about hostage negotiation. I can't say that word. Negotiations? Yes. Chocolate. There's a few things going on. Usually the hostage taker wants something. They want money, or they want to free their brothers that are political prisoners. Or they want safe passage or something like that. Right. Or they want some country to stop some policy it has. True. And usually the target of the hostage taker is not the hostage, but some other third party. Yes, but we'll get to the exception on that. Okay, good. I was chomping at the bit right now. I know. Finally. Hostages are usually only bargaining chips that have symbolic value, right? Like, for example, the 1972 olympic games in Munich. Yes. The hostages there had some serious symbolic value. They were Israeli athletes. And what kind of terrorists? Well, the target was the Israeli government. Clearly not the athletes. They were the symbolic pond, much like in the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The hostage crisis that happened there over what a 24 hours period. Sure. A bunch of Palestinian terrorists took some Israeli athletes hostage, and they were targeting Israel. So these were very symbolic pawns, I guess, as you'd put them. Right. Did you see Munich? Did you see yeah, man, that's a good one. So, Josh, now we can move on to the phases of a hostage situation. Okay. The initial phase. So, Chuck yes. All right, let's dramatize this a little bit. Okay. The initial phase. Yeah. We're just a group of people hanging out and say, A bank. Sure, we'll do a bank. Sure. And then all of a sudden, a bunch of guys come through the door kicking off what's known as the initial phase, like you said already. Right. And what's the initial phase, Chuck? It is an initial stage of panic and violence where they subdue the hostages, and it's very chaotic. So during the initial phase, they come in, everybody get on the floor. Right? Right. And then they bar the doors. And the initial phase is very brief. Right. Did you like my machine gun? Yeah, that's good. Then comes the negotiation phase, and that's when Johnny Law comes on the scene. And that's generally called the standoff phase. Right. And this is almost always the longest phase of a hostage situation. Yeah. This is when all the negotiation is taking place. They send in pizza boxes with little cameras. People have to pee, and the negotiator saying if there's a pregnant woman in their letter out. Right. When people have to pee. Yeah, that's a good one. And then the final phase is the termination phase. And you got a few different results that can happen here. Either the hostage takers surrender and they're arrested, or the police kind of mount an assault and kill them or arrest them, or their demands are granted and they get away. Yeah. And the second one is actually what happened actually combination of two and three is what happened in Munich. As anybody who's seen the movie knows, the West German police are like, we can't take these guys that we need to let them think that they're actually going to escape and get them to the airport. All the hostages were killed along with a pilot and a police officer and the rest of the hostage takers, the Palestinian terrorists were killed except for three who were captured. Right. It was a blood bath, basically. Well, I thought they were hunted down later. Is not that what Munich was about? The people who engineered it okay. Were supposedly hunted down later by the Eric Bana yes. Who is just clearly massage material. Yeah. Australian massage. So, yeah, those are the three phases. And during the second phase is when the negotiator comes on the scene. Right. And if you've ever seen the movie The Negotiator, you're clearly disappointed. But there was something that is very characteristic of hostage negotiation, and that is it's a very important point that the hostage negotiator not be the lead commander on the scene. Right. And why, Chuck? Well, because well, for a couple of reasons. One is that the negotiator doesn't need to be multitasking, right. Then they need to have all their focus on talking to and talking down the hostage taker. That's one reason that's part of it. One of the great tactics that hostage negotiators use is to stall and they prolong the situation. That seems like the main tactic, right? It's just to buy time. One of the tactics they use to create that tactic is to say, well, I can't make that call. I've got to talk to somebody else. And if it's common knowledge that the hostage negotiator actually is commanding the scene, then that doesn't really work. Right. They'll say, well, you can pull the trigger on that because you're the boss. Exactly. And they're like, no, don't use that phrase. Right? That's in every movie. Every single hostage movie is that scene where they go, I just can't give you a 747 full of gold bars, dude. I got to get clearance from Fort Knox, and that's going to take at least a day. So you might want to lower your demands. Which is actually another reason they saw it, to try and chip away at the demands. So the negotiators on the scene is trying to prolong the situation, like you said, they're trying to lessen the demands. They also stall and prolong the situation by getting the hostage takers to focus on some minute and really unimportant details. Yeah, I like this. They try to derail them. So, like, the 747, what kind of 747 do you want? Is it okay if it was built before 1998? Because we've got some that are built after that, but then they have this seating arrangement that might be a problem for you, and all of a sudden, you're distracting the hostage taker from the crisis at hand, right. And he's thinking about what kind of 747 he wants. I could just see the guy putting his hand over the thing and going, what kind of plane do we want? He's asking about seat configurations. I have no idea. Right. Exactly. All of a sudden, they hang up, and then you've bought some time. Right. And not only not every hostage taker wants a 747, but this can also be applied to even more minute details, like, what do you want on your pizza? Well, I mean, do you really want bell pepper? Because you're getting onion already, and sometimes it's too crunchy. I imagine there's a point where if you're talking to a hostage taker and you try the bell pepper onion combo to install, they're going to pick up on what you're doing. Or if they've read this article or ever seen a hostage movie. Sure. That's another good thing. They would probably be wise to say it sounds to me like you're trying to buy some time here, right? Bang. Indeed. Which is what the hostage negotiator does not want to happen. No, that's number two on their list. One is to prolong it. And while they're prolonging it, we should mention that they're trying to get information, as much information as possible on who the person is, how many there are, what frame of mind they're in, if they're unstable, if they're violent, any kind of clues that can help them out. Right, because a hostage negotiator is going to talk differently. They're not going to try that bell pepper onion thing on, like a very cool, calculated Clive Owens type, but they might on somebody who's just out of his mind crazy because his wife is leaving him. Right. Which is actually the most common hostage situation, is a domestic dispute that's turned into some guy with a gun barricading him and his family in their home. Yeah. Usually think of the big movie scenario with some foreign enemy taking all these people hostage, but it's usually just a regular old domestic scene. And the worst ones, man, the worst ones are those you see on the news where you see some dudes got a baby acting as a human shield. Who does that? You've never seen that? No. Oh, man, it's the worst. Watching those cop shows, those true crime shows. A baby is a human shield. Yeah, they have, like, a gun to the baby, these guys. It's like the dad is out of his mind and on drugs or something, and he'll have his baby, and it's just the worst thing in the world to watch. Unfold. Well. Very disturbing, I'll bet. In fact, don't go see that, Josh, okay. That'll keep you up at night. I bet it will. So that is the most common type of thing, is domestic. But back to the safety of the hostages, that's number two on the list of the negotiators to keep everyone in there alive. Right. I would think it would technically be number one. Well, prolonging the situation, I think, leads to number one, so they're kind of tied. Right. So what you want to do if you're a negotiator and you are chipping away at demands, first of all, you're trying to get the 747 out the window. Where the gold bars from Fortnite? Sure. But you're really trying to get to the heart of what does this guy want? He wants a 747 and he wants gold bars. Well, he wants to escape and he wants some money, so maybe it can be dealt with on a lesser level. But first, let's get you some food in there. But to get you some food, I need a hostage. I want to get as many hostages out as possible. Number one, to ensure the safety of the hostages, as you said. Number two, when an assault comes, if it does come, there's a lot fewer hostages in there that the police need to not shoot. Right. Plus, the hostage did you just say this? The hostage can turn if they release someone who's, like, ill or pregnant, they can give them information, insider information. Right. Even to create an even more distinct psychological profile, that kind of thing. Right. I like the fact that you were talking about the lessening the demands. Like, we can't get you 747 in gold bars. And I could see that throwing the hostage taker into a tizzy if all of a sudden they have to decide, well, will you take a helicopter and a cashier's check? That kind of thing. Right. Actually, I hadn't thought of that before, but, yes, I was the way to go. Will you endorse it beforehand? Right. Let's go to the bank. Oh, I'm in a bank. Awesome. Yes. Bring me that cashier's check, please. So number three on their list is to keep everything calm. You don't want to upset a hostage taker. No, you want to keep everything nice and chill, especially following the initial phase, that initial assault. The guy's all jacked up on adrenaline. Sure. He's a little crazy. All of a sudden, it's starting to sink in. If he accidentally took hostages, it's starting to sink in. Like, oh, my God. I am a hostage taker. Now, this is a little nuts, right? So you want to keep the guy calm or the guys or the gals calm, especially if it was a biter meinhof experiment. No idea what that is. Actually, there's a movie out called the Bota Meinhof Complex, I think. Really? And they actually introduced terrorism to the Western world. There's a group of Germans look at you German radicals. It's Kevin Spacey, basically. Bored kids that introduced things like Skyjacking and stuff like that. They were crazy. Crazy. Josh the fourth thing and this is my favorite one, actually one of the goals of the hostage negotiator is to get the hostage taker and the hostages to work together to give them some tasks where they have to interact, like delivering the pizza. So send out your most agreeable hostage that you trust the most to get the pizza and bring it in. So all of a sudden, the hostage taker has to talk to the hostages and say, hey, we need you to go and get the pizza, because we can't go within the sniper range. And the more you get them interacting, the more chance that the hostage taker sees the hostage as a human. Right. Instead of just blindfolding them and putting them in the corner right. Or shooting them in the head. Well, yeah, that, too. There was actually a very famous case of that. In 1975, some hostage takers took over a subway train or a train in Holland, and a guy named Robert de Groot was about to be executed. Chuck and apparently they allowed him to pray first, and they heard him praying for his wife and children, and they got them so bad that they just couldn't execute the guy, so they actually fake executed him. Right. The standoff continued, and when it came time to execute more hostages, they didn't give them a chance to pray and just actually executed them. Yeah. And I'm sure they pushed him off the train and he rolled down the hill and faked like he was dead. And I'm sure the rest of the hostages were like, thanks, Bob. Yeah. Right now, not only can we not pray, but we're getting a bullet in the head. Yeah. And I was thinking about that. You feel so removed from it. The weird thing about being a hostage is, like, no one plans on being a hostage. It just happens all of a sudden. And imagine dying on a train on some track in Holland by being executed by some hostage taker during a standoff. What a crap way to die. I know. You're right on the money there, brother. Yeah. So, Chuck, I think it's pretty damn pretentious of us, too, if not brought up Stockholm syndrome yet, don't you? Yeah, go ahead. Identifying with your captor. Yeah, it actually came out of a bank robbery, and I think 1980 or 81 in Stockholm, appropriately enough, and this bank robber's plan just kind of went to crap. And I've been, like, using pseudo badge words all day. Stupid, weird. This bank robber's plan kind of went to pot, and all of a sudden he was a hostage taker. Right. Well, the standoff continued, and strangely enough, the hostage just started helping them. They're serving as lookouts. They were giving him advice on how to escape and how to deal with the negotiator and all that. And that's kind of odd, if you think about it. So why would people suffer this, what they call Stockholm syndrome? Well, there's a lot of psychological reasons for it. Yeah. Defense mechanism, coping type of thing. Well, yeah, if you feel powerless in a situation like that, you go to whoever has the power. And when you're a hostage, your hostage taker has the power. Yeah. And the other thing I mention, too, is that if you're not killed and there are other hostages are killed, you feel such a sense of relief that can actually morph into sympathy. It's kind of like I remember we did the Brainwashing podcast. Absolutely. Yeah. Good one. Do you want to talk about countries and some famous non negotiating countries? Do you remember the 80s? It was like planes were getting hijacked everywhere, all over the place. Boughter minehoff. Yes. The United States, Russia and Israel are all very well known for having a non negotiating policy with hostage takers and terrorists. France had the opposite. It didn't work out for him, though. No, it didn't. France became very quickly a target for hostage taking because France would apparently be like, what do you want? Right. And apparently, sometimes, and this doesn't surprise me, the countries that refuse to negotiate, there might be some secret negotiations that happen that they never let out, because that would destroy their front, that they won't negotiate right. And France also apparently had a little problem with forming agreements with hostage takers, and then the hostage takers would break the agreements, which is crazy. Can you believe it? What a bunch of louse. So there is an equilibrium. Chuck loves equilibrium. But there is an equilibrium between not negotiating at all and over negotiating. I think that's what you're talking about. It's kind of like negotiating on the download and never talking about it. Right. And then hunting the people down who did this and murdering them. So, Chuck, let's talk about what happens when you just absolutely refuse to negotiate, as we've seen actually, in the 21st century, sadly enough, twice in Russia. Yes. A couple of famous occurrences there with the Muslim cetane separatists. In 2002, they took over a theater in Russia, threatened to blow it up, and so the Russians go in under. Who? Who was it? Putin, you think? Okay. The guy who wrestles tigers with his shirt off in front of news cameras. Doesn't that bear his hallmark? Yeah, they decide to storm the theater and send in some knockout gas instead of negotiating, and they ended up killing all I don't know if it was all of them, but 129 hostages died. 129. From the knockout gas. From the knockout gas. That's not knockout gas. That's death gas. I think that's what you mean by knockout. I don't think so. They just don't want to call it death gas. Maybe. So my eyes are open now because I didn't realize that it was a euphemism. The other one, Josh, was really sad. I remember this one well. Yeah, me, too. In four, when the same Chechen separatist invaded an elementary school with guns and bombs and locked themselves up in a gym, and Russia would not negotiate, and 300 of the hostages were killed. Yeah, that was awful. And half of them were kids when they blew up the gymnasium. Yeah, it's terrible. Listen up, Putin. Yeah. But you maintain your toughness, right? We're not going to negotiate. Just kill the kids. Yes. Okay. So, Chuck, are you okay there? Yeah, I'm good. A little riled up, but I'm good. Let's talk about a hostage situation that actually went relatively well, at least compared to Russia. Yes. Go ahead and hit it. I know what you're going to talk about. Well, there's a very famous incident at Princes Gate in London in April 1980. Members of the Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan. I know I changed that name. It's a mouthful, isn't it? Yeah. Basically, Arabistan is an Iranian province, and the group wanted to liberate it, clearly. Sure. And they were Democrats, I guess. Maybe. But I think 20 of them, and there were six of them, and they took 26 hostages at the US. Embassy in London. At Princess Gate. Yeah. So there was a standoff that lasted quite a while. The hostage negotiator did this by the book, kept the hostage takers focused on details, like, what kind of food do you want? That kind of thing. Thinking Thai. Yeah, I'm in the mood for Thai. I could go for a nice curry Buddha. Yeah, that sounds good. That's Indian, though. That's good stuff, by the way, if you've ever had it. I'll try it. They actually did execute one hostage, but the other hostages apparently reported that this guy decided to get into a debate over Islam with Iranian terrorists. If you don't do in a hostage situation, it's a hostage. The negotiator actually did manage to get the release of two ill hostages. Maybe one of them is pregnant. Sometimes we replace ill with pregnant, which I don't understand. And they got info from them. Yeah. And so basically, the one thing that really wasn't by the book was that the SAS got the, which is the special forces in Great Britain. Yes. They're bad. They are bad. I have a friend who's in that. Really? Yeah, I can't say his name here. Okay. They got the hostage negotiator to talk to the hostage takers on the phone right before the assault, knowing the assault was coming as a distraction. Right. That doesn't happen much. Not usually. And why? Because they don't let the negotiator in on this kind of information. Because they think that they would compromise the job just through maybe even inflection and tone of their voice. They would give it away. Right. On purpose, of course. No, certainly not. Yeah. Very few hostage negotiators experience Stockholm syndrome. Definitely just mentally crumble at the first time, but it actually paid off. The hostage negotiator kept the lead guy away from the window, and the SAS stormed the building. Boom. To tap. I imagine five of the guys and the rest of the six. Yeah, not bad. And I think they only lost one other hostage at the 26th, which is not bad. No, but I mean, if you storm a building in a hostage situation, it's like, well, yeah, that guy lost his life, and another guy lost his life. Right. But it's like yeah, but that's actually a really good percentage, I would imagine. Well, I would guess the 2004 Russian standoff is probably as bad as it can get. Yes, I would say so. One thing we mention there that I thought was pretty interesting was you mentioned the Stockholm syndrome, but that is actually a tactic that the negotiator will use. Sort of a good cop, bad cop thing. They'll get on the phone or how they're communicating and say, yeah, they'll try and relate to them. I kind of see where you're coming from. I understand this police captain does not understand where you're coming from, and he wants to mow you down. Right. So talk to me, man, and we'll work it out between us. Chuck, you would make an excellent hostage negotiation. I just realized that. I wish I had a hostage I could give to you right now. That was good. Oh, I just offer you a six pack and you throw down your gun all over, pretty much in some smokes, but that's a pretty cool trick there. I like that. Of course, again, this is straight out of the movie, so if any hottest takers ever seen any of these films and they should be one step ahead of the negotiator. I would think so. I would think so, too. There's another example of not going by the book that I wanted to mention. In 1975 at the US. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, there was a hostage situation, and apparently the Japanese Red Army remembers of the Japanese Red Army attacked the consulate and took hostages. So the terrorists actually called the authorities to tell them that they had the hostages and some junior officer at the embassy, elsewhere in the embassy picked up the phone, and from that point on, for the rest of the standoff, they wouldn't talk to anybody else but this junior officer. Wow. Yeah. Who was not a trained hostage negotiator. And it's just like, oh, God. Well, he probably has an earring in the other well, no, there was a negotiator on the scene, like coaching the junior officer. Yes. I also saw in the article where there's always a secondary negotiator on hand because sometimes they freeze. Sure. Because you're basically improvising. You got to be quick on your feet, and if all of a sudden you're going, you need someone to step in and say, tell them that we'll send them pizza. That first one sounded exactly like Kevin Spacey in the Negotiator. Yes. I didn't see that when there's some stupid twist where he was in fact the in on it or something. I don't remember. I blocked it out of my memory. That might have been spoiler. Of course, you're supposed to say spoiler beforehand, but whatever. Yeah. Well, we are pretty much done here with hostage negotiation. We're going to leave a whole section untouched on becoming a hostage negotiator. Sure. You can find that in the article, how Hostage Negotiation Works. You can type in hostage, I imagine, on the handystarch bar athousefworks.com which means it's time for listener mail. No, Josh, not today. Okay. No listener mail. We're going to do a little Kiva update like we are want to do. Okay. So you want to go ahead and give the plug? Yeah, man. We started a Kiva team. Kiva.org. Kiva.org is a micro lending website. Socially responsible one, which means you don't make any interest on your loan. You can loan as little as $25 to people in developing countries. And now the US. Sure. Entrepreneurs who are trying to become self sufficient through their businesses, they're little tiny loans that make a huge difference elsewhere in the world. Indeed. And we are kicking bottom on this. We are, man. And I'm proud of the stuff you should know, army, because you guys are responding, and this is really cool. We challenged the Colbert Report. Or I like to call it The Colbert Report. Yes. And we actually made a video where we chastised him. Yeah. Which you probably never see. But just know that if you watch The Colbert Report scoff while you watch it. Right. Thinking of Chuck and I and the stuff you should know, army people are responding in a big way and it's going great. And hopefully The Colbert Report will take notice because that will make even more money for Kiva and it might get us on his show. Chuck is just chomping at a bit to get on the show. Well, if you want to join the Stuff you Should Know Kiva team, please do. Please do. You can go to www. Dot kiva. Orgteamstuffynow. And that will take you right there. Plus, there's a pretty picture of Chuck on there. Yeah, me and Emily, actually. She's on my team. I was talking about our picture. Oh, no. On the member page, though, if you're curious of what my wife and I look like together, then you can search through the member page. Is that the one that's your screen saver on your iPhone, too? Yeah, it's one of the best pictures I have. Very nice. Thank you. And how about the blogs real quick? Yeah, we both run a blog and I've been lazy with it lately. I'm going to get back on off the Schneider. You can access the blog on the blog page, which you can find on the right side of the houseupworks.com homepage. Right. I just barely spit that out. So that's where you can find it. Yeah. Go interact. Yes, go interact. This is a pretty cool blog. We like it a lot. If you have an email or if your name is Aisha Tyler and you have never listened this far before in a podcast, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Er and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
4474fc28-53a3-11e8-bdec-e792d5f2ee80	Gobble Gobble: Turkeys!	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/gobble-gobble-turkeys	Turkeys are a very interesting bird as it turns out. Which may be why many people are leaving it off their Thanksgiving table this year. Learn all about them right now!	Turkeys are a very interesting bird as it turns out. Which may be why many people are leaving it off their Thanksgiving table this year. Learn all about them right now!	Thu, 26 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=331, tm_isdst=0)	44320048	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Gobble, gobble. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry. Jerome Brolin couldn't come up with anything at the last second. Sorry. And this is stuff you should know about Turkeys. Yeah. So I need to just apologize at the beginning of this episode because I could not help and I know I will not be able to help myself from making Vernon, Florida. References the great, great documentary from Errol Morris, one of the prominent about the citizens of Vernon, Florida in the 1980s and inland Florida panhandle small town. And one of the lead characters in that documentary was Mr. Henry SHIPZ. He was a turkey hunter and all he does is talk about turkey hunting. And I know it by heart. Me and all my friends know it by heart and we quoted a lot. So it's really hard not to just talk like Henry Ship's. So I'll try not to because it's so random that 99.9% of the people it won't be worth it for like the 100 people that will think that's the best thing ever. I don't know man. I've found over the years that it's good to cater those people sometimes too. I might throw in an occasional and I'll explain what I'm talking about maybe. But we do need to thank the Humane Society for the bulk of this research came from this really great article that someone, a nameless person at the Humane Society put together from a list of great, great sources. So I was surprised to see something so thorough. It was really great. It was written by the mysterious Tom T. He was really in favor of turkeys suspiciously Thanksgiving Day too. So we also need to apologize for we're not trying to guilt you or anything like that. Maybe don't listen to this one for a week. I will say though, Chuck, like, I'm not eating turkey anymore after this. And it's really kind of a pain because turkey is my favorite, my favorite meat of all time is turkey. I know, I'm sorry. Then it is tough. I knew turkeys were pretty cool and pretty smart, but it is tough to read this stuff and still slice into that bird. Well, it's funny to hear that they are smart because they have such a great reputation for being just totally stupid. But it turns out that that's really not right at all. It's at best human misinterpretation, maybe at worst cynical justification for eating them. But one of the first things that will remark about turkeys right out of the gate that a lot of people don't know is that Ben Franklin was more in favor of turkeys as America's national emblem. As far as birds go. Then he was the bald eagle. He had a big problem with the fact that eagles don't necessarily hunt as much as they bully other birds for whatever they just hunted. He said that the eagle does not get his living honestly. He steals from the fish hawk and is too lazy to fish for himself. The turkey, however, is much more respectable. A true original native, and a turkey would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guard who should presume to invade his farmyard. And after researching turkeys, I daresay he was probably right about that. Yeah. And the other thing that I'm surprised he didn't mention was and also, by the way, male turkeys, during the breeding season, literally, their head and neck turns red, white and blue. Yes, I noticed that too. That is so obvious. It's such an obvious pick. Like, at one point during the year, you got a red, white and blue bird. Yeah, exactly. Let's see a bald eagle do that. Stupid eagle. The other thing, the other reason why, and I think a lot of people think that Franklin said that that needed to be like the Great Seal of the United States, and that's not the case. He instead, I think, proposed Moses as the Great Seal, which is odd. But another check in Ben Franklin's pro turkey stance is that turkeys are indigenous to North America. And actually, we're down to two species. One, the common turkey, which is the kind that you or I or anybody else living north of Mexico are familiar with, they're all over the place. They're all over the United States and Canada. But the weird thing is, there's also turkeys in Central and South America, and it turns out that they're a really hardy, adaptable species and again, way smarter than you probably give them credit for. Yeah, I mean, turkeys, they do like warm weather, but they can survive in a lot. Like you said. I remember very distinctly when I lived in New Jersey, one snowy morning, looking into my backyard, and it was like a painting or something, there were three deer and six wild turkey just walking together through the snow in the backyard. And I didn't know that they would venture that far north, but they are all over the place. Did you say the name of the ones in Mexico? No, the Oscillated turkeys. Yeah, in the Yucatan Peninsula in Guatemala and Belize. They are different looking than the turkeys we know. They're smaller, little shorter. They have sort of a copper bronze, green plumage. And I think the male turkeys have larger spurs and do not have beards. And we'll explain what all that is in a minute. Yeah. So if you're talking turkey, specifically male turkey, another term, former gobblers or toms for young males, they are called jakes. Love that. And then adult females are hens and then hatchlings. Babies of both sexes are called poults. P-O-U-L-T-S. Yeah. The adult female is going to be about eight to \u00a311. Adult males about 17 to 21. We mentioned if you look at a turkey, they've got all kinds of crazy stuff going on, on their head. They look like something from a zombie movie. And every single adult turkey has what's called carnacles, a snowed sound, like Dr. Seuss and a duelap. The carnals are those big fleshy things at the bottom of the neck. The Snude is the stuff that protrudes from the top of the head and sort of flaps over across the bill. And then that dual app is that little thin skin under the throat that's so tuggable. Yeah. And if it's just one thing of skin that goes vertically down the neck in the front, it's a dual app. If it has more than one, it's called a waddle. But these things, the Car uncles, the snoot, and the Du lab, are the things that make turkeys outrageously ugly to humans. But ironically, those are the things that attract other turkeys. They, like you said, change color. They're unique to each turkey. And they are like, apparently, if you're a female turkey, you're looking for a guy with a longer snude, that's an attractive thing to you. So I just find that really great that we're like that is just those things are just so ugly, they could stop clock. And to the turkey, it's like, man, nice snoot, buddy. You're looking good. Yeah. And I think Carnacle Snoot and Dulab would be like a great name for a comedy bluegrass trio that would be on Heehaw or something. Oh, my wow. So the beer that I mentioned, too wait, was that a Burn in Florida reference? No, I'm paranoid. For most turkey strains, the males are the only ones who have a beard, and that is this feather. It's a modified feather sort of in the upper chest that keeps growing. It's like if you have one of those rat tails that you want to grow out for life. A lot of He Hall references, I guess they grow about three to five inches a year. And if Vernon Florida is to be is vernon Florida is correct, then Mr. Ship would point out that the longer the beer, the more sort of prize trophy it is. If you're a turkey hunter. Sure. Like, that'd be akin to a large rack of antlers because they mount the beard on a little plaque. Right. The other thing about male turkeys that you can differentiate from a female, while females have feathers that go up the back of their head so it looks like they have a little mullet going on, males do not they have a bear head. And then males also have spurs, like doclaws almost coming off of their legs, and hens typically don't. Right. And like I said, those males, during breeding season, they turn the carnacles go red. The white is the crown of the head, and then the neck on the side of the face go blue. And there's just nothing more American than that. It's true. But that's just the gobblers. Right. The hens just the tombs. Yeah, like you said, and I think I said first, you can find turkeys all over the place in all sorts of different conditions. Whether it's hot out, whether it's covered in snow, whether there's deer around. Who cares? Turkeys are down for hanging out. They just need, or I should say, prefer certain kinds of habitats. Huge trees in a mature forest. And typically they want mass bearing trees and mast. I don't remember what we were talking about recently. Oh, I think it was squirrels hiding nuts. Mast is like one of my favorite words of all time. It's so earthy and natural. I just love it. But it means, like, acorns and tree nuts that you can find in North America. And that's one of the things that turkeys eat. So they need lots of trees that have lots of mass. And the other thing is that trees are roosting sites. Turkeys, although they're not typically thought of as able to fly, they can fly for short distances and they roost in trees at night, which I don't think I've ever seen a turkey in a tree. I haven't either. I see turkeys quite a bit on the side of the road or taking hikes and stuff like that. But I guess it's because at night, I'm not hiking at night that I've never seen a turkey in a tree. Sure, yeah. Because they're dirty or right, well, yeah, I'm saying that must be the reason. Like, I always see turkey sort of just pecking around on the trail. I think that's legitimate. I was laughing because you said you made it sound like the turkeys were hiking, going on. Well, technically, I could see them with, like, big chunky socks on and vast boots just being all serious. But you mentioned their range. Their home range is what it's called. And their home range is dictated by how much food is around, how much of that mass is around. Right. And if they you know, they have pretty big ranges anyway. But if there's a lot of food around, then they may maintain like 400 to 1000 acres, which is huge. And that's if it's abundant. If they don't have a lot of food around, they have been known to maintain ranges of 8000 acres or more and travel up to 50 miles to different home ranges if they can't. Technically, they don't migrate. But if a bird is maintaining 8000 acres and traveling 50 miles, they're migrating around, kind of. Yeah, but I mean, that must be a really poor habitat because turkeys are not picky eaters. In addition to mass, they'll eat everything from seeds to lizards and basically anything they find that's chock full of protein. They typically like things like seeds, plants, fruit, berries, that kind of stuff. But they'll eat live animals. They'll eat a snake. Yeah, they'll eat a snake like crazy. Yeah. And then in particular, when a turkey is born, the young turkey, the poult for the first week or two of their life, they're eating nothing but insects constantly. Yeah. And that's why they prefer a range. They like that forest, but they like the forest on the edge of some grassy areas because that moves them. They get them closer to those little insects that you're going to find for those poults. Right, exactly. And that's actually where polls are born and raised, is in the grassy area at the edge of a forest, which is pretty cool and just quaint as all get out. It's like cottage core for animals. Yeah. If you think that they may need to live near a lake or something to get their water or a river or stream or any kind of wetland, you're wrong. I'm sure they love that kind of scenery, but they don't need it for water. They can get their water intake from vegetation. They can get it from that morning dew, succulent insects, little small pools. They can kind of forage through all that stuff to get enough water. Yeah. I mean, when there's a lot of snow on the ground, they don't hibernate or anything, but they go into this kind of like just hanging around the tree for chill mode time. Yeah, chill mode, for sure. And the water intake is just a little bit of snow that they're eating off of the tree. And the food is maybe just a butt or two that they can find on the tree they're sitting on. Yeah. And they do well. Turkeys are thriving. They eat a lot. One thing you will not see very much unless they're sick, is a skinny turkey under. Nourished, turkeys are pretty rare, as I said, unless there's some sort of disease or maybe if it's like in the middle of a really long winter, they might thin up a little bit. But turkeys eat a lot and they're generally pretty healthy and plump. Right. So like we said, they're diurnal. Right. They are active during the day, just like us humans. And you said they eat a lot, so they spend a significant amount of time eating. And when they eat, they'll eat just about anything they can come across. But when they eat, they eat the thing that they're eating whole, especially if it's something soft, like a berry. Right. They just swallow it whole. It gets digested along the way and they poop out whatever is left on the other side. But they also eat things like seeds and nuts and mast. And they have a gizzard, which is like a second stomach. That hard stuff gets diverted, too. And the stomach is basically all muscle. And they also eat while they're pecking around for food. They also eat little pebbles and stones and bits of hard things like bone. And those things stay in their gizzard and they become what are called gastrostones or gizzard stones. And they end up basically like a rock tumbler that crushes up things like seeds and mass that can then be diverted over to the regular stomach for digestion, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Another reason that I kind of identify with turkeys is that they do chill a lot. They get busy feeding and stuff and exploring around, scraping around, pecking around on the ground on. But after they have eaten, they hang around for hours at a time. They will preen. It's called dusting, when they just sort of move around in the loose soil. It's a dirt bath. Yeah. And they kind of just rest basically until a few hours before sunset, and then they start feeding again. This is amazing. So right before nightfall, though, they go back to those trees at night to sleep. And if they get caught sort of unaware, it's sort of like a vampire and they look up and that sun's going down, they will haul butt back to their tree. They can run ten to 20 miles an hour and fly in short bursts up to 55 miles an hour to get back to those trees. Because once sundown comes, if they're not in their little homestead, which offers a lot of protection, they're in big time danger for predators. Sure. Can you just see a turkey, like, running back, like gobble gobble babies? What I find interesting about them, too, is a lot of people don't realize turkeys are extremely good at seeing and hearing. We don't think that they're very good at smelling, but their sight and their hearing are so amazing that it really doesn't matter about the smell. Apparently, they have three times the acuity of the average human's eyesight. And then in addition to that, they also see in color, which is rare for a bird. Between the 270 and a 300 degree field of vision, humans have about 180. And the reason why they can see so much around them is because the turkey's eyes are on the side of his head, which on the one hand, gives them a disadvantage. They don't have binocular vision like humans do, so they have terrible depth perception, which is why you'll see footage of a turkey looking at something and it'll switch sides of its face that it's looking at you, because it's trying to discern depth that way, just kind of quickly creating binocular vision like a flip book. But what it lacks in binocular vision, it makes up for with its incredible hearing, because their hearing is such that they can identify the location of a sound really, really well. So they might not be able to see depth, but they can hear depth in addition to all the amazing stuff that they can see. You think we should take a break? That's fine. I'm just going to keep talking through the break because I'm just so in love with turkeys right now. All right, we'll be right back. So before the break, you were talking about their hearing in Vernon, Florida, which have you seen that yet? Still no, I have not got to see it. Okay. It's one of the great documentaries, that is. But Mr. SHIPZ really gives the like, when you listen to this man talk, and I'm not a hunter at all, but you really get a sense that turkey hunting is one of the most challenging hunts that you can undertake because of how smart they are. And he says they are smart. Boyd, he's one of those guys. He's like that. Yeah, but how smart they are. And then that hearing, like, you have to be so quiet and so all of your movements have to be so deliberate and even the slightest, like, cracking of a stick, that turkey will poke his head up and then just be gone out of there. So although I'm not a hunter at all and would never shoot an animal, when you listen to this guy, you can't help but be sort of impressed with or maybe you just fall under his spell. How much he loved it, I don't know. Yeah. So turkeys are really good at hearing, they're really good at seeing, and they're easily spooked, which all combined makes them very difficult to hunt. Yes. Yeah. So as far as their flocking and their behaviors, they live in separate flocks, the hens and the toms do. And then once the spring comes around and the days get longer and then the warmer temperatures sort of start coming in, then the males are going to leave their winter flocks and they're going to start. Now it's time to party, basically, with the hens. Yeah, they're going to start. Like many animals, there are a lot of rituals of trying to get their attention. They're gobbling, they have a couple of peaks in Gobbling, and the first one is at the very beginning of the breeding season, when there are a lot of hens around and you're trying to make yourself known as a worthy male, then you're going to have a second flock after most of the mating has taken place, there's a lot less gobbling going on. But those males who didn't mate, or maybe they did, and they're really trying to have another party, basically, that's when their second peak is going to happen. Right. But in between those two peaks, there's less gobbling, because by that time, the hens are like, all right, I'm into this. So the males don't have to try as hard. And apparently that second peak in Gobbling is kind of the more desperate. It's like at 150 a. M. At the bar. Oh, totally. Anyone still in a party, basically go. Anybody around? Go. But you got to do it like the Night of the Roxberry guy, but they're saying gobble instead of him. I think it's Tom, Ken and will mate with multiple hens. And hens actually may breed with the same male more than once. I don't think anyone has made any argument that they're in love, but you never know. Let's say at the very least, they have chemistry. They're also polygamous. If you're in Eastern wild turkey, they think that they sort of have a harem, basically, where you have a bunch of different hens with one tom until they've made it. If you are out west, you might see what's called a like system, le k, which is basically a group mating and group gobbling. Like a bunch of toms will get together and sort of gobble together. A lot of times a group of siblings, like those Carter boys, they get together and put on quite a show for the ladies, that kind of thing. And that actually makes sense. The harem makes sense because there's just such an abundance of turkeys that one Jake or one tom can mate with multiple hands all at once and the species continues. But where it's more spread out for them to all kind of come to one place. It makes sense because it's much more convenient. But also because all these different displays of like. Manliness of tomliness. I guess. Really gets the hens in the mood. So it kind of gets them prepared for mating much more quickly and efficiently too, which is a real advantage of the Lex system. Yeah, and you actually did not misspeak because Jakes can mate, they're just way less successful because they're jakes got you. Maybe there's some hens that sit around and say, like, I'm really more into Jake's than Tom's because the other one's like Nancy, well, I never but they do. Jakes actually can mate. But because they attract females by those big shows and the best gobbles, they're just usually not quite there yet. Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit about we always set up, like all the stuff we're going to talk about in every episode and then we actually talk about like maybe 70% of it. Yeah, but there's hierarchies in turkey flocks, which we'll talk about, but when the Carter brothers show up, or there's young Jakes and older ones, depending on the dominance of the turkey, that turkey is much more likely to actually mate. But all the turkeys will be strutting their stuff, getting the hens in the mood. It's really kind of this communal thing that actually makes sense because turkeys, it turns out, are super social animals, which makes the fact that the hens, once they have mated and go off to lay the eggs, they do that themselves. It's basically the one thing they do as individuals. But they do, like, basically to a hand, they will go off, they will find a nice grassy area at the entrance of a nice wood and they will start laying eggs and they'll lay one egg and cover it up, then leave. And the next day, usually about the same time weirdly, they come back and lay another egg covered up. And then as they start laying more and more eggs, they kind of reach like this critical threshold to where they're like, okay, I'm emotionally invested in these eggs now. I'm just going to stay around here and guard them and then eventually incubate them. And they do. And then about 24 hours before the eggs start to hatch, Chuck, they actually start making sounds, basically saying, I'm about to come out now. Yeah, it's really cute. This little pipping sounds and this pecking with and this is one of the cutest words I've ever seen. The first little hole that these things make from within the egg to get out is made with an egg tooth. How cute is that? It is very cute. But I mean, the fact can you imagine seeing a little turkey egg pipping? It's probably amazing. And I know the hen is entranced because the hen starts to make little encouraging clocks like, come along, little fellows. That's right, let's get on out, let's get on out. And it could take about a day for all these poles to hatch. And they are very mobile from the time they are hatched, but they are also very closely bonded to mamahan and the siblings for a little while, a pretty short while, for a couple of days, they all sit around together, they imprint on one another. And one of the big things that they do is they learn what mama sounds like. We'll get to the calls later, but there's something called an alarm call, which is exactly what you think it is. It's very important way to say, hey, everybody get out of here. There's a raccoon or a bobcat in the woods or something. And they have to learn their own mother's alarm call. And that's what they're doing in large part for those first couple of days. Yeah. And within the first couple of days and actually a couple of weeks, they can't fly. So they're real vulnerable because remember, the mom nests in like, grassland, not in the trees. So until they can fly, they can't roost in trees. So their big defense is to just scatter and stay still. Yeah. And like, as in frozen still for up to a half an hour, if they hear that alarm call, these little baby turkeys will just freeze like mannequins. It's amazing. It is amazing. One of the things, when a mother hen gives birth to a brood of polts, usually there's a one to one ratio between males and females, between Jakes and baby hens, which I found pretty amazing. Unless chuck something else happens. Yeah. I feel like usually when we cover animals, there's always one really astounding adaptation that we cover a lot of times more than one. But in the case of turkeys, these hens, if they don't find a mate and don't mate, they can still have little babies. Through parthenogenesis, they can produce viable eggs. It doesn't happen a lot, it seems like. And the embryos, I think very few of them survive. But it is medically impossible for a hen to produce little baby eggs. And have one, and if they do have one and it actually lives, it is going to be a male hatchling. Always. Right. Which is counterintuitive to me. I think if it's an evolutionary adaptation, it would seem like they would be female. Yeah, I don't know, but it's like bees aren't unfertilized bee eggs. Don't they turn into male drones and it's just the fertilized ones that become female workers. I don't remember. I'm pretty sure, if I remember correctly. So it's weird that it would happen like that, but yeah, that's a pretty rare occurrence, that parthenogenesis. Yeah. So now you've got all the little poles have hatched and they've been running around eating bugs in the grass and it's been about 17 days, and now they can fly. So they're starting to roost in the tree. And at first adorably, they're still scared little babies, so they roost under their mother's wing at night. But as they get a little more confident, they'll start to spread out into some of the surrounding branches of the tree in the roost. And what you've got now is a new flock of turkeys. But like I was saying, turkeys are extremely social creatures, so those flocks typically tend to join other flocks, especially mother hens, with new poles. They'll live with other flocks of mother hens with their own pools, and they'll become these kind of like huge megaflocks where if you walk through at night, it seemed like every branch of every tree around you was filled with turkeys. And that would happen probably sometime in the early mid spring after the eggs have hatched and the babies are all now roosting in the trees with their moms. Yeah, and here's another one that really tugged on my heartstrings a lot of times. Once they have joined these other flocks, if you don't have any siblings, if you're the only survivor of your hatch, you will oftentimes take up with another mother hen and they will sort of adopt you into their little family so you can have siblings. And if that doesn't knock your socks off, they also adopt the original mom to come along. Yeah, me too. Basically, they're just like, come and join our family. You only had one little baby that lived and they need some siblings. So why don't you and your little hatchling come along and your little poult and join us? Come have Thanksgiving with us. They don't say that word. You've got the T word is what they say. Yeah, t day. So that's one kind of flock. There's also a lot of, like the jakes. The young males in that flock will continue to stay until, I believe, the fall, and they'll leave and they'll go form other flocks with other jakes and sometimes older gobblers, and especially with their siblings, too. They'll hang out with them and then the young hands and the mother hens will stay together and form their own flock. So there's different flocks, but turkeys are. So social that they've been found to if you take a bird, a turkey from its flock and put it somewhere else, it'll basically just stand in one spot and make a scared sound until you take the turkey and put it back with its flock. Like they have been shown to be basically debilitated when they are moved from their flock. And I was watching this video called Turkey and Dog best friends are inseparable, they are colonizing. Those are the best things on the internet. So this turkey and this dog seriously were housemates, friends, like really great friends. And the woman who adopted the turkey, I think, as a poult, was like, well, the turkey needs to be on a farm with other turkeys. So she took it to a farm to go live its life as a turkey on a turkey farm. And it did the same thing that I've just described. It just stood in one spot in the barnyard and made this horrible call for, I think, three days. She let it go on and finally it's like, fine, come back home. Right when she got it back home with the dog, the turkey stopped and was back home and has been there ever since. It's definitely worth watching that video if you're like. I don't know, I still like to eat turkeys. Once you watch that one, that's going to be it for you, pal. You can't eat turkeys or dogs anymore. No, you can't eat pigs either. So another, I guess we mentioned the alarm call. Turkeys have an astounding ability to communicate with each other. They have a lot of different vocalizations. Mr. Henry Shipes talks about a lot of those, the different kinds of gobbles that a turkey hunter has to be acquainted with and make yourself to attract turkeys. But it calls them yelp. Of course, there are three kinds of yelps. There's the tree yelp, the plain yelp, and the plane lost call. And then there are a couple of basic calls, the clock and the alarm putt, and then a few other just complex calls. There's the cackle, the gobble, and what's called the key. Key. But that tree yelp is what they're going to make. That's sort of their morning routine. The first thing they do in the morning is start tree yelping. And it's basically like, hey, everybody, good morning. How did you sleep? Good morning. Good morning. There's the plain yelp, which is like just during the day if you want to say, hey, everybody, let's come huddle up over here. Because when they eat as a flock, they might spread out over a quarter acre, but we've seen that they will always have at least one constantly looking out, and they'll trade that job off, but there's always at least one bird looking out for the rest of the flock ready to make a call. It might be a plain yelp, it might be an alarm putt, but whatever that is, is going to get the bird's attention very quickly. Right. Then you have that plane lost call it's sort of like the plane Yelp, but it's usually louder. It's got some more urgency to it and that, they think is more for family. It's like, hey, you and all your brothers and sisters, get over here. Too sweet. Yeah. There's also what else? The cluck, which is to say, hey, Chuck. Cluck. Right. Cluck, chuck. And you look up and say, Talk to a person. What? And I say, I forgot what I was going to say. And you go back to eating. I just said specific to a person, meaning a turkey person. Right. A tom or a hand. There's that alarm putt, which is basically like, hey, everybody, there's something weird going on. The key key is if a little poll or a younger turkey is a little worried and wants to be reassured or doesn't know where everybody is, that's probably a pretty cute one. I listened to some of these and it's not Anna monopia. The kiki doesn't sound like a key key to me. I don't know what they're talking about, but it sounds like a wine, almost. It's weird. And then you have the Cackle, which that's sort of like hello and goodbye. When you're coming into your Roost or you're leaving in your Roost, you're going to cackle and say, I'm here. Right. The gobble. Everybody knows the gobble, but it turns out it's actually not that frequent a sound. It's one of the least frequent sounds they make because it's typically made by tom's when they're strutting their stuff for mating to get it on. Literally strutting their stuff. Right. And then here is one of the facts of this chock full of fact podcasts. Turkeys purr. When they purr, it's quite obvious they're purring with contentment exactly like a cat. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I saw another video of a turkey being stroked and petted and it just curled up on the person's lap. Purring. Amazing. It is. So, the other thing, when they've laid these eggs and everything and incubating, they will turn them periodically, which is really great. And what they're doing that is they're letting the exchange oxygen and CO2 as well as they think, and this makes a lot of sense, keeping the little embryo from attaching to one side of the egg. So if it starts to attach, they'll just turn it and then it'll flop down and not attach itself. Nice. And then there's also renesting. Right. There is. Which is basically like if the turkey is disturbed during the nesting process, she may go off and create a new nest. I get the impression the other eggs are abandoned. Or remember we said that she is emotionally invested after a certain point, if she's disturbed, then she just abandons the nest and doesn't do any more nesting that season. Which is very sad. Yeah, that's super sad. Agreed. So you want to take a break? Let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back, everybody. So, Chuck, I think at the beginning I was saying that turkeys are way more intelligent than we think. And that's true, right? They are smart. Boyd one of the smartest we got in this country. That's a good Vernon Florida accent. He's passed on, by the way, one of the cool. And if you're interested in that movie, go see it. And there's also a movie crush episode where one of my really good friends, Mike, comes on and talks about running Florida, and he actually struck up a friendship with Henry Ship's via telephone for the remainder of his life. Oh, that's neat. That's a long telephone call. Well, they talked off and on quite a bit. It was really special. I got you. That's cool, man. So he just called him out of the blue? Yes, he and Henry, he would call them up. Well, hey, Mike, how are you doing, buddy? And this was 20 something years after Ren in Florida was from the, I think, early 90s, or maybe even late eighty s. And so he got a kick out of it that Mike thought he was famous. That's cool, man. So you never answered. Oh, yeah, you did kind of answer my question. Turkeys are rather smart. Thursday a longstanding myth that turkeys are so stupid they'll actually drown when it's raining because they look up at the rain and the rain falls down their gullet and drags them. Have you not heard that? No, I've heard that before. It's true that there's a myth. The myth itself is totally wrong. It's been observed. Something similar has been observed mistakenly in domesticated birds, meaning, like, factory farm turkeys. And they've actually shown that if that has ever happened, it's not the turkey looking up to see the rain because the turkey wouldn't look up to see something above. It would look from the side of its head because it has monocular vision. Yeah. So it wouldn't be looking at the rain. And if it is looking up and has ever drowned or something, or seemed to have drowned, it was because it was having a certain kind of seizure that apparently domesticated factory farm turkeys have as a general condition, they have seizures and actually die from those kinds of seizures fairly frequently. So they think some farm worker saw a turkey have a seizure while I was looking up while it was raining and died. And that actually might have given birth to this incredibly wrong myth, it turns out. That was my cousin. They are smart and they have great memories, which is in the animal kingdom. Memory is an interesting thing and a lot of times a pretty good indicator of intelligence and just something more going on there. While turkeys have a great memory, they can remember very precise locations. They can go back to the same location miles away at the same exact time of day to get food. So they have a really good internal clock as well. And hens and tom's, they can also check supposedly differentiate human faces, so they can tell humans who are different based on their face, which is pretty smart if you ask me. Oh, totally. They can be a nuisance if you have a farm. Their droppings can carry disease at times, but they're easily scared, like you said. There's a list of things and how to get rid of turkeys that we came up with. Well, it didn't invent, but came up with some experts. We've been testing them out all week and it seems like all of them are like turkeys get scared super easily, so scare them off. Or if there's a real problem on your property, put up a motion activated scarecrow or a water sprinkler or something like that. Any kind of loud noise, flailing your arms, that will get rid of turkeys. They're scared of you. They want to get out of there. They're not aggressive. They can be intimidating if you're a kid, because they're big, but even a kid is going to scare a turkey off. Yeah, they are easy to scare off, but they can also be really intimidating and aggressive, especially if it's a tom during mating season. So you're supposed to do the same thing to turkey that you do to coyotes, and it's called hazing, where you show them you're dominant, and you can do it by everything from turning the hose on them, throwing a tennis ball in their general direction. Opening umbrella is a big one. But you're basically saying, like, I'm not scared of you, and in fact I'm going to scare you off. Because if you don't do that, apparently then they become increasingly more difficult to get rid of because they think they're dominant to you or say, a family member. And if you combine that with somebody, whether it's you or a neighbor or something feeding the turkeys or even letting them eat birdseed out of your bird feeder, that can be a problem, actually. Especially if you don't like turkeys running at you. Yeah. And the other really cool fact about hazing is they say that everyone in your family has to do it if you want to solve your turkey problem. If grandma lives there, she's got to get out there and hate that turkey. If you've got a four year old, you got to send that four year old out there to hate that turkey. Supervised, I would imagine. But every person in that house has to exert their dominance. Yeah, exert it with extreme prejudice all over that turkey. Gross. So I guess that's it. One thing I saw, Chuck, for Thanksgiving today, 88% of Americans will eat turkey, which actually seems right, doesn't seem high or low. But get this, that translates to \u00a3700 million of turkey on average, or 46 million turkeys all killed and eaten on a single day today. Goodness me, that's a lot of turkeys. It's a lot of turkeys. So if you want to know more about turkeys, go watch some turkey and dog friendship videos and that might make you regret what you just had to eat. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. And before listener mail, I just want to close the window on the Vernon, Florida thing, if you don't know what I'm talking about. It was a documentary originally and it's fairly interesting. Errol Morris went down to this sleepy town, like I said, inland in the Florida panhandle to do a documentary on these people that live there who would cut off their limbs for insurance money, and it was called Stubtown was the nickname. He went down there, no one would talk about it, and so he found himself down there without a documentary subject all of a sudden. And so he just, after talking to these people, said, well, this town is a documentary in and of itself. And he just turned the camera on the citizens and there's probably like ten or twelve of them sort of interviewed through the whole thing that's cut together and that's all it is. It's these people that live in Vernon, Florida. Pretty cool. Yeah. I need to see it one day. Yeah. It is a cult classic and a true documentary legend. It's really great. So, listener mail. This comes from Erica. Hey, Josh, chuck and Jerry. Listen to the podcast episode on fruit flies. I want to say that Chuck's pronunciation of the word drosophila is correct. Wow, that's rare. Having worked in a basic research laboratory for years, I've often pined for a science dictionary to help with pronouncing scientific terminology and nomenclature. For example, unless you chat with researchers on a regular basis, how would you know to pronounce the gene BRCA one as braca one and CDO as kiddo, while PD one is just PD one? I don't know how you would know. You wouldn't. You need to make smart friends, I think is what it comes down to. That's right. She says as long as we're discussing pronunciations, you mentioned in your episode on the US interstate system that Californians. Add the word the for any freeway highway number. I've lived in the bay area my whole life. I hesitate to generalize for all of Northern California, but at least in the bay area, most people say things like the rest of the country, 101, highway 101 instead of the 101. Anyone who says the 101 is most likely from Southern California. Got it. That makes sense. Yeah. So I guess that is sort of that makes sense. It's an La. Thing, right? Yeah, that's what I always associate it with, for sure. So that is Erica. Well, thanks a lot, Erica. That email was just chock full of info and we appreciate it big time. Thank you. If you want to be like Erica and send us an email chock full of info, we love them. You can send it off to us at stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
40517c5a-121b-11eb-ba6a-5738c36f1d65	Short Stuff: Traffic Signals	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-traffic-signals	The history of traffic signals is way more interesting than you might think. Trust us.	The history of traffic signals is way more interesting than you might think. Trust us.	Wed, 29 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=363, tm_isdst=0)	12430149	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and this is Short Stuff about the invention of the traffic light, which I thought until very recently I knew where the first one was, but it turns out that it's definitely up for debate and probably even wrong. Yeah. You know, this was so chock full of stuff, I kind of wondered if it could be a full link thing. But then I decided, no, let's just chuck stuff a bunch of stuff in this stuff. There you go. Stuff it up stuffer. So did you think the first one was in Cleveland in August of 1914? Correct. Right. And that still gets credit as such, even though there are other traffic lights. And as we'll see with a lot of the stuff we talk about, there are a lot of little improvements, whether they're automated or whether they lit up and stuff like that. So I think that's why there's a lot of competing claims. Yeah. And it was one of those things where just a lot of people contributed to what we know and love as traffic lights today. I shouldn't say love what we know and loathe in some cases is traffic lights today because I'm sure I said as much in the roundabouts episode. There is maybe nothing worse than sitting at a traffic light, a red light when there was nobody coming from either other direction is one of the worst things that can happen to you that doesn't involve physical pain or grief. That is true. We want to shout out historycom. Rachel Ross from Life Science and Larry Clark. Not the filmmaker, but Larry Clark, who wrote something for Washington State Magazine and the book Highways to Heaven called The Autobiography of America Auto. Yeah. ATO. There's a few other first listed in that book which are kind of interesting. Left hand driving became the standard in 19 eight in America. That center dividing line first started getting painted in 1911 in Michigan. And then the first no left turn sign in 1916 in Buffalo, New York. Yes. And shout out to Christopher Finch, the author of that book. That's right. But what about Britain? They had an idea about this long before 1914. Yeah, this to me is like, oh, okay, well, there we go. We have the first traffic signal in existence. And it happened to be in London, in Westminster, and it was based on an already used design that people use for railroads to say, hey, you can pass, or, no, don't pass. It was pretty much what you were trying to get across. And the guy who worked on the railroad, John Peak Knight, said, you know what? We've got a lot of congestion with buggies and carriages and maniacs and all sorts of people just running around. We need some sort of traffic signal for roads now, too. Let's adapt that railroad thing into a traffic light. And he did and again, the first traffic light was in London and I believe 1868. That's right. And it was a semaphore system, which meant it had little arms that raised up and down, which is kind of fun. It was actually mechanical and used gas lamps to light up the sign at night. And there would be a cop there, or whatever you call Bobby bobby stationed next to it to operate the signal. And this was in December of 1868, and it was actually working well. And they thought, this is going to be a huge success. Sure. And then about a month later, one of those gas lights exploded in one of those Bobby's faces and they said, we're not going to do this. And it was about 40 years until things started happening again. As far as traffic lights go, that must have been a really bad explosion on that poor Bobby, because for 40 years, the English were like, no, you don't want to get near a traffic signal. Forget. That was a terrible idea. Now, I can't tell you how many people were run down or how many buggies got hit by cars in that interim, but that's how bad that explosion was, that they abandoned it entirely. And it wasn't even the Brits that picked it up. Again, it was the Americans who said, we need something here. Let's pick up where the Brits left off. And it's here that most people say that the first traffic signal was invented, even though, again, it was first invented in London. But the Americans tend to get the credit for it. But even among Americans, it spread out over a ton of different inventors. Yeah. And you know, the thing about that British one, it wasn't even a traffic light problem. It was a gas lamp problem. Exactly. They blamed the messenger brother. All right, we'll do a little bit more before we go into a break. Yes. Okay. In America, there were a lot of people filing patents, like tons of patents being flung around in the early 1900s about this sort of very simple idea of a traffic light. One of them, and this, I think, doesn't qualify because technically it's not a light, it is just a sign in. Ernest Sarin or Seren introduced the automatic traffic signal in Chicago and it had, again, no lights, which is why I don't call it a traffic light, but it had the arms arranging across, rotating on an axis, like a weather vane. Yes. It would say Stop and proceed, and it would just kind of turn on its axis and face the right way, ideally, to get people where they needed to go. Yeah. I think there was probably a cop not a Bobby, a cop below operating it. So you had basically a traffic cop who had to be stationed there working it. But it was like kind of like the groundwork for the whole thing. Right. The idea that you were telling one intersection or one direction to not move while you're telling another opposite direction to move. That's the basis of a traffic signal. I agree. And maybe we should take a break okay. And maybe talk about another couple of people who didn't get their due credit. Fair enough. So, Chuck, there's a guy named Lester Wire who, like you were saying, doesn't really get his due credit outside of the Mormon held areas of Utah. Yeah, I guess you could say that. There's a 1912 in Salt Lake City, and he made something kind of look like a bird house. It was a wooden box. This actually had red and green lights on a pole, and it was attached to the trolley wires overhead to give it power. Very smart. I don't know why Lester Wire doesn't get the credit then. That was full two years before Cleveland. Yeah, it's basically a birdhouse. It doesn't even look a bit like it. It's a bird house. But I don't know why he doesn't get credit either. But he doesn't a couple of years after that. That's where the Cleveland one came in that everybody says that's the first traffic signal. I still don't understand why it was considered the first traffic signal if Lester Wire already had his in Salt Lake City two years before. But James Hog is the one who gets the credit for that. That one that was installed in 1914 at the corner of Euclid and, I think, east 105th in Cleveland. And James Hog went whole hogue by having four traffic signals wonderful. Thank you. That faced every direction of traffic so that you could coordinate them. And I think it was set up so that it was impossible to give conflicting signals so that you couldn't tell two opposite directions to go at the same time. Like it just couldn't happen. That's right. We should shout out William Giglieri of San Francisco, because I think the distinction here was that his light was the first automatic light. That's a big one, that used red and green lights. And this was in trying to go chronologically here. In 1920, William Potts, a cop in Detroit, not a bobby, he developed some automatic traffic light systems. And I think this was the first one to use the caution light, use all three colors. That was a huge innovation because up to that point, it was just red or green. So you had people going and then other people stopping and then still maybe going, and you could have an accident adding, like, that little caution. That was a lifesaver. Literally a big deal. And we have to shout out in 1923, Garrett Morgan, quite the inventor. Garrett was the actual first African American to own a car at all in Cleveland. Like I said, quite the inventory. Invented the gas mask as well, incidentally. And Garrett invented it was a Tshaped pole. It did have three positions on it, had stop and go, but this one was the first one, I believe, to have everyone stop for a moment of time, at least, so it would give other people a chance to get out of the intersection, which is a really big safety feature. Yeah. And Garrett Morgan is very often credited as the father of the traffic signal because he sold his patent to GE for 40 grand, which is about 600 and something thousand today. And GE mass produced these things. It was, like, really cheap and easy to produce. And so they started popping up everywhere, which is, I think, why he often gets the credit, even though his came almost ten years after that Cleveland one. But it's tough if you look at the patent designs, it's tough to understand. You really have to sit and think about it. But there was like a cross, and it said stop on one side and go on the other. But it would fold up so that it said stop everywhere, no matter what direction you were in, like you were saying. So there was a moment in between each change where all four directions were stopping. Yeah. And we still have that overlap today. I feel like I sometimes see lights in rural areas where they don't have that overlap, or maybe they've all been changed over. But I do remember a time there where they didn't have that overlap. Yeah, I remember that too. It wasn't even that long ago. No, it was kind of like just a free for all, basically. Just go. Like, as soon as the other one turned red, the other one was green. So it's funny that Garrett Morgan thought of this in the 1920s, and it went away for a while, I guess. Yeah. We also have to shout out John Allen, who was not only an inventor, but a bit of an entrepreneur, if you ask me. Yes. So this was the first street level pedestrian traffic signal, right? Right. And I think they had them before that, in the 1930s. But they were integrated into the traffic light themselves. Right. Yeah. And they, right off the bat, basically came up with the Walker don't walk signal as we understand it today. Like, that upright palm that you're saying stop with, that was, like, the first one, and it's still in use. That's a rare example of somebody figuring out the best design initially. Yeah, that's right. But John Allen his is kind of funny. He had the word stop and go, but he pretty smart. I mean, it didn't catch on, thankfully, but he got on this advertising thing really early and thought, hey, why don't we do this? Why don't we have signals that are sponsored? And it could say, like, go to Quickiemart, basically, if they want to pay the money for that Quickiemart. I do. Could you imagine if that's what it has turned into? I can, and I'm actually surprised that it's not that way now. But yes, it would have been cute to look at now in retrospect, but I'm with you. I'm glad it didn't catch on. Oh, boy, that reminds me of one of my most hated things is the advent of the gas pump advertisements. And they're so loud, too. God, I can't turn those off quick enough. No, I'm with you. They're pretty bad. Chuck agreed to the worst. Well, since we both think that gas pump advertisements are as bad as it gets, that means, of course, that short stuff is apt. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
4200a28a-53a3-11e8-bdec-ef3d7386bf6e	How Going to the Moon Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-going-to-the-moon-works	Fifty years ago, the first humans stepped onto the moon. After going back a few more times, humanity lost its taste for moon travel. But it’s being revived again. NASA is planning to send humans back to the moon by 2024 and build a moon base by 2028.	Fifty years ago, the first humans stepped onto the moon. After going back a few more times, humanity lost its taste for moon travel. But it’s being revived again. NASA is planning to send humans back to the moon by 2024 and build a moon base by 2028.	Tue, 16 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=197, tm_isdst=0)	52287608	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody, come see us, cause we're coming to see you specifically if you live in Chicago. On July 24, we're going to be at the Harris Theater. And the following night, we're going to be at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. And that's just the beginning. That's right. We're also going to our beloved Wilbur Theater, which we own in Boston on October 29. And then our first visit to Portland, Maine, at the State Theater on August 30. Yes. That's going to be followed in October. We're going to take a little break because that's a lot of touring in October. On the 9th, we're going to be at the Plaza live in Orlando, and then on October 10, we're going to be at the Civic Theater in New Orleans. That's right. And in October, we are going to round it all out at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn for three shows, october 23, 24th and 25th. Yes. So go to Sysklive.com for tickets and information and we will see you starting this July in Chicago. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck brian over there, and there's Jerry over there. And this is coming up on the 50th anniversary, Chuck, of the first time humans ever set foot on the moon. That's one small step for podcast. Oh, wow. One giant leap for podcasting. That's a really good Neil Armstrong. Oh, boy. That was dumb. I liked it, though. I think this serves as a companion piece to our June 2014 episode on the space race. Yes. And was the moon landing a hoax? We did that one, too. Jeez, did we do that silliness so long ago. 2000 and 910. That sounds about right. I think we landed on it not being a hoax, if I remember correctly. That's right. Yeah. This is a good companion of the Space race one. I went back and watched the full CBS broadcast of this. It's like 42 minutes long. Really cool. Yeah. Cronkite is kind of crying. It's easy. Well, he was a big crybaby. Everyone knows that about Cronkite. He cried at the drop of a hat. Cry kite. Yeah. Basically. You should have seen him when Princess Die got married. Good Lord. Oh, boy. So there's nothing wrong with crying, Walter. No. So, Chuck, I was reading about that transmission, and it's pretty amazing that the world got to see Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bouncing around on the moon in the, like, at the end of the 60s. But still, this is far and away the first time anybody had ever done anything like this. But what I did not know until this very day is that the guy who invented basically the whole set up for this, for Westinghouse that carried this out, when he saw that transmission come through, he cried. He almost had a heart attack. It was way worse visually than it was supposed to be okay, but he was upset at the picture quality. Yeah, come on. I know. That's what I'm saying. Like, you see this and you're like, wow, that's really good. No, apparently he had not factored in the compression that had to take place from the signal. If you see the raw signal, it was just crisp and clear, or you imagine it would be. It turns out NASA lost the magnetic tapes that have the original raw signal on it. Nice. But when it was compressed for TV, it kind of messed it up a little bit, but he apparently went with it and was like, that's still good. We're still broadcasting live from the Moon yes. Which is beaming it down, then back up, then back down. What does he expect? I guess he was a beard for perfectionist. So he had a heart attack? Yes. Traumatic. Well, I said he had a heart attack. I I thought he literally had a heart attack. No, you know me. I speak in figures. He sure beats Cronkite. He just fell right over. You know what's funny is Cronkite missed the second half of the quote. He said, that's one small step for man, I didn't catch that second part. And then a couple of minutes later, when Neil Armstrong was talking about he quickly goes in. He has a great quote. Wait, are you kidding now? No, I'm serious. Wow. So when Armstrong he says, that great quote, and then he quickly kind of goes into work mode, and he's just talking about the surface of the moon, how it looks like charcoal dust, basically, and Cronkite interrupts him, basically, and talks over him. He's like, okay, we have the second part. Apparently, he said, One giant leap for mankind. Okay. All right. I have never seen that broadcast. It's kind of cool. Sure. They have a simulation going, so you can a really kind of corny looking 60 simulation of the lunar module landing, and then it picks up with the live feed. Does it look like that mountain climber on The Price is Right? It wasn't unlike that. So for those of you who haven't called on yet, we're talking about the Apollo Eleven moon landing, which happened on July 21, 969. And there was a lot of work that went up to that really just happened overnight, and it actually all started a lot of people trace it back to that speech that John Kennedy gave at Rice University in Houston, Texas, in 1961, I believe. May sure. May 25. Yeah. Of 1961. Yeah. Where he said that he basically challenged the United States to go to the moon to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Right. He said, we go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's up there mocking us when we sleep. It's quite insane. And I'm told it's made of cheese, the finest quality. Bring me some of that cheese. He turned into Steinbrenner. George Steinbrenner. Yeah, from Seinfeld. So, yeah, this is what really I mean, the space race had been going on, and like I said, we did a pretty good show on that. Way better. June 5, 2014. Sure. But most of the 1950s were consumed with the Russians and the United States, or the Soviets, rather, just sort of while we were in second place. But just one after the other, like, oh, they're doing this, and we got to do this. They're doing this and we got to do this. Yeah. Or both pursuing the same goal and the Soviets beating us to it almost every time by three months, which is enough for the world to be like, but boy, we got the last laugh. We did. But that's what Kennedy went bankruptcy. That's what Kennedy was doing. Well, you can thank Reagan for that. Yes, that's what Kennedy was doing, was he was upping the ante. He was like, all right, enough of this TIFF Tat stuff. We're going to really stick it to him. And he said, we're going to the moon. We're going to put a person on the moon. A man on the moon. But if it were today, it's a human. Yeah. And I think we'll talk more about what's actually gained by a man, like sending a person to the moon. But beyond that, it was very much a symbolic thing to do this and to beat the Soviets there and to plant that American flag firmly in that lunar soil. But that's one big reason why it was televised live from the moon. Number one, we were showing we went to the moon world. It was broadcast around the world. But two, it documented it as proof that we are up there. To most people, it was documented as proof. That's right. But then also, there was a certain amount of bravado in the fact that we were broadcasting from the moon live. Sure. So not only did we accomplish this one feat of sending people to the moon, we broadcast it live, which is another feat as well. So we had the US. Ranger program from 61 to 65. And these are things that all, like you said, it was a long process, building up to actually putting people there. And it's easy to overlook that every mission that was carried out was a test, or they were trying to just build it by step by step. Sure. Including full on dress rehearsals. Yeah. So the Ranger program for four years sent nine missions. They're collecting data, basically, to say, here's how we can do this. In 62, Ranger Four reached the surface, but crashed. But then two years after that, Ranger Seven sent back more than 4000 photographs. Not bad. Ranger Six made it, but the camera failed. But get this, Ranger. Three and five missed. It was like, oh, I can't let it I mean, it's amazing that we were able to put people on the Moon and bring them back safely in a very short time. Like, when you imagine all the things that can go wrong and what year it was, it's just nuts to think about. Yeah. So you said Ranger Seven landed in 1964 and sent America back its own first images of the Moon five years later. We put humans on the Moon. That's a very short amount of time. Yeah. The Soviets were the first two. So these Rangers, they were basically like, take pictures, take pictures, take pictures, crash. Right. But the Soviets were the first ones who actually gently land a spacecraft on the Moon without just crashing into it. So the very first step was lunar orbit. The second one was crashing on the Moon, and then the third step was landing softly on the Moon. And the Soviets beat us every step of the way. That's right. So it was kind of gutsy for Kennedy to be like, we're going to be the first to the Moon because we've been behind every step of the way. I bet the moon was like, WTF. Like, what's going on? Yeah, I've been up here for a long time, and now there's just a lot of activity. I'm getting all pock marks. People are crashing stuff on me. Here's a dude, he's coming at me. He's about to jump on me. That was the moon's quote. I got you. Okay. So all this led up to, obviously, these tests, pre flight tests on the ground, which some ended in tragedy. Oh, yeah. Apollo One. Notably, in 1967, a fire swept through the Apollo Command module and killed Gus Christmas, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. And that was they did asphyxiation and after reading up on it, there was like there were so many things wrong. Like their spacesuits were flammable. They had a hatch door that opened in and took a long time to open. Well, the fire itself created a vacuum that made it impossible for the hatch to open. It was impossible for that hatch to open. It was a really sad accident, but it might have been one that was like, I wish there weren't people involved, but it might have been something necessary to get everything right. It definitely changed the mentality of the space program and that safety became even more important. Yeah. And I think Gus Christmas was the first of the Mercury Seven to die. Really? Yes. Very sad. 41 years old. Was he just 41? He looked way old. It's crazy. Like, what 41? What age that was back then? I think everyone like, 30 to 60 looks the same. Pretty much. I can't tell the difference. Pretty much. So we've gone to lunar orbit, we've crash landed on the Moon. There's a bunch of steps that we were taking, and that made up the space race. One of the next one was to get somebody outside of Earth's orbit and into lunar orbit. Big deal. The Soviet speed is there, too. But just very shortly after that, I think it was Apollo seven spent a bunch of time orbiting the earth. I think they made it to oh, I know the big thing about Apollo seven. So we've gone we've gone from like, pioneer ranger and pioneer ranger and surveyor into now. These are crewed missions. The Apollo program, apollo one ended in tragedy. And then Apollo seven is where it really starts to become significant, where things are really picking up by leaps and bounds. This is 1968, less than a year before we would land on the moon. And Apollo seven big one is that this is the first time that we're testing the command module that we would use to send Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins up to the moon. Yeah. So they orbited the earth 163 times, spent almost eleven days in space. So that was a big success. This was Walter Shara Jr. Don Isel and Walter Cunningham from old Sarah. And then Apollo eight was a big deal. It was happening so fast. Really? Seven was in October, apollo eight was in December of the same year. And this was the first one to use the Saturn rocket, which was a big, big deal. Yeah. The Saturn rocket is you can actually see one on its side and walk right under it at Kennedy space center. It's a pretty new museum, right. And it's bigger than, I think, a 36 story building. It's just this enormously powerful rocket. And when they started testing the Saturn, when the Saturn showed that it would work, people started to realize that actually, we might do this right, because we'd already tested out the command module. And now the Saturn was up. And the saturn came in three stages. There was the first stage that produced like \u00a37.7 million of thrust, which is a lot more than you produce when you jump up in the air. I looked for an analogy, I couldn't find any good comparison. No big max. It's just a lot of thrust. Yeah. So this is the thrust that this is the launch thrust. Yeah. It got you out of earth's gravity, or the bulk of the gravity, and then so that first big old stage would fall away. And then the second stage got you all the way out of earth's gravity. And then the third stage, the second stage would fall away. Then the third stage would propel you to the moon. So it's a three stage rocket. And by the time that third stage had fired and got you up to top speed, you're going something like 25,000 little capsule at the top of a rocket. Amazing. It was a very amazing rocket. I will go to my grave saying that. And this test of the Apollo eight mission showed that it would work. Yeah. So Apollo nine follows just two and a half months, three months later. And this one was a big deal because it actually practiced a very important procedure, which was the docking between the Command Module and the Lunar Module. So you've got this Saturn rocket that's providing the juice. Then you have the Command Module, which is essentially where you're flying what you would think of as the spaceship. It's like the crew quarters. Yeah, it's where the crew is. It's where they're flying. It's where they're eating and pooping and sleeping. And then you actually need to land on the Moon. And you don't do that in the Command Module. You do that in the lunar module? Right, but those two guys have to connect. Right. So the Command Module and the Lunar Module for launch are facing the same direction, but once they get out into a lunar trajectory and I could not find why they designed it like this. Yeah, I couldn't either. But the Lunar Module, that thing that you've seen laying on the Moon that looked just totally ungainly, had to blast off and it was tethered. It blasted off, turned around and then redocked. With the Command Module knows to know, I'm surprised that there had to be something they just couldn't figure out a workaround for. I would love to know anybody who knows, please write in, because I was looking all over for it. But consider this, Chuck. You had two pieces of equipment that were facing the same direction and you had to turn one around and face the other one in space at 25,000. That's pretty impressive that they were able to do in the 60s. Right. So this was apollo Nine was the first to show this is working. Like this is going to work. So they did that and then Apollo Ten was the one this is the last one in the dress rehearsal. Apollo Ten astronauts, you could call them understudy, I guess so just really took it for the team. Yes, they did everything but touchdown on the moon. Yeah. So they did this whole docking procedure where the Lunar Module was blasted off and turned around and nose to nose connected to the Command Module. And then they did the lunar landing thing where they blasted off the Lunar Module, brought it down within 50,000ft of the moon surface, and then took it back up and redocked again. I wonder if they're like it's right there. Maybe we should just I wonder, too. Surely they joked, at least. Yeah, probably so. But there's probably a lot of humor going on. I would hope so. But the whole mission, though, is you've got this Command Module and Lunar Module and the Command Module. When the Lunar Module goes down to the moon and then back up, the Command Module is just flying around in a lunar orbit waiting to rendezvous again. So they did everything but touchdown. And then they came back. And when they came back, they said, we're ready. This is it, and we're ready. And that was like two months before Apollo Eleven left it off. Should we take a break? I think so. All right, let's take a break and talk about the stars of the show, Apollo Eleven. I also want to shout out Apollo Ten, by the way. So with Apollo Eleven, the command module was named Columbia, and the lunar module was famously named Eagle. In Apollo Ten, the command module was Charlie Brown, and the lunar module is Snoopy, which I love. That's pretty sweet. Yeah. So everyone knows the three human beings that we sent up in Apollo Eleven commander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and the other guy. I know. Poor Michael Collins. Yeah. Command module pilot Michael Collins. And you really like, we want to sing his praises because it stinks to be known as the other guy, I would imagine. Sure. Everyone remembers those other two names. Ask Roger Daltrey. They got to what? They got to walk around on the moon while Michael Collins essentially babysat the command module in the command module, eating ho HOS, waiting for them to come back. That's unselfish. Extremely. And I'm sure they were assigned these roles because of what they had trained for. But to be the guy that's like, yeah, you know what? That's okay. I'll be number three. That's what he did, though. He sat up there with the command module and made sure it stayed in orbit, and that's right. Just waited for the dudes to come back. So hats off to you, Michael Collins. Yes. All right. So July 16, 1969, 932 in the morning. I'm so excited. Apollo Eleven lifts off from JFK Space Center at Cape Canaveral. It's no coincidence there. He said, Go get them and name it after me. So it was a huge moment for the sort of the end of the space race if it all went well. If it all went well. So remember, we practiced everything up to the actual landing. Yeah, we'll get to the landing in a second. But Buzz Aldrin later said that he was the most worried about the landing because they were the most unknowns, the most questions remaining, because it was the one thing that hadn't been studied and practiced and done before. And it was up to these guys. This is the last thing, the last part of this whole thing, and no one had done it. And so when they took off at 932, they went through everything just went perfectly. The first stage fired fine. Second stage fired fine. The third stage got them into a lunar trajectory, and I think they traveled this 238,000 miles over about two and a half days before they started to reach lunar orbit. Yeah. So on July 19 is when they enter that orbit, they spend about a day there sort of, you know, there's a lot of checking on things. You don't just plow ahead with your plan. You take a day once you get up there to make sure everything's working. They're checking the communication systems and basically preparing for the big show to come. Convincing Michael Collins that he couldn't come. Sorry. Still drawing straws up there in the orbit. Right. So here is the kind of cool thing that I think maybe, if you don't know this full story that's really pretty remarkable, is the lunar module was supposed to basically land on autopilot, right? But they saw where they were headed. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere. They had never really done this. So they didn't know exactly how to calculate their altitude and air speed and realized in short order they were heading toward a crater with very steep, sharp rims. And landing either on those rims or down in that crater was no good. So Neil Armstrong said, Screw it, I'm going to fly this baby down. He did. He wasn't even the lunar module pilot. He just took over, I guess his commander. Yeah, because if they were going to crash, it was going to be on him. I need to see this movie. Have you seen it yet? No, not yet. And there's another documentary, I think just called Apollo Eleven that's coming out. It'll have been out because we're releasing this around the anniversary. So I think it came out in late June, maybe on CNN or something. All right. Yeah. So Armstrong had to take over the controls. And again, no one had ever done this before. And this guy is landing a lunar module basically manually, and this is unscheduled. He had to make the thing travel further away from the spot it was going to land. And so when they finally landed, they had something like 30 seconds of fuel left. That's nuts. And it was a little hairy. And there was a very famous quote that came out of the Eagle lander, said, Houston, this is Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed. And Houston said, thank goodness. Yeah, Houston actually said, you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. And funny enough, that was Charlie Duke. Who was it? He was the Capcom on the ground in Houston, but he would later be up in the air in Apollo 16. Yeah, pretty neat. And I'll bet he was wearing a tie with short sleeve dress, button shirt, probably. So that's what all those guys for. Yeah. The problem back then was you could never tell a car salesman apart from regular people. Right. From an engineer or a teacher. I bet your dad rocked that look. Oh, well. Into the nineties with the old pocket protector. So they landed and they were going to abort their mission right there and go right back up? Well, no, they set it up so that they could abort at the drop of a hat if they had to. I think it was part of the system. Okay. I thought they were going to abort. No, I think the first thing they did was prepare for an abort. Okay. If something went wrong, they wouldn't have to prepare to abort. That makes more sense. Like press the button and take off. All right, I thought I got down there. It's like, let's go back up. I'm having second thoughts about being the first person to walk on the moon. Well, that actually does make a lot more sense then, because what they were supposed to do was take a four hour rest for safety, but they were all itching to go. So they were like, no, we're going to work through this. It still took about 4 hours just to get out onto the moon. But they were hard at work the whole time. They weren't taking a snooze. Yeah. Which I guess meant it would have taken them 8 hours had they taken that snooze. Yeah. But they did take a snooze later on. Yeah. That's something that I didn't realize about the moon landing. They spend a total of 21 hours on the moon and only two and a half hours of it out walking around on the moon. The rest of the time they were in the lunar module, including seven and a half hours of sleep. I mean, they needed it. So I was like, how did they sleep? I bet very Sally. And I thought, I've got a drugs. I'll bet they took drugs. You think? They did not. They had 16 tablets of Secanol on them. They took zero, although later lunar Landers would take a significant amount of Secon. All but Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong didn't take any Sikonal, although they did take dexadrine tablets during the mission. So they were pepped up. Oh, okay. Which is hilarious. Which means they probably crashed. I guess so. But they were not in any shape to sleep. But they still slept for seven and a half hours. I bet that's some of the quiet sleep. I don't know. I would be too excited, but yeah, I guess so. Maybe just being there and having already gone and walked out on the moon. When you come back in, you're ready for a rest. Yeah. So 650,000,000 people watch this. It's about a fifth of the world's population. At the time, Armstrong spent about 20 minutes out there by himself, which I imagine was something else. It's not like Aldrin crashed his party. He's like, Come on. But 20 minutes out on the moon by himself? It's hard to even fathom what that was like, or it would be like now. Even then, Aldrin follows them down and his description of the lunar surface was magnificent. Desolation. I never knew that before, did you? Yeah, I'd heard that. That's pretty cool. And they started working. They started collecting samples, surface material, moon rocks, basically taking notations on what the gravity was like, because it wasn't no gravity, it was one 6th of the Earth's gravity. So they were able to hop around and jump around you're in a swimming pool? Kind of, yeah. Have you seen that footage of jack Schmidt from Apollo 17? No, he keeps falling down. Really? He had a collection bag he was putting stuff in, and he'd like, drop it, and he bent over and get it and kind of come back up and then almost somersault he was having a really hard time. And they figured out pretty quickly you can't just walk on the moon, especially in these spacesuits. You have to hop. Right. You have to hop. But I think even hopping is not just, like, innate. Well, sure. So you can fall over, but there's a learning curve. Right. But I did not see that Buzz Aldrin or Neil Armstrong fell down. Me? No. Fell down? Who was it to fell? Jack Schmidt from Apollo 17. Klutzie Jack. That was his name. Yeah. Just like an astronaut falls down on the moon. It's pretty fun to watch, especially if you listen to yakity sacks in another tab. So we mentioned that American flag, that iconic flag drop or flag stick or flag rays. What would you call that? All of the above? I don't know. Comedy poke. It's a great drink, too, by the way, the Kami Poke. So the pole went in the first, like, six inches or so very easily, and they're like, oh, this is a breeze. And then it hit something super hard. And I guess they were like, oh, it's not so easy. So they had to lean the flag back. Oh, yeah. They kind of oh, just wriggled it back and forth. Right. Thank you. Because I realize people can't see what I was doing, but yeah, in doing this, this is really important. In doing that, they created ripples in this flag, and that's what moon hoax people point to. Really? Moonlight. There's no wind on the moon. Yeah. They're like, how is there wind, you idiots? Obviously, this is here on Earth. And that is the explanation that when they were wriggling it back and forth got, you created ripples and that you can see in footage, the astronauts moving around the flag and the flags ripples remain static. Right. So, no, there's not any wind on the moon. But that's not wind that did that to the flag on the moon. Yeah. And I saw about six years ago, they feel pretty good that most of those flags what are they, seven and all? Six. Six, I believe, are still there. They should still be there. I don't know how they would fall off the moon. Well, not fall off, but just the temperature swings on the moon. That's true. There was a lot of surmising that they wouldn't have survived this stuff. Okay. Really? Yeah. And the solar radiation and everything. We'll get to all that stuff. But it did say that they took a lot of pictures of the various times of day, and they think they have found I don't think they found Apollo Eleven, but it's not like they can get it from the surface. So these. Are all aerial shots. So they're comparing, like, shadows, basically got you. And saying, oh, well, it looks to me like this is the flag. Really? Yeah. Are they still standing up there? They think well, I don't think you can tell. Okay. But if it's casting a shadow, it must be oh, yeah, I guess so, right? Yeah. You need a job at NASA. Come in and be like that shadow proves it standing. That egg head. But in all for Apollo Eleven, they collected about \u00a350 of lunar material. Took a bunch of pictures, took two core tube samples and, like you said, spent what? Two and a half hours out there just romping around, having a good time. Having a good time. And 21 hours total on the lunar surface. And then they well, after about 21 hours, the lunar module went which no one realizes, but that's the sound that it makes in space. That's right. And it went up in rendezvous with the command module, it worked in a very passive aggressively hostile Michael Collins who was very quiet for the rest of the trip. But they docked again. They docked, like the docking procedure after launch, when it rendezvous, it docked with it. They got out and then they said, so long, Eagles, thanks for everything. Blasted it off again and just sent it on a crash course to the moon surface. And where it's crash site is, no one knows. It's an unknown site, but it's on there somewhere. But that's what they did. They said they use the Eagle to go down, come back up, and then they send it back to Mama. So, what happens on the way back? There's two scenarios. It's either those two guys can't stop talking about it and Michael Collins. Yeah, right. Or Michael Collins is like, what was it like, guys? What was it like? And they're like, you wouldn't understand. Yeah. We could describe it, but it wouldn't make sense to your brain. Yeah, those are people like the solar eclipse. Either one of these. That's a bad, right? Yeah. You really had to see totally. If you didn't, then just forget it. That's a bad outcome for Michael Collins. Either way. Pretty bad. The long flight home. But it's amazing that they were able to not only redock, right. But they were able to splash down in Hawaii alive. Yeah. There was one other part. So the command module technically had another part. The service module that had the oxygen in the water and all that stuff. And they scuttled that on the way back in. And then just the command module made its entry back into the Earth's atmosphere going again about 25,000, like 5000 degrees Fahrenheit height. And they had created this heat shield that they knew worked because they tested it on former or other Apollo missions. Yeah, but I mean, still, every time you've got three guys in a little tiny capsule going 25 0 mile an hour hurtling toward Earth with the outside temperature of 5000 degrees, it's kind of hairy. So, yeah, when they splashed down off the coast of Hawaii, it was a big, big deal. It had been successful. And actually, the stated primary objective, the primary mission of Apollo Eleven was to send a human into space, land them on the moon and bring them back safely. The thing that Kennedy challenged the United States to do, and when they splashed down and they were all safe and sound, apollo Eleven was successful. Yeah. I think that for all these Apollo missions, the Reentry is always the biggest. Well, I mean, there's tons of concerns, but Reentry is just so tough. And that they made this they made basically a covering that was meant to be destroyed. It's pretty ingenious sacrificial lamb covering. It's like it's supposed to burn. Right. And everything inside should be okay, right? Should be. I can't imagine that feeling, man. I can't either. And the fear, I'm sure it is fearful, but I wonder also, once you hit the atmosphere, I'll bet you can start to feel the speed. You're going to see the shaking out in space. I don't believe you can feel any speed at all, but because of the air pressure from the atmosphere, that's how you feel that stuff, right? Yeah. I met they could not have felt anything else, but we were probably going to die here any second now. Right? Well, I bet there's at least one or two. Yeehaw. You think? Yeah. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll talk about some of the other Apollo landings and then what's going on today right after this. So, Charles, as we were researching this, I went and looked, I was like, surely Michael Collins got another shot up in space? No. No. Well, they made a movie about him. They did. As an Irish revolutionary. His name sounded familiar. They went on to do Apollo 1213, 14, 1516, and 17. And all of them after Eleven, it was like, the mission is now. They got stuff done on eleven, but each mission after that had very specific goals that wasn't just go up to the moon no. And come back. Out of those six, five of them were successful. Very famously, Apollo 13 was not successful. It was an aborted mission that didn't land on the moon, but the other five did. And yeah, they were basically really fun scientific journeys. Yeah. Should we hit some of these highlights? I think Apollo 14 is known for Alan Shepherd hitting golf balls. It's funny, all the work they did, and that's like the iconic scene, is him hitting golf balls. Yeah. And some of the stuff that they're doing, too. That's NASA saying, go find out how easy it is to move around in these suits. Right. So Shepherds, like, all hit some golf balls up there, or like a golf course might be nice up there one day. Yeah. Apollo 15 was the first one where they used that cool, super cool looking roving vehicle, the lunar rover. That was really neat. They tore it up. Yeah. Remember that cartoon Doom Buggy? It was like Scooby Doo, but instead of being a dog, ScoobyDoo is a Doom Buggy. I don't remember that. You're not talking about Wonderbug, are you? No. Okay. I think it was doom buggy. Yeah, I remember Wonderbug. Wonderbug was a doom buggy. I could see there being more than one of these cartoons. Somebody ripping off somebody else. Doom Buggies were big in the 70s. Remember seeing those around? Oh, yeah. I bet you could buy Dune Buggy today for Speed Buggy. $900. Speed Buggy. Speed Buggy. All right. Yeah, it was a cartoon from the Wonder Bug. Was live action or the 70s? I'm sorry, was it did the Doom Buggy talk or something like that? Winderbug. Are you thinking of my mother of the car? Maybe I am. Okay, let me see. Apollo 17, I think, is noted for more lunar roving. And then a very famous quote as the last one. I love this. Who is it? Gene Cernan. We leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind. Yeah, that was something that the moon landings were part of this space race that grew out of this adversarial relationship of Cold War USSR and United States. But I do have to say that America did it pretty classy when we got there. Sure. Like, there were all sorts of talk about peace for humankind and that this is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. It wasn't like you say or anything like that from the moon. Yeah. So I'm really heartened by the fact that that's how it was done. It was meant to be a mission to the moon for humankind. I think there was a lot of camaraderie with cosmonauts and astronauts themselves somewhat. There's a lot of commemorative material up there commemorating cosmonauts, both alive and dead, that American astronauts took up with them. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about the stuff that we brought back and left from all these missions. And by the way, that last mission, 1972, we haven't been back since. No human has left Lower Earth orbit, I believe, since then. It's hard to believe. Yes. You'd think someone like we would have done it for some reason. No. I mean, we'll talk about it, but people just lost interest. It just became like, whatever. Part of it was the Vietnam War for sure. But I think it was also just kind of like, okay, we've done that a few times. How many rock samples are you guys going to go get? Wow me some other way. Well, it was expensive, and maybe the public sentiment, like, how much money we're going to pour into getting moon rocks sure. Probably had a lot to do with it. So all in they carted back. 2200 moon rocks? No, just samples. \u00a3842 of moon rocks, core samples, pebbles, dust, sand. And it helped them determine how old the Moon was. That's not bad. No, they figured something like 4.53 billion years or something like that. Okay. And they also came up with the current hypothesis for how the Moon was formed. That an object named Thea, about the size of Mars, collided with Earth early on in Earth's formation and merged, but also calved off the Moon. So the Moon was born from the Earth? Yes. That's pretty neat. So we left a lot of stuff, though. Yeah, it's kind of like they didn't listen to the Sierra Club. Yeah. \u00a3400,000 of stuff that's up there. And a lot of it is just gear, equipment. I mean, 70 space vehicles. Yeah, we just left her junk up there, basically. Yeah, there's a lot of junk up there. And they said that they did that on purpose to see what it would do, see what happened to it. A lot of it. Some of it was also that it just made sense to displace stuff. We didn't need to make room for the weight from these samples and moon rock. And it was also the 60s when you would just go do a family picnic and just, like, leave. Yeah, exactly. There was a debate, and it was finally put to rest. But for a while there, somebody came across some detail that there's 96 Amisis bags up there on the Moon. And what is that? An Amises bag is what you pee, poop, or vomit into if you're an astronaut. And so somebody said, oh, my God. There's 96 bags of poop and urine and vomit sitting up on the Moon? That's disgusting. And that's what everybody thought for a very long time. And then NASA lunar Archivist said, no, absolutely not. Nobody's puked on the moon. For one, only three guys have puked in space, and none of them were on the Moon. Not only did Aldrin and Armstrong not poop, they actually took a drug to keep them from pooping while they were on their lunar mission. Aldrin did pee, but there's no evidence that he left his bag behind. So they think that these 96 Amesis bags are all empty bags that were unused. Like, we didn't need this because we don't vomit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. But that's an urban legend, right? Ripley's Believe It or not website steered me wrong at first, and then I got steered right by, I think, Slate somebody. Well, good for them. There are some commemorative items besides just the flags. There are plaques kind of all over the place. Aldrin and Armstrong left one that said, we came in peace for all mankind. Little on the nose, but still a nice sentiment. A disk with 73 messages from countries all over the world micro etched. Yeah, just to show off more technology of the 60, like you said earlier, they honor their Russian cosmonaut counterparts, I guess, with metals. And then a symbol of the US. Eagle carrying an olive branch. Yup. And then they all left stuff when they went up there, including Charlie Duke, who I talked about from Apollo 16. I love this one. He took a picture of his family and left it behind. Yeah. So where are you going to do NASA administrators? Nothing. Yeah, so he left it behind. They think now that it's probably blank, though. That's sad. From the solar radiation. Yeah. And the family subsequently disappeared. Yeah. Their souls are trapped on the moon forever. Something else was smuggled, too, though, right? A commemorative plaque was smuggled. Right. Apollo 15, david Scott smuggled an aluminum plaque. Why would he have to smuggle that? I don't know. They just had it was off the charter or whatever, I guess. I don't know why. I know one guy smuggled a sandwich once. Really? Yeah. One of them that I can't remember, my brother like a roast beef sandwich. My brother at one time smuggled the PB and J into a Dire Straits concert. No. Did he really? Yeah, we still laugh about it. One of the nerdiest things ever, three songs in when he's like, you want a sandwich? He just starts unwrapping. That's hilarious. It's great. Wrapped in wax paper, I think it was. Oh, my God. What an Eagle Scout. So neither one of us were Boy Scouts, actually. Really? Because my brother would have owned that. Sure. And his son went all the way through, of course. Where is your brother Envious? Is he like Michael Collins? Yeah, I think so. But here's the deal with all that stuff up there, is lunar tourism is going to be a thing at some point? Yes, it is. So NASA actually had to establish lunar heritage sites and rules. Like, you can't go within a certain amount, don't go near any of this stuff, basically. Right. If you see a rover, just turn around and walk the other way, which is like or hop the other way, I guess. Yeah, don't fall down, man. Can you imagine, like, seeing a lunar rover? Oh, Dune can't go over there, but on the moon, too. Just see. Oh, my gosh, frozen in time. It'd be so Creepsville. Would be awesome. Creepsville, yeah. So what's going on these days? Well, so you said we haven't been back since to the Moon, which is really kind of astounding, if you think about it, but understandably, like, political interests, public interest, a lot of it waned. That means funding dried up. And because the moon kind of got left behind, NASA was like, well, we'll just focus on lower Earth orbit stuff and really went all in on the shuttle program. Right. And then also on the International Space Station. Both, again, are in lower Earth orbit, not in what you think of as outer space. Right. And then the Obama administration came. No, I'm sorry, the space shuttle accident that blew up the Columbia in 2003 caused George Bush to say george W. Bush to say, hey, let's bounce back. Let's go back to the Moon by 2020. Right. That's not happening, though. No. So NASA got directed back to the Moon, and Obama's administration did an audit and found that NASA was so far behind that we wouldn't make it back to the Moon by 2030. So Obama said, Go to Mars instead. This is par for the course for NASA. Every few years, they get a completely new directive to somewhere else in the solar system, and they have to scramble to change plans, try to salvage whatever they were working on. And they've gotten kind of good at applying stuff they're working on to basically fudge to say, okay, we're working on this Mars launcher right now, the SLS, the Space Launch System, and yeah, it can get us to Mars, but we could really also go to the Moon with this thing, too. Yeah. They're cross trained. Right. So after the Obama administration came along and said, forget the Moon, forget the shuttle program. Go to Mars, that started languishing, and then the current administration said, let's go back to the Moon, the current administration said, what did Obama say? We'll do the opposite of that. Right. So now the current target date is mind bogglingly tight. The target is to put humans on the Moon again in five years, 2024, and four years after that, establish a Moon base. That is extremely ambitious. Yeah. And I think most people kind of acknowledge that we're not going to hit that date. Well, NASA doesn't. These are outsiders. They'll say they're on target. Well, even the outsiders, I think, are saying, hopefully we'll be within a few years of that day. Right. It's possible. Yeah. I mean, one reason why it is possible is because NASA today has a thriving commercial space industry to work with, and they are embracing wholehearted partnering with them. Now, how does that work? They just pay those private firms a lot of money to tap their resources. Yeah. If you get a contract to build the Lunar Lander for NASA, you might as well just be printing money. Yeah. I think the current administrator for NASA estimated recently that it would be about $30 billion to get back to the Moon. Wow. And they put out a call for designs for the Lunar Lander. And so Jeff Bezos, remember, I went to New York to see the Blue Origin unveiling that's what he was doing was unveiling their thing called Blue Moon. It's a Lunar Lander. It's got a flat top like Kid and Play, and you can put anything on it. A lunar rover, a bunch of scientists, a lab, whatever you want, or pieces to a space base, a moon base, and build it slowly like that. And it looks pretty good. Nice. And it runs on hydrogen, which is big because they're going to start landing on the south pole of the moon, which is where they think permanent ice is, which can be mined, right? Yeah, they haven't been to the south pole, first of all, with any of the Apollo missions. So it makes a lot of sense to go there. And, yes, like you said, they got ice there. They can split that hydrogen and oxygen, thanks to electrolysis, and then you can make rocket fuel to use to get back. Potentially, yeah. I mean, the command module, when it was orbiting the moon, it was operating on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. So this is like an old technology. But the new thing is we would be mining it on the moon. Amazing. And kind of the logical conclusion of that then, is if we can establish a permanent presence on the moon, that's the new motto. So this program, which I think is kind of awesome, is called the Artemis Program that's returned to the moon, sister to Apollo. Right, which makes sense. But it's also the program that's expected to put the first woman on the moon, which is pretty cool. But the way that they're saying it is now, we're going to return to the moon and stay there. That's the point. We're permanently returning to the moon now. So once we do that, we'll have a new place to launch an outer space. Right. I mean, remember how many pounds of thrust and how much fuel that first stage of the Saturn took? And then the second stage, this doesn't require any of them. And so the plan is to build a small space station in permanent orbit around the moon that you fly out to. And then just like you keep a boat at your lake house tied up, they're going to keep a lunar lander tied up to the space station. And you just kind of go back and forth to the moon using that. Amazing. It is pretty amazing. And they're talking about doing this in five years. Can you imagine the quality of video and audio that we're going to get this time? It's going to be great. It's going to be pretty sweet. And I've seen that they are starting to like you're talking about with commercial tourism. I saw something like 5 million can get you to the moon. On the moon or just orbiting the moon. Oh, I'm sorry. To the space station. The ISS, 5 million, which is not bad because they wanted to charge Lance Bass, like 30 million or something crazy like that. Remember like HDTVs back in the day? That price is going to just keep coming down, everybody. Pretty soon you're going to be able to go to the moon for a cool $750,000. Even Lance Bass can afford that. You got anything else? No, sir. Well, congratulations to the world for 50 years of having been on the moon the first time. Great. I'm proud of us. And since Chuck said hooray, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one I've been meaning to read for a while. We did a show about live aid and do they know it's Christmas? And we're like, we love that song. Who doesn't love that song? Turns out a lot of people don't love that song. Really? Because the message is flawed. Oh, yeah. When you look at the lyrics, hey guys, was listening to the show and Live Aid and the song Do They Know It's Christmas? It's such a great song. Call me a buddy, daddy, but what I hear is this there won't be any snow in Africa this Christmas time. Check. The greatest gift they'll get this year is life. And he went, I think, okay. He said, Where nothing ever grows. That's not possible. Africa is a large continent with lots of growing things, okay? No rains or rivers flow. Ever heard of the Nile? That's North Africa. He said, basically, it treats Africa as a single homogenous region when in fact it's incredibly large and diverse. I can see that ignores the fact that most of Africa is in the southern hemisphere. So Christmas is in the summer there and assumes that lack of knowledge of Christmas is a flaw caused by lack of resources and good weather rather than a reasonable cultural difference. Considering that a large percentage of Africans are not Christian. I think this guy is taking the do they know it's Christmas, literally. Well, a lot of people wrote in about this. I got to say. I think the point of the lyrics was they have so much hardship in front of their faces. Are they even aware that Christmas time has come? The holiday spirit and season hasn't even shown up there because there's so much hardship. That's the point of the lyrics. Come on. He finishes by saying this. It's okay if you like the song. It's catchy, but please don't claim that everyone should like it. Everyone should like that song and that's anonymous from a bunch of people. I bet you're anonymous. Yeah. Well, thank you for writing and we always love opposing opinions. Right. Thanks, Bono. Yeah, right. He's like, if my lyrics had been accepted, it would have been a much better song. Yeah, well, if you want to point out that something we like is actually Heinous, we love hearing that kind of stuff. You can go on to Stuffyhana.com, and there you're going to find all of our social links twitter, Instagram, Facebook, that's it. And you can send us an email, which makes even more sense. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
75e7d518-d5a2-4f13-9fa5-aed900ed28e7	Selects: What's the misery index?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-whats-the-misery-index	<p>Economists love their data because somewhere in the numbers lies the answer to the ills of the country. They also love to frame data in a way people can relate to. Such is the case with the famous "misery index." Learn all about it in this classic episode.</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p>	<p>Economists love their data because somewhere in the numbers lies the answer to the ills of the country. They also love to frame data in a way people can relate to. Such is the case with the famous "misery index." Learn all about it in this classic episode.</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p>	Sat, 23 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=204, tm_isdst=0)	43073704	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e
null	null	null	null	null	null	null	null	null	null	"Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like, the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with their top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One NA member FDIC hi, everybody. It's Chuck here. I guess it's time to introduce another Saturday Select. I'm pretty miserable, so maybe I should just do this one on the misery index. It's called what's? The Misery Index. It's from June 23, 2016. I hope you like it. It was a lot of fun recording it. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. The W stands for Wayne Der. Wayne Coin. That gets you every time. I know it's funny to be 45 years old and named after Wayne Coyne because he's, like, 48, right? No, he's 50s, but it would be weird. I would have been named after a very kindergarten age Wayne Coin. All right, maybe your parents were friends with his parents, and they really thought a lot about him. Well, he's a real achiever, right? Wayne queen is going places. Okay. That was a weird sidetrack. It was already out of the gate, man. How're you feeling? I'm good. Got a lot on your plate. Got a lot going on. Oh, you know what today is? What? Dude, today is the day that I leave this office and I go to a shop in Edmond Park and pick up four brand new Last Chance Garage hats. Oh, wow. It's a big day. Very big day. Big day. So I have a couple of people I'd like to thank. It's a bigger deal than it should be for a grown man and a hat, but we all understand. First of all, Katie, my custom patch maker. This is really where it all came together. The patch isn't right. The hat's not right. Right. Katie killed it. It looks identical, and you can find her work@tulipcake.com. T-U-L-I-P kake. And I said people might ask you to make them. Last chance. Garage patches. Did you ever destroy the mold and I said, it's on you. It's up to you legally. I'm just saying you might get requests. You should have been like Ivan the Terrible who blinded his architects after they built his house. I don't care. People, I'd love to see these things around. And lamod big hats. Lamood for big heads. Because part of the problem was finding big and tall hats. Yeah, man. The problem I have with hats these days, I don't look like I have a huge head, but they just fit so snugly, and they don't go far down enough on my head. So I finally looked up oversized hats and found lemon hats. And, dude, they're exactly like the old hat. Nice. Except it doesn't stink. Oh, yeah, these are great. I got four brands. It's an improvement, for sure. So you're going to put one in, like, the seed vault in Norway? Probably one there. There will be one in the nuclear suitcase, and I'll wear the other two at the same time. At the same time back. Like Sherlock Holmes. That's right. Anyway, I'm super excited, so it's pretty cool. Thank you to Katie and Lemood Hats for allowing me to spend too much money getting four hats remade. And speaking of why we're thanking people, we owe a long overdue thank you to a guy who made us a really cool sign. Oh, you mean the sign this guy made for us, like, seven years ago? Yeah. His name is Matt Street. He's at Fatbison.com and he made a really cool woodcarved sign. Yeah, it was in our TV show. It was the production company got clearance rights for it and all that stuff. And we love the sign, but we just forgot to ever thank Matt. So, Matt, thank you so much for the sign. We love it. We have it hanging here in the studio. It is a work of art, and we appreciate it. We're sorry for the oversight. Yeah. Okay. Is that all the thank yous. So let's talk about the Misery Index, huh? Yeah, what a great transition. Had you heard of it before you came across this article? Yeah. I didn't know a lot about it, though. Apparently it's gone a little bit out of fashion lately, from what I understand. Yeah, I think so, because well, let's get into it. Okay. It turns out economics as a whole is in danger of going out of fashion. I've read this really interesting article on A on, which is maybe the greatest website on the planet. A-E-O-N. It might be co he said British about a lot of websites. I think I say it about A on a lot. Okay. And it just seems like I'm talking about different ones. But there's an article by Alan J. Levinovitz, and it's called The New Astrology, and he basically makes a parallel between economics and economists and economic theory when you take economics and try to apply it to future forecasting. Right. And the BCE. Chinese astrologers that basically directed the way that the economy or the government was going to move based on the movements of the stars. So what are they saying? You might as well just do that. He draws some pretty interesting parallels between the two, that economics in and of itself is not necessarily flawed, but when it's used to forecast the future, then it becomes inherently flawed. Yeah, this article really kind of yeah, a little bit, to an extent. I mean, the Misery Index is a legitimate economic tool, and it's hit or miss in a lot of ways. Yeah. I think one thing that hit home to me with researching this is it just seems impossible to say that there's one correct way of doing things right that is absolute. And you're like, if you do things this way, then there will be nothing but growth in jobs and the GDP. Sure. And GNP. And it just doesn't seem to work that way. Right. I think the problem is that if you listen to economists, they like to act like they do have a handle on that kind of thing. But if you really look into economics, it's very politicized. There's liberal economics and there's conservative economics, and the fact that each one saying it's right kind of makes you think that maybe no one is. But the Misery Index actually started out from a guy who was pretty good at walking the line between conservative and liberal economics. A guy what was his name? Oakin. Yeah, Arthur Oakin. Right. And he worked on Kennedy's staff. His Council of Economic Advisors. John F. Kennedy, that is. And I get the feeling one of the main influences in talking Kennedy, who initially did not necessarily agree, but talking Kennedy into kind of trying to enact both conservative and liberal economic policies simultaneously. Right. The US. Was in a recession when Kennedy took office in 1961, and they talked him into not only increasing government spending, like welfare programs, they raised the minimum wage and some other stuff like that, but they also cut taxes, which you do one or the other. You cut taxes and hope everything goes for the best because businesses will start investing in spending or you start investing in welfare programs to help your Ailing lower and middle classes. Right. You don't do both. Yeah. And Kennedy did both. And it was successful. Yeah. Well, first he said, I don't know about this, I don't know about this. Author Mike Kennedy. Sounds like a robot. Mike Kennedy did too, actually. Yours is fine, but Arthur mr. Oakoun Oakun. Oakun, I think. Oakun. Oakin. It's a weird name. O-K-U-N. He talked him into it and said, trust me. And things worked out in that case. Yeah, well, and a lot of guys, including Oakland's names were made by this advice that panned out like, the US. Entered a boom and Oaken ended up as being the head of the Council of economic advisors for Kennedy successor, Lyndon Johnson. Right, yeah. And one thing that economists, economists love to do is they love to forecast and all that stuff, but it's all about data. Sure, man. They love to pour over data, like stuff that makes the average person their mind bleed from boredom. They just find it fascinating. That's what they do on Friday nights. Friday nights they pour over data, historical data, trying to find it's like a big puzzle, and they're all trying to solve it. Right. So they pour over this data. Oakland did, and he said, you know what? I noticed something here between 1948 when we started recording some decent unemployment rates. Right. Which I didn't know. I didn't know we started at 1948. Yeah. It seems like it would have gone back before then, but between 1940, 819, 60, he said, you know what I've noticed that the gross national product rises 3% for every percentage point that unemployment falls, with the caveat that unemployment has to be between three and 7.5%. Right. Which is a pretty bold statement to say, I've noticed this is a definite trend. It is. And it came to be called Oakens Law because it was verified. Other people poured over the data. And like, this guy is right, man. He just keeps coming up with hits, doesn't he? That's right. And the reason you would want to know some arcane piece of data like that is that if you know that that's the case, then you can say, well, if we attack unemployment, can get it down a couple of points, we can raise GDP or GMP by 3% every time we drop it. So when we need to bulk GMP up, we just attack unemployment. Right, right. Easy peasy. Yeah. Everyone says thank you, Art. Yeah, things worked out pretty well for a while, but then the 1970s came along and we're going to talk a little bit about Stagflation now, but if you haven't heard it, we have a pretty good episode. What's it going, I think so called what is Stagflation? From February 24, 2011. Yes. I think as far as our economics episodes, it was not bad. Okay. I went back and listened to a lot of it okay, good. Before I got bored. So it checks out. Yeah, the first three minutes were great, but yeah, go back and listen to that. But like he said, he served as chairman of the CEA for Johnson. And then in 1973, a very unfortunate thing happened that kind of ended up rocking the world and the United States in particular, with our economy. So we're going to take a break and we're going to talk when we get back about the Middle East. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyberattacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt. And everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, what happened in I'm two years old. I am negative three. Okay. The Arab oil embargo happened, right? That's right. So at the time, until very recently, the US. Was super dependent on foreign oil. Yeah. Like other countries we wouldn't even sit down at the table with we were getting oil from. Right. Yeah. We're doing better now with our dependency, but back then, very bad. Very. And it was a source of anxiety for a lot of people, and that anxiety actually panned out. So in 1973, Egypt and Syria and a few other Arab nations invaded the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula to attempt to take back land from the state of Israel. Right? Right. The US. Was found to be supplying arms to Israel. So as far as the Arab states were concerned, the US. Had cast its lot on Israel's side, and they were fairly peeved about that. So they literally shut off the tap of oil flowing to the United States and other countries that were found considered to be on the side of Israel in this war. Huge deal. It was an enormous deal, this foreign dependency and the precarious situation that it plates the United States and came to pass. And the price of oil rose 37%. The long lines at the gas station were never seen before or since, even after the financial crisis of 2008. It was just insane. There was gas rationing in the United States in 1973 because of the oil embargo, and after a while, the tips were turned back on. But that shock to the system screwed the economy up for a decade. Yeah. Inflation went out of control. And another unfortunate thing happened along the same timeline. Unemployment started to creep up. And these two things happening at the same time is devastating. Yeah. And up to this point. So, first of all, the US. Had never had a shock to the system like that. That was one thing. Yeah. It wasn't a gradual thing. It was like yeah. But the other thing is, when you have something that has never happened before, you can look at it and say, wow, what happened? And new things that have never happened before come out of that. And one of the things was inflation and unemployment going up, because up to this point, economists just assumed that the two were mutually exclusive. If inflation was up, prices were high. That meant that companies could go out and hire more people. So unemployment, of course, would be low. Yeah. It kind of made sense. Well, not after the oil embargo. The shock to the system led to, like you said, high unemployment rates and high inflation. And it was a miserable time. Yeah. And that was called stagflation. It also led to skateboarding, as we all know. Oh, yeah. Because of the pools. Right. Yeah. Well, actually, that was the drought. But I think the drought was also tied into the economics. Sure. But they couldn't fill up swimming pools, so they started skating and swimming pools. Well, yeah. If you have a drought, then you lose your crops. And if you lose your crops, you lose money. A significant sector of money. Exactly. So, good news. We have half pipes now in Peralto. They're still around, right? I think so. Of course, bad news is, like you said, it had a devastating effect for many years on the United States. Right. So Oakin starts to look around. He said, you know what? Things are pretty bad here. One might even say miserable. I haven't gotten any claim for a while. Yeah. Nothing has been named after me in a while. Right. So let me create this new method for looking at the economy. And it turns out to not be like a look over a period of time or anything, but just sort of like a Polaroid of that day. Not just that day for the country as a whole or for the Fed or anything like that. But what he did that was different was he looked into what it was like that day or that year for the average American in their daily life. Right. And he called it the misery index. Yeah. And it was very rudimentary at the time. It was just a simple calculation of the yearly rate of inflation plus the unemployment rate. Yeah. So if you have, like, 5% inflation and 2% unemployment, you have a 7% misery index. It's as simple as that. I don't know why it got so much, why it was hailed as a big deal. Because I think Oakinhead a knack for noticing things that seemed obvious in retrospect. Right. But at the time no one had ever noticed before. Okay, I'll buy it. Thank you. Why not? All right, so now he has this index and not only can he look at a snapshot of that day, he can go back because he was a data wonk. Sure. He could look at data throughout history. Well, at least in 1948. Yeah. When we started recording unemployment, like we said, which must have been frustrating for him, because our inflation rates data goes back to 1914. But that's only part of the equation. He must have been like, oh, man, sure. And to be able to look at the Great Depression, you could have learned a lot. Sure. So he went and he looked back and he says, here is what we've noticed, and this is so obvious to me that presidents and political parties are brought in and out of office largely depending on how the economy is doing. Yeah, but they kind of proved it. But not even just how the economy is doing. He was saying, like the misery index you can use to predict whether the presidency is going to change hands politically. Yeah. So 1956 misery index is 6.53, which is great. It's during Ike. Yeah, very low. Mr. Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, and he got reelected because things were pretty good as far as the misery index goes. Yes. Everybody was pretty happy, even though they didn't really know what the misery index was because it wasn't invented yet. Right. They just had a general sense. Well, yeah. They didn't call it that at the time. No, they're just like seems fine to me. Are you miserable? No, I'm not miserable. Are you? So in 1968, Johnson came to the end of his term and the misery index was up to 8.3. And then he had his Democratic successor, Hubert Humphrey, in line. And because the thing had crept up people a little more miserable and they said, no, get out of here, I want Mr. Nixon in office. Right. And I guess I'm not sure about this. So I don't understand why Johnson was replaced by Humphrey, by the Democrats in this article. It seems to be because of this misery index that it would have predicted that. But he was the incumbent president, I should know this. Yeah. He was a one term, technically one in a third or one and a quarter, because he took over after Kennedy's assassination. But if his term was up in 68, then he would have won the 64 election. So he technically, I think, would have been able to have been president again. I'm not sure. We could have found this out, too. Sure. But I'll bet there's somebody out there who can explain it to us. And so email us, will you? At any rate, Nixon gets elected. And the misery index shot up to eleven point 67 during the first term, but then started to decline enough that he did get reelected, but then in 1974, with Watergate, the misery index left all the way up to 17.1. That's not good. No, that was the all time high at the time, from what I understand. I think so. And that happened around 1974, which meant that when Watergate broke, some people who really subscribed to the misery index say Watergate might not have been quite as big a deal if the misery index had been low at the time. Right. He might have been able to squeak by without resigning or being forced out of office. I think everyone has more leeway if things are great, sure. But his currency has been spent. Man, I watched all the President's Men a few weeks ago again. You ever seen that? No. Great movie. Yeah. I've always meant to. You really good. And just sort of like they don't make a lot of movies like that anymore. Spotlight reminded me of all the residents. Sure. I haven't seen that one yet, either. It's good. It's just I call it Movies for Adults. There's no chase scenes or anything remarkable. It's just good dramatic movie making. Yeah. Good stuff. Anyway, what's wrong with chase scenes? Huh? What's wrong with chase scenes? No, there's nothing inherently wrong with the chasing. I know what you mean. Just for the sake of a chase scene, which we see a lot of these days, you know what I mean? Like, Mark Ruffalo is chasing a priest in a car and Spotlight yeah. Where were we? Okay. We're with Nixon. Well, not with Nixon. You know what I mean? Ford comes in office for a short time, and he actually managed to get the misery index down. Well, I think just the fact that Nixon was out, I think that probably helped inspire consumer confidence and the like. So it cracked back down to twelve point 66, but not enough to keep the Democrats and Jimmy Carter from coming into office. And Carter actually cited the misery index? Yeah, it was relatively new at the time. He talked too much about it, but it was a g, whiz thing that you could really just point to, like this. Plus, this is the misery index. Can you hear me? Yeah, that's my question. That was his famous quote, can you hear me? I came back to haunt him, though, to say the least, because he talked a lot about the misery index. And then in his term, it reached an all time high of 21.98%, which, man, I really think that shocked to the system under the oil embargo and plenty of other stuff. This stuff gets laid at Carter's feet, I think, unfairly in a lot of respects. Well, I mean, I would love for someone to really know their stuff, to explain to me exactly how much a president's influence has on the economy and how long it takes for that to bear fruit. Yeah, I would love to know that, too. I think, though, the guy who came after Carter. Reagan is a pretty sterling, unassailable example of an impact a president can have on the economy. Whether you agree with his politics or his economic policies or not, he most decidedly had an effect on the economy. Yeah, I just remember hearing one time, I need to look this up, but somebody told me once that the economic impact of a presidential, a four year term is felt the most, like eight years later or something. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Economies don't move on a dime. Yeah, I don't know if that's lumbering things that aren't fully understood by anybody. Yeah, it's interesting to me now more than ever before, though, because remember, economics used to just bore me. I know. I was really surprised when you suggested this one. It's slightly more interesting to me now. What changed? Just wondering things like that. And during an election season, are the decisions we make now going to affect us in one year, two years? Eight years? Well, if there's any economists who are still listening after that initial remark about the new astrology, we'd love to get a primer on how long it takes for a president to impact an economy, if they do at all. And I'm sure it's a range, so it's not like starting at eight years. And really, honestly, was Carter that bad or was he a victim of cross stars? Yeah, I mean, you can make a case where a lot of ills of presidency is not being directly at their feet. But you remember that Simpsons where they unveiled a statue of Jimmy Carter in Springfield, and on the pedestal it says, Malays forever. And somebody goes, Jimmy Carter, he's history's greatest monster. Poor Carter. So like we said, it came back to haunt Carter because he talked a lot about the index. It rose a lot. Then Reagan came in, was like, well, let's talk about that misery index that you like to talk about so much that's at an all time high, Reagan got in there, knocked it down to 9.55 by the end of his term, enough to get Bush senior in. It inched up some that Clinton was able to it didn't go up that much, though. And I read an interesting article today on whether or not Ross Perot really got Clinton elected, because that's sort of the popular thought. He was a spoiler. Yeah, I can see that. But he's definitely more in line with Bush senior's policies than Clinton's. Well, at the time, yeah, you would think. But I read one article that said that it was kind of a myth that basically Clinton won by 6 million votes and it would have taken a Perot supporters to have been aligned with Bush. And supposedly exit polls showed it more like 38% to 40%. And so they're saying it's sort of a myth that Perot swung the election to Clinton. I see, but I mean, that was one person's opinion. So who knows? You know, I've been reading a lot about, you know, that suspicion you can't quite kick, that there's really no difference between Republicans and Democrats these days, that they're really just kind of all in the same little club. I think people feel that way sometimes. I've been reading a lot about that and apparently it's all based on neoliberalism. That's like the key. And there's a lot of if you look into neoliberalism and the policies of neoliberalism, you realize we're like living in the thick of it, but everyone's kind of blind to the idea that it's just a single thing that basically everybody in power subscribes to and that it has a trickle down effect of screwing over everybody below the top. But just the name itself seems totally fine, but it's interesting. Yeah, I researched that a little bit lately, too. Yeah, we totally should. Let's do it. Chuck. Agreed. Man, we're going to get some emails for that one from billionaires. Yeah. So let's just finish out this quick little recap. Clinton brought it down to 7.35. Things were great. Bush Jr. Gets elected despite the fact that Clinton had a low index. Well, it depends on how you look at the 2000 election. We should do one on that one, too. But that's considered one of those rare instances where the misery index didn't indicate where it was going to go. But you could also say it might have had things gone slightly differently in the Supreme Court. George W. Bush, the index rose from 735 to eleven four, and then Obama came in and went down to 787. But another weird flaw in the system is exposed there because despite the fact that the misery index was lower, things were not good. The stock market had crashed, unemployment was rising at a rapid rate, and they said it basically was another example of like, look, this misery index isn't all it's cracked up to be, right? So let's work on it. Yeah. I think a lot of people said this is too simplistic, you can't rely on this. We'll talk about some of the additional factors that people have worked into the misery index after this. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolatecovered goodness with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer, no special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, chuck so the Misery index, oakin everybody's happy with him. They're like, this is just too simple. Especially in what's called the postagflation era after the oil embargo. So some people have said, okay, there's certainly there's other things you can add in to give a genuine true snapshot of what the conditions are like on the ground, as it were, right? Well, yeah. Not only what the conditions are, but whether or not performance over a period of time is getting better or getting worse. Yes. And rather than, say, under this president, the misery index was this. And it gives you a pretty good idea with this one guy named Robert Barrow. He wrote a 1996 book called Getting It Right markets and Choices in a Free Society. And in it, he takes the Misery index oakens misery Index, and he says, we can add some stuff to this to make it an even clearer picture, not just of the conditions on the ground, but you can take it and apply it genuinely to a president's entire term to see just how good their economic policies were or weren't for the health of the economy. Yeah. And he added some other stuff. Yeah, he added four main new measurements, took the inflation rate during the last year of the president's term, compared it to the average inflation rate over the entire course of the subsequent presidents term, which is based on what you were saying, that a four year term. The effects are felt like years down the road. Sure. So I think that's what he was doing there. Right? Yeah, it makes sense. I did the same thing with the rate of unemployment. That was number two. He added in changes for the 30 year government bond yield over presidency. And then finally he said, I need to look at the difference between the long term GDP growth and the real rate of growth. Right. Compare all these things along with the original. This plus this equals this. Right. And with the real growth rate, that's where you take the actual change, either the shrinking or the growth of the economy, the GDP year over year. Right? Yes. And he took that for year over the course of a presidency and averaged it out, I guess that's right. Yeah. And he came up with what's called the Barrow Misery Index. And a lot of people think that that's where the misery index started, when in fact, it was Oakland who came up with it about 20 years before Barrow took it up and improved it. Yeah. So under Barrow's Misery Index clinton and Reagan this Bill Clinton, of course, came out on top. And then a guy named Steve Hanky about ten years later. This was originally in 1996, and then Hanky came along in 2006 and said, you know what? We need to add even more things. And this all just makes sense. If you want a more detailed picture, then add more detail to the data going in. Right. So he said, we need more detail. Why don't we do this? Let's measure inflation and unemployment like we're doing, and then let's now add interest rates and subtract annual percentages from the GDP to get a more accurate picture. Right. And he said, you can use this anywhere. You can use it all over the world. Well, that's what he did, and that's kind of what made his version of it pretty famous. He figured out how to apply it to other countries, even countries that used price controls to keep inflation in check, which means price inflation is held back artificially. So Hanky looked into other things, like the exchange rate in the black market in a given country, that kind of thing, and he figured out real inflation rates, and he applied it around the world to find out what country is the most miserable and what country is the least miserable. And what he found in 2014 was that the most miserable country in the world was Venezuela, which had a Hanky Misery Index of 79.4. It's pretty high. Very high. And then Japan had the lowest misery at 5.41. Yeah. The US came in at about 19. Correct. I think. Eleven oh, 11th. Yeah. No, eleven was our oh, I'm sorry, 19th. Yeah. Yeah. Ranked 19th. Yes. With an eleven rating. I didn't hear that. Yeah, because my tooth is still gone. You think it'd be more pronounced the th if there were 19th? I would have heard it clears about August. Can't get here soon enough. So there are critics of this one, too, though. There are critics of all these indexes. Yeah. A lot of them say no still to elementary. Yeah. Some people say this is all just tripe. Like you can't sure, you can't use this stuff to make any real predictions. You could use it to look back at the past, but to use it for the future? Probably not. But some people do believe in the idea that if you have enough data and the right kind of data, you can get a clear picture of misery. And again, that's what we're after here. The whole point of the misery index is to figure out how unhappy and just low the average person in the country is feeling at that moment. Right. So HuffPo actually came up with a pretty good one. HuffPo boo yay. In 2009, HuffPo came up with what they called the Real Misery Index. Right. And so a lot of people cite the use of what's called you three unemployment statistics, which, when you hear unemployment numbers in the news, that's what you're hearing. That's what the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues as the official unemployment numbers. Right. Yeah. And that's the very first thing that people will say if they want to poo poo the unemployment numbers. These are just false numbers. Yeah. If someone says, hey, man, look how great ex president is doing. Look at the unemployment rate. Right. They're just using the U three. Right. They need to use the U six. Wake up, pal. Open your eyes. Which is valid. Well, yeah. So the BLS has six measurements of unemployment, u one through U six. And U six is the broadest. It includes people who are so discouraged with the state of the job market that they've given up looking for work, and they just have given themselves over entirely to Judge Alex. Sure. Right. And then it also includes people who are working part time but wish they could work full time, but there's no full time work available. Yeah. Like I'm a graphic designer, but I work at Starbucks. So that's the U six measurement. And that's considered the broadest snapshot of unemployment. The real vision of unemployment. Yeah. Like you said, mostly they use U three, I guess because it's in the middle. I mean, you one they would never use. You two everybody used to like, but not anymore. I still like you, too. Yes. Not like I used to. I'm not poopooing anything. But I did see that concert they did on HBO, and I have to hand it to them. My big problem with you, too, for years was that they just got so out of control with those live shows like these giant spider spaceships and things. And I was always of the belief that, man, you need to go back to basics and just get up on stage and play again. And that's what they did with this new tour. I mean, there was a cool visual element, but the stage set up in the way they did it was very much back to basics in it. That's cool. I think they really connected with fans again. Yeah. That's got to help. Yeah. Because when the interactions between you and the fans rather than the fans and giant spiders yeah. You can only go so far in that direction. I think they realize that. Sure. Anyway, way to go, you two. I'll defend those guys even though I know everyone in the world generally wants to punch Bono in the face. I'm not one of them. I kind of feel weird. I like, them. Yeah, I'm on record. Sure. Bono, if you're listening. Well, if your Jared indicator is any predictor, bono is going to come out to be canonized one day. If what? Oh, yeah, you're like, there's something about Jared. I don't like him. And we found out about Jared. Right. And then now you're saying Bono like Bono good guy. Something is good. They're going to find a cure for cancer in a saliva or something. You never know. So did we even mention what the HuffPo what kind of outrageous numbers they came up with? No, we didn't mention everything they use. We were talking about the use six measurement. HuffPo used that measurement, the most extreme one of unemployment numbers. They also used other things, like the inflation rate of food and drink and fuel and health care, because the Misery index just uses the Consumer Price Index, which is inflation as a whole. Right. HuffPo used the inflation of some really essential things that people can't do without, and where you're going to immediately feel the pinch when prices go up with those key factors. Right. They also included the rate of credit card delinquency, the cost of housing, how many people are using food stamps. That seems like a smart move. Totally home equity loan deficiencies, I guess. People who are laid on their payments. And then they took the average of those seven numbers and added it to the use six unemployment numbers, which here you can step back and say, wait a minute, how are you adding this together? How does this make any sense? You can't just keep adding things, right? And really, you can take that all the way back to the initial Misery index. Like what? You're just adding unemployment percentage and inflation and all of a sudden you have a magic number that doesn't make any sense. This HuffPo metric really points out the inherent flaw in it, I think. Yeah, because in 2008, the Oakland Misery Index was 81. But HuffPos Real Misery Index, aka you think things are bad, here's how bad they really are. Indexed was 29.9 compared to the 8.1. Right. And some people are like, oh, well, it just shows how off the oak and Misery Index is. Yeah, who knows? I know they quit doing the Real Misery Index at Hopko, like, five years ago. I think it was am I going to call it a stunt? It was a bit of a stunt, maybe, but I'm sure really what happened was the writer who was contributing it for free, like, left for a paying job. That's probably what happened as a HuffPo Real Misery in day. Yeah, you're probably right. I was reading this guy. Tim McMahon. He has a site where he writes for a site, I'm not sure if it's his or not, called Inflationdated.com jim McMahon. Tim his brother got you. Not the Super Bowl shuffle. No, his brother. Okay, so he mentioned this 2001 paper that concluded that unemployment causes 1.7 times more misery than inflation. And so if you're doing any kind of misery index that uses those two, you need to first multiply the unemployment number by 1.7 before adding it to the inflation number to properly wait it. How did they come up with that? So I looked at the paper and it was actually pretty clever. There's like 23 years of this survey of life satisfaction and happiness that these researchers looked at back in 2001, and they found that economically based or just like, how happy are you now? Here's the thing. It was how happy are you? It was like a single question. Like, would you say, based on how you're feeling right now, that you are fairly satisfied, unsatisfied very satisfied with your life right now? Right. And then they took that measurement for the country as a whole, and you can do this for any country that participated in the survey. And then they looked at inflation, and then they looked at unemployment for those years, and they could figure out the variation between the interplay between unemployment and inflation and satisfaction, and they found that unemployment was 1.7 times more miserable than inflation in regards to life satisfaction as a survey goes. Pretty clever. Yes, it's a lot of hocus pocus, but I thought it was pretty clever how they did it. That makes sense to me because to be without work, like, if you have a job and things, inflation is happening, you still have your job. Sure. And you're like, man, this sucks to pay this much more, but you could still conceivably pay for it. Yeah, I'll cut back here or there. If you're unemployed, then there's not a lot of hope. Right? Yeah, that number might be conservative. Yes, I agree with you. Very interesting stuff, sir. So that's it, man. That's the misery index. You got anything else? No, but I'm looking forward to hearing from economists that me, too. Like, in an unbiased way, try to explain things. Me, too. If you send just these crazy political emails and they're going to fall in deaf ears because everyone yells at each other that they're right. I just want to hear some real numbers. Yeah, do it. Chuck. If you want to know more about the misery index, you can type those words in the search barhostoforce.com. And since it's a search bar, just plain old search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this follow up on Vocal Fry. Once again, regarding vocal fry, guys, you guys were offended because someone said vocal Fry was repulsive. But there is another side to this dudes. I suffer from a neurological disorder known as misophonia, which we totally should do a show on this. I agree. It's a condition where a person has extreme emotional response to commonly occurring sounds. And I remember hearing a lot of times it's like people chewing noises or gum or whatever he said. In my case, my trigger noise is the high pitched s sound. When some people speak, it feels like my brain is cringing, as if an allergic reaction is taking place. Cannot stress enough this is not a mere annoyance. It's a legitimate mental disorder that can vary greatly in severity. I don't visibly freak out when I hear my trigger noise, but it really kills me inside. It gives me an instant headache and which is why I will get away from the noise if at all possible. I believe in avoiding complaining in life and playing the victim. But this disorder really has made my life like a subtle hell. It's been especially toxic to my family relationships and my ability to learn in school. I felt compelled to email you guys because you definitely appreciate interesting medical conditions. I think it would be a great topic for a show someday. There's a documentary about it called Quiet Please. If you watch the trailer, you might be inspired to watch it to learn what the condition is. Yeah, huge. Thanks to everyone and stuff. You should know. You make the mundane parts of my life interesting and educational. I'm going to anonymize this from Texas because I didn't hear back from him from Texas. PS was in disbelief when Chuck said he had not seen Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore. That's a good PS. Believe it. It's a good postscript and post PPS, right? Not PSS. I think it's postscript. Yeah, but people often put PSS. It doesn't mean anything. Do you think Stuff You Should Know could ever become a television show? Well, text never. We actually did that. We found out the hard way that it came. Yes, we did a TV show on the Science Channel, and it ran for one full season that played out over the course of several days, which will always have Chuck. We'll always have that season of television. We did one. It lasted nine or ten days. Yeah, let's just show them all at once. Out of order. But you never know. We might get another shot at Stardom, but we're not looking to. I like it in this room where no one's looking at us. Yeah, jerry doesn't look at us. No, she's just there looking away and discussing the track. Good idea about the mesophonia. I think we mentioned that before. I really like that vocal Fry episode, and that was the one thing that I wish we would have mentioned because it's a legitimate thing that it does affect some people. But yeah, look for a mesophonia episode at some point in the future. Text. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com, and you can join us at our very own home on the web. Stuffychildnow.com STUFFYou Knows is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo ballistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for Digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com."
https://podcasts.howstuf…uly-part-one.mp3	Stuff You Should Know July 4th Extravaganza, Part 1: Mom	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/stuff-you-should-know-july-4th-extravaganza-part-1	What makes America unique? In the first segment of this special two-part episode, Josh and Chuck join up with guests from The Daily Show and The Onion to take a closer look at the Stuff You Should Know About America.	What makes America unique? In the first segment of this special two-part episode, Josh and Chuck join up with guests from The Daily Show and The Onion to take a closer look at the Stuff You Should Know About America.	Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:40:39 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=17, tm_min=40, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=193, tm_isdst=0)	51419954	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer, school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comssysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code S YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. So, hey, I guess. And welcome to the whatever this thing is, right? It's a podcast now. I guess it is. We're chopping it up, stripping it down, using parts elsewhere, right? Yeah. What are you talking about? Well, Chuck, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. But you and I went to Sirius XM headquarters in New York. That's right. In their studios. And we got like 50 Stuff You Should Know listeners to show up. And they sat there and watched us do a live radio show. Live the tape. And it was about July 4. It was about America. Totally fine in neato. I kind of like this live show thing. It's a little weird at first, right? But I think we got over that in the first few minutes. I never did. Plus, also, I don't know if you'll be able to pick this up, but starting at about the 30 minutes mark, I became almost overwhelmed with the need to go to the bathroom. Yeah, you told me this afterwards. I had to so badly. And I was just holding it because I drank so much water. Remember? I was nervously drinking water, which is like the dumbest thing you can do before you're about to sit down and perform for 2 hours. Yeah. So I guess listen out for that as we present this two parter episode, which helps for us because one of our listeners send in some beer. And Jerry's refusing to do anything for this week because she's mad at us because we didn't share it with her. So this is good for us, right? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that went down. This is why we're doing this, okay? We're releasing this for this reason. All right? So, without further ado, we got the stuff you should know does America with special guests Wyatt Sinek and Halle Haglin of the Daily Show with John Stewart. That's right. And Joe Garden and Joe Rondazo of the Onion and Jill Morris of the Onion as well. Yeah. So let's begin, Chuck. Let's take you back to July 1, 2011, heady days starting out. Yeah. I wanted to change that music at the last minute to the Elvis. Josh said, it's too late, and then I was going to walk in like Elvis backwards. Then Halle said, you might trip and that might be funny, but I didn't do it. Good. You ready? Yeah. So, hey, and welcome to the live radio show. I'm Josh. This is Chuck. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have stuff you should know. That's good. That was special for the radio. Special. You didn't even tell me about it. No, you never tell me. That looks fresh, too. The ink is rubbing. Yeah. You just came up with the facts of life a bit. Yes. In the moment. So we're doing this a little different, Chuck, than normal. It's just you and me now. We have 50 ish pairs of eyes on us while we're doing this. That's more than 100 eyes. Yes, 50 ish. And then we also have some special guests that we're doing for this stuff you should know about America live show. Right. Friends from the Daily Show. Yeah. With John Stewart. Right. Well, John Stewart's not here. Yeah, but that's the full title, I'm told. You have to say it. That's what Hodgman told me. Okay, so our friends from The Daily Show with John Stewart include Wyatt Sinack, right? Who you all know and love, and one of the esteemed Daily Show writers, Halle Haglin. How are you? Hayley Hallie is also a performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. And if you all are fans of that, then you're pretty smart and cool. Because it's awesome. Exactly. And then we have friends from The Onion as well, america's finest news source, which just celebrated its thousand issue last week. Wow. Yeah, it's been around for a while. We have the editor, Joe Randazzo. Say hi, Joe. We have one of the head writers, Joe Garden, and we have another writer, Jill Morris. Right? Yeah. So we have quite a lineup here today. Yeah. Joe's lovely wife Anita sitting in front of us. Yeah. Hey, Anita. My lovely wife is sitting in front of us. Yeah. And then a bunch of strangers. That's not quite true. We have friends here as well. We do. And thank you, strangers and friends, for coming out for this. This is really flattering. So thanks a lot. Thanks. Hopefully it'll be fun, right? Yes. Do you want to get started? Yes. Are you supposed to wear these? I mean, you can if you want. I don't like that. We don't normally wear this is, like, behind the scenes. We usually do have headphones, and apparently we're the only ones who don't wear them at stuff. You should know how stuff works. That's right. Yeah. We're rebels. I don't think we should change now, Chuck. I just don't want to get him sweaty. Okay, so let's start. We recently did a podcast on America's First Murder. I think it came out yesterday, right? Yeah. Who was it? John Billington. That's right. We just gave away the ending. That's right. We were digging around, like, doing research for this podcast, and I don't know how many of you have heard it or not. Hopefully very few, because we ripped off some of the content from it for this part. But one of the things we found was that John Billington, who was a Puritan and lived in Plymouth Colony, when we started digging around in Plymouth Colony, there's this whole see me underbelly yeah. Puritan. We should do that. Yeah, the Puritans. There was this whole life of crime that we had no idea existed. And so we started digging further and further, and we came to realize America is kind of this crazy place right. For a reason. It's been built, like, echelon by echelon upon crazy upon crazy. Right. So we figured we just kind of go over some of the factors that led to the craziness that was taking on the British, right? Yes. And we had our good friend Wyatt Sinak come by to talk to us about that. Right. You want to come sit with us? He just looks surprised, everybody. You're going to wear them? Because I'm a professional. These headphones were probably worn by Bridget the midget show. Yeah. You see that door is tightly sealed. I asked if I could take a peek since no one's here this weekend. No one peaks? No, they keep in there. It's her medically sealed if I'm scratching it out. Yeah. So, as I'm sure everyone here knows, you are formally trained in Colonial American history. You have a doctorate in it, right? I do. I have a doctorate from the University of Hawaii. Right. Rainbow warriors. No, it's the University of Hawaii at Arkansas. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's why we invited you by here today. Are you familiar with some of the senior underbelly of American history, or are you just kind of part and parcels to the textbook stuff? I know the textbook stuff, and I know the stuff that they talk about in reality shows when it's like, oh, yeah, you're going to go live in 1800 house, or you're going to go live in, like so I assume it was like that where there were camera crews following you everywhere, and we just haven't found those tapes yet. Right. I assume they're three quarter inch tapes, so that's probably part of the problem. Nobody has a three quarter inch machine anymore. Right? We're going to, I guess, open your eyes a little bit then. All right. Are you cool with that? Sure. So, Chuck, one of the first things that we figured out, I guess what caught our attention is the criminal element that was in Plymouth Colony with the Puritans, right? Yes. And by criminal, we mean specifically bugger. E. Are you familiar with bugger? Not on an intimate, but I do know what buggery is. I should point out real quick that there was an email exchange last week, a real email exchange, where Josh had written this out and said bugger is a very polite term for Bcality. Yes. And I had to send him an email and said, hey, dude, by the way, bugger is also sodomy I have the email still. It's framed and on my wall. I'm just curious if we have those people at work that, like, spy on your email. All it literally said was, by the way, bugger is also sodomy, Josh, I just want you to know that I also like the idea that in the time when buggery was popular, that perhaps if you were a registered buggerer, that somebody was like, oh, gross. You mess around with animals and someone would get indignant and like, no, I do not. I am a sodomist. A very proud one. Yeah, very true. No, I would never do that to an animal. They're beautiful creatures, especially that one. Yeah, okay. Maybe I would. All right, you got me. I'm an all around buggerist. There was an actual buggerist that we came across. Right. His name is Thomas Granger. And can you read old English? Sure. So this is a quote from the court records of Plymouth Colony, I think, in, like, 1631. Do you mind taking it right here? Sure, just read that. Is this a test to see if I know how to read? Yes, read Old English. That'd be really embarrassing. The E's are V's. Oh, is that what that is? Okay. Do you want me to read it in Old English? Yeah, of course. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. 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Thomas, growling lake servant sally Brewster of Ducksboro. Was this court that everyone used to sound in America, was this court indicted for buggery with a mare, a cow, two goats, divers, sheep, two calves and a turkey, and was found guilty and received sentence of death by hanging until he was dead? Right. So that's what happened to you if you were caught. I guess this guy is probably like the worst cereal bugger that Plymouth Colony produced that you know of, but I could find record of. But I was going to say, it does seem like okay, so there's a mare, a cow, two goats, some sheep, some calves, which I don't know if they're related to the cow and the turkey. And I was saying this to you earlier, for whatever people want to say about our technological distractions that we have, those may be the only things keeping us from having sex with animals. This is clearly these are bored people that are just like, I'm bored and there are no singles bars. There's just that barn. Just that barn and this groin. Let's make something happen. Also, I'm just going to say this. I'm going to throw this out there. How do we know the turkey didn't bugger the man? I think that's an excellent point. Yeah. So Thomas Granger, right? He's hang till dead, as you just read. So how he would have you believe right. Well, that's the court records. That's what they say. Right. But the ghost of Thomas Granger. Right? Is still around. He's out in the barn. Well, it's like that movie what was the movie where the guy who got electrocuted to death and then like, shocker? Was that Shocker? No. Did he come back to life? Yeah, the green monster. The green shocker out at the clean show. No, we do. We've been talking about bees reality for like, seven minutes. I'm sorry. It's good you did the old English voice and everything. Yeah, I'm sidetracking here, so well, the point is that there was crazy crime in Plymouth Colony. Are you seeing that now? The puritans? Sure. Yeah. And he got off kind of harshly because he was pretty big into the debuggery other people kind of harshly. I tried not to laugh so hard. No, there was something in the air and everybody needed to release it. I think we're all more appreciative of it now that we've got it out there. Yes. Right. So he was hanged. Other people were putting the stocks right. If you were a gossip, you would be dunked on the log is one type of punishment. So there's a lot of crime. There's a lot of punishment. Right. Weird punishment for weird crime. Exactly. Like, gossiping was one that would get you dunked on a log in a lake. That seems like a weird. Yeah. Which I imagine you'd be tied to the log, or else they just put you on a login dunkin, you just fall off and be fine, swim back to shore and be like, Can I go back home now? But again, it goes that idea of boredom where it's like, we need to punish this person. You can put them in the stock. Right. That's boring. Well, no, with the stock, apparently people would come like they closed school down, and people would come from surrounding villages to children would demonstrate and laugh. Yeah. And they would have a sign that said what their crime was. Obviously. Sort of like The Scarlet Letter. Being in the stocks was like being a stand up comedian. You talk about all of your problems, or in this case, they put a sign up of all your problems, and people would laugh at them. I think there's less money in stand up, though, as I understand it. Yeah. So apparently finding a house is a really difficult thing, right? It was very difficult. They lived in caves originally. Yes. Did you know this? I did know this. That they lived there was a lot of cave living. Yeah. So they get to the New World, and they're like, well, I don't know how to build a house. I thought you knew how to build a house. And they had to live in capes for a while until they figured out how to build a house. And then the houses they built were really crude and rudimentary. Like they were thatch covered in mud with sticks, with maybe a hole in the top so you don't die. Sure, right. Which apparently still kills 2 million people a year. Did you know that? I had to bring me down. Having a hole in your roof kills 2 million people. No, not having a hole in your roof. Yeah. Particulate matter. Yes, it really is. So, wait, so you're saying, like, if you live in an apartment because there's no hole in your apartment, you're dead. If you're in your apartment right now, get out. Don't cook anything with dung in your apartment. That's probably good to know. Just in general. That's why people die, though. It's sad. It's not funny. No. Apparently in the colonies, too, you had to keep your fire going because no one had matches. Right. So if you let your fire go out, you had to go to the neighbor's house and borrow a charcoal. Yeah. I don't know. People are living in caves. They don't have fire, it sounds like. Yeah. I thought they were a little more advanced than that. And it was apparently a roll bummer because you had to start your own fire, and I don't know. I don't buy it. There's something about, like, they had to keep their fire going all the time, that you look at just how far we have or have not come and that they wasted a lot of energy back then, and we still do it today. Thanks. Forefathers. Very true. But the hole in the roof we bring up because it would also it's kind of crappy. It would let in rain and snow and other drastic elements. Right. So the one guy who could build the houses, thomas Stranger, I guess, wasn't around. Right. So they had to find out once they got sick of the caves, they had to find that's where that term comes from, that Tribe called Quest song. Bugging out is all about, oh, there was a New York animal sex and scene that it was a warning to people, like, look, you don't want to be bugging out because they will hang you to death. That's right. Death by hanging until you were dead, which I thought was a little weird. So they eventually did get houses, though, because there were these people that maybe you've not heard of called Indians that lived in this country, and we did a nice job of coming over and killing them with disease, thanks to was it DeSoto that brought over the pigs? He was one of them, but yeah, DeSoto brought over, like, 300 pigs. He brought 300 pigs to eat. He just made them walk around until he killed him and eat them. Because you can't really pack a lunch back then. Right. I mean, it makes sense. It makes sense, for sure. But they spread like pox. Yeah. So the pigs killed the Indians, and then they're like, hey, now we got a place to live. Yeah. Look at all these awesome Indian huts. It took them a little while to figure it out, but then they were that's the first example of gentrification. That was the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, of colonial life. So we've got cave living. We have a lot of abandoned, dead Indian houses. Right, right. The pearls, we've now agreed, are the first hipsters, right. I'm sure they also had twirly mustaches, right? They did, yeah. You pretty much have to make anything that you want, right? Sure. They didn't bring anything over with them, like churn butter. You had to plant crops. You had to sow crops. Is that same thing as plant harvest? Yes. Sowe sow seeds, right? Yes. You fear the reaper. Right. You have to make your candles and pretty much like so it is everything that hipsters in Williamsburg. Exactly. Yeah. We're uncovering a thread here that I didn't realize was in there. You want to see colonial America? That's why that is Colonial Williamsburg. Not in Virginia. Yeah. Wow, look at that. It all came around. The brain is working. Not feeling well in the tummy, but the brain functioning. He just turns it on like that. I know, it's amazing. And then so you've got all this work. Right. You've got indentured servants. At first, yeah. They came over with the promise of land. Right. Like, hey, I'll come over there and work for you for four years if you give me a parcel. Right. It's like a maricore. And then they ran out, right? Yeah, they ran out of service. I think most of them got hung. Just like America. Somebody figured out that if you left Massachusetts and just followed the trade winds, it took you right to West Africa. So apparently we started to go to West Africa and get all sorts of free labor. And, like, between 1451, 900, like 11 million people were captured and brought to the Americas. Right? That's one way to say it. Yeah, that's one way to put it. So we've got now everything in place. Right. We have crazed like animals, starved, running around. These are the colonists with the will to carve out their place in the wilderness. We have slave labor, we have dead Indians, and we have butter churning. Right. The whole thing, it's just a really rotten life for everybody involved, right? Yeah. But out of all this came, like, these cities around 1700. Little after that, you've got cities like Boston and Philadelphia. And they were starting to get nicer and nicer, and people started to take a little more pride in them, and all of a sudden the British start flexing their muscles. Right. And I think because of the niceness of the cities, you have a certain level of resentment among the colonists of being told what to do. Like you're familiar with the stamp act. That was a big one. The T act that led to the Boston Tea Party. Okay. I didn't realize that was all forms of paper at the time. Is that right? The Stamp Act? Yeah, like, any piece of paper you had to pay a tax on, they just didn't like that. Really? Yeah. It's kind of weird tax, if you think about it. The T text really drove me crazy, though. And then you had to do a quarter British soldiers, which meant, like, let them stay in your house, which is kind of a thing, too, which is nice if you need, like, a roommate or something. I'm kind of lonely, and there's no TV back now, or you need, like, an extra hand around the house. Right. Yeah, right. Hey, British soldier, would you mind grabbing me out of the nonexistent fridge? My arm is about to fall off. I guess you're right. I think you make a pretty good point. That quartering British soldiers weren't that bad. So it was the taxes, I think, that really got them. And one of the things that the colonists did was to basically tar and feather tax collectors. Are you familiar with this process? Tarri and feathering? Sure. Yeah. They still do it in Williamsburg. Just bring it all back to Williamsburg. It's the only thing I know. So it's a pretty horrific process, right, to get the tar onto somebody's skin. Well, because that boils because it's got to be hot, right. And then the feathers is just adding insult to injury. Yeah. I'm sure at that point, the feathers are probably not as bad. It was just like, oh, God, this tar. Oh, this is terrible. Why are you putting feathers I mean, that's fine, but really, the tar you could have just stopped at the tar, perfectly honest. Oh, this hurts so much. Well, then the feathers might have provided a nice cooling effect. You never know. Yeah. And that was their little secret. They were like, no, not the feathers. That looks like a chicken, but it's okay. Oh, thank you. Hollow feather. The wind blows through you with or without the feathers. It was pretty awful, right, to have the hot tire world agreed on that. Yeah. Point out specifically in here, that it's a lot worse than you might think. Actually, I thought to begin with it it was probably pretty bad. Well, no, it's so cartoonish. Tarring and feathering somebody. I think Scooby Doo did it before. It just seems like, what's the game? But then you think, well, yeah. Hot, boiling tar. You ever been waxed? No. Yeah, that stuff is hot too. Yeah, because then you got to take it off too. Taking it off is a problem. Yeah. And it's like you use, like, turpentine, which then that burns, and you maybe probably still have little chunks of tar on you for the rest of your life. You're never totally clean, which is also, like, a time when everybody had bedbugs, and that was just a thing. Like Williamsburg again. Yeah, that's bushwick. Actually, Williamsburg is totally fine. We got rid of the bedbugs there. It's all in bushwick. Those jerks. No, but that's, like, the weird thing when you think about, like, oh, yeah, it would be interesting to have a time machine and go back to that time and see people. No, it wouldn't. You got, like, some guy who's still trying to pick off tar on his arm, and then it was just, like, pock marked all over from bed bugs and dysentery or whatever else. Whatever. Horrible things. Like, people probably looked horrible. Everybody looks like mutants back then. It's just a point that when we look back at this time with, like, great affection, we should also realize these are some awful looking mutant people. Right, but I think that's the point. I think they were aware of this. They were aware that they had bed bugs. They were covered in hot tar. Or did they just accept it as, like I feel like if all you know is bedbugs, you don't know a world without bed bugs. If you showed up, if you got a time machine and showed up like you are, with your fancy haircut and your exfoliated skin, people would be like, demon. Where are his bug bites clean of skin owl. He just pets that cow. He doesn't try to have sex with it. Burn the witch, then put him on a log and dunk him. But according to the thing that I wrote, though they were aware of it, is the thing. Right. Which is what drove them crazy. They were crazy enough to take on the bridge. Which little known fact, by the way, right. This taxation that drove them to tar and feather people without representation. Well, that was the big problem. Sure. Keep an eye on DC because they don't like it either. Right? Sure. But these taxes, most of them were repealed because of the tarring and feathering before they were ever even enacted. But the colonists still decided, no, we're going to revolt anyway. We really like Philadelphia. It's pretty nice. We're kind of tired of having you here. So they took on the world's largest military, the controller of the largest empire, from Canada to India. Canada. That was Canada to India. Yeah. I had no idea. Being America's head for a long time. All right. And they won. Right? Sure. Yeah. Using things like crazy guerilla tactics. That was one way. Yeah. And then so on, I think. June 11 to 18th. Chuck June 11 to 18th. It only took that many days for TJ. Thomas Jefferson, who also rewrote the Bible, as some of you may know from listening to our show. He decided to take a break from that blasphemy to draft the Declaration of Independence. And it only took him, what? Seven days? Seven days. Wow. God paid the Earth in seven days. You'd think that it's not that long of a document, really. Yeah. It's a one sheet, right? Yeah. Couldn't bang that out in a day. In the afternoon. Seriously, right now, I bet all of us could write our own Declarations of Independence. Just text it to one another. Yeah, we could, Tweet. If we have some time at the end. Maybe everybody could just take a half hour to write their own declaration and start reading them. I think that would be a nice thing, I think, if everybody wrote their own Declaration of Independence and then we'd all put on hats with little tea bags on them and go to a tea party rally and say, this is the Declaration. We should all follow this one because I don't like the current one because it got weird now somehow, for some reason. Yeah. Well, thanks, guys, for stopping by. Yeah, thanks. You got it. Now let's get back to midnight sounds with Wyatt. Thank you, Wyatt. Everybody. This is Stuff You Should Know About America from the series XM Studios in New York City. Now more from Josh and Chuck. How about that? Well, we're winging it. Are you staying with it? You don't have to. I know you're not feeling it. Yeah. Wyatt came in here on his deathbed to do this. Goodbye. Thank you, everybody. Wyatt. I felt like he was going to stay, and then I ran him out very clearly. He told me he was leaving. It's not my fault. So that's okay, right? Jill seems to think so. Okay, thanks, Jill. What do we have next, Chuck? We're going to talk about America, right. Throughout this. That's right. And what's more American than baseball? Baseball. I'm holding up a baseball for those of you listening, in 3 hours on Series XM. Yes. Baseball. We thought about, hey, we should do something on apple pie and baseball and Chevrolet. But apple pie is kind of boring. And Chevrolet. There's obviously implications there. We spend a little time looking for an apple pie recipe and realize that yeah. Unless we could have somebody actually making it, which makes a great radio, as I understand. Yes. It kind of sunk in pretty quickly that we weren't going to do that. We'll just pick the baseball. But Chuck, you're out of the two of us, you're definitely the sports guy, right? Yes. So you want to tell everybody about Mordecai Brown? Yes. This is the history and how to throw a curveball. We will teach you all this so you can go practice at home in Williamsburg. The curveball actually was not invented by this guy, but it's definitely the better story of the three dudes who were kind of the first ones to throw a curveball. And his name was Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown. Later to be known as Mordecai Three Finger Brown. And that is foreshadowing. Right. And he was named Centennial because he was born in 1876. Right. I didn't know that. Yeah. Is that extra research? Yeah. Well, no. I mean, he was born 100 years after the country's birth. I figured I had something doing. That right. So he was a Centennial baby. That's right. And he was a baseball fan as a small child and wanted to play in the big leagues, the burgeoning big leagues. And he didn't heed his parents'advice. And he put his hand, I would guess by accident, into a wood chipper. A food chopper. A food chopper. Feed chopper. Feed chopper. Yes. It's a big difference. One is for animals. And what it did was it cut off, I believe, his index finger on his right hand mangled the other mangle, the others. And if that's not enough, a few weeks later, I believe, while he was still healing, he slipped and fell and broke and mangled the rest of his fingers. He was a rambunctious young man. So that's where he got the name three Fingers, leaving him with three. But he had his thumb. But they were very accurate back then because technically the thumb is not a finger. That's right. Did you see a picture of this guy's hand? No. Is it messed up? It was messed up. He's got, like, the one finger that was mangled, literally made, like, a right turn at the middle knuckle. But this was all good news. So don't feel bad for Mordecai Three Fingers Brown, because what he did years later, he went to work in the coal mines of western Indiana. This is not good, fortunately. And he had a coworker named Legz O'Connell. I couldn't make this stuff up. His name was Legs O'Connell. He was a former big leaguer, and he encouraged Three Fingers. He was like, you should go try and pitch with that funky looking hand. Yeah. It might do some weird stuff. And it did. What it did was it caused an inordinate amount of top spin. That was very frustrating at first until he realized that top spin curved the ball. If he could control it to the advantage. That's right. Yeah. Because think about it, he's missing he's down an index finger. So he's holding the ball like that. Yeah. So yeah. It's going to produce top spin. And while I was researching this in our office, I kept going like this. Is that what you're doing? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. I have no idea. Yeah. I thought you were having fits. No, but yeah. So we figured it out, right? Yeah, big time. But I think we should I don't know if he fully understood it. Mordecai Brown right. Three Fingers. Three fingers. He mastered it. Who knows if he fully understood it? Because it was only like 20 years earlier that a guy named Gustav Magnus right. He came up with this idea called the Magnus Effect that explains how a curveball works, right? That's right. So the physics of it are that the spin of the ball sure. When you throw a curveball, and this is mainly for you guys here in the studio audience holding up this baseball. This is an apple pie and how you make it. But when you throw a curveball and you give it top spin, the seams hit the air. Right. And the way they hit the air, the flow of air, causes friction, right? That's right. So there's, like you said, an inordinate amount of friction on the top of the ball because it's fighting the wind, essentially. Right. So it's higher pressure here, lower pressure down below, because it's going with the wind. Exactly. So it creates kind of this whirlpool underneath the ball, and the magnetic force, which is the downward pull of it into that whirlpool, causes a ball to suddenly drop. Right? That's right. And Magnus figured this out because I believe he saw a spinning sphere underwater and noticed that if it was spinning in water, it was forced to move to the side. So he wasn't a baseball guy? No. This is maybe before baseball, was it? Yeah, it was like 1850. Do we have any baseball aficionados? Cuba, 1850 baseball, yes or no? So magnus figured this out. Three Fingers figures this out. Three Fingers played for the Cubbies and was a very important member of the last World Series team the Cubs ever had. In 19 eight. That was their first pennant, and then they won consecutive tenants. Right. So the last ones to win the pennant. Right, you right. But he did not invent the curveball. It's just the best story. The curveball is generally credited to Fred Goldsmith and William Arthur Candy Cummings, and I don't know why I made air quotes, I don't know why he was named Candy, but he was apparently five eight \u00a3120. So he may have just been a little placing of a baseball player at the time. Although he was probably big at the time. Right? Yeah, but he was giant. We'll find out. Foreshadowing. So when those guys are pitching, though, like 30 years before three fingers, like the curveball, or they call it the SKU ball. The SKU ball. And pitchers were called twirlers. Right. Well, the Twirlers who threw SKU balls were thought to be an ill repute because that was just kind of the rules. Yeah. You can't throw a ball that curves. By the time Mordecai came around, his curveball was so sweet that they let it in, plus the hand, they kind of felt bad for him. I mean, it's something to do with it. So, Chuck, there's also a lot of discussion that's been going on, and I don't know if it's still settled or not, but a lot of people wonder if the curveball actually exists or if it's an optical illusion. Right. Yeah, I remember hearing about that a while ago and I thought, totally, it does exist. Physicians are physicists, totally different. Physicists have concluded that, yes, the curveball does exist. It's this Magnus effect, nine out of ten dentists degree. But still, the explanation of how it could be an optical illusion is pretty interesting. Right? Yeah. This guy from the University of Pennsylvania, arthur Shapiro of Bucknell University I'm sorry, in Pennsylvania, is a real buzz kill of a guy because he tried to prove that the curveball didn't exist. Right? Right. And he was wrong. Right. Yeah. The way he saw it was that when you're standing there taking a pitch, the ball comes from your central vision, and then all of a sudden it hits your peripheral vision, and at about that time, it appears to just jerk. Suddenly these batters jump back. That was his explanation for the optical illusion. But it looks like upon recent camera work, that there is such a thing as a curveball. It actually does move. Right. And it moves gradually. And the reason it appears to break so hard when you're in the batter's box is because you're not facing the pitcher dead on. And I have a theory of the guys that have the more open stance, and the ladies, maybe they hit curveballs a little bit better because they're basing the picture mountain. I don't know if it's my own personal theory. That's fine, we'll go with that. Who's your favorite curveball throw? Oh, even better. What's your favorite name for a curveball? Esque pitch. Boy, I didn't know you're going to ask me this. I'm going to go with the big breaker. I like the fork ball. The fork ball, it's good. Yeah, because there's different methods of throwing the curve ball. There's a sinker, there's the slider. Yeah. And they all curve. There's the Japanese shuttle. I never heard of that one. I hadn't either until this one. They played baseball in Japan. And also, I wanted to point out, too, that the raised stitches is why it curves more and cheaters scuff up the ball. That's why in the old days, you would see pictures cheating with, like, an emery board in their pocket, and they would scuff up the ball as much as possible. And also the reason why they switch out the baseball so much, because the more the ball is scuffed up, the more it's going to curve and be unfair for the batteries. There's some twirlers of ill repute out there. There are. So that's curveballs. You got anything else? I think that's it, man. Nice. That's curve balls. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. 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This is stuff you should know about America from the series of XM Studios in New York City. Now more from Josh and Chuck. And that was Jazz hands. Right? That will get people clapping every time somebody wants to fight, you go like this, you'll just start clapping. So up next, we have something I am really excited about, because I have no idea what we're in store for, to be honest. I know that it is called unsung American exports. And I know our buddy Joe garden from the onion and Jill Morris are going to present it. And that's all I know. And ladies and gentlemen, Joe and Jill. I don't actually hear myself being projected because we're in a sort of aquarium like structure. It's called the fishbowl. The fish bowl. Yeah. I feel like the treasure chest in the fishbowl. You are. Anyway, I would like to point out Josh and Chuck do not know what I'm doing. This is based on my own research, and the pressure is really on. So I would like to encourage you all if you find factual inaccuracies, which you probably will fact check gently, don't be angry. Just sort of say, hey, Joe, you made a mistake, and corrected Dusty. I also have another disclaimer. The following presentation contains information about sexually transmitted diseases, which we already sort of I don't even know if I need this after I think, why prime this? All of that. Yeah, after the buggery. And it also breaks a doubt, the question of a certain gift bearing figure popular with children. You may wish to assure those under the age of twelve out of the room. Oh, wait, are they gone? Okay, screw those kids. Anyway. Wow, Jerry's cracking up over there. She's not actually here. I decided if I was going to do the stuff you should know about, I was just going to go waste deep with it. I always wanted to say that. So, moving on. I heard an interesting anecdote earlier this week, there's a party that featured a lot more taxidermy animals, and I'm accustomed to seeing. And I met a Pakistani documentarian and we struck up a conversation. And in the course of a conversation, I worked for The Onion. And he said, oh, here's something you really should know. In my hometown of Karachi, there are a lot of suicide bombings, subjects covered by an earlier podcast, and a lot of terrorist attacks. But the interesting thing is the terrorists usually target KFC or Pizza Hut and almost never target McDonald's. And I was really interested in this because when people think of American Imperialist Restaurant Hegemony, they always think of the golden arches. It's everywhere. I would have thought that somebody looking to attack a symbol of the United States would have just gone to McDonald's, no questions asked. So I asked why the terrorist choice was KFC. He said that people just like McDonald's more so this is yet another way that I do not sympathize with terrorists. And we ate at McDonald's before we came here. I did not. I'm sorry. That's okay. I use the WiFi and sit nervously at an imaginary pile of water, so I wasn't going to get kicked out. So anyway, I just need to point out I have not verified this fact to independent sources, so please use caution if you choose to repeat this fact. As it stands, I'm not even sure how you would research something like that. I tried Google searching karachi McDonald's bombings, karachi KFC bombings, they have both come up. But if you do manage to verify it, please let me know so I can use it again at future radio events. In any case, this all needs to be to my team today. President Calvin Coolidge famously said, the business of America is business, and this maximum has led the United States to all corners of the globe. There's the Transformers in China. There's Harley Davidsons in Dubai, miller Beer and Germany. But what about the exports that aren't monetized? Who will celebrate those things that have an impact that can't be measured in billions or even hundreds of dollars? Why, that person would be me. Joe Garden, with the assistance of Onion contributing writer Joe Morris, who will be providing pertinent facts to my rambling. First up, Santa Claus. Before you jump on my throat, I'd like to acknowledge that Santa Claus is not of US. Origin per se. He's an amalgam of several figures that drew from St. Nicholas, primarily drew from St. Nicholas, who placed gifts in children's stockings hung from the hearth. Every December 5, after the Reformation, the Dutch disavowed all Catholic saints, and particularly, they tried to ban the celebration of St. Nicholas holiday. But when you try to take a gift giving holiday away from people, they don't react very well to it. So what they did is the Dutch changed the name from St. Nicholas to here we go. The figure is center class, who would sail from Spain and travel from house to house in the company of Black Pete, distributing spice nuts and candies to good children. Black Pete was a devil Center Claws had defeated and made to do his bidding, usually depicted by the very Caucasian Dutch as a man in blackface. The legend changed in the 1850s, at which point he became a former slave that Santa Claus had freed. Dutch parents threaten their children by saying that if they're good, black Pete will bring them candy and toys, but if they're bad, he'll stuff them in his duffel bag and take them back to Spain. The early Dutch settlers I'm sorry. Yeah. The early Dutch settlers brought Cinder Claws back with them to the New World, where his name was changed to Santa Claus and the race to the sidekick was dropped. An 1863 illustration of Santa Claus by Thomas NASS is generally credited as being the first defining depiction of Santa Claus is the rotund, jolly figure we know today, and Coca Cola's use of the character cemented him in the American public consciousness. Now he lives in the North Pole, where his elves make the toys he delivers to good children every Christmas Eve. The North Pole is the northernmost part of the world and is often written on an envelope which contains a child's wishes for Santa. Such wishes may include please help my parents get back together, please kill my parents, and gimme, gimme, gimme. Bike, bike. Bike. As with most cultural traditions brought to America, he was, in short order, repackaged as a pitch man and shoved down the throats of every human with two pieces of currency to rub together. All this would be fine and good, but so long as Hollywood makes Santa themed entertainment and keeps appearing as a show for numerous consumer goods, santa refuses to be contained by American boundaries. As his popularity grows and spreads across the globe, santa Claus is in danger of edging out local Christmas figures. And that's not sitting very well with these locals. A school in Brighton, England, banned depictions of Father Christmas in a red suit, saying that it's smacked of commercialism. A group of tech advertising professionals started anti Santa Claus website to protest the replacement of its own gift giving figure. Pardon my check. Jesus. Shit. I think that's right, actually. Really? Yes. Oh, great. It translates roughly as Baby Jesus. And in Austria, the Christ child brings gift to Austrian children. And some of the Austrians mobilized to hand out anti Santa stickers because they didn't want them to dominate. It seems like I kind of hopeless battle, though, because the jolly old elf is coming to your land, whether you like it or not. My next American export is a little harder to tie down in Santa Claus, but isn't further reaching. I'm speaking, of course, about syphilis. It's very difficult to pinpoint the origin of syphilis. There are no Thomas Nas drawings of the spirit shatter that causes the disease, nor was it popularized by a soft drink company. It was mostly popularized by the oldest profession in the world. However, medical historians and anthropologists have determined that syphilis didn't exist in Europe prior to the discovery of the New World. When examining skeletal remains of 1492 Europeans, there's plenty of evidence of other diseases from the same species as syphilis, such as pinta and yaws. God, those are such great disease names. Yaws. It sounds so old timey, but it's also probably very terrifying. But none of them both the same. End results of syphilis, such as the near destruction of the nasal passage and the formation of cara's sika. Cara's sica is a deformation of the bone that starts as the depression of the outer layer and sometimes the middle layer. When it heals, it leaves a nodule, resulting in bony protrusion surrounded by depression. EW. The commonly accepted theory is that veneerio syphilis was bought back to Europe by members of Christopher Columbus crew from the Dominican Republic. They left to find a new route to India and instead came back with a disease that can result in madness and death. Even though Ulysses S. Grant wanted to annex the Dominican Republic in 171, it was rejected by Congress. It is a sovereign nation in the Caribbean, not part of the United States, and it's a stretch to include it in your little speech about American exports. That may be true, Jill, but the United States recognizes Columbus Day as a holiday, and as a result, I think it's fair game. It's a new world export. The first documented cases occurred in 1495 in Naples, Italy, after following its invasion by the French. As it was a banariel disease, no one wanted to lay claim to it. It was called the French pox by the Germans and English. The Russians called it the Polish sickness, and the Poles in turn, called it the German sickness. However, it spread and infected such notables as composer Fran Schubert, gangster El capone, philosopher Arthur schopenhauer, painter Edward Monet, and possibly Hitler. So Joe garden has endured many medical conditions, including appendicitis, mononucleosis and several nasty flu. He has never contracted syphilis. I had to use this little soapbox to advertise that fact. So this leads us to our next export the raccoon. I know it's sort of a weird. You don't think of the raccoons as anything as like if you see them on television or film, they always just sort of look cute. They're fuzzy little bandit masks and grabby little paws are kind of adorable. They almost look like they have little black human hands. They're very cute. But anybody's ever shine a flashlight in a rattling the rustling tree at night and seeing their beady little eyes glowering back at you know that there's something more sinister than a Grizzly Adams sidekick. Within the life and time of grizzly Adams was a television show about a man wrongly accused of murder who ran to the mountains and befriended raccoons, a bear, and the guy who played uncle Jesse on Dukes of hazard. It ran for two seasons in 1077 and 1978. Its star, Dan haggerty, was arrested for selling cocaine in 1984. Indigenous to north America, raccoons can quoted the size of a small dog. In 2006, they accounted for nearly 38% of rabies cases reported in the United States. Edging out bats and skunks, they made themselves at home in rural and urban environments and are not terribly deterred by the presence of humans. A cursed research of raccoon plus cat door on YouTube will send you down a rabbit hole of terrifying videos featuring them entering homes to try to steal food. YouTube is a video sharing website in which users upload their own videos to that others may watch, wait, and comment on them. This joke is originally by Josh Clark and a previous stuff you should know podcast. Yes, raccoons are jerks, but did you also know they have a Nazi connection? You should know what Nazis are. It's true. In 1934, a German animal breeder approached the Wright forestry office, then headed by Herman Goeringg with a plan to breed the raccoon in order to enrich the local fauna. The rationale was that it would be popular game for hunters, and the pelts could be put to good use. What they didn't count on was that the crafty critters powers of exponential reproduction. It looks so good on paper that phrase, the crafty critters powers of exponential reproduction. Thank you. Now, they are between 100,001 million raccoons in Germany, and they haven't stopped there. They spread all over the continental Europe and have even crossed the Channel through the Channel and invaded England. Game over. Now, after those three, I would like to end on a we're running pretty long, actually, so I apologize for that. I'm doing fine. Are you? Do you need some water? Okay. I tried some Wyatt, so I can get sick later. Never mind. So anyway, I like to add on a high note hip hop. In my lifetime, there's been no cultural movements that spread as far and as fast as hip hop. In fact, because it's still an art form in motion and because I'm running very long, hip hop is going to get the short shrift. As usual. It began at parties in the Bronx in the early nineteen s seventy s jamaican born DJ Cool Herc is considered the father of hip hop for introducing the concept of rapping over music and break beats. Break beats are the funkiest instrumental parts of a song that are best suited for dancing. A DJ would isolate the break beat on two different turntables to create a dance party that can't stop, won't stop a hip hop hip and to the hip to the hip hip hop and you don't stop rocking it slowly out of the Bronx and brokerage when the song rappers delight in charted on the Billboard 119 79. Since then, it's been an unstoppable musical juvenile dominating the American charts in consciousness and moving outward. Hip hop has established itself in the UK, France, Germany, South Africa, Tanzania, Japan, Indonesia, Argentina, Russia, Poland and so on, and so on. For more information, please consult your local library. Thank you all very much. You are a wonderful and lovely audience. So that's the end of part one? Yes. And I don't even know where we've cut this yet. Maybe it's a cliffhanger. Or maybe it was just between segments. I'm thinking it's not a cliffhanger. No, probably not. We'll see what happened to America. That'd be a good that's a great cliffhanger. Yeah. So like you said, it's the end of part one. Join us on what? Thursday? Yeah. Okay. For part two. Yes. Coming up next in two days, or if you've downloaded both of them on Thursday right now, be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House Deport staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my Favorite Murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo, elevate as, Tectco Pep supplied plus and select neighborhood Pet stores."
c2f1b312-5460-11e8-b38c-370fb30cbba0	SYSK Selects: How Lobotomies Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-lobotomies-work	Lobotomies -- brain surgeries to relieve psychiatric problems -- are rarely performed today, but they were once fairly common. Tune in to learn more about the controversial history and practice of lobotomies..	Lobotomies -- brain surgeries to relieve psychiatric problems -- are rarely performed today, but they were once fairly common. Tune in to learn more about the controversial history and practice of lobotomies..	Sat, 19 Jan 2019 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=19, tm_isdst=0)	32030804	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Saturday stuff you should know Select Edition. Chuck here with my Pick of the Week all the way back to 2009. May 19. Lobotomies. Man, this one is crazy. This is one of those is so good. I wish we'd go back and do it again for the first time. So much fun to research. Really interesting and grizzly. History, medical history. Some of my favorite stuff lies in those topics. And this one is all about lobotomies. Man, oh, man. Just get ready to learn about the frontal lobe ice pick lobotomy. I actually used to do that. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. It's called stuff you should know. It's Josh and Chuck Thompson and Long Beach together. Now you know you're in trouble. What's up, Chuck? How long you been sitting on that one? For the week. That's good. Thanks. Thank you. Chuck, how are you doing? I'm well, sir. You? Pretty good. I'm feeling great, actually. Chuck. I am glad to be alive. Yes. So, Chuck yes. I think this could arguably pan out to be our greatest podcast ever. You just jinxed us. No, I really don't think so. Chuck did the cheek thing twice before this one. Just kind of do it a second time. And I don't think we've ever had a topic that Chuck and I were more intensely interested in than this one. I know. It kind of just came out of nowhere, and it's really well, not out of nowhere because it's historical, but in our eyes, out of nowhere. Funny, I say in our eyes. Yeah. Little foreshadowing from Charles Bryant. Nice one, chuck, if you will get off of lol cats for a second and go check your itunes, you'll find that the title of this one is How Lobotomies Work. Yes. And that's what we're going to be talking about. Or lobotomy. So fascinating. It really is. Lobotomy kind of exists in this little segment of 20th century culture. Medical madness, I guess you could say. Right, right. And pop culture, because you still hear it being thrown around like, boys lobotomize me, scramble my brain. But it's kind of exactly the way it happened. Yeah. So, Chuck, you're a lover of great cinema, right? Of course. You've seen one flew over the cuckoo's nest, right? I have a poster. You do? Yeah. Good one. Yeah. The one of Jack Nicholson laughing with the watch cap on. Yeah, it's a good one. So, of course, you remember the pivotal scene in the movie where McMurphy is lobotomized for being unruly. Tries to call Nurse Hatchet because Nurse Ratchet Hatchet that was a Freudian slip right there. It was. She was a hatchet. Yeah, she was mean. No, I'm totally with you. It was a Freudian slip part that got me. I had, like, eight jokes going in my head at once, and I was like, can't say that, can't say that, can't say that. Like the terminator scanning for possible. That's exactly right. Yeah. So he tries to kill Nurse Ratchet because she was a terrible nurse and kind of evil. Yeah, very evil. And so he gets lobotomized and they don't show the procedure. Don't worry. If you ever wanted to know what one was like. We're going to go into grizzly detail in a minute. And he comes out just kind of this Drooling. Imbecile awful, which I have to remind everybody, was actually usually a medical term before it was imbecile. Moron and idiot were all degrees of mental retardation. Wow. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Of course. At the same time that people were performing lobotomy. So it seems like very archaic, even though it wasn't that long ago. Yeah. Well, let's set the scene. Okay. Okay. All right. So we're talking the 1930s, right? And the 1930s were a terrible time to be nuts. Basically, you got locked up in a straitjacket to keep you from eating your own feces or throwing it at order leaves or doing anything really crazy. And that was about it. Right. They had certain techniques like shock therapy. Right. What did they use? They still use shock therapy here and there, actually. Well, you have, like, electroconvulsive therapy. Right. And apparently they also used to use insulin. Insulin, right. We know how bad that is from I can't remember one of our aging podcasts. Right, right. And they would basically inject a hefty dose of insulin into a patient to be okay, Chuck. Yeah. Because my paper wrestling was going to get the wrath of Jerry. They know we use crib sheets, buddy. Sure. So they inject a patient with a hefty dose of insulin and would basically shock their system, possibly causing convulsions. There was another drug was this just to subdue them? Hold on, I'm getting to that. This is the craziest part. This was the grasp that medical science had on mental illness at the time. Right. There's another drug called Metrozol, which was a respiratory and circulatory stimulant. And in hefty doses it to produce shock and convulsions. Wow. So if you'll notice, all three of these produce convulsions shock therapy. And the reason that they did that was because there was a suspicion that there was a link between epilepsy convulsions and mental illness, and that if you had one, you couldn't have the other. So by producing convulsions, they thought that they were treating mental illness. Wow. Unbelievable. Yeah. So you could have just had epilepsy and they would sit you in the electroconvulsive shock therapy chair to treat you. Yeah. They'd stick a little paddle in your mouth and turn on the juice. Tell you what, man, like, I sometimes look back and say, boy, the 1950s, that would have been cool to live back then. But then you hear stories like this and you kind of forget about the downside. Yeah. ECT is definitely one of the downsides of this era. Right. All right. So another problem with this is that the mental care wow. Have you had a lobotomy? I had a little bit of one, yeah. No, I had some Metrosal earlier. I'm all jacked up. Nice. The state of mental hospitals in the US. In the that they were overcrowded. Right. Because, I mean, if you can't treat anybody, really, you can't treat their mental illness. Once they come in, they're in. Yeah. They wanted docile patients. They wanted people that didn't cause trouble, and really, any way that they could get there was kind of okay at the time. Right. And this was also before drug therapy was created. Right. So in the this new procedure comes about, they write, well, 1935, I thought it was 36 in Portugal. You're right. Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. That was Doctor Antonio Agass Monice. Nice. And Dr. Almida Lima in Portugal performed the first lobotomies by drilling holes into the skull on either side of the prefrontal cortex and injecting alcohol in there to destroy the fibers. Okay. Disconnected it. And this was actually based on an earlier study from 1933 by a couple of Yale researchers who removed the prefrontal cortexes from a pair of monkeys. Yeah. Lucy. And that was the other one. Binky will say, okay. Lucy and Binkie. Yeah. These two monkeys had their prefrontal cortex core Texas removed, and the researchers found that they still had intellect, but they were lacking the emotion that led to violent outbursts when they didn't get their way. Becky, by the way, I like Binkie better. Can we stay with Binkie? Sure. Okay. So the doctor. Fulton Carlisle. Oh, no. You're going back to Portugal. Yeah. Dr. Monise. Yes. Saw Fulton present one of the Yale researchers saw Fulton present his findings, and he thought, my mental patients act like monkeys in a violent outburst when they see things that aren't really there. Right. So let me get my hands on a cadaver and see what I can work out with the brain. Right. So this early, it was called the prefrontal lobotomy. Right. Started out, like you said, by drilling holes in the skull and adding alcohol. And the whole reason why chuck the prefrontal cortex, why the frontal lobe? What's so important about that? Well, the prefrontal lobe, the cortex, Josh, has a number of complex functions called executive functions is what they're known as. We're talking high level decision making, planning, reasoning, understanding personality, personal expression, that kind of thing. Right. So basically, your personality, the way you create things, the way you see the world, and how you react to the world, the emotions. Right. This is all generated here. It originates in the prefrontal cortex. And you are stabbing the front of your head right now. Thanks. And so as we all know that the brain is connected. It's all connected together, sending and receiving signals like mass, email. And so what you have here, you got two types of matter, gray and white matter. Gray matter includes neurons and brain cells and blood vessels and things like that. White matter is axons and nerve fibers, and they connect the gray matter and carry messages with electric impulses. Gray matter is where these impulses are generated. The white matter translates them or transfers them. Yeah. Transmits. It transmits, sure. One of the trends. So a lobotomy, what that does is it's intended to sever the white matter between the different areas of gray matter, thus interrupting the transmission, essentially. Right. And the problem with Dr. Monet's technique, the early technique using alcohol is, like you said, the brain is all connected, and alcohol, being a liquid, is kind of hard to keep in one place. So it started to go and destroy other areas of brain. Right. Not a very good idea. But he was onto something. He was onto something by destroying the white matter. Right. Yes. So instead he decided to be a little more precise, and he kept with the hole drilling method, which is actually based on ancient, ancient method of brain surgery called trepination. Right. Which actually I'm going to be in trouble here. We had a fan right in and suggest trepidation. And that's what got me on the bottom, is in the first place. And I apologize. So if you're out there listening oh, you don't remember the fan name. Thank you. Nameless fan. We love you, Binky. Thanks, Binky. Yeah. Or Becky. Yeah. And actually, in the article How Lobotomies Work, there's a cool relief from a Heronimous Bach painting of some early physician trapanning a patient, and he's got, like, a little segment of the skull lifted off, and the brain is exposed, and he's just poking around in there. Dr. Monies is still using the drilling method, but now he's inserting instruments in there. Right. He inserted this one that sounded like it's a handle with a little loopy wire that comes out. But it attracts Lucatom. Yes. So when you push down the back of it, the loop extends out, and then you can pull it in and just basically remove hunks of prefrontal cortex of white matter. Right. And that's exactly what hopefully white matter. Yeah, you would think. And it was successful, right? Well, yeah, sure. Again, to varying degrees. And maybe not again, because I think that's the first time we said that. But yeah, the lobotomy was successful to varying degrees. Very varying degrees. But there was this guy who went and saw Dr. Monise perform one of these. Yeah, this work gets good. And this guy was named Dr. Walter Freeman. And for probably about 50,000 people in the US. Alone, this meeting between these two men was the worst thing that ever happened in the history of humanity. Right. Because it's about how many people are lobotomized for over about a seven year period in the US. Was it just seven years? Yeah. Wow. Okay. Heavy work. So then there are many more, actually, but yeah. Dr. Walter Freeman became an immediate evangelist. He was called for lobotomy. Right. He tried Monet's technique with a partner and did it successfully for a while. But the problem is it was still surgery. Right. It required a surgeon to do it. Operating room. Right. And Freeman was actually not a neurosurgeon. He was a neurologist required anesthetic. Yeah. So there were some drawbacks to it, in Freeman's opinion. Right. Expense being one of them. Time and resources. So he created something that was a lot handier, a lot easier and a lot quicker. And that is what we call the trans orbital, or ice pick lobotomy. Right. Can I say what this is? Yes. He determined that if you took something which is technically called an orbitoclast, but it really looks sort of like an ice pick. You said it yesterday on our webcast. It's an ice pick. Yes. Call it a rose by any other name. Exactly. So you put this ice pick over the eyeball, but under the bone, there what's it called between the eyeball and the eyelid. The eyeball and the eyelid. Until the back of the orbital bone. Right. So once you get to the back of the orbital bone, there's a little resistance there because it's bone. And so enter a little silver hammer, and so he just tinks on that thing until it cracks through. And then he's got a pretty clean passageway to the frontal cortex. And so you've got an ice pick sticking out of your eye. He scrambles it up a little bit once it's in there, and then he does the same thing on the other side. Yes. And ten minutes later, you're lobotomized, literally. So he do both sides. Right. Right. He got kind of good at this. Doctor Freeman got really, I guess you could say, good at this, or at least very fast. In one two week period in West Virginia, he performed lobotomies on 228 people. Yeah. And in one day, he performed lobotomies on 25 patients. Right. In one day. In one day. So he's just basically bringing them in and sending them out. He's exactly doing that, actually. I read an interview with one of his assistants at the time, and he said he would literally not take breaks as the patient left. Another one would be brought in ten minutes later. Boom. And I don't think we mentioned yet, before he does this, he doesn't use anesthetic, he knocks them out with electroshock. Right. So it's making use of two extremely primitive and violent techniques. Right. Big time. And the result was, like we said, varied. I mean, it ranged anywhere from people being satisfied and seemingly successful, like highly emotional people, suicidal, all of a sudden being more docile and not so worried to death. And people rendered vegetables literally. Yeah. All over the map. Dr. Freeman actually referred to lobotomies informally as soul surgery. Yeah. I hate that. The reason why is because he was basically removing what makes us human. People could still function under successful about me. People could still function. They could still talk. They weren't doing anything. They weren't bringing anything to the table. There was no reason for them to exist so much anymore. For the personality surgery. Exactly right. And he did it again so fast, so often. And he had a touch of a showman to him that he basically did. He had a lobotomobile in which he performed demonstrations. Right. He toured the country, went all over the place. I think he ended up doing estimates run from 2000 to 5000 between 1946 and 1967. Trans orbital lobotomies in 23 states in the US. Right. Right. He'd perform with both hands. He would stick the ice picks in with both hands at once to add a little flare, but showmanship. Yeah. So he was basically performing shows, lobotomy shows. And not everybody reacted well to these. Right. Seasoned surgeons who had seen tons of gore and blood and horrible things in their lifetimes would vomit watching these things. Some had to leave. There was a nurse whose account I read of watching a lobotomy, said when he moved the ice picks back and forth, it made the sound of tearing cloth later on in the USSR, which actually banned lobotomies. And I think before we did, which was embarrassing. Yeah. Well, 14 years before we did. Right. Yeah. A physician named Nikolai or Serenski. Or Serensky. Or Cereski. Thanks, dude. O, Cereski. O, Sirski. He said that lobotomies violate the principles of humanity and change an insane person into an idiot. Again. Remember a medical term at the time? Sure. I imagine that there was something that affected you. Were you a human being, like a real human being, seeing this this rough, violent, misguided or unguided procedure being performed, that it would affect you in some way, like some very primal part of you would say, that's not supposed to happen. Right. Plus, there was no official scientific basis for this. It was basically, hey, look at the result in some cases. Right. That is what they were kind of basing this whole thing on. And also, as we were saying about Freeman being a showman and doing it so fast, there was one visit to a mental institution in Iowa. I don't remember what year it was, but Freeman killed three people in one visit. And one of the people this is so awful. He was doing his little show off thing with the two picks at once instead of his own procedure dictated one. And then the other side, he was doing two picks at once. So the patient is on the table with two ice picks sticking out of his eyes, and Freeman says, I'm going to take a photo of this, steps back to take a photo, one of the ice pick slips and kills the patient instantly. Right. So apparently Freeman was said to have basically just packed up right then and moved on to the next place without missing a beat or saying, geez, that's thing packed up the lobotomobile. Yeah, hit the road. You know one person he lobotomized, Josh. I know you do. He lobotomize. John F. Kennedy's, sister Rosemary. Yes, Dr. Freeman did. In 1000 941. Rosemary is 23 years old, and early on in her childhood she was shy and easy going, they say. But as a teenager, shocker, she became rebellious and moody. And that's what struck me in a lot of these cases, is so many of them were just normal human emotions, like anything from postpartum depression to an overactive child. It's just unbelievable. Right. So she was lobotomized and afterward was rendered basically she couldn't speak. She had the mental capacity of an infant, couldn't control her bodily functions. And the Kennedy family basically, from that point on said that she was mentally retarded, which they claim that she may have been before, but who knows? Do you want to talk about another guy? Howie, Chuck and I have a shared hero. He is an indomitable, 350 pound, six foot three bus driver who has this gentle, tender personality. Right. And his name is Howard Doley. And at the age of twelve, Howard Doley met Doctor Freeman under unfortunate circumstances. Meaning Dr. Freeman had a couple of ice picks on him when they met. Right. And Howard ended up under Freeman's care because of his stepmother. Right, Chuck? Yeah. It was kind of the classic story. The father gets remarried to a stepmother who is not very patient and understanding with her son. It sounds like he may have been a little rymbunctious, but what twelve year old boy isn't? And I think you have some good notes, actual notes. Yeah. Well, in Freeman's notes that Doley turned up later, and we should say Howard Doley created this great radio piece that NPR you can actually find by typing in my lobotomy and Google. I think it's the first thing that comes up. Right. It's one of the most amazing things you've ever heard, where he just goes and retraces the steps of his lobotomy that he got when he was twelve and tries to get to the bottom of what happened. We typically don't recommend people go listen to other things that it's not us. But that's how good it is. Right, yeah, exactly. It is that good. It's way better than us, actually. Sure. But he finds Dr. Freeman's notes on his case and apparently his stepmother pled her case to get him lobotomized by pointing out that he daydreams a lot. And when you ask him what he's daydreaming about, he says, I don't know. Right. He doesn't want to go to bed. And when he does, he sleeps well. Right. And my personal favorite, he turns on the lights in rooms when there's broad daylight streaming in. Unbelievable. I know. That kid deserves a lobotomy. Yes. But one of the things, I think one of the reasons why you and I both look up to Howard doley was because he has wondered his whole life how different would he be? Right. I lived hard and fast as a younger man. Right. And I've also worked calm days. Now, right here, it's an old days, actually, way harder and faster. But I've often wondered how much sharper would I be had I not lived like that. Right. But this is my own doing. It was my own choosing. True. Howard Doley had to think that same thing. Like, is there something wrong with me? Is there a part of me missing? Through no choice or fault of his own? We should also say that when Howard's stepmother found that he was not a vegetable, she just got him out of the house and he became a ward of the state. Yes. So he went to all around lady. Yeah. So, again, in the end, he finds there really isn't something wrong with him. He's a pretty terrific person, as it turned out. Lobotomy or not. Right. It took him a long time, though. I mean, he battled addiction and various forms of mental illness his whole life after this. And I think going this special that aired. And he wrote a book and went and talked to his father. After 40 years, he actually finally spoke to his dad about it. And that seems to have been the thing to get him over the edge, to not feeling like a freak anymore, as he called it. Yes. You can actually hear him working it out in my lobotomy. Yeah. A big, deep voice. Yeah. He sounds kind of like not Sam Shepard. What's, the guy? Big Lebowski. Sam Elliott. Sam Elliot. Yeah, that's what he reminded me of. The dude. Yes. He also had that big mustache, too. Sort of like Sam. Ellie. Yeah. That handlebar biker mustache. Right. So, Chuck, whatever happened to lobotomies? Why did they go the way of the dinosaur disco? Well, a couple of reasons. I mean, one, there was a lot of gaining steam with the criticism of it because they found that they were lobotomizing criminals. They were lobotomizing soldiers from World War II because criminals against their will sometimes. Right. But they lobotomized soldiers because hospitals were overcrowded veterans. Unbelievable. And so that was kind of gaining steam. And then the introduction of Thorazine basically was kind of Thorizing it all, everything. I believe that somebody said that Thorazine was to the treatment of schizophrenia. I'm sorry. That penicillin was to the treatment of infectious diseases. Which is a pretty big comparison. Yeah, big time. So Thorazine was developed in 1950, and as it began to fall into widespread use, lobotomies kind of fell out of widespread use. And Dr. Freeman himself, he had one last lobotomy in 1967. Right. Yeah. He killed a woman with a brain hemorrhage after the third try. I think this is her third lobotomy. And she wasn't just some mental patient in Iowa. This is a housewife. And when she died of I believe a hemorrhage after the procedure, that third procedure, that was it. He was banned from surgery, performing any kind of surgery from that point on, and actually spent the rest of his days until he died in 72 traveling the country in a camper, which I wonder if it was his lobotomobile. Yeah. I don't know. He wasn't pitching it. He was actually going around trying to find he was visiting old patients to prove that he had done good. And he had done some good in a couple of cases. In several cases. I imagine his first one was a woman. I can't remember her first name, but it was inevitable. And she was violently suicidal, as described by her daughter, and afterwards, she went on to live a happy, fulfilled life. Yeah. But every successful case I read about, they would say things like they weren't violently suicidal anymore and they were just kind of happy. But it still seemed to be that lights are on, but no one's home thing. Like the couple I got robert Palmer, of you. Yeah. The married couple was the husband had his wife lobotomize because she was so emotional. She was suicidal as well. Yeah. And she says that she was happy as a clam and he was satisfied. He said that she came home and she never caused any more trouble and she was just happy. And she could still back talk. Yeah. She could still cook and clean and do all the things she could do before, and she agreed. I just haven't been worried about things since then. And she was in her eighties. But you read that emotions are normal, mood swings are normal. Agree. But I do think that there is a certain threshold, and if you're violently suicidal, maybe a lobotomy was a better option. Yeah. But I also want to know what the criteria for all this was back then. There wasn't any. Put that in your pipe. One of the most unsettling things that I found from this article is that lobotomies are still performed today. Yeah. In England. Right. The UK is one of the few countries where it's no longer called lobotomies because lobotomy is such a horrible stigma attached to it, and for good reason. Neurosurgery for a mental disorder and MD. And today, apparently, they use MRIs as guides, to be more precise. But pretty much this type of surgery, psychosurgery, as it's called, is pretty much the same thing. It's destroying white matter connections and you're removing people's emotional selves. Right. I mean, there may be something to that, but certainly it was so nonspecific and nontechnical to jam ice picks and just blindly move them back and forth. No wonder there was all kinds of results. Yeah. So, Chuck, we are both kind of nuts, and I'm really glad it's not like 1946, because we be in big trouble. Yes. My wife Emily and I would both be on the lobotomy table. I think I'd drive you to the Freeman. Thanks. Sure. I appreciate that. That's it for Lobotomies, buddy. Yeah, I encourage people to go out and listen to Howard Dully's radio show there. It's really great. Okay, hopefully you guys enjoyed this one. You can read all about Lobotomies on how stuff works.com. You know what to do, handy search, bar, et cetera. And Chuck, let's talk some Audible stuff, shall we? Our sponsor Audible.com. Hit it. Okay, so if everyone goes to www. Dot. Audiblepodcast. comStuff and sign up to get one free download from Audible.com. 50,000 plus titles of audiobooks, stand up comedy, spoken word speeches, pretty much anything you can listen to is right there. Yes. And I was on there browsing just this morning, and I found one of my all time favorite books. 1491 by Charles Man. Good one. Great one. Man runs around the Americas, basically to archeological sites, and gets the scoop on the most recent findings and finds that there were way more people in the Americas before Columbus showed up than we realized. Really? And, yeah, there's a lag between the arrival of Columbus to hispaniola and the second wave that followed within the next 50 years, the second wave found that it was virgin territory. There's almost no one there, it turns out. It's because about 100 million people died of smallpox from Columbus's first arrival. Wow. Between then and the second wave, it's fascinating. That's a mini sod right there. You just did one. Maybe we'll do a bigger sewed on it. A bigger sod, yeah. What about you? You've been on yeah, I'm going to recommend, just quickly, steven Colbert of the Colbert Rapport. Nice. Oh, I saw his portrait. His National Gallery portrait of Smithsonian recently. It was awesome. With this familiar scowl. Yeah, I love that guy. So, yeah, he has a very popular book that he reads himself called I'm an American and so can you. And that's all I need to say about that. It's hysterical. Nice, Chuck. So you can get either one of those titles for free by going to www. Dot audibleprodcast. Comstanding up. And that is audible right there, baby. Let's do listener mill. Let's do it. Josh, I'm just going to call this we got a lot of great feedback for the high fructose corn syrup. Yeah, we're going to have probably like three podcasts in a row. We're going to be reading some in the mail. What do you think? Really? We should I can bring back haiku's. Okay. All right. So I'm just going to call the intelligent listener mail because Max is a smart guy and I like these. Most of all, I'm a graduating senior in the business college, but when I'm not in class or listening to podcasts, I almost always enjoy listening to philosophy. It's more or less my passion. More specifically, I'm interested in world religion, metaphysical theory, and man's relationship to nature and the universe. So this guy is obviously smarter than we are. Heavy. To say that fructose corn syrup, or any other man made chemical compound does not occur naturally. You're speaking with the basic assumption that man is something different than nature. Unfortunately, for those who can find themselves above nature in importance or authority, this is not the case. It's our Western culture and religion that strengthens his point of view. Man didn't plop into nature as a separate and flawed phenomenon in a stupid natural universe. Man came out of nature. Man is nature. Man is the universe. To borrow a quote from my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts. And you're seeing, you're hearing, you're talking, you're thinking, you're moving, you express that which it is, which moves the sun and other stars. So to perceive yourself as something different is only an inability to identify yourself with the cosmos. So, Josh, man's manipulation of chemical compounds is really the world's manipulation of itself, or perhaps the universe manipulating itself. And that is certainly a natural occurrence. Boom. And that is what happens when I off handedly. Say something is manmade. Right? Nice. Well, what's the guy's name? Max. And I dig my philosophy, too, so I thought it was kind of cool. We dig you, Max. And we really dig anybody who sends us something, especially if it's as intelligent as that. If you want to shoot, show off your ginormous brain, send us an email to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com."
444835f8-53a3-11e8-bdec-c759d1435b03	Beavers: Tail Slapping Fun	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/beavers-tail-slapping-fun	Beavers are in fact, very busy. They're builders and solid family members, husbands and wives. Learn all about N America's largest rodent today.	Beavers are in fact, very busy. They're builders and solid family members, husbands and wives. Learn all about N America's largest rodent today.	Thu, 22 Oct 2020 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=296, tm_isdst=0)	40216946	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And there's Jerry somewhere. And this is stuff you should know. The Orange Insider edition. Thought you're going to make a bad naked gun joke. No, it did run through my head over and over and over and over again, though. It's hard, though, when you're our age. Yeah. And you saw those movies for sure. Yeah. Dumb joke, though. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a naked gun joke for pizza. Come on. So this kind of ties in, I think, a little bit, with our porcupine episode in that beavers are porcupinesque in some ways. I think it ties in even more to our wetlands episode, which gave birth to the idea for this episode. Yeah, absolutely. I'm pretty excited about this one. I think beavers are about as great as it gets because they're so studious, and they also bend the world to their will. They shape things the way that they want them. And I like that about them. Yeah. And I also love their familial aspects. Yeah. Which will get to all this stuff. But what we're talking about is the largest rodent in North America, which really demeans them, I guess. But yes, rodents. It's not a bad word. There's so many great rodents who beavers, porcupines. What? Squirrels. I know you have a thing with squirrels, but I know I like squirrels. Now, Momo and I and Yummy sometimes comes with us to chase squirrels across the street in the park and feed them peanuts. We give them peanuts as like to kind of buy them off after mo chases them up a tree. But the squirrels across the way will actually come to you and eat peanuts out of your hand. So I'm kind of on squirrels now. Momo loves squirrels. Chipmunks. Mice chipmunks, too. Yeah, rodents are okay. Chuck. I think there are fewer terrible rodents, and the only ones I can think of that are terrible are those scary New York City sewer rats. Okay, so rodents are all right. Up with rodents, I guess, rabbits. And I don't think they're rodents. They are. You like a hamster? Sure. Hamsters. I don't know if rabbits are rodents. Are they? It makes sense that they would be. But it's what rodent.com says. Okay, well, who am I to disagree with that? But we're not talking about rabbits. We're not talking about sewer rats. We're talking about beavers. And again, beavers are amazing animals. And like you said, it's kind of related to porcupines in that there's what you could call Old World and New World beavers. But there's really just two species, and one is found in North America, and one is found in Eurasia. And it's easy peasy, no fuss, no must. These are the beavers that are alive on the planet. Yes. So we've got the American beaver. They weigh between 15 to \u00a365, which is very large. If you've ever seen a large beaver in the wild, it's not scary because, you know, and we'll get to whether or not they're dangerous, they're really not. But it's such a large thing that you're like, wow, they're bigger than I thought. Usually has run through my head when I see beaver. Yeah. \u00a365 is about 30 kg. It's a big beaver. It is a big beaver. And I had to convert it to kilograms for at least our friends in Canada, because beavers their national emblem. They have beaver on their nickel, which is amazing. Like, this just makes me love Canada all the much more. So for that \u00a360, you're going to be a couple of feet long, 23 to 40 inches long. That's without the tail. You don't count the tail when you're measuring a beaver, the tail, we'll talk a little bit more about it, but they're anywhere from seven to twelve inches. If you're Asian, you're about the same size. You can be a little bit smaller, but bigger. Well, you can be a little smaller. I think the range is bigger. Okay. So you can be down in the 20s poundage wise, but up to the 70s poundage wise, and you're probably a little bit longer. And your skull and your tail are going to be narrower or your tails narrower and your skull is smaller. Yeah. But that tail is what everybody understands when they see a beaver. Just like with a porcupine and it's quills a beaver in its tail, they're just synonymous. Everybody recognizes a beaver because of its tail, and also the tails help make it cute, even though if you zoomed in and took a really close look at the tail, you'd be like, Gross. Do you think? Yeah, it's scaly. It's got sparse, coarse hair associated with it. It looks like a blackjack that some old tiny roughs would beat you up with. And yet it's one of the most amazing appendages any animal has. It's like a Swiss Army knife for tails. Yeah. They're very useful in a lot of ways, obviously, if they're swimming. And beavers, by the way, can swim five to 7 miles an hour. They have little web feet, they can close their ear holes in their nose holes, and they can roll a film over their eyeballs. Yeah. Nicotating membrane. Yeah. It's amazing. So if they're going to be swimming, then that tail is going to be acting as a rudder and as a propeller. Also, if they're on land, it's going to act as a little kickstand at times. Yeah. When they stand up on their back legs, they use their tail to kind of lean against to help balance. It's a big one, for sure. And this is a sure sign that you have frightened, upset a beaver. They will slap the water with their tail, in part to frighten you away, to say, like, don't mess with me, but also to warn other beavers because, like you were saying, they're familial. They are actually fairly social animals and they live in family units, so they would want to warn the wife and the kids back at the lodge. Yeah. And here's the thing. I spend a lot of time at a lake here in Georgia and I have heard something which I thought was a beaver tail smash, but I'm not sure because I didn't see it. I have seen evidence of beaver eating tree stuff. Yeah. Which we'll get to. And one day when I was in the lake, I saw a mammal's head coming toward me and I don't know if it was we also have river otter, so I don't know if it was an otter or a beaver, but either way it was a large head. And even though I know that they weren't going to come after me, when that thing pops under the water, you're just like, Where's he going? What's he doing? Where is he? Is he coming at me or not? Were you swimming in the lake at the time? Yeah, swimming in the lake. All this large mammal head dunk under, I could feel you. I'm not sure how long beavers can hold their otters can hold their breath, but beavers can hold their breath for about 15 minutes, which is pretty remarkable. I think it's remarkable, too. It really just goes to show like, just how adapted they are for life in the water. And they are mammals, so they have lungs, so they need to breathe air outside of the water. But yeah, the fact that they can hold their breath for 15 minutes, they have nicotating membranes that cover their eyes like little goggles, so they can see and work underwater. They spend a significant amount of their time underwater. In fact, they're most protected in water. That's where they can move the fastest. They can swim pretty fast, way faster than they can waddle on land. Sure. And a lot of their predators won't necessarily come into especially deep water after them. So when they're in the water, they're in their happy place. Yeah. And imagine when they dive for 15 minutes and are swimming around, what do you think those fish think, here comes a beaver. Do they know or they just like, what in the world is that big hairy thing? I would like to think they know. I like to think of communities of animals or ecosystems. Just they know each other. Yes, they know each other. They know each other's. Foibles they've come to accept one another fever. Foibles. They always kind of in the end that when somebody like a human comes in and tries to screw things up, they'll all band together and raise money for the community center so that the developer can't buy it. So if you are North American beaver, you can live pretty much anywhere in North America except for the desert, because you want water around you're probably going to be near a pond or a lake or marsh or swamp or a river. Eurasian beavers used to live all over Europe and Asia, but they were overhunted because at one point in time, wearing beaver pelts and beaver hats was like really high fashion. So now they're only found in Germany, France, Poland, Scandinavia, southern Scandinavia and Central Russia. Yes, and a lot of those are because they were reintroduced to the areas I believe Germany had to have their population reintroduced because they were hunted to extinction. How many neighbors used to be here? Like 400 million. That's the estimate in North America prior to Colombian contact, that there were about 400 million beavers and they were hunted down to near extinction within the hundreds of thousands, from what I saw. And we're luckily held back from the brink. And when I say luckily, I don't just mean for the beavers, but I mean for the planet as far as North America is concerned. Because one of the things that we are still learning but have come to realize is that the beavers are probably the most useful species on the planet because they are one of the few species that alters their environment as radically as they do. Yeah. What are they called? They're a keystone species. Keystone species, because when they are present, biodiversity thrives, and when beavers are removed from an area, biodiversity suffers. The presence of beavers makes life better and richer for entirely other animals and species just because of what they do and how they do it. All right, that's a great place to take a break. And I say when we come back, we talk about the two fundamental fulcrums on which beaver life is based, the dam and the lodge. Okay? All right, we're back. And there are a couple of things you've heard busy as a beaver. I don't know if that's proven, but I think it is almost universally agreed that that phrase came about because beavers are, in fact, very busy and they work all day long building their homes and building dams. Their homes are called lodges. And you've probably seen if you've ever been hiking and stuff in America, you've probably seen a beaver lodge by river or lake. It's a little dome. Well hunt out of sticks and grasses and moss and mud. Maybe you thought a local witch had built it. Yeah, those look like a little what do you call witch's houses? Witch's house. I think there's a cottage. Oh, sure. I think there's a different name, but a witch's house. There's a name for this. I thought so. No, I don't know. I think so. Which house? Maybe I'm thinking of Coban's House a Day, which no, there's a word. I just watched The Witch, the movie again, I think there's a word for it that might be my favorite movie. We did a movie, crush roundtable on that, by the way. It was really good. It is a good that's the guy who did the lighthouse, isn't it? Yeah, Robert Haters. God bless that man. I can't wait to see his Viking movie, too. Oh, man. I can't imagine. Okay, so the beaver lodge is about 8ft wide, a few feet high. They're on the banks of these ponds or on lake shores. This is one of my favorite parts. Many of them have a little underwater back door. It's like sort of a skiing chalet if you're snow skiing. Yeah. Which makes sense because, again, they spend so much time in the water, but also it protects them from terrestrial predators because they can get into the water and escape when a predator is like at their door. Yes. And they're nocturnal. They don't hibernate. But most of this action is going on at night and everyone pitches in, the whole family. I don't think we said yet, they live with their children till they're about two. And in a beaver lodge you might find a mom and a dad who are monogamous mates for life. And they might have their three two year old, almost two year old children. And then they might have their little grandbabies. Yeah, because when they have their babies, which are called kits, which admittedly is not as cute a word as Porcupets. No, but they're cute. But dude, press pause right now, everybody, and go look up some baby beaver pictures. Little tails. Oh, my God. They're cute. So they have baby beavers. And one of the reasons why they're so cute is because they stick around for so long. Or they stick around so long because they're so cute. That's what I mean to say. But they stay as part of the family unit and help work on the family lodge and dam until about two, when they wander off. And then at three, they start to mate. But they build their own lodge at age two. And from what I've read, it's usually very clumsy. It's not in the best place, necessarily. And so they kind of learn as they go, but they also learn from their family unit first, which I think is super cute. It is. I think we should talk about dams, though. I mean, the lodges are cool and it's a great place to live if you're a beaver. But the dams is where they really get their shining moment as a species. That really helps out the environment because they help create these wetlands, don't they? Yeah. So a beaver will move into an area that's dry as a bone, that's maybe cropland, that's maybe timberland that is not at all flooded. There's no pond or wetland or anything like that. And they say this can be better. And so they find like a source of moving water, like a stream or a brook, maybe a creek, maybe a creek, something like that, and they stop it up. They build a dam and they build this dam so that the water backs up behind it and floods this area and turns it into a wetland. And they do this not to irk humans or just for fun. They do it because they're altering the ecosystem to better suit themselves. Like I said, they survive much better when they're in the water. They move faster, they can work faster. So they actually make this ecosystem into an aquatic ecosystem where before there wasn't an aquatic ecosystem. And they do it all by building this dam. And the way that they build dams is magnificent in and of itself. Yeah. So you've got your dam base, the foundation, basically, where you're going to use mud and gravel that you get from the stream, and you kind of work together as a family. And with your tail and you're pushing I say we're beavers all of a sudden, and you're pushing this mud and gravel up from the bottom of the stream. And if, let's say it's a place where the creek is running a little bit too fast and there's too much flow, they're going to say, you know what, we're going to take these sticks. We're going to pile these things up all along the bottom until basically it's like building from the ground up until they're strong enough to stay in place. Right. But they're so good at using their hands and they're so strong. You said 60, \u00a365 or about 30 kg. They're mostly muscle, too. They're really strong little rodents, especially for being like herbivores. They're like those vegan bodybuilders. But they'll take sticks and plant them in the bottom of the stream or whatever and start forming a lattice work that they weave in between and fill up with mud to really stop up some fast moving current. That's the level of manipulation that they're doing. They're building a dam that they eventually successfully back up the flow of water from. Yes. Which is I've tried to do that before and it's hard to do. My buddy Scotty and I went camping once in California, and it was when I was young in the film industry, so there's a lot of time between jobs. And we just decided to stay and keep staying. And I think we ended up staying for like eleven or twelve days. Wow. And we wanted to build a waterfall next to our campsite so it sounded better. So we spent days and days with sticks and big rocks and trying to reroute and change the river. It was some of the hardest work I've ever done. Imagine doing that at like 48 inches long and only \u00a365. Yeah. So they're not only building this thing up, they got their little kits and their children helping, like bringing up sticks and mud, saying, PA ma, is this okay? And they say, yeah, add it to the pile. And then once they're done, there's a periodic inspections that go on because they got to make sure that it stays strong because that current just keeps going, and it's very easy to wiggle the right stick loose, and all of a sudden it starts crumbling down. So they basically inspect these things every so often and check it for leaks and bring in mud and patch it up just like it's like a human might do. Oh, I saw that they do daily maintenance on it. That one way to tell whether beavers are in the area is to find their dam, make it like a little minor hole in it, and then go back and look the next day. And if it's patched up, the beavers are around there and giving you the middle finger. Right, exactly like, okay, yeah, we're here. You figured it out. Please leave our dam alone. But, yeah, these things are like water tight for the most part, or they allow very little water through. I guess, from what I can tell, as much water as the beaver wants through. Like, they're very willfully deliberately constructed structures that will turn a dry area into a wetland. And when that happens, one of the things that they use to build the stuff with their trees around the area and they use their teeth, those really sharp, strong teeth that I said are like kind of orangish at the very beginning of the episode. And they're orange because they have so much iron in them, which actually gives them that much more strength. Yeah. They're up to an inch long. They're super strong. They actually sharpen as they gnaw on trees. So it's not like it'll dull their teeth out. It actually sharpens them. And the other thing they're doing is they're eating that tree. They're one of the few mammals that may be the only mammal that can actually digest cellulose. Well, porcupines can, too, remember that's, right? Yeah, they can digest cellulose because they probably have a very similar kind of bacteria that helps digest it for them. But they digest a lot of the cellulose that they eat. And it's really hard to break down normally from mammals, though. Yeah, but like you said, they're essentially creating these wetlands. They're preventing erosion. They are helping to purify the water. Oh. Let's talk about what the dams can do. Okay, Chuck. It's amazing. It's like a little environmental coalition that goes into the woods to make things better. Yeah. So I think in the wetlands episode, I said something like a beaver creates the equivalent of some, like, a $5 million wastewater treatment plan or something like that. I could not find that again to save my life, but I think that was roughly it. They create this structure that creates the artificial wetland, and in doing so, it filters the water because it slows the water down so much that the stuff can trickle down to the bottom. It turns a normal terrestrial piece of land into a wetland. So aquatic plants come, and they've also found out that not only does it filter water of, like, sediment and particles. It also is capable of handling farm run off fertilizer, which is really pernicious because when all that fertilizer makes its way into watersheds and wetlands, it creates algae blooms, which suck up all the oxygen and kill off a bunch of fish. Right, which is a big problem. They figured out that beaver dams actually work against that. By fixing nitrogen, excess nitrogen, from fertilizer, it prevents it from flowing. Bacteria chomps down on it and releases it as nitrogen gas into the atmosphere. And the stuff the bacteria doesn't eat floats down to the bottom, gets eaten up by aquatic plants, which, when they die, lock it into the sediment. So this farm runoff, that's a huge problem as it stands, is actually mitigated by beaver dams. They've recently found out. Yeah, and talk about just what kind of impact it has on who lives there. It's basically like an invitation to nature that says, hey, we got a good scene going over here. If you're an invertebrate that doesn't feel like they have a home, you're welcome here. If you're a new species of bird that didn't think that you would flourish here, time to change that attitude. If you're a duck or a goose, you can nest on top of our lodge because our lodge is super warm, because it's full of beavers and you can nest on top of there and stay warm. And especially if it's out in the middle of a pond or something, you're going to be safer. What else? If you are a woodpecker and you're like, all these trees are too healthy, there's no insects in them, well, just wait, because flooded timberland doesn't stand up very well to standing water, and so some of those trees die off and they provide housing for insects, which in turn provides food for the woodpeckers. What if you're a moose? Let's say probably no good for you, right? No, you're going to love this if you're a moose. So buckle up. Because the beaver has turned it into a wetland, it's now an aquatic environment. And moose like aquatic plants that grow on the edge of, like, marshy areas. So these plants that weren't there before are suddenly there for the moose. And it gets even better, because when the beaver family finally moves away or they die off and the whole thing gets abandoned, eventually the dam is going to break without regular maintenance. And when it does, the place is going to go back to how it was before, but it's going to go back to better than it was before. Because think about all that nitrogen that was fixed in the sediment, all the erosion that was prevented, and all of a sudden you have a lush, beautiful meadow that deer can come eat on. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. They help out all these animals and introduce all these new animals that can live together. And then once it's done, it becomes a flowery meadow for deer. They leave it better than it was when they first got there. Amazing. It is amazing. The problem is that humans frequently have much different plans for those same areas, and we want to follow them. Say we take a break, and we come back and talk about that after a break, like I just said, what do you think? Answer now. Yes. Okay. All right. So we love beaver. You love beaver. Everyone out there listening. There's a lot of people who don't love beaver. Is that beaver? It is now. Okay. And the reason why is because if you own, like, a stand of timber, your plan is to eventually cut that timber down and sell it for wood planks or books, like, stuff you should know, calling an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things available everywhere. You get books to preorder. Now, there's things you can do with trees that you grow, and if beavers move into your area and they build the dam, those dams are effective. This isn't like a little puddle we're talking about. They can create basically, like, lakes, ponds, like enormous wetlands. And when you have standing water over timberland, those trees, they're not aquatic trees that you're growing there, so they actually die again. Remember, they die often. Bugs move in, and woodpeckers eat the bugs. Well, if you're trying to make money off of those trees, you don't really want the beavers to do that to your timberland. No. And I think how many tens of millions of dollars? I think it was like $20 million a year or something. I think more than that because I think I saw Alabama alone suffered, like, $14 million in losses from timberland. Just Alabama from Beaver Damage. And not only that, it'll flooding for crops. It can make what was ordinarily a very stable bridge or road now unstable and caused damage to roads and stuff like that. Yeah, from, like, saturating the soil that was holding it up just fine before. Yes. The good news is, back in the old days, they would just call as many beavers as they could to get rid of them. These days and this is kind of a weird stat, but it says 75% of beaver. Human conflict can be resolved without trapping or killing the beavers. So I take that as in they will somehow move them along in a way that's humane. Well, I don't know if that's even the case. I think that more often than not, the first question is, is the beaver really causing a problem, or is it that there's beavers and they've created this wetland and it wasn't there before, and you're taking it as a problem? And that's the thing that I'm seeing, that it seems to be, like, the new paradigm for viewing beavers as far as their relationship to humans. It's like, really, what's the problem? Yes, they're damaging cropland. Okay, that's a problem. If they're killing timberland, that's a problem. If they're washing out a road, that's a problem. But if they just created a wetland that wasn't there before on your property, where you bought the property and it was dry and now there's a wetland there that you didn't plan for, is it really a problem? And I think that's what they're saying is that 75% of the people who are asked that question will say, actually, I guess it's not. I'm going to learn to love the beaver. I love beaver. Yes. And it really gets my dander up this lake that I go to the Facebook page, there are people post like, hey, it looks like I have a beaver eating on my trees. And some of these people literally are like, yes, I'll take care of that with my twelve gauge. And it's just like I've never understood the people who want to move to nature to kill the nature. Yeah, I know. It's just unnerving. And I have seen some beaver damage and I love it, I welcome it. So, yeah, all you want, you would be one of the 75% who would say like, no, it's no problem whatsoever. You probably wouldn't even say it was an issue. You wouldn't even be asked that question. You would just know from the outset that it's not a problem. I call that a beaver. Beavering. Yeah, that's right. Beaver is going to beaver. And so we know now that they are a keystone species. They're so important that it's great. The impression I'm getting is kind of like, no, it's not really a problem. So you can't touch that beaver, don't shoot that beaver. You're going to get in big trouble depending on where you are for shooting a beaver when it wasn't creating a problem, which I love, because they should be protected. Because, again, not just the fact that they were almost hunted to extinction. They provide so many really important services. I don't even know if we talked about it. There are two others, chuck, they prevent flooding. Three others, they prevent flooding by slowing the flow of water so things downstream from the dam don't get overwhelmed as much. Right. The stuff in the dam helps recharge aquifers below, whereas before there's a little stream trickling over. It was doing jack for the aquifer. Now the aquifer is getting recharged on the daily and then the third one is they provide natural fire breaks which help forest fires. Yeah. I have a feeling when we're done we're going to be mad because there were like three more things we didn't think about. That happens to me a lot and drives me nuts. Here are some of the things that people do, try and do, though, to mitigate what they perceive as their beaver problems, because they do create some problems as far as human settlement is concerned. They will use beaver pipes, and this is basically plastic pipes that you put in a beaver dam to route that water to where you want. It helps control. The flooding that beavers can cause. Yeah, it's like so long that the beavers like it doesn't think to go to the end of the pipe. It just sees that there's something around it's damage. And it probably dams up around the pipe, but that still lets the flow of water go through. Yeah, this is kind of cool. They will build a pre dam. If they want beavers away from a certain place and in a different place, they'll basically say, hey, look over here. We got this fence. It's like a foundation for your new home. Right. You got 10% of your work is already done. Want you to start here. So they'll do that. Yeah. The beaver says hot dog. And then another thing is to design well, there's two kinds of fences. There's the pre damn fence that encourages them to come. And then there is another kind of fence to keep them from building there in the first place. Yeah, those are called beaver deceivers. Yeah. Basically like a culvert is a frequent place that a beaver likes to dam up. And that's where it causes a lot of damage because culverts are meant to help drain water to keep roadways stable and that kind of thing. Right. So you would just basically put a fence radiating out from either side of the culvert outward at an angle kind of like in a V shape. And then those two fences are connected by another fence between the two. So it's just basically like a triangle that ends in the culvert. The key is if you make those fences long enough, I think 12ft minimum or something like that, the beaver is going to be like nuts to this. This just isn't even worth it. I'm not going to try to build a dam here. Or if it does start to build a dam, it's going to give up eventually and your culvert is saved without the beaver being hurt or harmed. The beaver just moves onto a different spot that it likes. Right. And if you have a tree that you really love that you see has a beaver activity, you can wrap like chicken wire around the base of it if you want. There's also some special paint that you can paint on the trunk that apparently beavers don't like if you want to protect a certain tree. It's like the nail biting stuff, all that. Oh my God. Somebody wrote in about that. What did they say? I didn't see that one. I think they were just asking what it was. I'm sure they still have it, but I don't remember what it was. I believe. Remember Lee Press On Nails? I think they had a sideline in that stuff. I'm sure it was it's probably just like clear nail polish. Yeah, but tastes like garbage. Yeah, that tastes really bad. Taste like what? I thought it was like hot. No, it was bitter. Okay. Yeah, I wouldn't like that at all. Now it was very bitter. I don't think we mentioned the I mean, we should talk a little bit. We talked about the kits, but they do live in large groups. They're very social. They're called colonies, and they mate in the winter. During the first few months of the year, the Eurasian beaver gestates for 60 to 128 days and have one to six little babies. And the American beavers gestate from about 105 to 107 days. Again, one to four little kits. And they are weaned around two weeks of age, whereas the Eurasian beavers weened at about six weeks of age. Right. And so, Chuck, I saw that beavers tend to live, like you said, they were monogamous, typically. I saw that they live about ten to 15 years in the wild, which is so cute. But you can also build a pretty respectable dam in that time, too. And I think actually the largest dam that they've ever seen is they think it is for many generations of beavers staying and working on it in Alberta. Right? Yeah, it's huge. And I guess everyone just got in on the party. Yes. I think since the seventies that some beavers have been keeping it very appropriate. Yeah, pretty much. And those little kids, by the way, can swim about just one day after they're born, they're already swimming around. Right. So, like we said, I think that they become sexually mature at age three, and around that time they're going to start producing something called castorium. Right, yeah. And castorium is like a lot of people think that it's like the origin of castor oil. It's not. Correct. From the castor bean. I believe this stuff is like the opposite of castor oil, actually tastes and smells like really good. Yeah. I mean, it's used the FDA says you can eat it. It's one of those grass, remember, generally recognized as safe ingredients. And the thing is, there's just not a lot of it. It's very tough and it's a lot of work to go out there and try and extract this flavor ingredient from the beaver tail. Right. I think it says about \u00a3292 annually total. Right. I imagine it's expensive. It is very expensive. And you can still find in some places I think I saw a whiskey that uses it, chanel's perfume. What is it called? KOAR Derusi, I believe it still uses it. Really? And it's a flavor ingredient, too, because, like you're saying, it's generally recognized as safe, but it also adds like a vanilla raspberry flavor. That's what it tastes like for humans. And they think that there are some ice creams out there that still may use that, like old timey ice creams that use beaver castorium, like beaver scent. It's what it is. It's beaver musk. It just so happens, it's so gross that beaver musk tastes like raspberry vanilla to humans. Yes. But they were hunted for a really long time, which kind of led to this one myth didn't. It the testicle myth. Yeah. Up until about the 1100s, people thought beavers ate or bit off their own testicles. Apparently this has its origins in ancient Egypt and medieval Europe. It continued where I think what they said was that beavers knew that hunters were coming after them because of that castorium which originated in their testicles. And none of this is true. I think their testicles, they don't even have hangers, right? No, they don't. They're located inside them, which automatically disqualifies it. But also the beavers were basically saying, like, no, you can't have my castorium. I can't have it anymore either. I would rather bite off my own testicles than let you have them. I guess maybe as a survival mechanism. Like they thought that the owners would leave them alone if they didn't have testicles. But maybe no, that's not true at all. And then there's one other great fact, Chuck, that I think you got to take us out with. Yeah. The Pope in the 16th century said, you know what? That tail is pretty scaly and they sure are in the water a lot. So during the fasting days, go ahead and eat that beaver. It's close enough to a fish. Yes, exactly. It qualifies as a fish. So you could eat beaver back in the 16th century thanks to the pope. That's right. As far as I know, it teased early if they were dangerous. They're not. Beavers are very nice little fellows and ladies. And if there is a beaver that attacks somebody, it will make the news because it's so rare and it probably means they're really sick. Yeah. Like all mammals can get rabies, but like porcupines, I get the impression that that's one of the few diseases you can get from a beaver. The thing is, if they are rabid and they do charge at you, they can do some serious damage with those teeth. Like they can chew through three foot diameter trees. They can bite through your skin. And so if you get too close to a beaver, it can have bad effects. It's just like you said, it's extremely rare. But I saw at least one guy died from them in the last decade or so. Right. That was just bad luck. So a guy in Baylors was trying to get a picture of a beaver and got too close and the thing bit him in his thigh and bit through his flemoral artery. And the guy bled to death from a beaver attack. He died just bad from a beaver attack. His family has to live like that for the rest of their lives. Yep. Beaver attack. I know. And there's been some other attacks too, but yes, I think they just kind of give beavers bad name unwarrantedly, don't you? Shot through the leg and you're too blamed. You give beavers a bad name. Goodness. Todd. Well, I guess that's it for beavers, huh? That's it. I'm glad we finally got to do this one. Leave them alone. Yeah, let them do their beaver thing. Beaver in. Like Chuck says, beaver's going to beaver. If you want to know more about beavers, by God, you go find some beavers and study them from afar because they are nature's miracles. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. All right. I'm going to call this braver Angels. Hey, guys, listen to your episode on swing States. You mentioned the dangerous level of polarization going on between reds and blues in America. Oh, yeah. Thanks for reading. That's fine. You're welcome. And I wanted to let you know that there's something we can do about it. There's a great grassroots organization with a specific goal of depolarizing America called Braver Angels, which organizes events to bring reds and blues together, to have real nuanced discussions about things they disagree about and help us understand and respect each other. That's great. It is great. Yes. I would love to peek in on one of these meetings and maybe go to one. Yeah, they're doing a lot of online events now due to Kobe and among other things, just launched a campaign called Hold America Together to prepare a response to potential election related conflict in November. Could you please tell your listeners about Braver Angels and help keep our country together? Because America needs this. Love to all the reds and blues out there, and you guys are great at what you do. Join the braver Angels that is from Krista and just go to Braver Angelsorg baraverangelsorg. B-R-A-V-E-R-A-N-G-E-L s.org. That is correct. Okay, cool. That's fantastic. Thank you, Krista. And thanks to all the braver angels out there who are trying to keep the country together, because like Krista said, we kind of need it right now. And it is brave. It's daunting to step outside your echo chamber. Oh, man. It is. And it's just harder and harder because the echoes have gotten stronger and stronger. So to hear something other than that, it's like this almost like makes your brain melt. Pretty neat. All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know about some group or service the country or the world is in dire need of, we want to hear about it. You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iheartradios How Stuff Works. For more podcast My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show."
423d271e-53a3-11e8-bdec-ff416ca3b0eb	What's the deal with MSG?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-msg	MSG got a bad rap in the 70s and 80s. But what is it exactly and how bad is it for you? The answers to those questions lie within.	MSG got a bad rap in the 70s and 80s. But what is it exactly and how bad is it for you? The answers to those questions lie within.	Thu, 05 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=248, tm_isdst=0)	54157556	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, friends. You know, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted it in compatibility. Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself. Like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Hello, stuff you should know. Come and see us in Orlando or New Orleans because that's your last chance. Yes, Orlando. We're going to be at the Plaza live, october 9, New Orleans. We're going to be at the Civic Theater October 10. Just go to Sysklive.com and you will find info and links to buy tickets. And then you can come see us because they won't let you in the door without them. I'm sorry. That's right. And if you want to come see me, I will be in Chicago at Lincoln Hall on September 12. And I will be in Austin, Texas, at the north door on October 2. Ticket links are weirdly hard to find. So just look up end of the world Josh Clark. Austin or Chicago, and you will find what you're looking for. See you guys soon. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark there's. Charles W, Chuck Bryant there's first time guest producer dave Dave, yeah, he picked it up already. That he already knows not to say anything in response. I love that in a guest producer, don't you? So Dave's story dave worked with us many years ago and went away. I don't even know what Dave did in the meantime. He went to Alaska. I think he wandered the desert. He wandered back in one day and said, hey, I hear you guys invented podcasting. Right? Can I get a job? Yeah. And here he is now. Yeah, it's good to have him back. You may have noticed a distinct uptick in the quality of our short stuff. That's because Dave took over editing those things. Yeah. Jerry was like, this isn't even worth my time. Snooze yawn. Yeah. Gerry has been handed off duties. Huh? Left and right. Like she's dealing a hand of cards. You know what the final straw one day is? She's going to just look at us both. This is how she's going to quit and do the move when the dealer leaves the table. The little hand move. Yeah. I'm out. I hate you both so much. That's how she's going to break it to us. Yes. And then a new person with a cumberbunt on. We'll just wander in and an arm garter. Right? Because we go to casinos in the 19th century, right? A portly fellow with a mustache. That's right. Hair waxed. That'd be great. Would be great. Can't you see Jerry dreaming about doing that? Like just kind of twitching in her sleep with a big smile on her face. You and I dream about stuff you should know going on forever. And she dreams about ultimate demise. Right. So, Chuck, let me ask you. Have you ever had nacho cheese doritos? Is that the original doritos? I don't know. I think it's possible. Taco flavor is the original. But for you and me, as children of the would say, nacho cheese is the first one we probably ever ate. The red bag. Sure. I'm a Cool Ranch guy. I like it too, actually. I like all doritos. I don't really discriminate. So you have had nacho cheese doritos? Yes. Have you ever had soy sauce? Oh, I'm a big soy guy. Okay. I do not follow the sushi. What they say how to eat sushi? I drown it. I still use soy sauce, even though every time there's a weird little voice in my head that's like, you're not supposed to do that. That's voice. It's probably you. Me sitting next to you. It's really not, because she uses a little bit too, but I don't know. It is not male, it's not female. It's just some weird, disembodied voice. And I say, to heck with your voice, I'm doing it anyway. Yeah. What about Maggie sauce? Have you ever had that? I don't think so. Oh, I'll bet you have somewhere. It's kind of like a tall, slender brown bottle with a yellow label. Maggie. M-A-G-G-I-I think I can picture it. Okay, I'll bet you've had it anyway. If you've had all three of those or any one of those. What about vegemite? Oh, God, no. Okay, I've had vegemite. I'm not crazy for it. But we're not here to yok anyone's. Yum. Right. Well, I'm going to throw one in because I see what you're doing now. Okay. Can I throw it in there? Sure. Have you ever used accent? That is AC. A little accent. I go, I believe. Sure. C-E-N-T that spice. I don't know if I have. I know exactly what it is because I'm just so familiar with grocery stores, but I don't know if I've ever had it. You're so familiar with grocery stores. So familiar. 20 of your talents. I've got another one for you. You know Japanese mayonnaise? The cupidall mayonnaise. I have had that. Okay. We could do this all day. What about oysters? You ever had oysters? I love oysters. Okay, well, Chuck, listen, you have had MSG, monosodium glutamate if you've eaten any one or all of those things. That's right. I love monosodium glutamate, also known as MSG. And the world does, too. The world just doesn't know it because MSG, those three little words. Those three little letters have such a bad reputation, especially in the west, especially in America, that food manufacturers have come to basically bend over backwards to create new processes for creating MSG so that they can insert them into foods without having to say that there's MSG in the food, even though there's very much MSG in the food. But they know that a lot of Americans won't eat that food if they see that there's MSG in there. That's right. And we will get to this in more detail. But it was such a bad thing at one point, especially in the yeah. I remember growing up and people talking about MSG in Chinese restaurants, and the whole time they were talking smack about Chinese restaurants, a lot of American families were just dumping that stuff all over their food via that little Accent spice bottle. Yeah, Accent. Any kind of processed food that has any sort of salty or savory kind of flavor to it. It's everywhere. It's in grape juice. It appears everywhere naturally and added because grape juice, what you want is a meaty salty aftertaste. Right. Swishing the grape juice around your mouth, you're like yeah, it's got a real oyster quality to it. I love it. Are they natural in oysters? Is that the deal? Yeah, oysters. MSG, like the little trio of sure, those three letters. Yeah. So the point is that people are terrified of MSG or really can't stand it. They say maybe it gives them all sorts of physical maladies. Perhaps they think it can lead to developmental disorders. And yet, at the same time, they consume MSG every day without realizing it and without being affected by it. So it's entirely possible, like you said, we'll talk about this much more in depth later, that the fear of MSG is a totally unfounded scientific panic that is basically a nocebo reaction to something that appears to be basically harmless to almost everybody who consumes it. Yeah. We're going to be busting some left and right. Here we are. I call Adam. Did you say? I call Adam. Yeah, I call Adam. You're Jamie this time. Nuts. My beret out. Yeah, you got to shave your beard, too. Just keep the mustache. Yeah, and I got to grow that mustache out to where it covers both lips. That's right. He had that big thing. Boy, he disappeared, didn't he? Oh, yeah. He said, thanks for the memories, suckers. Yeah. I was under the impression, just watching that show and being a fan, that he didn't want to be there ever. Right. I think he liked the science of it. He wasn't into the TV part of it. I think so. I think his last day on set, he was probably pretty stoked to get out of there, right? He was like Jerry at the end of stuff. He should know when it comes. Yeah, except he had millions of dollars just into his arm. Garter. Exactly. All right, so monosodium glutamate. There's a lot of myths. One of them is that this is something that human beings just created out of thin air. It's black magic. And that is not true because it occurs naturally in a lot of foods. If you've ever had tomatoes and cheese, those are a couple of big ones. Eat a pizza, you're eating naturally occurring MSG. Yeah. Don't forget, again, oysters, anchovies, mushrooms, potatoes, if you like Asian food, kelp, seaweed. Sure. All that stuff contains natural MSG or some form of glutamate. Yeah. And such that the FDA. If you get a can of tomato sauce, if you haven't added MSG, otherwise you don't have to put that on the label because it's in the tomato. Right. But apparently in the United States, you also can't put something like no added MSG or no MSG on the label because it's been proven as misleading. You just don't mention MSG at all, even though there is MSG in that tomato sauce. But like you said, if the manufacturer says these tomatoes have a decent amount of MSG, but we really want to pep it up a little bit with some added MSG, then they definitely have to put the MSG is in there. That's right. So if you want to talk chemistry very briefly, which is always the best way to talk about chemistry, it is monosodium glutamate is glutamic or glutamic acid. What do you say? Glutamic. Glutamic. Yeah. And a little Ion of sodium. Just boop, right there on top. Right. And so that's it. That's monosodium glutamate. And so the difference between glutamic acid, which is an amino acid that our bodies produce, we're able to synthesize it by breaking down proteins. It's actually glutamic acid. And any kind of mineralion bonded together is a glutamate. So if it's bonded if glutamic acid is bonded with an ion of sodium, it's monosodium glutamate. If it's bonded with an ion of potassium, it's potassium glutamate. So there's, like, different minerals that it can bond, too. But the one we're talking about is monosodium glutamate. And glutamate is extremely important to our bodies. I saw somewhere that \u00a34 of us, a little under 2, any human being walking around is glutamate. That's how much of it we have in our bodies at any given point in time. Yeah. And it actually serves functions, too. Glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter. Right. And it's an excitatory neurotransmitter, which that means it stimulates nerve cells to relate the signal, and we'll get to the is a good or bad thing. But some people, one of the claims, and sort of where some of that is rooted aside from just propaganda, is that MSG in foods can lead to excessive glutamate in the brain and then excessive stimulation of nerve cells. And for that reason, it's what's called an excitotoxin. Right. Like, it excites neurons so much that it actually destroys or damages them. So you destroy enough neurons, then you destroy your cognitive function. That's right. And we'll hold the rest of that for further mythbusting mythbusting. I like the extra mustard you put on it. So as far as how much we're consuming, this is what the FDA says, and this is a quote. An average adult consumes approximately 13 grams of glutamate each day from the protein in food. And then this is just like regular foods, while intake of added MSG is estimated to be around 00:50 5 grams per day. Right. So average daily intake is about a half a gram a day. Right. And so you can find it again everywhere in the body. You also find it in breast milk. And glutamates are just everywhere. Even if you wanted to get away from MSG, you're not really getting away from glutamates. And you'd be ill advised to get away from glutamates to begin with. Right, right. The thing is, and this is where a lot of people say, well, really, MSG is fine. There's no problems with it. A lot of people say that it's kind of considered settled science by some, as we'll see that the body does not distinguish between manufactured MSG and the MSG or other kinds of glutamates that it gets from foods in which this naturally occurs. Right? That's right. When your body takes it in, takes an MSG, it goes, okay, let's separate the sodium ion and send it over here for this use. And we'll break the glutamate down over here, and we'll use it for this, for neurotransmitting and to build proteins. It doesn't make any distinction, metabolically speaking, between MSG that's manufactured and MSG that you find in, like, tomatoes. Right. I think part of the problem started in the 60s with the way it was synthesized. Yeah. Anytime something is synthesized through a chemical process that has toxins and toxic byproducts, I think people are going to freak out even if the end result is not toxic. Yeah, and it's pretty understandable, too, because, I mean, some of the stuff we're talking about is very nasty. And you think about it, you're like, Wait, that's where MSG comes from, and I'm eating it on my food. Right. I can commiserate with that big time, even though a large part of my brain is like that's just kind of a fear of science and chemistry. Right, but it's understandable. For the first half of the 20th century, there was a process to produce MSG that included propylene and acryl and nitrile. But you don't want to eat that, and you don't eat it. It's just these were used to as precursors to create MSG. That's the process for a while, but you can understand how it would get a bad rep just from that alone. Yeah, but now it's produced by fermentation. Basically. They take certain kinds of bacteria and yeast, and they grow that in a broth. They basically use starches, various sugars, carbohydrates, and then the bacteria ferments that sugar and they produce the glutamate. Then they combine it with the sodium, and it looks sort of like salt it's a white crystalline substance. It doesn't really have much of an odor, and you could just sprinkle it on top of your chocolate ice cream if you wanted. You could. I think it actually does, in certain amounts, bring out sweet. I don't think it does anything to sour or bitter, but it can enhance sweetness and enhance saltiness. It does have its own flavor, which we'll see, but it's also known as a flavor enhancer too. Right? Like that accent. Right? Exactly. Accent. Why are they sponsoring this episode? I don't know. They really should. Either that or they're like, leave us out of this. We don't want to get this kind of wrap. We were under the radar for a large portion of the 20th century right? Exactly. Until you guys came along. Should we take a break? Wait, hold on. I have a little more on fermentation. All right. Of course. This is very surprising, but the fermentation, the waste water, what's left over after you get the MSG out of this, like, sugar beet juice that the bacteria and yeast have fermented. I read a study from the Chinese National Academy of Science, I believe. Chinese Academy of Science. They called MSG wastewater one of the most intractable forms of wastewater we produce. Yeah, because all of that yeast and some of the ammonium that's produced as a byproduct of it, it consumes a lot of oxygen, so it kills off other stuff in, like, water. So you can't just dump this wastewater into other water because it'll create, like, a dead zone wherever it hits. That doesn't bode well for people that are scared of it. No, it doesn't. There's a lot of stuff about MSG where if you look at it, like, yes, I really understand. It's really coincidental that this is actually harmless, but there's all this circumstantial peripheral stuff that the wastewater will scorch the earth, basically. Yeah, but enjoy your accent. Chump. Poor accent. I know. All right, now I'm okay with taking a break. All right, we'll come back and talk a little bit of a refresher, perhaps, on Umami right after this. So, Chuck, we did an entire episode on Umami. Do you remember that? That was a good one. It was. We also talked about it in our episode on taste and how it works. Sure. But we should kind of go over the broad strokes of it again, I think. Yeah. I mean, up until the early 1900s, humans were sort of since 400 BCE. When bitter was added by a philosopher, of all people, named Democritus Democratis. Anything that philosophers couldn't do? I don't think so. It's a pretty broad title back then. For real. But sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. And we were locked into that, and everyone was pretty happy with that. Like, why mess with it? I don't know. They're still messing with it today. There should seem like six or seven other candidates for a 6th taste. I'm sure that will be happening at some point in the near future, don't you think? Yeah. And I think we settled last time on carbon dioxide is going to be the 6th taste. Really? Really. Wow, that's sad. No, it's good to go. And it does some magic to your tongue. I guess it does, doesn't it? Alright, well, we'll see. So here's a gentleman that comes along in. His name is Kakune Akita. Is that right? Not bad. What did I get wrong? There's like an extra little half syllable in there. Kikuna. Okay. I should just leave the Japanese pronunciations to you. I think you basically need I should have just kept my mouth shut because it was so close that I got Europe locked down. How selfish can I be? Right? Exactly. Do kikunaya aka in an Italian Accent I don't think I can. My brain just broke. So he was a professor of chemistry at Tokyo Imperial University and he was eating some dashi, which is made from seaweed, a kelp called kombu. And he was like, man, this tastes meaty. But there's no meat in it and it's super rich. And there's something going on in here that I can't quite pinpoint. And I think I might be on to something. He said, where's the beef? He might have. He totally did. So this is not like the first time anyone ever realized, yeah, there's such a thing as a meaty taste or whatever. But because we have been so locked into the idea that there's only four tastes, I mean, I remember going to elementary school and being taught that too. Sure. In the 80s. Basically just lied to over and over again. Yeah. No one said umami to me until like, seven years ago, basically. Yeah. But Aka had figured this out way back in 19 eight. He said, no, this is not just some flavor, this is a taste sensation. That is not one of the other four, it's its own thing. And even more than that, I've been doing some pretty neat experiments on kombu and dashi and I've actually isolated what's giving this thing. It's meaty taste. And by the way, I'm going to call meaty taste umami, which means delicious or yummy. And it's called monosodium glutamate. That's right. And we knew about glutamic. Glutamic acid. Which way do you say? Do you prefer glutamic? I mean, my mouth wants to say glutamic, but my heart wants to say glutamic. I got you. So I'm torn between two lovers. You are. Just call it g acid. Yeah, g acid. We knew about this stuff already. There was a German chemist named Carl Heinrich Rithousen. Beautiful. And he discovered this in 1866. So that brings us to another myth we can bust here. Is that gluten? Because it's monosodium glutamate. People that have gluten intolerance think that it's made with wheat gluten and they can't eat it. That's not true at all. No. Had you heard that before? I think anything with the letters glu in any food. I think people that have gluten sensitivity are wary of. Right. Well, what's interesting about this I hadn't heard that, but this makes total sense. The reason that it's even called glutamic acid is because written housing used wheat gluten. He hydrolyzed. It basically broke it down. Like the acids in your stomach break down food. Right. To isolate the glutamic acid. Since he used wheat gluten, he just kind of named the acid after what he used as the precursor, which was wheat gluten. But it has no gluten in it. Has nothing to do with gluten. You can get MSG any number of ways that don't involve wheat. Did I ever tell you about the restaurant in Paris, the gluten free place Emily and I went to? No. You know what the name of it was? What? No glue. Serious? That's pretty great. Yeah. Right in the middle of Paris. And it was actually really good. I had a very delicious hamburger there. I can imagine, man, french cooking is yeah, even without gluten. And speaking of French cooking, there is a guy who was using savory. That's what people in the west called it. Even after Akaida came along and said, no, this is, umami it's its own thing. The Western chefs were well aware of this idea of savory. They just hadn't said, this is a fifth taste that humans are capable of tasting. And Augusta Scoffier, who I heard the name of before, but I didn't realize he's the guy who basically founded French classical cuisine as we understand it today. Oh, really? Yes. It was this guy. He invented the sauce. No, he invented, like, French cooking. That was a joke. French cooking is all about the sauce. It is about the sauce. So, yes, I'm sure he had a lot to do with the sauce, but I was reading an article on him in Britannica, and it was written by Nathan Mervold, who was the first CTO of Microsoft. But it was about this French cook from the 19th century. Yeah, he was big into animal stocks, and he used veal stock and kitten stock and puppy stock and all sorts of baby animal stocks. Right. And he knew about it. We just didn't call it, Umami until it was so named. No. And also, one other thing about Escofier, he also used something called Maggie sauce, which had been invented several years before by Julius Maggie, who was a Swiss miller who came up with the sauce and escape was like, this is the bomb, I think was the quote that he said. So people were aware of savory, so much so that they were creating sauces that really isolated the, Umami flavor. It just, again, was Akita, who came along and said, let's apply some science here. I give you, ladies and gentlemen, the fifth taste. That's right. And it does taste. There's a writer named Carla Lali. Music nice. It's music, but I bet she pronounces it music. I would if my last name is Music. And she writes sometimes for Bon Appetit. And she said it's sort of like salt mixed with dehydrated meat juice. And it adds a lot to food. You don't want too much of it. You can sprinkle it on your food, but you don't really want like you can buy pure MSG, but it's not the kind of thing that people generally do. Like, at home, is buy a big tub of MSG and like, sprinkle it on stuff. It's usually mixed with other spices. Like Accent. Yeah, Accent. It can be mixed with other seasoning salt. It gets mixed with most often. And the reason that you want to premix it is because one, I mean, it's just easier to use, but there's certain proportions you want to use. It doesn't take much MSG to bring out the flavor and salt or for MSG to kind of even stand on its own and lend that, umami, flavor to whatever you're doing. So you don't want to use too much. So you'd have to be pretty proficient in using MSG to just use straight up MSG. Right. Which is why it's usually pre mixed to begin with. Yeah. He was a smart guy, so he wasn't just satisfied with discovering this and sort of sitting back and said, one day on Wikipedia, I will be featured. He said, I'm going to make some money off of this. You got a business partner name? Well, you should say all Japanese names. Okay. Sabro Suzuki Jr. Yeah. So you do it with the right flare. I've been exposed to it so much, I like it. I sound like an american. And you sound like you're trying to fit in. Thank you. So this guy was already a part of the chemical industry, and so it was a pretty natural relationship. They founded a company called Aginomoto. The essence of taste. And their mascot was and is well, that's just okay. The Odgy Panda. I could have said that. You could have said that. But they are still around today. And a couple of years ago, they had about $10 billion worth of sales of MSG. They're the largest producer and they are literally pumping this stuff out on a year to year basis. Yeah. Funny enough, I don't have a bottle of Accent in my pantry, but I do have a bottle of Adenomoto. Yeah, some Listers going to write and be like, why do you hate America? I bet Accent is not even made in America. I wonder. Sometimes they do kind of slip a bit. Like, it's just been around for so long, everybody thinks like, well, of course it's America. Who knows? Like they chant USA when they grab the bottle and sprinkle it on their food. So we should talk a little bit about the science of whether or not MSG is it all in people's head? Is it real? I'm really glad you asked that, Chuck. I don't I don't know. Well, I mean, here's the deal. The FDA says I remember do we do one on the FDA? Yes. Does the FDA protect American? That's right. Because that's where we remember this phrase, generally recognized as safe. Gross I think that also came up in our dietary supplements episode, too. Yeah. It's funny that a phrase meaning something is safe does not make one feel any better. Right. Generally recognized as safe does not mean 100% safe, and it doesn't mean 100% safe because even though it's fairly settled science, they can't say, like, absolutely no way, in any case is MSG ever harmful at all to anyone in any amount. Yeah, but I mean, you can say that about basically anything. And I hate I'm not trying to create a straw man argument. No, I'm with you. You can say that about water. There was a woman who drank too much water and died of water toxicity. You can die from too much salt. And remember, it doesn't take much MSG as compared to salt to be added to food to really bring out the flavor or whatever. So there's like a lot of you can basically there's nothing you could say, this is never going to harm you no matter how much you eat. And I think that's kind of why they're saying generally recognized as safe. I think the other aspect of it, though, is that a lot of people do want to say, no, this is just it's settled. I've seen that all over the place while we were researching this is Settled science. I've read about a woman who wrote a book exploring whether or not some food additives were safe, and she didn't even bother to include MSG in the book because she considered it so settled. But there is definitely a contingency of people out there, including not just like, worried parents or Facebook dwellers, like actual scientists in, like, the industry of food sciences who are saying, no, actually, there may be a small group of people out there who experience these symptoms that we now call MSG symptom complex, but what used to be called Chinese restaurant syndrome. But overall, it's not going to developmentally harm your kid or it's not going to blow your brain up because it's an exciting toxin or anything like that. Yeah. So here's the deal on the science. It is true that increased glutamate activity can cause harm and that large doses of MSG can raise the blood levels of glutamate, but dietary glutamate and we'll talk about some of the experiments here in a second, but dietary glutamate is not going to have any effect on your brain because it can't cross the blood brain barrier in large amounts. It's true. That's right. Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay, so here's the deal. If people experience, like, headache, muscle tightness, numbness, tingling, weakness, flushing, these are all reported like symptoms of that syndrome. We're talking about dietary glutamate. Like, they. Say the threshold that could cause those symptoms is about 3 grams in a single meal. But if you remember, we said zero. 5 grams is a daily average intake in a single meal. Consuming six times the average daily intake of MSG could lead to something like that. And they're not exactly sure why, but some researchers have speculated that really large doses like that, like overdosing on MSG, you may get little trace amounts crossing the blood brain barrier. Got you. That makes sense. And that 3 grams in a single meal is straight up MSG fed to people in an experiment who were on an empty stomach. There's basically no situation where you're going to accidentally poison yourself with MSG so that you would actually get that MSG symptom complex. Right. And in the early 70s, when this stuff started really becoming like the devil spice, they were literally injecting baby monkeys and mice with straight MSG and humans. And humans. And they didn't like it very much now because they were injecting large amounts of MSG into infant animals. Right. So I read that there are pharmacological effects from injecting MSG, like, that's basically not up for debate. And I was like, well, sure, if you inject sugar or even if you inject salt or something like that, you'd be the same problem. Actually, it's not necessarily true. You get kind of saline drips. You get glucose drips. People do inject salt and sugar and can tolerate it. So in injected form, MSG is not good for you. But no one injects MSG, and the fact that we metabolize MSG by eating it and that that's how we actually intake MSG in small amounts through food, which are guts, then metabolize and turn into glutamate and sodium, it should not be harmful for you. That's what the science has found. That's right. And in addition to these studies that injected baby mice, which is sort of ridiculous, these weren't even great studies anyway. They were not double blind and found research that says they were just basically lacking in design altogether. Right. So they weren't good studies, and they were wacky and the methodology, I think. Well, yes, which is kind of I don't know. I guess it's surprising maybe just scientists who weren't so great were the ones who tended to be interested in it, or they were rushing it out to market. I'm not sure. Maybe food science was just a little early. Maybe so. But from the findings of these early studies and then replicated studies of the early studies that found MSG to be harmful, basically said, no, this is not harmful. Yeah, probably. If you inject it, it's not good. But don't inject it is basically what science did. And then there were further follow up studies in the decades that followed that said, okay, well, wait a minute. What about all these people who are self reporting MSG, allergies who are saying they're getting this complex of system or symptoms from eating at, like, Chinese restaurants or something. And so there was investigation of that. And what they found from those studies is that they basically couldn't get it beyond the placebo effect, right. That you were just as likely, if not in some cases, more likely to report the MSG symptoms complex from a placebo than you were if you were given actual MSG, a pillow with MSG or something in it. So combined, all these studies combined have basically led the FDA to say, because the symptoms can't be consistently or reliably replicated, and that there's all these double blind placebo tests that have been done that show placebo can bring it out, too, we tend to think that it's actually basically in almost everyone's heads. That's right. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll take one final break, and we're going to come back and talk about a few reasons why the MSG scare was born right after this. So, Chuck, just despite the fact that there's all the science out there, that some people are like, this is settled science, that is not a phrase that even really has any basis in reality. But that's what they're kind of the point with people who say it settled science. They're saying that this is as close as science comes. Like, stop being afraid of MSG. There's still plenty of people who don't eat MSG to avoid it. Yeah, I saw that. The International Food Information Council did a survey and found that 42% of Americans actively avoid MSG. They read labels, and if the thing says MSG is contained in this, they won't need it, which is more than people who avoid caffeine, genetically modified organisms, or Gluten, which was really surprising to me. And when was that? Oh, man, you're killing me. It wasn't very long ago. How about that? Well, it's been since the Gluten scare has happened. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I would guess so. I would say within the last ten years, that poll was done. But so there are people who are like, I don't trust you. I don't trust the FDA. I don't like the word that says generally. It scares me that sometimes MSG is used as a preservative and stabilizer in vaccines. I don't like those two being associated with one another. Other people say, I saw this, but I couldn't see it. I saw the same mentioned basically around the Internet, and I couldn't find any source material. So take this with a grain of salt, as it were. But the fermentation of MSG produces arsenic and lead. Yeah, that's all that, too. So people aren't really excited about that kind of thing. And then there's that whole other subsection of people who are like, it's an excitatoxin, and if you eat too much of this, your brain is going to blow up. It's basically like a genuine flavor blast, is what they're saying. Yeah. So there are a lot of people who are afraid of MSG but the question is, is it because MSG really is harmful or is it because it's just a fear of science and a distrust of the people who are supposedly looking out for our wellbeing? Well and a holdover from the right when it was all over the place of something terrible. To the extent where restaurants and hotels and a lot of them still do have these signs say no MSG. It's safe to eat here. There was a book written by a man named Russell Blaylock called Excitotoxins. The Taste that Kills. And there were rumors that Chinese restaurants put it in their food because you get filled up faster and you won't eat as much off the buffet. Oh, yeah. Oh, you don't remember hearing that? No. Yeah, that was a big one. That fills you up or make you feel full. So you're going to get away with $0.13 less food. Right. I've actually seen that there is an idea that MSG does affect you in that way. It makes you feel fuller. But from what I'm seeing, science is bearing out the opposite, that they think that people who eat MSG tend to be heavier than people who don't use MSG because it may suppress leptin, which is a hormone that tells us that we're full, so we stopped eating. So the idea is the more MSG you eat, the less you're going to feel full, or you're just not going to feel full and you're going to keep eating more. Which is a problem because from what I'm seeing, the whole anti sodium thing that's kind of going on among health crusaders. Sure. Well, in very much the same way that corn syrup was allowed to replace fats in that whole fat free trend, MSG is being added in increasing amounts to this low sodium or even salt free stuff because it brings out the flavor in salt. So if you add more MSG, you can use less salt. And on the package, you can say lower sodium. Right. You don't say anything about the MSG, but you can sell this thing as lower sodium or whatever. So people who are worried about their heart or worried about their salt intake will buy that, not knowing that they're eating actually more MSG than they would be, and that may actually cause them to overeat if indeed MSG is linked to obesity. And the jury is still out on that one as well. Yes. Very much inclusive at this point. Yes. So a lot of this this is where the story gets kind of interesting, I think, as far as the hysteria around MSG. And there was a letter written to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 from Dr. Homonka Kwok, and he was a senior research investigator at a place called the National Biomedical Research Foundation. He immigrated from China, and he said, you know what? After I eat at Chinese restaurants here in the United States, chinese American food, I feel malaise, I feel some of these symptoms that people always list out these adverse reactions. And I think I'm speculating here that it's because they're using a lot of MSG over here. Right. Which I think the implication was they don't really use MSG in China because they're better chefs. Like really good chefs kind of look down their nose at using MSG because it's a cheat. You can bring MSG out you can bring glutamates out in food through patient slow and low cooking techniques, or you can just take a shortcut and put a little MSG on it and you're going to get to basically the same place. Right? That's right. So in one way, you almost have the idea that he was saying, like, Chinese food in China is superior to Chinese food in America. Sure. Is true, probably. But he was saying, I actually feel physically unwell after I eat in Chinese restaurants in America. Yeah, exactly. Which is a big difference than Chinese food in China is better than Chinese food in America. Right. And this was not a letter to the editor. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Right. By a doctor. Yeah. So it was a big deal. And here's what happened after that. This letter, like, it was sort of a domino effect. And even though he was a Chinese American and he had probably the best of intentions, it gets picked up, and then all of a sudden there are white people in America writing racist articles with broken English headlines, very much like making a caricature out of Chinese people, chinese food, Chinese immigrants, Chinese chefs. And it devolved into jokes. And, like, this is the era that we grew up in, in the seventies and eighties, where, like, we remember this stuff. Sure, in very short order, dr. Clock didn't coin this, but some of the letters, the follow up letters in response that the New England Journal of Medicine started to print, coined this term Chinese restaurant syndrome. That's right. Where basically, if you ate at a Chinese restaurant in America because of the copious amounts of MSG that was used, you could feel weak, light headed. Your neck and face could feel tight or flushed or both. You might feel woozy. You might have heart palpitations. Any number of things headaches, allergies might get set off. Your asthma might get set off. And all of these things combined came to be called Chinese restaurant syndrome. And here's the thing. You said it. Dr. Klock's letter was a letter. It wasn't a study. He didn't say, here's the study. Let's peer review it. It was a letter that got some response, pretty much tongue in cheek, joking responses in The New England Journal of Medicine. And the non medical media saw this and said, oh, let's start reporting on this and started reporting on it as if it were scientific fact that MSG caused these symptoms and that you would get this from eating at Chinese restaurants. That's right. So none of it had to do with eating \u00a38 of Chinese food at a buffet. Sure. And even Dr. Klopp in his letter said, maybe it's soy sauce, maybe it's cooking wine, maybe it's I can't remember. I think the copious amounts of sodium. And people even still today say, hey, maybe Chinese food does do something to you. But is it possible it's one of the spices or herbs or plants that used extensively in Chinese cuisine? Who knows? Yeah. And it can be salty food, especially when you're dumping soy sauce on top of already salty food. Sure. But the point is it's not clear at all that there is such a thing as Chinese restaurant syndrome, that there is any kind of response that anyone actually gets to this. Or is it all just the power of suggestion? That's right. And the story gets a little weirder here as far as this letter goes. So they published a letter, new England Journal of Medicine, and apparently there's a history there of joke letters, like onion style stuff, I guess. Sure. Fake syndromes, silly letters to the NBA. A lot of letters in response to this Clock letter had this sort of took this angle where they were doing that, and some of them suggested that it was a fake letter and the name Ho Man Clock was upon human croc, and it was all just cooked up. Right. So that's the foundation. Then in 2018, Dr. Howard Steele, this guy, put a response to an article about this controversy, and he called a reporter and said, you know what? I wrote that letter way back then. He said, I was trying to win a bet to see if I could get a fake letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. So that became the story for a while that this one letter that had kicked off this potentially totally unfounded fear of MSG and Chinese food restaurants was not only, like, baseless, but it had been written as a prank by a white doctor who made up a funny sounding Chinese name and that he had basically pranked everyone in America for the last several decades. Right. That's how it stood for a little while. But it turns out that even that wasn't correct. And we have our friends over at this American Life, our friends, rivals over at this American Life to thank for exposing this Howard Steel dude, because they dug in a little further. Yeah. Who are you going to turn to? The podfather? Yeah. Mr. Glass. Doctor Iraglass the Podfather. I thought that was Marin. No, I always called the Iraglass the Podfather. Really? Yeah. I always thought you were referring to Marin every time. It makes a lot more sense than Mary's not the Podfather. Isn't Adam Curry the podfather. Well, I think technically, probably. Is that an urban legend that he was the first podcaster? Yeah. I don't know. That's got to be true. Right? I don't know. It sounds great. So yes, of course it has to be true. I mean, Jesse Thorne was around before. Marin. Sure. Well, we were around before Marin, were we? Barely. Just barely. He'll never live it down. So this was this year, in 2019. As we record this, this American Life poked around like they like to do. They found out that Dr. Steele, who was dead at this time was kind of a real jerk because Dr. Quack was a real person who is now also dead. And his children are not too happy about Elvis. They confirmed, like, no, my dad was Dr. Clock. That is his real name? Yeah. It's not a joke name. No. He wrote this letter. He did work there is really a place called the National Biomedical Research Foundation because I guess Theo said that wasn't even a real thing. Right? He said he made up the whole thing. All of it. Yes. And his daughter was sort of exasperated and was like, no, that was my dad. He worked there. He wrote that letter. And this Dr. Steele sort of like, what's his problem? Basically, his daughter explains on this American Life that her dad was the kind of guy who would just play a prank like this. And when he was finally found out, we just refused to apologize because you should have had your head on straight better and shouldn't have fallen. He was that kind of guy. And on the one hand, he was an important physician. He apparently invented some orthopedic surgical techniques that are still used today. But he was also kind of a jerk, from what I can tell. He's the kind of guy that pulls out the chair from under you and you fall on the floor and he's like, what? You don't reach back to see if your chair is there? Basically. That's kind of how his daughter portrayed him in a certain way. Lovingly. Because it's her dad. Sure. But did you hear that segment? Yeah. So, yeah, it's real cringe inducing to hear Lily Sullivan on this American Life break the news to Dr. Steele's daughter that he didn't make up that letter. That he was lying about that all these years. She was like, oh, God, what has he done now? So the uptake or the upshot of all of this is that there was, like, steel really confounds everything. But if you take steel out of the equation what you're left with is a Chinese American doctor I think a pediatrician who wrote a letter back in 1968 from what I can tell, very earnestly and with good intentions saying, hey, don't you think this is weird? What is this kind of thing here's what happens to me when I eat Chinese food in America. Here's what I think it is that just set off this uncritical and pretty racist examination of it that the whole country just kind of took on as fact for decades. That's right. And your beloved accent. Chuck. Yeah. How does that play into this? Well, I mean, I don't use it. Well, no, but it had been around for a good 20 years before Dr. Cox's letter was published, right? Oh, sure. American has been using that stuff for ages. Right. And no one had ever complained of any symptoms from MSG. It wasn't until that one single letter isn't that fascinating? What an odd story. You got anything else? No. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about MSG, go try Maggie or Kombu or what was it? Oysters? Sure. Tomatoes, cheese, accent. Go try all that stuff. You're going to love it. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Well, you got a listener mail follow up, don't you? I do. I have two things, Chuck. First, I want to give a little heads up to everybody. My Chicago End of the World show is coming up on September 12, and there's tickets still available. I'll be at Lincoln Hall and you can get tickets@lhst.com. Don't be a jerk and spell out dash. It's just the dash symbol. And then, yes, I have an update for a listener mail. Do you remember the listener mail author Kate, who wrote in at the end of the nuclear semiotics episode? Sure. She had said that she had undergone, like, a big break up and drove from Phoenix to Charlotte and listened to us the whole time. Well, when we read that, almost immediately we got an email from another listener named Jeremy who lives in Charlotte who said, sorry to hear about your break up, but welcome to Charlotte from another SYSK listener. Are they in love? I don't know about that. It's a great city and I hope you have a great new start here. Which I just thought was so nice. Sure. That I found Kate's original email and got in touch with her and just forwarded just that part, copied and pasted it and forwarded Jeremy's whole email because, you know, you're not playing matchmaker, you're just being friendly. No, and I'm glad I'm not trying to play matchmaker, because in response, I get an update from Kate and she says, thank you. I'm doing so well now. I made a new group of friends, I have my own apartment, a new teaching job, and I'm even dating someone new. It ended up being the best decision I've ever made. She said, thank you for sharing my list in the mail. You guys rock. And then the metal finger hand emoji. Is she dating the guy? I don't think so. That would have been really fast. That's a MacGuffin then, right? Yeah. Well, you're the one who introduced it. I never said that. The guy was just being nice. I think it clearly was headed toward a romantic ending now. Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that. I've seen too many movies, I guess. I think you have two. You're like, come on, you got mail. All right, well, I'm glad everyone's happy. It doesn't have to end like a Meg Ryan movie. No, it doesn't. But it sounds like it came pretty close, actually. All right. I love it. So. Way to go, Kate. In making a bold decision. That paid off. So now, listener mail. Or should we does that count? Should we just end? I don't know, man. It's up to you. How good is the listener mail you have? It's pretty good. Let's go ahead and read it. Okay. This is from Veronica. She said, hey, guys, beyond the content of your show that I love, I hold a special place in my heart for the community your show has fostered that I experienced at your Chicago show this summer, which was just a few weeks ago. Yeah. I attended that show during by the way, she started listening to this show when she was in the 6th grade. No. And now she's, like, a working adult. That's cool. Yeah, it's the best. I attended the show in a very particularly difficult week. My childhood dog of 17 years had passed away that day. I had just moved across the country for a job with a lot of new responsibilities and challenges, and I was trying to establish some new routines in a big city where I knew no one. I was sitting in the third to last row of that theater with anxiety heavy in my heart. And then seeing both of you guys for the first time and hearing your voices made me feel like everything was going to be okay. It's hard to put into words how tangible the happiness in that theater was. And, people, if you don't go to these live shows, there's tangible happiness. There is. Yeah. We have not paid this listener to say this to give this testimonial. Yeah. Come for stuff you should know. Stay for the tangible happiness. Right. You can squish it through your fingers like jelly, she said. I've never been to any sort of event with such a joyful crowd. This is amazing. And she capitalized joyful. At the end of the show, Chuck talked about his late dog Buckley. I remember the last question of the night was this cute little girl who said, which dog who was dead do you miss the most? She said, it nicer than that, but I said, Buckley, and she said, that brought me to tears in the theater, not only because this was the same name as my own dearly departed dog what? Who died that day. This is just descended into, like, joyful chaos. I know, right? I can barely hang on, man. She said also, it felt like such a weird coincidence of this universe, and I couldn't explain it. Having recently graduated college, I'm starting my first job as a teacher in the fall. And I attribute a large part of my desire to go into education to you guys. Thanks for instilling me a love of learning, pursuing intellectual curiosities, and sharing those curiosities enjoys along the way with others. And she shouts out some friends. Caroline VZ in Philadelphia, Joanne L in Aba. Maria, Florida. They are two fellow stuff. You should know. Enthusiasts. And her name is Veronica, newly transplanted to Chicago from California. Well, welcome to Chicago, Veronica. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about Buckley, but I'm glad that you could help grieve that loss with 1400 friends. Joyful friends. That's right, man. That was amazing. Thanks a lot for that letter, Veronica. That was great. If you want to get in touch with us, like Veronica did, or Kate or Jeremy, you can go on to stuffyoushano.com and check out our social links. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that puppy on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgheref and Georgia Hardstarke, this true Crime M comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ct-placement.mp3	How Product Placement Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-product-placement-works	In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck take a look at the advertising practice of product placement, from its origins to different types to classic examples in film and television.	In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck take a look at the advertising practice of product placement, from its origins to different types to classic examples in film and television.	Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:36:15 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=16, tm_min=36, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=309, tm_isdst=0)	31736555	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco, pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. US. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good, it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles w chuck Bryant, who's enjoying a delicious RC bran cola right now. How's that treatment? It's wonderful. It's satisfying and delicious to my mouth. Chuck. Yes, chuck, I know we've already mentioned this once, but I want to allude once again to the mysterious companion shows that are coming out on the Science Channel. Sure. Pumpkin Chucking. And that's close the road to Pumpkin Chuckens. Yes. Yeah, but they're in the first order. Sure. The road begins at 08:00 p.m.. Eastern time. They're on the Science Channel on Thanksgiving night. It's a special Thanksgiving. Special? And you can kind of glean from the name what it's about. Yeah, but we're not going to say too much more about Erin. And now back to our regularly scheduled program. Chuck, I'm going to give you a little known but historically significant date in the 20th century. Let's hear it. March 31. Okay. Did you give up 1516 days after my birthday? 99. Ten years ago. I was in my 20s. Still, those were good days. Now what? On that day, the digital video recorder known as TiVo shipped its first product. Right. I happened to be outside that day the moment that that was shipped. Really? And I swear I heard an audible oh. Sighing out of every ad agency on the planet. Yes. They have found a way to not watch television commercials. Yeah. Not only can you fast forward to television commercials, you can skip television commercials automatically. TiVo senses that break. Yeah, much like your old cassette player in your car could skip to the next song because I break. Right. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. It was bad news for advertising. Yes. I have to admit that I do that as well. I try to start even my Falcons games about an hour late so I can zip through the commercials there, too. Oh, really? Yeah. So you like to postpone gratification? Yeah, I've gotten spoiled here. You know, they actually factor DVR stats into Nielsen ratings. Now they figured out how to do that. Well, it's a landmark change. Yeah. They factored in as whoever watches the show. And then there's the secondary seven day window after the show premieres. I remember them scrambling to come up with how to work that in. Yeah. Good for them. Yeah. Go Nielsen. Well, go Nielsen. And I guess go advertising agencies, because they figured out a way around it. Actually, it wasn't anything new, but it's definitely been stepped up since the introduction of TiVo. And that is something called product placement. Yes, product placement, which is time. You might not have been paying attention toward the beginning of this podcast, but we did it ourselves when we mentioned Chuck drinking a delicious RC Bran Cola. Right. It's a little harder to be subtle when you are working in an audio medium. Sure. You pretty much have to say it. Right. But the trick is, in a visual medium, like a television or film, obviously, you don't want to hit someone over the head with it too hard because then it can kind of backfire on you. Right. So you want to be really clever with how you place it. You want it to be noticed, but not to stand out. Right. And when done right, it works like gangbusters. Absolutely. The key is to have a cool advertising executive working on this plan who has nerves of steel and knows where that line is. Because you want, as Catherine Near, our esteemed colleague who wrote this wonderful article catherine. Right. As she points out, it's very easy to cross the line, and you want the product to fit in almost seamlessly. Yeah. Because the filmmaker certainly doesn't want that either. Even though it greases their palm a little bit and makes things possible many times, they still don't want it to be the focus. They filmmaker worth their salt. They don't always have their palms creased. Well, no. And you would think, well, yeah. They're always paying to have their product placed. There are actually three ways that it happens. Yes. The first way is when a product just ends up in a scene, organically or without any contact with the company who manufactures it, saying, Give me money. Yeah. Like a director or prop master. Someone says, hey, that'd be cool if Tom Cruise smashed this Coke can against his head, his little tiny P like head. Or if somebody in The Sopranos used a can of Raid yeah. On Tony. Yeah. Very violently. Right. Yeah. Ralph sprayed Tony in the face during a fight. That's not good. It didn't end well for Ralph either. No. And the SC Johnson company who manufactures Raid wasn't entirely happy about it because, really, number one, they weren't asked. Right. And number two, it makes their product look kind of bad. Like, oh, yeah, I forgot. Reid is really dangerous on humans, too. And they didn't use the can of rid the fake things that Hollywood comes up with. My brother used to give me those little props is like Christmas gifts. I would love to have one of those. Chuck, by the way, a can of beer that we talked about in the previous well, that's legit. Those are just generic products. But he would send me, like, a Budweiser Can was Bud Mace here? And he sent me an Avian bottle that said Ewan. And they do it just in the same typeface. Just like it. Yes. Which I guess you can get away with. Yeah. There's two other ways that this can happen. One is that the company trades some of their product for product placement, which is pale. About as lame as it gets. Not really. Like, oh, yeah, we need 50 cases of Coca Cola and we'll put your product in the movie if you give us free Coke. Who does that? Well, yeah, but that's the kind of clamoring that you do, buddy. Oh, yeah. You've been like, hey, if you send us some Reese's Pieces, we'll talk about them on the air. Yeah, that's right. But we're not famous filmmakers. No, we're not famous enough to do it the third way, which I plan on doing. That's pretty much extortion. Yeah. Financial compensation. You're saying we'll put your product in our movie or TV show or on the Internet, whatever. We'll get to that in a little bit. If you give us money in return. Yeah. And deal for smaller films, though. For sure. Definitely. When you think, like, oh, this is the most expensive film ever made. $200 million, or whatever wasn't it Water World that broke the $100 million mark or something? And then Titanic broke the $200 million? It just crazy money. But, I mean, this doesn't all come from one guy writing a check or one studio writing a check. There's Japanese masters involved. Sure. There are charity groups, there's investment funds, and then there's sponsorship, corporate sponsorship in the way of product placement. Probably the most famous, as far as I know, product placement was in E. T. Well, yeah, I just mentioned Reese's Pieces right out of context. But yeah, Et. Was famously catapulted. I even remember this. I remember Reese's Pieces before Et. And after Et. Because it was a big difference. And their notability was supposed to be M and Ms. I think people might have heard the story. And I think the M and M people, they said the Spielberg who wanted a million for it. Was that what it was? He wanted a million. M and M turned him down. Reese said, yes. 80% jump in sales the month the movie was released and really put it on the map forever. And put product placement on the map as well. This can work, and it does. Chuck, let's talk about the first product placement that ever occurred, as far as we know. Something in a little film called The African Queen in the 1950s. Kate Hepburn through a case of Gordon's Gen over the side of a boat. That's exactly right. That was awful. That wasn't bad. It's better than Mike. Kate Hepburn. I used to do a pretty decent one. I don't know what happened. You did a pretty decent one before we started recording. Or maybe I did. Audrey Hepburn. No, not Audrey Hepburn. Maybe I used to do that one. Well, I can keep them straight. Gordon's Gin paid the production company that made The African Queen, which at the time was either UA or Paramount, as far as I know. Yeah, probably. And that was the first real product placement that ever took place that we know of. Did you know that about that same time it started to really gain traction. And soap operas are named soap operas because they use product placement, oftentimes soap products in their episodes. And it still continues on today. What is it? All My Children had, like, a couple of months long storyline where Revlon factored into the plot line. Probably like the Revlon Killer or something like that. Probably. I'm sure someone knows and we'll hear about it. Yes, we will. All right. So it simply happens. It happens in exchange for the product happens in exchange for compensation, or it doesn't happen at all. Most famously in the movie Repo Man. Yes. Repo man film by Alex Cox they could say, how do you know that? I'm a fan of the movie. I am, too, but I don't know who directed it. Well, he did sit, Nancy, and straight to hell. He's a classic director. Okay. Alex Cox, famously and repo man, used all generic products. And if you've seen the movie, it's called Classic now, you'll notice that every single product in the movie is generic. And it came from Ralph's grocery store in La. Oh, really? Yeah. Who used to make the beer that I sent you? So it really was generic products. Yeah, they were real. Technically, there was a company that made those generic products that featured prominently. So I guess there was lots of product placement as all one company. Actually, there were two companies. Also, anybody who has seen that movie can tell you that probably the most prominent character in the entire movie that appears in just about every scene are the little Christmas tree air fresheners that show up on every vehicle in the movie. And the motorcycle. Right, exactly. And the company that made those actually sponsored that movie. Yeah, I actually I looked into that. I think it wasn't quite a sponsorship, but they did send them free trees. And apparently Alex Cox said they sent unscented trees because none of the actors could stand to be cooped up with the scented ones for too long. That's very kind of them. Yeah. And they basically said, These really stink, and you send it some that don't. Okay. But they are air fresheners, remember? So they didn't sponsor the movie. They did not sponsor it, but they sent him the swag that was used in the film. Why must you always humiliate me? I'm sorry. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building where you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a milk steak flamers chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis as an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling who's a? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only murders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription required terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So we talked about Reese's pieces getting a big pay off, right? Yeah. Smaller companies can do this too. You remember red stripe beer? Red stripe Ray beer? Yes. I love those ads. Yeah, I like red stripe, too. I do too, but I had never heard of that before the firm. See, I don't remember that in the firm when he goes down to the Caymans and is hanging out with Gene Hackman, drinking, drinking red stripe the whole time, okay? It was so prominent that there were, like, articles in the New York times and newsweek written about red stripe beer. And it was so funny, too. I remember. It wasn't about product placement. They were drooling over red stripe like it was the hip new things, right? It could not have paid off better for Red Trip. I think they saw actually, it could have, but they saw a 50% increase in sales after that movie was released. Right. I guess people probably were turned on by the cool little squatty bottle. Yeah, but, I mean, it had been around forever and was sold in the United States. I think they probably used it to just kind of up their market presence. I'm sure that they got a lot more distribution after that. The power of the cruise. Yeah. He's very powerful. Small man. Don't you wish that just for mentioning Red Stripe being in the firm, they would send us Red Stripe to be some retroactive compensation. Some juice. You know, my uncle was in the firm. Do you have BTS or something? No. Some juices. And some juice. Got you. Okay. I thought you meant beer. My uncle was in the firm. I'm not surprised he wasn't living in Memphis at the time where they filmed it. Tom Cruise. Your uncle is Gene triple horn. Your uncle. Jean Triple Horn is my uncle now. He just had a little walk on, like when we walk in and give the papers to somebody. These pretzels are making me thirsty. Exactly. Should we talk about Jerry Maguire? Yeah. This is a really good example of product placement going awry. Chuck. Yeah. If you remember in the Cameron Crow film, Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr. As Rod Tidwell, was a professional football player who is getting constantly dissed by Reebok in the movie. And Reebok is showing me no love. They're giving me no love. And that was a deal made through Rebock and TriStar. And it was contingent on at the very end of the film, after the credits, I think there would be a phony Rebot commercial finally with Rod Tidwell, who said, Sorry, Rod, we were wrong all along. Love. Rebot and Cameron Crow cut that from the end of the film. And they got sued by Reboot. TriStar did, because Cameron Crow cut that scene. Well, not only that, Cuba Gooding Jr. Is talking smack about them and at least one scene. Right. Well, they okayed that as long as the commercial played. Oh, I got you. Wow. So it was all part of the deal. And Rebot supposedly put in 1.5 mil into merchandise, advertising and promotional support. They sued TriStar for 10 million and settled out of court. And if you notice, if you've ever seen Jerry Maguire on cable, that commercial is back in the movie. Wow. So that had something to do, or at least it was initially on Showtime. I don't know if it still is, but that was probably part of the out of court settlement. Sure. Slip it back in there for cable and DVD or whatever. Yeah. TBS. And we'll make good cars also usually feature prominently in movies. Talking about cars. Yeah. There's actually been any time you see a movie where there's, like, a high speed chase, you inevitably invariably are shown the grill of the car that has the emblem. So, you know exactly like the transporter. I think Audi's figured really big into that one. Yeah. And Transformers. I think it was that new camaro. Michael Bay is always trying to highlight the new models of Fords and Chevy's. I think the first time I ever became aware of product placement was a little movie called RoboCop. Yes. Do you remember the Taurus from the future? Yeah, the Ford Taurus. It was actually the 1988 model Ford Tourists with a couple of ground effects on it that RoboCop drove. And I remember it coming out like I think RoboCop came out in 86 or 87. It was definitely before that tourist debut. Yeah. So the movie was its debut, and I remember seeing it on the road when it came out like, holy cow, there's the RoboCop tourist without the ground effect. That's exactly what they want. It is exactly what they want. I didn't go out and buy a tourist, but it is exactly what they want. Josh, some other notables yeah, clearly smoking. The bandit with the Pontiac TransAm, one of the most classic. I would have gone with the bitch and Camaro over a TransAm, but Herbie the Love Bug was, of course, a big ad for the Volkswagen Beetle. Not a big ad, but big. That's the thing. They might not be intended like that. Sometimes it just works out. There's a classic movie out there that is centered around a sentient VW Beetle. Right. That talks. Yeah. Is that what sentient means? No. And does Herbie talk? I think he just reacts. Yeah, you're right. Ascension is aware of your own being. Yeah. No, I'm kidding. Okay. I wasn't kidding. Back to the Future. The DeLorean was prominently featured, obviously, but I think, if I'm not mistaken, that was after the DeLorean had already had its run. It was very tongue in cheek appearance. Okay. And actually, I think Pepsi was definitely a corporate sponsor of that movie. Right? Yeah. And who can forget the truly bad BMW Z Eight that was driven in the Bond film, the World is Not Enough? The Bond films are often used to debut new stuff because there's just such global events, and those movies come out, they're perfect for it. And let's of course, Chuck, let's not forget my boy Magnum Pi. Driving a Ferrari 308 I, which, by the way, I've been online. You can get one of those these days for about 30K. Really? Yeah, and it costs you another 15K every time you need an oil change. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a TV car. Some other notable TV cars are the Dodge Charger from Dukes of Hazard and the Trans Am from Knight Rider. Once again getting some more love. And the Gran Torino. What Camaros? I don't know. Because even Star skin hutch use a Gran Torino. They could use a camaro. They were bad. Yeah. I often think of us as the Starsky and Hutch podcasting. Really? Yeah. Who's? Who? I'm clearly Hutch. Okay, that's fine. Who's that? David Sole. Yeah. Nice. If you're talking cars, Josh, a little company called Audi took it to a whole other level, as we say here in the south in 2004. The movie Irobot, which had something to do with Asimov, right? Well, yeah, it was based on the book. Yeah. The Audi RSQ concept car really plays a central role in that movie. And it wasn't just placed in that film. It was built and constructed solely for that film. Right. With the input of the director. The movie. They designed it together. Yeah. Just for this movie. It's nuts. And did they ever release that as a real car to the public? Most concept cars aren't released as a real car. They're just kind of like, hey, check this out. Get excited about this. And then sorry, jumps. Some other examples of non car. Who can forget Tom Cruise? Once again, we can't escape his tiny shadow. The Ray Ban sunglasses. And Risky Business. Yes. Classic scene. Yes. And Fruit of the Loom underwear. Yes. Fruit of the Loom. What else? FedEx and castaway film castaway. Yeah, but not just FedEx. Clearly FedEx features prominently in it. But they did such the writer clearly this is the writer did such an amazing job of Wilson Sporting Goods manufacturers. Yes. And they're volleyball. There are basically two characters in the whole movie, and one of them is a Wilson grand volleyball name. Wilson. Exactly. Yeah. But it's so perfect. This is actually maybe an example of the almost being taken out of the seamless. The product wasn't being seamlessly woven into the end of the I thought it worked, actually. It did work. I'm saying it works so well that I don't think must go by Wilson Volleyball. Right. Yeah. It was just another character. Well, I guess they've proven things like Reese's Pieces that it works. But do you really get a jump in volleyball sales because of that? I don't know. Seems unlikely to me. Will the COO of Wilson Sporting Goods please write us and let us know if you guys saw a jump in sales? Yeah, I'd like to know that. All right, Josh. Now, it used to kind of be just a willynilly, let me see what I can do DIY thing. But now most corporations have entire branches. Well, not a branch, maybe, but they'll have people that work exclusively with product placement, and they search out films and contact them to try and get their products featured. I think they're called Officers for Integrated Branding is the division usually they always create such silly names. Sure. They want to leverage their brand on as much of a granular level as possible to get shillemister. Sure. That's a great one. So, Chuck, this has become quite the booming little cottage industry. Big time. In 2006, they spent 1.6 billion for product placement in movies. 1.8 billion for TV. Wow. Most of that went to a show called American Idol. Yeah. Full of it. They will do anything for money. Because remember at and T If you call at and T and you can text to at and T and vote for your favorite person on at and T. And that way when your person wins, you can think at and T for being around. That's the kind of thing that each other feel dirty. Chuck you know what they paid every sponsor at and T? Coca Cola and four each paid $26 million each per episode. Not per season, is it? Per episode? I think it is. Per a deal, we should say. Yeah. I don't know how many episodes that is, but that's a lot of dough, man. It is. And reality TV as a whole has really embraced this. And this is where I don't mind it that much. Like, I'm a big Top Chef fan and that show is heavily sponsored. Like Padmo will come and say, if you notice in your GE monogram kitchen and you see GE monogram everywhere, or we want to thank the Glad family of Bags for supplying us with this, blah blah, blah. But reality shows, they don't have the fewest budgets. And if they can get an entire kitchen donated by GE monogram, then good for them and give them a little love back. And it's reality TV. Whatever. It's not like ruining the throughline. You don't have to suspend disbelief to watch reality TV. It takes the Guesswork out of watching. I have to suspend this belief that Padma is not really my wife. I bet you do at times. Especially when your eyes are shut really tight. Chuck there's been some really great examples of product placement being treated tongue in cheek. Remember in Wayne's World where they're going off about how they won't do any product placement? They won't be corporate shells. Right. And while they're doing it, they're showing the products that they are. I think Pizza Hut was one of them. Right. And New Prin. Little yellow. Different, better. And like the little yellow pill is on black and White Hand. Yeah, it's pretty good. Josie and the Pussycats. Apparently I didn't see the movie, but I guess in their two minute, 25 2nd trailer, there's like 30 instances of product placement. Yeah. As a spoof though, right? I think they're just trying to take the piss out of it, as our English fans might say. Yes. Which means it shouldn't be bleeped out. And also, have you ever seen State and Main? Chuck I love that movie. I love that movie, too. So that happened. Do you remember your favorite line of that movie? Alex paul crashes the car. Oh, yeah. And then he just gets out of the car and goes so that happens, right? He's all kind of dazed. Yeah, he's hit his head. Clearly love that movie. You remember one of the very minute subplots that was about product placement. They were having a real problem with it because the movie was set in the 19th century, the movie they were making. And they had corporate sponsorship from a brand new, cutting edge like, office supply company. Right. So they finally figured it out and they kind of show it very subtly at the end, like the name of the office supply company, printers or something like that. It was like ye old, whatever it was. Exactly. That was classic. Or Philip Seymour Hoffman was the writer that had to deal with that. It's a great role. It was a great role, Josh. Not only if you're talking about American idol, not only will you see ads splashed all over the place, a big thing now is to actually sponsor I wish I could think of the right word. It's not even an ad, really, but if you go to their website, parts of their website are sponsored. Like the old navy fun and game section. Right. And when was the last time you went to a falcons game? I don't remember. Chuck, when was the last time you went to a fun game? You know, the red zone is when a team has the ball on their opponent's 20 yard line. I'm familiar with the sport of football. Yeah. So if they're inside the 20, this is the red zone. That means you're trying to score. Touchdown. It is not the red zone in Atlanta anymore. It is the Ford drive zone. I've seen that. There's also the old spice red zone. It depends on your team, I guess. What city is sponsored by what team. Right. Or who the highest bidder was that season? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building. Or you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a MILKSTAKE flaming flamer's chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious tranquilim? How smoothie. Did you see blood analysis? As an investment opportunity, would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling hoosa? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only murders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription required. Terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. You want to talk about books real quick? Sure. Who's the author here? I've never heard of her, actually. Fay Weldon. Apparently, she wrote a book. She was contracted by Bulgari the jeweler contracted to write a book? She didn't just have an idea, and they said, hey, can you slip Bulgari in there? They contracted her to write a book that centered around Bulgari, and she did so, and it was called the Bulgari Connection. Right. Well, they did it. They contracted her to write this book. And it was exclusively for that's. Right. Their highest end clientele. Right. Just as a gift. Right. See what we got this famous author to write a book about. Exactly. And here you go, Mr. Money Bag. But she did release it, though, as a book, and was chided in many circles. I would imagine so, because that put her in league with such other titles. Chuck, I know. It's coming as skittles riddles math, the Hershey's Kisses edition book, the M and M's brand counting book, twizzlers percentages book and the cheerios Christmas playbook. Yes. Apparently, kids books are rife with this kind of thing. I didn't know that kids book is in Faye Weldon books. Yeah. I had no idea. And Catherine is a great example here. She said something about if you think that maybe they just sponsor the book and put their name on the title. Not true. The Oreo cookie counting book. Literally, you're counting Oreos, you open up the page, and this is how you teach kids to count. By counting cookies. Count delicious Oreo cookies. Yeah. So we talked about the first product placement. We should have qualified that. Chuck, as far as we know, it's the first product placement in a movie. Cat Hepburn throwing Gordon's Gin overboard. That's right. Right. The oldest product placement that Catherine could come up with was in a song. Take me out to the ballgame yes. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks. You got it. That's one of the more obvious product placements. But from what we can tell, it was not accidental. But he was certainly not given Cracker Jacks, and they didn't pay him anything to do that. But still very famous example. Let me give you an example that has yet to happen yet. It's an example of product placement from the future. Give this okay. On the November 8 episode of The Family Guy, viewers will be treated to what has been called pretty much a 30 minutes ad for Windows Seven. Really? Yes. Is this one of the things where they sponsor the show ad free? No, the whole episode is about it. Oh, okay. I can't imagine not making fun of it, though. I'm sure they'll make fun of it because you want a cool ad exec. And Seth Macfarlane is not a complete sell out, but I'm sure it'll be as cool as a 30 minutes infomercial cartoon can be and probably even cooler than it can be to the Sassy. Wow, you got Rich Little sitting over here. Good Lord. But do you want to know where I found that little tidbit of information on Fox.com? No, I didn't. Where do you want to know? Yes. Folks, there is a site out there where if you are looking to arm yourself against product placement, you can go to and it'll give you a heads up on what's coming out. It's an industry website called Productplacement Biz. Www. Dot. Productplacement. Biz. The actual name of the site is Product Placement News, and it's all, like, basically press releases and articles about the industry of product placement. Holy cow. It's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah. I guess the final example that Catherine mentioned in the article is noteworthy is rap music starting way back with Run DMC and my Adidas. Sure. I think they did that themselves, though. They're fond of Adidas. That's what her point is. Most of the instances in rap music, like Buster Rhymes had a song called Past the Kovacia Part Two. Most of these come out because of the artist's fondness for the product, and then afterward, the product will get in touch with them and say, hey, Basta, thanks, man. You really did us a solid. And so here's a year supply worth of cavasier and some trees and whatever else that's actually happened a lot earlier than with the advent of hip hop, what you just described. Sure. There is a very deep seated rumor surrounding Janice Joplin, who Southern yeah. You might remember, had an affinity for Southern Comfort. We drink five THS of it on stage during the show. We'll go through a fifth during a show. Poor Janice. Yeah. You know, she couldn't hack it the first time she went out from Texas to San Francisco. Yeah. She had to go home. Like, she was like, I can't do this. And then she, I guess, started really getting wasted. I was like, okay, let me try again. And that one took. Right. She met up with Pigpen, and then it just went downhill from there. Yes. Did you ever read those letters? Wait, hold on. You're not done with my story? Well, I'm not done with my part either. All right, go ahead. Did you ever see the letters from her sister that she and her sister wrote back and forth that documentary? No, but they went no. It was actually very touching and very sad. She wasn't like Miss Big Pants Rock Star. She was like a really sweet, down home girl that was, like you said, was very shy and nervous and close to her family. Very tragic. Somebody dies at age 27, that's pretty tragic. Apparently, there's a rumor that Soko was so fond of her drinking their product and hawking it just by taking it up on stage that they bought her the mink coat that she wears on the album cover for the album Pearl. Wow. Yeah. Classic cover. Yeah. Those big round classes. I've also heard they bought the Rolls Royce that she's standing next to as well. Really? Yeah. You know, I got a little tip for you. Janice Joplin spent her last night at Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood drinking Southern Comfort. Went off to a hotel and died. Go to Barney Spinery and order the toad in the hole. Okay. Thank me later. And if you want to know more about project I feel like such a jerk saying this. After that. If you want to know more about product placement, you can type product placement into the handy search bar@housetepforks.com. And that means it's time for listener mail. Indeed. Josh, I'm just going to call this our favorite high speed story so far. All right, man. Chuck, you got turnover going. We did our Cannonball Run episode recently, and we asked for high speed stories. We got a bunch of good ones. We don't want to plug those because it's unsafe to drive past kids. But this came from Jamie in Chicago. Jamie works at a financial advising firm, and we help him get through some long work days. And Josh, he has an Uncle Matt that's a pretty big car collector. He never owns more than two to three cars, but he always has a nice Corvette or a muscle car from the 70s. Buy, fix up, and then sell or trade. Cool. In the early 1980s, uncle Matt was living in Kansas. He had just bought and fixed up his Corvette, and he took it out on a nice flat highway in Kansas to see what it could do. He was going between 100 and 2140 when he saw the flashing blue lights in the mirror, and cop pulled him over. Cop walked up and said, do you know why I pulled you over, sir? And Matt said, I tried to fumble through some answer about how fast he was driving, and the cop said, I pulled you over because in this state, we have a law that all aircraft must have their tail numbers displayed on their wings. Turns out the cop was a gearhead and more interested in looking under the hood than giving him a ticket. So not only did he not end up giving him a speeding ticket. He just said keep it down to more of a land speed level. Send him on his way. Sweet. It's good for Uncle Matt. Yeah, it's good. Well, I guess we're done with the speed stories, right? Yeah, we're not going to read too many of those. Well, then I guess that means that we should just have a grab bag this week. Yeah. Grab bag. Anything you feel like saying to us, you just go ahead and say it. Send it in an email to stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetopworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet at Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet foods that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopeet.com."
43e05316-53a3-11e8-bdec-8b7a9cc4a2e1	Wasps: Not as cute as bees	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/wasps-not-as-cute-as-bees	Wasps have a bad rap. Because their sting really hurts and they don't make honey like their cousins. But they are super cool and you shouldn't kill them. Listen and learn!	Wasps have a bad rap. Because their sting really hurts and they don't make honey like their cousins. But they are super cool and you shouldn't kill them. Listen and learn!	Tue, 04 Aug 2020 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=217, tm_isdst=0)	45344051	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey everybody, its us and we're here to talk to you about get this, our book. We have a Stuffy Should Know book coming out this November and you're going to love it and you can pre order it now. That's right. It's called stuff you should know, Colin. An incomplete companion of mostly interesting things. And it's been a lot of fun to work on and we're really genuinely excited about how this thing has come together. Yes, it's 26 chunky, hairy chapters that are just going to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we are indeed proud of this book. It is truly indubitably. The first Stuff You Should Know book, and it's coming out this November and you can order it now preorder everywhere you get books, so do that and we thank you in advance. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's out there somewhere, which makes this stuff you should know. Yes, old school insect. A dish from Robert Lamb. I know it's got mouth parts in it, but it's no Tracey Wilson joint. Yeah, Tracy, but it's still good. It's super charming. Robert starts this article out from the perspective of a spider who has been dragged into a wasp's nest and is about to be eaten alive by a wasp larvae. It's pretty interesting. It's a good article, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And if you are not familiar with Robert Lamb, then friends, you are missing out on not one, but two, no, three really great podcasts that guys put out. What is it? Stuff to blow your mind. Of course. The Stalwart science tech. Well, not tech, sort of science plus show. Yes, indepth, like super deep rabbit hole. Interesting stuff. And then he did one called Transhuman. Yeah, that's a fiction. Scripted scifi. Very cool. Yeah. And then also he and Joe, who he does stuff to blow your mind with, also do invention, too, which is kind of an indepth rabbit hole thing about invention. So check all those out, everybody. Yeah, it was fun to kind of get back to basics with a nice little insect cast on wasps and dude, I went outside today on my side deck to let the dogs out, and lo and behold, I looked. You said, who let the dogs out? Sorry, who? You said, let the dogs out. So I had to I thought you were saying wait, wait. No, I was saying, oh, boy, that was a wasp nest on the ground. Okay, good. All right. Sorry, did I knock the legs out from under that story? Yeah, it's just a waste nest, but the timing was it live? Oh, I didn't poke it to see. It was not attached. I think it had fallen. So my guess is that it did not have any more wasps residing in it. Man, that's got to be a real letdown because it's the middle of summer right now, so they're wanting to grow. There was probably larva in there. Yeah. That's really weird. They must have abandoned it then. Yeah. And wasps are I think everyone loves the bees now because they should, because bees are awesome and bees produce honey and we want bees to stick around. But I think wasps and hornets, which are a type of wasps, are still just so maligned, and they're the ones that people will reach for their can of Raid to spray. No qualms. Yeah, and you shouldn't don't do it. Let the wasp live. I'll go ahead and say it now. We're going to say it a bunch. Yeah. But let them live. Totally. Chuck, thank you. Yeah. We're here to open everyone's eyes to the function and purpose of wasps existence. They're not like mosquitoes. Remember in the mosquitoes episode, we basically concluded that there's no reason for mosquitoes to be around and they just are terrible. Wasps are not like that. And I think Robert does a really good job of basically pinning down why wasps get such a bad rap. One is that their stings pack such a wallop compared to other stinging insects. Yeah, it hurts. And we'll talk about their stings in the venom that goes along with it, which is okay, that's fair. Like, nobody wants to be stung by a wasp. It can ruin your day. And then also the other thing is that if you pay attention to wasps, you realize that they live these really brutal, grizzled existence. They're predators, and in fact, in their habitats, they are apex predators. They're like sharks and lions, but for the bugs and sometimes small animals that live around there. Like, I didn't watch any of the videos that I could have because I'm just really over animal death, even if it's nature. Oh, really? Yeah. When I was doing the End of the World with Josh Clark, like, I went into it just feeling fine about that. That's just nature. That's the way things work. And then one of the guys I talked to is David Pierce, who you and I talked to actually first in our SUPERST guide to happiness. But I went back and interviewed him, and his whole jam is like, we could actually eventually engineer the biosphere so that there isn't any suffering among animals. And what we take as natural isn't necessarily have to be that way. And it's really changed how I view, like, violence, even among animals. So anyway, the upshot is I didn't watch any videos, but one of the ones that I saw, the title was Wasp Kills Baby Bird. So that video is out there if you want to see that, but I just can't. I don't like to see that stuff anymore, you know? I mean, I didn't really enjoy it before, but now it just downright bothers me. Yeah, I get it. I live with a person who can't watch anything like that. So I get it. So there are more than 200 species of wasp. Like I said, hornets are a kind of wasp. So if you hear I mean, you would call a hornet a hornet, but you can't necessarily use them interchangeably. But a hornet is a wasp. Over that 20,000 species. There are a lot of different kinds and a lot of variety as far as what they look like and what their shape like and what color they are and how they like to live their life. But as with every insect cast, we are going to go over those body parts. Sure. His mouth parts is in there somewhere. And it starts with that exoskeleton, just like all the little insect buddies have that chitin exoskeleton. And in the case of the wasp, they are very segmented out. They have three segments to get your head, which has got those antennae, the sensory antennae. You got those mouth parts because they lick and they bite. And then you have the very cool looking compound eyes and simple eyes, these sort of kidney shaped eyes of a wasp that are very sort of signature. What are they known as in the Italian accent? Ocean. In the Italian, if a vowel follows a celebr yes. It makes a c sound. If a C is followed by an H, it makes a C sound. Is this really pronounced ocelli? Yeah. Okay. I think among biologists they probably say Ocelli, but since you're doing the accent sure. I wanted to set you up for a lesson in itself. Okay. So you got the head. It has some eyes. Also has a brain, Chuck, which I saw. Supposedly, wasps are among the smarter insects out there. They can recognize each other by face, by facial markings. Did you know that? Yeah. Hey, Steve. How are you doing? Sting anyone? I'm doing okay, Ted. Thanks for asking. Just killed the baby bird. Some weirdo was filming it and put it on the Internet. Well, actually, Steve would say, no, I didn't sting anyone, because I'm a man and I don't sting. Oh, yeah. That's a really great point, Chuck, which we'll talk more about later. You'd find the stinger in the abdomen, which is the third part, the lowest part of the wasp body, but only in a female, which I think this is true for bees, too, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I don't remember. We've done a lot of good bee stuff. And then in between those things, you got the thorax, which has the six little legs, and then those really quick flapping wings. Yeah. So in between the thorax and the abdomen, you have a very narrow waist, which usually is what gives away a wasp. You can look at it and be like, that's a wasp. It's like it's got a corset on. Unless it's a hornet. Hornets are much chunkier, more rotund, but they are, like you said, a kind of wasp. And actually, I think the genus that hornets fall under is called Vespa, and vespa in Italian means wasp. So hornets are wasps and Italian. Okay. So I think one of the coolest thing about the wasp is the history and the evolution of this thing, along with some pretty horrific stuff that's going to follow. But in the Cretaceous Period, about 100 million years ago, you had to kind of take a snapshot of planet Earth to understand how the wasp performs. And back then, they didn't have all these flowering plants like we have now. There were a lot of conifers, and these evergreens depended on the wind to spread their seed around. They weren't counting on the insects to do this kind of thing at this point. And we should also mention that ants are a cousin of the wasp, which makes sense. They look kind of ant like. Yeah, I think they finally figured out that ants evolved out of muddolvers. They are their closest relative. Okay. It kind of makes sense. I think they have some ant like behavior. Yeah, ant like the age during the Cretaceous Period, these wasps were carnivores and they preyed on spiders and other insects. And as plants started to evolve, they realized that, hey, there's a lot of insects flying around, going back and forth. We're just using the wind to carry our seed around. Why don't we get these insects to work for us, basically, and they can do the job. Yeah. So that was the rise of the angiosperms, which is, whenever you think of a flower that the bee visits and moves from place to place carrying pollen, that's what an angio sperm is. Rather than having to just depend on the wind, you can depend on the insects. And so eventually, over time, these wasps, these early predators that used to feed exclusively on other insects, said, well, you know what? This whole nectar thing and the pollen thing, I can get with this. So they started to change their diet from insects to pollen and nectar. But the weird thing is, rather than developing a way to feed their young from pollen and nectar like honeybees, which I think is another reason people like bees and don't really realize it, is that their little vegetarian, vegan animals yeah, maybe they don't hurt anybody. They'll still defend themselves, but they don't want to go hurt anybody. They're very peaceful. Wasps are not like that, because even though they generally most species of wasp adults eat nectar and pollen, they still kill other insects to drag back to their nest, to feed their young, to raise their young on. So wasps are technically omnivores at the beginning of their life, they're carnivores, and then later in life, they grow into herbivores. Yeah. Isn't it amazing? It is. Wasps are way more amazing than I realized. Should we take a break and talk about their stinger? Yeah. All right. We'll be right back for Stinger Talk. All right. Welcome to Stinger Talk. I'm Chuck. I'm Josh. Wait, no, I'm Ted. I guess it makes me Steve. Yes, wash stings are tough. You kind of mentioned early on you get a yellow jacket, and that doesn't feel great. And obviously we're talking about if you're non allergic and it's not, like, a legitimate threat to your health. And it's just the pain of the sting that we're rating here. Yellow jacket sting isn't great, but a wasp sting and a hornet sting is really something else. I feel like it hurts more and for longer, and for good reason, because it actually does. Like, b venom is its own thing, shares a lot in common with wasp venom. Wasp venom seems to be this extraordinarily highly developed biological weapon that is the cocktail of different kinds of compounds that all come together to produce a horrible, pain sensation that lasts longer and has a greater impact on your body than anything the actual sting produces. And that's apparently the whole reason behind it, is it makes the wasps seem way less vulnerable than they actually are. It seems like they're way more powerful, and for all intents and purposes, they are. But if you could take the venom out of the sting, the sting would do basically nothing to you. But because the venom is introduced by that sting, that venom is so potent, it's, like, one of the worst things in the world to get stung by a wasp. Yeah. And the actual stinger itself has a pretty remarkable evolutionary story. So here's what happens. In the prehistoric times, this parasitic wasp would use this ovipositor that's actually the egg laying organ. They would use this pointy thing to lay the egg on a living insect, like, they would lay the egg on the caterpillar. Then these little larvae would hatch out, and then they would eat that caterpillar. The larvae would. So at some point, as things are evolving along, mother Nature says, you know what would be even better than this? Is if you could saw open that caterpillar with this ovipositor and lay eggs inside of this thing. And that's exactly what happened. Right. Which made a lot of sense. And I think there's a lot of wasp species there's, at least some that still do this. Like, rather than build a nest, they just go find an insect host and lay some eggs on it, or lay some eggs in it, and then just let the larvae eat the inside out. But most, I think, have evolved to kind of use some different techniques, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But the stinger itself stuck around even after it stopped being used to actually deposit eggs into the insects directly. That's right. And you talked about the venom that's obviously produced in the venom gland stored in a little venom sack, little burlap sack inside the wasp body, and then it seeps out. It's a barblast stinger. It's just like a straight little pointy thing, but it seeps out through these little valves and coats the entire stinger. And so they store this stinger inside of a sheath and are always kind of ready to use it. And like we said, it's only the females because it was an ovipositor. But the males can pretend like they'll rear their little butt your way and say, stay away from me. You don't know if I'm a male or a female. Right. You don't want to look too closely. Right, right. Which is just hilarious. But also, doesn't that show like, a certain level of intelligence as well? I think so. Or at the very least, there's some REM. Yes. The bluff that takes intelligence, which is, I think, another indicator that wasps are amazing. Yeah. And like you sort of hinted out, the reason this venom is so powerful is it has a couple of functions. One is just the simple function of paralyzing those insects. And the other is, as a defense, it's meant to sting something much larger and have that thing hurt so bad that it thinks it's hurt a lot worse than it is and just wants to get out of there, basically. Right. And then that combined with their usually very bright colorings, because usually the more colorful an animal is, the more toxic it is. Just kind of a universal symbol in nature to just steer clear. And hornets and wasps typically are fairly colorful as far as insects go. So those two things combined can teach a larger animal pretty quickly to just leave them alone. And that's kind of how wasps have made it this long. They've been around for more than 100 million years. That's a pretty successful species or family of insects. Yeah. And that includes humans, obviously, if you go poking around a hornet's nest or wash nest and you get stung, you're not going to finish the job. You're probably just going to get out of there. Yeah. Hopefully you can learn your lesson that first time. Or maybe you don't even have to learn it directly. You can just know to stay away from the wash. So what's in that venom? Oh, some really good stuff. I actually found even more stuff than Robert included here. There's some peptides and some enzymes. Some of the enzymes include phospholipase, phospholipase, amb. And these actually break down the membrane and lipid coating of cells in your body to basically spill their guts into your bloodstream. And that includes neurons. Neural cells can be spilled into your bloodstream when they encounter this peptide, which sends excruciating pain notification to your brain, saying, alert, alert. You're in a tremendous amount of pain. That's just like step one. Yeah. They also have norepinephrine in there, which stops the blood flow temporarily. And that's why when I said it feels like it lasts longer, I feel like that's the norepinephrine at work because it just sort of sits in one place and eventually the bloodstream is going to kind of dilute it away but it kind of hangs out there for a little while. Yeah. That's just mean. There's also acetylcholine which actually goes to your pain receptors and stimulates them. Right. Wow. And there's also histamines. And histamines are released by your body. They're responsible for the inflammatory response. But the venom in a wasp venom includes histamines directly too just to make sure that it gets that inflammation good and primed. Yeah. And then there's I was hoping you would take this part because of that word. You want to try it? Hyaluronidase. Oh, well I use hyaluronic acid under my eye. Do you really know what you're sure? What's that? It's an acid. I don't know. I think for bags like eyebags generally yeah. Just to keep your eyes looking sharp. Well I noticed your eyes always look so sharp. I thought you'd notice eventually. So that thing that you just talked about and then something called Pylonidase MCDP mass cell degranulating peptide. This stuff actually melts through the connective tissue between cells and basically just sort of destroys those membranes and allows the venom to move a little more freely than it would ordinarily yeah. And the degranulating peptide degranulating means that it basically goes to your mass cells and squeezes the histamines out of them. So not only does it contain histamines already, not only does it trigger a histamine response or release, it goes and gets it out of the cells that normally carry it around in your immune system. So it's just really mean nasty stuff. One of the other things I saw that they've just started to kind of pay attention to is called brady kinan and it's associated with chronic pain. Wow. On top of acute pain production they're like, how about a little dose of what it feels like to have chronic pain too in the mix of all of this stuff. And then chuck, tell me this is an astounding. I got a couple more. One thing is just called antigen five which is a cryptic as it comes. They don't know exactly what role it plays, but they know it's a very powerful allergen. And then there's a couple of peptides that are antimicrobial which prevent the wasp from contracting an infection from a prey that it puts its stinger in. Oh yeah. Isn't that amazing? Like this is some amazing stuff. Yeah. And I didn't see, I saw the hornets can sting again and again and again but I don't know about the wasp in general. Is that the case? Yeah, definitely. Okay. Because a hornet is just a type of wasp. So you've got like muddauber is the kind of wasp, a hornet is the kind of wasp and there's like many types of hornets but they're all wasps. That's right. So yeah, they can sting again and again and again, which apparently is another reason why they're sting hurt so bad. They can do this to you. And inject this venom into you. I saw one expert interviewed on a different House to force article that said an average of ten times. Like, if you get stung by a wasp, usually you're going to get stung more than once, and it can be ten times, I guess, on average. I don't know if they just pulled that out of the air, but they were a wasp expert, so hopefully not. Well, you know those Murder Hornets that are making the news these days in the States, these things can kill small rodents with a full charge of a sting. Right. The Asian Giant Hornet, which they found, I think, three of them in the Pacific Northwest that they thought they got rid of last year, but it turns out they survived the winter. A queen did. Yeah. And they call them Murder Hornets because they kill bees. I didn't know this because it was just sort of a back page thing, but in 2016, a package of Murder Hornets was intercepted at San Francisco International Airport. They destroyed that, so it didn't become a thing, but they're a real threat to be. So that's why people are sort of writing about Murder Hornets now invading as an invasive species here in the US. Yeah, and I mean, like, it's really doing an injustice to the Hornets, unfortunately, because calling them Murder Hornets, like, if you read some of the articles on it, people will say outright they can kill people very easily. And that's just absolutely not true. And it makes it sound like they're a threat to humans. Like you said, the big threat is to honeybees, and specifically, it's to European honeybees, because they haven't evolved around Murder Hornets or Asian Giant Hornets. Asian honeybees have, and they actually have a defense to where, when the Giant Hornets show up, like you were saying, Murder Hornet is a good term if you're a honeybee, because just a few of them showing up at a hive can just destroy a colony in a few hours. And they do it in a really brutal way. They decapitate the bees and just kill an entire colony in a few hours. And they do it because they are one of the few species that they're omnivorous, but most of their food comes from meat. They're mostly carnivores. So they're eating human baby, all these bees? Basically, yeah. They just carry your baby right off out of its crib. But they can wipe out a whole colony like this if they run into an Asian honey bee colony, those bees have developed a response where they'll swarm around one of the Asian Giant Hornets, and they'll flap their wings a bunch and generate heat, and they'll cook the hornet alive inside the swarm. That's their defense. European honeybees, which make up a lot of the honeybees. Most of the honeybees in the United States, they don't have that defense. So it's a big problem if the Asian Giant Hornet gets a foothold here yeah. And it will pack a lot more of a punch, too. They have about seven times potency as a honeybees venom. And as far as the pain scale, they likened it getting stung by a murder hornet. They likened it to like between three and ten. If you were to be stung by three to ten yellow jackets all at once. So awful. Yeah, because the yellow jackets thing is nothing to sneeze at either. That's a kind of wasp. Yeah. I haven't been stung in a long, long time. Knock wood. Knock on wood. I got stung a couple of summers ago. I'm not allergic or anything, but my story, I told it back with the b thing, was when I was hiking that time and I got tagged eleven times in the face and neck. Oh, man. When I stumbled, it was one of those underground hives that I just walked over and you see two or three bees what's going on? Then you see ten and then all of a sudden they're everywhere and you're just running like a moron through the woods toward the river, basically. But yeah, I got hit eleven times and that could have killed me if I was allergic. Out in the middle of nowhere like that. Sure, I thought you were allergic. So we just lied on the episode of the TV show. Yeah, it was painful. There was one, I think that got the deepest on my eyebrow bone, my orbital bone, and it went straight through and I could almost feel it on my bone. And that's the one I had a hard time getting it out. It was so embedded and it felt like somebody and I know I used the same analogy back then, but it felt like somebody had a tiny little nails you hang pictures with. Felt like somebody had that poking that bone and they were just tapping it with a hammer in this regular beat. It is awful. It's terrible. Man alive. Yeah. It sounds like you stepped on a yellow jacket nest because they nest in the ground and they follow you, too. I think we should take a break, maybe and talk about nesting right after this. Yeah. Okay, Chuck. So we're moving on from venom. I think we made our point. Venom from wasps is pretty serious. And if you want to avoid getting injected with venom from wasps, you want to learn to know what a wasp nest looks like. So you can avoid the wasp nest altogether. Because some wasps are more aggressive than others. And if you get anywhere near their nests, they're going to be like, let me just give you a little lesson about getting close to my nest. And they'll sting you. Right. You want to get away. So the kinds of nests that you see hanging from trees, that's the kind of wasp nest, that's paper wasp nest. There's muddy bird nests. There's nests in the ground that are yellow jacket nests. Watts make a bunch of different kinds of nests, and for you to survive in the world, you have to know what each one looks like and be able to sense them out with your nose. Yeah. When I think of wasp nest in Georgia, at least I think of that honeycomb style, where it's just a bunch of little tiny holes and it looks like it's made out of paper, because it kind of is, in a way. Yeah. I think those are bald faced hornets or wasps. I can't remember which one. I think those are the wasps. And they actually chew up wood fragments that they'll get from, say, like, your deck. Or if your kid only has those old tiny wood toys, they might chew those up if they're in the yard. And then they take that and turn it into actual pulp, like paper, and they spit it out and make, basically, a paper mache nest, which is pretty impressive. But that's why those things look like they're paper mache, because they basically are. Yes. And they're light like paper mache. And they're fairly intricate. If you look at them, some of them have what looks like a little roof eaves. They're, like I said, super light. So they can be dangling from a really small sort of thread, like I don't even know what you would call it. Just a thread? Yeah, sort of like thread, I guess. Suspension cable. Yeah, suspension cable. Exactly. We'll go with that because it sounds like it's a little sturdier. Although is that the kind that you found in your yard today? Yeah. That you let the dogs out? Yeah, I found one of those laying on the ground when I was a kid. The big hornet's nests that are the big sort of also sort of looks like paper machete, but it's more gray, and it doesn't have the little holes. It's just got one central entry point, and it's about as big as a football. Yes, those were sort of like country decor. Did you ever know anyone who had one of those in their house? Yes. Murderers. Serial killers. We had one. My dad climbed up a tree to get one of these. It was emptied, thank goodness, and we had that thing mounted on a log above our fireplace for years. Really? Yes, it was weird. Well, that's fascinating. I don't remember which kind that is. I've looked at so much stuff about waste. I think it was the white face hornet, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. Is that who it is? All right. They get pretty big. Yes. And they're big, like you said, the size of a football. Their nest can get pretty big, but yeah, that's a good one to avoid. I didn't realize that they were aggressive. Yeah, you don't want to mess around with one of those nests. You don't want to go poking it. From what I saw, the muddawbers, which actually make theirs out of mud, they're. The ones that those tubes that usually come down from the ceiling, down the wall, those are actually mud tubes that the muddabber has made. And muddabbers, we should say there are basically two kinds of wasps in the world, wasps and hornets, social and solitary. And solitary is exactly what it sounds like. It's just a single wasp, a female living on her own. She'll mate with some male wasp and then go off and make her own nest, either burrowing into the ground or if she's a muddabber, she'll make a mud nest. So when you see a muddabber's nest, stop and be like, I respect that, because that was made by one single wasp on her own with zero help whatsoever. She made that nest, which I just find extremely impressive, by chewing up mud and just slowly but surely building it, spinning mud out onto the wall. Yeah. And if you're a social wasp, it's sort of be like in that they're working for the queen, maybe more than one queen, even. But you have these male drones that are there to mate, and you have these female workers who build the nest, and they hunt for food and tend to these little larvae. But it's basically all about getting the queen to live through the winter to the next season. Like, they will all leave the nest. And I think the queen is the only thing that overwinters. Isn't that right? Yeah. If they raise queen larvae, the queen will live until the next winter and start over again, basically creating eggs of sterile female workers to help her to hatch and then help her build up the hive, raise male drones, or no. Is the drone the worker? No drones. The male that's just used for reproduction. Right, yeah. And then eventually raise little queens. So it's pretty interesting, especially as far as social insects go. There are very few species of social wasps and hornets, but the ones they are that are pretty highly social, even among social insects, they have pretty intricate, complex societies. Like, some of these social wasp nests, I think, including yellow jackets, will have multiple queens. And there's one head queen who has basically beaten up other queens to establish her dominance. And then she'll have the most eggs, and then the next layer down will have the second most eggs, and so on and so forth. And that takes, like, a certain amount of cooperation to maintain and respect that type of hierarchy to keep that society functioning the way it should. Especially considering you have to reinvent the wheel every year after winter comes and goes. Yeah, absolutely. And they talk to each other, too, in a way. They communicate, especially if there's a threat via pheromones. So that's why you were more likely to get swarmed rather than just like if you're an actual threat to a nest, they can send a signal that says, hey, everybody, this jerk over here, this kid has got a stick, and he's coming at us. Yeah, let's get them. And if they die, actually, they release that. It's like a byproduct of their death is releasing that same pheromone. Yeah. Man down. Basically, they turn into, like, Harry Dean Stanton and Red Dawn where they're like, avenge me. I have that one written down. I guess you didn't see the video, then, of the tarantula hawk, since you're not into those. No, but I've seen one in person, actually. Yeah. The Pepsi wasp is known as the tarantula hawk because they lay eggs inside of a paralyzed tarantula, and the larvae eat the tarantula from the inside out. And I was like, I got to see this. And of course, on YouTube, there is a Pepsi SWASP battling it out with a tarantula, and it's no match. And it paralyzes this tarantula and drags him back, like, a great distance. Yeah. Pulling this tarantula across the ground, which is much larger. But the tarantula, like you said, it's no match. And even among humans, I think that tarantula hawks sting is like a four out of four on the Schmidt pain scale. It's as bad as it gets, because you know why? They asked Mr. Schmidt, how bad is it hurt? And he's like, oh, my gosh, it's terrible. He said, yeah, but yes, they're very bright. Blue and orange, too, which is another indicator, like, stay away. Stay away. If you see anything that's really colorful, just assume it can mess you up pretty good. Yeah. Tarantula hawk. That's the case. Don't lick that colorful frog. Even if it's not a wasp taking down a tarantula and laying eggs inside it, that eat the tarantula from the inside out. Almost all wasp species, if not 100% of waste species. Like we said, they raised their young by paralyzing other insects, dragging them to their nest, and laying the eggs nearby, leaving the bug to be paralyzed and still alive when the egg hatches and larvae crawls over and starts eating that bug alive. And this is one reason why wasps have such a bad rap, because it's just such a brutal it's like a horror movie circle of life. It really is. Yes. Especially from the perspective of the insect. And apparently, Charles Darwin said when he witnessed this happening to a cute little caterpillar that it made it difficult for him to believe in an omnipresent and beneficent God, because what kind of God would allow a cute little caterpillar to do that? The thing is, Charles Darwin, I mean, he liked to putts around in the garden, but he was not a farmer. If you're a farmer, you're probably kind of happy to see a wasp larva eating a caterpillar, because caterpillars eat your crops. And if you ask me, this is where we get to the part about the roles that wasps play in the ecosystem and why you shouldn't just go willy nilly killing them. Yeah. I mean, they'll bring in wasps, farmers will sometimes if they have an insect issue, because the wasp was going to take care of that naturally. And you won't have to use insecticide and stuff like that. No, but also, bees are usually kind of finicky, I saw, as far as what they'll pollinate and what they won't. Wasps are not at all finicky. They'll pollinate whatever. So they're nonselected pollinators, which makes them like you could use them to pollinate any kind of crop, which makes them pretty helpful. And so they control other crop destroying insects, and they also pollinate crops, too, so they are pretty useful. So that means that you shouldn't just go around killing them. I think we should say it again. No, you shouldn't kill anything except mosquitoes, fleas and ticks. And you also can't say, well, they're a threat to humans, because I looked up some stats. Chuck, are you ready for this? Yeah. You're not going to get killed with perma wasp, are you? No, but no, you're not. So combined bees, wasps and hornets and hornets are just another type of wasp. Is that so? Yeah. I hadn't heard. They kill about 62 Americans every year from anaphylactic shock. Right. By contrast, 300 Americans die from falling off of ladders every year in the UK. Get this, between 2006 and 2007, eight people died from bees, wasps or hornet stings. I'm including bees here, by the way. And then in Australia, where you would guess that half the human population is killed off every year by bees and wasps and has to regenerate every spring. Now, between 2000 and 2013, there are only 27 deaths total for that 13 years from bees, wasps and hornets things, which is pretty astounding, but it all goes to say, like, don't listen to the Murder Hornet rap. The hornets and the wasps aren't out to kill you. They don't want you anywhere near their nest, but they're not like, trying to wipe out your family, they just want to be left alone, basically. The Murder Hornet wrap. Yeah. Now, here is a hornet, and it's here to say, I think I can't wait to relisten to this one, because I'm pretty sure you said that they kill 62 million Americans every year. No, I think you did. I might have been hearing things. It might have been a computer glitch. Just 62. Okay, six to the two. I really am curious. If you said million, we'll find out. That will be Easter egg for us only. So, yeah, don't kill the wasps. If you have what you think is a wasp problem at your house, you really don't. Unless if you have a really big wasp nest, like right above your front door or something, I could see maybe a case being made for removing it, having it professionally removed. Or if your kids are playing out back and there's a sinkhole from a yellow jacket. It's underground, Jack. Hundreds of yellow jackets. And if you're allergic, you'll be getting that removed too, but in general, like, was after you. They don't want anything to do with you. They're not aggressive toward humans unless you come poking their thing with a stick. I love this Robert, and this takes like nerves of steel. He's like, if one lands on you, don't panic. Avoid swatting it or making swift movements. Just kind of sit there and it'll quickly fly off. Like, I don't want to kill a wasp, but if a wasp lands on my arm, I'm not going to be like, alright little fella, you're just going to give you some time. No, I would freak out and flail. I wouldn't SWAT at it because I feel like I would get stung for sure, but I would definitely do that. Right. You got to try not to do that. You have to listen to Robert and don't panic. Good luck. Every time I see Don't Panic in the wild, I just assume that it's a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, don't you? Yeah, I think so. So standing still, that's one thing when one lands on you. Okay. That's great things you can do to keep them from landing on you, though. Or to not wear white and yellow outdoors. Yeah. Okay. I don't like white and yellow. Yellow doesn't look good on me anyway. But those colors attract insects. You don't want to wear perfume because you may confuse them into thinking you're a flower. Sure. If you have your garbage can uncovered, don't stand next to it. You want to cover your garbage can? Yeah. Especially if you're us. I always call it the stinkiest garbage can in Atlanta, I think so. Nasty. Ours is pretty bad too. It's a lot of years of cat litter. Oh yeah, that's a stink dog poop. You can take down nests yourself if it's below 60 degrees Fahrenheit or 15.5 degrees Celsius because they're probably dead in there anyway, so it's a good time to take it down. But for the most part we're just going to go ahead and say, don't take down a wasp nest that you want out of your yard by yourself. Just don't do it. Hire a professional. There are people who will take money in exchange for coming to get a nest out of your yard. You can give them money for that and they know what they're doing. So you can feel good about that, about hiring them. And it also supports local business too. Yeah. And don't get that wasp tray that sprays from like 20ft away and just go home and attack these nests with poison. Just don't do it. No. Stop killing things. What else you got? I got one more thing. You have anything else? No. Okay. So in Japan, it always circles back to Japan, doesn't it, Chuck? If it's quality and good, including the Asian giant wasp, as well as yellow jackets and some other types of wasps, japanese culture or culinary culture loves wasp larva. But to get wasp larvae, you have to go out in the wild, find a wasp's nest in the summer, and then take it back home without getting stung and raised the larvae yourself. And then when they're ready to go, you harvest them and eat them in the fall. Which is pretty interesting in and of itself, right? Yes. It gets even more interesting than that because to find a wasp nest in the woods, what they do is they take raw fish japanese love raw fish, but they share some of theirs with wasps and they leave it out as bait. And then when a wasp shows up, they'll take chopsticks and a little hunk of this fish meat they have a string tied to, and they'll hand it to the wasp, and the wasp will fly off with the hunk of fish to take back to its larvae, its eggs with the string dangling, which makes it easier to follow back to the nest. And after doing this a few times, they're probably successful enough that they track the wasp all the way back. They don't lose it, and they find the nest. And then that's when they take it home and tend to larvae, and then they eat it in the fall. That sounds familiar. For some reason. I might have heard that before. Isn't that cool? That's amazing. Amazing. Well, that's all I've got for wasp. Chuck. Wasp out. So since Chuck said wasp out, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. Adam, I think you were wrong and Josh was referencing they might be giants. It's a long winded title. Okay. Hey, guys, in your episode of how he Almost got rid of polio, you read a listener mail that referred to how flame throwers work episode. However, I'm somewhat sad that the reference wasn't made for the day. Might be Giant song. Istanbul, not Constantinople. Josh made the statement and it was a wonderful wasted opportunity. Well, that's exactly what you're talking about, right? Yeah, I said, not Constantinople. Yeah, you were talking about that they might be giant song. Right? Yeah, of course. You just didn't it doesn't get me. He just didn't say, hey, by the way, that's that they might be giant song. Hey, everybody, open up for the spoonfeeding. Just thought I'd drop you both a line. I love the show and enjoy listening to it daily to and from work, especially the wit and dry humor, even though it goes over your head sometimes. Yeah, right. He said it's very much, my style. So much so that you aren't sure if there was a joke even told. Wow, this is getting very meta. You both make my commute tolerable and enjoyable. Thanks, guys. That is from Adam P in Gulfport, Mississippi. Nice. Adam, for you, from now on, whenever I make a joke, I'm going to add walkawaca at the end. That'll do. It'll be just for Adam. Thanks a lot, Adam. We appreciate that. Thank you for listening to us and for letting us rag on you. We do it lovingly and jokingly, we hope, you know. Of course, if you want us to rag on you, well, you send us an email and see what you get. Look up and see what you get. You can send it to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show."
43c2f172-53a3-11e8-bdec-9bb9e7dc1383	Essential Oils: Nature's Cure?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/essential-oils-natures-cure	Essential oils are from plants and they can help the human body in a lot of ways. There are also many false medical claims. Learn all the ins and outs today.	Essential oils are from plants and they can help the human body in a lot of ways. There are also many false medical claims. Learn all the ins and outs today.	Thu, 09 Jul 2020 13:43:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=13, tm_min=43, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=191, tm_isdst=0)	52635353	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce, templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So I was in the at and T store for an upgrade. I left with at and T's best deal on a smartphone and a choice of plan. But on my way out, here comes this new guy, a non carrier phone and a plan that raised eyebrows. I felt for him when I tell you we left the store grinning from ear to ear with the same deal. I love watching people prosper. You feel me? That's when I learned that whether you joined today or have been with at and T for years, they'll have the same best deals for everyone on every smartphone. Eligible plan required. Offers vary by device. Restrictions may apply. See att. Comdealsfordetails. Hello, friends. We have a book coming out finally, and it is awesome. You're going to make me say the title again? Yeah, fine. It's stuff you should know. Colon an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And get this, Chuck, you don't have to wait to order until the book comes out. You can do what we in the book biz call pre ordering it, and then when it does come out, you'll be the first to get it, or among the first. Well, and not only that, you get a preorder gift. You get this cool custom poster from the illustrator of the book, Carly Minnardo, who is awesome. We worked with another great writer who helped us out with this thing a great deal. His name is Nils Parker. And it was just a big team effort, and it's really cool. We love how it's turning out. Yes, we do. So anywhere you can buy books, you can go pre order the Stuff You Should Know, colon and Incomplete compendium of Mostly Interesting Things. And then after you do, you can go on over to Stuffyoushoreadbooks.com and upload your receipt and get that preorder poster. So thank you in advance for everybody who is preordering. That means quite a bit to us, and we appreciate you. Stuffyoushoreadbooks.com preorder. Now. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Joshua, Joshy, Clark. And there's Charles W. Charles Chuck, Wayne, Chuck, Wayne, Twain, Bryant and Jerry. The JDog. Roland is floating around somewhere in the ether. So this is stuff you should know. Everybody. Hi. Hi. This is the episode I'm nervous about. Why? Because of Emily. Why? Because she knows so much about it. She's going to be like, you got this wrong. That wrong. Not so much getting it wrong, just it's one of these that's close to her heart. So I feel like I got to do right by it. Oh, I'm sure you will. Like, I usually don't care at all about anything we ever talk about, but this one I care about. You're like a nihilist, like flee. Hey, by the way, we should mention we got a book coming out. Yeah, we do. Which not only do we have a book coming out, we have a preorder gift that's ready to go now, too. I think we have a pre order gift, which is a custom poster written by us and designed by Carly, our amazing illustrator for the book. Yeah, that's right. And we even have a book website now. Oh, is it up already? Yeah. Have you seen this thing? Yeah, I saw the drafts of it. I didn't see that it was up. I'm so glad you're handling things. So thank you for doing that. Yes. And that is stuff you should Read Books.com. Great. And it looks great. The web page looks awesome and it gives you a little excerpts and you get a little peek inside. It looks way better than our actual site, like our regular stuff. You should know the site. We're working on that too, though. We are. Here's the deal. You can go anywhere and pre order the book now and then come, I think sometime in is it October? November? When the pre order gifts? No, when the actual book arrives. When it comes out. I think we pushed it back a little bit into November. Right, okay. So you will eventually get the book, but in the meantime, if you go onto the website, stuff you Should Read Books.com, you can upload an image of your receipt and they'll say, oh, thank you for preordering the book. Here's your preorder gift, and you can hang it in your room next to the torn out posters from Tiger Beat magazine. Wasn't it Teen Beat? I don't think so. Smart. Yeah. So we're going to be mentioning this a lot because as John Hodgman told us, the secret ABP always be plugging. I know. That is going to be on his headstone. And there'll probably be a QR code on his headstone so he can buy his books. Oh, man, that's a great idea. So we're talking today not about books necessarily. We're talking more about essential oils than books. Although there's plenty of books on essential oils. But that has nothing to do with our book. Instead, essential oils has to do with our podcast, in particular this episode of our podcast. Which is on essential oils. That's right. And these are the oils, these little chemicals that are stored in plants, in the glands of all different kinds of plants and all over the plants from petals to stems, to roots. And depending on where you are in the plant, you might be getting a different kind of oil from that particular spot. Yeah, there might be a certain type of essential oil found in the seeds and a totally different one found in the leaves or the roots or the bark or the stems, the twigs, the hair, the teeth. Basically every part of the plant can hold some sort of essential oil. And one of the things that I love about this, Chuck, is that science isn't 100% sure exactly what the functions are of essential oils, but they know that it's some form of communication. I mean, like scent is a form of communication in the plant world and the animal world, and these communicate different things, likely things like getaway cow, I don't want you near me and eating me. Instead, bring on the honey bee to help pollinate me. That's right. And we'll get into what they have been used for and are used for. But it's safe to say that since the times of ancient Egypt, people have been using essential oils, certainly back then, before there was modern medicine as medicine. Right. So we'll talk about all this. Let's get into also a big shout out to Julie Leighton for helping us out with this one. Yeah, Julie is back in the rotation. Very happy about that. Yeah, for sure. So essential oils to us, you know what an essential oil is. Most people do, but as far as plants go, as far as chemistry goes, they're really just a certain kind of compound. You can divide them into two different categories. One is oxidated compounds, and the other is hydrocarbons. And oxidative compounds come in all different forms and shapes, things like alcohols, phenols oxides, esters, aldehydes. And then on the hydrocarbon side, they fall under one category called terpenes. If you have ever been in a drug education class and the educator brought out that briefcase full of different drugs, you may have gotten a whiff of the marijuana that is the terpenes and the marijuana that gives it that distinctive smell. That's right. And by the way, I'm going to read it on a list or mail at some point, someone said that we should not use the term marijuana anymore. Oh, my gosh. Why? And use the term cannabis because apparently the term marijuana was created as sort of a racist term to make it sound oh, wow. Foreign, south of the border. Wow. And evil. Yeah. Wow. News to me. So it makes sense. Yeah, sure. Wow. Okay, well, we'll start calling it Exhale. Okay. That's the new name for pot, everybody. X Factor. I think that's a TV show. We might get sued. That's a Joe Rogan TV show, isn't it? No, that was Fear Factor. I bet you anything that was an X Factor. And I bet Joe Rogan had something to do with it. He's like, we got to come up with a good name for the spin off. So you were talking about like, you mentioned one thing. You said something about an alcohol. People are like, what in a plant? But that's true. If you look at peppermint oil, that great scent that you get from peppermint oil is the alcohol menthol. Right. And all these different things. They're different kinds of compounds. They have different kinds of atoms put together. They do different things. They provide different functions. Again, they probably all largely have to do with plant communication to other plants or to animals. But they smell different. They combine to make different smells. The thing that they all have in common is that essential oils are all VOC volatile organic compounds, which are just a type of compound usually, I guess, carbon based. They might have to be, yeah, because it's organic. So they're all carbon based compounds that have in common the fact that at room temperature or at low temperatures, they evaporate. They have their boiling point is so low that it happens at room temperature. And it can happen at such a low point that it doesn't actually even go from solid alcohols to liquid into gas. It can sublimate sometimes just from solid into gas. And it's that gas that spreads out off of the plant stems or leaves or rows or petals, whatever, and hit our olfactory senses through our nose, and we smell. That's all it is. It's a compound that vaporizes very easily at low temperatures and spreads through the air. Yes. And those little tiny droplets, they diffuse through the cell membrane, and then all of a sudden, they're on the surface of the plant just waiting for somebody's nostrils to come by. It's kind of like that old question, like, if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound like if there's nobody there to smell a volatile organic compound, does it actually smell? And the answer is clearly yes. Yes. Sometimes you can just smell with your nose, and it smells great, but sometimes the tiniest bit of activation will get it going. One of my favorite things to do is on a walk when someone's got one of those big, beautiful rosemary bushes out in there by the sidewalk. It's just Emily and I, both and my daughter, to just run our hands up one of those stocks sure. And just rub our hands together and you got delicious steak hands. Which is why it's also a good example why if you grow rosemary that you use in your food, you want to grow it away from the sidewalk because who knows? People are touching it. Who is walking by with what on their hands? Rubbing your food, basically. Hey, man, if you got edibles in your front yard, then that's your fault. No, I'm saying yeah. So you need, like, the public rosemary bush for people to walk by and smell. Then you need, like, your head stashed rosemary bush up by your house, right? And if you go up to the house, you can lean out the window and say, hey, sir, that's my private bush. Stay away, steer clear. Okay. So volatile organic compounds, we've kind of gotten that across, I think. And with essential oils, this is, I think, pretty essential to know when you smell something like lavender or rose or juniper, something like that, you know what that smell smells like. And from researching this stuff, I think scientists have managed to isolate the essential oils found in like 3000 different species of plants so far. It's amazing. 300 of which and we'll talk about this more later, but 300 of which have been shown to have some sort of biomedical properties, which is pretty important. But from all of these, they've realized there is a central player. Right? Like what was the one that you called out? Peppermint oils? Menthol. It's a type of alcohol, but if you just smell menthol, that smells like peppermint. Instead, the essential oil is that main component, that main volatile organic compound with dozens or hundreds of others in varying quantities and amounts all mixed together just perfectly so that you have not menthol, but peppermint, the essential oil of peppermint. And that is what an essential oil is, a really intricate, complex combination of volatile organic compounds. That is the essence of that plant. That's right, the essence of the plant. That's exactly perfectly said. And I'll just say this now. We're going to talk about him in a minute, but there is a Swiss chemist, Chuck, named Paracelsus, and he was an alchemist. And it turns out the alchemists are the ones who coined the term essential oil because the alchemists believed in five elements. The four elements were earth, wind, water, and fire. And then there was a fifth element that was like, elusive. It was the one that bound all the other elements together. And it was the glue that bound reality and existence in the universe together. And so quintessential comes from quintessence, meaning the fifth essence or the fifth element. And so quintessential was shortened eventually into essential oil, which was thought to be the purest, most basic, fundamental essence of a plant. So that's where we get essential oil, is from alchemists. Boy, why wasn't there a soul band in the 70s named The Fifth Essence featuring Billy D. Williams? They could open for Earth, Wind and Fire and they would have done the soundtrack to The Fifth Element. Whatever. So if we go back in time, if we hop in the old way back machine boy, we haven't been in this thing for a while. No, think about it. Kick it, Jerry. Fired up. It smells a little musty. I think we've been in this thing since in 2020. You didn't dry out the life preservers from last time. You just threw them in there in a pile. Now they're all messed up. That's true. Well, luckily we have some essential oils on hand, because we're going back to ancient Egypt, and this is when they started using essential oils, integrating them into medicine. The trades, of course, in China, they were doing stuff like this, and the Orient and trade routes between the Orient, the Mediterranean really opened up this trade to these sort of magical oils, as far as they were concerned. We know it's not magic now, but back then, this was early medicine, for sure. Yeah, it was used in traditional Chinese medicine. Still is. It's spread from Egypt to the Mediterranean to the Greeks to the Romans, over to the Persians, who figured out how to distill ethyl alcohol from sugar, which is a really big component in extracting essential oils from plants. That was a huge innovation. And then that trickled over to Europe in the Middle Ages. And that is where we join up with our friend Paracelsis, that Swiss chemist whose birth name was Philippus Theofrastus Ariolis Bombastus von Hohenheim in. That's amazing. Isn't it amazing? Just von Hovenheim gets him a statue in my mind. Yes, that's pretty amazing. But he was known as the Luther of medicine because at the time, people were like, oh, this Galen guy had it all figured out. There's four tumors, and that explains everything. He's like, no, let's use evidence based science. Let's use things like chemistry. And this guy was an alchemist, even, and he died bitter and angry because no one would listen to him. But he really helped kind of push things forward as far as reforming science into thinking scientifically is concerned. Yeah, and he was a big proponent of these plant oils that he was extracting, and the compositions were revealed in the 19th century, and then, of course, the 20th century comes along, and we get much more efficient with our extraction. And that just means more essential oils, which means more experimentation, basically. Yeah. Looking a little X factor and little fooling around. Who knows? Should we take a break? Definitely no. All right, let's take a break, and we'll talk about this extraction process, something that I see under my deck a lot these days. Right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff, that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. Hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the allinone commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales, so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff all lowercase for a free 14 day trial, and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. So I want to say something. Chuck. With extraction. One of the reasons why essential oils are so expensive. And if you get really good essential oil. You're going to pay a lot for it. I saw if you bought a leader. Seems like a lot of rose oil. But if you're going to turn around and sell it in smaller amounts of other people. You probably buy a leader if you have $21,000 to cough up for a single liter of rose oil. And the reason why essential oils are so expensive is because it takes so much plant material to get that essence from it, right? So with roses in particular, you can expect to need about five metric tons of rose petals just to get a kilogram of rose oil, 3000 lemons to get a kilogram of lemon oil, and something like \u00a3440 of fresh lavender flowers to get a kilogram of lavender essential oil. Yeah, for our American friends who are like, dude, what are you even talking about? \u00a3600 of rose petals for 1oz of essential oil, or 40 to 60 rose buds for a single drop of rose auto essential oil. Amazing. I love stuff like that. Well, essential oils are my favorite new thing. No, it's cool, but it's also sustainability is an issue. Because of that, they use the most plant material to produce a very small amount of oil. So you're throwing away the rest of the plant. Well, yeah, I mean, that is true, but here's another way to look at it, Chuck. If the purpose of life, genetically speaking, is to multiply as much as possible, we are helping plants by propagating them. And we're doing it because those plants are producing a smell that we like. So in this sense, we are the slaves of plants who were propagating as much as we possibly can to produce that smell more. Yeah. And Emily is all about essential oils, for sure. But she's also gotten much more into using the whole herb and the whole plant and trying to use as much as the plant as possible, which is pretty cool. She's like, here, just stick this whole twig of rosemary up your nose, and you'll be fine. She's really learned a lot, man. It's pretty impressive to see and inspiring to see someone learning so much midlife, something brand new, like going back to school, basically. Yeah. I can actually attest this is not a paid plug, everybody. Chuck does not give me money for these. We got some soaps and some room sprays, I think I told you, from emily, from her company. And we actually sent some to some friends, and within, like, a couple of weeks, they were asking they were dead. They said, where can we get some more of this? Because we're spraying this lavender spray on our pillows every night to go to sleep. And they wanted to make sure that they could secure more because they were halfway through the bottle that we sent them. Not even like, we're out. Where did you guys get this? We're halfway through. We want to make sure we can get some more. So emily is making the good stuff, for sure. That's right. Go to loveyourmoma.com and check it out. She's a small business, and they're all hurting right now, so we always appreciate the business. So extraction. There are have been a lot of different methods over the years. As emily told me. She's like, these are all ancient methods or not all ancient methods, but many of these are ancient methods. Does she say things like low first? Low is the ancient method? Because that would be wonderful. She does say on flourage. Okay. This is a very interesting older technique where you isolate these essential oils by using purified fats. And this all sounds gross, but what you would do back in the day and I'm sure there are probably still some people doing it this way you can probably go, like, pay $5 to watch them dress up in old timey clothes and stuff sure. And do this. But you would get a tallow and large mixture and spread it out on a flat surface. And then the first thing you have to do with any of these is you got to crush up the plants really well, and you coat it with these crushed up plants, and the fat absorbs these VOCs. Takes a few days. Then you filter out those plant parts because you don't want those around anymore. You've gotten what you needed from them. You're done with them. Get out of my sight. And then the fat will eventually become saturated with this essential oil, and then you extract that oil with a solvent, basically like alcohol. Yeah. From what I saw, though, this is a multi step process where once you get rid of the plant material, once you've gotten the essential oil out of it. You repeat the process again and again and again until the fat is saturated with essential oil. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And that's great. That seems very ancient indeed. And there's another variation of it called maceration hot fat, which is where you do the same thing, but you warm the fat to kind of speed up the absorption process. So I guess that means that essential oils, or at least certain kinds of them, are fat soluble is what I'm taking from this. Yeah. I couldn't really figure out this maceration. That may be an old term because like a macerated oil is basically an infused oil or using a carrier oil now. Yeah. My understanding or my familiarity with maceration is when you make a shrub, a vinegar shrub to put in cocktails or whatever. Macerating is where you basically chemically mash the fruit by putting so much sugar on it that it just breaks it down. And then you take that and add vinegar to it and shake it up and let it sit for a few weeks and thank me later. One of my favorite ways of extraction is good old fashioned mechanical expression. Another good band name. And this is like citrus rhines. Like all those great essential oils that you get from an orange peel or a lemon peel. And you cold press this stuff and just extract those oils with good old fashioned elbow grease. This is what Lucille Ball was doing to those grapes in that classic episode where she's mashing grapes by jumping around a tub with another lady. I mean, is there anything better than taking a lemon twist and squeezing that thing into a drink and seeing those little citrus sneeze come out of it? Yeah. And then it kind of floats like oil on top of the drink. When you get it just right, it is very satisfying. Agreed. If you ever just, like, use some lemon juice and then throw away that lemon without using the peel for something, then you're doing it wrong. Oh, yeah. Spray it in the air. Sprayed on your counter, sprayed on your hands. Do whatever. Oh, friend. This is what you do with a lemon peel. You never throw it away. You throw it into your garbage disposal and eventually run your garbage disposal. And not only does it make your garbage disposal smell really good, it actually disinfects the garbage disposal so that it doesn't smell funky. Nice. Yes, do that. Like if you drink a lot of lemon water, your garbage disposal is going to thank you for it. I saw one of those and I hate calling them hacks, but one of those food hacks lists the other day, and this was pretty good. You take instead of cutting the lemon and then getting like a cheesecloth or something to keep those seeds and things in there, you just roll it on the before you do anything, you roll it on the counter like a rolling pin with your hand and just get it all soft and squishy. And then you just stick like a skewer, like a kebab skewer through the little what is it called? The nipple? Sure. The nip of the lemon all the way through. And then that's just a little spout, and you can just squeeze the heck out of that thing. The only thing that's coming out is the juice. I've never heard of that. Food hack. That was a good one. You know what else we could call that part of the lemon is the lemon's moose knuckle. What do you think about that? That or the nick. Make your choice. What else do we have? Well, Emily is a steam distiller. She's got a still, and she uses steam distillation process, which is very cool to see. So with steam distillation, it's basically the same thing that you would use to make, like, gin. The still that we talked about in gin is basically the same thing where you've got the hot water that's producing steam. The steam rises up through, like, a grate or grid or something. It passes through that and then up past these mashed up bits of whatever plant you're extracting the essence from. And then that water vapor carries those essential oils from the mashed up plant up and then down again to another part of the store where it's cooled and turns into a combination of oil and water. And correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong, because I've never actually seen this firsthand. And then the oil and water goes into the final little area with a spigot at the bottom for the water and spigot at the top for the oil, which will eventually start to float. Sounds about right. Okay, great. And then I saw something else, Chuck, that ties into another episode of ours that I found very satisfying. Ultrasound is used sometimes to pre extract the essential oils. So you'll take, say I saw a demonstration using this ultrasound wand, basically, and they had a cup of water and hops that they'd mashed up some hops, and they just stuck the ultrasound wand in the water and made the water go crazy. And what they found is that using a lot less energy and even less plant material, you can extract more essential oil, because the cavitation that's produced by those sound waves in the walls of the cells that hold the essential oil in the plant, those cell walls get busted open. And so when more essential oil comes out, so you can actually get more essential oil out of the plant, and it takes lower temperature steam to lift that essential oil out. So there's no thermal degradation. There's a lot less thermal degradation. So you use less plant material, less energy to get more essential oil out, thanks to the beauty of ultrasound. Now, before they did that demonstration, did they say, this wand has not been up anyone's butt? Yeah, of course. Okay. That's how they started every single video in Germany. Oh, boy. That was a German company. Sure. And they're into that kind of thing. Yeah. And Germans. Listen to this. Hey, Germany. Because we have a specifically tailored ad for Germany, which I'm proud of this punch about. Yeah. Go and talk, everyone. Yeah. Do you know what that means? It means this wand has not been up anybody's butt. That's right. And talk. So the uses of essential oils, depending on who you ask, and we'll get into the controversies of how they're marketed, because there are some, for sure. Yeah. A couple. If you read some sites, they'll say basically they'll cure anything or maybe not cure anything, because you have to be careful of how you say things. But no, they still say that. Do they? Yeah, it's bad. But some of the legit uses of essential oils, they can be preservative. They can be a flavoring agent. They are certainly used to scent agents and all kinds of things. Emily makes her own insect repellent, mosquito repellent. She use citronella. Jeez, I should know this because I spray it all over my body, like, every night. I don't know. I just trust her that she's doing it right. It can be a fungicidal, herbicidal, and pesticidal agent for crops. And then there's aromatherapy, which we'll get into in a few minutes as well. Yeah. And all those will make a lot more sense in a second once we talk about the actual evidence based research into what kind of biomedical properties essential oils have. One of the things that we found, like, pretty early on, and we should say there's hundreds of essential oils that are used for aromatherapy or for industrial purposes, and we really have studied just a handful of them, but the ones that we have studied have turned up some pretty interesting results. Like, we found that very clearly, some essential oils are antimicrobial and antifungal as well. Some essential oils are both at the same time, like clove oil. If you're a bacteria or a fungus, you do not want to be around clove oil, because it is going to mess you up pretty bad. Worse than rocky on draco? Eventually, yeah. Tea tree oil is something we use a lot in our house as well to dry out a pimple, let's say, or to heal something, like, on your skin. It's very good for skin treatments. We should mention, too, the reason people are turning to these is because there's a big movement, and there always has been. But it seems like it's really gained steam in the last decade of people trying to find natural alternatives to synthetic treatments sure. Which is laudable and commendable, as long as the science backs it up. And part of the science also, too, is showing that it's not actually harmful, which we'll talk about, too. But one of the things that they're figuring out about essential oil and they are scientists, I should say, is that because they have antifungal properties and antimicrobial properties, and because those properties survive being vaporized, that you could use this stuff as a spray for cleaner conceivably. And that's not to say, like, just stop using any other cleaner and just use clove oil. Although we use clove oil a lot to disinfect things. We use lavender oil to disinfect things. So I don't know, maybe do what you want, but we're probably going to start seeing more essential oils in cleaning products than we do even now. And they're starting to be all over the place. Yeah, I mean, the air base disinfectant is pretty interesting. We use Emily make room sprays, and those, I don't think are so much for the disinfectant is just a good scent based poop cover up. Yeah. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I was just using it to make the room exponentially more pleasant. Yeah, but they're good to have in the bathroom, you know what I mean? What do you mean? Empty poop? Got you. Another cool thing is increasingly there is drug resistance among infectious microorganisms. And so that has opened up the doors for more research into the anti pathogenic properties of essential oils. Because they're saying, like, hey, maybe some of this stuff can be replaced, these synthetic compounds with these natural compounds. So they're talking about MRSA here. Right. So one of the problems with MRSA is that it's resistant to the drugs we have. So even if you're like, I don't care if it's all natural or the most horrid industrial compound we've ever come up with, kill the MRSA because it can kill us and we can't treat it. They're finding that essential oil has properties that MRSA can't develop a resistance to. So not only can it kill MRSA, we would expect that Mrs not eventually going to evolve to be resistant to these essential oils as well. Yeah, maybe now would be a good time to take that next break because we were going to dive into aromatherapy, and that's the one area, like you said, they've done. I wouldn't say a lot, but they're doing more and more studies on a handful of essential oils and their uses. But aromatherapy is the one area where they still have not done a ton of studies, and that's probably the most controversial area of essential oils, wouldn't you say? It is, for sure. And before we take a break, I do want to say we're talking about individual studies that are basically the first steps in a scientific understanding of the properties, the biomedical properties of essential oils. So it's all like g, whiz and everything, but it's not settled by any stretch of the imagination. We're still just beginning to investigate this stuff, so bear that in mind as well. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there. It can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated USbased restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. Hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales, so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff all lowercase for a free 14 day trial, and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. All right, Chuck, we're back. That's right. To talk about aromatherapy. And this is when you get into the different applications for essential oils there. And Emily told me to make sure I mentioned that there are people out there that are recommending people actually ingest essential oils more and more, and she's saying, don't do that. That sounds a lot like injecting bleach or cleaner to combat viruses. That's not how these work. Yeah, she's saying that there are people out there recommending that you literally ingest this stuff, and she's saying, just don't do that. It's a good issue. Yeah, it's much better in a tincture, maybe, or a topical thing. Or in this case, we're talking about aromatherapy, which is breathing stuff in either through your skin or into your mouth and lungs. Yeah, but either way, apparently, however you ingest it like that, through your lungs or your nose or mouth, your olfactory center is initiated, and it starts doing all sorts of different things depending on what volatile organic compounds are hitting it. Right. And when I found that was a really good example. My favorite smell of all time lavender. And lavender, through some studies isn't it great? Through some studies, lavender has been shown to prevent serotonin reuptake. They've shown what kind of neurochemical mechanisms lavender affects our brains through, and one of them is it prevents serotonin transporters from doing their job. Once a serotonin transporter gets a hold of, like, a serotonin molecule, that thing gets taken out of your brain and you're no longer feeling your mood from that particular molecule of serotonin. Well, lavender, or specifically, I think, lavender duel, which is a terpene from lavender, prevents the serotonin from taking up or the serotonin transporter from taking up that serotonin. This step one and then another one is that it's an NDMA receptor antagonist, which puts it in the same class of chemicals that dissociative chemicals as ketamine. They've actually studied lavender now closely enough to say, this is how it affects your brain, and it definitely does affect your brain. So there is something to the idea that aromatherapy does have therapeutic effects, and lavender in particular. Now we understand how now, do you mean SSRI potential, like a natural SSRI? I don't know, because I think part of the other thing about essential oils, too, is, like, the impact and the effects that they have on us are pronounced enough that we could study them and see them, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be able to just take lavender pills as, like, a mood enhancer or to combat depression. It's just not pronounced enough for that. It could conceivably open a door to some inquiry or some investigation that could lead to new synthetic compounds based on what we find. But just taking like lavender is not going to cure your depression? From anything I've seen. Yeah. And I think it depends on who you're talking to. Some people might advocate for complete replacement of practice of TCM, let's say. Might be like, no, man, don't take any of these quote unquote Western medicines. This is the only stuff that you need to be taking. But other people will say, hey, you can augment with things like lavender or eucalyptus or cedar wood and stuff like that. I have no problem with augmenting. I have no problem with traditional medicine of any culture. As long as it works, it's not harmful to the user, and it's not harmful to other sentient beings or the planet. Those are really my only qualifications. As long as it works, just go for it, but just make sure that those caveats are checked, or else it's harmful. Yeah. Well, let's talk about some of these purported benefits of these various oils. We talked about lavender, of course, relaxation and sleep is where you're going to see a lot of it, like spraying on your pillow. Eucalyptus is a big one for congestion, for burns, for cold sores, arthritis, even rose is a big one for anxiety. And a lot of these, too, have to do with skin things like eczema or dandruff or rosacea and stuff like that. And all these, you should say these are all ones that like the essential oil industry says, that not that science necessarily backs up. Right. Well, that's what I meant by purported health benefits. Okay. Got you. Yeah, I didn't pick up on that. Or if you play the video game Dead Redemption, you can spend a lot of your time gathering herbs because it's the Old West. What do you do with those herbs? You use them and craft different things with them to help yourself. Oh, that's neat. Do they have X factor in it in that game? I got bit by a rattlesnake the other day in the game, and they said, you've been poisoned. You might want to go find some additional herbs and eat them. Did you survive? I survived, and I shot that snake, too. Do you shoot the snake? That's got to be tough to shoot a snake. Yeah, they are tough to hit. Yes. Unless you pull out the old shotgun. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah. It's funny. Someone who loves animals and hates hunting as much as I do really gets a kick out of hunting in this game. Well, it's different. I don't think it counts. It's not real. As far as we know, it's not real. Some of these oils have been studied to a certain degree, and I like the way that Julia puts this studied enough to confirm or strongly suggest a positive association between oil and a health outcome. But it's tough because the and we'll get to the FDA part, but all these plants are different. When you're talking about the scientific studies, that's all built on consistency of the product that you're testing. Yeah. Replication. Yes. And because these are plants, it's tough, but depends on where the plant grows and what month you pick it and how it was distilled. There's so many x factors. Nice one. Yeah. They kind of confound things, right? It does. And, I mean, apparently, depending on the time of day, the plant might be producing different levels or types of essential oil. And because no one has said this is the chemical compound of the chemical recipe of lavender essential oil, because there's nothing like that, then even if you are trying to apply science to studying essential oils, you don't know if you're studying the exact same thing that somebody else is studying who's getting results that you're having trouble replicating. It's definitely like the Wild West right now. People are getting bit by rattlesnakes level Wild West. Yeah. It's important because it's not regulated by the FDA right now. It falls in that weird gray area between being a pharmaceutical medicine and being a cosmetic. And so they aren't FDA regulated, so they don't have to go through that testing and approval process that medicines do. Right. So technically, they can make vague claims. Like, if you are an essential oil producer, you could take some of these studies that you found that may not have been peer reviewed, that may have had a very small sample size that may have been virtually made up, but that support your claim that, say, things like, roman chamomile is good for heart health, or something like that, you could put that on the label. But if you say something like, roman chamomile helps stave off heart disease, then you'll get a letter from the FDA saying, like, hey, you're making health claims that you can't back up, that science certainly doesn't back up, and you need to stop. The problem is there's a lot of companies out there making these claims right now all over the place, and a lot of them come in the form of multilevel marketing or pyramid schemes. Like, I think Young Living is a really good example of that, where you can find Young Living products in your neighbor's garage or on Twitter or Instagram and not necessarily in a store. So it makes it very difficult because it's decentralized. It makes it difficult for the FDA to find out about this stuff, and then even when they do, they don't have a lot of recourse to stopping it, aside from sending threatening letters, threatening legal action. Yeah. And I think they were one of the ones that markets to pregnant women specifically. And this is where we get to, like this is why it's actually problematic. Yeah. I mean, anytime it's an unregulated substance and they're saying, hey, use this on your baby, or use this if you're pregnant. And there's been so little peer reviewed research, then that's when it can get a little bit dodgy, because there is very little research on how these oils should be used at all on kids and babies. Right. As a matter of fact, there's a couple of companies let's see, young Living has a series of essential oils that they recommend for different stages of pregnancy. Hopewell has a whole baby chart for your child to use for things like teething or ear infections, that kind of stuff. These are all essential oils. The problem is, some essential oils have been shown to actually potentially be harmful for women, for pregnant women. Like, there's a whole class of essential oils that can produce sudden and heavy menstruation, which is not what you want to do when you're pregnant. So those oils should not be marketed toward pregnant women who should not be using them. Like, Rosemary is a really good example of that. It's actually used as an abortive fashion in Brazil, in traditional medicine in Brazil, because it can bring on heavy, sudden menstruation. So there's a lot of reasons not to use these things, depending on your situation, who you are. And the problem is not only that kind of marketing is being avoided, they're actually being aggressively marketed toward women without proven results, but also without being proven as safe because they skate the edges around FDA regulation. Yeah. Or that there may be, like, one study that is sort of cherry picked and overstated. I know that in this article, it's mentioned the 2008 study about lemon oil and the effects on mood. And in that study, the subjects did say that their mood improved. But then the scientists were like, well, your actual biological markers on stress and mood isn't really changing. So is it the placebo effect that's going on here? Which, I mean, they said they felt better. Yeah, and that's fine. The placebo effect is fine, Chuck. It's just that if you're not treating something else or you're not using something else to actually treat a problem like lemon oil improving your mood, who cares? But if you're using something that's actually harmful, then that is problematic. And what you were just talking about also about how you could just cherry pick a study, that's essentially what we were doing towards the beginning of this podcast, we were saying, there are some studies that have shown that these definitely do have antimicrobial and antifungal properties. So maybe we'll end up seeing them as like aerosolized disinfectant spray in the future. That's really close to what some of these companies are doing, but instead, these companies are actually selling these things and saying, here, drink this, or take this or use this. Based on these cherry pick studies. Yeah. And I know the company, Terra. T-E-R-R-A. They've come under fire. They're one of the giants of the industry. In 2014, they got a big warning from the FDA about crossing that line into making medical claims. And they're like, you're basically touting yourself as a pharmaceutical, and you're not basically, yeah. A really good example of this is some essential oils. There are studies out there that have shown that they may have antiviral properties, right. Like how clove oil has antibacterial and antifungal properties. Some essential oils are showing the possibility of being antiviral as well. So then those essential oils would be taken by a company like Young Living or doTERRA and marketed as a cure for Ebola or Coronavirus. That's a big problem. That's a huge leap that's totally unfounded and that people really should not be using rather than, say, seeking medical attention. Because you have to assume that somebody who is turning to essential oils to cure their Ebola is probably doing so because they don't want to use Western medicine. The problem is, Western medicine is one of the few, if only, courses of treatment that has been shown to be able to take on Ebola and certainly not something like clove oil. So that's really again, I don't know if I'm getting this across or not. That's problematic. Same with using marketing essential oils to cure things like and again, we're using the word cure here. Parkinson's disease, autism, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, insomnia, maybe insomnia, heart disease, PTSD, dementia, ms. Tetanus. All these things have been marketed to be curable by certain kinds of combinations of essential oil. And there's just not science to fully back that up or even come close to backing that up right now. Right, but that's not to say that you can't use certain essential oils to help with nausea because of your cancer treatments or something like that. Yeah, or apparently lavender also is good with helping curtail agitation and aggression in dementia patients, which is great because those are really tough to treat pharmaceutically. So there is stuff that it can do. It's just it can't cure Ebola. Like stop and think for a second. Clove oil can't cure Ebola. I'm sorry. Maybe if you take an Ebola virus and put in a petri dish and put a drop of clove oil on it, then yes, I would not bet you a single cent that clove oil wouldn't kill the Ebola virus. I'm sure, but that's not how our bodies work inside. So stop and think for a second. If you actually are walking around believing that clove oil cures Ebola, stop for a second and just do me that favor. Just stop. Is that what you're saying? Just stop and think. Don't forget the second part. Very important. Oh, see, I usually just stop. That's not good. Thank you for letting me go off there, Chuck. Regardless, this is a big industry and the market is booming and growing. It's expected to reach 7.3 billion in just the next three or four years. And that's up from about four and a half billion just last year in 2019. And they're looking by 2020 614 billion dollars. Industry. Yeah. Big money. It is. Big money. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. I said my piece, too. So since we don't have anything else about essential oils, everybody, it's time, of course, for listener mail. I'm going to call this fellow breakfast. Hey, guys. Just listen to your episode about brexit. I myself grind teeth like a champ. But I got really excited when I heard that Chuck and I have the same mouth. Just went to the Orthodontist. And the list of atrocities inside my mouth could take up a short stuff episode. So, Chuck, I feel your pain. I have a crossbite, a weird underbite. I feel like my lower jaw belongs in a different mouth, just like you. I left the Orthodontist. Feeling like a freak of nature and hearing that one of my alltime favorite personalities has the exact same diagnosis made me feel less pitiful. Eventually I'll have that horrible jawbreaking surgery and the plan was to recover with cheeseburger smoothies and stuff. You should know marathon. Now it'll mean a whole lot more. And that is from Erica McCarrons from Memphis, Tennessee. And Erica, my family is from Memphis, so you might be my sister from another mother. That's right. That's great. That's a good one. Thanks a lot, Erica. I'm glad Chuck can make you feel a little better about things because that's what Chuck does best. Who's going to make me feel better? Me. Okay. Or one of Emily's room sprays will help, too. You need to get those things out of the bathroom and get them more involved into your life. Chuck dude, I'm constantly being slathered and tinctured and poultessed and dipped. Dude. I'm a guinea pig. Nice. That's a pretty pleasant thing to be a guinea pig for, I have to say. Agreed. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like did Erica that's right, Erica. I just want to make sure you knew still, too. Thanks again, Erica. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios how stuff works. 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https://podcasts.howstuf…rain-robbery.mp3	How The Great Train Robbery Worked	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-great-train-robbery-worked	In 1963, 15 men got together in England to pull off one of the most daring heists in history. The Great Train Robbery was the crime of the century, capturing the public's attention and leaving them torn on who to root for - the cops or the robbers. Learn	In 1963, 15 men got together in England to pull off one of the most daring heists in history. The Great Train Robbery was the crime of the century, capturing the public's attention and leaving them torn on who to root for - the cops or the robbers. Learn	Thu, 16 Oct 2014 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=289, tm_isdst=0)	41235939	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should Know from housetepworkscom. ChuChu. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles w truck bright. There's Jerry. And you put all of us together with the club. A couple of microphones, a crummy, Ikea Lamb and a head full of nose juice. You get stuff you should know. That's right. Stuff you should know. Juice. Oh, great. How's it going, buddy? Besides the obvious under the weather of you, I predict this is the last one. Great. I'm going to be back to good as new by the next time we record. Yeah. We're going to Vancouver and you'll get some of that good Canadian air in your body. And the pine air, it's healing properties. I'll get pine and flannel and ocean in my face. And moose. Moose hair. If you want it all into a ball and sniff it. It takes care of everything. That's right. What the world are we talking about? I don't know. We're talking about trains. That's right. We're talking about a specific train, Chuck. We're talking about a specific train at a specific moment and place and time that all came together to become known as the Great Train Robbery. Right. Did you commission this article? I did not. Did you know about it already? Some, yeah, a little bit, but not obviously as much. After I researched and I watched a couple of documentaries and was looking for a great, awesome movie. But I don't think there really is a great, awesome movie about this yet, which is surprising. I think they did like BBC did one and I think Sean Connery did one that was loosely I think other things were loosely based. Like the taking of three. Yes, exactly. That's a good movie. The original, of course. Yeah. Did you watch The Tale of Two Thieves? Is that one of the documentaries you watched? No, I don't think that's out to the public yet. Unless I just haven't seen it. Okay. I think it's new this year. Yes. It seems like it's 2014. Yes. I want to see it. But there are no shortage of YouTube BBC docs, because they love it and I learned a lot of new words watching them. Yeah, like what? Like instead of crooked, someone is bent. Like a bent solicitor, I figured out was crooked solicitor. And a kosh is like a billy club and you can kosh somebody. Oh, wow. Like the train conductor was koshed. Yeah, yeah. They were just a bunch of cool terms that I had to kind of figure out what they meant in American. Got you in my English. Yeah. So I had heard the words great train and robbery together, but I didn't know anything about it. I think there was another one, an older Great Train robbery from the 18 hundreds. There's one in 10, 50, 55, where a train traveling from London to Paris or vice versa had a bunch of gold bullion on it and it got hit that was legendary. But apparently this is the biggest train heist since then, more than 100 years later. Yeah, it was a big deal. And it was sort of Jesse James style. That's why it became one of the crimes of the century in England, for sure. I mean, it was huge in the press. And these guys that knocked off this train became these kind of weird working class heroes. Well, one of them became the symbol for the anti establishment. Which one? What was his name? The one who made off for years and years. Yeah. He was on the Lamb for, like, 30 years. So he was super famous. Yeah. And they knew where he was and they couldn't get to him, which we'll talk about. But he became like the folk hero of the anti establishment, saying vocals on lots of, like, punk records. Really? Yeah. I saw in both documentaries they had a bunch of interviews on the street, interviews from the time with regular, upstanding citizens like, Whose side are you on? And a lot of them were like, well, I feel ashamed to admit this, but I kind of think these guys really took it to the cops on this one, and they thought they were ingenious. And even though the plan, as we'll get to really was pretty uncomplicated, it wasn't nearly as clever as it was made out to be. Right, well, let's talk about the plan. So there was this idea who had the original idea. I believe his last name was Fields. He was the guy who originally had the idea and approached several people, criminals for partnership. And they all turned him down except for this ace safe cracker by the name of Goody. Okay, so Goody had a friend who was his name was Bruce Reynolds. And I guess he originally funded the whole thing. Yeah. Well, they were in a gang called the Bowler Hat Gang in London. I know. Right. I don't think we said this. We've made reference to the Wild West and train robbers and everything. This is the 1960s. Yeah. Like the early nineteen s. Sixty s that this is going on. Yeah. And the Bowler Hat Gang, they dressed in bowler hats and suits, and they had done some crimes, and they were mainly career criminals, and they had the presses attention. And they actually tried to rob a train at first, but it didn't work so well and they got away. But they had sort of not a trial run, but they legitimately tried to knock off another train. So is that when they realized that they needed to expand their rank and file? Yeah, they realized that we don't know trains and we don't know how to stop them. So we need to get some train guys. Right. So the Bowler Coast Gang, who is, I guess, led by Bruce Reynolds. Right. Yeah. Bowler hat. The bowler hat gang they got with the South Coast Gang, I think. Yeah. The South Coast Raiders. Those are some great gang names, by the way. Totally great. But the bowler hat gang and the south coast raiders who were led by a dude named buster Edwards. Right, yeah. And Tom Whizby, he was one of the main wisdom. Sorry. So those guys all got together and they said, we got this great idea. We need your people to come help us. We're going to rob a train. And not just any train, there was one specific train that this gang targeted, and for good reason. It was called the Up Special. And the Up Special had been running since the 18 30th between Glasgow, Scotland and London. Right. Yeah. And it run every night. And it was basically like a mail sorting facility on wheels. It was pretty clever. They thought, well, we'll take all the mail from Glasgow that's going to London and we'll sort it along the way. So there was twelve cars in the Glasgow Special or the Up Special, and a diesel engine. So it's a pretty simple train. Yeah. And it'll run for years and years without incident, for like almost 150 years. Yeah. And it wasn't loaded with guards and cops. I mean, it was a bunch of postmen, basically. It's really weird, then, that the banks would trust their money that we're moving from Glasgow to London to this postal train that had, like, no security, no armed guards, no alarms until the early 60s on the train cars themselves. But yet every night, the banks would empty their accounts into this train and say, good luck getting to London. Like, here's a bunch of huge sacks of money, we're going to put it on the train and you're going to sort it along the way. Exactly. They had an inside man. Who? And this is one of those weird stuff, you should know things. You know how there's all these weird correlations in the news? Right. I picked out this article two days ago, and two days ago it was announced who the identity of the inside man was. Yeah. The last great mystery of this thing from the 60s was just unraveled, like, two days ago. And I didn't even know it at the time. I found out afterward, but the code name was Ulsterman and it was always believed to be someone on the inside of the train and post industry to give them information. Like, the train is super loaded on this particular night because of a bank holiday. Right. And he was named by Gordon Goody as Patrick McKenna. Yeah. In that documentary, A Tale of Two Thieves, they hand a picture of Patrick McKenna to goodie and say is that Ulsterman? And apparently he gets visibly uncomfortable because he's kept this guy's identity secret. He was the last person alive for 50 years to know who this person was. There were two other people who knew. They both died before goodie. Patrick McKenna died years back and there was just this one man who swore he would take the secret to his grave, and he named him. He lingered him. These guys were really good at keeping secrets over the years. They wore bowler hats for goodness. So McKenna's family was super surprised to hear all this. Police never suspected them, and they basically think that this guy felt bad afterward and never even spent the money and gave it to the Catholic Church, like, slowly over the years. Oh, yeah, his cut is what the family is saying. It's like an Ulsterman kind of thing to do. Yeah, allstate right. He's a good guy. Well, before he had a change of heart, he was the inside man that helped the gang figure this out. Yeah. He actually recommended they changed the date to get a bigger take than it worked. Can you explain this to me? So a bank holiday, and it's the same thing here in the US. It's like a day. The banks are closed. They have official bank holidays. There is a banking act in the UK from the 19th century that designated certain days as bank holidays. What I don't understand is, why is there so much more money the day after bank holiday? It's like everybody waited to do their banking business that they would have done on Monday, on Tuesday. Like, there's so many more people or so many more transactions that didn't get to be done on that Monday that were carried out on the Tuesday. That's why there's so much more money. I don't know. Maybe it's that because of the holiday, they didn't do their deposits and make the money leave the bank like they normally would. So it was compounded, I guess. So that was like double the amount of money, as usual, because they didn't do their drop on the holiday or something. Yeah, but they didn't conduct any business on the holiday, so there wouldn't have been more money to accumulate than usual. You know what I'm saying? Well, if it came after a weekend, though, maybe it was like all of that weekend's deposits had gathered up. Okay. I don't know. That's a good question. Okay. The point is a lot more money than usual. A lot more. Usually this train car, the Up Special, carried about \u00a3300,000 between Glasgow and London each night. On this particular night, the night of August 8, 1963, which was Thursday, early we hours of a Thursday, it was carrying something like \u00a32.6 million, which today in dollars would be worth about 50 million. I looked it up and it was like, double that 100 million. Well, yeah, because you're going from 1963 to 2013 and from pounds to dollars. Yeah, I might be off, but I got \u00a369 million today or $111,000,000 US. Let's go with that. That's way better either way. \u00a32.6 million was a ton of money for a high spec then. Yeah, it was, like, really a lot of dough. Even splitting it among 15 guys. Yeah. And they didn't even necessarily split it evenly. There were the core gang who were carrying this thing out, and they all got even split. But there are also accomplices in addition to Ulsterman. There's Mr. One, Mr. Two and Mr. Three. Yeah. And those are their names, though, because they were never brought to justice. There were three that just got away with it. Even though they knew who they were, supposedly, they didn't have evidence to go pick them up. So, like, the identities of the three guys that got away, they think they knew who they were the whole time. Really? I mean, one of them's named John Wieder. He got away. I'm not sure. Was he one of the one, two or three? Yeah, he was the one who got the safe house for the gang. Yeah. Well, he worked with Fields to get the safe house. Well, let's back up here. Okay. We're so excited. We're getting so he mentioned that they recruited another gang that knew how to work with trains, knew how to stop trains. And what they did was they brought this guy on board who had this elderly man who was a train driver. His name was Peter. And Peter's job, once they stopped the train, was to get it to where the drop point, the exchange point, was in case, because the train stops at the red light, right. Which they very awkwardly wired the red light to turn on, and they just covered the green light with some gloves. But it worked. They stopped the train and still needed to get it down the track to the exchange point. And this old man gets on board and he's like, I don't know how to undo this new handbrake. Right. So he was useless. And so the guy, Biggs, who became this criminal legend for evading the law for so many years, apparently his only job was to find somebody who could drive the train, and he screwed it up. So the guy who was supposed to drive the train got thrown off the train, and they got the original train engineer, the one whose job it was to actually drive the train under normal circumstances, and made him drive another mile and a half to this bridge. Yeah. And that was Jack Mills. And this is a very important detail. He was, like you said, the conductor and two guys jumped on the train at the very front there and coushed him, which is smacked him on the head a bunch with this billy club. I thought it was a crowbar. Well, it's an iron cosh, which is English for crowbar, I guess. And this was a big point because for a lot of reasons. One, it was why the justice ended up coming down so harshly on them, because they were apparently way more violent than they needed to be with this guy. Yeah. And the public perception of these guys as working class heroes doesn't job with the violence because English still aren't really into violence as a whole. No. Especially if you're the Bowler Hat gang. Yeah. Like, you dressed nicely and you conducted your business, your criminal business like gentleman. Right. And you didn't need to beat this old guy up. He was elderly, nearing retirement, and his family says the robbers still say today that he wasn't beaten up nearly as bad as they say. And the family is like, no, he never fully recovered and died of cancer about seven years later. I think he died of leukemia. Yeah. But they say he had headaches for the rest of his life and he was just not the same man. Yeah. You can't do that to somebody. You can't do that to someone. And like you said, that changed absolutely everything. Goody. The guy who is really the brains behind this whole operation, he wrote a book a few years back before he died, and he said it was either Buster Edwards or a guy named James Hussey, who was the one who cost the poor conductor. Yeah. And supposedly Hussey, who was brought in as a heavy, is some muscle. Supposedly at his deathbed, he said that it was him who coshed the guy. But there are other people that say, including Jack Mills son, who said, no, my father told me who it was, and it wasn't him. This guy is just doing that robber thing where you still cover for your people. So, like, on his deathbed, he was still trying to cover for the real guy. And I don't know if we'll ever know for real if it was him or the other dude while lying on your deathbed. Yes. That's not okay. No, that never happens. Yeah. That's where you're supposed to be the most truth. Sure. They take deathbed confessions as completely legitimate in court. Yes. That's where you're supposed to look at your wife and say, I never really loved you. Wow, that's terrible. Can you imagine? I think that was in a movie once. You thought it was going to be some tender moment, and he was like, I never really loved you. I think I know what you're talking about. The War of the Roses were like, they're both playing, they're dying. And Michael Douglas goes to, like, put his arm around it's a great movie. No, I don't think anybody's done that. Okay, so Roger Cordrey is the guy's name who came up with the idea to fix these train signals, and he was an associate of Buster Edwards. And if you have ever seen the movie Buster with Phil Collins oh, is that who it's about? That's who it's about, yes. Sort of like a working class criminal. Like, criminals back then were kind of revered in certain circles in England. Two hearts beating in just one heart. Was that from that movie? Okay. Great song. All right, so after this break, we are going to talk a little bit more about how it went down and what happened right after. So, Chuck yeah. We've got the Bowler Hat Gang and the South Coast Raiders coming together for one huge heist that's worth about $100 million in today's money. Yeah. Or half that. They're hitting the up special, just this crotch of the old twelve car train moving along through the night from Scotland to London. Right. Yeah. And so the gang messes with the lights. Yeah. They put a glove around the green light and managed to turn on the red light. So the train comes to the stop, they all board the train, they hit the conductor over the head. Huge mistake. They bring on the guy who's supposed to drive the train, find out he can't drive the train, throw him off, stand the conductor back up, probably give him a handkerchief for his head and say, we need you to drive this another mile and a half to the drop point, which is called Britigo Bridge. Yeah. Was it like a bridge overpass? And the guy does that and they start offloading the loot. Yeah. They got 120 of the 128 sacks of cash money onto they had this big Lori and a couple of Land Rovers. Yeah. Could this be any more stylish? They had Land Rovers and getaway cars. Yeah. It's pretty cool. You see why people bought into all this stuff and thought it was cool? Because I think it's cool right now. Yeah. And so what they did, they had pre arranged a hideout and this was Fields job as well, was he bought this farm and farmhouse leather Slade Farm. Right. Yeah. And it was sort of ingenious, but ended up screwing them in the end because the idea was within 30 minutes of this robbery, they have effectively disappeared off the face of the earth. Well, they stopped the train and got it to the bridge and offloaded more than a ton of money. Yeah. Two and a half tons of money in 15 minutes. Yeah. And they were back in their hideout in another 15 so by the time this thing was reported, they were gone in this farmhouse, like, with the windows shut and the shades drawn. Okay. But it also kind of screwed them because before they left the train, they said, all right, no one moves for 30 minutes. And so the cops hear this and they went, oh, well, they're probably within a 30 miles radius then. And so they put this out on the news. We know that they're within a 30 miles radius and we're going to start canvassing the area. They get word of this, they're within 28 miles and they go, well, crap, they're going to find us. And they also said it was sort of a city boys move to think you can hide out in the country like that. And this one guy in the documentary was like, out in the country, you get notice, right. If you're 15 guys in a farmhouse that was their undoing. And neighbors said, there's a lot more people at this old rambling old farm and they're all wearing bowler hats for some reason, or at least half of them are. There's something fishy going on. So when the word got out that this train had been hit, this guy came forward and said, you guys should go check this farm out. Yeah, well, the guys weren't only at this farm for the half hour after the heist. They've been there for like, eight days, waiting for the day to come, getting ready, eating things that required ketchup, playing Monopoly. Played a lot of Monopoly with their real money. Yes. They thought that was just a fun thing to do. Hilarious. Yeah. And they did go to the trouble of wiping down a lot of the stuff, but they left a lot of stuff behind. Including the Monopoly game. Including the ketchup bottle and a lot of other stuff that had prints on it. Well, yes, because Fields was supposed to get a guy to go towards the place. Yeah, that's what I thought. I was like, Why wouldn't you burn the place down? That was the plan. And apparently the guy never did it. And they ended up getting out of there a few days early. They left five days into it because they obviously heard the news that they were canvassing the area, so they left quicker than they wanted to and like you said, left a lot of stuff behind because they thought it was going to be torched. Their plan was to lay low there for a few days. Yeah, to keep laying low. But when they found out they were basically making their way to them little by little, they got the heck out of Dodge. That probably kept them from getting caught sooner. So the public is being treated to this incredibly daring train heist. These people got away without a trace for at least the first week. Finally, within a week, this leather Slade Farms has been identified as the place where these guys were hiding out. Yeah. They found the trucks and they got at least one person within eight days of the heist. Yeah. And all of a sudden, people start falling. There's 15 people. And on the case is called the Flying Squad, who are, like, the best of the best that Scotland Yard has to offer to combat these some of the best of the best criminals that Great Britain had to offer at the time. Yeah. Chief Superintendent detective Tommy Butler was the head of the Flying Squad. And like you said, this was so sensational because it was the top robbers and the top cop. It was I guess it's sort of like the Elliott Ness of the day, going after Al Capone. It was just a huge story. And like you said, they started getting nicked one by one. And it came out later that there was an informant by the name of Mickey Kiho. Supposedly, Scotland Yard said this guy Mickey Kiho was telling us all about it because it was well known within the criminal underground, like, what was going on, and started naming names. Although the robbers to this day still say, no, it wasn't Mickey Kiho. We know that guy. He didn't even know us that well. He wasn't giving up names. Yeah, but I don't know Scotland Yards. He was, so I don't see why they make that up. I could see them making it up to protect somebody else. Especially if they didn't like Mickey Kiho in the way he looked. That's true. But you're right. They started to go down one by one. There was a pretty short list of people who they thought it was. It wasn't like some great mystery. Plus, once they started peeling away one and one here, there, others started falling. Did anyone who was caught name names? Did you get that impression? No. Most of them were pretty tight lipped. In fact, one guy, Charlie Wilson, he was the treasurer of the gang. They called him the Silent Man because he literally said nothing. He just didn't speak at all during the trial. Right. He went on to become a US. Congressman who waged a proxy war against Russia and Afghanistan. I don't think so. I think that's a different Charlotte. Okay. Tom Hanks. Yeah. Right. So consider this from the public's point of view. There's a staring robbery, right? Words getting out. Within a week, you got your first guy caught. But there's still tons more people on Lamb, which gave the press tons of fodder. They had so much to write about. There was a capture of one of the guys that involved rooftops. Like, the guy was running and jumping from roof to roof with the police and chase. Finally, by August, all these guys are rounded up. Twelve of the 15, I think, were rounded up. Yeah. And they started to stand trial in January. They were caught. They're being quiet. The public is just totally in awe. And finally this trial starts and right out of the gate, the judge found out that Biggs had a criminal past, so he shouldn't be tried with the rest of them because it contained the jury against all these other guys unfairly. So Big got spun off to his own trial and these guys stood trial. Or the other 11th no, ten of them stood trial. One of them managed to have a lawyer. He was there because his prints were on the Monopoly game. Yeah, there were prints on ketchup and Monopoly and pots and pans. And some of the guys wore gloves the entire time. And they're smart ones. Yeah, but Biggs was the one. Remember Biggs? One job was to bring the train engineer, and he screwed that up. His prints were on the ketchup bottle, so he screwed that up, too. But there was another guy whose prince run the monopoly game. And his lawyers managed to show that they could have gotten there long before the crime and that it didn't necessarily mean he had anything to do with it. He was acquitted during this trial. He was the only lucky one. Everybody else had the book thrown at them. Yeah, a lot of them were saying that they cooked up a bunch of evidence because they knew it was them, but they just didn't have the evidence. So the Big Lori truck, they had hastily painted yellow. And the goody one of the main two guys was supposedly some of his evidence was that they found yellow paint on his shoe. And he was like, I didn't paint in those shoes. And it was funny because years later, he's like, oh, I did it. And, yeah, I painted that truck yellow, but I wasn't wearing those shoes. They planted that evidence. Is that right? Yeah. And apparently there was false confessions. There was another great British word for that. I can't remember what they called it, but chaverdaba chaver dabbing. False confessions were big at the time in England, and there was a lot of reports from these robbers that they were using false confessions and planning evidence. And again, even though they did it, they were like, yeah, but if you don't have evidence, you can't convict us. All right. So I don't think we'll ever know if they cooked up some of this evidence or not. Well, there was one guy named William Bowl who was a poor guy. He apparently had nothing to do with it. Well, he received money in payment from a debt I think that Goody owed him. No, it was Biggs. Oh, Big to get he was a friend of Biggs, and when he got out, helped him kind of lay low. But he had nothing to do with the robbery. He got 14 years. No, I'm sorry. It was Cordrey. It wasn't Bigs. Okay. Cordy. I know. I feel bad for Biggs. We're just dragging his name through the mud. Yes, but it was Rob Cordry. It wasn't Rob Cordry, but it was his dad. It was his great grandfather, Cordary, and he was Bold's friend. He helped him lay low, and he went Cordary was actually the first one to get pinched because he and Bo helped him rent a garage, and they paid in the same bank note bills for, like, three months in advance in cash. And the lady said, this is a little suspicious. Turned him in. Bowl got wrapped up, and because all these guys were saying, we're innocent, they couldn't come out and say, well, he really is innocent. Right. So they kind of had to take this guilt with them to prison. So Bold got 14 years for doing nothing, really? Yeah, and for just basically knowing the wrong guys and hanging out with the wrong guys. He died in prison. I'm not laughing because it's just tragic. It is tragic. So his. Family is trying to mount a campaign now to get a posthumous pardon, at least he and the guy who got hit over the head, the conductor, are really the two Big victims and all of this. Yeah. And one of them there was only one guy that turned in his cut of the money and actually pleaded guilty out of the rest. That was Cordrie, I think. Yeah, that was Cordrie. He says, yes, I did it. Here's my 80 grand. The guy who he associated with still got 14 years in jail. Yeah. That's so sad. So you'll notice that we're talking about twelve of the 15. Big, by the way, after he stood trial separately, was also found guilty and got things like these guys were getting, like, 20 years, 30 year sentences, enormous sentences for this train robbery. Yeah, generally 30. Which was double the harshest penalties for robbery that they've ever seen. Right. Which is really strange, because the judge in the case, he had actually reduced another robber in a completely separate robbery where a man had been shot and killed during the commission of the robbery. Oh, wow. Someone who was involved in that robbery had his sentence reduced from 15 years to ten years. Crazy. Because the judge thought it was excessive. That same judge was handing out 30 year sentences to these guys where no one got killed. Yeah, that was Justice Edmund Davies, I think, because it was such a high profile case, he felt he could make his name had to be he was making his name, though, against public sentiment, because a lot of people were very much saw these guys as folk heroes. None more, though, than biggs. And the reason why Biggs is a folk hero was because he evaded capture so long. And we'll talk about that right after this. All right, so some really interesting things happened after they were sentenced. Charlie Wilson escaped prison, which was pretty cool. A couple of them escaped prison. And the way that it was very cute how you could escape prison back then. Like, let's put a ladder by the fence and climb up and jump over into a truck and speed away. It turns out that Benny Hills show was basically a docu drama at the time. Another one escaped when he I think he had some guys infiltrate the prison and help him escape. Yeah. In a furniture truck. Yeah. That was biggs, I think. Yeah. It was a lot easier to escape prison back then. And some of these were maximum security, for what it's worth. Yeah. One of them was Britain's version of Alcatraz. They say Wandsworth Prison. And that Big escape from there. When he escaped and went on the Lamb, he went to Australia and then eventually moved on to Brazil. But first he stopped off at one of the worst human beings to ever walk the planet's office. The very same cosmetic surgeon who redid the faces of Nazis fleeing europe at the end of World War II. Really? Yes. That's whose plastic surgeon was yes. Interesting. So Bigs got his face redone a little bit, went to Australia, made it to Brazil, and he had a family in Australia, which he left behind there, and then went on to Brazil, got a girlfriend and she was pregnant with their child when the British authorities found him in Brazil. And he said, oh, turns out, under Brazilian law, you can't extradite the parent of a Brazilian citizen crazy. So for many, many years, Ronald Biggs lived openly as this felon escapee in Brazil. And there are things that he couldn't do in Brazil, apparently. He couldn't go to bars, he couldn't be out after 10:00 p.m.. He couldn't associate with anybody with a criminal record or anything like that. But he wasn't imprisoned by the Brazilian authorities and he couldn't be extradited to Great Britain, which drove Great Britain crazy. Sure. And there was this one very famous detective who was on this case who made his own name. His name was Jack Slipper. Yeah. I get the feeling that he and Biggs, it was sort of like the lay miserable, like Jean Valjean. They had this lifelong pursuit, smoking in the bandit. Sure. It's a very old story. Yes, it is. And Biggs and Jack Slipper were playing it out in real life. So much so that Jack Slipper in showed up on Biggs'doorstep, I guess, just to rattle him, just to say, I know where you are and I can get to you. And Bigg said, yeah, but you really can't do anything to me. Yeah. And some of the other guys evaded police for a little while, for a number of years, but I think by 1969, they were all caught except for the three that they couldn't finger with good evidence. Yeah. But even the main mastermind was able to evade the police for four or five years. I think he went down to Mexico. Buster. He turned himself in after living on the Lamb for three years. Yeah. And Bruce Reynolds, I think he was on the land for a while, too. Yeah. He got caught in Canada, I think one of the guys well, I guess it was Bruce Reynolds, when he changed his name when he went on the land, he changed his family's last name to first. Oh, really? And he had a wife and son, Colin. He changed his son Nick's name to Colin Firth. Shut up. Is that the guy? No. Totally coincidental. Okay. I thought you were going to say, wouldn't that be amazing if that Colin Firth was the son of Bruce Reynolds and it was all an alias that he turned into a state's name? That would be awesome, actually. So one of the fun things that the Prime Minister tried to do because he was so upset about this, was he tried to at one point, or he didn't try to, he had the idea to reissue every banknote in England, so their money would no longer be good. So from what I understand and they were like, yeah, you can't do that. From what I understand, most of the money was never recovered, yet 400 grand out of the 2.6 million was recovered. Right. So there was a lot of that out there still. Yeah. But apparently England went to a different type of decimal currency by 1970, I think, and that means that that money that was out there automatically became worthless. Well, apparently they laundered it pretty quickly afterward, so I don't know how much that affected them. Okay. Like through bookies and stuff like that, they made it new money. However, all of the robbers ended up saying even if they got their cut, like it was a curse. And they didn't live this rich lifestyle in Mexico and Spain. Like a bunch of them moved to these places and served shorter sentences because I think parole was brought in after they were sentenced. It wasn't even like a thing in England until then. Right. But retroactively, they were able to get out in like ten or 14 years and then supposedly had some of this money still hidden away. But most of them ended up like one guy committed suicide, one guy died in a medical trial that he signed up for. One guy was murdered. Yes. By a hitman on a bike in Spain. Yeah. So most of them have these awful sort of ending stories and they didn't live out like sexy beast like Ray Windstone on the Riviera. I think some of that might have been influenced by some of that movie. A lot of Great Britain's love of gangsters was influenced by these guys. Yeah. They were definitely looked up to and it's pretty interesting. I got a little more on Biggs, the ballot of bigsie. He really is like a folk hero against anti establishment types in the UK. In part because he was living openly in the face of British authority. And it irked the British enough that a group of exbredish military in 1981 kidnapped him from Brazil and put them on a boat and got as far as Barbados where they had boat trouble and they were picked up by the Barbados and authorities. And it turns out Barbados doesn't have an extradition treaty with the UK either. So he got sent back to Brazil and supposedly these ex military were saying that they planned on, I guess, getting some sort of reward from the British Crown for bringing this guy back. But it's also been supposed that that was actually a plausible deniability cover, that it was actually like the British really tried to have this guy. Wow. It wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. He finally turned himself in and died in 2009, but he turned himself in in 2000 and started having like, failing health. So he's like, I guess I'll go live out my life in jail for some reason and I think he went to, like, an old man's hospital jail back in the UK. And not all of them had gross, untimely demise. Several of them just kind of retired and went back to their work as Florists and Cordially sort of retired with her family in Sussex or London or sort of around England. But apparently none of them got rich off this, or they're not talking if they did. Yeah, still. Well, Goods wrote a book, so there you go. There you have it. If you want to know more about the Great Train robbery, a great place to start is the search bar@howstafworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this horse milk. In our Animal Domestication podcast, we talked about horse milk, and I can't remember what I said. I probably said it was gross or something. I think we said that we want to hear from people who've had it, and I figured we'd hear from a couple of people, but I'm blown away by how many people have had a brush with horsemen. A lot of people liked it, too. This is not one of them. Hey, guys, just listen to the podcast on Animal Domestication. I wanted to tell you about the revolting drink called Kumas from Kazakhstan. That's K-U-M-I-S mila. Kumas. It is similar to the more familiar product, keifer. We talked about that in something else, right? Yeah, it's like this or something. It's like Balkey's version of sour milk. Bulgarian, I think. Yeah. He said it's made from horse milk because horse milk has more natural sugars than cow, sheep, or goat milk. Kumas ends up being mildly alcoholic after fermentation. Crazy. Imagine the sourness of raw yogurt mixed with the bite of a shot of vodka. Whoa. And round it all out with a disgusting tang of horse milk and you've got kumas. Well, I don't understand that last part. I don't have anything to equate that with horse milk. Vodka, cheque sour, like fermented yogurt. But you don't know that disgusting tang. No, I want to know now. You know, in Toronto, when I was there, my friend Chris from let's Drink About It ate horse meat. Like, in front of you? No. I was supposed to go out to dinner with them, but I was sick, and after we recorded, they went out, and the next day he's like, dude, I ate horse meat yesterday. I went do they go to Ikea? No, they went to one of those adventurous restaurants, and I was like, Josh would have been all over that. But not me. No, thank you. Yeah, you'd eat horse meat, right? You try it out. Probably. But not horse milk. Only if the horse died of old age. So Greg says I drank sleep. Well, that's what they said. Supposedly. All of them. They're called what do you call them? Barbarian something. Horses. Like old, dead horses? No, basically, there are horses that died of natural causes. They call them like senior horses? No. Like golden age horses. No, there's a word. There's a lot of words. I can say them all. So Greg drank it in Kazakhstan, and he said it was served in a bowl, what he would describe as a bowl, you get cocktail peanuts like you would get cocktail peanuts in instead of a bowl of peanuts, it's a bowl of this disgusting drink. Wow. I've lived in the caucuses for four years now. I've had my share of questionable foods. The only thing I found more disagreeable than a saucer of kumas was a pickled rooster comb. Oh, my gosh. He said it was all skinny cards. It felt like I was eating an ear. Wow, man. That is from Greg. That's called using every part of the animal. Yeah, Greg, you just blew my mind. Same here. Man, I wish I could think of the horses. Not like freedom horses, but it was something like freedom horse. It was a word. The horses that want you to eat them. Yeah. Donor horses. We'll find out and tell everybody next time. Okay? Yeah. The essentials. They're horses that died of natural causes. They weren't killed for their meat. They got you. If you want to let us know about an experience you had that is fascinating or amazing, you can tweet it to us at syscast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuffbodcast@housestephorts.com, and you can hang out with us at our home on the Web, the Internet clubhouse known as Stuffychano.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today."
8a5673e2-4a58-11e8-a49f-37349140315b	SYSK Selects: How Electroconvulsive Therapy Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-electroconvulsive-therapy-works	With the exception of lobotomies, no other psychological treatment has a worse reputation. But thanks to some thoughtful tweaks, ECT has lately emerged from the dark ages and toward the respectable forefront of treatment for major depression.	With the exception of lobotomies, no other psychological treatment has a worse reputation. But thanks to some thoughtful tweaks, ECT has lately emerged from the dark ages and toward the respectable forefront of treatment for major depression.	Sat, 18 Aug 2018 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=230, tm_isdst=0)	25586726	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everyone. It's your old pal Josh. And for this week S Y SK Selects, I've chosen how electro convulsive therapy works. This one was an eye opening episode. It came out in May of 2013. And prior to this, I always thought it was just kind of a barbaric treatment that was used to keep patients quiet, when actually, in reality, it's an effective therapy that is still in use today. Like I said, eye opening. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Which means it's time for stuff you should know. Indeed. Shocking edition. See, I take the rap for a bad pun, but you, in fact, said that before we recorded. I know before we recorded, I have a public image I have to carefully send to you. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever seen or read or both? One floor of the cuckoo snow. Yes, both. Oh, yeah. Did you like the book more than the movie or vice versa? Both. The book was great. I've seen the movie a dozen times. Yeah, one of my favorites. It is a great movie. I haven't read the book, although I was a Ken Kesey fan. I thought he was a cool dude. Yeah, I've read a few of us. What else did he write? Well, actually, he didn't write that was Tom Wolf that wrote the electrical AIDS trip. But Kesey was figured prominently, obviously. Oh, yeah. He's the main kesey wrote the crap. I'll come back to it. Okay. Well, if you haven't seen or read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, you totally should. It is, like Chuck was saying, one of the best movies of all time. It is a great book, apparently. And one of the things that factors into it's, set in an insane asylum in the would say, maybe sixty s, and one of the, I guess, almost a character in this movie or book is electrocompulsive therapy. Yes. Which the staff uses to basically keep the patients in check. Just the very threat of getting electroconvulsive therapy. Shock treatment, a type of shock treatment, we should say, is enough to just keep everybody very docile and calm and settled down. When they start to get riled up, you can just ask them, do you want some shock treatment? They're like, no, everything is good. Everything is fine. And apparently because of that and Kesey worked as an orderly mental institution in Oregon, so he had his first hand when he wrote it. Sure. Because of that, ECT got a pretty bad rap over the course of a couple of decades, to the point where it's basically forced almost out of existence. And it wasn't just Kesey making this stuff up. Like you said, he was a disorderly, like the fat boy. But there was also a study in 10 00 19 85 by the National Institutes of Health that found, like, that was pretty common practice among mental institutions at the time because it was drug free, it was just using electrical shock, and it wasn't a lobotomy. Right. And the effects were temporary, and apparently it worked to keep everybody in line. But that's a gross abuse of this. Pretty effective therapy for mental illness. Yes, for severe depression. And these days it is approved by the National Institute of Mental Health, the APA, the AMA and the US. Surgeon General. And they all say that if used properly, ECT these days and Tweaked version of what they did back then right. Can be very beneficial. And Kitty Dukakis, wife of Michael Dukakis, former Presidential nominee till he rode in a tank, wrote a book because she had it, and it's called Shock the Healing Powers of Electroconvulsive Therapy. And it helped her out. I've read excerpts and reviews and stuff, and she doesn't, like, champion it for everyone or anything, but gives a lot of great history and then says how it has helped her in her journey through depression. Apparently it also helped Dick Cavitt. Oh, yeah. Interesting. It did not help so much. Sylvia Plath or Ernest Hemingway. Right. But yeah, it's been used in a decent amount of people. Apparently about 100,000 Americans a year undergo electroconvulsive therapy. 6ft under who got George the James FarmWell. Yeah, that's right. We've already spoiled that show. We should just, like, do dramatic readings from scripts. Yeah. So we should also say before we go forward, it's very easy to call it electroshock therapy. That's kind of right. Electroconvulsive therapy is a type of shock therapy. And shock therapy, the aim is to shock your system into having a convulsion, because as far back as Hippocrates, it was noticed that people who have mental illnesses who experience convulsions tended to feel a little better after they experience their seizures. Yeah. So what you're trying to do with any kind of shock treatment is induce a seizure and a convulsion because no one knows why still to this day. But it does something to your brain and can cure, whether temporarily or permanently, mental illness. Yeah. I didn't think about it until just now. I wonder how it ties in with a temper tantrum, like a kid feeling better afterwards or more settled afterward, or an adult that just loses it. And then I think everyone truly lost it before in some emotional way. And then afterwards you're like, Boy, I feel, like, more relaxed now. Right. Like resetting after a catharsis. Yeah. I bet you it's sort of similar pathways in the brain. Right. Except this is with electricity. Exactly. So let's talk about the history of shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy or ECT. That's easier to say. So one thing that they did in the 20th century, they started to experiment with insulin shock, where they would just dose the crud out of somebody with insulin and basically bring them into a coma. And in the coma, they would have convulsions. Is that right? Yeah, right. That was the point. Like, they figured out this guy named Latticelaus von Meduna, who is a Hungarian physician. Is that real? Yeah, he figured out that if you take insulin and inject it into somebody, it puts him in a coma, temporary coma that you can bring them out of with glucose. Right. And then while they're in the coma, they have seizures. And he was one of the ones, probably the first modern physician to suggest that there was a link between seizures or seizures and the curing of mental illness. Right. He took it one step too far in saying that schizophrenia and epilepsy were counterproductive maladies. Right. So if you had one, you couldn't have the other. Yes. Not true. He was wrong about that. But he was right about seizures having a curative effect on mental illness, though. Interesting. But he was the one who started championing using insulin to produce features. So he led the way, followed by Italian scientists in the 1930s who finally brought electricity into it. Well, hold on. There was another guy, too, before the 1938 guy. Yeah, like, right around the same time, there are all these competing shock therapies. And there was the insulin guy, and then there was another dude named Manfred Seiko, and he was testing something called metrozol, which is a respiratory stimulant. And when you give somebody this stuff, they have seizures. And it's very reliable and it's very powerful. More powerful than insulin. And it requires less recuperation time and hospitalization time. The problem is it's so powerful that, like, 42% of patients who had shock therapy using metropolitan suffered spinal fractures. Oh, wow. Because the convulsions were so hardcore. Yeah. Like the Exorcist. Yeah, and then some. Now, are you electricity? Yeah. In 1938, they discovered electricity. No, eight. That's not true. That was close. I think it was like the 20, these Italians, they were scientists, and they said, we can use this to jolt this guy. Like, with these delusions. He's clearly suffering. Let's shock him with electricity. And the delusions receded after several treatments. And then just a few years later, in the 1940s, it was being used as a regular treatment in the US. For schizophrenia, depression, bipolarism. But it's not like it is today. No. Far cry. You said they've tweaked it. They've definitely improved it. They figured it out. We were a little barbaric before. No anesthesia back then. Yeah. So you're wide awake and conscious when they applied an electro shock to your brain. Like in Cuckoo's Nest. Yeah. Violent physical reactions with the body that don't happen these days. Like, the convulsions were very powerful. Yeah, because A, there's anesthesia and they also these days, put muscle relaxers and stuff everywhere except the Big Foot. Is there a bigfoot 8th single foot? Well, it has a blood pressure cuff. I'm sure it is the Big Foot, but yeah, they introduce it intravenously, and then they put a blood pressure cuff around your ankle. So your body isn't like convulsing anymore. But they can tell what's going on by EEGs and stuff. And then the foot, single foot movement. Yeah. Because you're keeping the muscle relaxer and I guess the anesthesia out of the foot. Yeah. So someone's actually a doctor looking just at your foot, supposedly. I haven't seen that anywhere else. I saw that even with the muscle relaxants, your fists are going to clinch and unclenched and your chest might heave yes. And they'll still put a tongue thing in your mouth to keep you from biting your tongue off. Right. But the cumulative effect of it is not going to be felt at all by you because you're out under general anesthesia and you're probably feeling pretty good anyway. That's true. Thanks to Mr. And Mystery. Relaxer. And then the way you've always seen it on TV, even when they portray modern like on 6ft under, they show people are always rendered like zombies, like lobotomized, essentially. And that's not what's going on these days. No. Well even back then it was kind of a caricature of what a person look like coming out of it because there is memory loss associated with it. Yeah. And there still is. Yeah, there was then, there still is now. So I think that's almost like that's what some artists rendering or some directors rendering of what somebody with memory loss looks like. Right. And so that's what just kind of got picked up in the popular culture following ECT is you're just like catatonic lobotomize, zombie like, but really that's shorthand for it. There's weird memory loss. Yeah. And these days are going to check you out a lot more beforehand, I think especially in the media. Portrayed as a McMurtry in one floor with Cuckoo's nest. He's causing problems. Let's just drag him in there, strap him down and shock him. These days, five disorderly to the holding down. Exactly. You're going to go through a battery of pretreatments like blood tests, electrocardiograms, they're going to give you a physical, they're going to give you a mental and they're going to make sure you're a good fit all the way around for this kind of treatment. I don't know if it was willy nilly back then, but that's how it appeared to be. At least there's actually a decision by the FDA. It's an electroconvulsive therapy machine is a class three, I believe. Yeah. Device. Just the strictest right classification. And so that was up for reclassification for a little while and they said, you know what, we're going to stick with this classification because it's used for electroshocks. And a lot of people said, whoa, like that's old stuff. Yeah. You're still looking at it under the medieval use from the things have changed by that. But I have to say I kind of am comforted by the fact that you still have to go to a doctor. It's not like the same thing as going for laser hair removal. Sure. Like, you can't also get ECT in the same office. It's very much medicalize, and I think it should be because we still don't understand what the mechanisms are. Yeah, that's true. They will pulse your brain. You've got these little things about the size of a quarter of these pads on the side of your head, either on both sides or one side, and they pulse you for one millisecond, even though I think recently, even shorter. Like millisecond 25 to zero point 37 milliseconds. Yeah. That's what they're starting to use, I guess. Is it for more humane purposes or works better? Yeah, I think they're finding that it works at least as well. But there's also fewer side effects. Like, apparently a one millisecond pulse of electricity is enough to really interrupt memory consolidation, I guess, whereas, like a quarter of a millisecond, it's not so bad. All right. And these days, you're going to get it two to three times a week for three to four weeks as a typical treatment. Yeah. That's a course. Five or ten minutes at a time. Yeah. From the time that they inject you with the anesthesia till the time you start to wake up is about ten minutes, which, I mean, that doesn't sound like much, but if you're doing that two to three times a week for several weeks sure. Although that's a period of your life that you have a lot of trouble remembering much of. I don't think it's a picnic still. No. Because you are still coming out of it. You're still groggy coming out of anesthesia. You can still be confused. What's ironic is, now that they use anesthesia, you probably look more like the portrayal of people coming out of ECT in the 50s than they did back, because they were anesthesized. Yeah. They weren't. No. Yeah, that's what I'm mean today. That's funny. I didn't think about it like that. I found one statistic monster. I found one stat that said it is effective in 75% to 80% of people these days with severe depression, whereas antidepressants are only effective about 60% of the time. Yeah. And that's pretty much what they're using it for, is just like major depression is pretty much the thing that they found. Like okay. It's really effective for this. Like, when drugs don't work well, that's usually when they're turning to it. Right. Is after antidepressant. After antidepressant hasn't worked, but this is, like, a pretty significant rebound, 100,000 people a year getting this, and it coming under wide medical and public acceptance. Sure. Because just as recently in the 80s, there's a stat in this article that says between 85 and 2002, the use of ECT in England dropped by half. Wow. And that was because there was a rise of antidepressants. It's like, you can take these pills, or we can put electrodes on your brain and zap you. What do you want to do? Right. But then, as physicians, I guess we're finding that there are plenty of people out there who don't respond well to antidepressants. Shock therapy is a great alternative. And if you suffer from major depression and you are suicidal or at risk for suicide, they may hop right to ECT because the results are so much faster. That makes sense. I know. Well, one of the interesting things they pointed out, too, was that once you've had ECT, if drugs were not previously effective on you, then the antidepressants can extend the good effects of the ECT longer. Right. Which was interesting because I guess they can work in concert if you go ECT first, which makes it sound like the ECT goes in there and shake things loose, and then the drugs come in and keep their functioning going, keep the new and improved functioning going. And we should say, like all this is theory. No one knows specifically what ECT does to the brain, we just know it works. Then we should also say no one's exactly certain how antidepressants work or what effects they have on the brain. But there's a couple of theories that are kind of brain based. One is that the idea is that the electricity changes how blood flows or how cells metabolize things, and that leads to some sort of improved function. Yeah. The other one is they think it might release certain chemicals that can help out. And everything I've read sort of likens it to a control alt delete reset or some sort of reset function on your brain. I think they're likely to adhere to turning the stereo down. Like there's just so much noise and this just sort of resets a troubled brain. Right. Yeah. There was a study from Scotland in 2012 where they did brain scans of people with major depression before ECT and after a round of ECT, and they found that these regions associated with mood and emotion were less active. Right. And so they said that they basically altered the functional connectivity of these regions between the regions so that the person could think more clearly, was less distracted. And they think that that had an effect on reducing their depression. Well, and they tested with placebos too. And I think anytime you test with a placebo, you're going to find that there's going to be a little bit of it that works, but not always. And that's what they found here, is that some of the people that were told that they received ECT put under this is kind of mean. Yeah. They would put them under and say they did it and not do it. The people with ECT did recover faster, but there were some that received the fake treatment that did recover as well. So they think that might have just been because they received that extra TLC from a proper clinician and the free drugs. That's true. So we should say there are risks to it. Like there's at least two types of memory loss associated with ECT. One is you have trouble making memories around the appointment right. Which is to be expected, and it usually fades. Then there's larger memory loss of past events long before your ECT therapy. But that also fades. Not in all people, though. So there is, like, memory loss associated with it, with zapping the brain with electricity. Who would have thought? And then you can also die. One in 10,000 patients undergoing it dies. But they say that how many? One in 10,000. So every year, ten people die from RCT in America. Wow. But they say that that's typically reaction to or a result of anesthesia, like, just going on. Right. Yeah. Which is dangerous in and of itself. You're going to get headaches, obviously, and some muscle pain, but I don't think it's anything quite like the old days as far as muscle pain and stuff like that. Yeah. And you will still find people that poopoo it, of course. But this article points out a lot of those people are the same people that are pretty anti psychiatry in general and stuff like this. So that seems like a bit of a leap to me from the author to say that. Yeah. At least she wasn't just like scientologist hate. It true. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Let's go try this out. I would certainly try it out if I needed it. Okay. Yeah, I would, too. There's something appealing to me about using electricity over drugs. Yeah. Drugs are some great thing to pump your body full of. Yeah. I don't know, I wonder if it's going to become more and more widespread, you know? Yeah. And if it comes back, gangbusters, man, that's really going to be impressive because it was almost gone. Yeah, true. Imagine if the lobotomy came back. I know it's still around, but it's not back. But not the me. Sure. ECT is back, baby. Maybe a little bloodletting, little leeching. Right. If you want to learn more about electroconvulsive therapy, type that word in the search barhowtuffworks.com. See if you can do it on the first try. And since I said search bar, I guess it's time for message break. And now listen to your mail. Yes. And I'm going to call this misheard song lyrics. Oh, yeah. Can't remember which one we asked. Hanmar Canal. Yeah. Okay. Everyone has misread sound lyrics. Excuse me while I kiss the sky. Jimi Hendrix wrapped up like a douche sanford, man. It's not what he's saying. No, it wrapped up like a deuce. He's talking about craps. Is he craps? Or some other sort of gambling? I don't think so. Springsteen wrote the song and it was cut loose like a deuce. And he's talking about a car engine. I've heard gambling. Springsteen wrote it. Okay. And then, man for man, changed it. And it's funny, Springsteen has come out and said, you know, that song didn't become popular until it became about feminine hygiene. And then it was like a big deal. Yeah. Or there's a bathroom on the right. CCR. There's a bad moon. Yeah, I hadn't heard that one. There's a bathroom. No, I mean, like, I've never heard anybody thinking he's saying there's a bathroom on there, right? It's fairly common. Okay. All right, so we got one from Cheryl. Hey, guys. First of all, I want to say you're still keeping me company on days when I get time to work on my art projects. You're still as great as ever. I was just listening to Panama Canal and I thought I'd pop you a quick note to give you a grin. Misinterpreted lyrics. Where my specialty as a kid, far and away in my most famous moment was when I was five or six, listening to Madonna with my auntie and I would sing Papa Dom Bridge. I'm in trouble deep, she said. Thing is, this really made sense to me. And logically, if a bridge is made out of papadoms, which are those are sort of like a flat bread, like a crispy tortilla, sort of no, it's like a crispy, flat bread. Got you. So if a bridge was made out of papadoms, it would be bound to be weak. And if someone were to walk over it, it would break and they'd fall in the river below and hence be in trouble deep. And my dad still teases me about that to this day. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. Cheryl Papadon Bridge. Well done. That's fine. Yummy's. Mom, she's from Okinawa. She calls Madonna Papadon Preach. Oh, calls her that? Yeah, it's her name. She's like, Are you listening to Papa Don't Preach again. My friend Fox had the best misread song lyric ever. And I was racking my brain earlier trying to remember it, and I cannot. There's some good ones out there. I'll try and remember and post it or something. I'll get in touch with Fox. Okay. It was a funny one. Nice. You got any good ones? I'm, like, racking my brain right now, and I know I've got one and I can't remember it. Do you have one? Jerry? Terry looks like she does. What is it? Jerry just said, if you did not hear, instead of voices carry by till Tuesday. Horses scare me. Keep it down. Horses scare me. Don't attract any horses because they scare me. Do you know that technically, Till Tuesday was the first band I ever saw alive? Oh, really? At my first concert. Paula Notes at the University of Toledo Coliseum. They opened up. Yeah. Till Tuesday opened up. Nice. Well, I never really thought about that because I always say, oh, my first concert was Cheap Trick. Yeah. I don't say it was John Wait who opened up for Cheap Trick. Was it really? John, wait. Yeah. Man, I would have loved to have seen that one. And those are real concerts. Like, I went to Kenny rogers and stuff when I was a kid. And people are like, Kenny Rogers is real. Yeah, it is. But I'm about to say the same thing. I meant concerts that my family didn't drag me to. Got you. That I paid my own money for. Where I smelled marijuana for the first time. Like a real concert. I didn't smell any marijuana at the Holland Oats concert. Well, I did a cheap truck. I was like, what is that? I'm sure I've never smelled that before in my life. Cheap Trick. And everyone around me said, that is the devil's smell. Stay away. Yeah. And you did. Good going, Chuckers. Is that it? That is it. Thanks to Cheryl for kicking off a pretty great little chat. You should get Yummy's mom to call her Papadon Bridge now. Yeah, see if you can get that done. Hey, listening to Papadon Bridge. Yeah. That's not Papadon. Priestess papadon. Bridge what do you want? Oh, if you have any great marriage stories, we want to hear them. We haven't asked for that ever. Haven't we? Yeah. And I don't mean wedding day fun. I mean marriage. I would take wedding day fun. Those are two different things. All right, well, whatever you want to send related to marriage, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshouldnow. And as always, go check out our awesome website, stuff You Shouldn't. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com."
https://podcasts.howstuf…sive-therapy.mp3	How Electroconvulsive Therapy Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-electroconvulsive-therapy-works	With the exception of lobotomies, no other psychological treatment has a worse reputation. But thanks to some thoughtful tweaks, ECT has lately emerged from the dark ages and toward the respectable forefront of treatment for major depression.	With the exception of lobotomies, no other psychological treatment has a worse reputation. But thanks to some thoughtful tweaks, ECT has lately emerged from the dark ages and toward the respectable forefront of treatment for major depression.	Tue, 14 May 2013 19:58:59 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=19, tm_min=58, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=134, tm_isdst=0)	24658842	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. US hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Which means it's time for stuff you should know. Indeed. Shocking addition. See, I take the wrap for a bad pun, but you in fact, said that before we recorded. I know. Before we recorded. Okay. I have a public image I have to carefully. Got you. Chuck? Yes? Have you ever seen or read or both? One flew over the cookies. Now. Yes, both. Oh, yeah. Did you like the book more than the movie or vice versa? Both. The book was great. I've seen the movie a dozen times. Yeah, one of my favorites. It is a great movie. I haven't read the book, although I was a Ken Kesey fan. I thought he was a cool dude. Yeah, I've read a few. What else did he write? Well, actually, he didn't write. That was Tom Wolf that wrote the electrical aid. Astro. But Keasey was figured prominently, obviously. Oh, yeah, he's a mainstream. Kesey wrote the crap. I'll come back to it. Okay. He wrote the what was it? The book. Well, if you haven't seen or read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, you totally should. It is like Chuck was saying, one of the best movies of all time. It is a great book, apparently. And one of the things that factors into it's, set in an insane asylum in the would say maybe sixty s, and one of the, I guess almost a character in this movie or book, is electrocompulsive therapy. Yes. Which the staff uses to basically keep the patients in check. Just the very threat of getting electroconvulsive therapy. Shock treatment, a type of shock treatment, we should say, is enough to just keep everybody very docile and calm and settled down and they start to get riled up. You can just ask them, do you want some shock treatment? They're like, no, everything is good. Everything's fine. And apparently because of that, and Kesey worked as an orderly mental institution in oregon. So he had his first hand when he wrote it. Sure. Because of that, ECT got a pretty bad rap over the course of a couple of decades, the point where it's basically forced almost out of existence. And it wasn't just Kesey making this stuff up. Like you said, he was a disorderly like the fat boy. But there was also a study in 1985 by the National Institutes of Health that found, like, that was pretty common practice among animal institutions at the time because it was drug free, it was just using electrical shock, and it wasn't a lobotomy. Right. And the effects were temporary, and apparently it worked to keep everybody in line. But that's a gross abuse of this. Pretty effective therapy for mental illness. Yes, for severe depression. And these days it is approved by the National Institute of Mental Health, the APA, the AMA and the US. Surgeon General. And they all say that if used properly, ECT these days and Tweaked version of what they did back then can be very beneficial. And Kitty Dukakis, wife of Michael Dukakis, former presidential nominee till he rode in a tank, wrote a book because she had it, and it's called Shock the Healing Powers of Electroconvulsive Therapy. And it helped her out. I've read excerpts and reviews and stuff, and she doesn't, like, champion it for everyone or anything, but gives a lot of great history and then says how it has helped her in her journey through depression. Apparently, it also helped Dick Cabot. Yeah. Interesting. It did not help so much. Sylvia Plath or Ernest Hemingway. Right. But yeah, it's been used on a decent amount of people. Apparently about 100,000 Americans a year undergo electroconvulsive therapy. 6ft under who got George the James Farewell. Yeah, that's right. We've already spoiled that show. So we might we should just, like, do dramatic readings from scripts. Yeah. So we should also say before we go forward, it's very easy to call it electroshock therapy. Right. That's kind of right. Electroconvulsive therapy is a type of shock therapy. And shock therapy, the aim is to shock your system into having a convulsion, because as far back as Hippocrates, it was noticed that people who have mental illnesses who experience convulsions tended to feel a little better after they experience their seizures. Yeah. So what you're trying to do with any kind of shock treatment is induce a seizure and a convulsion because no one knows why still to this day. But it does something to your brain and can cure, whether temporarily or permanently, mental illness. Yeah, I didn't think about it just now. I wonder how it ties in with a temper tantrum, like a kid feeling better afterward or more settled afterward, or an adult that just loses it. And then I think everyone's truly lost it before in some emotional way. And then afterwards you're like, boy, I feel, like, more relaxed now. Right. Like resetting after, like a catharsis yeah. I bet you it's sort of similar pathways in the brain. Right. Except this is with electricity. Exactly. So let's talk about the history of shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. That's easier to say. So one thing that they did in the 20th century, they started to experiment with insulin shock, where they would just dose the crud out of somebody with insulin and basically bring them into a coma. And in the coma they would have convulsions. Is that right? Yeah. Right. That was the point. Like they figured out this guy named Ladislaus von Meduna, who is a Hungarian physician. Is that real? Yeah. He figured out that if you take insulin and inject it into somebody, it puts him in a coma, temporary coma that you can bring them out of with glucose. Right. And then while they're in the coma, they have seizures. And he was one of the ones, probably the first modern physician to suggest that there was a link between seizures or seizures and the curing of mental illness. Right. He took it one step too far in saying that schizophrenia and epilepsy were counterproductive maladies. Right. So if you had one, you couldn't have the other. Yes. Not true. He was wrong about that. But he was right about seizures having a curative effect on mental illness, though. Interesting. But he was the one who started championing using insulin to produce features. So he led the way, followed by Italian scientists in the 1930s who finally brought electricity into it. Well, hold on. There was another guy, too, before the 1930 again? Yeah. Like right around the same time, there are all these competing shock therapies. And there was the insulin guy, and then there was another dude named Manfred Seiko, and he was testing something called metrozol, which is a respiratory stimulant. And when you give somebody this stuff, they have seizures, and it's very reliable and it's very powerful. More powerful than insulin, and it requires less recuperation time and hospitalization time. The problem is it's so powerful that like 42% of patients who had shock therapy using metros all suffered spinal fractures. Wow. Because the convulsions were so hardcore. Yeah. Like the exorcist. Yeah. And then some. Now we have electricity. Yeah. In 1938, they discovered electricity. No, wait, that's not true. That was close. I think it was like the 20, these Italians. There were scientists and they said, we can use this to jolt this guy. Like with these delusions. He's clearly suffering. Let's shock him with electricity. And the delusions receded after several treatments. And then just a few years later, in the 1940s, it was being used as a regular treatment in the US. For schizophrenia, depression, bipolarism. But it's not like it is today. No. Far cry. You said they've tweaked it. They've definitely improved it. They figured it out. Like we were a little barbaric before. No anesthesia back then. Yeah. So you were wide awake and conscious when they applied an electro shock to your brain. Like in cuckoo's nest. Yeah. Violent physical reactions with the body that don't happen these days. Like the convulsions were very powerful. Yeah. Because A, there's anesthesia and they also these days put muscle relaxers and stuff everywhere except the bigfoot. Is there a big foot? A single foot? Well, when it has a blood pressure cuff, I'm sure it is the big foot, but yeah, they introduce it intravenously and then they put a blood pressure cuff around your ankle so your body isn't, like convulsing anymore, but they can tell what's going on by EEGs and stuff. And then the foot single foot's movement. Yeah. Because you're keeping the muscle relaxer and I guess the anesthesia out of the foot. Yeah. So someone's actually a doctor looking just at your foot, supposedly. I haven't seen that anywhere else. I saw that even with the muscle relaxants, your fists are going to cleanse and unclean your chest. Might heave? Yes. And they'll still put a tongue thing in your mouth to keep you from biting your tongue off. Right. But the cumulative effect of it is not going to be felt at all by you because you're out under general anesthesia and you're probably feeling pretty good anyway. That's true. Thanks to Mr. Muscle relaxer. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff the way you've always seen it on TV. Even when they portray modern, like on 6ft under, they show people are always rendered this zombies lobotomized, essentially. And that's not what's going on these days. No. Well, even back then, it was kind of a caricature of what a person looked like coming out of it because there is memory loss associated with it. Yeah. And there still is. Yeah, there was then, there still is now. So I think that's almost like that's what some artists rendering or some directors rendering of what somebody with memory loss looks like. Right. And so that's what just kind of got picked up in the popular culture following ECT. You're just like catatonic lobotomized, zombie like, but really that's shorthand for it. There's weird memory loss. Yeah. And these days are going to check you out a lot more beforehand, I think, especially in the media. Portrayed as some, like a Mcmertry and one floor with cuckoo's nest. He's causing problems. We'll just drag him in there, strap them down and shock them. These days, five disorder leads to hold them exactly down. You're going to go through a battery of pretreatments like blood test electrocardiograms. They're going to give you a physical, they're going to give you a mental, and they're going to make sure you're a good fit all the way around for this kind of treatment. I don't know if it was willingly back then, but that's how it appeared to be. At least. There's actually a decision by the FDA. It's an electroconvulsive therapy machine. It's a class three, I believe. Yeah. Device. Just the strictest right classification. And so that was up for reclassification for a little while, and they said, you know what, we're going to stick with this classification because it's used for electroshocks. And a lot of people said, whoa, whoa. Like that's old stuff. Yeah. You're still looking at it under the medieval use from the right. Things have changed by that. But I have to say I kind of am comforted by the fact that you still have to go to a doctor. It's not like the same thing as going for laser hair removal. Sure. Like you can't also get act in the same office. It's very much medicalized, and I think it should be because we still don't understand what the mechanisms are. Yeah, that's true. They will pulse your brain. You've got these little things about the size of a quarter of these pads on the side of your head, either on both sides or one side, and they pulse you for one millisecond, even though I think recently even shorter. Liked zero point 25 to zero point 37 milliseconds. Yes. That's what they're starting to use, I guess. Is it for more humane purposes or works better? Yeah, I think they're finding that it works at least as well. But there's also fewer side effects. Like, apparently a one millisecond pulse of electricity is enough to really interrupt memory consolidation, I guess, whereas, like a quarter of a millisecond, it's not so bad. All right. And these days you're going to get it two to three times a week for three to four weeks is a typical treatment. Yeah. That's a course five or ten minutes at a time. Yeah. From the time that they inject you with the anesthesia till the time you start to wake up is about ten minutes, which, I mean, that doesn't sound like much, but if you're doing that two to three times a week for several weeks, sure. Although that's a period of your life that you have a lot of trouble remembering much of. I don't think it's a picnic still. No. Because you are still coming out of it. You're still groggy coming out of anesthesia. You can still be confused. What's ironic is now that they use anesthesia, you probably look more like the portrayal of people coming out of ECT in the 50s than they did back because they were anesthesized. Yeah. They weren't today. That's funny. I didn't think about it like that. I found one statistic monster. I found one stat that said it is effective in 75% to 80% of people these days with severe depression, whereas antidepressants are only effective about 60% of the time. Yeah. And that's pretty much what they're using it for. It's just like major depression is pretty much the thing that they found. Like, okay, it's really effective for this. Like, when drugs don't work well, that's usually when they're turning to it right. After antidepressant hasn't worked. But this is like a pretty significant rebound. 100,000 people a year getting this, and it coming under wide medical and public acceptance. Sure. Because just as recently in the 80s, there's a stat in this article that says between 85 and 2002, the use of ECT in England dropped by half. Wow. And that was because there was a rise of antidepressants. It's like, we can take these pills or we can put electrodes on your brain and zap you. What do you want to do? Right. But then, as physicians, I guess we're finding that there are plenty of people out there who don't respond well to antidepressants. Shock therapy is a great alternative. And if you suffer from major depression and you are suicidal or at risk for suicide, they may hop right to act because the results are so much faster. That makes sense. I know. Well, one of the interesting things they pointed out, too, is that once you've had ECT, if drugs were not previously effective on you, then the antidepressants can extend the good effects of the ECT longer. Right. Which was interesting because I guess they can work in concert if you go ECT first, which makes it sound like the ECT goes in there and shakes things loose, and then the drugs come in and, like, keep their functioning going. Keep the new and improved functioning going. And we should say, like, all this is theory. No one knows specifically what ECT does to the brain. We just know it works. Then we should also say no one's exactly certain how antidepressants work or what effects they have on the brain. But there's a couple of theories that are kind of brain based. One is that the idea is that the electricity changes how blood flows or how cells metabolize things, and that leads to some sort of improved function. Yeah. The other one is they think it might release certain chemicals that can help out and everything I've read sort of likens it to a control alt delete reset or like some sort of reset function on your brain. I think they're like in here to turning the stereo down, like there's just so much noise and this just sort of resets a troubled brain. Right. Yeah. There was a study from Scotland in 2012 where they did brain scans of people with major depression before ECT and after a round of ECT, and they found that these regions associated with mood and emotion were less active. Right. And so they said that they basically altered the functional connectivity of these regions between the regions so that the person could think more clearly, was less distracted, and they think that that had an effect on reducing their depression. Well, and they tested with placebos, too, and I think, like, any time you test with a placebo, you're going to find that there's going to be a little bit of it that works. Yeah. But not always. And that's what they found here, is that some of the people that were told that they received ECT put under you, didn't you think this is kind of mean? Yeah. They would put them under and say they did it and not do it. Yeah. The people with ECT did recover faster, but there were some that received the fake treatment that did recover as well. So they think that might have just been because they received that extra Plc from a proper clinician and the free drugs. That's true. So we should say there are risks to it. Like, there's at least two types of memory loss associated with ECT. One is you have trouble making memories around the appointment right. Which is to be expected, and it usually fades. Then there's larger memory loss of past events long before your ECT therapy. But that also fades. Not in all people, though. So there is, like, memory loss associated with it, with zapping the brain with electricity. Who would have thought? And then you can also die. One in 10,000 patients undergoing it dies, but they say that that's how many? One in 10,000. So every year, ten people die from tea in America. Wow. But they say that that's typically a reaction to or a result of anesthesia, like, just going on. Right, yeah. Which is dangerous in and of itself. You're going to get headaches, obviously, and some muscle pain, but I don't think it's anything quite like the old days, as far as muscle pain and stuff like that. Yeah. And you will still find people that poopoo it, of course. But this article points out a lot of those people are the same people that are pretty anti psychiatry in general and stuff like this. So that seems like a bit of a leap to me from the author to say that yeah. At least she wasn't just like scientologist hate. It true. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Let's go try this out. I would certainly try it out if I needed it. Okay. Yeah, I would, too. There's something appealing to me about using electricity over drugs. Yeah, drugs are some great thing to pump your body full of. Yeah. I don't know. I wonder if it's going to become more and more widespread. And if it comes back gangbusters man, that's really going to be impressive because it was almost gone. True. Imagine if the lobotomy came back. I know it's still around, but it's not back. But not losing MECT is back, baby. Maybe a little bloodletting. The leaching. Right? If you want to learn more about electroconvulsive therapy, type that word in the search bar howstep works.com and see if you can do it on the first try. And since I said search bar, I guess it's time for message break. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? Then you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. And now listen to me. Yes. And I'm going to call this Ms. Herd song lyrics. Oh, yeah. Can you remember which one we asked? Panama Canal. Okay. Everyone has misunderst song lyrics. Use me while I kiss the sky. Jimi Hendrix wrapped up like a douche. Hanford man. It's not what he's saying. No. Wrapped up like a douche. He was talking about crap. Is he craps? Or some other sort of gambling? I don't think so, because Springsteen wrote the song and it was cut loose like a deuce. And he's talking about a car engine. I've heard gambling. Springsteen wrote it. Okay. And then man for man changed it. And it's funny, springsteen has come out and said, you know, that song didn't become popular until it became about feminine hygiene. And then it was like a big deal. Yeah. Or there's a bathroom on the right CCR instead of a bad moon. Yes. I hadn't heard that one. There's a bathroom no, the song. But I've never heard anybody thinking he's saying there's a bathroom on there, right? It's fairly common. Okay. All right, so we got one from Cheryl. Hey, guys. First of all, I want to say you're still keeping me company on days when I get time to work on my art projects. You're still as great as ever. I was just listening to Panama Canal and I thought I'd pop you a quick note to give you a grin. I misinterpreted lyrics where my specialty is a kid far and away in my most famous moment was when I was five or six, listen to Madonna with my auntie and I would sing Papa Dumbridge. I'm in trouble deep, she said thing is, this really made sense to me. And logically, if a bridge is made out of papadoms, which do you know what those are? Sort of like a flat bread. Like a crispy tortilla, sort of. No, it's like a crispy, flat bread. Got you. So if a bridge was made out of papadoms, it would be bound to be weak. And if someone were to walk over it, it would break and they fall in the river below and hence be in trouble deep. And my dad still teases me about that to this day. It doesn't make sense. Yes, Cheryl. Papa don bridge. Well done. That's fine. Yuumi's. Mom, she's from Okinawa. She called Madonna. Papa, don't preach. He calls her. That's her name. She's like, Are you listening to Papa Don't Preach again. My friend Fox had the best Mitchell song lyric ever. And I was racking my brain earlier trying to remember it, and I cannot. Yeah, there's some good ones out there. I'll try to remember and post it or something. I'll get in touch with Fox. Okay. It was a funny one. You got any good ones? I'm, like, racking my brain right now, and I know I've got one and I can't remember it. Do you have one? Jerry? Jerry? Looks like she does. What is Jerry just said? If you did not hear instead of voices carry by till Tuesday. Horses scare me. Keep it down. Horses scare me. Don't attract any horses because they scare me. Do you know that technically, Till Tuesday was the first band I ever saw alive? Oh, really? At my first concert. Paula Notes at the University of Toledo Coliseum. They opened up. Yeah. Till Tuesday. Opened up. Nice. Well, I never really thought about that because I always say, oh, my first concert was Cheap Trick. Yeah. I don't say it was John Wait who opened up for Cheap Trick. Was it really? John, wait. Yeah. Man, I would have loved to have seen that one. And those are real concerts. Like, I went to Kitty Rogers and stuff when I was a kid, and people like Kitty Rogers is real. Yeah, it is. But about the same. The same thing. I meant concerts that my family didn't drag me to, that I paid my own money for, where I smelled marijuana for the first time. Like a real concert. I didn't smell any marijuana at the Holland Oaks concert. Well, I did a cheap trick. I was like, what is that? I'm sure I've never smelled that before in my life. Cheap Trick. And everyone around me said, that is the devil smell. Stay away. Yeah. And you did. Good going, Chucky. Is that it? That is it. Thanks to Cheryl for kicking off a pretty great little chat. You should get Jimmy's mom to call her Papadom Bridge now. Yeah, if you can get that done. Hey, listening to Papadon Bridge. Yeah, that's not Papa Preach. That's Papadon Bridge. What do you want? Oh, if you have any great marriage stories, we want to hear them. We haven't asked for that ever, probably. Yeah. And I don't mean wedding day fun. I mean marriage. I would take wedding day fun. Those are two different things. All right, well, whatever you want to send related to marriage, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffynow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, go check out our awesome website, stuffyoushaneau.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Jackthredscom. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourcing radiance plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com."
8a436590-4a58-11e8-a49f-ebaa499b70a7	SYSK Selects: How Twinkies Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-twinkies-work	Twinkies have a reputation for being so processed that they can last for years and years, but they're not as hardy as you'd expect. Uncover the sweet story of Twinkies in this classic SYSK.	Twinkies have a reputation for being so processed that they can last for years and years, but they're not as hardy as you'd expect. Uncover the sweet story of Twinkies in this classic SYSK.	Sat, 14 Jul 2018 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=195, tm_isdst=0)	26012608	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Stuff You Should Know. Saturday selects Mr. Chuck here. Charles w chuck Bryant. One, two, maybe one third of Stuff You Should Know depends on the day. I'm going to go this week with How Twinkies Work from July 9, 2009. This was a fun one. I like my, or rather our pop culture editions. I like our food episodes. And it all kind of came together with Twinkies, that magical little snack that no one quite understands and knows what it really is. Is it cake? It's cakey. Is it creamy? It's creamy. But what is it really? Where did they come from? Is it true that a Twinkie will last for a thousand years? We get the answers to all this and how tweakies work right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to arguably the most important podcast chuck Bryant and I will ever record. I'm Josh Clark. This is stuff you should know. And, brother, I am jacked up me three. Are you ready? Yeah. I'm speaking for Jerry, since she's the Marcel Marcel of our group. Yeah. She always wears white gloves. Weird. I hate mine. I actually don't hate mine. It's just a cliche to say you hate mines. Mines are cool. It says who? The mines are cool. Yes. I just said it. Jerk. Chuck and I have clearly been eating far too many Twinkies in preparation of this. Yes, we have. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. What do you know about the Twinkie? Let's talk about Twinkies. Let's talk about Twinkies. Everyone knows the Twinkie is a popular junk food snack cake. Yes. Legendary junk food snack cake. I would say. I would say legendary as well. I'm glad we're doing something light like this. Yeah. Lighty. Yeah. Very nice things. And creamy. Yeah. Chuck, how long is a Twinkie? Twinkie is four inches long. How wide is a twinkie? Inch and a half. Did you know that originally it was first invented it was made with banana cream filling. Indeed. Let's get into this, buddy. Okay. Those are just some teasers. All right? So the Twinkie was first invented in the 1930s. Yes. Continental Bakeries. Yeah. The vice president of Continental Bakeries, which is already doing business as hostess, which we know and love, is the maker of Twinkies and what I consider to be the greatest snack food of all time. The Crumb Cake. Oh, really? Are you a fan? Oh, my God. I like the nutty bar. The Little Debbie Nutty bars. We're talking hostess here, buddy. Okay. Yeah. They will assassinate you. They're like material. Pink balls. What are those? Snow. Snowballs. All right, so back in 1930, the vice president of Continental Bakery, he's a guy named James what is it? James Doer. Not a scotch maker. His brother could have been sure. He decided that the company's idle machinery that was used to make strawberry filled little shortbread fingers was the brand name. Could be put to better use. Right. Well, the machines were idle because seasonal. Yeah, seasonal, because strawberries only grow certain times of the year. Right. So the rest of the year, they would just sit there. Sure. And this bug Doer, and he decided to do something about it. So he came up with a little yellow cake filled with creamy filling, creamy frosting, if you were that could be made year round. And apparently, on his way to a marketing meeting for this snack cake, he passed a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes, which, I got to tell you, I would never buy shoes called Twinkle Toe Shoes. Oh, sure you would. You'd dream, sailor. I totally would. And that was it. He had the name right there, and Twinkies were born. There's always a cute story behind names like that. Anytime the words twinkle and toes are put together, it's a cute story. Sure. Yeah. So Twinkies were born, and as I said, they were made with banana cream filling, right. For a while, yeah. Until World War II. Yeah. I thought, this is pretty interesting. They quit doing that because there was a shortfall of bananas during the war. Yeah. I had no idea. No, I can see rubber and iron. Steel. Yeah, I know. Men, maybe, from all the banana bombs we were dropping. Confetti missiles. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they replaced the banana with vanilla frosting. Right. And it stuck. Yeah, it definitely stuck. Although every once in a while, hostess released the banana flavored Twinkie like a limited run, and every time they did, they noticed sales increase 20%, which is pretty substantial. And now it's permanent as of 2007. Is it a picture? Yeah. Let's talk about the early Twinkie and the pure goodness. That was the early twinkie. Yeah, in the early days, Josh, it was made with eggs, milk, butter, as you would expect it to be, because it was cake. Right. And it had a shelf life. The problem there was it had a shelf life of what, like, two days. Two days. So the salesman had to rotate the stock every two days, and that was cool because they tasted good. But Doug said, I'm not making as much money as I could. Chuck, can you imagine how divine a Twinkie made with, like, real butter and milk and eggs would be? It's called cake. Yeah, but cake with, like, real vanilla frosting in that shape, too. Yeah, that would be great. I would love for someone to make and send me a real original Twinkie. Sure. That would be awesome. Yes. I just zoned out for a second thinking about that. I know. Seriously. Glazed over. Okay. So these days, it's actually up to 39 ingredients, and most of them come out of labs, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a lot of chemicals going on. You've got, like, yellow number five. There's still sugar in it. Plenty of sugar. Yeah. Just corn syrup. Of course. Our old friend Boo and there's also bleached wheat flour. Bleached wheat sugar and flour are the two biggest ingredients in it. Right, right. Monoglycerides and diglycerides have replaced the eggs yeah. Which act as emulsifiers. Emulsifiers. They stabilize the cake batter and enhance the flavor. Yeah. Apparently, for the filling, they use to achieve the same. And polysurbate 60, which does much emulsifies. The frosting. Same thing. Yeah. And there's hydrogenated shortening instead of butter. Although there is artificial butter flavor and artificial vanilla flavor. And both of those are actually made from petroleum. I know. Yeah. When I read that, I was a little taking it back, to be honest. Yeah. Do you eat Twinkies now anymore? Well, you know, I don't eat at all, but I do occasionally enjoy Twinkie, for sure. I haven't had Twinkie in a long time. Do you treat yourself and I'm not opposed. I'm down the Ben and Jerry's and I'm not opposed to eating fattening goodness. I know. I think part of it is Twinkies are associated with youth. Yeah. I'd agree with that. I'm telling you, go back and eat a Twinkie. You'll love yourself. I will. You know, my mum used to make strawberry shortcake with Twinkies. Nice. Yeah, it was a good move. I'll bet. Very nice 70s dessert, too. Before the key party, load the kids up with the Twinkie strawberry shortcake. Apparently, she's not the only one to experiment with Twinkies. I have a Twinkies cookbook at home, actually. All sorts of crazy stuff in there. Yeah. They should have brought that in. I should have. I don't have the kind of foresight that you expect me to have. You had the deep fried Twinkie? I used to make them and sell them at this beer festival last couple of years. Oh, dude, I can make a fried Twinkie like you would not believe. Well, how do you do that? It's incredibly simple. So you have, like, a VAT of oil, I think. Peanut oil, maybe. Peanut oil is the best. It's the worst for you, but it tastes the best. And you just take, like, pancake batter or fry batter. Right. And you make the batter up and you just dip the Twinkie in the batter. Throw it in the deep fryer, like on the sticker. I just throw it in there. Wow, man, that sounds good. Pull it out. Throw some powdered sugar on there. Oh, my God. You'll see? God. It's like a funnel cake. Turbo funnel cake is what it really is. No, not at all. No. Okay. It's like a funnel cake with a Twinkie inside. It's the greatest thing you'll ever have. And I can make a good fried Oreo, too. Really? You never cook for me. I will sometime. You'll have to come over. We'll shave some years off our life. Seriously. Excuse me. Should we talk about the process of how they make it in the factory? That's kind of cool. Yeah. So, Josh, we're in the twinkie factory. This is Jerry's chance to add some sound effect. Okay. We're in the twinkie factory. You look good in a hairnet, by the way. I appreciate that. What they do is they have these metal pans in the shape of Twinkie. Shape upside down. Twinkies are baked up, what you would consider upside down. The golden brown bottom is actually the top side. Yeah. I actually used to hear that they weren't in fact baked brown and that was added color. Not true. They are baked brown on the bottom. Indeed. Yeah. You talked to the widow of James Doer about that, didn't you? I did, personally. So they throw the batter in there. It's baked at a cool 350 Fahrenheit for nine to twelve minutes. Cool 350 ft. After cool stay. The famous three holes in the bottom of the Twinkie, those are from the manufacturing process. They're cream filling injectors. They stick those three things in there and squirt in the cream, which I wish they just squirted in my mouth. So you just want to lay down on the conveyor belt and go down the Twinkie line, have the stuff squirted in your mouth straight from the try injection. Yeah, that sounds good. So that's pretty much it, man. They seal it airtight in the package, and apparently the sealing process is really where the preservation comes in. Right. Because, Chuck, if there's anything that everyone agrees on with Twinkies, it's that they will last indefinitely. Not true. No, it isn't. And actually there's only one ingredient in the Twinkie that's added specifically to preserve it, and that's sorbic acid. Right. There are some preservative properties of some of the other ingredients, but ultimately there's only one added ingredient that's meant to preserve it. And it's actually, like you said, the airtight package that makes a Twinkie last. Yeah. And there are all sorts of urban myths about the one I like best is that they're still selling the original run of Twinkies. Yeah. Which actually is clearly a lie because they would be banana flavored. Yeah, true. But the Hostess company says that Twinkies have a shelf life of 25 days. Yeah. Not 25 years. No, but yeah, there have been some experiments that indicate to the contrary. Right. There's actually these kids who very recently, this last school year, out in Wallowa County, Oregon, two little kids, Logan Waldron and CJ. Horn, were talking about whether or not Twinkies could last indefinitely, how long they could last. And they have a very encouraging bus driver who, I must say, based on this picture, is arguably the best looking and most stylish bus driver on the planet. And her name is Lisa Morris. And she said, you know what, why don't you guys do a scientific experiment? That's a bus driver. I know. It's quite a babe. I know. I must say, she encouraged them to conduct their own experiment. So they put a double pack, my favorite kind of Twinkies, in a mayonnaise jar, closed it and put it in a rock crib, which I'm not sure what that is. Right. But they basically buried it, and the kids were planning on doing it until they were 18. Really? But they're like nine. Exactly. But she kept encouraging them to wait, at least until the end of the school year, and they did. So nine months later, they popped it open, ate the Twinkies one each. Were they fine? They both said they were fine. One kid said he got a belly ache from it. The other kids said he was fine. So they are now encouraging teachers around the country, science teachers, to conduct similar experiments. But yeah. So as far as these two are concerned, a Twinkie shelf life is at least nine months greater than 25 days. Yeah. Well, I know you just mentioned the double pack. I know why you like the double pack. Because there's two of them? No, because of the little cardboard in there. And you can scrape the little cakey goodness off the cardboard and eat it. I just lick it off the cardboard. It's like the cheese paper on a cheeseburger. Do you really eat all that stuff? Oh, dude, who doesn't take the paper from a McDonald's cheeseburger and scrape the cheese off of it and eat it? People who want to live. Shut up. You've had McDonald's in your day, pal. Twinkie, man. Twinkie the Kid. Let's talk about Twinkie. The kid. Nice way. I just totally shocked you with that. Yes, I had a Twinkie the Kid T shirt when I was oh, my God. 13 kills for one of those. It was awesome. I wish I still had it. Yeah, I'm sure they're still out there. Yeah. I wonder why. Twinkie, the kid. It's famous. He's never seen it, and I'm sure everyone has. It was a cowboy motif. Lasso and a hat and boots. Yeah. And I saw a dude online today that had a Twinkie the Kid tattoo. That's a pretty cool tattoo, my friend. Yeah, that definitely beats taz. Or a dolphin or a turtle. Sunburst, barbed wire around your arm. Good night. Yeah. So twinkie the kid. Cool tattoo. Even cooler T shirt. I remember seeing Twinkie the Kid ads in between acts of Thunder the Barbarian. Right? Yeah. And hanker for a hunk of cheese. Remember that? What was that, jerry Dill house rock? No, it was like, the nutrition people. Yeah, exactly. I got a hanker for a hunk pocket full of something. Yeah, because a hunk of cheese is really healthy for you. Yeah, that was clearly the Dairy association. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's talk about Twinkies and pop culture. Yeah, this is good stuff. Well, no, not pop culture. Real culture. Yeah. History. Yeah. My friend. Have you heard of Twinkie Gate? Yeah, go ahead and break that one down. That's good. So, there was a guy who was 71 back in 1985, was running for a place on the Minneapolis City Council. His name was George Belair. And he was actually indicted for bribery because, I guess a candidate for him he was the low end candidate for it. I guess he hosted it. No, he provided coffee, Koolaid and Twinkies for these senior groups that were there. Right. And he was indicted for bribery trying to bribe a constituency. They didn't call it Koolaid. Gate. No. And I was thinking about that too. I think Koolaid had its run. One pop with Jonestown. Sure. Yeah. We'll forever be enshrined with think about drinking the Koolaid. That's in the lexicon now. Drinks the Koolaid. Definitely. It's got its own thing. Sure. Twinkies are much more versatile. True. It's such an ironic twist to crime. It is. But that's not the only crime that they've been associated with. Well, can I cover this one? Please? In 1979, Dan White of San Francisco famously shot and killed Harvey Milk. Was he a city councilman? He was. And a supervisor. Yeah, supervisor. The first openly homosexual public office holder in the country was Barbie Milk. And the mayor also got capped, too. Mayor also got capped. And Dan White, who did the deed. And the famous Twinkie defense was used in his case because they said he was under severe depression at the time. And as evidence, they used the fact that he uncharacteristically was wolfing down Twinkies and junk food. Junk food. Apparently Twinkies was mentioned. It does show up in the court transcripts. But it was one witness who used it in passing. And actually, Ding Dongs and Ho HOS were mentioned way more. But, yeah, the guy was apparently Homicidal under depression, brought on by a poor diet. And it actually worked rather than first. This was premeditated murder. Oh, yeah. He got manslaughter in eight years. That was it. Yeah. And that the media ran with it. And the Twinkie defense speak, you still hear it. But again, why not the Ding Dong defense? It's even funnier. The Hoho defense. Sure. That would be confused with Santa Claus, probably. You know why? Because twinkies are an American icon. You know who says so? Me and you and former President Bill the Lady Killer Clinton. Really? Yeah. He actually selected a Twinkie to be placed in the Millennium time capsule in 1999 alongside the complete works of Louis Armstrong. Nice. The works of William Faulkner. The state flag of Hawaii. There's a Twinkie in there, too. So in 100 years, people will really be able to find out just how long the shelf life is for Twinkies. How about half a twinkie? Nice. That was my Clinton. That was a little perfect. Yeah. You got the thumb out your teeth. So that is the twinkie defense in Harvey Mill. No, that was the Millennium Capsule. Oh. Yes. We moved on. Millennium Falcon. Thanks for coming, Chuck. Should we talk about the twin K-I-E-S project? I can't wait. Pretty cool. Rice University, right? Yeah. Rice University in 1995. So it was kind of a while ago. These students, as college students, are so fun. It was called the test with inorganic noxious cakes with a K in extreme situations which spells out Twinkies. Twinkies, yeah. And let's go over a couple of things that they did with twinkies. You tell them yours first. Okay. I want to do the water test. What they wanted to do was see what happened when you put a twinkie in water. Straightforward enough. Let it sit there. And they said this, and this is on their website. As soon as a twinkie was placed in the water, it swelled to approximately twice its normal size. A quick, tactile observation indicated that the twinkie immediately began to lose its structural integrity. The color of the twinkie pailed to an off white color while the water below the twinkie turned a dark yellow brown while the water above the twinkie remained clear, which is interesting. And they showed pictures. So basically, they left it in there for 48 hours. They said the creamy filling somehow used out of the center and collected on the surface of the water. And basically it turned into a lump of goo by the end of it. What was the water conclusion? The conclusion? Actually, I don't have the observation. I think the observation was it turned into a lumpy goo of mess in the water. Got you. You got my other favorite one. My second favorite dropping off the building. Did you print that out? No. You do that one. I got another one. Okay. Yeah. They did the gravity test on two Twinkies yeah. To find out whether or not twinkies are subject to gravity. I think they would float up with an unbelievable. So they released twinkies off the 6th floor. And I liked the picture of the twinkie circle drop. And they said that upon impact, there was a loud split sound. A small crack opened on one side of the twinkie. There was no noticeable change in the control, so they dropped the twinkie again. The same split sound was heard. Then they dropped the same twinkie. Yeah. And I love this line. The fissure and the side of the twinkie widened. Again, no noticeable change. And basically, the twinkie and the control twinkie didn't really completely split up. And it just kind of some of this stuff oozed out nice. But they are affected by gravity. I did have the conclusion in this one. However, the reaction on impact is much smaller than expected and they maintain a good deal of structural integrity from such a lofty fall. Yeah. Six stories. Yeah. That's not bad. My favorite, actually, was that they wanted to find out whether twinkies were sentient or not. And they decided to run this test last because they had killed a lot of twinkies, as they put it. And they didn't want to know that they were sentient while they were dropping them off six story buildings or drowning them. So they actually administered the Turing test, which is normally used to test whether or not a computer has developed an artificial intelligence. Right. If you put a person and a computer in another room or whatever, and you direct questions to both of them simultaneously, and both answer, if you can't tell the difference, then the computer has developed artificial intelligence. Okay. So they conducted a test on a sophomore at the college and a Twinkie, and they put them behind a sheet so you couldn't see who was who, and they asked certain questions to the Twinkie and the students. Yeah. Okay, so question one was, what would you describe as the purpose of your existence? And subject B, which was the guy the answer was to women. And subject A in parentheses. No answer. And it just kind of goes on like that. They wanted to know how the both of them felt about their mother. They did some free association, like the word health prompted the answer, sex for free association from Subject B. The word spam prompted no answer from subject A, and so on. So they determined that Twinkies are not, in fact, sentient, that they do not have intelligence. That is a relief. Wouldn't that be unnerving? Yeah. As a vegetarian, I think, or a vegan, you would have to stop eating Twinkies. Oh, I'm not a vegan. No, of course not. Okay. You're a beef eater. Yeah, I am. So, Chuck, most Twinkies ever eaten by a person, you want to guess who it is? Jerry, our producer. She's close. Okay. She's very close. Actually, there is a guy who is 89, and I believe he lives in Indiana, and his name is Lewis Browning. He's been eating Twinkie a day since 1941. Really? He's up to 20,000. Wow. Dwarfed by the creator of the twinkie, James Doer. Oh, really? He lived to be 88, and he ate an estimated 400 Twinkies in his life. Wow. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad at all. So I hate off to both of those men, and actually, I was thinking maybe I should start eating a Twinkie a day and see what happens. You know what they say, Josh. A Twinkie day keeps the doctor away. That's not true. It's not true because they're really not great for you. But I think anything in moderation, you don't go nuts with the Twinkies. You're probably all right, Chuck's, final thought on Twinkies. Which means Twinkies are done, right? I'm done. Okay. I'm done, too. So we'll be done with Twinkies. Now I really actually want to go eat a Twinkie. Yeah, we should have brought some up here. Agreed. I told you to. And you're too cheap to go buy them for it. Could have expensed it, too. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe afterward. Yeah, sure. Okay, so, Chuck, Twinkies is done, which means it's listener mail time. Josh, I'm going to call this listener mail from Amsterdam. All right. One of my favorite places, as you know. I do know this comes from Robin in Portland, Oregon, and Robin was recently in Amsterdam. Actually, the funny thing is, Robin's friend Stephanie wrote in and told us the story and said, my friend Robin is too chicken to write in for some reason. Weird. And I said, you know what? Tell Robin right in. She'll make listener mail with the story. Chuck delivers on his promises, as she did. I was recently in Amsterdam for a combination work holiday trip, staying in a fabulous top floor apartment. I took a break from work one day and wandered to the patio for some fresh air. And I realized I closed the patio door and locked myself out and was stuck. No phone, no keys, no jacket, no way down. And it was pouring down rain. Awesome. The neighbors heard my cries for help. They were able to log into my email account, find local apartment contacts, phone number, and throw me their cell phone to make the call. Luckily, the contact had a spare key and was able to let her out in 5 hours after she gets off work. So I hunkered down in a small corner of the patio. Apparently, she had a little space, like a two foot by two foot space where she wasn't getting rained on for 5 hours waiting to be rescued. And did I mention that by stroke of luck, I had my ipod with me and it just downloaded several months worth of stuff? You should know. Silver lining exclamation, all caps. In between learning all about face transplants, exploding lake, deja vu, flirting, rigor mortis, I spent time stretching, doing jumping jacks, weeding the plants, and taking short naps. It was one of the best 5 hours spent doing absolutely nothing. Rarely do I take a step back and just have the time to do that. Josh and Chuck, you both keep me informed, kept me informed, entertained, insane. And thanks to our day together, I was able to flex my intellectual muscle by holding my own on who owns the ocean debate with other international travelers. So she says her friend Stephan turned her on to the show, and thanks a lot. Keep up the good work. And she has a loyal listener. So she was stuck out on a porch in Amsterdam, and we got her through that's. Excellent. Pretty cool. Excellent. What's her name? Pretty cool? Robin of Portland, Oregon. Robin. All right. Thanks for writing in, Robin. And if anyone else out there wants to share your story about an interventionist god forcing you into a situation where you have to listen to us, you can send us that in an email to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside. Tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music. My Favorite Murder from exactly right media. My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. One hosted by Karen Kilgara and Georgia Hardstarkk. This true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
c9060970-39cf-11e8-bf1b-3331b6866dc2	SYSK Selects: Sherpas: Warm, Friendly Living	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-sherpas-warm-friendly-living	What exactly is a Sherpa? Tune in and learn more as Chuck and Josh explore the culture of the Sherpa people.	What exactly is a Sherpa? Tune in and learn more as Chuck and Josh explore the culture of the Sherpa people.	Sat, 07 Apr 2018 12:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=97, tm_isdst=0)	29118894	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Binge. Listen this and all your artist stations, plus any song from our library of millions of songs, all ad free. Get your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. You'll love it. Don't be basic, be extra. Start your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess now, happy weekend, everybody. This is Chuck here, bringing you my selection for the Stuff You Should Know select episode on this fine Saturday. This one is from April 5, 2011. Sherpa's Warm, Friendly Living. And I know for a fact Josh came up with that title because I thought it was very fun, and it really kind of embodied what sherpas are all about. Sherpas will lead you up Everest or maybe some other mountain range in the area. And the more we dug into Sherpas, the more we realize just what warm, hospitable, amazing people they are. And it's really easy to overlook the Sherpa, because you will often hear about the wealthy climber of Everest and not much about the Sherpa that really got them there. So this is our bid to shine a little light on the Sherpa. So here we go with sherpa's warm, friendly living. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the Sherpa. I'm Josh Clark. There's, Charles. W did I just say sherpa no, you said, welcome to the podcast. Why would you say welcome to the Sherpa? Because the Sherpa is a nation of people and also a last name and also an occupation. Yeah, that's pretty good. Well, that's the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Ignore Gay Bryant. Sherpa. Yeah. Chuck, we're talking about Sherpa today. Yes. Is it sherpa or sherpa's? I have no idea, because I see both in this article. I do as well. All right, let's find out, shall we? Everyone will just hold on a second. Are you actually looking this up, Chuck? Most people do this before their hit podcast. Have you ever seen well, I'm sure this won't make it in. You never know. They'll never make it in, I bet. You guys, have you ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? The first one. That was not the first one. Yes, it was. Raiders the Lost Ark was the first one. That's what I meant. I'm sorry. Dimple of doom was too. What was I thinking? I don't know. You've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yeah. Okay. Scores of times. So you know when he goes to meet Marion for the first time after, like, ten years after jilting her? Yes. The drinking scene. Yes. The huge guy that Marion is drinking with, or I guess in a drinking contest with. It's like they kept hearing me say Chuck over and over again. Right. That, my friend, was a Sherpa. Was it? I'm pretty sure he looked Mongolian to me. No, they were definitely in, like, Nepal. Okay. Yeah, it even said Nepal. Remember, he flies in the plane and it's like Nepal red line takes them to Nepal. Yeah. All right, so let's call them a Sherpa. So sherpas is plural of sherpa. That's what I thought. I thought so, too. The Sherpa people are actually pretty fascinating. They're pretty isolated, and they haven't been where they are, which is the base of Mount Everest in the Solo Kumbu area region of Nepal for more than actually about 500 years. And when they arrived in the Solo Kumbu region, they found it uninhabited. And the reason why is because the Sherpas are pretty much the only people on the planet besides maybe Ethiopian Highlanders or Peruvians in the Andes who could conceivably live in this area, because, again, it's at the foot of Mount Everest. Yes. And we recorded a podcast on Tibetans and altitude sickness. So if you want to know all about that, refer to that podcast. But, Josh, you're right. They migrated from Tibet, from the province of Kam to the northeast corner of Nepal around the 16th century because of warfare. Yeah. And as I understand, they're very peaceful people. Oh, very. So they would have been fleeing warfare. I would say so, yeah. Not running toward it. Headlong so they migrated there. There was a lot more like forest and wood and for fuel at the time, which was good. And they could grow wheat and buckwheat at the time, and that's about all they could grow. But that was enough, right? Later on, potatoes really changed the way they do farming, because they grow a lot of potatoes now. Yeah, I think the potato was introduced in the mid 19th century, and that kind of changed everything. 1880. I'm sorry. But if you think about it, these people, when they first arrived in the area, they moved to the Kumbu Valley, which is higher up, actually, than the Solu area. And it's about between 11,000 and 13,000ft. And they're like, this is a little too high. Everybody is a little sick. They're going to move a little further down to the Solo region between 6000, 510,000ft. It's still extremely high, it's still extremely rocky. And they whip this part of the Himalayas into shape. They created terrace farm fields. Guatemala, baby. Remember that? Yeah. Down a slope, you can create you can farm on the side of a mountain. People do. But think about this. How did they figure that out? I'm very curious. Well, it's not rocket science. You need flat land. And if you have a steep side of a mountain and you cut into that, you can create a series of steps, essentially, which is flat land. Cherries and they're laughing. Yes, I know. I would have been in trouble chairs. Like I've been to Guatemala three times. I know all about step irrigation, and I know how to do all that. Right. I would have been like, Man, I wish it were flat around here. I guess I'll just sit here until I die. Right? You'd be bad sherpa. Oh, I'd be terrible at it. Yeah. One of the reasons why I'd be terrible at it is because I will get in my car to drive 500ft from, say, store to store. Do you do that over there at the edgewood? Like, you'll go to Target and then you'll drive to Kroger? I haven't been there in a while, but I have totally. I mean, yeah, I'll walk I walk more now than I ever had before in my entire life. And then, like, the weather or what's going on definitely depends on the weather. It depends on my schedule. Very often. I get that. If I'm in a hurry, I might do that. Right. I would make a terrible stripper, though, because they don't have wheeled anything there. A terrible stripper. I would make both terrible. Okay. Yeah. Well, I know what Aaron Cooper is going to make this time. Exactly. Yes. As I just said, I think it bears reiterating mr. Joke Guy, there are no wheel. Anything there. There's no cars. Yeah, there's no wheelbarrows. Yeah, they don't even use wheelbarrows, which now we've reached another reason that would be a terrible sherpa. They have to carry everything. I can barely carry a thing of dog food out of the grocery store to my car. And that's like, with a car involved, which has wheels, which they don't have in the Solo Kumbu region. That's right. They carry everything. Josh and we actually saw this one, Guatemala, too, the plum line. Trump line. Yeah, plum line is a little different. Yeah. What they'll do is they'll say, get a big load of firewood, and they'll wrap it up, spank it on the bottom. Spank it on the bottom. They'll wrap it up. And so they can wear it on their back and a big bundle, and then attach to the top of let's say they lay it in, like, a hammock and fold that over a hammock like thing. And then that is attached to a band that it's like a headband. And so it goes around their head, and it takes a lot of the weight off their back. And we saw these in Guatemala dudes walking up the road, and I thought, man, look at that. That's like ancient engineering. Still in practice. And you're like, Man, I got to do more of that. And you got back here and you're like, Give me a cheeseburger in my Jan Sport backpack. Anybody who's ever seen the front cover of Led Zeppelin Four is familiar with this concept as well. Was he wearing one of those? He should have been if he wasn't, because that's a big old bundle of sticks that guy's carrying. That was a bustle in his head drop. So sherpas can whip a mountain into farmland. They can live on buckwheat, and then several hundred years without the potato. And then the potato yak milk and yak meat. Right. They walk everywhere. They carry things everywhere with yaks, and they are basically a mountain. They're mountain folk. They speak a Tibetan dialect that's virtually their own. They don't have a written language. No written language. Until the 1960s, there is no formalized education, they just lived. They carved a very meager existence out for themselves. Yeah, and thanks to a dude named Sir Edmund Hillary, they now have the foundation that he set up. And we'll get to Edmund Hillary in a second. But everyone, come on, you know who he is. He's the first man to ascend Everest with Tins. Ignore Gay Sherpa. Yeah. To summit to summit. What does a send? Yeah, I mean, you got to get to the top, right, or else what? He just blew 65 grand? That's about how much it costs these days. Yes, it does. So, through his foundation, in later years, he became to love the peaceful Buddhist of the Sherpa people there, and so he's like, in set up a foundation, we're going to do things like bring some schools, bring some hospitals, give these kids access to health care, things like that. So he did that and that helped a lot. Although nowadays the schools aren't in great shape, evidently. It's kind of hard to get there, so they're doing what they can. But you can take the folk out of the mountain, but you can't take the mountain out of the folk, you know what I mean? That's right. They are very friendly, very peaceful, very compact, very strong, great attitudes, apparently. And that's not just Chuck saying that. Chuck? You're basing that on the guy who basically took these very isolated, happy, self sustaining, self sufficient people, mountain people, and introduced them to the world, or no, introduce them to the people who would introduce them to the world. Right, right. What is the Englishman who is credited with saying, hey, if you want to get up Everest, you need yourself a Sherpa? That was Alexander Kelles, not Tens. Ignoregay not Sir Edmund Hillary. Right? Well, Tens ignoregay was a sherpa. He's far too modest, I'm under the impression, to have been like, you want to get up beverage to get yourself a Sherpa. Sherpas. They're not big self promoters. The English have been the biggest promoters of Sherpas, and Alexander Kelly was his name. Yeah, Kellis, he tried to make it up Everest and failed. But there was a point in time where, well, if you look at a mountain, it's not like a cone, you know those styrofoam cones that you can get at, like, the craft store that have actual volume? It's a cone. Yeah, the mountain is not like that. It has all sorts of crazy peaks and different faces, and if you go up one side and make it up easy, that doesn't mean that you can go up any other side and make it up easy, right, yeah. So the place where the Sherpa live is actually a pretty good way to get up Everest, but it was closed off Nepal as a country was closed off to the rest of the world until, I think, 1949. Yeah. Everest was confirmed as a high speed in 1865, but it wasn't like, all of a sudden the floodgates were open, and every Brit in the world said, I must conquer that mountain. They said that, but they were like, but how to get to it? Right. And they think, 49, it happened. Right. But in between, they're like, well, let's just colonize that place and then figure out how to get up. Yeah. Exactly. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics. Students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast that's K twelve.com podcast, and start taking charge of your future today. True. And when India began colonizing I'm sorry, when England began colonizing India, darjeeling, across the eastern border of Nepal, was a big popular tourist spot for British military political officials. Bigwigs. That's where they met the Sherpa. And that's sort of where the mountaineering profession for the Sherpa kicked off, because all of a sudden, there were Englishmen saying, I can now get in here to Ascend and summit this mountain. Right. But I need some help because I'm not carrying all that junk. Yeah. And it's not like Sherpas are the only ethnic group around Mount Everest. But as people soon found, like you said, they were sturdy, they are compact, they can carry tons of weight, and they have a cheerful attitude. So Alexander Kellis introduced the climbing community, the western climbing community, to the Sherpa. And in short order, Sherpa's became extremely famous after, like you said, Sir Edmund Hillary summited Mount Everest. Yeah. And he was one of 400 people on that expedition. I never knew that. I just thought it was sir Edmund Hillary got in his car in England and drove to Nepal and said, hey, Tinsig, take me to the top. But it was a big group of people, and they were the only two that made it right. They were the last ones, and they just kept on going. But, yes, there was tense. Ignorege Sherpa. That's his last name. Yeah. Because as you said at the beginning of this, it's a group of people, it's a profession, and it's a last name. That's right. So from that moment on, everybody knew what Sherpas were, right? Yeah. They were no longer confused with alpacas. In popular culture, people are like, oh, they're a group of people. Yeah. Literally. The people from the east. That's right. And like you said, they're not grand standards. They don't get a lot of attention. And I made a joke, I believe it was either dead bodies on Everest or the Tibetan altitude sickness about Sherpas being unsung at the time, about how you always hear about the Indian or the Brit standing on top of the mountain, and you don't see the Sherpa behind him carrying all their junk. And that's really true, because when you know what I mean, when Hillary ascended and summited, he got a knighthood and Norgate got an honorary medal. And you think, well, of course they're going to give the British guy the knighthood, and they're going to give the foreigner a medal untrue because Sermon Hillary is from New Zealand. That's right. He wasn't British, so technically he wasn't a citizen of Great Britain, and neither was tense, ignore gay. And they still didn't get the same thing. Yeah. It was called the British Everest Expedition was the 400 people. So that's why I think a lot of people probably thought Hillary was a Brit, but he was not. But again, our Western culture is a little different from Sherpa culture. Like you said, they're not grand standards. They're not publicity hounds. The ones who are involved in climbing and trekking do make a pretty substantial amount of money, especially in comparison to what the average person makes in Nepal, they make about two grand for a trip. Right. And the gross domestic product per capita of Nepal in 2007 is like $331. Yeah. That really puts into perspective. They're rich by other standards, I guess. Extremely rich. Very wealthy. But I guess in addition to making money, they help other people ascend Everest to attain their personal glory. Right. For the other people to attain their personal glory, which is kind of there's a lot of dichotomy between how the Sherpa view Mount Everest and how they interact with it, that the Western influence kind of puts them in this weird position, because they follow a form of Tibetan Buddhism which says that you should perform selfless acts and help others. Right. Yeah. And being at the top of Everest to them means you're closer to enlightenment. Right. If the people are going to climb up anyway, you might as well go with them for two grand. Sure. But you might as well go with them to make sure that they don't kill themselves. Right. Yeah. Very selfless people it is. But at the same time, they're helping the west kind of exploit Everest. Some people worry that the Everest experience is being cheapened. Since Hillary summited Everest, I think more than 2300 other people have. Right. Kind of loses its closeness to the Buddhas when all these other footprints are everywhere and there's a couple hundred dead bodies on the mountain. Yeah. I think, Norgate kind of summed up there how they feel about Everest. When he called it, when they asked him how he felt about being up there, and he likened it to a mother hen and said, what else? He said that this was, quote, warm and friendly living. How about that? Yeah. And then Hillary shoved him back down. He's like, Quiet, you, get out of my picture frame. Here's your metal. So, like you said, the region now, Josh, because of the massive amounts of tourism, and not massive like Grand Canyon massive, obviously, but still for Mount Everest, it's a lot of people going there trying to climb it. We did talk about pollution there now. And so the very thing that brings the Tibetan Buddhist Sherpa's enlightenment has also kind of denigrated the area somewhat. Yeah. Well, it's about 20,000 people pass through that area per year. And now you can go play pool. You have Internet access. You have the trappings of modern living, and you also have the drawbacks of modern living. Deforestation. Yeah. Pollution. Yeah. Exploitation, that kind of stuff, right? That's right. And we should point out in Sagaramatha National Park, where about 3500 Sherpas live, and Sagar Matthew is the word for Everest. Right. The Sherpa themselves call Everest chomalangma. Chomolangma chumbawamba. It's close now, but that's not it. Okay. Chomolangba, which means, roughly, goddess mother of the world or mother hen. You want to talk about a couple of famous Sherpas? Yeah. We talk about Edmund Hillary all day long, but you never hear about APA Sherpa. Yes. And all he's done is ascend and summit every 17 times more than anybody else in the world. Not bad. Yeah. What about Babu? Chichiri Chihiri? Sherpa yeah. Camped on the summit of Mount Everest for 21 hours without oxygen. Usually what happens when you climb Everest is you get your picture made and you say, wow, this is really unbelievable. This is amazing. All right, let's go back down. Right. And you have 5 million canisters of oxygen at your disposal. Really high. Yeah. Who else? There's a lockpa galu. Sherpa who holds a world record for the fastest Mount Everest ascent. 10 hours, 56 minutes, and 46 seconds. That's a lot. Not bad. Wow. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience network, and, most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve, compodcast. And start taking charge of your future. Today you have Ming Keeper Sharpa. What's the big deal with Ming? Ming just climbed Everest at the age of 15 years old. Not on his Xbox. In real life. Yes. And then there's Pesank Lambo Sherpa, who was, Chuck, the first woman Sherpa Everest, which apparently when women started climbing Everest or serving as Sherpas to climbing expeditions in the 70s, this is probably the biggest problem internally for the Sherpas that Western tourism was having on their culture. A woman's place traditionally is at the farm in Sherpa culture on the side of the mountain. And I guess there was some static for a while, and then finally, more and more women started doing it, and we're doing it successfully, and that was that. Yeah. And evidently, when the husband, if the husband is the Sherpa worker, goes on one of these trips, then the female becomes the head of the household at home if she's not a Sherpa herself. And we'll take care of things just like the husband would. That's nice. Yeah. What else is there? I love these people. I think you have a fun place in your heart. Yeah. They remind me of the people of Guatemala. Kind of short and friendly and warm. Friendly living stocky. Yeah. It makes me kind of wonder there's so many similarities. Chuck, that because, think about it. Everybody calls the people the Sherpa, right? Yeah. They're people from the east, but that's in reference to where you are in Solu. Kumba. Kumbu. Right. Okay. What were they called before they moved west? The people? Mayan, maybe. Finally, Josh, for my part of this podcast, if you think this one is off the rail, do you think the Sherpa have it bad with not getting any recognition? There's also something called a porter. Yes. And a lot of Sherpas grow up serving ads. Porters. That's basically the job below the Sherpa who does even more of the heavy lifting and gets even less money and less oxygen, less clothing and other outer wear. Yeah. And there's an actual international porter's group, right? Yeah. Protection group that are advocates for their safety and fair wages. Because obviously, if you've got very poor person doing a lot of hard work, they're probably being taken advantage of in some way. So, Chuck, we would be remiss to do a podcast on the Sherpa and Everest and Hillary and not mention the Yeti. I don't know much about the Yeti. I didn't look at that. So the Himalayas are the home of the Yeti. The abominable snowman is another way to put it, which is basically like the extreme, cold, high altitude version of Bigfoot. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. I just always thought that's what we thought of, but I didn't look into it. No, it is pretty much okay. It's a biped. A very furry, heavy, large biped that's mysterious and lives out. By itself, it's bigfoot, but in the Himalayas, it's like in Empire, like on Hoth, it's more like the Abominable snowman and the Rudolph Christmas specials look kind of like the thing in Empire. Kind of, yeah. Who. Looks like yes. Wow. Anyway, Hilary himself was actually a believer in the yeti. He went back after summiting Everest. He went back again in 1960 to look for the yeti because he'd seen yeti footprints, what he took to be yeti footprints. Oh, really? Interesting. He found nothing, though. He didn't. And a lot of people think that these were just some other animals footprints that melted in the snow and expanded as the snow melted. Right. Who knows? Yeti again, you have taught me something, my friend. Thank you for that, because I couldn't figure out how to wrap this one up. I feel like we should apologize for the light nature of this, but we just recorded right before this on the nuclear disaster in Japan, so I think we were rife for a little riff. Plus, also, we should point out in true Sherpa style chuck, they'd want it this way. Well, think about this. There are all sorts of trappings of Western influence and degradation of culture. There is a dwindling of population. I think at its peak, this area was home to 250 people. Now it's down to 3500, like you said in the park, right? Yeah. There was a National Geographic survey of Sherpas saying, are you concerned about Western influences on your culture? And they were like, not overly. Can you hear me? The TiVo remote, you're sitting on it. Do you have any Mountain Dew or vault? So that's it a Sherpas if you want to read more. There's actually some more in there, especially more on their Buddhist religion, I believe. We didn't cover that fully. Yeah, there's more goodness in there, for sure. You can type in Sherpas or Sherpa if you want to be safe. In the handy search bar@housetuffworkscom written by Kristin Conner of stuff mom never told you. That's right. That's true. Excellent podcast. Yes, it is. Great podcast. And they did a great job at south by Southwest. They did. And since I said Handy Search Bar and south by Southwest, that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. This is a little more Disney dirt. And most of the Disney dirt we got wasn't very good. We got a bunch of yeah, there's really nothing going on there. There's underground tunnels, but that's no big deal. Yeah, a lot of those. And it's really not like you guys think. We finally got a pretty good one. This is from M and M. Seems like she would have been one of the employees that I might have been hanging around with that know about the dirt. Some people apparently don't even know about this stuff. I hope we don't get trouble for this. Hi, guys. I just finished listening to the Tickling podcast. Excited that you asked for Disney dirt. As a cast member at the Happiest Place on Earth for almost four years, I gleaned some interesting tidbits of information. For starters, in a workroom behind Pirates of the Caribbean, there exists an infamous Mylar table, which has a long standing reputation for being a favorite place for cast members to be amorous with one another after hours. I can't imagine how clean such a table might be, but many cast members have been known to participate in tradition simply for the sake of being part of the legend. They're like the mile high club, I guess. On my attraction, the Jungle Cruise, it said that one can't be a real skipper until they have urinated into the river. No. I suspected as much about you can create the what is it the most what? The happiest place. The happiest place on earth. But if you staff it with bored and nihilistic 20 year old, it's going to end up like this. Yeah, someone's going to be in the river most of the time. This is done before or after park operating hours when a skipper can take out a boat alone and relieve him or herself, often into the hippo pool. You can imagine it's harder for girls to participate in this rite of passage out of sheer logistics, but I do know some women who have managed to become real skips. I think it'd be more physics than logistics. She says the mechanics boggles my mind. Now for the gnarly stuff. Under Space Mountain, there are stored 60,000 body bags. Supposedly they are there in case of a natural disaster or some other emergency where people may be trapped inside the park for an extended period of time. I don't believe that. I don't believe it either. The food freezers in the storeroom down the hall are also over 6ft tall for storage, if you know what I mean. It's quite morbid and a popular site for telling ghost stories. I've got plenty more if you want some off the record ghost stories. This was on the record. Gee. Or personal anecdotes from my time as a Jungle Cruise skipper. I'd be happy to share. Keep up the great work from M. Well, I would love to hear the off the record one. Me too. What is her name? Em. I'd like to take her to lunch. Yeah, well, please at least send us an email. Okay? I don't think we'd be allowed to go out to lunch with that girl. No, our significant others are killed yet. Chuck. Josh, you got anything else? No, I'm done. All right. What should we call for here? How about if you have ascended Everest? No, it's boring. Okay. If you are interested in your state succeeding from its current geographical boundaries, we want to hear why. That's right. Send it in an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog. On the housetofworks.com, homepage. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…sweat-colors.mp3	Can you sweat colors?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-you-sweat-colors	A condition known as chromhidrosis can be jarring: The sufferer excretes colored sweat from the eccrine or the apocrine sweat glands. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore this somewhat understood, but still bafflingly mysterious medical condition.	A condition known as chromhidrosis can be jarring: The sufferer excretes colored sweat from the eccrine or the apocrine sweat glands. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore this somewhat understood, but still bafflingly mysterious medical condition.	Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:11:05 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=18, tm_min=11, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=214, tm_isdst=0)	23325957	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This July. Don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Are you looking for an escape? An immersive getaway experience? Well, there's a place for all your wildest dreams. Perhaps you enjoy wrapping along to paperboy. Or you believe that blessed be the fruit. Or you dream of one day smashing a glass while stealing huzzah. Whether you're sworn to Team Kim or you just want a good old fashioned, mysterious murder, there's a place that has it all. From Atlanta to only murders in the building, it's all on Hulu. So check into your obsession. Hulu subscription is required. Terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant flying by the seat of our pants. Right, Chuckers? Speaking of flying, you're like? Let's go. Let's go. I got to go to New York. Yeah, it's your birthday tomorrow. It is? Happy birthday. This will be after the fact, of course. I can't believe you're bringing this up. So you got a little birthday trip plan. That's very nice. You mean six men in New York? Nothing like a weekend in New York. No, they're definitely celebrating anything. I'm very excited about it. Cool. I'm giddy like you should be. Yeah. And we were just in New York, but it wasn't quite the same. You mean that income with did she no, we are staying at a friend's place. Okay. Fortunately, we have some friends in Brooklyn. Should you say his name? Adams. Yeah, Adams. Cool. Adam said hello. Yeah, I will. Adam and Sarah now. Oh, well, good for them. It's a lot of info. Might as well give out their address, Social Security number, that kind of thing. Right, Chuck? Probably get started, right? Yeah, let's do it. You enjoy good sweat, right? That has been determined. You know about sweating. Actually, I hate a good sweat. Do you plague me? I wouldn't call it plague. I think you have it under control. Yeah, I mean, if I'm in the steam room, I love a good sweat. Or the sauna. Yes, that's when you're supposed to sweat. I like it, too. I don't like it, either. I'm totally with you. Like, this summer has been particularly hot down here in Atlanta. I don't know if you noticed at this point. There's this boiling point. I guess that I've been hovering around for the last four weeks, where, if I think about it, I can make sweat just, like, burst out from under my pecs. It's so awful. All over my stomach, there's, like, a sweat trail, a horizontal one that I constantly have, and then I get skin tags, probably. Right. And then if you get the nerves, you get both kinds of sweat, which we'll talk about. Yeah. Because there are two different kinds of sweat glands. Do you want to just talk about sweating first and then go into this? Yeah. How about that? Let's do that. Chuck. The average person has, like, 4 million sweat glands all over their body. You have, like, eight. I buy that. Right. And they're divided into two types eckrene and porcine. Close. Echrene and apple cream. Yeah. Don't sing that. They are both sweat glands, and you would think that you'd have, like they'd all provide one function. They don't. You would be wrong. That's right. So echo and sweat glands, I think, are more predominant. I think there's more of them. Yeah. Because they cool you down. Yes. That's what they're charged with. They don't cool me down. Or else, actually, I don't know, maybe it'd be, like, really hot. It would be dead. Your thermostat is set high, and it's your hypothalamus, by the way, that controls your body temperature. Right. It gets messages, say, from your skin right. That things are hot. And your hypothalamus is like, oh, well, I better activate the Ekron sweat glands and humidity, I reckon, too, because that's what kills me. Well, humidity kills you because it keeps you from sweating. Not me, man. No, it does. It kills you. It keeps you from cooling off, I should say. Oh, it keeps the sweat from the back. Yeah. So it gets backed up. Yes. But it can be, like, 60 degrees and humid, and I'll sweat. Yeah. The worst is when you get out of a shower and you start sweating immediately. Like, you go to the gym and the shower didn't take. Right. Yeah, right, man. I think that's a seinfeld reference, too, actually. Is it? Yes. George. Okay. He had a shower that didn't take. Yeah. Okay. That rings a bell. Yeah. I'll take an ice cold shower after the gym, and it's still just sweat. Well, it takes a little while for your hypothalamus to be like, oh, okay. It's cool down. Yeah. Right. So your Hypothalamus, if it detects that your body temperature is getting too high, it needs to cool down. It sends a message to your Ekron sweat glands that says, Start sweating, boys. And it's a different type of sweat that you're sweating than the stuff that comes out of the apocryme glands. Right. Yeah. It's mostly salty saltwater, basically, or water and salts, but mixed together salt, water, and electrolytes. Have you seen Idiot? I have, yeah. You didn't like it, you said. No, I thought it was good to a point. But the one joke premise movie kind of got stale for me. I liked it. Okay. But we did manage to work a movie into a sweat podcast. The other kind, Chuck, is apocrine. Yes. And that is usually in the well, is it usually in the face, the Axela and breast, just period, or with this condition, that's where it's most heavily concentrated, period. Yes. Okay. And the axle is under the armpit. Yes. That is your armpit. Your axle. Yes. Not under the armpit? No. There's nothing under the armpit. No. It's just dead space there. That's right. And remember when we talked about deodorant versus antiperspirant? Classic SYSK episode? That's a long time ago. Yeah, it was. We talked about sweat then, too. And apocrine sweat glands produce the kind of sweat that makes you stink. Right. Right. So if it's just salt and water coming out of your Akron sweat glands, that's not going to smell. Sweaty palms are not going to stink. Right. No, they don't. There's over, I think, hyperhidrosis, period. But then some people get it so bad in their hands, they have surgery. Yeah. Well, that's as far as we've ever progressed with the treatment of sweating of any kind of sweat problems. Like destroying the sweat gland, removing them, getting rid of them altogether, or yeah. Going in with, like, a laser, like yeah. I don't get the palms. It's my head and face. Which is an awesome place to sweat. Well, your palms are very hairy. I imagine if they weren't, they would oh, boy. They would be far sweatier. Okay. So with the apocrine sweat glands, you're sweating out water. That's the vehicle that's actually moving the stuff, like fats, the waste byproducts of metabolism, basically. It's a way to evacuate stuff from your cells outside of it's a disposal system. Yeah. It sounds gross. So when you say fats and wastes right. Well, coming through your skin yes. And those don't stink in and of themselves. It's the bacteria on your skin. The local flora? No, the local fauna that eats those fats and then creates the stink as excrement. So you stink because of bacteria? Excrement. That's what it is. So you've got both of these, and both of them are capable of very strange condition called chrome hydrosis. I've never heard of this. And I thought I knew everything about sweating. And the reason I didn't know anything about it is because it is really rare. This is the alien hand syndrome of bodily fluids, I would say of sweating, at least of sweating. There's a lot of weird bodily fluids going on. Syndromes. Yeah. This is when Drumroll although you know the title, is when your sweat is Colored. Yeah. And I thought I had it bad, but sweating green. That's really what it is. This condition, chroma hydrosis, is painless. It doesn't lead to any other conditions. Benign. It's totally benign. It's strictly embarrassing. It's debilitating. I imagine you can't wear certain clothes you certainly can't wear white because all of a sudden you have two large orange circles where your nipples are. Yeah, because that's one place where especially the apocrine version takes place very typically under the armpit and at the breast. Right. And one of the reasons why you can remember that apocrine sweat glands are around your nipples because they are eventually converted into cells that deliver milk when you're lactating. Well, not you know, I told you I had a friend that lactated a guy. That's right, you did. So apocrine can turn into lactating cells. Right. That's why they're around the nipple. Right, yes. And apocrine, if you have this form of chrome hydrosis, you will sweat yellow, green, blue, black, or brown. Yes. And why specifically? Because the culprit here is something called lipofusken. I don't know if it's lipofuscan or lipopuskin. It's like lipid, like fat. Yes, it's a type of fat that's been oxidized. Yeah. And there you have it. I mean, it's pretty simple, actually. Yeah. Mystery solved. So if you come to your physician and say, hey, man, why are my nipples orange producing orange sweat? Or blue or green or yellow? Yeah. He's going to say, I have a pretty strong idea that it's apocrine chrom hydrosis. I would say right away, I saw the orange lady. Did you see her? The I saw a PowerPoint. Someone had a nurse. Was she a nurse? No. Orange. So this is such a rare condition. I don't know if we said that. Whoever you're talking about, it was probably the first case ever documented, and that was like 2008, maybe because it was a PowerPoint that some, I guess, physician had done, and it showed her face was blacked out, but it showed pictures of her stained brazier and T shirts, and it was just like, I can't imagine that I feel awful enough as a sweater. Right? I mean, you're a sweater plus color. Yeah, exactly. Just fascinates people. You can't fault somebody when they're like, Why? What's going on? Yeah, but I'm sure that happens a lot. Like, all you do is explain away, like, oh, I have this weird condition where I sweat orange. Well, apparently with this nurse that I mentioned, I think she's like 26 or something like that, she spent five months wondering what the heck was going on before she went and sought treatment. She had no idea. And I can't imagine sweating something right away and waiting, like, five months before finally going to a doctor for red sweat. I'm one of those guys who, like, put off going to the doctor forever, but red sweat would get me in there. Yes. Have you seen the Gatorade commercial where people sweat colors? Yeah, I'm sure that's not what they weren't like, they should have had a tag at the end, like, not chrome. Yeah, exactly. To not offend, like, the five people in the world. So, Chuck, we were saying that if you come in and your doctor sees that you have blue sweat coming out of your nipples, they're going to think it's apocryphone chromatrosis. You can prove definitively that it is by holding a black light up to sweat, because the lip of fuskins phosphores what is it called? A woods lamp. I never heard that. I just call it a black light. Yeah, because you have a basement. Yeah. And I went to Spencer Gifts when I was 13. Right, exactly. Do you have any wood lamps? Yeah, exactly. So that's apocrine chrome hydrosis. April chrome hydrosis is also equally well explained. It's always a foreign object, like a die or something that person has ingested that somehow gets into the ecrin sweat glands and then is produced. Right. Because the one common thread between these two is that the pigment is produced in the sweat plant. Yeah. That's important, because if you're a miner, a copper miner, sometimes you'll get a mineral mix with the sweat once it leaves the skin, and it'll turn it blue. Blue for copper. Yeah. Right. Which is not to be confused with the blue man who took too much some kind of copper colloidal silver. Yeah, that's what it was. Wasn't he a senator or something or a congressman? Wasn't he really? One of the guys turned silver? This guy was blue. He looked like a blue Santa Claus. Oh, really? Yeah, from too much Chloe's silver. So, yes, if you have pseudochromydrosis, it means that you're sweating a normal color or colorless sweat, but it's reacting with something on your skin to produce yeah. And they say, Get out of the copper mine and stop, eventually stop rubbing pigment on yourself. Right. But with ecrinchrome hydrosis, you're producing pigmented sweat and then sweating pigmented sweat. But it's not from lip a few skins. It's from something else. And that nurse that I was talking about that waited five years, and I think this was in the mid 90s, she read and her physicians took some samples of her regular sweat and compared it to the substance they found on or closed and said, yeah, you've got chromydrosis. And we think it's Ekron. Well, it would have to be because it wasn't yellow, green, blue, black, or brown. Right. Yeah. But we know so little about this. If somebody presented with a case of red apocrine chromosis, they'd be like, okay, well, this is new. Right. Because they don't understand the mechanism behind either they understand what's going on or they understand how it's happening. They don't understand what's going on. They have no idea. Yes. And I think this, like, alien hand is one of those where they might be able to find out, but it's so rare. It's not like a lot of funding goes into this for research. Right. So they just treat it. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment, so why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right, from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Speaking of alien hand, I found out about this thing. I wrote a blog on it recently about mirror dystonia, and it was like mirror neurons and alien hand mixed together, right? So if you have this, your brain isn't producing proteins. This one specific protein that basically acts as, like, the switch. I'm going to pick this up with my right hand, right? So both sides of your brain get the signal, but there's this protein that switches it's like, oh, okay, right hand. So this protein isn't strong enough. And people with mirror dystonia, so they go like this really pick up something with both hands. Both hands? Yes. Or both. Like, if they go to take a step with their right foot, they do with their left foot, too. So walking is very difficult to jump. Wow. Isn't that crazy? We'll have to do a full podcast on that. Maybe there is not enough on it. All right, well, that was it then. The mini cast, so echoing chrome hydrosis. The nurse I was talking about, she was eating some sort of and I could never find out. I wonder why you didn't list it. I thought it was for like oh, boy, I can't say. It was a Kebler devil's food cake. It was tomato based and had paprika. And it was a prepared food that she ate as a snack constantly. So the red tomato paste and the paprika were coloring her sweat. And that's where science is baffled. They have no idea how something can get into your sweat glands. It doesn't make any sense. They also don't know why some people overproduce lipopuscans or their fats become overly oxidized until they become lipopuskins. Well, ecran is the one that you want because the treatment for that is to identify the culprit of the foreign food, or not foreign, but whatever. The food that's discoloring your sweat and discontinuing that food stuff. The lady could have been like, hey, I'm going to keep eating this. It's like the best thing I've ever eaten. So, Chuck, I guess if you're stuck with apocrine chromatrosis right. Or you love your tomato paste, paprika flavored, whatever prepared food product. Right. That's my novelty throwing discover that on The Simpsons. Yeah. They couldn't call it a prison, right? Yeah. And I don't think we can either. Sure we can. If you like it so much that you want to seek treatment, what are some of your treatment options? Well, there's this substance called capsaicin, which is the key ingredient to pepper spray, and it's bear spray, and it is from red pepper. It's just dry from red pepper itself, isn't it? Yeah. Like red pepper flakes. Pretty much. And it will burn you, I guess, if you spray it in your face. But apparently as a cream, it can help treat the Aprican version. Right. And we should have said earlier a cream. Sweat glands are triggered by changes in body temperature sensed by the hypothalamus. Right. Apocrine sweat glands are triggered by emotion. Well, that's why I talk about the nerves. Right? Yeah. So there's this neurotransmitter called substance P that apparently is involved with the activation of your apocrine sweat glands. Right. So with capsaicin, for some reason, it blocks the re uptake of substance P, which makes you sweat less. Yes. You might work in concert, and I think most people that sweat more than usual work in concert because you get hot and you're like, oh, crap. Oh yeah. If you're not doing anything important, it doesn't matter. But if you're going somewhere and you're like, oh man, now I'm sweating, and then the other ones kick in, it's even worse. That used to happen to me in college. Like, I couldn't sit towards the front of the class because I was too self conscious. And I'd start to my scalp would start to tingle a little bit and I'd be like, is that sweat? Or their bug jumping off my head and it just hits this vicious cycle. Are you sure that was going on? I'm pretty sure. College bugs jumping off your head, tingling. Okay. It could have all been some sort of dream. Also, it's funny you said tingling because I don't know if it's true, but I did see one account that said it's sometimes associated with an aura, like a warmth or prickling sensation. What this condition? Oh, really? Yeah, and that it happens more often in African Americans and that the youngest age they found it in was an eleven year old. In apocrine or Ekrainer? Both. Just the whole condition, period, I think. I wonder if, like, these additional things, like you can sense them leaving your skin, maybe more than just sweat or the standard sweat. And I don't know if associated means it was like one of the cases, or if everyone across the board said it was kind of hazy. Yeah. And then we also talked about removing sweat glands. Is one treatment option for hyperhidrosis and chromidrosis. Yeah. And Botulinum yeah. Botox or what? Is that Myoblock as well. Right? It's a toxin. Right. And it affects the neurotransmitters that are involved in sweating as well. The other one, too, which is a terrible treatment, is to express the gland because it lasts a couple of days and basically sweat it out, but then every couple of days. Or you could just go to the sauna a lot. Yes, I imagine that would help. And where maybe like, a sign around your neck that says, yes, I know I'm sweating blue. I'm with stupid. Have you ever had to express your dog's anal glands? No, I haven't. Someone roughly told me, I don't remember who years ago, and I was like, I'm not doing that. They're like, well, then you have to take your dog to a groomer, and it's like, no, I don't. Yeah. Jerry ever? No. Have you ever smelled it? Anyone? Yes. It is the most distinct, awful smell on the planet. There's nothing worse. And it's exactly like when you smell it, you're like, okay, that's anal gland. Yeah, well, that's why they rub their bottom. They're expressing their own anal glam. I know, my dogs, they self express, but you smell it when it happens, and then you see them cleaning themselves, and you're just like, all right, remember, no licks for, like a week. Right? On me. Yeah, I don't know. Sorry. I got sidetracked. So, yeah, I guess that's it, right? You got anything else? There is so much I don't on this one. There's so much sweating stuff. I personally can tell you quite a bit about sweating, sweat glands, zits, all that stuff. I spent, like, a couple of months writing about this stuff for a while, and this article came out of it. I wonder if I never got zits because I sweat so much. I wonder if that helps keep my pores clean or something. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. It also has to do with oil on the skin, and I think my family none of us really got it, so I think it's hereditary to a certain degree, too. Right, yeah. And I think it also has to do with the degree of how sensitive your skin is. Right. Well, anyway, if you want to learn about that kind of stuff and sweating and read my article on chromodosis type sweat into the search bar@howstepworks.com, and it'll bring up a ton of stuff. We should do it on acne. Okay. That's a big one. Yeah. I'll bet some of our pubescent listeners would appreciate that. 01:00 a.m. I right? Yeah. All right, well, I said, am I right? So that means it's time for listener now. Yeah. This is someone who's correcting us, and I'm just not quite sure how right she is, so we're going to discuss it. Hey, guys. I'm a fairly new fan of your show, but I really enjoy every episode. I'm dying to go back and listen to the older ones, but there are so many that it's taking some time. That's true. I just listened to the recent one about America's version, Murderer. It was great at the beginning, though. I think you may have confused or lumped together Puritans and Pilgrims. Pilgrims that came to Plymouth Rock in 1620 were actually separatists because they wanted to completely break away from the Church of England, whereas the large group that settled in Massachusetts, like, ten years later was Puritan. They wanted to Purify reform the Church of England, not break away the Puritans. And separatists had some different philosophies and beliefs, so I think it's important to make that distinction. I am a history nerd, so I think those details are cool. Please let me know if I misheard or if I don't have my facts straight. Thank you, Rachel. I am a history nerd, too, and I don't know the answer to that one. I looked it up, and I got a little confused, to be honest, because it was a little bit like that rectangle or square thing. Like I think some of the separatists or some of the Puritans were separatists, but not necessarily the other way around or something. I don't know. I got confused. So you're saying some of the Pilgrims were separatists, but not all separatists? Were Pilgrims? One of those kind of things? I think so, but I could see if that explains why there is the word separatists and the word Puritan. Yeah, I'm sure it describes the same group. I think I would argue, though, that it matters so little at this point that, okay, lump them together. I think she's saying that there were no Puritan Pilgrims. Okay, well, we'll find out. We'll either find out someone will set us straight that really knows it, or we will just say, Rachel, thank you for the correction. Yeah. Either way, I'm going to go look. Okay. I can't let this let me know. Even if it doesn't matter any longer, I still need to know. And it's not like I didn't care. I did look, but we're busy now. I didn't have quite enough time to fully research it. Well, okay. If you have an amazing historical fact that has been lost to the age of time that you want to tell us about, we're very interested in that kind of stuff. Right. Right. Send us an email. You totally should. You can address it, too. Stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join House of Works staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…k-geocaching.mp3	What is geocaching?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-geocaching	Armed with only a GPS and a sense of adventure, geocachers use their wits to locate containers across the world. Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the history, practice and strange origin of geocaching in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Armed with only a GPS and a sense of adventure, geocachers use their wits to locate containers across the world. Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the history, practice and strange origin of geocaching in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:51:28 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=16, tm_min=51, tm_sec=28, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=251, tm_isdst=0)	26682737	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. It's Charles w chuck Bryant. How are you doing? What's? Some fruit juice in there, chuck, you were smelling your hand a little bit ago. What's wrong with you? I smell like my wife's hand made artisan soap. Yeah, she's having a grand opening webyourmoma.com now. Going to have a brick and mortar store, right? Yeah. Very proud of her. And you and Jerry are coming to the grand opening tomorrow. I have some wine. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the rosemary garlic chicken wings. Yes, Chef Charles is going to be making they are delicious. I'll report back to all of you SYSK listeners on just whether or not they are delicious. I wouldn't take Chuck's word for it. Okay. So, Chuck, you know what we're talking about today? Yes. Actually, let me throw this out. It's totally unrelated and it's just too interesting to not mention. Okay. I was talking to Ben bowling evil, mad creator of stuff they don't want you to know. Soon to be released, hopefully. Hopefully, yeah. And he was telling me he just found out that the average house price in Detroit right now, eleven and a half. $1,000. Really? Yeah. This has nothing to do with what we're doing? No. That boggles the mind. Yeah, that's really cheap. So, anyway, after this, we're moving to Detroit. Okay. Instead of Detroit housing prices, we are actually talking about Geo Caching, right? Yes. And I want to go ahead and say that this has been off requested by many people, geocachers, I guess. And I just want to apologize and say I didn't save all your names, especially the dude. Last week I had a guy that we emailed back and forth like three or four times in a few hours, and he was actually Geocaching while he was riding me and listening to our podcast on his iPhone while he was Geo Caching. That kind of gets things done. So I kind of feel whenever someone says they listen to us in India when they went on their trip or when they did this, I always feel like we're kind of brought along and always thank people for bringing us along. Sure. Yeah. Instead, we're actually stuck here in the studio. Apparently, we also cure homesickness. We've gotten several emails from Atlantis. Yes. And I've heard firsthand stories about people who are sitting in airports in India who was just totally homesick and just listened to our podcast and was cured. Nice or comforted, at least. All right, Geocaching. Yeah? Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. All right, let's do it. Let me give you a little background info, Chuck. Okay. Actually, Geocaching can be traced directly back to Korean Airlines flight double seven. Really? In this commercial plane was flying, I guess, in Asia and inadvertently traipsed into Soviet airspace and was shot down by the Soviet. Yeah, I remember that. So, as a result, President Reagan said, okay, we've got this kind of GPS system that the Air Force has been using for a while, but we need to make this commercially available so that this doesn't happen again. Really? So they did. Reagan started the whole thing. Reagan did? Well, it was already in effect, but he made sure that this program really went to town. Right. So they started launching more and more satellites for global positioning systems. Eventually, it became available to the public, to airlines, to whoever wanted it. But there was a little glitch, a purposeful glitch in the system. I did not know about this until I read up on this. Right. Selective availability. Yeah. Basically, they intentionally made the GPS systems available to the public off base by a little bit, by about 300ft. 300ft. Because they wanted the US. Military to have the most advanced system to pinpoint a location, and they wanted to get your average Joe just in the general area. Right. So if you're a Korean pilot, you give yourself a 300 foot buffer when you're flying along Soviet airspace. Easy enough. Right. But if you are the manufacturer of an onboard GPS system or car, you don't want your customers going, tom, you're a stupid like every time you ask for directions. Right, right. So there was a certain limitation by that 300ft, because turn right 300ft ago. It's not very helpful, but President Clinton comes along and sees the value of GPS. I like this stuff. Yeah, that's exactly what he said. And he liked it enough so that he issued an executive order saying we need to get selective availability offline within ten years. That was right. It was supposed to be 2006, but what happened for us, it happened a lot six years sooner. Right. So now everybody thinks, Tom Tom is as smart as he can be. And this hobby comes about almost immediately because you could pinpoint location. Strickland says he wrote this article between six and 20ft. Not bad. Right? So this whole wealth of handheld GPS devices hit the market, and right off the bat, a guy named Dave Olmer decides to test how well his works. I don't know what model he had. Yeah. By hiding an item and going and marking its location, then leaving and coming back and see if it could redirect him back there. Right. Just as a test, he left a little box and went on a website of his and said, here's a box. Here's the coordinate. And I think he wrote very famously, take some stuff, leave some stuff. He put a couple of trinkets in there. That's really what started the whole thing. And not only did it start, it's pretty much the same way nine years later. Like this initial geocache hunt that he created, it immediately created the model that people follow today. Well, it's a good model. If it ain't broke. It's a pretty basic, simple thing. It's fun. I just realized we haven't actually said what geocaching is. Right? Yeah. We should probably get geocaching is when you use your GPS, it's basically like a treasure hunt. People leave these caches hidden in a location with the coordinates and you get from a website, let's say, and then you go and try and find it. And they have little trinkets in there you can take. Then you leave your own little trinket and it's just like a big treasure hunt that anyone can participate in. Sure. Anybody who has access to the Internet. Sure. GPS receiver and very important, a topographical map. Yeah, that would help. And actually also strict, I have to say. Jonathan Strickland, who is one of our colleagues and co host of Tech Stuff, who, you know, from Necronomicon yes, that came out, didn't it? He makes an excellent point. You want to make sure that the map that you are using was made after 1984. And the reason being is, in that year, we switched over the type of data that's used to create maps or to position people. So the World Geodetic System of 1984 was the new convention for creating, positioning, creating maps that's used for GPS, all that stuff. It replaced the North American Data system of 1927. Yes. So if you have a map that was made between 1927 and 1983, exactly the year before man, that was a monumental year. It was. Your map and your GPS receiver aren't going to match and you can run into some problems. True. Because your GPS receiver might just say, you're getting warmer going this direction. It may have a compass. If you don't have one that you can upload maps onto right. You're not going to know that you're about to fall off a cliff or something because you're staring at your receiver. Right. So your little topo map and your compass will let you know, hey, there's a river crossing. Or like you said, cliff ahead, danger. So Dave Olmer hid the first geocache, and a guy named Mike Teague was the first to find it. Actually, surprisingly, it's almost like this hobby this past time, or I don't know what you refer to as a game. Sport. Sure. I don't know about sport. Well, there's hiking involved a lot of times. I don't know about sport. Okay. Ulmer hides this and within, I think, three days, two people found it. And yet two people independently of each other. Right. So it was right on the surface, geocaching is just waiting to happen. It was a market for it. All right. They called it GPS stash hunt at the beginning now, which is a little clumsy compared to geocaching. Yeah. And everyone else. Well, not everyone, but someone at some point suggested Matt Stone. Yeah, he was credited. I came up with coining the phrase or the term, it's catchy, it's cashy. So you've got your GPS receiver. You've got your topographical map? Check. I assume you're probably wearing woolly sock. Check. What else do you need? Well, they advise to take things like flashlight and bug spray, sunblock, hiking boots, water, that kind of thing. Extra batteries, we should say. All this is to assume that you actually want to go on a geocache hunt sure. Right. And you're not sitting around your house listening to it. We should also say there are several websites dedicated to this hobby, and that's where you want to go to start finding out locations for cash. Right. There'll be links, or else there will be a list of different caches or coordinates. Geocaching.com is the main one, I think. Yes. Unless you're just really adventurous, you probably want to pick something sort of close to you on your first try, at least to kind of break your caching hobby in. Right. And some people hide their caches, as Strickland put it, with sadistic glee. Yeah, that seems to be part of it, because there's no fun if it's just sitting right there in the middle of the trailhead. Well, not only that, probably some schmo who doesn't know what's going on will be like, oh, look, something I don't know what this is. Right. Well, that leads us to an important point. If you are stashing a cash, why not have such a problem with that? My wife is going to make the least of your problems. It only is going to make fun of me because I do mess up that word a lot, and she thinks I'm an idiot. So, like, if your average hiker happens upon this box full of Santana CDs, and they're thinking, wow, I can just take these CDs and one left. These this is awesome. Yeah. Or drugs. No, that's one of the things that you are not supposed to put in these cases because it's a family friendly activity and they don't want to sully it with the likes of illegal drugs and such. Sure. What about alcohol? Keep it clean. No. Okay, so Santana CDs is pretty much what you're going to find in a geocam. Well, he did say CDs and DVDs or handmade trinkets. You don't want it to be too expensive because you don't want to sink a lot of money into it. But whatever. If you take something, you should leave something. You don't have to take something, but I think you said if you don't take anything or leave anything, you should write in a logbook that's contained inside the cache. TNL. Yeah. Took nothing or left nothing. Took nothing. Right. Yeah. One thing that you're going to find in any geocache. And Chuck, you were saying, like, you should put an explanation and maybe a note. Strickland also recommended actually labeling it like, this is a geocache. Here's my email, or here's my phone number. Because I don't know if you said or not. You don't want to cause a panic. Well, no, I didn't mention that some people geo cash in cities. Sure. And actually in New Hampshire, I can't remember what town it was. A geocache that was hidden in a supermarket caused a panic. Portsmouth post 911. People see little metal boxes. Some places shouldn't be. They're going to be like, well, there's a bomb. Yes. Stuck to the underside of like an escalator rail. Sure, yeah, exactly. If it blinks or something. And some nerd is like, what a great hiding spot me. And then all of sudden, a, the cops are tackling them. Chuck, as I was saying, the one thing that you're going to find in any geocache is a log book. Very important. Yeah. Because you want to it's sort of like a wedding thing that you sign when you go to a wedding. You want to say that you were any kind of guestbook wedding, funeral, bed and breakfast. Yeah. You want to add your notes, like what you found or what your experience was. This is cool. Some of them have disposable cameras in them. And what you're supposed to do there is take a picture of yourself and put the camera back in there. Right. And some people actually like to see if they can get based on that whole taking something and leaving something, they like to see if they can get their trinkets across country. Yes. Josh, that is what's that called, a hitchhiker cache. Right. And their instructions on how to get this thing across the country. The geocachers take great pride in playing along and trying to get the Santana CD from Atlanta to Los Angeles, let's say. Right. And some people also have coins made with some sort of ID on it. They're called geo coins. It's a type of hitchhiker cache. Right. And basically you find the coin, you put it somewhere else and you're posting these on site so somebody can go on and see that their coins made it from Topeka to Colorado Springs so far. And they're like, oh, it's getting close, right? Yeah. I think I love the spirit of this whole thing. It's really neat. I'm going to try this, actually. I've never done it. Santana heavy, drug free traveling spirit of geocaching does not get any it captures your imagination, doesn't it? Yes, it does. We should also say that if you are going to plant and start your own little geocache game, that you want to stay away from private land, first of all. Yeah. Some public officials are aware of geocaching and not everybody's hip with it. Right. Technically, the entire state of New Hampshire is one example. Well, they're willing to outlaw. Correct. Yeah. And I know national parks is not allowed. Some state parks it is allowed, but they say the whole spirit of this thing is to be respectful of the environment, not cause a mess, not damage anything. And it's really important to geocachers, too, that they're looked at in a favorable light. Yeah. They want to be looked at as cooperative and helpful. So basically, if you're hiding a geocache, you want to kind of pull your head out of the game and actually really kind of look around. Right. Not just look for a hiding place, but look at the impact that geocachers who come to look for your cash are going to have on this area. So you don't want to put it in a place flower bed. That's a good one. Yeah. Historic and archaeological sites. You don't want to place those there just basically anywhere where a lot of people tramping. I guess it's probably smart to assume that there's going to be a lot of hunters looking for it, that they're not going to really have a terrible impact on this area. Right. I would put one in a deer hunting tree stand and see what that did for you. Yeah. In the middle of deer season. Sure. Smart. Not a good idea. So, Chuck, is it true or not that you will be murdered if you remove a cash? Not true, but not cool. What about a spanking? You might get spanked. Yeah. That initial guy who started it, he might track you down. Geo spank you. But conversely, also, you want to maintain your cash. Right. Like, if you get a couple of logs of people saying, I couldn't find this thing no matter what, that's a bad sign. Yeah. It means you should go out and look at your cache. Yes. You want to be clever about where you hide it. Not too clever. Or somebody may have walked off with it. You want to also keep an eye on your logbook because if it gets filled up, you want to replace it with another one. You want to bag it. You want to bag everything ziplock so it doesn't get rained on. You want to double bag the log book. Absolutely. Leave a pen and a pencil just in case these guys and gals don't bring theirs along, because the log book is the most important part. Actually, the second well, I'd say it's a tie. The other most important part is that you log the stuff on the website as well when you get home. Right. So everyone else knows what's going on. Yeah. And the game continues. It does. And this podcast continues, Chuck, because there's actually variations on geocaching. This I thought was really cool. There's the straight up geocache, which we've been talking about. There's also multi caches love it. Which are basically there's a series of caches which are related to one another. So you go to one cache and inside, instead of Santana CDs or dare to keep kids off drug stickers, there are coordinates to another one. That's where I'm going to go. That's like a real treasure hunt. Yes, it is. Minus the treasure, of course. Yeah. Well, it depends on how many centuries you get. Plus, they say the treasure is in the experience itself. It's not so much about the trinkets. Like I said, in the spirit of goodness and giving. I see that you're put out by that you want some money or something. There's also the letter box hybrid. Yeah, explain that. So that's kind of like a combination between straight up geocaching and a type of treasure hunting, which is letterboxing. So it's like multi cash, but you have to solve puzzles or figure out hints or clues to the location along with these coordinates. Yeah, which sounds like fun. And the coordinate may be a starting point. Or is that a mystery cache that I'm thinking of? Yes, that is a mystery cache, if I'm not mistaken. Well, it was pretty close to the letterbox hybrid, frankly. And then there's the virtual cache, which I think kind of stinks because there's no loot involved. That's just the location. I thought you were in it for the spirit of caching. Well, for the spirit of that in O'maah, santana City. Yeah, I know what I'm getting you for Christmas. Santana City. Yeah. Sweet. And, Josh, you mentioned hints for the puzzle. That's not limited to just the letter box or the mystery cache. A lot of times you'll want to include little hints on your website to get people there, not only coordinates. Yeah. So, Chuck, if somebody wants to go ahead and get into this, where do you start? Well, I guess you would want to pick out a location, a general location, and like we said, since you have to manage your little stash here, then you want to have it kind of close by, so it's manageable and easy to get to. You don't want to have to manage something that you have to scale, like a 50 foot wall to get to, unless you're that dude, then knock yourself out. That's right, Chuck. But also, you want to start by buying the GPS receiver, right? That's a good place. And you don't want to just say, hey, I bought my GPS receiver. I'm going to start geocaching. You want to test it out a little bit first? And how do you do that, big boy? Well, I guess you would go to a spot ping where you are. Right? I don't know if it's called pinging or what we're going to call it ping. Ping where you are and then leave. And then see if you can get back there using the GPS. Right, yeah, that's pretty easy. I'd probably do it more than once, too, with a couple of different locations. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yes. But once you get started, then you can start a few hunts, maybe hide your own, meet some cool people, spend a bunch of money on disposable cameras, santana CDs. Yeah, it's wide open. I guess we need to cover the lingo real quick, too. All right, so if you're out there and you see these letters, like, if you're a texture, you don't know what lol means, you'd be mighty confused if everyone keeps saying law to you. So Cito means cash in, trash out. And that's one of the tenants is that you should kind of like hikers, take only pictures, leave only footprints mantra. So you should like, pick up trash along the way and take it with you. Got you that's one. You want to name another one or do you want me to do all these? Well, I already talked about TNL. Okay. Took nothing, leave nothing there's. FTF, which is a big one that's first to find. And if you're the first one to find the Stash, it's pretty cool. I can tell you a name for us. Geomuggles. I know just people who don't. Geocache. Yeah. So I'd say like 99.99, 97% of the global population are geomuggles. Geomuggles. Yeah, true. And a spoiler just like you would suppose is a comment that reveals the location on, like, a website or something. Yeah. And who would want to do that? Geomuggle would do that. Like any good underground hobby, it has its lingo, it has its websites. Sure. But like you were saying, it's family friendly and there's this kind of a cool spirit to it. It struck me as very open. I think Geocaching is one of the more friendly hobbies around. Yeah. Anytime you start a community like this, like the hash runs that people do, it's cool. It's something that people can take part in, and it's a lot of fun. Got you. I guess. Can we mention Philadelphia real quick? Sure. They actually have embraced it big time. In the spring of seven, they had a little thing where they wanted to promote a little promotional deal, the Franklin Institute's King Tut display. And they actually had a Geocaching game that they presented to the public where you'll go to twelve different sites related to the exhibit, and each site had to stamp. And you collected these stamps, and once you've collected all of them, then you get a prize at the end, which, from what I understand, was a Santana CD. Yeah. And a ticket to the King Tide exhibit. Nice. So, Chuck, is that it? That is it. And if you want to know more about Geocaching, I got to tell you, Strickland wrote the definitive article on this. He used the geek god tone where it was like, no drugs. Sure. He did it. He knocked it out of the park. He did. So if you want to learn more about Geocaching, I would strongly urge you to, even before you go buy your GPS receiver, read Jonathan Strickland's article on Geocaching. Good start. And also Marshall Brain, founder of the site, and Tom Harris, one of our freelance writers, wrote how GPS Works. Really good overview of how global positioning works. Those are two good articles. You can find them both by typing in GPS into the handysearchbar Athousepworks.com. And Chuck, before we do listen or mail, let's plug. What are we plugging? Let's plug the webcast and the blog. Okay. Every Wednesday afternoon, 01:00 p.m.. Eastern Standard Time, josh and I do a little webcast live. It's a live video webcast, just so there's no mistaking it. And it's more newsy. And we cover current events and interesting topics from around the world. And it's fun. We've been getting some. It is fun. It's gotten to be fun. I stopped feeling the urge to vomit right before it. Every time. You're solid, bro. It's good. How are you, buddy? Thanks. And then we also have a blog. Stuff you should know. Blog very much in the spirit of stuff you should know. We pretty much write about whatever strikes our fancy, which is nice. Yes. You wrote about a gun toting town hall meeting attendee recently, and some good debate on that one, which I figured, yeah, it's nice. I wrote about Gary Warren, the founder of the Suicide Club. So those are just a couple that was examples. Thanks, bud. So that's plugfest nine, which means it's time for a listener mail. Yes. Before we again do listener mail, our producer Jerry had a special request because we referred to the great IRA Glass as our archae nemesis. And a few podcasts ago, I remember, which we gotten some response. People are like, what's going on, guys? We love Iraglass. We figured you all would be fans, too. We do love I reglass. Oh. We're big time fans. And we love this American life. And there's a friendly ratings war that they consistently win. So that's why we call them our arch nemesis. But there's nothing but love. Sure. And I regulate if, you know, we exist. We love you. Thank you for inspiring us. Yes. So, what else you got? I got listener mail. Okay. All right, Josh. Listener meal time. We have a couple of quickies here. I can call this one Sarcopenia proven. So we had a guy right in, said he's been listening for a while now, and he wants to say that we're great. He is a gym dude. And he was listening to the podcast at the gym, and it struck a chord with me. About six months ago, a little fragile, hunched over lady started showing up at the gym. I probably would not have taken much notice, but she was totting around a portable oxygen tank. Holy cow. Which gave me a deep respect for her tenacity and a water bottle with a very large straw protruding from it. She shows up on a regular basis and puts everyone else to shame and works hard with the trainer. Since that time, she has become the poster child for reversing the aging process. First, she dropped the oxygen tank. Completely gone. Well, then she lost her hunch in her back and is walking upright again. That's awesome. She still has a water bottle with a straw, which has become the only way for me to identify her because she looks so much younger. Thanks for helping me understand exactly how this went down. And that is from Jason. Booyah. Pretty cool. Yeah. And then another quickie. This is from our buddy Danielle in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Danielle and I are Pinpals, and she loves that we mentioned Eau Claire and Sheboygan and places like that, so she sent us a list of other Wisconsin cities that she bets we cannot pronounce. All right, I'm just going to put that here. Okay. And I'm going to go ahead and say the first one is okanama kawa. Kawk. I think you're way off. All right, you go next. Wawa tosa. That was pretty easy. The next one is altogima. You sound Cambodian. I'm going to try tremphalo. All right. It's not easywani. E. Yes. That's not easy at all. All right, Wakeisha. And finally we have wyawakea. Yeah. And then the last one is double dash Danielle. Yeah. Danielle. Weird sitting in. That's the pen pal. Danielle. Take that. Yeah. Perfect pronunciation all the way down the list. Yeah. In your face, Danielle. And Sarcopenia, if you want to correspond with Chuck or I, chuck is actually really good at responding to listener mail, and he's made some pretty good friends along the way. So if you want to be Chuck's friend, send an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-about-brain.mp3	Myths About the Brain	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/myths-about-the-brain	As is usual for SYSK, Josh and Chuck go over some, but not all, of the entries in this list of ten common myths about the brain. While it lives there in your noggin you don't really have much of a grasp on your brain and how it works. You think you do, bu	As is usual for SYSK, Josh and Chuck go over some, but not all, of the entries in this list of ten common myths about the brain. While it lives there in your noggin you don't really have much of a grasp on your brain and how it works. You think you do, bu	Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:27:10 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=21, tm_min=27, tm_sec=10, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=45, tm_isdst=0)	23887694	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. Oh, the podcast. Greetings, Earthlings. Hello, everyone. Brains. Brains. Brains. That's my intro. That you didn't do it ten times, though. No one wants to hear that. And we're not going to even talk about ten brain myths, even though this episode is called Ten Myths About the Brain. Yeah. If you're new to the show and you've never heard us through one of our famous top ten, then you probably don't know we rarely cover all ten. We will tease you a bit with six to eight and then say, go read the article if you want the other one. Exactly. And in this case, we've actually covered a couple of the things before, so there's no point in rehashing. Exactly. So I guess I just probably need to explain that you laid the ground rules pretty well, man. So a top ten, that is really not ten. So we have brains. Yes. In our heads. And I think most people walk around feeling like they have some ideas about the brain, some understanding, but it turns out that some of them are wrong. There are myths out there, and some of them have kind of interesting, weird origins, too. Yeah, I thought this is a pretty cool article because we've covered the brain a lot, and it's one of our favorite, favorite subjects. So it's kind of cool to root out some of these things that a couple of these I thought were true. Well, for example, like, your brain is gray. I thought that to be true. Well, and it's understandable why too, because people call the brain gray matter. Sure. Apparently hercule pawl row. I just said that like a dog. No, that was right. It was an odd name to have to say, though. Yeah. Hercules, especially from my tongue, marble mouth. He used to call his brain his gray cells. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, everybody thinks the brain is great and it is gray. There are very much lots of gray areas called gray matter, but there's other colors to the brain, too. Yeah. This kind of knocked me out because I had no idea that the brain was also white, black and red. Like our Georgia Bulldogs in Atlanta. Falcons laughing in there. Everybody's brain is walking around the Bulldog fans. So like you said, there is a lot of gray matter cells, neurons connecting to each other. There's also white matter. Well, that's the stuff that connects them. Well, the white matter is the nerve fibers. Right, right. So it connects like your gray matter regions to one another. Got you. So that makes sense. Yeah. But what about the substantia nigra latin for black substance? Part of your brain is black. I would think that would be scary. Yeah. He was dead. You'd think so but that region of the brain, it has to do with motor control, like fine control. And they think that possibly that's where Parkinson's damage comes from or Parkinson's disease is located there. And the reason it's black is because of neuromelanin, which is a pigment. And I was very curious why your brain would need any kind of pigment whatsoever. Yeah. Did you get to that? Yeah, it turns out they don't know. But they think that basically removes heavy metals from your bloodstream from that area and that they also think that it has to do with there's adrenal chromosome. Do you remember that from fair and loving Las Vegas? Yes. So that stuff is real and your brain produces as a byproduct of some of its normal processes. And we would all be totally psychotic apparently from the stuff if it wasn't for neuromel. And if they think basically getting rid of it. So we depend on that color. Well, yeah, that pigment at least. Right. Wow. Not for coloring in this case, but for some other stuff. Yeah. The reason we think gray, besides people calling it gray matters because usually when we see brain, it's floating in a jar and it has been turned gray from the formaldehyde and stuff. But I couldn't find any kind of picture of like an active brain with all these colors. I guess that's impossible unless they just peel your skull off and take a picture real quick. Yeah, I'm sure that was exist. Why couldn't I find a picture? I don't know. Yes, they do brain surgery with a healthy living brain. Super hard though, that's the secret. So there you go. Red, black, white and gray your brain. All right. Number two, listening to Mozart makes you smarter. Yeah. This one I thought was proven. I did too. Because baby Einstein, if you've never heard of that, that is parents who live in this stuff. Big multi million dollar industry of packaging classical music and poetry and stuff like that to play not just to your baby and toddler and growing child, but for your fetus as well, even. Yeah. The Mozart effect is what it's called. Right. Maybe it's going to be smarter. Apparently the Mozart effect is trademarked by a guy named Dan Campbell who basically puts together mozart and CDs and books and stuff like that. The thing is, this mozart effect, it was first noted in the think by an ear, nose, and throat doctor named Albert Tomatis. And he said that you say tomatoes, I say tomatoes. He said that his patients who were struggling with speech and auditory disorders showed improvement when they listened to Mozart specifically. And then in the 90s, somebody else apparently conducted a test at the university of California, Irvine that showed that people's IQ scores improved after listening to Mozart. And then the Mozart effect was born. Also based on these studies, I would think that it does make you smarter. So is that true? Apparently. Not necessarily. No. Because these are all myths. Yeah. That UC Irvine study in particular was kind of taken out of context, I get the impression. And they were saying, well, we never said it makes you smarter. We just said that it improved people's ability on the specific temporal spatial test. This one specific thing. We didn't say it makes you smarter. Right. That's the popular media that did that. So things got a little twisted around over time, and since then, they have not been able to duplicate these results from that original test. So it turns out it probably won't hurt you any, but listening to classical music is not going to actually make you smarter. But they have found that learning to play music can do a lot of stuff. It improves concentration, self confidence, coordination. Oh, really? Yeah. And you mentioned people playing Mozart to get the Mozart effect for their fetuses. Yes. Have you ever heard the one that you get a new wrinkle in your brain every time you learn something? I knew that wasn't true. It sounds a little bit like an angel gets his wings every time a bell ring. Totally. That is not true. But there are some cool little factoids in here, one of which is that by the time you reach 40 weeks old, you have the same brain. It will get larger, of course, but you have all the same little folds and crevices called Jerry and Susie all folded up together. And the reason it's folded up together is because our brain is large and the skull isn't. So it needed to scrunch itself in there as we evolved. And I think if you unfolded all that, the brain would be the size of a tennis court. No, that's the intestine. Right. A pillowcase. Right, okay. That's still pretty big. Yeah, it's huge. And that's why we're so smart. Which kind of leads us to another myth, that humans have the biggest brain, which is not the case. Which makes sense to me. I thought this one was pretty cool, actually. A lot of people walking around think that because we're so smart, we must have the biggest brain. But if you think about it, no, a whale's going to have a bigger brain than a human brain. That's true, because whales are enormous. Yes. Our brain is about \u00a33. A whale sperm whale is about, what, \u00a317? Yes, which is a huge brain. So why aren't sperm whales running the planet? The reason why it doesn't really matter the size of the brain is the size of the brain to the rest of the body. That ratio is what matters. Yeah, I thought that was super interesting. They use dolphins as an example, because a dolphin's brain is about the same size of a human's brain. Dolphins are super smart. Right. But an average dolphin weighs about \u00a3350. I don't know. Does it say how much the average adult weighs? It's not \u00a3350. I would say, depending on whether it's male or female, anywhere between 100 to \u00a3200, whether or not average somewhere in there. Sorry. And then they also go on to name some other animals, which was just sort of cute to think about. A beagle's brain is 2.5oz. Cute little beagle. They're very cute. And a sparrow has a brain that weighs less than half an ounce. Right. That's adorable. So again, though, it's the brain size to body size ratio. In humans, it's one to 50. Most other mammals, it's one to 180. Yeah. And then in birds, it's one to 220. Typically. Yeah. But we do have humans compared to mammals. We have the largest cerebral cortex. Right. Which is really where that's the money section. It's also the newest part of our brain. It's on the outermost surface, and that's where all the higher functions are carried out. And that's what really separates us. That's why we run the planet. Otherwise we'd just be orangutangs what about subliminal messages? Have we learned from those? That is a falsehood, sir. I guess that's the spoiler. All these are false. Yeah, they're myths. Yeah, they're a myths. But back in the 1950s, there was a marketing executive, a researcher named James Vickery, who everyone always heard you go to the movies and they flash up Coca Cola and popcorn. I thought that was a myth. I did, too, but that was true. They did that in 57. Yeah. There's a still in this article from the movie Picnic, starring Kim Novak. That's awesome. And over Kim's face, it says, hungry eat popcorn. And it's from a frame of the movie, so that's one 3000th of a second. And Vickery said, you know what? Sales increased in the theater by 18% for popcorn. I'm sorry. For drinks. And by 57% for popcorn, thanks to these messages. Yeah. And everybody said, okay, well, we're very interested in basically psychologically manipulating everybody into buying our products. They started putting that stuff in jingles and in movies and television, and they found pretty quickly that it actually doesn't have an effect. Yeah, well, they banned it. First of all, the FCC banned it in 1974 because they did think it worked at the time. Okay. But then later on, it turns out that James Vickery just lied about the results. Yeah, not true at all. He's like, hey, I was a sales guy, not a scientist. What do you expect? Like you said, the FCC band subliminal advertising in general, which is a good move, because if it did work, that's not okay. No, but a lot of people still think that it's still around, and then it actually does work. Yes, but it is not true. And they even tested this in Canada, evidently on TV. They flashed the message Call now during a broadcast. And I guess nobody called. Yeah, maybe they didn't give a number of experience. I feel like I need to call somebody, but I don't get it. I wondered, though, like, if they were studying the wrong thing. Like call now makes sense. Right. But what if it has to be much more explicit? Like, hungry, eat popcorn. You can't eat popcorn. Maybe that would make you grab a bite of popcorn if it were in your lap. Right. Maybe it has to be more direct, like, hungry, go buy popcorn at the front concession stand now. Right? Yeah. Because then your brain would obey that command interested rather than a roundabout command. That's the result of something you have to do telling you to go do that thing. Maybe that would work. So you're leaving the door open for this, for further testing. I could see it subliminal below the Lyman or lemon, which is the threshold of our conscious awareness. Yeah, it looks like Lyman by itself. That's what's, in spring. But if you said sublimenal, then somebody would just punch you upside the head. Where are we now? We are on the idea that brain damage is always permanent. I didn't know that this was a thing. I didn't know that people said that. Sure. I never heard that. Well, I think the point of it is that the brain can't repair itself once it's damaged. And that's absolutely not true. No, it's not true. The brain is extremely resilient. It's so much so that there's this thing called plasticity, which it kind of ties into that idea that you get a new wrinkle when you learn something. Right. That's not true. But your brain can rewire itself. That's how you learn and unlearn behaviors through brain plasticity. Yeah. So I guess there's some truth in that. Neurons, once they are damaged, they cannot grow back. Right. But thanks to plasticity, that will make new neural connections in sometimes surprising ways. Which is why if you've had a stroke and damaged part of your brain, you can relearn to speak. Perhaps if you've lost that ability by forging these new connections. There's a girl out there who has only one hemisphere of her brain that's it born that way. I don't remember she was born that way or if it was the result of surgery or damage or something. But she's got half of a brain. Her brain has just one hemisphere, and she has binocular vision. She can see out of both eyes, which they had no idea how that was going on. And they finally went in and looked, I guess, using an MRI, and they found that her optic nerve that should be connected to the missing hemisphere have basically had grown to go patch into another part of her brain on the other side. And it basically hijacked this other part of her brain and was using it for site. That is unbelievable. That's the brain. I wonder what you lose, though. I wonder if it forges a connection and at the expense of another. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Could she be like, man, I can see through both eyes, but I can't tie my shoe any longer. Yeah, maybe it's possible. Interesting. But I mean, the brain would say, well, it's better you can see somebody else can tie your shoes. Well, that makes me wonder, though. I wonder if there's an order to at all, like, if the brain knows what's more important. Yes, there is, as a matter of fact. This ties into the idea that you only use 10% of your brain. Wow. All right, let's hear it. Well, that's not true, by the way. It's a myth. Right. And actually, that one has a pretty interesting origin, doesn't it? Yeah. They're not quite sure where it came from. It seems like it's always been around, though, the notion that you only use 10% of your brain. But they think it may have come from American psychologist William James in the early 1900s when he said, the average person rarely achieves but a small portion of his or her potential. And that was just sort of twisted into 10% of your brain is used. And you see people taking advantage of this notion all the time with self help books like tap into the other 90%. And it's just bunk. Right. And this is where it ties in. It is bunk in that all regions, all physical regions of your brain are being used. Yeah, but there's a theory that's around for savantism that explains savantism, which I want to do some day. We need to write the article on it. We've covered it a lot in different areas. It's so fascinating. Totally. There's a theory right now that savantism is from the result of brain damage. What? Savantism is the result of the brain's tyranny of the frontal lobe, is what it's called. Really? And basically, the idea is that your frontal lobe decides what's important, and it bosses around all the other regions of your brain I see. To carry out this very smooth, efficient, streamlined process that basically it decides is the most important. And in doing so, it casts to the side a lot of other stuff, like the ability to make great art or the ability to count a bunch of matches that just fell on the floor, whatever. And that savantism is the result of this executive function. This tyranny of the frontal cortex being disrupted so that maybe you aren't just the most efficient shark in the tank any longer. And you're not out there and going and trying to compete and beat everybody else. But there's all these other things that are now free to just kind of blossom. Like artistic deep. Amazing. Artistic interesting abilities. Wow. Yeah. That's this theory, and we're just now learning this stuff, but it suggests that maybe we do only use a portion of our abilities, not physical. Like we're using 100% of the physical parts of our brain, but what we're using it for is that issue. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So there's definitely something to that. Yeah. I trip out on the brain a lot. Like, when I'm studying it for the podcast, I'll get sidetracked. Like this morning, I was reading this article, and I just had one of those little flights of fancy where it amazed me that I was looking at these printed shapes on a paper that formed words into sentences that I understood and had meaning. And I just was amazed by the brain just laying in bed this morning. I was like, My God, that's nice. I'm reading these words that makes sense, and I'm speaking words that have a symbol form on a paper. And I promise you I wasn't on LSD this morning, but I just had one of those moments where it just totally amazed me that I was even able to read. That's awesome. Yeah. So the brain basically made you impressed with itself. Yes, it did. And while you mentioned LLC, I guess we can say in passing, apparently drugs do not create holes in your brain. That is not true. And there's a lot of back and forth over how much damage drugs do to your brain at all, how repairable that damage is. And there are studies going on all the time about long term drug use. And the results one of them interestingly, found that they think that some long term use of some drugs can cause structures in the brain to grow. And that is why addicts may have a hard time kicking the habit, because they've grown a certain part of their brain, I guess, to your rewards are good on that. Yeah. Your limbic system is strengthened through that. Very interesting. Yeah. And alcohol does not kill brain cells. It damages the dentrites that we've talked about. And those are the ends of the neurons where the connections are taking place, I guess. Right. So it makes your neurons talk sideways to one another, like the brain cells are still there, but they just can't talk your pal. Yes, pretty much. And there's something, a neurological disorder called Wernicke Corsicoff syndrome, and that can result in a loss of neurons in the brain. But that's basically what I think of when I think someone has pickled themselves with alcohol. But that's kind of what's going on. It's actually not the alcohol that's killing brain cells. It's from a deficiency in Thiamine. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So if you have a Thiamine deficiency, you can get this worn Ike Corsicoff syndrome, and that's a B vitamin. Yeah. And if you are an alcoholic, you typically aren't absorbing your Thiamine like you would if you weren't an alcoholic, which is why it's associated with alcoholism. But it's not alcohol killing brain cells. Right. And it's much easier for me just to say they've pickled themselves, which is really sad. We're laughing, but it is super sad. Yes, it is. If you've ever met anyone that was pickled well, yeah. Any addicts suffering as a result, their addiction is extremely sad. It is so that's all I got. How many was that? Seven, eight, six and a half? Something like that. If you want to learn the fate of the other remaining brain myths from the top ten list, type in brainmyths in the search bar@housetepworks.com and it will bring this article up. And actually, we sort of have issue with one of them we left off was the Decapitation. They said it was a myth. I guess I didn't even read it, kind of but didn't we say it was saying they're like, yeah, it's going to last for a couple of seconds, or whatever, which is what we said in the podcast. But for some reason they made that seem like but that's nothing. Right? But then they said that it's an extremely painful way to die because you are conscious afterward. It was kind of a cluster mixed messages. Yeah. All right, so I said, first parts need some time to listen to mail. Yes. I'm going to call this poopy time. We did our podcast on fecal transplants. We've had all manner of Poopy emails coming in and I'm going to share one from Jacob Carnes. Hi, Josh. Chuck and Jerry. And he spelled Jerry right. I just finished the fecal transplant podcast and felt compelled to write in after you mentioned the norovirus, which I was afflicted with about two weeks ago. Didn't last long, just about 24 hours, but it hit instantly like someone flipped a switch. I will spare you the details, but it was nearly the worst I've ever felt. The day after was nearly the best I've ever felt due to the euphoria of still being alive. But for the following week, my gut felt like it just wasn't right. My hunch is that it was really messed with the internal flora. He needs some Kombucha. It's this fermented, basically like probiotic drink, I guess. It's Eastern. It's really delicious. There's some good, delicious Kombucha drinks out there and it supposedly promotes colonization in your gut. You're drinking this stuff? I love it. Yeah. Where you get it? Whole Foods has this kind, it's called and they have a specific flavor called Ginger Aid. That's just so good. I have to check that out. Yeah. All right. He follows up to say and this is my favorite part. Like I said, I felt compelled to write after you mentioned the norovirus, but I felt obligated after you brought up the terror of your young self experience. When you had the misfortune of using the bathroom after your father's remember that old man Poop? Yeah. When I was a child, my father liked to enjoy a cigarette while doing his business. It is very 70s, so when I heard the call shortly after him, I was subjected to the patriot number two smell mixed with the stale cigarette smoke. And to this day, I have trouble separating the latter from the former. As I grew up, the need to look cool convinced me to try and take up the habit of smoking to look cool on the toilet numerous times. But my childhood association has at least helped me come to my senses. So he never learned to smoke because he associated with his dad's poop. That's good. Whatever works. Yeah. Thanks for another great podcast, guy. Jacob Carnes. Yeah, I guess for all of you smoking out there, like, take it to the toilet, see what happens. Take a big whiff of poop while you're smoking a cigarette and they'll probably break you of your habit. Mixing disgust with anything will break you up habits, right? Yeah. If you have a bad habit breaking tip, we want to hear it because that's a demonstration of brain plasticity. As you know, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast, you can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheaknow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the web, stuckyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school is out, the sun shining, the daylight is longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing Poolsite, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before or you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…on-ivy-final.mp3	How Poison Ivy Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-poison-ivy-works	Poison ivy, oak and sumac are all variations of the same plant and they all can make you itch... if you're susceptible that is. In this episode, you'll learn just about all there is to know about this itch-causing plant, including how to best avoid it.	Poison ivy, oak and sumac are all variations of the same plant and they all can make you itch... if you're susceptible that is. In this episode, you'll learn just about all there is to know about this itch-causing plant, including how to best avoid it.	Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:10:37 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=16, tm_min=10, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=27, tm_isdst=0)	31691409	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Well, this is stuff you should know. It looks like you're about to describe the room too depressing in here. Yeah. And we might as well announce that we're moving. I don't think we've announced that yet, have we? No, we haven't. No. We are finally moving. We've been in this building since you and I and Jerry have been here. Yeah, actually since House Supports has been around. Right. I think it started in North Carolina. Well, no. Marshall Brains Kitchen. No, I mean the Atlanta version. I genuinely don't know, but probably. Yeah. So we've been in this building in bucket Atlanta. It's not super exciting. And our first office was kind of cool. This one is decidedly not cool. We call this one the call center. Yeah. It's just not a creative space. And so when we were sold by Discovery Channel this summer, our new parents, Blue Cora right. Said, let's move you into a cool, creative, awesome new space. And we are all super excited. Except for you, probably with a commute. Yeah, but I mean, it's still exciting. Pretty cool. I mean, there's going to be an easy kaya downstairs. Yeah. I think it's the same people that developed Chelsea Market. Yeah. New York City. Yes. So they're doing something here, too, and we're moving into it. Yeah, it's called Pont City Market and it is the old Sears building from the early 1019 hundreds, which I used to go to as a kid when it was Sears in the 1900. Very funny. What was the wow, that's a not bad suck. You were thinking 1920s, though. I know where you're going. So we're trying to have a bigger presence in Atlanta and be a little more visible in the world. In the world. And so we're going to have a cool new office space and it's just awesome. So thanks to our boss Jason and Jerry for working so hard on all this and Michael and Izzy and everyone's done a great job when we're moving in the last six shows or so we're recording here ish until we move into our new place. Yeah. So I just wanted to say that we're super excited. That was nice, Chuck. Yeah, hats off to you too. Yeah. Killed a few minutes. So that has nothing to do with poison ivy at all. No. And as a matter of fact, I'll bet there's not much poison ivy around Pont City Market. No, I hope not. Seems like the kind of place where they would keep the poison ivy under control. Yeah. And I imagine this also, by the way, will be a show where there will be many people scratching themselves. I did while I was researching. A matter of fact, I just scratched my ear while you said that. Yes, but that had nothing to do with poison ivy. I have a poison ivy story for you. All right, let's hear it. So actually, when I lived in the Highlands let's see, not too far from Pont City Market. Yeah, you mean I had this house we were renting. I remember the house, and it had a pretty substantial poison ivy vine growing up, this big oak tree in the front yard. The front yard? Yeah. You probably wouldn't have seen it, not care on the back. Right. I, for some reason, had a suspicion that I was immune to poison ivy. Dude, I remember that. I don't know why I thought that, but I did. Even still, I took some precautions. I wore, like, gloves and a long sleeve shirt and jeans and boots and everything like we're supposed to. And then I went out and decided to take this thing out. Yeah. That's when you are in your homesteading days. Right. So first things first, you have to chop the vine, right? Because it grows alongside the tree, latches onto it to grow up. Yeah, it can. So when it gets its meat hooks onto the tree I think that's the technical term for it, it's kind of tough to pull away, so you want to chop it off first, and then you pull it away from the tree. And this thing was growing way up, this oak tree. It was a substantial poison ivy vine. So when I pulled it down, not only did a lot of the poison ivy detritus fall down on me, the whole vine, like a 20 foot vine just fell down on top of me. And I'm looking up as this stuff is falling down. It's going into my face, it's getting under my shirt, it's going into my mouth, my eyes, everywhere. Right. And I'm thinking, man, I'm really glad I'm immune to poison ivy. Still, I don't remember why I thought this. I'm picturing you standing there with your mouth wide open, pretty much like, wow, it's a lot of poison ivy that just came down. So I'm standing there, I'm starting to clean it up, and no rash is coming around. I'm like, awesome. I am immune to poison ivy. I was right, because it's been, like, two minutes and no response. Sure. Well, fast forward to like, an hour or two later. Is that all? It was pretty quick. I was like, oh, no, I told you too. I was like, I'm immune. And she was like, you need to get out of those clothes and take a shower. But it was too late. And I guess you remember. I do. It was really bad for a couple of weeks. Yeah. I have always thought I am immune, and I may be, because I've still never gotten poison ivy at all. That is really surprising. Yes. And I've been in contact with it plenty as an outdoors enthusiast and a camper and hiker. But I remember I was telling Jerry in between, my father used to get it crazy. Like, one of the memories I have as a child is my dad seems like he constantly had poison ivy and that pink calamine lotion. Yes. Just constantly slathered on his body. Poor guy. And a lot of myths being bandied about. Like, I would catch it from him. Right. Or don't scratch because you'll spread it. Neither one of those things are true. No. Judd Apatow's wife lied in. Big Daddy. Did she say that in Big Daddy? Yeah, she was like the little kid was scratching and she was like, don't let them scratch. Here, put this, like, frozen broccoli on it. It'll spread the rash if you scratch. It not true. It's a lie. So Knockwood. I still have not gotten poison ivy, and that was one of our best intros ever. That's a good one. I'm itchy now. Yeah. So let's talk about poison ivy. Chuck that was, like, a good story, where one of us is a bonehead man. I can't believe it. And I think it was just from having been outside and not getting a rash or poison ivy, but I guess I just hadn't come into contact with it. Well, no. Or we'll learn that you could have been immune for a while and developed after repeated exposure. Yeah, that can happen, too, but usually it goes the opposite way. The more exposure, the less it happens. Yeah. Which is why a lot of adults basically age out of an allergy to poison ivy if they come in contact with it enough time. I'll have to ask my dad, actually, next time I see him. So apparently, back in the day, poison ivy was used as an ornamental shrub or vine, because it comes in both varieties, and then they were like, something that causes this much of a reaction in humans has to have some sort of medicinal benefits. Right. And actually, there was at least one guy who really researched poison ivy as a medicine, and supposedly he cured skin ailments. Really? He made some sort of tonic that he drank and said it cured, like, a stomach ailment, although it made him sweat and urinate more than usual. And this guy was a real urinator, too, so that's something he was. But he apparently was one of the only people who really looked into it, and other scientists were like, we're just leaving that thing alone. I think the name of Americans did, though, right? I did not see that. Okay. I think I saw that they used it for medicine. Yeah. Which shouldn't be surprising because they had a lot of home spun sciences. They had it figured out. Sure. But it wasn't until, I think, like, the well, the early 20th century, that a Japanese researcher by the name of Majima isolated what it was in poison ivy that makes us allergic and which is why it has a Japanese name. Correct. Yes, that's exactly right. Which is urushiol. Urushiol, yeah. After the Japanese urushi, which means lacquer. Yeah. And basically it is the chemical that is in the SAP. That is what causes the rash. And apparently the rash is actually called poison ivy as well. Oh, really? That's what it says here. It says poison ivy is the red itchy rash caused by the plant that bears its name. Oh, yeah. So I always just called it. Well, people say you got poison ivy. Yes, that's right. I never thought of it like that. I didn't either. That's exactly right. What a breakthrough. That's amazing. And the way you get poison ivy is by coming into direct contact with this arushaw. It's in the plant, it's in the leaves, it's in the roots, it's in the stems, and you can get it not only well, you have to come in contact with that, but it doesn't mean from the plan. It can be on a garden ray candle. Yeah. Or a football that you throw in the woods, or your animals fur. That's right. But it still has to be that actual chemical compound. And it's got staying power, too. Supposedly all can stay potent for years. Yeah, I saw that. Like a rake from last summer. If you pick it up the next year, you can still get it. Yeah. That's insane. So, Chuckers, if you are immune to poison ivy, as you claim, you fall into the lucky 15% of people estimated who are immune to poison ivy. But for the rest of us, the 85%, we are allergic to arushaw. Yeah. And it doesn't take much. They say here, 1,000,000,000th of a gram is all it takes sometimes. And this is not just poison ivy, we should point out there is also poison sumac and poison oak, eastern and western poison oak, which are all part of the same family that I'm not going to try and pronounce. Let me give it a try. Okay. Anacardis CA. Man, I said it like out loud while I was studying and it didn't take. Anacardis CA. Anacardio. Anacardioce. Okay. That sounds about right. When you have any vowels, it's very difficult. Yeah. The AC E-A-E at the end really kind of messes up, but a CA. Yeah. So anacardia CA. Yeah, I think that's right. I did it. One day we're going to practice these things twelve times before we record, instead of on the air, mixed for Riveting podcasting. So, like I said, it's in the stems, the leaves, the roots, the whole shema. If you want to avoid the rash, you have to avoid the plant. And just because the old saying, leaves free, leaves three, leave it be. It's true in a lot of cases, but not always. Homer Simpson says leaves afore. Eat some more. I think I remember that. That's so funny. And you said that it's found in the roots, the stems, the leaves, the whole shebang. Yeah, whole shebang. But even after the plant dies, arushiol can stick around. That's how tough this stuff is sure. Like you killed that vine in your front yard. And what did you do? Did you leave it there or did you eventually get around to I cut it and pulled it right down. It was a potent as. The day is long when I cut it. No, but what'd you do after it was laying there on the ground? I just cleaned it up. I was immune. Remember you finished it up and put it in like a garden bag or something? Yeah. Okay. I might as well have just rolled in it naked. You probably thought, though, you were like, yeah, I showed you. Yeah, I think I probably was cursing as I was pulling it because it was hanging onto the tree so much. Oh, yeah, man, that stuff is like cement. But the point being, even after you had killed it and chopped it up into tiny pieces, it still has that active ingredient. And like you said, it doesn't take much like a billionth of a gram. That's right. That's not very much of this stuff. That's like a drop. That's less than a drop. Yeah. So we said the leave three is a good rule to go by. The center leave is usually larger, but not always. Here are some other ways to identify it, though. It's generally in a cluster, like a low weed light or a vine, like you said, that can climb. Right. So it's either on the ground or it's climbing. This isn't helping differentiate. No, it really isn't. By riverbanks in the woods, moist areas. If you go hiking a lot or camping, you're going to see it everywhere. And the leaves are smooth and have a little teeth sometimes. Serrated. Yes, like a serrated edge could be to put it their color also changes, which makes it difficult. I didn't know that. I don't really remember that either. I had no idea. I thought it just turned brown. I thought they went from green to brown when it went dormant. When the actual plant goes dormant, apparently it's a seasonal thing, like reddish then green, then yellow. Yeah. Which is another reason why they were sold as ornamental vines for a while. That makes sense. But yeah, people are like, no, this is just foolishness. And white berries, apparently. Well, let's take a message break and then we'll talk a little bit about the oaks and Sumax. Oh boy. Right after this. All right. Oaks and Sumax, my friend, they are a little different in appearance. Yeah. So poison oak is called that because it grows into a shrub. I've never thought about that. Right. So you walk on, you're like, oh, look at this cute little oak tree. You're going to be so big one day and you put your face all over it or whatever. Yeah, you got poison oak on your face, you dummy. Don't ever get too close to an oak sapling because it could kill you and your whole family if it wanted to. That's right. And they can be from a foot to 6ft tall and on the West Coast and in the south, although I don't think we said that you're going to find poison ivy everywhere. But it says Southwest, but I looked at a map and it looked like kind of just California. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it kind of squirted out a little bit there into Arizona, some, like, in the desert, but then other parts of Arizona. Obviously you're going to find it. But most of the country, you can get your poison ivy, except Alaska or Hawaii, because those are great places. I'm surprised Alaska I'm surprised Hawaii doesn't have it. Everything grows in Hawaii. Yes, but I don't know, hawaii doesn't strike me as like, woodsy. It seems more like, oh, there's a lot of woods. There lush and palm trees and, like, rainforests. Right. But I mean, the stuff grows in moist areas. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what to think anymore. Well, this is the thing. You can't identify it. It grows everywhere. Even the places they say it doesn't grow. I mean, we're in trouble, basically. So the oak, the leaves can also be in threes, but they are thick, green and hairy on both sides. I think the hairy thing is what's the dead giveaway with the family. Yeah. And then the sumac, you're going to find that in swamps or in the Northeast and Midwest, along the rivers. And it's a woody shrub. I love that word, sumac. Yeah, I do, too. It makes me think of, like, a Native American, like just rolling a canoe of their own making down a river. Wow. Sumac. That's what it evokes in my mind's eye. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And they have stems with rows of seven to 13 smooth edged leaflets. Yeah. It doesn't look anything like poison oak or poison ivy. No. And you should know what this stuff looks like pretty much by now. But if you're a city dweller, you're going to go to the country, look it up online, just look at some photos. Can you identify poison sumac? No, but poison ivy for sure. Yeah, I usually can. Or if I have a question about it, I just assume it is poison ivy and steer clear. Yes. I don't think I've ever seen the sumac. I haven't either, until this article. It's kind of pretty. It is pretty, yeah, it'll just put your face in, it destroy you. So, Chuck, I guess let's stop beating around the bush here. Okay. Terrible. Yeah. What exactly is going on when poison ivy and specifically arushiol, comes into contact with your skin? Why do you break out in a terrible, terrible rash? Well, it's pretty much the same. If you remember our Allergy podcast, the same kind of thing is going on, from what I can tell. It's like a mistaken response right. To something that shouldn't give you a rash. That's right. Which is why you see animals eating it like crazy and rolling around in it? Because they're not dumb humans with dumb immune system, they're like, this stuff really is no big deal. Yeah. Your immune system, when it encounters arushiol, turns into some bonehead at the bar who got this heightened response. Dulukuma girlfriend wants to fight everybody. That's what your Tcells do in your immune system. Sure. So the arushaw, because of the way that it's formed the compound that it is, it makes it through the skin pretty easily. Yeah. And as it is absorbed, your body, your skin actually metabolizes it and breaks it up into little components and presents it to your T cells, your immune system cells, to say, hey, are these guys cool? You recognize these guys? And again, your T cells are like, no, I want to fight this guy. And he calls his boys the site of kings. Right? Yeah, the site of kings come along and they're like, yeah, let's fight. Yeah. Look at those white blood cells. Because they are some tough dudes, right? And the white blood cells come in, and they're huge, and they turn into macrophages. That's right. And they eat stuff. They eat the foreign substance like crazy. And in doing so, that's where you get your rash. It damages the tissue. Yeah. Because they're not just focusing on the arousi all. No, because it's indiscriminately, just messing the whole place up. The whole bar just goes to pot because there's like glasses broken and stools thrown and everything is just messed up. Yeah. It's like the movie Hooper with Burt Reynolds. I haven't seen that one. One of the great Barfights of all time. Oh, I got to see it. Yeah. So that's what's going on, basically. That's where the inflammation comes from. It is just like in allergies with hay fever. It's a mistaken response to that pollen in hay fever's case. And it's just your dumb body not knowing that. It really shouldn't be a big deal. Exactly. Which is why, over time, over repeated exposure to poison ivy, even those lunkhead T cells figure out, like, you're a pal. I don't have to mess with you. Right. I know. My girlfriend is pretty it's cool. I'd look at her, too. Right? They calm down over a while. Yeah. So eventually, I guess, if you just rubbed poison ivy on yourself enough time, your response wouldn't occur at all. Yeah. But there is a myth that you can eat poison ivy to develop that immune response. Do not do that. Don't do that, because you could die. No, seriously. Right. So what we just described can happen on your internal organs rather than your skin. The macrophages come in and indiscriminately, just start eating everything and damaging the tissue. That's one thing if it's on your arm. It's another thing if it's on your esophagus. Sure, yeah. You could think it's well shut or it's just as bad as your lungs, too, which is another reason why when you destroy poison ivy, you don't burn it, because when you burn it, the oshurio vaporizes and you can inhale it. And that's really bad. That is really bad. You mentioned that you thought you were okay after a few minutes. There can be something called delayed hypersensitivity. It is that. It's always that. Yeah. Because you're not going to rub it on your skin and get it in seconds later. Right. That's immediate hypersensitivity. If you have delayed hypersensitivity, it could take hours, it could take days. You might think you're all good, and a few days later you're going to get it. Which is one of the reasons the myth of if you scratch, it'll spread, it happens because you might see it popping up on other parts of your body days later, and it's not from scratching or spreading it's because just that delayed response. That's right. Yeah. But you know more about that, right? Yeah. So the whole thing, what we found out, people called poison ivy, the rash. Yeah. It's technically called allergic contact dermatitis. Okay. You can get it from all sorts of things, like laundry detergent or like an itchy tag. It's basically a skin irritation from an allergic reaction. Right. And with the delayed kind yes. It takes anywhere from hours to days. Right. But it's going to happen. Right. There's also immediate, which is like, say, a bee sting or like a peanut, where within minutes, like, you're in big trouble. Yeah. And actually, if you do start to display the same kinds of symptoms that you would with, like, an immediate reaction, you really need to go to the hospital. Like, if your throat swells up from poison IV right. Or your lips turn blue from poison ivy, or you have a fever that's like over 100 degrees from it, those are all signs that you need to go to the hospital. This isn't a normal reaction to poison ivy. Yeah. If your lips turn blue at all in life, go to the hospital. Yeah. That's just doctor Chuck chiming in. So we're going to bust some more myths and all that kind of jazz right after this. Okay. So, Chuck yes. I said that we would bust some more myths. That's right. Let's do that. Okay. So one of the things you said is that poison ivy doesn't spread. Like, if you have it remember when I had it? Yeah. If I brushed up against you, you wouldn't have gotten poison ivy unless I had some oshurio on my skin. Correct. So the poison ivy rash itself is not contagious. No. But if it is still on your body, you could spread it. Like if you and I were on one of our famous camping hiking retreats. Sure. Yeah. And we were in the woods and I got it on my hand and then slapped you on the back and told you what a good pal you were, and of course you hiked shirtless. So you might get it because I actually have the compound on my hand. If it could make it through the thick mat of hair on my back, then, yeah, I might catch poison ivy from that. Well, you're hearing on both sides, just like the poison oak. That's right. But let's say you do come into contact. You're out in the woods, you're camping, and, you know, you're like, oh, man, crap. I've been avoiding it, but I just got it all over my foot and I realized I did that. What you want to do is just act super fast, get it in the creek or wash it off. If you have water immediately with just plain water, the quicker you do it, the better your chances of not having that response. And you also want to use cold water, too. Warm water is going to open your pores, which will allow the Oshuri all to be absorbed that much faster. That's no good. Apparently our hot water will help after you've gotten it, though, with the itching symptoms. Yes. Like a really hot shower. Right. But not at first. You rinse off that skin, take off all your clothes that have come into contact with the plant. You're going to wash those as quickly as possible as well. So now you're naked out in the woods. You're naked and afraid. You're washing your clothes. You want to wash your skin at that point with this open water after you've already washed it off initially. Yeah. Rinsed it. And then if you're at home, get some isopropyl alcohol and cotton and then do that next. If you're out in the woods, you probably won't have that. Yeah. So like you said, if you act fast, you might be able to prevent a reaction. And that's because you are washing the curry all off before your skin absorbs it. Once your skin absorbs it, you have a very limited amount of time to take some sort of steroid, like a corticosteroid that actually reduce the body's immune response naturally. Like an antihistamine is a good example of that. Yeah. Or a topical if you're super allergic, you may even have a prescription for something like this, which you want to take right away. But if not, just get the court aid, Orlando Court, and rub that all over your body like my dad did. Right. Look like a weird pink beast. Right. But the problem is, these windows close pretty quickly because once the ochurio is absorbed and once your body mounts this immune response, once those macrophages go in and do all this tissue damage, you're dead. Your body has to heal from that no matter what. Even if your body is no longer responding to this foreign invader, that's actually harmless. The damage is still done. And you've got yourself this dermatitis that you've got to deal with. Yeah. And it's going to itch. And you shouldn't scratch it. Not because you'll spread it, because you can actually get infected and I don't remember. Did you scratch a lot or are you pretty good about it? I mean, I wanted to. What were some of your little, like? I know when someone is infected like that with something, as an adult, they do all kinds of things. Like, I'm not scratching, I'm just like rubbing my face on my pillow super hard. Right. No, I used a lot of self control. Yeah. A lot of smacking. Yeah. Like, you can smack the thing and it won't scratch. And the whole reason you're not scratching is not again, you're not going to spread it by scratching, but what you're going to do, conceivably, is you're going to open up these sores yeah. Because they can get full on blisters. Right. And if you break one of these blisters and you've got, like, poop under your fingernails, you can infect the blister and get, like, a skin infection and end up with scars. It's not a good jam. So if you smack it, you're not going to scratch it or you're not going to break the skin, but you can still alleviate that itch that's generated by your skin repairing itself, because you never know when you might have poop under your fingernail. Exactly. So just defer to the smack. I'll bet there's a substantial amount of the population that has poop under their fingernails at any given point in time. Yes. I don't want that weird stat. Not at all. So a hot shower once you have the rash can help soothe the itching a little bit. Calamine lotion can help. Baking soda paste if you're into more natural things. Sure. Baking soda and water just mixed together, basically. Rub that on there. Right. And the old oatmeal bath with any kind of rash will soothe things a little bit. That's right. I think I used just tons of calamine lotion. Yes. If I'm not mistaken, I think I blocked a lot of that out. And would you mean just walk by shaking her head at you every time she saw you? She took good care of me, but yeah, that's good. Yeah. You can also just kind of get around the whole thing by using something like Ivy Block, which uses something called if you go camping and you know you're allergic, you can take something beforehand. That's right. A preventative. That's what it's called. Yeah. Bento quantum bentoquaidum. Basically, it acts as a shield that prevents the ochuria from being absorbed by your skin. Interesting. And it works to two degrees, supposedly. If you do want to get rid of it at your house, you should do what Josh did, sort of in that you wore boots and long sleeves and gloves and all that stuff, so you are on the right track. Just don't gaze upward and wonder as the stuff falls down onto your face. Mouth agape. Man. That was just bad. Not good. But if you do dress up like that and cover yourself. You want to pull it out by the roots, get it all out of there. It's a vine. Vines can establish themselves pretty easily with just the slightest fragment of living plant. That's right. Don't burn it. No, it's not just bad news for you. It's bad news for all your neighbors, too. Yes, I imagine. You got anything else? Old man clark over there burning this poison ivy, right? I got nothing else. I don't either. That's poison ivy if you want to know more about it, including seeing pictures of poison ivy and poison sumac and poison oak before you go camping, you can type in poison ivy at the search bar@housetofworks.com. It'll bring up this great article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this part two scientific method from a scientist. Hi, Josh. Chuck and Jerry. J-E-R-I-I feel like I'm not getting her name right. So I'm sensing that these scientists don't feel good about their spelling abilities. No, but they're doing a great job. They are. Just for the episode on scientific method and wanted to say you guys did a pretty good job with it and its history. And I say this as a practicing scientist and he had a great long email, but I'm going to have to edit for content. But he talks a little bit about the woes of current science. He said it is a problem that many young academics fret about. The problems are real, but I want to underscore the fact that in many ways it is a golden age of science right now. So much good work is getting done. It just happens to be a terrible time to be a scientist. More funding would help alleviate some of the strain academia is under. But as you point out, there's some systematic reforms that need to happen as well, and many are discussing just what a workable solution is. I have tried to stick as close to the scientific method as possible in my career and haven't been all that productive because of it. I'd rather publish something solid and put something out there that's potentially wrong or flawed. Being able to publish negative data would be good, but even more to the point, science almost works well as improv, which is the yes and approach oh yeah. Where scientists proposes a hypothesis and supports it and another scientist picks it up and says, well, yes, if so, then this should also be true as well and extends the original work. So he's a collaborator. The scientific method is a huge part of our lives and needs to be taught to all. I say we need more science literacy, not more scientists. But it can be tricky. Science and nature are truly amazing and yet we're not willing or able to support all those who'd want to make it a career. He gives us the cheers. That is Ian Street, PhD. Nice job, Ian. That's a great email. Yeah, and good for you for sticking to the scientific method, even to your detriment. Yeah, hang in there. I hope you write a great paper one day that gets you accolades and money with great spelling, too. That's right. If you want to be like Ian and talk to us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyoushouldnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouseuffworks.com. And as always, you can join us at our home on the Web stuffyshoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…cemeat-final.mp3	Operation Mincemeat: How A Corpse Fooled the Nazis	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/operation-mincemeat-how-a-corpse-fooled-the-nazis	In World War II, a secret department of British 'corkscrew thinkers' hatched a plan to use the cadaver of an unclaimed homeless man to turn the tide of the war in the Allies' favor. It worked.	In World War II, a secret department of British 'corkscrew thinkers' hatched a plan to use the cadaver of an unclaimed homeless man to turn the tide of the war in the Allies' favor. It worked.	Tue, 02 Feb 2016 16:05:56 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=16, tm_min=5, tm_sec=56, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=33, tm_isdst=0)	42628595	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry Rowland. This is stuff you should know. Chuck. Yo. I'm 39 years old and I still can't say my own name correctly because of my stupid, thick tongue. You're going to be 40? Yeah. Soon. Crazy. Yeah. You used to make fun of me, and now you're old. Well, you're still older than me. I know. Nothing can do about that. It's cool, though. Yeah. You're aging very well. No, you're aging really well. You mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain and the gray beard? I still say you're aging very well. I appreciate it. Let's get off your hat. I still got good hair. Boom. Look at that. They got hat head now. Beautiful. Okay. People think I'm bald. Some people do. Oh, really? Like, you're always wearing that hat. I don't know. Suspicious people. Yeah, like the drummer for the Chili Peppers. Anthony Keitas Flee. No. The guy from James addiction. No. I don't know. Then not John for Shanti. Chad Smith. The guy that looks like Will Ferrell. Ferrell. He's always got that hat on backwards. He's bald. Oh, yeah, totally. Like Brett Michael's bald. Remember, he always wears a D rag. He's super bald. So I get why people are suspicious. If you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece, then it's probably because you're bald. But not in my case. What a weird way to start the show. Especially this show, operation Mincemeat, which is a ghoulish gallows humor. Awesomely World War II British name for this operation. Yeah. This will live alongside our Nazi spies and invading Florida podcast. And the History Girls covered this very topic as well. Yeah, man. There's nothing I love more than little known history. This is it. But this is great. Little known history. Yeah. And this shouldn't be middle known because after the Trojan War, maybe the largest and most successful military deception plan in history. Well, there's also have you seen that documentary Ghost Army about Operation Fortitude? No. They used a bunch of blow up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes to make it look like there's a whole Allied division over here so that we could invade Normandy more easily. It's like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Off. But yes, this ranks up there with literally with the Trojan horse. It's that ingenious and that wonderful. Yeah, but so let's set the stage right. Okay. So in early 1943, the war was very much undecided. It could have been anybody. Europe was under the control of Hitler. Huge amounts of Europe. They called it Fortress Europe because the Nazis had just overrun the place. They were dug in, and the Allies knew that they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler or else, like, they weren't going to win the war. Sure. So Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly, which is maybe Italy, Greece, Sardinia, he called it the underbelly. Not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody. The Allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese people in Hawaii everybody knew. Yeah. They weren't American quite yet. Okay. Everybody knew that the Allies were going to attack somewhere in that area. Yeah. Come up through the Mediterranean. Even Hitler feared this the most. Right. But it was key. Right. I mean, everybody knew the Allies were coming and they were going to come there. But this land mass, this area of land and sea is large enough that you can't just be like, oh, they're coming down there. We got it covered. We'll cover it. All you need to know kind of specifically where they were covering. And there were just a few places where they could have come. One was Greece. That was where Hitler always suspected. One was Sardinia, right? Yeah. And then another was Sicily. And in 1943, I think, January, the Allied powers met in French Morocco and held a conference, the Casablanca conference. Very sexy name. Yeah, it really was. And they said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July. We're going to call it Operation Husky. Now we have to do everything we can to not let the Nazis know that that's where we're going. And that actually hatched eventually, what's called Operation Mincemeat. Yeah. You know what, studying this stuff, and I'm not a big war buff, although I'm getting more so. But reading up on this stuff, like, the old wars are so much like the board game risk that it's startling. Yes. Literally, when you look at this stuff, it's like moving troops to where you think people are going to attack you. Right. And rolling the dice a bit. And if you're right, then great. If not, you're screwed. Very much so. Which is why it's such a huge shift that we're seeing now, moving to unconventional warfare, because that's scary stuff. Yeah, I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah. Well, of course, I'm not saying, like, Normandy was a cakewalk or anything because they knew what they were going on. Right. Man. I watched Saving Private Ryan again the other day. God, it's crazy. That thing is almost a Snuff film. It's not as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film, but it's I never saw that one. The Mel Gibson one? Yeah. Dude, it's the most graphically violent, mainstream movie ever made. Really? Yes. Wow. Yeah. Like, there's a part where they have a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right? So his helmets in the near foreground, and that guy takes a hit to the head and blood spray covers the camera lens. For the next little while, his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting. Did you like saving Private Ryan again, though? Yeah, it's a great movie, but it is, like, really violent. That's another thing about getting older, is that stuff affects you more and more the more you come to terms with your own mortality. The more valuable life becomes, the more valuable even a character in a movie's life becomes. You know what I mean? This stuff gets to you. Agreed. It's called growing up, my friend. I'm becoming human, isn't it? Gross. All right. So on September 20, 1939, there was a director of British naval intelligence named Admiral John Godfrey, and he distributed something called the Trout Memo. And it was written by his assistant, lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. Familiar name. Yeah. Creator of James Bond. That's right. The guy. And I think most people know that he served at this point. Yeah. But if you didn't, that's a nice little factoid for you. So he wrote the Trout Memo, and they called it the Trout Memo because they pointed out in the intro that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he changes venue frequently, and he changes his bait very frequently, too. And so they're charged with deception. They wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all these different bait and venue changes that they could come up with. Yeah. And this was a time, too. We should point out that spying is always vital, but, man, in World War II, it was going on all over the place and a huge part of the war. Right. So we need to do one on the Enigma machine, by the way. At some point we do, because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation. Absolutely. All right. So with the Trout Memo in, Fleming wrote well, co authored 51 different operations suggestions, and number 28 was one called A Suggestion Parenthesis. Not a very nice one. The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson. I'm so pleased that you said Basil. Basil, yeah. In fact, that was a 1930 $7 novel, the Milliners Hat Mystery, and he was actually a World War One spy. Oh, really? Yeah, it's all coming together. So he was a spy writer. That Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Doug crazy. So that's where this originates. Sorry, I'm getting excited. That's right. The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson. A corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed. I understand there's no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval hospital, but of course, it would have to be a fresh one. So the idea is, let's get a dead person, let's dress them up like a soldier, give them some sensitive documents that leak this invasion. Fraudulent. Fraudulent, yeah. Very important. That leak the invasion of Greece, which is not really happening. And they're going to mount up troops there, and we'll actually go in Sicily. They're going to find this body, they're going to think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident and we're going to fool them. So, yeah, that was the whole idea. That was the general basis of it. And Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers. Right. Because he knew Hitler thought in a straight line. Yeah. And by corkscrew thinkers, I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box. Exactly. Yes. Churchill was like, this is great. I love Churchill. Let's drink some scotch and do it. Yeah. Let's look like a bulldog while we do, too. That idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming and then the Churchill's core screw thinkers. The Xx committee, led by you and Montau. Chumley. Yes. His name is not spelled Chumley. No. How's it spelled? Are you ready for this? Yeah. Chumley. Yeah. And apparently, when he met people, he would say, Lieutenant Charles Chumley. C-H-O-L-M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y. He would spell it out. Would he really? Yeah. Are you making fun of me, or is that for real? No, he was a very quirky guy, and that's how he described himself as toothpaste, as if it had been squeezed from the tube, like he self described. He would go hunting with a revolver. Like bird hunting. He was a weird guy. I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this, and they pronounced it Charles Cholomondele. Did they really? Yeah. Nice. I'm glad we did our research. Exactly. Shout out to BuzzFeed. So you and Montague, right? Yeah. The other guy, he is noteworthy in a number of ways, too. Apparently, he's just the greatest guy ever. Most interesting man on the planet. And he actually wrote the book, the first book on Operation Mint's Meat, because he was one of the people who came up with this and implemented it. The man who was never there. The man who never was right. Yes. Of the same name. Starring Montgomery Cliff. I believe. No, starring Cliff. Cliff. Cliff. Cliff Clavin, cliff Webb. But not Montgomery Cliff. No. Those two are virtually interchangeable. Sure. So you and Montague was already notable because at school, he and his brother had created the rules for Ping Pong. No way. Yeah. I did not know that. Among other things. And his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious, went on to become a spy for the Soviets. Oh, wow. Yes. So he turned yes. Against England. Yes. Wow. Against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague, he was formerly a barrister and attorney, and this is why he actually did not go serve on a ship. And the other guy, Chumley, never flew a plane. One was Air Force. One was a navy. And apparently Montego, as an attorney, was very good at just seeing all the angles. So they said, you, sir, are perfect for this job. Nice. And they picked wisely, because these guys really pull it off. So we'll dive into this much more in depth right after this. All right, Chuck? Yes. So we have the rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with. The Xx committee led by you and Montague and Charles Chumley. Yeah. Part of mi five, I believe. Okay. Said, we're going to take this particular idea and really run with it. And like you said, they were going to. Well, the first thing they did was start setting about creating a backstory. Yeah. Well, they had three months, so the clock is ticking at this point. Yeah. Because here's the thing. They set the invasion right. In January, and they set the invasion for July. Now, you needed enough time to plant this corpse, this fake dead courier, into Nazi hands with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it, analyze it, decide it was truthful, and then react the way you wanted them to. Which meant that they had no later than May or else this plan was out the window. Yeah. You wanted them the ultimate goal was to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place. And that takes time. Right. So they looked around and they decided that the best place to carry out this operation was Spain. And Spain during World War II was allegedly ostensibly neutral. Sure. But they had a lot of access sympathies, a lot of connections to Nazi Germany. And there was a particular Nazi agent, a spy working in a port called Whovla. Right. Sure. And his name was Adolf Klaus. Yeah. And Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical, pretty brutal and ruthless, extremely gullible. Yeah. He was a straight line thinker. He was. He wasn't one that could think outside the box and think, maybe this is an elaborate hoax. The guy didn't even own a real corkscrew. They targeted this guy, cut the top off of wine bottles. Yeah. They specifically targeted him, which is amazing. So they wanted this guy, who was fairly gullible, but also known as, like, a very respected Nazi agent in Spain, to be the one who came up with this corpse in Cadaver. That's right. So before they ever had any corpse or Cadaver or anything like that, montague and Chumley start setting about creating a backstory, and they created this guy named Major Martin. Yeah. William Martin. That's right. And they created Major William Martin, and they created this whole persona. And this wasn't the first time they done it. They actually had chops with this kind of stuff. So they had created a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think that they had a whole double agent network in the UK. And all of them were fictitious, not real people that you and Montague and Charles Chumley had created these fake personas. Amazing. And it fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist. So they took that understanding and that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona, and they set about creating one for Major William Martin. Yeah. And there's a great BBC documentary on this, and they interview a lot of the players, including a lot of the women who worked at Mi Five in the office and they were all just so delighted. They all described this as the most exciting adventure they'd ever had. I'm sure it was like something out of a spy novel, and they were living it. Right. And so they all had great fun creating these characters, these made up people. They wanted to give him a fiance because the idea is that they find this body with not only these documents in a briefcase, the important documents, but to make it believable, he had to have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter, which is if you find any person on the street, ask them to open their wallet. You're going to be able to tell a lot about them. Sure. So just stuff to legitimize it. So they said, let's give them a fiance. And all the women in the office wanted to be the fiance. Oh, yeah. So they all submitted photographs. They picked this one lady, Jean Leslie secretary. Okay. That's the lady on the beach. Yes. Picture of her in a bathing suit on the beach. So this was going to be planted on his body. They all wanted to write the love letters back and forth, but they picked a woman named Hester legert, the head secretary of Mi Five. And she wrote even though she was dispenser, she wrote all these heartfelt love letters. The first couple of drafts were really dirty, and they were like, you got to tone the sound a little bit. Is that what you think happens in a relationship? No, not me. The kisses, lady. So everyone's really excited in the office. Chumley is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every day to give it that worn in look. Awesome. Montague actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who gave them the photo as a fiance. They had a real life affair as Bill and Pam. Pam is the made up fiance. It got a little weird. That is a little weird. Like, they wrote each other love letters, had a real life affair, calling each other Bill and Pam. So there was some strange role playing going on. I'm sure he was married at the time. His family had been shipped to America, so he was not doing the right thing there. Jeez. He was allowed in that department. Well, you know, also, Raul Dahl, the guy who wrote James and Giant Peach and Charlie and Chocolate Factory, he was a spy for the British. He was in the British military, and his whole job was to basically bed the wives of American officials here in Washington. Really? Yeah. Did he do so? Yeah, he made his way through Washington society. Wow. Apparently with great zeal. All right, so they're cooking up this backstory. They get other great things for the wallet letter, like theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank, and just these things that make it seem, like, super realistic. Right. And what else? I think they gave him a St. Christopher medal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that he was Roman Catholic, and that'll come up. It will become very important in a minute, right? Yes, very much so. They've got this backstory, and apparently they were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair, wearing the uniform, all that stuff, before they'd even gotten final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work and then have to pick it up feverishly. They wanted this to keep going. So they finally got final approval from Admiral Godfrey to carry out this thing for real. And when they got final approval, they said, okay, we need a body. And they figured, no problem. They were looking at first they needed somebody who had relatives that didn't care what happened to the body after death and could keep their mouths shut. They needed a body that was of military age. Sure. Didn't have any signs of visible trauma or scurvy. Sure. And that preferably they would have died of pneumonia. The reason that they wanted him to die of pneumonia is because they were going to make it look like this guy had been in a plane crash, but it survived a plane crash, but it drowned at sea. Right. If he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled with long. So that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy. Yeah, exactly. So that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy. They'd be like, it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I've never seen fluid filled with lungs, but that's how much fluid there is. The problem is they didn't get their hands on a guy with pneumonia, and they didn't even know exactly where to get a person at first. It wasn't until they turned the guy who ran the mortgage at St. Pancras Hospital, which is the worst hospital name of all time, they turned him and got him to assist them that they finally got their hands on a body. Yeah. His name was Ser Bentley Purchase, which is a great name, great British name. And he was the coroner of the largest mortuary at St. Pant. Chris terrible. And he had, apparently, a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty complicated to give directions to his office, so when he gave Monty the directions, he said, or you could just get run over by a bus. Nice man, the British, during war time, where they're having a blast. Their sense of humor was wonderful. So they got Bentley purchased, and he said, I've got a dude. His name is Glendor Michael. Yeah. That is not how that's spelled either. No, it is G-L-Y-N-D-W-R super Welsh. Yeah, he was a Welshman. Born in the son of a coal miner. His father killed himself by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that. He managed a word, old man, and it didn't say, like, slit your throat. He said he stabbed himself in the throat right. Which is weird and sad. So his dad died when he was a teenager, mother died when he was 30, alcoholic, had a rough go because of the depression and basically killed himself by ingesting rat poison. So that is not necessarily resolved, whether it was suicide. Yeah. So the Bentley purchase wrote down that he killed himself. Yeah. It was ruled a suicide. Okay. But the way that he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust of bread. So he was hungry. They wondered. So he may have been so destitute that he ate a crust of bread that he found in an abandoned warehouse, and it was smeared with rat poison, and that's what he died of. Wow. But they found him in this cold January night in 1943 in this abandoned warehouse in London, and he had just eaten some rat poison, but he survived for two more days. And so Bentley purchased, got his hands on him and said, I think I found your guy, dudes. Yeah. And they did. There were some issues, one of which is they needed a photo of the guy for an ID. He didn't have any photos. Oh, God. And every time they took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like, he looks like a dead guy. Yes. Really? I can see your fingers holding his eyes up. So they scoured London looking for a lookalike and eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who looked just like him. Awesome. So they use his face awesome. For the ID. It's all coming together. Yes, it is. I'm sure they were like, wow, Providence is really smiling on this. Yeah. And if you're feeling bad for Glendor, just hang tight. Yeah. I still think you can feel bad for Glendor. Well, sure. Talk about a rough life, man. Yeah. Jeez. Do you remember that one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duvall was, like, super special guest? He wasn't even hosting or mentioned. No. He just showed up on this game show called Who's More Grizzled? No way. And he talks about, like, it was him and Garth Brooks. How did I miss that? And he talks about how one cold winter, his wife died and he had to keep her out in the barn until the ground thawed so we can bury her out back. What? Yeah. It was just weird like that. It wasn't even really funny. It was more just like, wow, that really is hard. But the whole game show was who's more grizzled. Anyone, of course. Because it's Robert Duvall. Yeah. He's more grizzled than Garth Brooks. Yes. Poor Garth Brooks. Not poor Garth Brooks. What are you talking about? I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing. He chose to do it. He's a wealthy man. Yeah. I don't feel too bad for him. I think that was evidence that he was surrounded by yes men at the time. Yeah, maybe. That was a weird thing, though. Yeah. He faked a soul patch that wasn't even real? No, I mean, even if it was real, it was part of his character. Yeah. I thought you meant it was sharpie. Maybe. Okay. The hair was definitely colored with sharpie. All right, so where are we here? We've got a body. We finally got the photograph of them. Yeah. That's amazing. I didn't know that part. Yeah, and there's another thing. We found this awesome. A military analysis of it. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Somebody wrote a military analysis of this. I don't remember who. So I can't give them a shout out, but we'll put it on our podcast page. But they point out that one of the reasons this was so successful this operation was one, these guys at Xx Committee just had free run to break the law, bend morality, do all sorts of stuff. They just were able to go do their thing. But the other thing was that they really kept this lid on this stuff and it was all disseminated on a need to know basis. So when they had this guy, they had them, they got Glenda, kept him on ice for three months. As they finish his back story, they're running up against, like, go time. And then I think in February or March, april, maybe, I'm not sure of the date. Do you know that what happened when they finally carried out Operation Mincemeat? Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept them on ice for a few months. Yeah. So they're up to the point where the decomp is about to give away that this guy didn't just recently die. Yeah. And that was a big fear that the Spanish coroners would be able to tell, too. Okay. Which will come up in a minute. Okay. And they're also getting to the point where they're reaching the end of the amount of time that they need to give the Nazis to absorb this misinformation. Sure. So they finally get the guy's persona in place, they have the body, and now it's time to actually carry out the operation. And like I was saying, they kept a lid on all this, so it was a need to know basis. So they got their hands on a sub commander who could keep his mouth shut, and they gave him a metal cylinder with the corpse of Glenda or Michael. Now, Major William Martin. Yeah. When you say sub commander, you mean submarine? Yes. Not a commander below? Regular commander. Yeah. The submarine commander. Yes. They gave him the cylinder and they said, we're going to tell you what's in here. Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the people staffing the sub that this was some sort of weather buoy. Yeah. It was marked Optical Instruments. But you're right, he was the only one on board, supposedly, that knew there was a body inside. Yes. And they put a life jacket on him, stuffed them in the cylinder, put them on the sub and took him over to Spain on a submarine. Well, let's back up for 1 second, okay. Because we forgot to cover the main letter in the briefcase case. Really important. This was the all of operation meant to me. It did not hinge on theater ticket stubs or bank overdraft letters. That's merely pocket letter. It hinged on a letter hinting strongly that the invasion was going to come up through Greece, Sardinia. Right. And that was the other thing, too. It wasn't like official document, invasion is going to come through Greece. Yes. It was a letter from one general or admiral to another high ranking guy, I think General Nigh. They composed a bunch of different letters themselves and finally they said, why don't you write it in your own words, in your own language, in your own handwriting, everything. So it really was written by this high ranking US military official or British military official who wrote this fake letter. And he made a joke about Sardine, a terrible joke, which was the little hint that was just clever enough to work. Right. And so in it, it basically says, we're going to strike through Greece. That's where the invasion of Europe is going to be. But we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover. Right, right. And this is a stroke of genius. Oh, yeah. Because in this false letter, not only does it show that they're coming through Greece, which they weren't, but it says that Sicily is the cover, which would make the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leak the real invasion plan of Sicily, the Nazis would think that was misinformation. Dude, it was so ingenious. That's crazy ingenious. And I think about here now, Chuck, we get to the point where we should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played, right? Yeah. Well, basically we all know that the Enigma machine was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher well, the Enigma machine wrote the code, I think. Oh, it wrote the code, yeah. And then it deciphered code that they got. They deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But I think the Enigma machine was the actual code writing the encrypting machine. Okay, I could be wrong, but okay, well, we definitely need to do a podcast on that because we're mixed up already to get it straight. But at any rate, the long and short of it is in Beckley Park. Was it Beckley Park? I always say Bletchley. Was there an L in there? I draw the whole ugly word out. They basically had it was like reading the Nazi's email, essentially on a daily basis, on an hourly basis. Hourly basis. They knew exactly what was going on, so they would know if they were buying this whole thing as it happened in real time. But even before that, they were able to craft this misinformation based on the Nazi's assumptions. So everybody. Wants to hear that their assumptions, that their beliefs are correct. People are more apt to buy that things that confirm their suspicions of their beliefs already. Right. Yeah. Hitler was worried about Sicily. He was. So he already thought that Greece is going to be where we invaded. And then secondly, we knew that he had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon, so he was reticent to commit troops to Italy. Right. So this revelation that came in the form of this letter, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler and the Third Reich believed as far as this European invasion was going to go. And we were able to do that thanks to the smarties at Bletchley Park. Right? Yeah. And this letter, too. Here's another little tidbit. They put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter, so they would know when they eventually got this letter back. If there was no eyelash, they would know that the Nazis had in fact opened it, because the idea was they would open it, reseal it and act like we never saw it. Right. But there wasn't that eyelash and they'd know. Nice. So rudimentary. But it worked. Oh, yeah. Should we take another break? Let's take a break. All right. I'm getting excited. Okay, so, Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine. That's right. Chili down here in Dark. It is. And you're not supposed to be smoking cigars. No, you're not. Despite Gene Hackman doing it in Crimson Tide. Yeah. What a bad idea. So we're off the coast of Spain. We're off the coast of whoever. Not an easy word to say, but it's a port in Spain. And again, this is where Nazi agent ateolf Klaus. Yeah. They kind of want to float the body right up to this guy's backyard, basically. So they did. He was released from this canister. I read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on with submachine guns on a sub, so you could just call them machine guns there. And it was sunk and the body drifted off towards I thought they just dumped the body. Yeah. I'm not sure because I found a book on Google Books. It was like from 2007, and it was a history book. Got you. And it made it sound like the people working on the sub all knew what was going on. But that's in stark contrast to everything else we've seen. So they may or may not have sunk the weather buoy, who knows? But either way, Major Martin was released into the current. That took him right to whoever, and I think he was found by a fisherman that same day. Yeah. And at this point, the Brit started sending telegrams about a very important missing person. Frantic. Yeah. Like they wanted these to get intercepted, obviously. And that worked as well. This is all really going exactly as they planned. So they sent the British Council in Spain, in Hue, or in Spain to Huevla and said, this is really important. You need to get your hands on the briefcase, find out what happened to this guy and get your hands on his briefcase. Yeah. And Klaus was going, briefcase, right. His monocle popped out and the British Council in Spain didn't even know what was going on. Yeah. They thought they saw everything from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis need to know basis. Exactly. So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase kind of frantically, and the Spaniards were like, you know what, we are just going to keep this on lockdown for now as we investigate the whole thing. But we got it covered. Remember, we're neutral, so your briefcase is safe. The British Consulate said. Well, okay, one thing. This is very important. This guy was Roman Catholic. You can check out the metal in his pocket, so please don't dissect them. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs and traditions to dissect their autopsy body. I hadn't heard before, but apparently in the was the case, spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and they said, oh, yes, of course we won't do that. So apparently that's how they got around the fact that Glendor hadn't died of pneumonia. Yeah. And the other way they got around it was they had a plant in the office who talked to the coroners and was like, guys, it's hot and this body is going to start riding real soon, so how thorough do you really want to make this? And they said, you're right. Let's go have some wine. Some what do they call it over there? Wine? No, what's, the pretty sangria? Yeah, let's go have some sangria and knock off early. And that's exactly what happened. Thanks to the plans. So this is going on. There was a small wrinkle at this point. The briefcase went to Madrid. Spain wasn't going to hand it over to anyone, but the Brits were trying to get it in the hands of the Nazis, and they're actually having trouble getting it into the hands of the Nazis until a guy named Carlo Culantal. He was Hitler's most trusted guy in Spain. He got wind of it and kind of took over for Klaus, was like, I'm going to get this briefcase. And he did. Nine days later, after the body washed ashore, the letter ended up in the hands of the German. The German worked his way up the chain. Yeah. To Hitler himself. Yeah. I went to Gerbils first, and Gerbils, even in his diary, they found later, had suspicions about it because he was a corkscrew thinker. And he was like, Wait a minute, this is pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here. But apparently he never said anything to Hillary. He got distracted. He wrote about it in his diary, but the documentary said his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's good enough for me. That seems like a bad idea. Yeah. And homeboy Carlo Culantal, there was always a lot of speculation on why he just ran with it and didn't ask more questions, because that was his job. And it turns out his grandmother was Jewish, and he was very paranoid about this being found out, so he thought, this is it. I've come upon the greatest find of the war, and it's all mine. No one will ask any questions about me after this. Wow, that worked out really well. Yeah, very convenient. And thanks to the Enigma machine, they knew pretty quickly that this was working. And I guess Montague and Chumley sent Admiral God for you a transmission that said operation Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker. Yeah. It's so cool seeing these old apparently you're not supposed to see elderly anymore. By the way. We got an email. I knew that. Or seniors. You're supposed to call them older adults. Seniors. I didn't know that that was a thing. Yeah, older adults. So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that are in their eighty s now, and they were just all so still excited. They said, when they because with the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails and they were like, they knew they were buying it. They're buying it. And everyone was just flipped when it came to the office. It was just like party time, basically. So the operation mentioned me really worked really well. So much so that apparently Hitler moved a panzer division, which totals about 90,000 troops from Sicily to Greece, and all the artillery and armaments and everything, not just soldiers. So long, Sicily. We're going to Greece. And then up came the allies through Sicily. 160,000 allied troops stormed Sicily, and only 7000 lives were lost, which is still in a lot of people who died. But apparently, as far as military historians are concerned, and I think the military at the time, that was a way fewer lives lost than they expected had Hitler not swallowed Operation Mince me. Yeah. They expected 10,000 casualties in the first three days and 300 boats sunk in the first two days, and it ended up being 1400 in that first week. Soldiers and about a dozen ships in that first week. So that's not bad. Yes. And not only that, but it had another effect, big one. The Soviets. Yeah. So this is not something that they teach in American history classes in US high schools that much. No. The operation Husky, it was that penetration of Europe's underbelly. Right. Yeah. And suddenly Hitler said, I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these troops down here in Europe because I got big problems. Yeah. And that allowed, basically, Russia to topple the Nazi regime and Mussolini get toppled by the Brits. Yeah. It completely changed the face of the war. Yeah. This one idea cooked up by me and Fleming in part, isn't that crazy? It's pretty awesome. You got other stuff. There's a book called Operation Mint's meet by a guy named Brett McIntyre. All right. That came out in 2010. That's a very good, well cited book that we inadvertently cited here or there. And then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was written by you and Montague, which is not just about Operation Mincemeat, but also about basically how to carry out deception plans. All right. Remember earlier when I said, don't feel too bad for Glendor Michael? Yes. Even you said, well, the dude died possibly of suicide because he was penniless and going nowhere. Yeah. He'll bite about that. But 50 years after he was buried in, the British government added they basically buried him with military honors. The Spanish did? Yeah. He's buried in Spain, but the British came from the Brits, I think, to do so. His head stone came from the Brits, but the Spanish buried him with, like, the 21 gun salute and everything. Yes. As Glenda Michael served as Major William Martin r. M. Royal Marine. Pretty cool. Yeah. So this alcoholic drifter who never served in the military never served in the military, buried with full military honors. Yes. And completely changed the face of the war, thanks to being a body that fit the bill. And if you like, ghoulish photos, is a very famous photo of him being propped up in his life jacket in uniform as they were basically loading them into the cylinder that you can see by searching, I'm sure. Major Charles Martin. That's right. No, William Martin. William Martin. Something like that. I still want to know what was going on with that weird role playing there with that dude. That's odd. Bill and Pam. Yeah, because they interviewed the lady and she was just like, oh, it was all very exciting. That's a great British lady accent. Older person. Yeah. Older adults. Yeah. If you want to know more about Operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your favorite search engine or go check out the stuff you missed in history class episode. I said stuff you missed in history class. It's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this bread crust. We had that discussion about the crust in pieces. This is from a dad. Dear Chuck and Josh, you discussion of the insects of bread in the body language episode brought ridiculous grin to my face as I walked around my neighborhood. Don't worry, though. My neighbors have thought me to be eccentric for years now. Look at that guy. He's smiling. What a weirdo. He must be a pinko. When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I realized we were doomed to 18 ish years of eating bread crust pieces ourselves if we didn't figure something out. And quickly. Our solution, we started calling those pieces the Lucky piece. And boy, did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your supposition is correct, Jack. At least for children under eleven years old. Even if they're honor students as mine, where they will fight you for the right to eat that savory, oso, desirable piece of luck. Nice idea, younger adults. Rock on, guys. And please keep my goofy grins coming. That is from Ted I-N-E with a little what do you call that quiney accent? I don't know. I didn't take French. Legume. What do you call that? A legume accent? Legume. Yeah. So, thanks, Ted. I'll just call you coin. Yeah. Looks like coin. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Ted contacted us on Twitter. He wanted to send us this email. So there you go, Ted. Wow. If you want to get in touch with us, you can try all the ways, like Ted did. You can contact us on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@householdworks.com. You can join us on Facebook.com, STUFFYou know, and you can hang out at our luxury area home on the web, stuffyshesnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com."
e008d61e-0655-4c99-93bc-aed2010fadd2	Why Bowling is Awesome	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-bowling-is-awesome	Bowling is awesome. It just is. And if you don't think so, maybe take a listen to today's episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Bowling is awesome. It just is. And if you don't think so, maybe take a listen to today's episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Thu, 14 Jul 2022 16:33:53 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=16, tm_min=33, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=195, tm_isdst=0)	57324847	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. All of us are wearing bowling shoes. Our feet hurt, they look kind of weird, and we're we're ready to go. I want to shout out this was a genuine listener suggestion. Oh, nice. What Listener suggested mark Bowles. No, not B-O-W-L. It's B-O-L-E-S but still kind of funny since you're talking about bowling. I watched a video on automatic pin setters by a kid named a guy named Matt Bowen. He's a pinsetter technician, so there's some weirdness going on here. I had a dentist named Dr. Tuggle. That sounds painful. He just made my scrotum shrink up into my cell and had my proctologist is Dr. Finger and Butt. What? Isn't that weird? His first name Finger and his middle initial is N, and then his last name is Butt. No, his whole last name. I think his name is Robert Finger and butt. Yeah. Doctor Finger and Butt. Yeah. Maybe Finland or something. I don't know. I just call him Robert. You have Bobby. Bobby Fingers. Yes. But Chuck, the hilarious thing is we're not talking about proctologists right now. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I'll be very surprised if they come up again in this episode, because instead we're talking about bowling. That's right. And big thanks to Mark Bowles for this. He just simply wrote in and said, hey, I bet you bowling has a pretty interesting backstory. And it kind of does, I think. Yeah, it does. Mark Bowles was lazy and wanted us to do it for him, and here we are. And we want to also give an even bigger thanks to Edgarabanowski for helping us out with this one. Yeah. And before we get to that interesting history, though, bowling seems like the kind of thing we could just say, hey, we're doing one on bowling. Everyone knows what that is, right? But at the risk of not covering our bases, we can very quickly just sort of describe the game, right? Oh, yeah, I think that's a good idea, because ten pin bowling, which is what we're talking about, there's tons and tons of different variations on bowling, but, Timpin, bowling is specifically what we're talking about, and it's an American invention. So it's entirely possible that there's people out there who listen, who have never played Temp and bowling, who knows? I'm making it up, but it's a good guess, I think. All right. So what you do here. And Ed is keen to point out and we'll also get to this in the history that bowling is a variation of just a game. Which seems like kind of one of the earlier kinds of games. Which is throw something at those things. Whether it be cornhole or horseshoes or any kind of rolled object at a club or a pen or something. And ten pin bowling is a variation of that where there are ten pins arranged in the triangle, starting at the head pin. So you got your one, and then you got two pins, and then you got three pins and then you got four pins, all in rows, so it forms a nice little triangle. And you throw a bowling ball down a lane that is 42 inches wide and 60ft long from the foul line to the head pin. Yeah. And the entire lane itself is 62ft and ten and 316 inches long, to be precise. Yeah. Something no one ever needs to know. Right. Well, I mean, somebody put it out there, I wanted to know, so hats off, too. I can't remember what site helped me, but at the end where you're rolling the ball, where you the player, the bowler is standing, there's a line, it's a foul line, and if you cross it, you just gave up any points you might have accrued for that shot. You blow up, you explode. Yeah. And then just to make it even harder, that would be amazing. Kind of like a running man version of bowling. Yeah. Or a squid game thing. Yeah. The new running man, frankly, bring it into the modern era. It kind of hits in some ways. Yeah. And then to make it even harder, in addition to the threat of exploding, if you cross the foul line, there are these troughs on either side of the lane that your ball can easily move into. They're called gutters. And balls are usually about eight to eight and a half inches in diameter. Gutters are a nice snug fit. They're usually about nine and a quarter inches in diameter. So there's a little bit of room for the ball to move along, but it's snug enough that it's not coming out of the gutter once it goes in there. Almost always. I've seen some aggressive bowlers have one pop out of the gutter. No. If it gets a nice rock going, wow. But I think that's sort of like hitting a 710 split. Yeah, exactly. Bowling pin, nice foreshadowing. And even if you had never bowled, you've probably at least heard the term gutter ball. It's just kind of a catch all term for things that stink that happened to you, whether you like it or not. Yeah. And these days. If you go bowling with your younger kids or just someone who really wants to make the game a lot easier. They have these little gutter guards. Little gates that lift up automatically. If you so choose or not automatically. You trigger it to and then that way your six year old can throw a bowling ball down and it'll just go side to side. Hitting those things all the way down. Yeah. And they might get lucky and ricochet it right into the pocket, which is the sweet spot between those pins, between the first pin and either one of the two behind it. Depending on whether you're a left hand or right hand bowler. Yeah, I mean, it's good that you brought that up. That if anyone ever didn't bowl much and thought, well, why do those pro bowlers and certain jerks at regular bowling alleys really try to spin that ball hard so it kisses that gutter and then flies at an angle? They discovered that the best way to knock down all ten pins for a strike is to come in at that sort of diagonal between the head pin and the pins behind it. Right. They're not doing it just because it looks cool. No, that's basically how you bowl if you're actually trying to do you try to spin? I haven't bowled in a while, but yeah, I definitely tried to spin because you don't want the ball to just skid along without rolling on the lane. You want it to spin. I never tried to spin. I was never strong enough or good enough, but I was an okay bowler in my bowling. Heyday, same here. I definitely peaked at bowling in about six to 7th grade when I was actually in an after school bowling program. That was much later. Okay, well, I also peaked at basketball in second grade when I played on the maroon team and the royal blue team at the YMCA. Were you taller earlier? No, I was less afraid of getting an elbow in the face, so I was way more aggressive taking it to the basket. My whole secret when my bowling game was on and I wasn't going out there and bowling like a 220 or anything like that, but if I walked out of there with like a 180 on any game, I've considered that a really good score for me. Yeah, my whole trick was to just bullet really straight I was pretty good at that. And to not launch it three or 4ft down the lane. It was a very smooth action, making contact with the floor kind of right at the foul line, and it all resulted in just a pretty true throw. Nice. So that's 180 is not professional. Okay. But yes, 180 is definitely I mean, I wouldn't go around boasting at it in some random bar you just walked into, but you could probably impress your closest friends with that. I mean, that's probably like my best score, just to be clear. Got you. Okay. Yeah. And speaking of scores, Chuck, today, if you go bowling, a computer keeps score for you. You don't have to score. That's actually a huge relief for a lot of people because scoring in bowling is really complicated. And there's actually I've seen a theory or hypothesis, I guess, that one of the reasons why bowling has become less of a thing in America over the years is because it is computerized scoring and people don't understand the game like they used to when you had to keep score yourself. Well, yes, but the goal for every single time you throw the ball is to knock the pins down, right? But if you don't, then you've got a problem on your hand. And even if you do knock all the pins down. So that's a strike, by the way, for those of you who've never played ten pin bowling. If you knock all ten pins down in your first throw, you get two throws per frame. There's ten frames per game, right. In any given frame, you have two possible throws. If you knock all ten pins down with your first throw in a frame, that's a strike and you're done. Okay? Are you done? Well, you're done until your next if it's one through nine, you're done. And the ten frame, you'd get those bonus balls, which we'll get to got you. So with scoring, since you knock all ten pins down, you'd think, okay, you get ten points per frame. If you bold a strike in every frame, you'd have 100 points. Like, that's the maximum number of points. It's actually not correct. There's bonus points in bowling, so that if you bowl a strike in any given frame, the number of pins you knock down in the next two frames affect your score in that first frame that you bowl the strike in. Okay? I told you it's really complicated. And scoring strikes is easier than scoring spares, which I'm hesitant to even get into. But the upshot is there are bonus points in scoring a spare. And a spare, by the way, is when you knock down all ten pins. But it takes you both of your throws in a single frame, right? Right. Which can happen. You can knock down one pin and then nine pins, or you can knock down nine and then one or any combination therein. Yeah. As long as all of the pins are knocked down by your second throw, right, that's a spare. And then your next throw in the next frame, those points get added to that frame previously, where you threw a spare, the frame before. It's way more nuanced than that, actually. But frankly, I'm very relieved because that's a pretty good overview of scoring and bowling. Yeah. And in the old days, when we were growing up, pre computerized scoring, I felt like there was always somebody in the group that knew how to do it. They were kind of the de facto scorekeeper, and you would indicate a strike, and it's still indicated via computer with an X and a spare with a slash mark through the square. And of course, now with the computer thing, when you bowl a strike, they flash your name up there. So people inevitably list their name as Chewbacca or Fartface or something. Something really fun. Yeah. It's kind of incumbent upon you to come up with a silly name, unless your name is Doctor Finger and Butt, and then you definitely just use your real name. Right. So you've got like, the scoring with the spare scoring with the strike. Those are exceptional. Those have bonus points. If you take two throws in a frame and you knock down two pins, and then in your second throw, you knock down five. There's nothing special about that. That's seven points for that frame. But the thing is, if you notice when you throw a strike, the next two frames scores are added to that frame where you scored a strike. If you score a strike in every frame, it just keeps going down the line to where you end up eventually with 30 in each frame, and then by the time you get to the 10th frame, since if you roll the strike in that 10th frame, you actually get two more throws because you're basically adding two more frames or one more frame. And if you bowl a strike in every single one of those, including your two extra throws, you will have just bowled twelve strikes in a row and you will have accrued a score of 300, which in bowling is considered a perfect game. That's right. And bowling is all about those strikes and spares and those bonus points if you want to score high. Because if you think about it, if you knock down nine out of those ten pins, you might think that's pretty good. But if you do that ten times, you've only scored a 90. Right. So you really need to hit those strikes and spares, or ideally a turkey, which is three strikes in a row, at least at one point during the game. And you really, really want that money ball as that last frame. That's where you can really add a lot to your final total, right? Exactly. So, I mean, this isn't meant to be like an exhaustive primer on bowling scoring. I think if this episode gets you into bowling, you'll probably need to look up some more explanation of the rules or don't or have it taught to you or something like that. But that's generally how it works and it is really kind of difficult to understand, but it also, to me, it's a throwback of when the general public was a little smarter, because we didn't necessarily rely on computers for stuff like this, we had to do it ourselves. Right? Like now, if you can type in Chewbacca, then you can bowl it's misspelled, just like a capital letter randomly in the middle of it. All right. I think that's a good break, right? I think so, too, Chuck. We're in sync right now. Yeah. Let's do it. So we'll come back and we'll talk about all kinds of fun stuff, bowling gear and more, right after this. All right? Ed Wisely points out that there's quite a bit of bowling gear for a game that you can play in short pants while drinking beer. We'll talk about the ball in a second, but well, let's go ahead and talk about the ball. Yes. What are you waiting for? I don't know. The original bowling balls were wood. It was a hardwood native to the Caribbean and South America called Lignum. I even looked it up. I t. Yeah. Or the Gakan tree. Oh, is that the tree? That's the tree, yeah. You said the Texonic name. I think one of the common names is Giacon. Okay. But it's a very hard, dense wood. And that worked out for a little while, but then the 20th century rolls around, and I said, hey, we got new things like rubber, so let's make them out of rubber. And they had a core, which was either one or two piece that would be connected by pegs, and then like, a one inch outer shell. And then Brunswick came along. The rubberman was the crew that worked on this project and developed something called a mineral light bowling ball in the 1910s, which Ed couldn't figure out what that was. And from what I saw, I don't know if you did any digging. I found that it wasn't a substance, but it was more of a process. Right. Yeah. And I think that the process resulted in a hard rubber ball. Right. But it was a ball that floated in liquid mercury that they would continually kind of used to tweak the ball. Is that right? I didn't see that. That must have been amazing and dangerous. Well, that's what I saw, because mercury would be the mineral. So I think it's a process of making the bowling ball using this liquid mercury. And we should say bowling balls in used to be made out of bouncy rubber. That would be an entirely different game from what we're talking about. This is like hard rubber. Like a hockey puck. Yeah. Or flubber. You don't want that. No. Chuck and by the way, if I'm wrong about the mineral light, it is pretty hard to find out a lot about that for some reason. Yeah. I don't know either. If I was wrong on that and someone knows what it is, please let me know. Right. And then also, Chuck, the balls eventually were made from plastic polyurethane, and then resin took over in the were a decade. Like, each decade basically brought along a pretty big sea change with bowling balls. But the 90s are arguably the decade of the most change, because with that resin, they started messing around with different coatings on the outside of the ball. The resin, they called it reactive resin, I think, and it would actually kind of grip. It would give the ball some grips, and all of a sudden, you could control that ball way better. And because of that change in balls, Chuck, the number of perfect games exploded, starting in the really? Look at this. Yeah. In the 69 season, the US. Bowling Congress, which is this umbrella organization that covers all bowling from people who just show up at a lane to the highest paid Pro Bowler. The USBC recorded 905 perfect games in the 1968 69 season. Okay. Okay. 30 years later, in the 1990 819 99 season, there were 34,470 perfect game. Kidding me. Yes. And not only that so that's a 3700% increase. But not only that, there were two thirds fewer bowlers bowling in that season than there had been in the 68 69 season. Bowling tech. Thank you. Right? Yeah. But that's what the change in the ball City, it just completely revolutionized the game. It made it way more easy. You could also say a lot more fun for the average casual bowler. Yeah, I would say so. It's interesting if you look inside a bowling ball on the internet, like a cross section, they do have a core, but it's not round, and it's really kind of strange. There are some interesting and kind of odd shapes that are inside bowling balls, and different shapes of the core will give a different characteristics as it rolls or is spun or not spun. What do they call it? Hooked. Thank you. Hooked down the lane. And then you've got your cover stock, and that is the final outer layer. That is now that reactive resin. That apparently changed the game. Yeah, totally. And if you want to make sure your bowling ball is regulation, you want to get yourself one of those things they used to measure what's it called? A caliper scale. You want to get a caliper and you want to measure and make sure it's between eight five and 859 five inches in diameter. That's a regulation sized bowling ball. There's no minimum weight, but the maximum it can weigh is \u00a316, which hurts my elbows is thinking about that. Yeah. Were you a heavy ball guy or not? Medium, for sure. Medium to light. Yeah, I was light to medium. Okay. Yeah, I think it's the same thing. We were just going in opposite way. I mean, I definitely prefer lighter. I was and still am a weakling. So a big heavy bowling ball just was no good for me. No, it's not that fun. And then the last requirement for regulation bowling ball is that it has to be gaudy. Yeah. Some of them are kind of crazy looking. You can get all kinds of like if you're a real bowler and you want to buy some weird specialty bowling ball that has a crystal skull in it, you can. But, you know, they have the plain black ones, but they also have all sorts of fun marbley colored bowling balls, and those are always kind of fun. I found the one that Bill Murray bowled with in Kingpin, the clear one with the rose in it. Okay. Was it a rose? I couldn't remember. Yeah, and you can get it for like, $250 online. I mean, not the one he was bowling with, but a remake of it, but it's out there for sure. Okay. I just might add that to the old Christmas list for special podcaster. Nice I hope you're talking about me and not been bowling. Ben bowling. Right. Yeah. And my mind just went there. That's funny. Should we talk pins? Yeah. There's not a lot of interesting things about pins as far as I'm concerned, except for the fact that they have to replace them about once a year because they get so beat up. Yeah. And they're not a single piece of wood. They used to be a single piece of solid maple carved out, but since the 50s, they've been glued together in sections. Right. And then also the lane itself is its own kind of piece of masterwork because it looks like individual pine boards. And the reason that it looks like that is apparently it's an homage to how lanes actually used to be built, which was individual pine and then maple boards, depending on what part of the lane you were talking about, you put maple at either end because that's where most of the heavy action was going on. And then in the middle, you would make it pine. But there were little tiny lengths of boards that were nailed down and screwed down to plywood, basically, that was on top of heavy beams, and that was your lane. And you had to varnish it and then sand it and varnish it and varnish it again maybe once or twice a year just to keep the thing intact from all the wear and tear. Yeah. And we should say that they use pine in the middle because pine is really soft. If we have the pine floors from the 1930s and our house. And if you look at it wrong, it can dent and scratch. So it's not a very hardy wood. So that's why they had the hard, super hard maple, where you're throwing that ball down at the beginning and at the end where the pins are exploding after you throw your 16 pound ball down there. But nowadays, bowling lanes are synthetic, isn't that right? Yeah. And again, it's funny that they make it look like they're individual boards because it is all just synthetic. Apparently the manufacturers of lanes keep their exact recipes as trade secrets, but it turned up one that described its substance. The synthetic substance that makes the lanes out of is phenolic, which is a kind of synthetic resin made from formaldehyde. So it ain't pine or maple anymore, is basically what I'm saying. Yeah. I like the fact that they do make it look like the olden days, but I think they could get a little more creative in some bowling alleys and they're trying to get people bowling again. And I know they're doing all kinds of fun stuff with cosmic bowling and all these kind of crazy ideas, but I think they could make the lanes look really interesting. Sure. Whatever that substance was made out of that you'd find around like a brass bowl in the 90s, but it was all sorts of different weird colors mixed together sort of okay, something like that. Or tiedye. Why not do tie dye bowling lanes? Like it's synthetic. You could make it look any way you want it. Or maybe, like, the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Yes. Oh, you know, it would be fun. People do that sidewalk art that makes it look like the sidewalk is crumbled away. The 3D art. That would be awesome. That would be so cool. It would. So Chuck, I think we should talk a little bit about lane oil because it's kind of interesting actually and it kind of changes things. Are you cool with talking about it at this point? Yeah, the whole deal from the end. Yeah, totally. So despite it already being made of pretty slick material, a bowling alley lane is actually coated in mineral oil and it's coated in different places and not just across bowling alleys. Like a different bowling alley will have oil in different they apply it in different patterns in different ways. Yes. And this is the reason why. And Ed sort of posed the question, if a scheme like me can go out there and bowl a 180 and the average professional bowler bowls between 210 and 220, I might think, hey, I'm pretty close to that score. I could do this a couple of times a week and I could be a pro bowler. And apparently that is not the case because of the fact, this one fact that standard bowling alleys were schmoes like US bowl, we get the mineral oil application and pattern that is the most forgiving and I guess the easiest and most geared towards amateur bowlers. Right. So like if you get a gutter ball or you just somehow miss all of your pins, you have really failed at a normal bowling alley because they are actually setting you up as best they can to get a strike every time. So you're actually really working against the workers at the bowling alley at that point. But the upshot of it is that it's geared toward making the casual bowler a better bowler. If the casual bowler stepped out and started bowling on the lane that had a PBA Professional Bowlers Association approved oil pattern, you would be totally lost. You'd probably get a gutter ball every single time. And like you said, that's the difference between the casual bowler and the pro bowler. It's so much harder to bowl in the pros because of that oil that they put in different kinds of patterns depending on the tournament, depending on the alley, depending on sometimes probably bowler's preferences. Yeah. And the sort of the simplest way to describe it without getting too dense into the patterns themselves. If there's less oil, then it's not going to be as slick and it's going to have a little more grab. If you get the house oil treatment, which is what they call the standard treatment for amateur bowlers, there's going to be less oil along the edges and along the sides near the gutters. So hopefully if it veers that way, it'll grab and try and veer itself back toward the center. I think it's fairly subtle. It's not so much that you can just obviously throw one up there and it'll just sort of ping pong down there toward the middle because of the oil application. But apparently the pro patterns which have animal names or they are named after famous bowlers from the past, like there's a scorpion pattern, stuff like that. Apparently that stuff is there's a lot of nuance to how you bowl on those. And those PBA bowlers are great at it. Yeah. And so like at a PBA approved tournament or championship, everybody's bowling on the same oil pattern. The oil pattern is established at the official practice and then they reapply it throughout the tournament. But it's the same type of pattern. So they've got these patterns down so well that after a day the oil is worn off, but they put on the same exact pattern that night. And to the bowler who comes the second day, it's like bowling exactly like it was the day before. That's how exact these patterns are. I saw that the oil is applied. The measurement that they use are like microlitres. That's how exactly these oil patterns are. And there's actually one I saw chuck that's named after Chris Paul, the NBA player. He's that much of a bowling enthusiast. He really own oil pattern named after him. I didn't know he was into it. I love that. I like Chris Paul. Yeah, he's huge into bowling for sure, but he's still an amateur. And also the pro bowlers will maybe dial in a certain ball. They might have several balls in their arsenal and depending on what kind of pattern they get, they may use a different ball and they may throw it and hook it a little bit differently or they invariably well, depending on what kind of pattern. But they know the patterns and they know what to do. Right. And then lastly, Chuck, the accoutrement that you want to make sure you're outfitted with if you're going to bowl are bowling shoes. And if you're a pro bowler, your bowling shoes are rather different from the kind that you or I would get from a guy who just sprayed it with some weird disinfectant and handed them to us. These are not normal bowling shoes. Yeah, that's such a classic part of bowling. It's just seeing them grab those and spray it in. Right? Yeah. Who was it that did that for a living in some movie? I don't know. I don't know. I want to say there is a heist movie where one of the characters is like a bowling shoe hander outer. Okay. I bet you somebody will write in I would like to know that too because that sounds familiar. I would too. But the bowling shoes that you will be probably renting unless you do. Bowl a lot. If you're in a league, you probably have your own shoes, but they have the right amount of amount of slip and grip to send you gliding down the floor but not slipping all over the place. And they are, in fact, made ugly and uncomfortable. So you don't take them home. That's a true thing. That's awesome. But people still do take them home. I think criminals once in the I think I did that once in my 20s when it was kind of cool to wear bowling shoes around. Shame. Shame. Chuck, what became of them? Did you take them back? Oh, who knows? That stuff in the 20th, it's ephemeral. Did you wear them out? Yeah, I was wearing them out in Athens and be like, hey, he's chucking his bowling shoes. Man, you are such a hipster. And the last bit of equipment we can mention is if you're pro Bowler or maybe if you have like, even wrist problems, or if you're just a league bowler who's highly enthusiastic, you might have a wrist brace and maybe a rosin bag to dry your hand off, even though they do have those great little air blowers at the ball return station. Yeah, they really do it's pretty great. We're going to talk about that in a minute, Chuck, because I propose we take a break and come back and talk about one of the most profound developments in the history of bowling, the automatic pin setter. Love it. So, Chuck, for this first part, I want to direct everybody to our 2018 episode, Jobs of bygone Eras, because we talked about something that really ties into bowling, which was pin monkeys or pin boys. They were human people who would stand at the back of a bowling lane. Sometimes they were responsible for one lane, sometimes for two. And then as people bowled, they were responsible for removing the knockedover pins called deadwood, leaving the other pins up. And then when a frame was done, resetting the pins by hand, they would just set the pins out in a triangle. They would also take somebody's ball and roll it down a little incline back to them. That was a human based job for a really long time, actually. That's right. Then they advanced it a little bit to where there was a machine that would position and set the pins, but there was still a pin boy because it wasn't fully automated. They would, like, use the lever to lower it down, but it was still like a mechanical machine that was helping getting them in the exact correct position, eliminating human error, I reckon. Yeah, sure. But also making it a lot faster, too. Oh, yeah, way faster. And then they finally, I guess this was the early 1900s, they tried to automate it a little bit more. Never really caught on that well. And then a gentleman named Fred Gottfried. Fred Schmidt from New York State figured out a machine that would actually clear the pins. Lift them up. Set the pins. And it was bought in 1941 by the American Machine and Foundry Company. Which. If you don't think that sounds familiar. If you go to any bowling alley. You'll see a lot of equipment with AMF branded on it. And that's where it comes from. American Machine and Boundary Company. Yeah. And that was a really, really good purchase of those patents by AMF. They opened a factory in an old, I think, bicycle factory in Shelby, Ohio. They started out with 200 employees, and those 200 employees could make 200 of these automatic pinsetters a year at first, but they caught on so quickly, and the pinsetter changed the game so much that they just started hiring and building more and more and more. So much so that from 1950 to 1958, 40,000 AMF pen setters and a pinsetter is a huge machine at the back of every lane in a bowling alley. 40,000 of them have been sold or leased out to bowling alleys just in the United States alone. So it was like a revolutionary shockwave that went through bowling, because bowling was no longer a slow and unpredictably paced game anymore. It was fast, and it had a rhythm that you could get into. As a matter of fact, AMF touted that. This was a new type of bowling. They call it rhythm bowling because it was automated, so you could kind of determine when the ball was going to come back, when the pins are going to be ready. And it was just much more fast paced than having some kid hand setting up pins in the back, which is what it had been like just a decade before. It's interesting you mentioned the rhythm. Like, you don't really think about it, but even an amateur schmo like me, when the thing messes up or when your ball doesn't come back right, you do feel a little put out, like, oh, man, I was feeling things. I was in my groove. Right. And now I got to push that button to make the person from the front desk come over and talk to it. Yeah, that's funny because I don't feel disappointed. I feel like I did something wrong and I'm about to get in trouble for doing something to their ball. That's how I always felt. Really? I'm coming to realize that that's like a hallmark of my entire life that I really need to get past. It's not your fault. You don't need to hide in the bathroom. Thanks. I wouldn't quite hide in the bathroom, but I wouldn't make eye contact with the person. Came over and fixed it. Well, you probably had a scarring thing at a young age where someone came back and went, would you do would you do that ball? I'm crumbling right now. That was, like, such a perfect impression. You didn't do anything. Todd GAC. You didn't do anything. Thank you. Rocking back and forth so we're going to get into not the weeds, but we're going to get a little bit into the nitty gritty of the modern automatic pin setter, which is just a truly amazing machine. If you like watching how it's made or any of those shows about like, factory mechanical processes, then look no further than the automatic pinsetter. And I can recommend, I think we both can, a YouTube video from a gentleman named Jared Owen Animations. So just look up Jared Owen Animations pin setter, and he does these great animations of mechanical processes. And this one was just so cool and fascinating. It's nuts how amazing it is, how great this animation was. And then also I wanted to just rerecommend pinsetter. Operation Video kind of a sterile title. And it's live action. It's not Animation by Matt Bowling, again, who's a pinsetter mechanic. And he took apart all sorts of different components of the pinsetter to show how they worked in operation and explains it. So both of those videos are really good at explaining how pinsetters work. Right. And one last thing before we get into it. I did think of a lot of ideas along the way, like the plaid bowling lanes and things to get bowling more interesting. Again, I say get rid of the facade in front of these machines and let people look at them. It's amazing looking. And it would be super cool. It would be super cool. But one of the things that's really critical on those facades is another AMF invention that helped change Bowling, what's called the magic triangle, which shows which pins are still standing in their location on that facade so that you know how to throw your ball. That's true. But get rid of that. They could put that somewhere else. And apparently, AMF really tried to call this thing the pin Decatur, and it never caught on. Everybody called it the magic triangle. I like vindicator. I'm surprised it didn't catch. It did not catch. All right, should we get into this? Yeah. Also, real quick, shout out. I think it was Richmondcountyhistory.com, which is all the info I got. That Shelby, Ohio am f info from all right, shout outs over. Here we go with automatic vincent, one of humankind's greatest inventions. The first thing that's going to happen, you're going to throw your ball down there and hit pins. And as soon as your ball crosses that little threshold where the pins are, there are sensors on both sides that tell the pin setting machine, hey, the ball has passed through. It's time to go to work. Right. So a bunch of things happen initially, obviously, when you throw a ball really fast, that weighs up to \u00a316 down 60ft of Lane, and it knocks into a bunch of wooden pins that suddenly go flying. You need some sort of backstopper barrier. And they have that. They have like some sort of tarp or sheet that covers rubber stoppers that are mounted to a wood panel, and that's like the backstop. And then directly below the backstop, between it and the end of the lane is a little conveyor belt that pushes everything that got knocked over toward the backstop back away from the lane that's going on simultaneously while the sweep and the pins that are coming down. Right, right. And the other thing we should mention that is happening, ideally, if it's working correctly, is your ball is going to be sort of shuttled over to what's called an accelerator, and it's just a really fast moving conveyor belt on a pulley, and it's going to shoot that ball pretty fast, actually. But it's all happening underground. Again, make these things clear, like people want to see this stuff. And it goes through that tunnel between the lanes. The lanes share one of those ball return machines. And then at the very end, when it reaches the big covered up thing that shouldn't be covered, you have an S shaped sort of system with two spinning tires, and it just sort of grabs the ball and shoots it through this track, for lack of a better term, out to where you are. And you can kind of think of those spinning tires as like a baseball pitching machine when you stick the baseball in between the two tires and it shoots it out. Right. And not only shoots it out, it moves it upward vertically, which is pretty cool because, again, this is a 16 pound ball. And then I looked and I didn't see anybody say anything about it, but it looks like that top wheel spins in a direction that will put spin on the ball so it loses momentum as it's coming up because it's spinning the opposite direction of the direction it's traveling. I'm not 100% sure that's based exclusively on my own information or observation, and I haven't conducted any sort of scientific study of it because you got to watch those fingers when you go to pick the ball up for sure, because that's a lot coming out. But I think that they put spin on it to make it slow down. That's right. All right. So meanwhile, you've got a rack that's going to drop over the pins, and you have obviously, if you don't knock everything down, there's something called a sweep wagon or a sweeper that's going to sweep away those pins, but you want to keep those pins that are there. And this machine drops down. There's something called the pin detecting plate that's going to detect whether or not there's a pin there, and then it will engage these grasping claws called spotting tongs. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. Okay. And they grab that pin and pick it up. Yeah, because it's really important that whatever pins are left standing after the first throw in the frame, you want to move them up and out of the way before you sweep the deadwood that's left on the lane back toward that conveyor belt. Right? And then it brings it back down, sets them back in place, and then the pins that are lift back up and it's ready for that second throw. But in the meantime, that conveyor belt, that's moving all the deadwood in the ball that was swept back beyond the lane. So the ball has been shunted off into the ball return and what's left are pins that are just kind of spinning around, bobbling around. It almost looks like a lot of machine with the balls pop jumping around inside of it. And right behind that conveyor belt is an elevator. And an elevator is designed with a bunch, I think, 14 different little buckets. In each bucket, very snugly holds a bowling pin. And the bowling pins just kind of fall into the elevator sideways, one by one. Yeah, sideways on their side. Right. And then one by one, they're lifted up and taken to the top of the pin center. And some more magic happens, too. Yeah, some more magic happens. They have the centering wedges that get them all ready to go. And we should point out they can be laying either skinny side left or skinny side right. And they are horizontal. And then when they are dropped off, they're just sort of one end of it is sort of smacked around and it goes down a little. Shoot. So they are sitting upright again. Yeah, they're all facing the same way with the base at the top? Yes, at the bottom, toward the person. So, yeah, there's all sorts of little, like, fins and chutes and just little things that manipulate how the bowling pin moves around and where it's laying and how it's oriented that are really simple in design, but they're also extremely ingenious. It's not like the kind of thing that you wouldn't intuitively figure out if you sat down and thought about how to do it, but somebody sat down and thought about how to do this and they came up with a really elegant, really complex electromechanical solution, which is the pinsetter. Yeah. I'm sure there are other places around the country, but I know there's one in La and Highland Park called Highland Park Bowl, which was a bowling alley from the 1930s that they restored to its original beauty not too long ago. And they do leave the pinsetting machines exposed there. And it's super cool looking. Yeah. So you've got, eventually, ten pins that are lined up in the pin setter and they're knocked into a vertical position, standing upright, and then eventually that same pin setter that lifts up the remaining pins after the first throw. That same pin setter drops down ten pins after the second throw, resets everything and the whole thing starts all over. That's right. It's beautiful. Again, go watch one of those videos. It's really interesting to see how it works because we haven't quite done it justice, if you ask me. Yeah, and I imagine they're expensive, and there are a lot of them in a full size bowling alley. It's a lot of money going on there, for sure. So should we talk about some of the history? Yeah, we'll finish out with some history. So, like we said, this started out as a lot of human games, which is throw something at something else to knock it down. They have found things in Egyptian tombs that show that they might have done something like bowling. They definitely know that in the middle Ages they were bowling on lawns, like a bowling green. That's where that comes from. And at various times, bowling became super popular, and various kings got angry that bowling was popular. And so they said, you cannot bowl anymore. But also, Germany is tagged as possibly the beginning of not what we modern, ten pin bowling, but early bowling. And the 300 ads as religious rite in ritual, where you would roll a stone at a bunch of standing clubs to absolve your sins. Yeah, it was religious bowling. I love it. Yeah. Germany still lays claim to the invention of bowling based on those monks that used to do that. Again, that's nine pin eventually. We don't really know where ten pin or when or who, I should say who created ten pin and exactly where and when it was created. But we do know it was an American invention in the very late 19th century. And there's a long standing rumor, an old saw, if you will, about where ten pin came from, and that was that there were all sorts of prohibitions on nine pin bowling because it had become a means of gambling or something to be gambled on. And so to prevent gambling, there are prohibitions on nine pin bowling. So they added a 10th pin to get around those bands, and that's supposedly where ten pin came from. Apparently, no one's ever really turned up any original source material saying that, but it's a pretty good story. I like it. In 1895, a gentleman named Joe Thumb, the grandfather of modern bowling, brought together a bunch of people and formed the American Bowling Congress, the ABC, which is now what you mentioned earlier, the USBC, the United States Bowling Conference. And over the years, bowling has kind of ebbed and flowed in its popularity. There were beer leagues in the where beers would sponsor tournaments and sponsor bowlers. The mafia got involved for a while with action bowling, which is like, hey, let me get some action on this. And there were some pretty high stakes games going on in New York back then, right? Yeah. Supposedly action bowling would take place after the leagues were done, and it would start around midnight or 01:00 a.m., and sometimes these games would go to seven in the morning. And there are stories of people who were into action bowling in New York who would walk out of there with 10,000 plus dollars that they won from these basically gambling on bowling late at night. And it was a huge thing in New York, and it got to be so big that some of these action bowlers ended up getting so good that they became pros. They ended up in the Pro Bowlers Association because they couldn't find anybody who would take their money anymore because people just knew how good they were. So the only people they could compete against were other pros. So Ed has the 1980s. He lists the peak of Boeing's popularity. I'm going to take issue with that. Maybe in the 80s it was the peak of televised professional bowling, but everything I saw clearly indicated like the 19 fifteens and sixties was when bowling was at its peak of popularity. As far as the American public goes, bowling is concerned. Yeah, let me give you an example of that. And I got this from a price anomics article by Zachary Crockett. I think it's called the Rise and Fall of bowling article. Zachary Crockett is one of my favorite writers on the web. He's just awesome. He's popped up in a bunch of our episodes because he just writes about the most interesting stuff in a really great way. But in it he cites that the first athlete of any sport, chuck any sport, to land a $1 million contract was Don Carter in 1964, and that's $1 million in 1960, $4. So it's about more than seven and a half million dollars today. And that's pretty astounding that a bowler was the first one to land a million dollar endorsement contract. But it's even more astounding when you juxtapose it against what some of the other stars, some of the other sports stars were getting at the same time. Right? Yes. 1963, the top bowler was a man named Harry Smith, and he made more money than baseball MVP Sandy Koufax and NFL MVP Ya Tittle combined. Yeah, exactly. And then also there were other sports figures who had endorsement contracts, but they were nothing like a million dollar endorsement contract. Arnold Palmer had one with Wilson for $5,000. That's less than $40,000 in today's money. Joe Namath had one with, I think, Schick razors. He had a contract for $10,000, which is worth about 75 grand today. A bowler in 1964 got a million dollar contract. You see, man, that's how popular bowling was at the time. Yeah, it was huge. There was a legend named Dick Weber, and he has a son named Pete Webber, who's probably one of the more well known bowlers today. And the only reason I bring him up is because Ed pointed out a very fun video of Pete Webber in 2012 after winning a tournament. And you got to see it because Ed says he shouted Nonsensically, who do you think I am? Or who do you think you are? I am. And I was like, what does that mean? And I know it was nonsensical, but did you see the video? Oh, yeah, I kept watching it over. I did too. It's so funny. He gets so fired up and he's screaming and he just goes, who do you think you are? I am. And that's the double thumbs. And everyone went, what? Yeah. And of course this happened in 2012, so it immediately became a meme. And so a lot of people who are not at all in the bowling are familiar with who do you think you are? I am. Apparently it's on coffee mugs and really shirts and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I'd not heard of it before then, but I looked into it. It is definitely a meme. But yeah, he was the kind of like the John Mcenrow of bowling, but from what I could see, it was definitely a greater personality. But he also did it to keep attention on bowling at a time when bowling was losing viewers, like left and right. As a matter of fact, the pro Bowlers association, the PBA, was purchased in 2000 by three Microsoft employees for $5 million. That's the state that bowling was in back in the day. That's how far it declined. And slowly but surely, it's starting to tick back up. And I've got a couple of stats, if you'll indulge me real quick. Oh, please. Because I've got more. Okay, so in the heyday, in the 60s, there was something like 12,000 bowling alleys and there were 10 million Americans who were considered regular bowlers. Today there's less than half of that in the number of bowling alleys, and it's down to less than 3 million regular bowler. So it's been a pretty precipitous drop. And one of the things that this group, White Hutchinson, who from what I can tell is basically the KPMG consultants of amusement games, they did a bunch of studies and focus groups and they kind of put their finger on the idea that the old bowling alleys were kind of neglected as customers dropped off. And they got to be really sad, cigarette, stale, beer smelly places that you would not want to take your family. It was just a depressing place to hang out. And now people are starting to tear those down, remodel and replace them with these new, happy, huge fund centers. And as a result, bowling is actually starting to make a comeback. Yeah, and league bowling too has been a big part of that hit. I think it used to account for about 70% of total bowling revenue. And when you and I are growing up, my parents didn't do it, but league bowling was a big thing, like a lot of people did it definitely. Now that's down to 40% of total revenue is from league bowling. And you're right, I think like, Lucky Strike is one of them. And there's all kinds of sort of new fancy schmancy bowling centers where you can get like a quality cocktail and for bowling alley, maybe decent food. Definitely more family friendly for holding like birthday parties and stuff there. Those places are fine. I am a fan of just sort of an old school not gross, but like an old school bowling alley. No, I know what you mean, for sure. That's what I grew up in too. Yeah, if you can find one. I do want to shout out, they're both closed now, but I know I talked about the Hollywood star lanes, which I live down the street from in La lebowski lanes where they film the big Lebowski. And on any given Friday night we'd be in there hanging out and there'd be like the cast of the 70s show bowling and Vince Vaughn and John Fabro over there having a drink and it was like a really cool place to see celebrities on the DL. And then when I moved, we moved to eagle Rock and there was eagle Rock lanes, which had the killer karaoke. And I just looked up in Eagle rock lanes closed a couple of years ago, which makes me very tall. I want to shout out my home lane, which is not nearly as hip or celebrity studded as yours. Southwick lanes, where the bowling alley I grew up bowling at, and also, if I remember correctly, the place where I first really smelled a cigarette and thought, I wonder what it's like to smoke one of those. Yes, I probably bowled more in my 20s when I lived in La. And early 30s because it was just fun and pretty cheap. Like these new places are a lot more expensive. I mean, you used to go in there and bowl for $10 or so for a couple of hours, not including your beer and stuff. But maybe we should close on the 17th split. Oh, nice thinking, buddy. So I've always heard about the dreaded 17 split, which means the only two pins remaining are the ones on the very, very back corners opposite one another, the seven pin and the ten pin. And I knew it was like a really hard thing to do, but I had no idea literally until today that it's only been done four times in televised pro bowling tournaments. Yeah, I think the first time it was ever shown live was like 2010 or twelve. When was that one? Well, I don't know about life, but I saw clips from the 80s. Okay, so what I saw on CBS sports is that there was a bowler who did it. It was a PBA bowler. He did it and it was the first time it was captured on live television. The last time that it had happened was like 1991 and apparently it wasn't televised live. So it is extremely rare and the chances of you actually making it happen are really, really slim. I saw something like a zero 85 or maybe even zero 85% chance .8% of syncing, a 710 split. And it's because you have to hit either the seven pin or the ten pin in such a way that you knock it directly into the other pin, opposite it in a direction that's perpendicular essentially to the direction the ball is traveling. In that sense, you're knocking both pins down using one pin to knock the other pin down. It's extremely hard to do. I didn't realize how hard it was to do either. I'm like you. I was just like, yeah, 710 split. Everybody knows that's hard. Yeah. But I did not know it was that rare. And just to shout out the gentleman who did it most recently, you can look it up on the internet, 18 year old name Anthony newer. It's kind of fun to watch because people go nuts. It's kind of fun to see something like that happen. But the announcer screamed out because this kid's got red hair. The ginger assassin. He did say that not only does he have red hair, he's got a luxurious mullet. I believe it looked pretty mullett. I didn't get a side view, but it looked like he was partying in the rear. It definitely did look moldy, too. So congratulations to you, sir. And I guess that's about it. Bowling still goes on. The change in balls. Didn't just change it for the casual bowler, changed it for the pros, too, so that it's undergoing or in the process of a big sea change as far as how the game is played by the pros, but it's still hanging around. I think bowling is ever going extinct anytime soon. Agreed. I haven't been in so long, this has inspired me to go out. I think my daughter would enjoy it at this age. It'd be fun. I'll see you there, Chuck. Let's do it. Oh, and one more thing. I want to shout or direct everybody to the song that I usually think of anytime I think of bowling. Campervan beethoven's. Take the skinheads. Bowling. Great band. Surprisingly happy song. And since I said it's a surprisingly happy song and Chuck said, yeah, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a quick pronunciation tip. This is from Theresa in Melbourne, Australia. Hey, guys, enjoy the podcast. Firstly, I would like to know which one of you has the delightful giggle. No, I think we know who that is. I guess that's me, right? I was going to say Jerry. Okay, but that is not my genuine question. Like many Americans, you struggle to pronounce English towns in cities and locales and government names. Particularly, I've noticed the ones that end in S-H-I-R-E. Sheree. The unofficial rule, guys. When standing alone, it's pronounced shire like wire. But when used as a suffix, it rhymes with beer. So Oxfordshire, worcestershire. Obviously instead of Worcestershire or Leicestershire, I'd Say Worcestershire. Worcestershire sauce. I don't say any more on these. I'd say it three times in secession, just like that. Pronounced this correctly and you will probably get many free. Beers next time you're in the UK. And again, that is from Theresa in Australia. Thanks a lot, Theresa. That was a great one. Cheer. Cheer delight. If you want to be like Theresa and give us some tips on how to talk good, we would love to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ckfilm-final.mp3	How Brickfilm Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-brickfilm-works	What began as a pair of teens who made a film for their grandparents has exploded into its own art form. Learn all about how stop-motion Lego films are made.	What began as a pair of teens who made a film for their grandparents has exploded into its own art form. Learn all about how stop-motion Lego films are made.	Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:22:29 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=15, tm_min=22, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=190, tm_isdst=0)	30680364	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. How's it going? Going great, sir. How are you? Pretty good. Yeah. Do you remember our Lego episode? I do. That is a great episode. Classic. That I highly recommend people listen to it's. Where the name old Kirk Christensen came up. As soon as I saw that name, it just flashed me back. A great name. Ole. Yes. O-L-E-I think we should go by ole Josh Clark and ole Chuck Bryant. That's definitely how it goes. Well, I'll bet you something, Chuckers. Yeah. Back in 1932, when Old Kirk Christensen founded Lego and Bill and Denmark billy, when did you say is the name? Yeah. You mean when he founded automatic binding bricks? Right. He didn't call him Lego at first. No, lego is definitely more grabby. Yeah. Well, he came up with Lego, apparently, and I remember us debating this or not, so I looked around and this is what I see everywhere, including on the Lego site, that Lego is two words, leggoot, which means playwell, G-O-D-T. But Lego also means I put together in Latin, I believe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, when he was coming up with this, I'll bet he never thought, these are going to be used to make hundreds and thousands of short stop motion films that are going to delight millions of people around the world one day. Probably never thought about that. No, but they do. I wonder what old Kirk thought when he stepped on one with his bare feet. He thought yeah. He said, man, this is going to tick off a lot of parents for the next 3000 years. Yeah, it's not fun. So, Chuck, I don't know if you caught it or not. I just made a reference to Brick films. Yeah. Did you catch the reference? I did. Stop motion. Well, I guess animation really is what it comes down to. That's exactly what it is. One of the earliest forms of animation, because all it involves is moving something, taking a photo of it, moving it just a little bit more, taking another picture and doing that until you want to kill yourself. Pretty much. And then that stop motion animation. Yes. Requires a lot of patience. I've made a few of them myself, and when I say a few of them, I mean one complete one with my brother, with GI. Joe's. I remember with the Super Eight, I made about probably 12 seconds of one with Star Wars figures in my twenty s, and then about 30 seconds of one with Clay. I built a little theater box set and everything. Nice. Made a guy look great out of Sculpy and I think he got out of bed, went over to his dresser, got a shirt and went and exited the door. And then I was like, I'm done. I bet it took so long the rest of his day that you had the script for just no. Yeah. It looked good, though, and I was proud of it, but it's just not for me. Well, you need to post those on YouTube and they're on VHS somewhere. I can take these things up. You need to get them on YouTube. Yeah. The world can't access your VHS tapes. So what, do I just get the VHS tape and I just bang it on my laptop and it gets on YouTube? Yeah. Okay. As long as there's a black monolith in the background behind you. Yeah, it'll work. All right. I'll have to try that. So you never use Legos, though? Never use Legos. But I do think Legos are made for this kind of thing because not only do they click into place, which is key, because you don't want stuff moving around. Right. But these days, there are all kinds of prepackaged Lego sets that are just little film sets waiting to be made into movies. Right. That's probably the reason why it took off so much, I'm sure, because Lego keeps building these sets that are like Harry Potter sets or Star Wars sets or Marvel superheroes sets. Yeah. And then there's Lego competitors, like Mega Blocks that has licenses for the Halo video game series. Or Hello Kitty or Barbie. Right. Call of Duty. Yes. All you have to do is get, like, one of these packages, one of these sets, and all of a sudden you have a movie set. If you have a lot of patience, camera of any sort, really, as we'll see. And something to animate it with basically a light source. Sure. Not a lot of stuff. When I was doing it, it was about as bare bones as it got. It was working on a tabletop with a couple of the little clip on aluminum lights you get at the hardware store. You can use those. What are those? Work lights. Work floods? Yeah, just little work lights. They get hot. They sure do. I didn't have any. I had a tripod and a camera because you want to keep things super still. You definitely need a tripod. Definitely need a tripod. Or if you are fancy or have friends that are fancy and have a slider, it's basically like a little mini dolly that your camera can sit on and they're three to 4ft long. And then you can do little dolly moves and camera moves on your slider and keep it nice and straight. Or if you have some ingenuity, which you probably do if you're making a brick film, you can make your own little skateboard dolly out of skateboard wheels and PVC pipe. Yeah, you can make a little track and then attach. There's a lot of ways to do it, but like a baseboard to set the camera on with track wheels to guide along the PVC. Right. Pretty neat what we're talking about specifically are brick films. And there aren't a lot of requirements to make a brick film aside from what you're saying. But one of them is that Legos have to kind of feature prominently. Most brick films are stop motion. And one of the things in addition to having, like, Harry Potter sets or outer space sets, or all these different sets that are like mini movie sets, right out of the box are the mini figures. Yeah. Those are your actors, typically, yeah. They didn't come along until the late 70s. Yeah, 1978. And then now I think they're the largest population on the planet. Oh, really? Yeah. Remember, there's like 4 billion of them or something like that. I know they made more tires than anyone else, but yeah, that doesn't surprise me. All right. Yeah, I came along. My Lego experience was prefigure, so we had to make our own little men and women out of smaller Lego in the snow. They go both ways. These make sense. They look cooler. Yeah. So most brick films are stop motion. Some people actually film the Lego figures and characters moving. Yeah. That's tough. I would guess so. I would think it's not quite as time consuming, though. Wire work and stuff. I bet it's frustrating. Yeah. But I mean, if you have, like, all of your Lego figures on rollerskates or something, you just kind of drag them along. Sure. You don't have to take picture, picture, picture. You can film them moving with stop motion. It's the opposite. Basically, it's like you said, you set up your shot, you take a photo of it, and then you move the person a little bit. Like if they're walking, you would move their arm, one of their arms down, another one up, and one leg out a little bit, and the other one back a little bit, and then take that picture, and so on and so on. And what you're ultimately doing is recreating motion using inanimate objects. And the way you recreate motion is by the frames per second, which is a film speed, and film shoots, or plays, I should say, at 24 frames per second. Which means that every second of film you see, you're actually being shown 24 still photographs in Secession. Yeah. That's for film. Video is 30 frames per second. And there are variations on all this to achieve different looks. But if you were just doing the math, if you want to do a stop motion film, a five minute stop motion film at 24 FPS frames per second would be 7200 individual photographs. Right. That's for five minutes. Five minutes. Film means you have to take that many photographs in order. And in between photographs, you can't just sit there and take 7200 photographs. You're going to have 7200 of the same pictures? Sure. These are 7200, slightly different pictures where one is slightly different from the last. Yes. One way you can cheat that a little bit is if you just double it up and you use two frames for each move. Right. So you would take twelve pictures for a second of video. Right. And then just use them twice. And that would make it a 24 frames per second. Yeah. It's going to look a little more herky jerky. But the nature of the brick film is a little herky jerky anyway because of the way they move and the range of motion on the little figures. So it's not like if you took completely bendable action figures, you can get a lot more smooth, detailed moves. Yeah. People aren't expecting your Lego thing to move completely seamlessly. That's not how Legos move. No. They've got, I think, four points of movement. Do they? Yeah, their shoulders and their hips. Okay. So they don't have like, elbows or knees. No. Okay. And then technically you can say their head has a range of motion. So five. Yeah. You just acted out a Lego movement. Yes. It's very adorable. Which people can see this stuff. Josh. Thanks, man. All right, well, let's take a little break here and get back to some lighting techniques right after this. All right, Josh, you've got your ghostbusters Lego kit. Lego brand kit. Right. You want to make a sequel to Ghostbusters because Ghostbusters, too, was horrible. Not true. Did you like it? Sure. It was a ghostbusters movie. It was great. Oh, boy. So you want to make Ghostbusters Three because you thought two was so good, it deserves its own sequel, and you want to get some lights. I already said you can go cheap and just get those little aluminum lights. If you really want to get serious, you can rent lights from a camera house, or you can go to your friend Scott. Sure. Be like, I know you have some lights. Yeah. Or here at House Stuff Works, we have the use of lights. Yeah. If you're making a brick film, drop by, we'll lend you some lights. No, don't do that. Basically, lighting is going to do a few things. It's going to light up your set so people can see it, A, and B, it can help you set a mood for sure, like whether it's day or night or noir or like a bright sunny day. And what you're really looking to do, though, is have complete control of your lighting. Because one thing that can really thwart your brick film is any change in lighting. You won't notice it. You'll just take your little picture and then you'll see flickering going on when you play it back. And that's because someone turned on a light in the other room next to you, right. And you didn't notice it. So you want to black out all the curtains. Just get in a room where you have complete control over the lighting. Yeah. That's the same reason why you don't want to shoot a brick film or any kind of stop motion outdoors. No, because the sun changes its lighting. That's impossible. At a fairly regular rate, faster than you can shoot and move. So, yeah, you want to totally be able to control lighting. So once you have your lighting under total control, you want to use usually about three lights. At least put on your black turtleneck. Yeah. Or like your black root suit or something like that. Even better. Don't let anybody see like that because they're going to be like, you're a total weirdo, locked away in this room with no windows, wearing a black root suit, playing with your Lego minifig. Then you'd say, no, I'm a filmmaker. Right. Brick filmmaker. And they would just back out of the room slowly. Yeah, exactly. So you use one light for backlighting. Use that behind the thing behind your shot. You have key lighting, which is the front, and then you also want to have some sort of bounce. And you can basically replace that third light source with even just like a white sheet of paper or something to reflect light off. That's very mobile. So you can direct it wherever you need it. And the whole point of this is to light normally, but also to chase off shadows. Yeah. If you've never lit anything, you're going to be frustrated at first because your Lego characters are going to have, like, two different shadows going in two different directions. And the first thing you're going to think is, well, that doesn't look like real life. So you can do two things. You can experiment around with your fill lights until you get rid of your shadows, or you can get a book or look on the Internet. Just some very basic lighting techniques. It's not super complicated. No. But to get really good at it right. It's not necessarily intuitive. No. Where you're like, oh, this guy looks like a soccer player in a night game. He's got four shadows everywhere. Yeah, exactly. So how do I get rid of that, this bounce? I would say this would be one of those times when it's best to just rely on the wisdom of others who've come before putting that wisdom on the Internet. Yeah, exactly. The lights, too, you're going to want to defuse it. It's probably going to be way too harsh coming directly off the bulb. So you can use like, wax paper or a handkerchief or anything that doesn't catch on fire. Ideally, yeah. Go to your grandfather's room and get a handkerchief out of his gesture drawer. Exactly. But the initials monogrammed some old crusty brown Snot. Yeah. I used to think that was so gross when I was little. It is. It's like, oh, man, they're blowing their nose and they're putting it in their body, putting it away for safekeeping, basically. It's gross. It was a less wasteful generation, though. They didn't fill up landfills with Kleenex. That is true. So I pretty much feel like we just gave a great clinic on lighting. Yeah. Shoot some test footage. Don't dive right in there. Monkey around with it. Oh, yeah. You're going to be really mad. Or your thing is going to look terrible at first and then get progressively better as the final thing goes on. Learn by doing. Yeah. And just do some exercises. All right. We talked a little bit about equipment. There are all kinds of cameras you can use. What I used on the last one, which was super handy, was a camera that had a remote control so you could just click off the photos without having to touch the camera. That is very advisable. Yeah. Once you have the camera set, it's really nice to not touch it again if you don't have to. Yeah. Because again, you're moving the stuff within this world, not the camera. At least for the shot you're taking. Right. And again, if you have a three second shot, that's what, 72 photos you need to take from that exact same position. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, you don't want the camera to move at all, or else there's going to be some weird jarring and stuff like that. And the best way to do that is a remote capture camera. Yeah. That really helps. If you have an autofocus slash manualfocus, you want to turn it off, the auto focus, make it fix focus, manual focus. Again, you're just looking for complete control, the auto focus. You don't want to focus on the wrong thing, especially if your minifigure is coming closer to the camera every time. That's going to change that auto focus. And every photo in the frame is going to look slightly different or fuzzy or just completely changed from time to time. Not good. Yeah, you're after consistency. Consistency through control. Pretty much. If you have a digital zoom camera, you want an optical zoom. What is that? It's basically, I think, a digital zoom simulates the image rather than it being actually so it digitizes the zoom at a certain point. And it's not as high quality. Yeah, it always looks cruddy. Got you. In my opinion. So, yeah, you want to control. So a true zoom. Basically, you're under the camera. Yes. Creep that little thing in like a dolly. Right. Or if you have your slider, you're all set. There you go. So are you going to say it's like a what? You basically want to be like Nikolay Cha Chesky or EDI Amin of your mini film set here. You want, like, total control over everything. I thought you were going to say, like Orson Wells. Like you said, all tour even worse. Okay, so we talked about bumping the camera. You also don't want to bump your film set. Yeah. I mean, that can really ruin your day at the end of a long day if you bump it and all your stuff falls over. So clamp that stuff down. Clamp your set down, glue it down, do whatever you have to do to keep it as rooted as possible. Yeah. And don't let anyone anywhere near it now because it's my Lego set. Right. And I'm the outdoor. So we've got some more stuff, some more awesome recommendations, and we're going to get to it right after this. Chuck, I really feel like we're helping a lot of people here. I think so, too. So we talked about lighting, we talked about the kind of camera equipment you want. Sure. And a lot of well, especially the first brick film, which we'll talk about later, are silent. They are silent films, which means you don't have to worry about sound. But there's a lot of them that do have sound, dialogue, all that stuff. You don't have to worry about recording that as you go along. No, most of the sound can be recorded in post production, but you want to have an idea of what is going to be said, where, or what your soundtrack is going to be like. Because you have to figure out how long each shot needs to be and ultimately how many photos you need to take within a given scene. Or else, like, the voiceover is still going when you just change scenes. And your entire family and friends will laugh at you when you show them your brick film. You don't want to be the Ed Wood of brick films. He just did not care. No, he didn't care. It was great. That movie was great. My favorite, or one of my favorite parts, aside from everything Bill Murray did, was when Tor bumps the wall on the way in and they're like, don't you want to shoot that? Tor just walked in the wall. He's like, no, I like it. It's real. Let's use it. It's great. So expressions and drama. These little Lego folks aren't super expressive in the face, but they suggested in this article and it kind of makes sense. Pop their head off and put on something else. Yeah. Could be a ping pong ball that you draw faces on. Well, there are different mini figs that have different expressions. And so you can just interchange their heads. Okay. So someone needs to look up horrors. Put on the horror face. Right. Got you. Yeah. And then apparently there are companies that will customize facial expressions on your mini figures. Yeah. And I imagine if you have some money, then you can get that done. That's right. And now I want to go, not off topic, but off article and say story. If you are going to make a brick film or any film, have a good story. Just because it's a two minute Lego brick film, it's going to stink if it's just no matter how good it looks, it's not going to be fun to watch unless you have a good little story. Right. So, like, write something out that's good and engaging or funny. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be super long to have a little character arc or story arc. Have your guy chased by something else. Yeah, I watched one the other day and it was fun. It was silly. It was one Lego guy helping the guy next door do all his chores. Is it the dandelion? I don't know the name of it. Okay. But he was helping him mow and helping him put on shutters and doing all this stuff. And all the while, like, his home was getting beaten up and that's all they needed was that one little joke at the end where they showed the nice house and then the house in Tatters. Yeah. It's a very iron Randy and Brick film. Was it? Don't help your neighbor. Oh, sure. Your own house will fall the pieces if you help your neighbor. Well, to take care of yourself. The character was John Golf, so there may be something there. So, anyway, yeah, story. I would encourage you to make something engaging and then make it look good. Yeah. All right. That's my soapbox moment. That was great. Thanks. That was good stuff. All right. So we're on the software. Yeah, I think so. Because you're going to find very quickly, when you have 7200 photos, you need a way to turn them into a video. They don't just automatically turn into a video like that. No. And you can't just do a flipbook on the Internet. No. Because you'd have to shoot that anyway and run it through software eventually. So you might as well not go to that extra step. Just get yourself some stop motion animating software. And there's plenty of them out there. There's some that cost tons of money, some that are free. Lego has one called Lego Movie Maker. Yeah, it's a little app. You can make your own little encourage the making of brick films, of course. Right. So depending on the kind of software you have, there's some that will automatically import from your camera. There's some that will have something called onion skinning. Yeah, that's pretty neat. Which shows like a transparency of the last shot over the current shot. So you can make sure everything's going the way you need to. Very helpful. If you need to stop and reshoot one of those photos you can real quick. It's got to be super helpful to have that. Sure. And the whole thing is going to put it all in order animate it. And then it's probably also going to have some sort of whiz bang features. Like there's one called Rotoscope, which makes things glow, which comes in very handy if you're doing a Star Wars brick film and you want to make the lightsabers glow. That's right. Some of them might have other little CGI tricks built in. Or you can do some lo fi CGI of your own with a little investigating and learning on the YouTube. It's not super hard to learn a couple of basic things. And again, these are brick films. This one that I watched had some lo fi like fire effect, and it looked great for what it was supposed to be. It's not supposed to be a Hollywood action thriller. It's a brick film. Right. So it can look kind of campy and corny and it still works. Did you ever see The Matrix brick film? No. Is it good? Yeah, I think it's not even like a shot for shot thinking of The Matrix. It's like, in addition to it, it's super gory. Oh, wow. And it's just incredibly well done. It is like Hollywood action thriller brick film. Nice. I have to check that out. Well, there's hundreds and hundreds. I would say thousands. Thousands at this point. Brick films. The first one that they I watched, this one actually in 1973, lars and Heinrich Hassing made a little super eight brick film called Journey to the Moon. And it is cute. It's actually my brother. It's like kids playing around and then it looks pretty good. Yes. Especially when you consider that they were doing film and using film editing software and stuff to put this thing together. Yeah. It's kind of mind blowing that these two kids put this together and made basically the first brick film. What's more, since it was 1973, this was five years before the minifigures came out. Yeah. So they had to build their own characters out of Legos. Tough. Good stuff. And then there's another classic brick film from the late 1990s by Lindsay Fleet. I think the late 80s. What I say? Late 90s. Yeah, late 80s is what I meant. The Magic Portal. And that was shot on 16 millimeter film. Yeah, it looks good. Great. He was a film student and actually got money from a grant from the Australian Film Commission and a bunch of people donated Lego sets. And it looks really good. Yes. And it took them years to do it. It took, I think, more than a year to just shoot the photos. Yeah. I mean, now you know why my films were all 12 seconds long. Yeah. This one's like 16 minutes long. Crazy. What are some of the other big ones? Star wars. The Han Solo Affair. Yeah. A lot of Star Wars ones. Yes. Have you seen Monty Python? Holy Grail. No. Shot for shot of the camelot song. I got to see this. And not only is it shot for shot, it's so great. They got the lighting correct on every shot. Really? It's not like there's some inside Lego world. It looks like they took the original Monty Python this minute and 15 2nd clip and ran it through like a Lego nader. Wow. They got the lighting perfect. You got to see it, man. It's probably the best one. I have to check that out. And there's some really great ones out here. Like, again, that Matrix one amazing. And I have to say, I am a fan of the Magic Portal. Now yeah, but this Monty Python one is just mind blowing. And that was by spite your face. They seem to be the premier brick film studio. Yeah, they do have done a lot of them. I was about to remark about the attention to detail and like the Monty Python thing, but I think that's by nature, what you're getting with these people who make these if you don't have an attention, like a scary attention for detail, you're not going to be working in stop motion anyway. So that's why stuff by, like, Nick Park and Ardman Animation did Wallace and Grommet and the Creature Comfort series, they look like the detail is so great because it's just their deal. California Raisins. You remember that? Yeah. Good attention to detail. Yeah. Did you see The Lego Movie? I didn't. I didn't either. Hurt. It was great. Yeah. I want to see it. But is it a Brick film or not? No, it's not. It's all CGI. Sure, brick film doesn't have to be stop motion, but typically it should be in at least like it should be real life Lego figures, not CGI ones. But apparently I had plenty of homages to Brick films in general. Yes. I didn't know that. I think that's kind of neat. Yeah. So the impression I have from researching this is that Lego as a company is very aware of Brick films, obviously, because they have that movie maker app. Oh, dude, they love it. They seem to me they give award out for Brick films. Yeah. And in The Lego Movie, it was kind of a tribute to Brick films. Yes. A little tip of the old Cap ol. Kirk Christensen would have been like, oh, yeah, Lego loves the stuff. Make a Star Wars One. Make a Ghostbusters one. Make an Indiana Jones one. Buy don't make three Star Wars ones. Who would do that? Make a Star Wars and a ghostbusters and a Planet of the Apes. Yeah, exactly. You got anything else, man? No. Brick films. Again, this is another entry in our quest to explain absolutely everything there is on Earth and beyond. So enjoy it, everybody. Lighten up. If you want to know more about Brick films, you can type that word, one word into the search bar athousedofworks.com. But even more than that, I would encourage you to just type that word into your favorite search engine and sit back and start watching Brick films. Delightful. They are amazing. Yes. And since I said your favorite search engine, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this jokes to her husband. Hey, guys. I listened to the podcast on Revenge this morning. As usual, I really enjoyed it. Made me think of a revenge story in my own life that backfired then became something pretty amazing. My wife and I are big jokesters. When we found when we were first married, my wife thought it would be funny to throw a bucket of cold water. Over me while I was taking a shower. Yeah. I told her that revenge is a dish best served cold, which is, by the way, one of my favorite sayings of all time. It's a good one. And that my revenge would come tenfold. So about three years and two children later, my wife took a pregnancy test, afraid that she was pregnant since our son was three, our daughter was nine. My wife was a bit freaked out at having another kid. Test ended up being negative and she was relieved. She left the pregnancy test in the back of the toilet, went to grab a center while she was gone. Using a pen, I was able to make the pregnancy test look positive and put it back where she left it. I never will forget the look of terror on her face when she eventually saw it came walking to the room with the test. I immediately started joking with her about how exciting it is and really playing up the ruse. I didn't let her dangle too much though, before telling her the truth. It was a good time and laughs were had by all. One month later, she actually was pregnant and quickly found out that we had twins. Wow. So to this day, she playfully blamed me for our seven year old twin boys. It is his fault. It was a great lesson in karma. And the aftermath of revenge isn't always a bad thing. This world wouldn't be the same without our two little guys. What a sweet dude. So that Danny DeMarco started off as kind of like a jerky thing to do, but turned out great. Nice. Thanks. Danny DeMarco from Dallas. Great name too. Danny DeMarco to Dallas. If you want to get in touch with us like Danny did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstepysheano. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouhw.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music my Favorite Murder from exactly right media. My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarith and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite murder one week or early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1215462738890sysk-unselfish-acts.mp3	How Altruism Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-altruism-works	Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn more about the nature of altruism.	Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn more about the nature of altruism.	Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:23:06 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=18, tm_min=23, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=108, tm_isdst=0)	5433691	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from howstopworkscom you're getting smarter. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, staff writer. Here@housetepworks.com with me is trustee editor Candice Gibson. Candice, what are we talking about today? The question is, is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act? And what do you think is there? I don't know. I'm sort of on the fence about this one. But one of my favorite sitcoms of all time, Friends, had an episode in which they sought to answer the question. And this episode was called the One Where Phoebe Hates TBS. Season five, I remember. Exactly. And just to bring you up to speed, she had just given birth to her brother's, triplets. And Joey said that wasn't really an unselfish thing to do because it made her feel so good. So she sets out to find something that is good for someone else but not good for her in any way, and she stumped. And finally, she decides to let a bee sting her because it'll help the bee look cool in front of his Beefriend. Right. But that didn't work, though, right? No, because the b died. So finally, toward the end of the show, she decides she is going to make a pledge to PBS. And Jerry is taking pledges. And when he receives feebies, he actually gets to be on TV. And that does something good for him. And the plan is foiled because Phoebe feels great. Yeah. So her altruistic act is ruined? No. In the span of about, what, a 30 minutes sitcom? That question couldn't be answered. But there have been some deeper perspectives throughout the century. Yeah. And I'm sure you already know this, but what Phoebe and Joey were engaged in is a centuries old philosophical debate. Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act or an altruistic act? We should probably define that real quick. Altruism is performing some self sacrificing act for the benefit of another person clear enough? I don't think we'd be even having this discussion if that was it. But there's one caveat to that, which was posed by philosopher Immanuel Kant who like to shake things up. And that was that the person performing the unselfish act can't get anything out of it. And we're not just talking about tangible things. We're talking about the intangible. Warm fuzzy. Sure. Now, this has already been shown to actually have an effect on us humans. These warm fuzzies you just described. And using MRI machines, we've seen that by at least donating to charity. The pleasure center, the reward center in our brain, sets off a flow of endorphins. And we feel just as good giving out money as we do receiving money. So clearly there are warm fuzzies which kind of supports Kant's idea that there is no such thing as an altruistic act. But so too, does evolution, right? Yeah. So in the natural world. There's also a couple of perspectives on this, and we look at something from the flora side. We have a tree, and when the tree sheds its sleeves and fall, essentially what it's doing is it's providing a cushion of warrants to protect its roots throughout the winter so that it can regenerate again when there's warmer weather. So it's propagating itself for future generations. And you could say the same holds true for a mother who protects her child in the face of adversity, too. She's also trying to protect her lineage. But again, both of these things, the tree and the mother, they get something in return. The tree gets longer life, the mother gets the love and loyalty of her child. Well, let me ask you this. What happens if the mother sees her child in the street about to be hit by an 18 wheeler, runs out, pushes her child out of the way and is hit herself? She's not getting anything out of that, is she? Well, I don't know. I guess at that point you're sort of tapping into religion and storing up good deeds for the afterlife and final judgment, aren't you? I guess so. That's one way to look at it. That might be a question for another day, though. And we have to talk about Josh's favorite philosopher, Emil Durkheim. Durkheim, he was a pretty heavy fellow. He had the impression that altruism was merely a social construct that was used to control people. Basically, if we just all went around stabbing one another because we needed money, rather than just going out and working for it or borrowing it, society would fall apart. To Dirkham, one of the things we have to have to function as a society is something like altruism self sacrifice for the greater good. But Durkheim's view kind of makes us all look a little bit like Dopes, actually. Like we're performing all these self sacrificial acts, and under his view, the person who's benefiting from it isn't really benefiting from it. It's really all for society, which is about as depressing a view of altruism as can be. So clearly, once again, the philosophers, sociologists and evolutionists have really screwed up the warm fuzzies, haven't they? They really have. They're trying to take the heart out of the issue. But at the end of the day, it's all the same if you do something nice for someone else and you happen to feel good in return, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. I think I agree with you, actually. Well, Candice and I are going to go not stab anyone for money, so we'll be performing our own altruistic acts. Be sure to read Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act on howstep works.com? For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseetworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housestepworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry it's ready, are you?"
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-01-03-sysk-feeding-babies-breast-final.mp3	How Feeding Babies Works: The Breast	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-feeding-babies-works-the-breast	Breast milk is considered a perfect food for infants, so much so that for the first four to six months of life, a baby can subsist on mother’s milk alone. Learn all about the most fascinating milk around and the science behind it in this episode.	Breast milk is considered a perfect food for infants, so much so that for the first four to six months of life, a baby can subsist on mother’s milk alone. Learn all about the most fascinating milk around and the science behind it in this episode.	Tue, 03 Jan 2017 17:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=17, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=3, tm_isdst=0)	65955718	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"San Francisco. The S y SK treat. Yes. San Francisco, Oakland, the entire Bay Area. And dare I say, all of Silicon Valley. Yeah. We love you. And we're coming back to sketch Fetch Fest this year in January. Yeah. We're going to be there on Sunday, January 15, at 01:00 P.m., a very rare afternoon show, and we will be ready to go. So you guys better be drunk from the night before or getting drunk for that evening. However it crosses over, I think it will be proof positive that we endorse afternoon drinking. Yeah. A couple of drinks, maybe. Sure. Maybe Bloody Mary. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. We're promoting our show. Oh, that's right. So we're doing that show on January 15. You can go to the SF Sketch website to get tickets, and it's awesome. It's a great comedy festival. Lots of awesome shows that weekend and for the following weeks. Yeah. So I encourage you to buy lots of tickets. Just buy ours first. Yeah. And hurry. Hurry, because they're selling out fast. No joke. That's not a ploy. It's not a marketing ploy. No, they're really selling fast. We get emails every time. Guys, you told me to hurry. I didn't hurry. I'm shut out. And since this promo is petered out, it ends right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstaffworkscom? Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stephanie. Just two of us again. That's fine. Yeah. Two Dudes, Four Nipples. Right. Totally useless nipples, though. Yeah, we did a show. Why do men have nipples? In 2013, by the way? I think we should change the name of the show to Two Dudes, Four Nipples. Okay. I might be on to something. Yeah. And that factored in not much to this podcast, but it just worth mentioning. Yeah, exactly. And you have been wanting to tackle breastfeeding yes. As a topic for a long time. Yes. And as I got into it, I was like, we can't just do how breastfeeding works. It's just too unwieldy. It's got to be too harder. Yeah. And I realized that it would be folly to also name it How Breastfeeding Works. So we're calling it how Feeding Babies Works part One and Part two. Yeah. We may French it up, though, and call the second one Part two. Who knows? Yeah. You have been reticent to do this one because it is fraught with anytime you're dealing with babies and moms, it is fraught with differing opinions, not just among people listening and how they feel about everything, but from the medical community. Different recommendations. Right. So there isn't really one set way ever. And people think, like, their way is the way, your way is not the way. There's a straight up culture war going on over it. Yeah. That's an easy way to say it. So I see why you waited into this gently with some trepidation but I feel like once we got in there, we can talk about anything. Agreed. But I think I said some of that as a way of just saying, hey, if we get some stuff wrong, if you disagree with some of the stuff, we're just throwing it out there. Yes. And we're going to try our best not to mansplain, because this very easily could end up being the very definition of mansplaining. What? Two men doing a two part show on breast milk. Right. So we try not to do that. So if we do, you can hold us accountable. But yeah, we're just trying to deliver information that we found. I have no opinion on any of this, actually. Great. Ready? Yes. Okay, so to start, actually, one of the things that inspired this was a really great article by a woman named Angela. I'm not quite sure how to say her last name. Garbus. Maybe I'm going to say garbus. It was in A Stranger, and she was breastfeeding at the time and was just fascinated by it. So she wrote this really great article in The Stranger about breastfeeding, and one of the things she points out is that when women breastfeed, they, quote, literally dissolve parts of ourselves, starting with the gluteal fomoral fat, aka our butts, and turn it into liquid to feed our babies. And your mind was blown. Yes. There's a lot of really amazing stuff when you start to look into breastfeeding breast milk, what the body is doing. It's pretty mind blowing, actually. Every single aspect of human reproduction to me is mind blowing. Yes, it is. And not just human, just period reproduction, right. Making a little thing inside of a body, PPS and wee wees, PS and wee weeys coming together to make another living thing is just one of the most amazing, miraculous things. It is pretty neat. Just unbelievable. So with breast milk, right, there's different stages of breast milk production there's actually, I think, as far as I know, three stages of what's called lactogenesis, right? Yes. Stage one is basically the premium stage that happens before birth. Stage two is what's called colostrum. Yeah. Which is a kind of milk. And it's not what you think of as breast milk. No. I'm going to accidentally use the word designed a lot, but it's basically specifically designed to feed a baby for the first few days after its birth. Yes. And then there's the third stage, which is called milk maintenance, but the milk is made this is pretty nuts. So you've got these little tiny cell clusters called alveoli. Right. And that's where actual milk production occurs. And in these alveoli, they basically have something called lactocytes. And lactocytes go into the bloodstream and gather nutrients it needs to form the milk. Right. And depending on what is needed at any given point in time, it will retrieve those nutrients and antibodies and all that stuff and put them together and then create the milk. That's pretty awesome. So the milk is literally made from the woman's body? That's right. Okay. It's not delivered by a guy in a white hat. Right. But there's no milk store or anything like that. At any given point in time, the actual components of a woman's breast milk is different from maybe what it would be the next day or later that night or a week before. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's its own recipe on a day to day basis. Right. Which we'll talk more about that cool stuff later, too. So it is low in fat, but really high in proteins and carbohydrates. Well, the colostrum is yeah, that first yellowish, thick, as you call it, thick golden liquid, which that's a good way to describe it if you've ever seen it. You can just type it in images and it'll have pictures of it next to breast milk. And it's a pretty stark difference. But the whole point is that it's super easy to digest for a newborn baby and gives that baby exactly what they need to get going in life. It gives them a head start. Right. Including having a lack of effective effect to get rid of that first poop, which is called the Maconium. Waiting on that first poop is a very big deal because then things are moving as it should, and then it's nothing but poop. And a breastfed baby has a little bit different poop than a formula fed baby. It's a little more yellowish than brown and supposedly doesn't smell quite as bad. That's what they say. I've seen that. It actually smells a bit like buttermilk. Altogether unpleasant. And because the breast milk is well absorbed, babies who are breastfed are very rarely constipated, too. Yes. So that's the colostrum, and after several days, the colostrum goes away and is replaced instead by what's called mature breast milk. The good stuff. Yeah, the stuff you think of when you think of breast milk. Right? Yeah. So it's about 3% to 5% fat and is chock full of minerals and vitamins. Sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, vitamins A, C and E, long chain fatty acids that are both omega threes and omega sixes. And then you also have lactose. It's the principal carbohydrate. Right. Yeah. And lactose is important because it's just a huge, wonderful energy source. And it also has the proteins in it are a specific kind of protein. They're whey proteins. Right. So in cow's milk or in livestock milk, the protein is usually cason, which isn't as easy to digest. In breast milk, the protein is whey, which is extremely easy to digest for human babies. And then, even more interesting, Chuck, there's something called ogliosaccharides. Yeah. This is amazing. These are sugars, like 150 or more, and they are only in human milk. Yeah. That's pretty astounding. Right. So you're thinking, well, they're nutrients that are only found in human milk, which is for human babies. Makes sense. The weirdest thing, though, is that these ogiosaccharides can't be digested by the baby. They're not actually for the baby. They're actually nutrients for the gut flora in the guts, in the baby's stomach to help it digest food even better. Yeah. So it's actually food for the microbiome of the baby in the breast milk. It's amazing, man. I just keep wanting to drop this money. I think you're saying ogliosaccharides. What is it, oligo? Oh, yeah, it's all right. I misplaced the g. That's okay. That happens. So I know one of the big things, too, that has been amazing you for a while, because you've dropped this fact a lot lately, is that we know how the human body fights off immunity, but something really unique happens when a mother's breastfeeding a baby is it's a bit of a two way street. There's a vacuum created when the baby is breastfeeding on the nipple, right. And if a baby needs some sort of immunity response boost, then the baby's saliva will actually enter back into the woman through the nipple. And mommy, all of a sudden, her body says, oh, you're telling me that you need this to fight off some sort of sickness? Perhaps. So now my body will produce that and then render it back to you in the breast milk. Unbelievable. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. There's, like, receptors in the memory gland that analyze the saliva for pathogens and then produce antibodies as a result. That's crazy awesome. Yeah. So the breast milk is chock full of nutrients. It's chock full of proteins and fats and all this great stuff, as well as antibodies. So the baby, being breastfed, has this established microbiome, thanks in large part to what the mom's breast milk is giving it. Yeah. And like you said, despite all the things in the breast milk, a woman's body can also say, oh, you need this, too. Let me whip some of that up right. And deliver that to you as well. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And even cooler. Well, I don't know if it's even cooler. I'm going to keep saying that, but when a woman nurses, there's basically two stages of the actual nursing. The first stuff to come out is called for milk. It's kind of finished and bluish, and it's mostly water. And it's meant to, like for the baby's thirst. Yeah. For hydration. Right. Yeah. Because a baby can subsist for the first four to six months of his life solely on breast milk. It doesn't even need water. It's getting it from that foremilk. And then the stuff that comes out after the foremilk is called hind milk, and that's the creamier stuff that's higher in fat, and that's what fills the baby up. Yeah. And so if all this talk of immunity building and stuff like that makes you think that a breastfed baby might potentially be less susceptible to illness than a formula fed baby, some studies show that that is possible. Every situation is different. Of course you can have breastfed babies that get sick a lot. You can have formula fed babies that never get sick. There is no like 100% across the board thing. But the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months because they do think it can lead to fewer illnesses, fewer hospitalizations, or at least milder illnesses. Right. And it's not just those two. The government of the UK, australia, Canada, Ireland, India, Japan, all of them recommend that women breastfeed exclusively for six months. Right. But as Angela Garbage pointed out, though, those health outcomes, those positive health outcomes, they're relative. Sure. Right. So if your baby is born in the west, in a developed nation with state of the art technology and is born a relatively healthy baby, the benefits from breastfeeding are going to be much less than if you compare that baby to a baby that is born in a developing nation where the water, the water available is impure. Yeah. A lot of disease, perhaps the country is generally poverty stricken. That baby will benefit tremendously more from breastfeeding than would the kid born in the modern, developed, richer country. Yeah, absolutely. And also we'll see. We're going to get into it for sure. We can't avoid it, but there's a lot of conflicting studies on breastfeeding and health outcomes and the benefits of it. But we'll wait until that later. Yes. With our Kevlar vet. So let's talk a little bit more about some of the benefits of breastfeeding. One of them is if you just want to look strictly at numbers, if a woman's body produces something for free that you would normally have to purchase in a store in the form of formula, then it's just going to be flat out cheaper. This $400 number in here is way low. Really? Yeah. It says in the US, families can save an average of $400 a year even with the cost of a breast pump. Yeah. That's got to be low because you spend I think the average cost of formula for a year is closer to $16. To $1,800. Wow. And then subtract, of course, for the breast pump and stuff. But let's just say you'll save some money. Right. You'll also save having to get up and go to the kitchen to make some formula or having to wash out bottles, sterilize bottles, stuff like that. Yeah. Although I think most women probably do pump and dump in bottles yeah. These days. Yeah. So saving money, maybe saving a little inconvenience. That's one positive. Yeah. The funny thing is this little section that comes from the House Stuff Works article on breastfeeding, it makes it sound like breastfeeding is just so easy and convenient. Right. There's nothing to it. Stop complaining. Yeah. So we should talk a little bit about these two hormones that are super important to breastfeeding and period in life. Yeah. Because these are definite benefits of breastfeeding. You can't argue with it. Yeah. We're talking about oxytocin and prolactin. And prolactin tells the milk, hey, make more milk, tells the glands. It basically makes that production happen. Right. Oxytocin is what gets the breast milk to your baby. Right. Milk let down is what it's called. Yeah. Which is kind of a letdown sound like something bad. I don't know why they call it that, but yes, let down is good in this case. Right. But as long as you're feeding breastfeeding or you're pumping, then your body is going to continue to release that proactin. And it's just sort of a feedback loop. Right? Exactly. It's all hormonal. Right. Prolektin, oxytocin, their hormones. But there's this neat, like, hormonal balance where when your breast gets full, milk production slows down, and then when your breast empties, milk production speeds back up. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It is. So oxytocin specifically is really amazing. That is a chemical messenger, and it's released in the brain, and a lot of it. I mean, it's not just something that happens with women. Oxytocin. We all have it. Yeah. It's a social promoting hormone. Yeah, exactly. And skin on skin contact is where things get really interesting. Right. It actually triggers the release of oxytocin. Right. Yeah. And if there's one thing that a new mother's brain is primed to experience, it's floods of oxytocin. Yes. And they actually believe that this is the basis for the incredible mother infant bond that occurs. It's this huge surge of oxytocin that takes place during labor, after birth, and is sustained through skin to skin contact, including breastfeeding. Yes. And this happens this is another pretty amazing fact. In those early stages of that flood of oxytocin, nerve junctions in parts of the mother's brain actually reorganize, and it becomes like maternal instinct becomes hardwired at that point. Right, exactly. Like the oxytocin receptors start to spread all over the place in vast numbers. Right. When these maternal behaviors, I guess you'd call it, if you want to talk about a woman like you're a biologist. Right. The oxytocin is released and so the pattern is reinforced, and like you said, the brain is structurally reorganizing into motherhood. Yes. It's pretty astounding. Yeah. And they recommend I said that after everything we said, let's say you don't breastfeed. Let's say you aren't able to breastfeed. Let's say you have adopted your child. There are all sorts of scenarios maybe where you don't breastfeed. They still recommend that skin on skin contact as soon as possible and as much as possible. And not just for mom, dads, get in on that action. There's nothing better than laying chest to chest with a newborn baby. Right. And that skin on skin contact works the same way with men. It's just not quite as a robust release of oxytocin. Right. But there have been plenty of studies that have shown that children who don't have that skin to skin contact don't develop as securely, and their brains don't necessarily develop as robustly or at least socially as kids who do have the skin to skin contact. A lot of people take that to mean that breastfeeding is what's responsible for that. That's not the case. Right. Breastfeeding allows for that skin to skin contact. So it does allow for that oxytocin release in the child to develop more securely. But like you were saying, you can also get the same thing from holding the baby skin to skin without even breastfeeding. Yeah. When this insecurity and underdevelopment occurs, it appears to be from neglect rather than the fact that the breastfeeding is so great at it. The breastfeeding forces that essentially right. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, so there's even more on oxytocin. Right? The oxytocin prevents I saw a study that showed that mothers who breastfeed had about half the levels of stress hormone release as mothers who didn't breastfeed. It allows for imprinting odor imprinting? Yeah, for baby and mom. I recognize your smell. Right. The baby became accustomed to the smell of its amniotic fluid in the womb thanks to oxytocin. Well, the mother's breast smells similar to the smell of the amniotic fluid, so the baby is able to find the mother's nipple after being born just from that smell. Right? Yeah. All of this is fostered from oxytocin, and it's hardwired through oxytocin as well. But our understanding of oxytocin and how it does it is we basically you can replace oxytocin with Saturnal magic. Right. We just don't understand how it's doing all this. We just know that it does, thanks to rodent studies. Yeah, that sounded funny, but it's true. Yeah. And it also reduces your baby's stress hormone responses. So they've done studies where they found that, let's say in the continent of Africa, where mothers tend to carry their babies a lot more than like here in the United States, maybe, that babies tend to cry less and are able to self soothe more and are just more suitable, period, because they're just simply held more. Yeah. Well, there's also supposedly studies of, I think, children in Eastern Europe who are raised from infancy and orphanages that had tremendous social maladaptations, and they traced it back to not having been held as children. It's huge. And apparently skin on skin holding is the solution to that. Yeah. I call it Skiwee skin to win. That came from our friend. We didn't make it up. It's good stuff. Except he was talking about, like, Friday night in the hot tub. You guys just adapted it, right? Yeah, exactly. I got you one of the other amazing things. And then we'll probably take a break after this. But finishing up on oxytocin, I feel like we could almost do a whole podcast on oxytocin. Yeah, we really should. The wonder hormone. But with that high level, that big rush of oxytocin, mom's priorities actually become altered. And the brain says, you know what? You don't have to groom yourself and try and make yourself look a certain way to obtain a mate anymore. Now your priority is feeding this little BB, and so it literally kind of switches that off in the brain. Right. So mom's like, Great, now I grew my child. I don't have to worry about myself as much. They're like, Why is my hair so long? I'm going to chop this off. Stupid necklace. Yeah, pretty much. I don't know. It's kind of funny when you think about it, but it's almost like the body saying, take a break from that stuff. Focus on BB for a little while. Right. And maybe later on, once the oxytocin goes back down, once you want another baby, maybe so. And proactakin is similar in a lot of ways. We don't want to sell that short, but it's made in the pituitary gland in the brain, helps people sleep, helps maintain reproductive organs, your immune system, and it's what prepares the mommy's breasts to make breast milk. Right. Also, while the mom is nursing, it is released, and it has this kind of relaxing effect so that mom's just happy to sit there and breastfeed, not have to worry about getting up and doing something else. She's just content doing that. Yeah. All of this is designed to keep mommy kind of doped up and happy to just take care of a baby and like to love that baby. Her brain is physically rewired by oxytocin to love that one baby right there. All right, before we say amazing again, we'll take a break. We'll come back right after this. So, Chuck, a lot of the talk of how magic this is and how natural it is and how hormonally driven all of this is has led a lot of people, and I'm sure there's a lot of women out there who have experienced a lot of difficulty with breastfeeding right from the get go and probably felt a lot of frustration, shame, rejection. Rejection, resentment, all sorts of seemingly horrible feelings because breastfeeding didn't come naturally. That's right. Apparently breastfeeding is as natural a thing as it is. It's actually not like no one walking around just naturally knows how to do it. It takes some practice. You have to learn how to do it first. Yeah. Sometimes the breast milk won't come in for a few days. Ideally, you want to be breastfeeding within a few hours if you can. 1 hour within the first hour is what's recommended. Yeah. And if that doesn't happen, at least get that skiweek going, right? Yeah, but sometimes it takes a few days for the breast milk to come in. There are conditions where breast milk may never come in. Right. What I would advise is to stay off the mommy blogs. They can be helpful, but they can also really be tough on a new mother. Yeah. If you feel like you don't measure up to breastfeeding ideal, there's a lot of judgment going on. Even if you just look up, like breast milk didn't come in, you'll find some women that say, yeah, sometimes that happens, and other women say, like, you just gave up, you got lazy with it and you didn't work at it. Right. Apparently the recommendations that I found, and I didn't find them judgmentally. They seem to come from a non judgmental place as I saw them. Right. Yeah. Keep trying. Basically, I'm sure that there is some line, and every mother has her own line. Once she gets to that line, she's done. But apparently, if your milk isn't coming in, the best way to get it to come in is to keep nursing. Yes. To keep getting the breast milk flowing. Because it's eventually going to get the proactin going. Yeah. And the proactin is going to get the milk in, and it's going to get the oxytocin going, and the oxytocin is going to let the milk down. So just trying to breastfeed apparently is the best fix for breastfeeding problems. Right. Another thing to do is to reach out to what's called a lactation consultant. Yeah. There are professionals out there who will advise you. I mean, there are all kinds of services that can help you with everything from advising you or counseling you to literally showing you different methods, which we'll get to on how to literally physically breastfeed, like how to hold a baby, how to do all that stuff. It's sort of like a coach, in a way, coaching counselor, I think is a good way to put it. Right. And they can really help. And don't hesitate to reach out. Like, it doesn't mean that you're not a good mom or that things aren't coming naturally to you. If something is wrong with you, that shame needs to get out of your head. I know. It needs to get out of society. Yeah. But it's tough right after you have a baby. I mean, we should do one on postpartum depression, too. Sometimes you are at the whims of what your body and your hormones are doing. Right. And someone who might normally not feel those things feels those things. Right. And then you add on top these social expectations from friends and neighbors and the nurses and the doctor, and everybody will just showed up. Oh, you're not breastfeeding. Yeah. There's a great article that Hannah Rosen wrote. It was published in The Atlantic in 2009, called The Case Against Breastfeeding. Yeah. Very controversial. And just some of the stuff she mentions, just some of the casual vibing out that a mom encounters when she says she doesn't breastfeed. And there's a lot of social pressure to breastfeed. Yeah. If you've chosen the breastfeed and you're having trouble with it, what we're saying is go find a lactation consultant. That's fine. At the same time, make sure you're also in close contact with your doctor, your child's doctor, because if your breast milk isn't coming, your baby still needs to eat something. Sure. Right? Yeah. So your doctor will be able to tell you, well, you might want to go buy some human milk, or you might want to introduce your baby to formula while you're also nursing, too. You're trying to nurse to get your breast milk coming so that your baby has enough nutrients and calories and everything. Yeah. Or if it's not coming in as much, like, some women might not go to doctor because they're producing breast milk, but they're not producing enough on a daily basis. So there are cases where a baby is hospitalized, and they found that the baby is actually suffering some from a form of dehydration hypernatremia, which is like a cellular imbalance that a baby can die from. It comes from, basically women being so thoroughly scared off from formula or shamed away from formula right. That their baby is not getting enough milk, but they are afraid to supplement it with anything like formula, so the baby ends up in dire straits. Hey, I want to take this chance to recommend another podcast. We're talking about judgy people. One Bad Mother, great, great mom, actually, parenting podcast. It's called One Bad Mother, but plenty of dads listen as well, and it is on the Max Fun Network. And my friend Teresa Thorne and Biz Ellis, her co host. It's just a great, fun, funny podcast. Nice. Very supportive, not judgmental. And I was a guest and told a bit of my adoption story a while ago. I can't remember what it was last year. I remember that. Yeah, obviously sometime after mid summer last year. Do you remember the name of the episode or the number? Now people are going to want to know. You can Google it. Okay. Google that junk. But anyway, one bad mother is great and fine. If it's not them, just find some good resource that is trustworthy and that you feel good about. Yeah. So with all that said, here's how to breastfeed. It's easy. All right. Josh just took his shirt off. It's a little weird. You know, it's funny. Like, some of these I was going through, like, making the actual canned motions and everything. Yeah. Some of it's tough to visualize, but others and you may walk through and she's like, why are you cradling a loaf of rye bread? Why is it crying? You could make rye cry. It's pretty powerful. So apparently the latch is everything, right? The baby's got a latch on, and like you said, that vacuum has to be formed, and to form the vacuum, the baby's got to get a big old mouthful of boob nipple, specifically. So when you're getting the baby to latch, you grab the breast around the nipple, around the aerial eye, and you basically tickle the baby's mouth with your nipple. Yeah. And she's like, okay, I'm open and wide. And you take the bottom of her jaw and put it underneath your breast, apparently, or underneath. Your nipple. I'm sorry. Also don't listen to me. And then you move her head forward onto so that the top of her mouth is now on the nipple. And taking in at least one to one and a half inches of Oli as well. Yeah. Isn't the idea that baby comes to Mommy? Mommy doesn't, like, kneel down or lean over to baby. Right? Isn't that how it goes? That's what I saw. Okay. There are various types of holds. The duplex, the figure four. No, sorry, hold on. That's wrestling sleep for hold the cradle position. That is one of them. That's when you have the baby on your forearm, her head in the crook of your arm, and sport the bottom with the other hand. Then pull a little baby close to you, belly to belly, which is a great thing, with her ear, shoulder and hip. And a straight line. Yes. So that's the cradle, the football. Yes. I call it the heisman, the hyzman. So you're laying on your back, right? Is that what I'm getting here? Well, the mom. Okay. And then there's a pillow very close to your side with your baby on top. And I think you're both facing in opposite directions. Right. Or you're facing one another, but you're pointing in opposite directions. Yeah. Okay. And you just lift your baby's head up to your breast from the side. And that's really good if you had a cesarean section, because I'm guessing you don't want a baby anywhere near your belly after that. Yeah, the football and I couldn't picture in my head as much. That was a little less clear. Okay. Baby is facing this way, I'm facing that way. Got you. And nothing is coming out. It's getting very disturbing in here. Then you have the old side lie. Poor baby is getting a lot of hair in her mouth. Oh, God. The side eye not the same thing as the side eye. That's much different. This is also good if you've had a C section or if you want to rest, if you're worn out while you nurse. So this is when you lie on your side, place your head on a pillow as mom and pull the baby in close to you. And use your arm to support her little baby bottom, which is adorable. And use your other hand to bring your breasts up to the baby's mouth. Right. So I think that one makes sense to me. Yeah. All of it made sense to me. Well, I practiced it. You had a loaf of bread. I did not. So, again, if this isn't working at first, don't worry. Don't be discouraged. Don't take it like your baby doesn't like you or is rejecting you. That's not the case. Try again. Try again, but also again if you reach your point, if you reach your limit, well, then come up with plan B. Or go with plan B? Like no judgment. Yeah. And here's a pretty amazing fact if you have adopted your baby or if you use a surrogate or if you're female partners and new mothers, you can actually point is if you didn't give birth to the baby. Right. It's a long way of saying that. Yeah. You can actually induce lactation with a lot of time and patience. Not always, but it is possible to breastfeed a baby that you did not bear, which is astounding. Yeah. Like there's a lot of techniques you can use. Ham massages help quite a bit. You want to try hand expressing like eight to twelve times a day. Like shadow puppets, basically squeezing shadow puppets. Okay. And you can also take something called I love this word galactagogs. Yeah, that totally sounds like a video game from the it's a type of chemical that spurs a woman's body to start creating breast milk. Right. Yeah. And there's some that have been proven through scientific study. Drugs like meticulous, amide. Right. Yeah. Then apparently there's herbs that anecdotally work wonders, including Feny, Greek. They don't have quite as much evidencebased advocacy, but they may still work for you. It's worth trying. Yeah. And I think if you watch a lot of Gilmore Girls that might help. Yeah. Maybe pop in Steel Magnolias. Sure. Any mother centric plot line, right? Actually not, mummy dearest. Yeah, I was about to say psycho mommy dearest. You might want to stay away from those. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, let's do it. So Chuck, let's say you've decided to breastfeed. Yes. How long should you breastfeed for? Well, that's up to you as an individual, obviously. Like we said, the experts do recommend that first four to six months is pretty key and that doesn't mean it has to be exclusive. If you want to augment with formula sure. You can do that. Everyone's decision to make on their own. And then there was that lady. Remember that one lady made a lot of news because she was on the cover I should have looked this up. She was on the cover of some magazine. Time or Newsweek. Yeah. With a much older, like a four or five year old. I couldn't remember the age of the oversold that was breastfeeding and got a lot of flack for that. But it was like an article on attachment parenting, I think, that stuff. I can't remember exactly. I should look that up, but I'm pretty sure it was either Time or Newsweek. But anyway, to make the point, like some women have done that where they breastfeed to their point, where their kid is coming up and saying, hey Mom, I would love some food sure. For your breast. If you're doing that you want to make sure that your kid is eating plenty of other stuff as well. Sure. Because the point of breastfeeding or breast milk is that it can sustain a child exclusively for the first four to six months of his or her life. After that, you have to start supplementing either with formula or solid foods. And the rule of thumb that I saw when knowing whether or not the baby was ready to start trying solid foods is if he or she is coordinated enough to let you know when she's full, then you could try to start supplementing with solids. Right. But you can breastfeed exclusively up to four to six months. After that, you just physically can't. There's not enough nutrients for you to produce to sustain your kid with breast milk alone after six months of age. Right. We mentioned pumping a couple of times. We'll get more into that in part, too. But if you live under a rock and you don't know what that is, that means you are just storing your breast milk. You're using a device, a machine, I guess you want to call it, to store your breast milk for later. It means you like to have a drink once in a while, so lay off. We'll get to that too. But as far as storage goes, here's the deal. It depends on what kind of fridge freezer you store the breast milk in and how often that is opened. Oh, is that right? Yeah. So like if you have one of those, if you have a small old school fridge that has the little freezer section in the top of it, that is the shortest amount of time. That is only two weeks of storage, even if it's in the freezer. Okay. If you have a separate freezer within that fridge, like a little freezer on the bottom or whatever, you can store it as long as three to six months. If you have a deep freezer in the garage right, with a body in it, keep your dead bodies like Bernie we keep your delivered steak, subscription service and dead bodies. So you bought off of some guy's pickup truck. You can actually store it in the deep, deep freeze for six to twelve months, even though they say past six months is not optimal. So I think if you were the zombie apocalypse happened and you have some twelve month old frozen solid breast milk, right. You can try and use that. Yes. We'll give our thumbs up on that one. In room temperature. Apparently if it's a coolish room and it's not the heat of summer with no AC, we're talking about 6 hours, which is longer than I thought. Yeah. And then up to five days in the fridge, although that's not optimal. Supposedly after about three days. Not bad. And you just want to make sure in the fridge and anywhere really, everything is super clean. Right. You got a bottle cap on there, sterile. Yeah. Everything is really especially early in BB's life, you want everything really clean. So one of the big reasons that a lot of women pump is because they want to breastfeed, but they also either want to or need to get back to work. And this raises a big issue as far as breastfeeding goes. Right. There's this really great New Republic review of a book called Lactivism, and the reviewer is named Catherine Joyce, and she points out that it's great that the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics and all of these guys say women should breastfeed exclusively for at least the first six months, but that demand puts a burden on basically no one except for the mom. Yeah. And then simultaneously we're saying, breastfeed for six months and get back to work because we've got an economy to keep going. Yeah. Or you have rent to pay. Yeah. Or get back to work because your family needs it. Right. Angela Garbage points out, like, basically everything about breastfeeding is at odds with holding down full time work that breastfeeding for the first few months can take 8 hours a day of time easily, but hey, go work for 8 hours on top of that. Right. And she says, I think, quite reasonably, that if we're telling people for telling mothers, hey, you should breastfeed exclusively for six months, then they should also be given six months of paid maternity leave at a minimum. And that should be enshrined in American law. It may sound radical to a lot of Americans. In fact, America is the only developed nation that doesn't guarantee paid time off for mothers. Yeah. There's not a day of paid time off that a mother gets guaranteed under federal law in the United States, it's the only developed nation that doesn't have that law. It's one of only two nations that doesn't have it. The other one is Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea, 85% of the people who live there make their subsistence off of agriculture. They don't need to have a law like that. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. That's amazing, too, but in the opposite way. That amazing. Yeah. I mean, these days there are a lot of jobs that are way more flexible as far as working from home or having lactation rooms. Agreed. True. Flexible scheduling. A lot of companies have made it much easier for you with a combination of pumping and dumping, to still be able to do that. But if you're not lucky enough to be in one of those scenarios, and if you've got a job that's like, no, don't do that here. They have to allow some break time and they have to provide some private place, but there's no specifications that there can't be some old shower stall or something like that. And of course, that's just the law. That doesn't mean every company absolutely does this across the board. There are people that run afoul of the law. You're right. And it is getting better, though. It is getting better among employers. But in the United States, there's the Family Leave Act of 1993, and it does guarantee twelve weeks of unpaid maternity leave. Yeah. But your family might not be able to afford that. So that equals, like, no maternity time. Yeah. And they've found across the board that higher income families breastfeed longer. Right. It's just the way it is. Here's some more stats for you if you want to talk about how long to breastfeed. Most women stop within the first year. In 2013, the CDC said 77% of American women breastfed from birth at that rate since birth. And then after six months, that dropped to 16%. Right. But you make a big point. Well, you didn't make the point. You source these points. I arranged them to make point. You make a point that it depends on where you live in the world, in Africa, on the continent, 87% of women breastfed beyond twelve months. So it definitely depends on where you are and you make the point, which is what I was getting to is that a lot of these stats kind of stink because they're old, man. They stink and outnumbered, contradictory. Contradictory. So it's really hard to kind of get great percentages on this stuff. But everything that we looked at does say that breastfeeding is on the rise sure. In the last probably 20 years. Yeah. And that it's on the rise, especially among older, white, educated, wealthier women. For all the reasons we talked about. Yes. So let's pull out a bummersville for a second, chuck okay. And talk about the food. Yes. Like what a mom eats. If the mom is producing this milk, it would make sense in turn that the milk will end up cause we said each recipe, each day can be a little bit different. Right. And if you had general Sal's chicken the night before, your breast milk might be a little spicier. Yeah. Actually, there's a study back in the Manitoba that took breast milk from women and had a flavor. Professional tasting panel did an episode on those. Yes. Sample. One of the women had eaten spicy food the night before, and hers was described as hot and peppery. Yeah. Pretty neat. It is pretty neat. And then this one woman, and she's not the only one, of course, but this lady named Julia Manila of the Monel Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia said that she thinks, and a lot of people agree, that these early flavor profiles that the baby experiences develop taste preferences for later in life. Right. That makes sense to me. Yeah. I see no reason why that should not be true. No. I don't know that it's proven, though. But it does make a lot of sense. Yeah. So when you're breastfeeding, the rule of thumb that I've seen is that you want to eat about 500 more calories a day than you were before you were pregnant. Yeah. Right. Potato chips, candy bars. No, you want to avoid that kind of stuff. Oh, man. Right. You actually want to avoid junk food. Instead, you want to eat the good stuff. That's right. The stuff that's good for you. The stuff that's whole the stuff that's chock full of, like, good vitamins and is nutritious, aka the food you should eat, period. Right. But all that stuff is going to pass right through you into your baby in the form of your milk. So the stuff you eat is like a gift to your baby. It's like passing that really great food along. That's right. Sometimes something that might give mom and baby problems. If you eat like Brussels sprouts or cabbage or things that might make you a little gassy broccoli. Everyone has different things that make them gassier, whatever that is for you, that could cause some trouble. What else? Anything like heavy and additives or dyes. Yeah, like we're talking about like non whole foods could produce a little bit more issues for you and baby. Both onions, garlic, citrus, corn is no good. Or just all of these things trickier. They can produce problems. Right. So if you've noticed that your baby, after eating, shortly after eating, is drawing her legs up to her stomach and screaming, that's colic, it's probably because your baby has gas. You want to figure out what it is that you're eating that is giving your baby gas. There's also other things that you can pass on to your baby that the baby doesn't want that can result in an unhappy baby caffeine that can pop up not just in coffee, but also things like coke and chocolate and all sorts of stuff. There's also worries that babies can actually develop food allergies, which is entirely possible, that usually is sourced back to milk. You might not be lactose intolerant, but your baby might be. All this stuff you can figure out on your own very easily, doing a very simple at home experiment. Take whatever food you think is making your baby unhappy and remove it from your diet for about a week. See if that clears it up. If it doesn't, it wasn't that food. You can reintroduce that food. Yeah. Like with any food allergies, it's just called an elimination diet. And you get rid of the stuff until you see a change. If it doesn't change, you move on to the next thing. Yeah. And mom is usually pretty in tune with baby. Sure. And ideally and so an elimination diet is pretty, I don't want to say easy because it is time consuming and you should keep records of things, but it's fairly intuitive, I think is what I was looking for. Yes. So apparently they used to tell moms, drink a bunch of beer because it'll aid in milk production. Really? That sounds so true. It's ridiculous. All right, so it must be true. Yeah. So they realized that, no, you should probably not do that. Not only does it not eat in milk production, but apparently the blood alcohol content that you have about the same percentage is passed along to your breast milk. The blood alcohol content of your breast milk is pretty much the same as your blood alcohol level at any given point, which is super low. Unless you've been drinking, then it's super high and then you're getting poor baby Blitzed by breastfeeding drunk. You'd have to drink a lot. I don't know if that's the case, man. No, it's absolutely the case. Like, your blood alcohol content, even if you're ripped, is still super low. Okay. As far as a percentage of alcohol in your blood. But we're talking about like, what is a DUI? Like people that weigh like \u00a38? No, I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying it's not like you're giving your kid a shot of booze. Right. And this is another one of those things if you look at ten different places, you're going to get ten different opinions, even from doctors. Sure. I saw one doctor was like, you know what? This is one of those things that just makes it even harder for a woman is to tell her she shouldn't even have a glass of wine when she's breastfeeding. Right. So really, I literally looked at four different things and they all said something different. What I did see was there's a direct correlation between the amount that you're drinking and whether or not you're drinking it with food. Just like with the blood alcohol and it loves, it has to do with the mom's weight and like, the amount of fat. How that makes sense. Like, where alcohol is stored. Sure. So there's a lot of factors that go into it. The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on drugs considers alcohol compatible with breastfeeding. So they said you don't have to abstain, but everything I read says keep it in check and maybe don't drink the wine while you're breastfeeding or within a couple of hours, like, maybe have the glass of wine after you've breastfed and put baby down for the night. So the rule of thumb I saw was 2 hours before the alcohol is out of your system. Yeah. Which means if you're breastfeeding every 2 hours, you got to either pump and dump, hand express or time it so that you're not passing it along. And this is after nine months of probably abstaining from alcohol too. Yeah. Hey, I don't blame anybody for being like, I'm having a glass of wine. Yeah. People always say a glass of wine. Why didn't people say I'm having a scotch? No, don't have a fifth. Do you have an insucient attitude towards smoking and breastfeeding? Who, me? Well, I mean, I think you shouldn't smoke, period. I think that's true. So I guess you could say that. In keeping with that, I would say you shouldn't smoke in breastfeed. Yeah, but apparently the nicotine is not good for milk production. It diminishes milk production? Yes. Just on a practical level, you're not doing yourself any favors. It reduces the amount of vitamin C present in your breast milk. It can increase nausea in the baby. That alone. That's sad. Yes. And plus, not to mention if you're actually smoking around the baby, right? Come on. And then there's that woman in Arizona. Do you remember her? No. The mom who got just hugely, massively in trouble because she took her baby to the hospital. Something is wrong with my baby. And the doctors tested it, and we're like, that's weird. Your baby has a lot of cocaine in his system right now. Any idea why? Have you been doing cocaine? Well, yeah, I did, but what's that got to do with my baby, right? Are you breastfeeding? And she was like, yes, I am. Well, you passed the cocaine onto your baby. Yeah. The old days of walking around baby on breast with a cigarette in one hand and a Scotch on the other, and a bump of coke in your nose. Those days are long gone. Sure. We know better at this point. I was not breastfed, by the way. I'm pretty sure I was. Actually, now that you say that, I don't know, I feel securely attached. Yeah, my mom actually told me this just, like, in the last six or eight years, even. Oh, yeah. I was like, did you know? I guess. How did she tell you? I don't remember. I think it was on my birthday card. Happy birthday. And by the way, no, I can't remember. It just came up and I was like, oh, I didn't know that. And she said, yeah, I was her third kid, didn't have a lot of help from my dad, so she was managing a three year old and a six year old, and I think had a rough time breastfeeding my brother because my brother said she just wasn't organized enough. Is that right? No, I'm just joking. Yeah. Scott, though, that would be right. Scott would have been like, you get it all wrong. Let me hand express this for later. I'll feed myself. I think I had a rough time breastfeeding Scott, and then I think just sort of decided, like, yeah, I got too much going on. Going with the formula for BB Chuck. And it was also at a time in the early seventy s, like starting in the 50s through the even to a certain degree, there was a bigger move toward formula feeding and away from breastfeeding, because the notion was like, this science has finally figured it out. You don't need to breastfeed. Because we have this wonderful new thing called formula, which the name formula just cracks me up that that's what it's called, right? That they didn't think of some name I know. It's like the most generic clinical term they could have come up with. Like, hey, we came up with this formula that meme express milk. What should we call it? Formula. Originally it's called Formula X, but they thought that was too sinister. Well, that makes more sense even than just formula. It's like, hey, we got this new recipe for chicken, what do you call it? Recipe. Good point. Anyway, but that whole push starting in well, as previous to the 50s, we'll talk more about it in part two, but there's a lot of pushback that came out as a result of this trend toward formulas. Right? Yeah. And there are actually groups that are called lactivist groups that started beginning with the Latche League, which was established in the 50s in the States among a group of Catholic moms who decided that it was their biblical right, their biblical heritage to breastfeed their babies. And that was what God wanted them to do. And the League is still around today. It's one of the most prominent activist groups around. They're very active in public awareness, teaching, breastfeeding classes, all that stuff. But they grew out of this group of Catholic moms in the 50s who actually took their name from shrine down in Jacksonville. Oh, really? Yeah, jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville, Florida, yes. The name of the shrine is called Newestra Senora de Lace Buena Pardo. Which means Our Lady of Happy Delivery and Plentiful Milk. Yeah. And they published in a very famous pamphlet called The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding that eventually became a book and it was very popular. It's now in six languages and it's 8th edition. And also in the 70s we've talked about Hannah Rosen before. She said there were other groups that were a little more hip than the lll that came out and she said notably one in Boston. Do you know the name of this one? I don't know that they had a name. They created a sort of a movement. Yeah, they wrote a book called Our Bodies Ourselves. Right. And that was basically the foundation for what she calls the second wave of lactivism. Yeah. And she said, quote, were more groovy types than the lll moms, slouchy jeans, clogs bandanas, holding back their waist length hair, she said, but the two movements grew out of the common frustration and anger of this condescending medical establishment, this paternalistic, non informative, judgmental group of men, basically, who are just like, just do what we tell you. Yes. You don't need to ask questions, just trust us pretty much in these groups came out and said, you know what, these are our bodies and our decisions. I don't think beer AIDS in milk production. So they took their well, I guess they're womanly Art of Breastfeeding and they kept it, they took it back, they yanked it back. And so the lactivism has always had this kind of tinge of moral authority because of the religious roots of the Lache League and radicalism because both waves came counter to the medical establishment at the time. Yeah. So there's a lot of current understanding of breastfeeding is not necessarily based on accurate scientific information. Right? Yes. We already talked about how the benefits of breastfeeding are fairly relative, but there's also a lot of misinformation or misunderstanding about what breastfeeding and breast milk can do for a developing baby. Yeah. There's a lot of correlative effects that it's tough to put the hard science behind. Right. Because, as Hannah Rosen says, it's tough to do a really ideal study, because what you would have to do for it to stand up to scientific rigor would be to divide up two groups of mothers and say, you breastfeed, you don't, and then measure the outcomes for years. And you can't do that. You can't tell a woman not to breastfeed for the sake of this study. So what they end up doing is they just look at observational studies where they look at differences in the two populations over the years. And this is where you get that skewed perception or where you can get a skewed perception, because they may be looking at us mothers of a certain social strategy. Well, yeah, there's all sorts of confounding factors that are variables right. That women who tend to breastfeed these days, again, tend to be from a wealthier family, so they maybe can stay at home more or they have more money available for preventative health care measures. There's a lot of other things that could be accounting for these better health outcomes that studies have found but have been able to say, yes, this is directly because these babies were breastfed. The problem is that these studies that say, hey, these breastfed babies had these amazing increases in IQ. Yeah. That's what gets reported through lazy scientific reporting. It hits the popular media, and then all of a sudden, that's gospel fact, and if you don't breastfeed your baby, you're a horrible mom. Yeah. In 2007, the World Health Organization did a survey of all this literature, and they looked at the big five claims about benefits of breastfeeding. Lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, lowers risk of obesity, lowers risk of type two diabetes, and increases cognitive ability. And they didn't find a lot of hard scientific support for one through four. But they did see, like you said, that there was a correlation between an increase IQ right. But they found it was a relatively small increase. Right. But if you're one of those, like, dog eat dog, enroll my kid in preschool before she's even born type of parents, you'd be like, I'll take those extra five IQ points. Sure. Yeah. So this is part one. But before we go, Chuck, do you have anything else? You know what? For part one, since we talked about breastfeeding at work and stuff, I feel like we would be remiss if we did not mention Donald Trump. Remember that? No. About five years ago, he was in a deposition, and one of the opposing attorneys, Elizabeth Beck, went to pump okay, breast milk in this deposition, and he got up and said, you're disgusting. And he got out of the room. And this was a very I can't believe you don't remember this. It was a huge deal or a huge. Deal and what she says. Elizabeth Beck from her side said, he called me. There's nothing disgusting about this. He can't say that to a woman who's breastfeeding or pumping or doing whatever, no matter where it is. And then Trump and his general counsel what was his name? Allen Garten. They contend, like, sure, he said she was disgusting. They didn't deny that. He said, but this is not about breastfeeding. They said that she was in a deposition right in the middle of a deposition. This is a quote, attempting to breastfeed, to pump in the middle of a deposition with five lawyers and was not excusing herself. And he claimed that Beck orchestrated the stunt because she ran out of question, didn't know what to do, and so she just pulled this breast pumping move, the old breast. Those are the two sides of the story. I'm not going to comment one way or the other, other than saying you should never use the word disgusting when a woman is breastfeeding or pumping or anything. And he said, I'm going to be president one day, and she's like, you're not. I don't care what the circumstance. Don't say that even if you think it's inappropriate. I'm not even going to say whether I'm not going to weigh in on that. But if you think it's inappropriate, then you say, hey, maybe I think this is appropriate. Don't say you're disgusting. Yeah, not right. I agree. That's as political as I'm going to get on this one, and that is Feeding Your Baby, part one. And this one is robust. Yeah, that's just part one. So be sure to join us for part two. Do we have a listener mail or these things so thoroughly conjoined that they can't be separated by listener mail? Yeah, let's skip the listener mail on this one. Okay, good idea. All right, well, join us for How Feeding Babies Works, part Two, coming at you soon. And in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at Syscap. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshono. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshando.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Caring Kilgarrath and Georgia Hardstarke, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ouija-boards.mp3	How Ouija Boards Work	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ouija-boards-work	Although most people who've used Ouija boards don't think they're communicating with the beyond, there is something mysterious about how it works. Learn the ins and outs of the popular parlor game that sprang directly from the 19th-century spiritualism mo	Although most people who've used Ouija boards don't think they're communicating with the beyond, there is something mysterious about how it works. Learn the ins and outs of the popular parlor game that sprang directly from the 19th-century spiritualism mo	Tue, 29 Oct 2013 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=302, tm_isdst=0)	31795899	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful from the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with Capital One's top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One n A member FDIC brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's kind of here. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah. This is the last podcast, these two today that we're recording in the infamous Murder Room. Oh, yeah, it's right. So long, Murder Room. Yeah, we're moving offices. And what better thing to do than to have a seance, which we're going to conduct after this episode. Records. You didn't talk to me about this first. Yeah, we're having a seance, buddy. I don't know about that. We're going to get down to brass tacks and answer all the unknown questions. Well, you know what? I'll tell you what. I will have a seance with you using a Ouija board because now I know how they work and I'm not quite as scared of them as I used to be. Say after I saw the exorcist. Yeah. Do you say ouija or ouija? I say ouija. Yeah, I kind of do, too. Although I think it's probably Ouija. Right? Not to be confused with the crime scenes photographer. Ouija. We're talking about the Wiji board. Although yeah, I think some people say Ouija. Yeah. I just think it's interesting I said ouija since I was a kid. Yeah, me too. But I also say Reese cup instead of Reese's. Yuumi does too. Yummy and resist. Yeah. I'm like. No, it's Reese's. They're like, no, it's Reese's. Yes. Well, I don't say reese's. I just say a Reese cup. I think they do too, people in their quirks. Yeah. Foibles. I say Foibles. Yeah. You should hear him sing that potato potato song, everybody. Yeah. Which apparently I got snookered on that, by the way. That's an old bit. So I was snookered by an urban legend. What, the whole potato potato song where I was like, yeah, a friend of mine's friend auditioned with this piece and sang it wrong. You thought it was for real? Yeah, of course I did. I'd never heard that before. That's very funny. Yes. Have you heard that? No, because you would have stopped me. I know. I have heard it before, but it wasn't too long ago, was it? From my mouth, maybe, but I didn't think like that. It actually happened, I think. Okay. Anyway, ouija suckers born every day ouija board. Yes. And I mentioned exorcist already. You saw that, right? Of course. A bunch of times. Enough. Here's a trivia question for you. What is the name of the spirit Reagan communicates with? I didn't even have to look this up through her Ouija board. Jeez, I don't remember. Captain Howdy. Shut up. No. Do you remember now? No. Captain Howdy was who she's talking with? Who is the devil? I guess that was one of his aliases. I wonder if he has like, a devil passport that says Captain Audi. Devil, Satan, Lucifer. Captain Outdoor Audi. Yes. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's true. That makes it a little less frightening. What was that? The early seventy s? The exorcist came out, right? I think so. Okay. And the Ouija board, the one she was playing with, I believe, was a Parker Brothers Ouija board. Was it now? Hasbro. Yeah. And there was this mass manufactured, mass marketed toy game, but it was actually based on like a real phenomenon that we've talked about here on this show before the spiritualism movement of the 19th century. The Ouija board first made its appearance around then. Supposedly they claimed providence for this way further back than that. But there's no real evidence that the Ouija board itself is any older than the mid 19th century and that it's American in origin. Yeah. The actual Ouija brand board is what you're talking about. Right, right. Or talking boards in general, which is another name for like a Ouija board is a talking board. But not all talking boards are Ouija boards. That's right. So you're saying there's no evidence that they existed before, like in the 1800s? Before that. Before that. No. People did use divination. There is a pretty good source, a century BC. Greek scholar who wrote a history, who talks about a pair of men who were killed for using divination, but they used a pendulum and a disc with the alphabet around it. Got you spell out a message. So there were divinations people did use, like, alphabet style? Yeah. I don't know if they use planchette, but the Ouija board itself, despite being marketed for many years, is something from Egyptian antiquity, is probably something that was created no earlier in the mid 19th century in the States. All right, well, 1891 is an attorney named Elijah Bond patented what was called the Ouija Egyptian Luckboard. And it's important to point out when these things are marketed, when you read the fine print, they never claim to be able to talk with the spirits. It's a game. Right. It's a game now. And it was once it became mass marketed. Yeah. But in 1891, it was part of this larger offshoot of spiritualism. Yeah. And we talked a bit about Egyptology, and it sort of all ties in seances were big. You remember they cracked the hieroglyphic code from the Rosetta Stone just a couple decades before. So Egypt is like this weird place with all sorts of strange cults and rituals. Yeah. And it's just strange to me that something like the occult, even on a minor level, sort of took hold on the United States at one point. And I don't know how, if it was accepted by the masses, but regular people and noteworthy people would hold seances and try to communicate with their dead relatives, usually through a medium who is usually female. Right. There weren't a lot of dudes doing it. No, there are a lot of dudes who are involved in it. But the mediums were typically female, and a lot of them use things that were like the Ouija board. Talking boards. Yeah. You mentioned the dial plate, which was a spinning wheel with letters and numbers, and the alphabet board, which was sort of like a Ouija board, but you just pointed to different letters and waited for a response from the great beyond. Some had a little pencil that would actually write things out. Right. They used the Planchette, which is French for a little plank, which is a little board or something, maybe like a circular disk on three legs. And then one of the legs for a riding planchet was basically a hole with a pencil going through it. So that when the planchette moved, using the medium's hands. But the spirit was really in control. The pencil would write something, hopefully. So back to the Ouija board. The official game version. Over about 70 years, it changed ownership a few times, eventually landing at Parker Brothers, which is now hasbro, like you pointed out. Right. Elijah Bond, the guy who he didn't come up with the first Ouija board, but he was the first one to make an improvement on an existing patent. Right. And the Ouija board, as we understand it, that was his how we see it now. Yeah. And he actually went off after he sold the rights to it, to a guy named Charles Canard. Elijah Bondwin often created a rival version that had a huge swastika on. It didn't perform so well. No, it did at first, because we're talking that association is still like a mystical symbol. Yeah. But it was made by the Swastika Novelty Company in West Virginia that he founded to produce this rival board, and it's considered his other Ouija board. That's pretty funny. Isn't that weird? Yeah. My friend Jesse Char the other day tweeted something funny about design. I think it was something like 15% of design is trying to make something not look like a Swastika or a penis. Although that was pretty good. Did she make that up or have you heard that? I've not heard of that. All right, so I'm giving credit to Jesse Char. So, Chuck, the point is, the Ouija board took this thing that was being used by mediums as part of a very serious spiritualism movement and said, hey, you don't need this crazy old lady to contact your dead uncle right now. You can buy one and do it in your own home over cocktails. Exactly. And a lot of people took it like that from the get go. I think some people probably purchased Ouija boards. Seriously? Sure. But I think from the outset, it was a part of a party. It was a conversation starter. Something that you just did socially, too, for fun. For sure. I think that there was always a large segment of the Ouija board buying population that just took it as entertainment. Yeah, exactly. Which is probably how you should take it. Right from Kennard, he had an employee named William Fold, F-U-L-D who basically took it over to the point where he even stamped his name inventor on the back of it, even though he wasn't. And he's credited as being sort of the father of the Ouija board because he's the one that really ran with it in a marketing sense and brought it to the masses and would do all the press for it. He claimed that the French and German words for yes, we and ya is where the name comes from, even though that's not true. Well, even before that, Charles Canard said that he came up with the name by asking the board itself what it was called, and it's spelled out Nonjou I-J-A. And he asked it what it meant and the board told him it was Egyptian for good luck. So that was the story. And then, yeah, I guess Fold was like means yes and yes. Yes and yes. Pretty much in French and German. It's pretty good. So like we said, Fold sold it to Parker Brothers, who turned into Hasbro. And now when you buy a Ouija brand Ouija board, it's from Hasbro. Yeah. And the article here makes a point to call out Catholics for basically saying that it could be an evil thing and not to use it. But as a little Baptist boy, we were very much told not to use a Ouija board. I remember specifically my uncle, like, burning his Ouija board. Yeah. Did he go out and buy it just so he could burn it? No. Friday we got a party going to my house. Yeah. It's pretty funny to look back when I was a kid, I was like, yes, get rid of that evil thing. Were you there when he burned it? No, I wasn't there, but I heard about it and that was just good for him. That's cool. Throw in Candy Land while you're at it because that game stinks. What was the Sheets and Ladders? I never played that. I was big into frustrated. Sorry. Remember that one? Yes. That one made you hate the other people you played with, though, right? Couldn't you get ahead by screwing over your fellow players? I think that's why it's called sorry. Yeah, I think, like, if you landed on someone, you send them back the beginning and you go, Sorry. Yeah, maybe I just play with jerk. Who knows? Maybe so you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid. Your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity. Support healthy skin and coat hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions, faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. So, Chuck, the Ouija board, from the original bond creation to the one you get today from Parker Brothers, the design of it has changed very little. Yeah, I guess we should describe it. I mean, I assume most people have seen one, although I've never used one. Have you? Oh, yeah, when I was younger. Yeah, I'd totally be into trying it out. It's neat for fun. It's very neat because the thing is just moving around the board by itself. All right, so we will describe the board if you have not seen it. It has the alphabet and two different arcs. It has numbers below the alphabets. It has a yes in one corner, I think a moon and a no in one corner with the sun. Right. And therein lie the answers, my friend. Oh, don't forget the most important part. Basically what amounts to the off button. It's goodbye written at the bottom of the numbers. Yeah. Sort of like a Satanic magic eight ball. Kind of, except this really works and it's not Satanic. Right. So the way that you use this talking board, which, again, if you're interested in this and you want to see some pretty cool old Ouija boards and the Swastika board as well, and another one called the Sphinx board, which I think is the coolest one, it's from the there's this awesome online museum called the Museum of Talking Boards. And they have histories of all this. The history of the Ouija board. History of talking boards, just some really great articles and images on there. So go check that out because it's a pretty cool website. But when you're using this, well, the instructions stay the same too. Not only the design, but the gameplay itself is just about the same as it was way back in the 19th century. Right. And when you use this, they say you want to have two or more people with their fingers lightly resting, just your fingertips lightly resting on the planchette. And we should say the planchette like the other planchette that used a pencil to write it's. Just a little plastic heart shape board, I guess, with three small legs and then a circular plastic covered disk in the middle, clear plastic disk that you look through and the disk shows you the letter number or word that the spirit is communicating. That's right. When you look down through the planchet that's the letter word in question. That's right. So you sit there, you ask a question aloud, everyone concentrates, no joking around, going on. No. Even Fold himself said you want to make sure that the people who are at the table are taking this seriously or else it's not going to work. Right. Well, even though it was advertised for mirth making, you got to cut the mirth down when you're actually operating the board. Yeah. The guy who has the lampshade on his head. Yeah. You got to get out of that room. So then you ask the question and then everyone watches and the planchette, as if by magic or Satan's dark powers, moves along and either answers yes or no questions or spells things out. You want somebody to jot down the letters or numbers as they are read out in the article. It says ideally they spell out words or sentences the players can understand. Right. If it spelled out a nonsense word like Weeja you would probably just say it's malfunctioning or you would say what does that mean? And then it would spell out its Egyptian for good luck. Yeah. Or German and French for yes. I wonder if Ouija boards always answer the same when you ask them what Ouija means. I don't know, I started saying it differently all of a sudden. Now it's a Ouija. Just a Ouija a couple of times. Interesting. How do you pronounce the thing that you claim your windshield with? Is that a squeegee or a squeegee? Yeah, but that's S-Q-U-E-G-E-E. There's three E. No, I'm just kidding. And evidently it can take up to five minutes for the planchette to start moving, which I don't know if I would have the patience for that. I know I might start moving it on my own. Yeah, well then you'll be the life of the party. Especially if you said like I'm being contacted by the spirits. Right. If after five minutes you don't get any movement from the plane yet, you want to either ask the question again. Or ask another question. Sure. And there's some tips for using your Ouija board to maximum capacity. Yeah. One of them is concentration. Again, to do with the lampshade. Needs to go sit in the living room, watch TV or something while everybody else is doing this. Yeah. You want to turn down the lights, maybe burn some candles, burn some incense. Yeah. Turn off that smartphone and the TV, maybe. Yeah. And you really want to concentrate. And when you ask questions, you want to ask them slowly, clearly, simple questions. Yeah. And you want to ask them one at a time and wait for the answer, the response, before you ask the next question. Yeah. And they also recommend that you avoid scary questions, because that could lead you down a dark path, my friend, and always, above all else in the game, by saying goodbye. Because if you leave that portal open to the great beyond, the bad people might come in through that portal and find you and kill you. Ask Regan from the exorcist. That's right. Things can go pretty badly. So you want to end each session with the planchet over goodbye. Yeah. And then breathe a sigh of relief. Exactly. And apparently, if this doesn't work the first time you do it, you shouldn't be frustrated. In fact, the Museum of Talking Boards has a regimen that they prescribe 30 minutes of practice every day for two weeks, and apparently you'll open your chakras or something. Really? And all of a sudden, you will be speaking through the Ouija board, or the spirits will be speaking through you. Got you through the Ouija board. Is that before? After the opium regimen that they advise? I think the Museum of Talking Boards is they're more historical. They're more interested in the history and background of the whole thing. Yeah. So let's talk about this for a minute. People sit down, they put their fingertips on this thing. The planchette moves. I mean, it moves like we're not making this up. Like, if you've never messed with a Ouija board before, give it a shot with another friend, and the chances are the things are going to just start moving by itself. It's eerie, especially when you're younger. Now, see, I've never done it. Explain this to me. What do you mean by itself? I will show you. I get it. But the thing the planchette is very light plastic. The feet might even have felt on them or something like that. It's designed to move very easily. Not tiny little casters. No, I think original planters had casters. Okay. But basically, you're being pulled around the table. So you actually want to be in a comfortable position because your fingertips are just sitting on this thing. Right. And then when you ask a question, after a while, it'll move. I've never seen one move fast, but it just moves kind of slow. But, I mean, there's no question about you're not thinking, is it moving? Like it's moving over to a letter and then it's moving over to another letter and then it's spelling something out. Yeah. But you are moving it. No, you're not. In your head. Here's the thing. Let's get to the science of this. You are, in fact, moving it, but you are not conscious of moving it. Which is the awesome part of it. It's this thing called idiomotion. Yeah. Which someone pronounced IDEO, and I didn't know if they were just being fancy or not. It can go either way. Okay. IDEO. Idiomotion. Okay. But it is an actual involuntary motion. It's one of the types of involuntary motion of which human beings are capable, thanks to our muscles and neurons. Yeah. It was coined by a due named William Carpenter in 1882 to explain dowsing rods, which is the same kind of thing, basically. Yeah. Dowsing rods, pendulums. Yeah. Idiomtion is where thought precedes movement. And the other part of it is that we're unaware of that movement. Yeah. It's movement without owning that, basically. So when you apply that to Ouija Board, you have what's called the IDEO motor effect, where your thought is placed in the form of a question to the Ouija board. And then the movement, the unconscious movement, you're not aware that you're moving. Right. Moves to answer that question. So if you're thinking yes. Am I speaking with Great uncle Charlie? Yeah. And you really want to and you're thinking, yeah, man, I hope he's there. Right. So you're unconscious or subconscious, which is it? I would guess unconscious. I think it's unfashionable to use subconscious. Very Freudian. It would move it to the yes, but you wouldn't realize you would think it was just moving. And that's where the Ouija board fund comes from. Chuck you don't realize you're moving it. You have no sensation of movement. And like you said, this idea, motion is we've understood it for a while, since the early 1800s. Even Fold himself in, one of his patents said, I think 1920, explained that it was moved by unconscious muscular movement of the back in the guy named Anton Chevrolet. Chevrolet Chevrell. He basically proved this using a pendulum on a string. Yeah. And you've probably long heard about the old wives tale if you want to find out what your baby's gender. Right. You hold like a ring on a string over the belly and wait for it to move. And if it moves back and forth, it's a boy, it's circular, it's a girl. And it's the same basic thing as this Chevrolet pendulum, basically. It's just ideal motion. In effect, you are unconsciously swinging the string whichever way you probably desire. Exactly. That's what makes it so fascinating, is what you're really seeing is the unconscious telegraphing, supposedly of the mother's wishes of what gender she would like because she's, in fact controlling it. But her muscles are moving so minutely that she's not aware of the movement. But since the pendulum is on the string, it really kind of really telegraphs these very tiny movements. And then inertia takes over and it really starts going. So it just seems amazing because the hand is not moving right. But the ring is going crazy. It's going crazy. This is the same have you ever heard of facilitated communication? It's pretty controversial. You've probably seen on the news. It's when basically a caregiver will guide the fingers of someone who's severely disabled over a typewriter typewriter a typing machine, over a keyboard to a computer to supposedly get answers or communicate. Right. And it's very controversial. It started out in 1977 in Australia, this lady named Rosemary Crossley. But the American Psychology Association basically says it's not scientifically valid. These are people that are just what facilitated communication. Yeah. The caregiver is really guiding this conversation, and it's really not coming from the person that's disabled. Right. The thing is, what makes this so tragic and sad is that the caregiver isn't aware that they're actually making these movements. Again, all of this is unconscious. You can't tell you're making this movement. And so since the profoundly handicapped person is moving their hand, the caregiver thinks that it's them. It's the handicap person. It's not like they're trying to snow somebody. Exactly. And they may even really want this person to communicate and say these things. Yeah, they're still studying it. Syracuse University actually has since 1992, it was the FC institute. Now it's the Institute on Communication and Inclusion are still studying it. And the controversy, as usual, between the skeptics and the believers. Yeah, well, that's the thing. If you want to see who believes in idea motor effect, type that into Google. It's all like skeptics dictionary. Skeptics. Skeptic. Like, every entry is skeptic. But if you type in idea motion, you get peer reviewed scientific literature on that. It's just the idea motor effect is basically taking the proven IDEO motion and applying it to debunk things like Ouija boards. Right. They did a study in the University of British Columbia just last year in 2012, and basically they said it's strongest when there are multiple people on the planet. And they tested this by blindfolding people saying, you got someone else on the board with you. And when in fact there was no one else on the board, the person would still say it was the other person moving it. They would say there was no other person. Right. And then they'd say, well, then it was the spirit moving it, I guess. Right. That's funny that no one says it's the spirits moving. It's always the other person who's moving it. Right. That's a pretty common trade of any Ouija board game that you're sitting there going like you're moving it. No, you're moving it. No, I'm really not moving it. And then with two people working in tandem, you have two sets of muscles moving unconsciously, but making a movement. You have one person relinquishing responsibility because they think it's the other person, which they think frees the muscles to move even more strongly because you're saying, it's not me, it's the other person. And if they both have a common goal, then the planchette will move even more briskly. I guess if both girls are like, it's going to move to B-R-A-D than that planchette is going to move to those letters in that order. But they're both going to be like, I'm not moving. Well, hold on. Before we get into any real life stories, do you want to do a message break? Yes. Okay. You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo Holistic, made with only whole meat, no meat meals, and probiotics. For digestive health, our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find halo. Holistic at Chewy. Amazonandhalopets.com what if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You weren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. And we're back. So should we talk about a couple of these stories? Ouija. Are they real? Are they not stories? Sure. The Herds of Kansas City. Five. This is pretty crazy. Herbert Heard killed his wife Nelly, shot her in the back four times. And you would think, what a jerk. But what happened was they were elderly, they were in their 70s. They played with the Ouija board one night, and Nellie claimed that she received a message saying her husband was stepping out on her and gave, like, $1,500 to the other lady. $15,000 even. Wow, 1935. That's probably, like, their life savings. True. What happened was Nellie tortured him, tied him to a bedpost, whipped him with a knotted rope, burned him with a red hot poker, stabbed the knife into his shins, and forced a confession by holding a gun to his head. And eventually she left the gun on the bedside table there. Herbert got a hold of it and killed her. Can't really blame Herbert. And apparently the courts did not. What else you got in the other ones? Yeah. It was called an Italian enclave in El Cerrito, California. The Italian community there apparently experienced a wave of mass hysteria that landed several people in asylum because of Ouija board use. The town went ouija crazy. Yeah, one policeman, like, tore off his clothes and ran into a bank. And there's a lot of craziness that happened. It was just masses area, I guess. And the town was like, you know what? No more Ouija boards. And finally, in 1913, British author Sax Roamer supposedly came up with his villain Dr. Fu Manchu, when his Ouija board spelled out Chinaman. So his Ouija board was racist? Yeah, and he says that's where it came from. So here's the thing. If you ever want to test whether Ouija boards are the result of idea motion and the players actually moving it or not, go to Goodwill and buy one for $3, right? And then do this very simple test. You blindfold the players, you turn the board 90 degrees so that anybody who's memorized the layout of a Ouija board can't cheat it. Right. And then ask them some questions. And you're not going to get any kind of sensible answer. And if you do, then you need to trade carefully because you've just unlocked the gate to the spirit world. Don't forget to sell it. Goodbye. To seal off that gate, always remember, put it on. Goodbye, folks. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. I feel like here in my 40s after knowing now that they're not evil tools of Satan. And I would like to try it out sometime on a Friday night with good friends. Yeah. We'll play a little cards against humanity. We'll play some Ouija, and then risk and risk to wind it all out with a big bang. Yeah. Invite me over. Okay. So if you want to learn more about Ouija, that kind of thing, you can again go check out the Museum of Talking Boards. It's pretty sweet. And also you should read this article on how stuff works.com, type O-U-I-J-A into the handy search bar, and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar in there somewhere, I think it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this crack baby. Jeez, we got some good response on the old crack episode, which is a good one. Yeah, I thought so, too. We've been killing it lately. Hey, guys. Just finished listening to the story on crack cocaine, and it reminded me of a story of a crack baby from many years ago. Around 2001, I was doing volunteer work at the local children's hospital in the neonatal ICU, holding babies. I came in one day and one of the nurses told me to go hold this one particular baby. She told me it was a crack baby that had been crying nonstop for three days and hadn't slept. So I washed up, went to go hold this baby, held the baby in my arms and just looked at the baby. And the baby was crying, eyes closed, non stop, just crying, crying, crying, crying. After several minutes, the baby's eyes opened a little bit and then closed again, would keep crying. Tears are flowing the whole time. After several minutes of that, her eyes would remain open longer and longer, but the baby was still crying and the tears were still flowing. After several more minutes, the baby's eyes stayed open, looking at me, crying a little bit less, the baby started crying less and less and less. Then after several minutes, was smiling, giggling and cooing and making all those nice, happy baby noises. After several more minutes of that, the baby's eyes started to close, and soon she was asleep, sleeping for the first time in three days. It was a wonderful experience that I will remember forever. Jim from Austin, Texas. That's pretty neat. Pretty cool. Yeah. He cooed a crack baby to sleep. He's a sooth player, soothe, cooper Jim. Yeah. And now he brings a Christmas present every year. That would be a great story. Do it. Jim, if you have something to tell us that you've done based on something we talked about, I would say that Jim story falls under that umbrella when you do. Yeah, we want to hear about it. Basically, just let us have it on Twitter, at s yskpodcast, on Facebook.com, stuffychewnow via email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Like we said at the beginning. Hang out with us at our home on the Web. Bring a smoking jacket and some slippers, and we'll chill out@stuffyshirenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores."
c7d513aa-361e-11ea-bbe5-6f8a9a6146a9	Short Stuff: Charley Horse	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-charley-horse	You know those terrible leg cramps that come out of nowhere? They may be named after a drunken baseball pitcher.	You know those terrible leg cramps that come out of nowhere? They may be named after a drunken baseball pitcher.	Wed, 13 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=134, tm_isdst=0)	11539476	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer, school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. It's just the two of us, but we're here with a horse named Charlie. A-K-A crippling. Temporary leg cramp. You know what I immediately think of when I think leg cramps? Now, right? No. Remember Roundup? That's right. You totally got one of these, didn't you? Like, while we were recording? Yeah, it's on video, everyone, if you want to go look up one of our Internet round ups. I wish I could remember which one. Maybe you should suffer through all of them to try and find it. But I got just out of nowhere. It was so funny that we were like, all right, we should just leave that in there. We have to keep it. I think I demanded that we keep it, and that was just so great. Yeah, which is weird. I don't cramp up like that much. So it was very much out of nowhere. I don't know what happened. Well, Chuck, you could have been over age 50 at the time. No, you might have been dehydrated. Maybe, but I drink a lot of water. Perhaps you've been sitting too long without moving. There's always a chance of that. Or standing too long on a hard surface. Probably not a chance of that. Or you could have been sleeping and your brain may have misdirected your leg to move, confusing your leg, resulting in a cramp 50 50. So those are some risk factors for getting a Charlie horse. But before we explain what a Charlie horse is, we should talk about the origin of the word. Did you read about this? Yeah. It's a word that is very much American. You won't hear that word in England, apparently. And there are a couple of different stories that I saw, maybe more than that even. But in the late 18 hundreds in baseball, one storey said that there was a lame horse named Charlie and it said it pulled the roller at the Chicago White Sox ballpark. I'm not sure what that means. Probably whatever flattened out the dirt, maybe. That's what I was thinking. That's all I can come up with. Or maybe the thing that the hot dog spin on is their cooking. I'm not sure. What's the other story? The other one is that Charlie Radborn, who is a pitcher you mean Old Haas? Old Haas was another name of his. Andy. I looked him up. He's the 74th. Greatest pitcher of all time, based on cry. Was also a terrible person. Lobster Boy esque, from what I can tell. No murder involved, I don't think. But he apparently got a Charlie horse in a baseball game. In the middle of a baseball game. He played for Providence in Boston mostly, and it's possible that it was named after him and that significant event. Yeah. What I've always heard of charlie horse was, or how I've always used it, was not just a leg cramp, but it was when you got punched in the thigh or something or knee somebody in the thigh. And you would give someone a charlie horse and you had to say Charlie horse as if they didn't know what was happening. Don't freak out. You're not imagining things. I just gave you a charlie horse. And this is called having the wind knocked out of you, right? Yeah, but it can come from that, from a sudden blow to a leg muscle. And usually it's your thigh muscle, your calf muscle or your hamstring is where you get a charlie horse. But as you also know, I didn't touch you that time. You got one for Internet roundup. It just came out of the blue. Out of the blue. So a Charlie horse, it's different from like a leg cramp, say, like your muscles cramping up from overuse on a long run. That's probably just from dehydration or a loss of electrolytes, from sweating too much. A charlie horse is kind of leg cramp, but it's a little more specialized than that. It's like a knot that just suddenly comes out of nowhere and affects one of those areas in your legs. And what's interesting to me is that medical science is like, I don't know, here's some best guesses, but we're not 100% sure. Did you used to do the thing called frogging someone? Yeah, it's essentially the same thing, except your knuckles on your fingers are held a certain way when you punch them, right? Totally. It's a knuckle punch. And I always was frogged. I didn't do much frogging because I was a nice guy. But someone would stick out their center knuckle and do sort of a swiping punch across the arm, not like a straight punch. And the knuckle would hit it and cause the same sort of sensation, like a little knot and a bump would form. Yeah, I was never very good at that either, but some kids had almost a preter natural sense of like a muscular pressure point, you know? Yeah. I have a feeling you are a champion pencil breaker, though. No, I don't remember pencil breaking. What was that? You guys didn't do that. I mean, I remember yeah, like somebody would hold two ends, the farthest ends of the pencil, and somebody you just karate chop it. Well, you would use another pencil and you would just take turns until the pencil broke. But there are all sorts of various techniques for maximum breakage. I'd forgotten all about that. When I think pencils and school Chuck, I think, did you guys have the smelly pencils? Like caramel corn and all that? Yeah, that's what I think of this. Tastes degrade. Were you good at pencil breaking? I wasn't very good. There was always the one bugs meanie who could do it in one fatal blow. Is that another encyclopedia ground reference? I think so. Maybe we should take a break. Yeah. And we can go solve an Encyclopedia Brown crime. Okay. And then come back and talk more about charlie horses. All right, well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Okay, so charlie horse, leg cramp, sudden spasm, sudden muscle. Medical science is baffled goat. Yeah. So you can get a charlie horse at night when you're sleeping. It's called a nocturnal leg cramp. And just like a daytime when it can go away very quickly or it can be a few minutes. I can't imagine. Like the one I had an Internet roundup was such a tight, violent thing. I can't imagine that going on for several minutes. No, because it lasted maybe 30 seconds. Probably the longest 30 seconds of your life. Ten full minutes of that would just be hell. Yeah. And this is not the same thing as restless leg syndrome. That also happens at night, but that is when you sort of have the jimmy legs and you have the urge to move. But I think both cases, they don't know exactly what's going on. No, they don't. And then you can actually solve both cases. If you get charlie horses at night while you're sleeping and they wake you up, or if you have restless leg syndrome, the jimmy legs, you can solve both by doing stretches before bed. And sometimes I get restless leg syndrome. I don't know if I have it to a clinical degree or whatever, but especially when I first lay down to go to bed, sometimes I can't sleep because my legs are just bugging me. And I always get up and do this hamstring stretch and it works like a charm. Like I'll be asleep in 30 seconds afterward. You know, they say stretching is just sort of one of the keys to life. Like if you start in your twenty s and thirty s, just stretching really great every morning and every night, then your body is going to be the better for it. Do you remember we did an entire episode on Sarcopenia, that stoop that you get from old age? Did we? We totally did. And I think that that's a really good way to combat Sarcopaneous, to be limber and stretch your back muscles, too. Yeah. It's all about keeping those muscles limber. Yeah. Let's do it. Chuck let's commit to stretching at least five nights a week, okay? Deal. Pinky swear. Virtual pinky square. The other thing you can do, like you mentioned, is plenty of fluids if you're exercising, especially because your muscles need those fluids to relax and contract like they should. And if you're going out there and running or even doing a good exercise walk and you're not stretching beforehand, then what are you doing? You're a chump. You're a sucker. You're just asking. You're a chucker. Oh, speaking of Charlie, I called you Charlie on an email. I think yesterday I noticed that my head just ripped in two afterwards. It just blew my mind. Why? You're not a Charlie, you're a chuck. But the idea that it's almost like you turned into Gwyneth Paltrow and sliding doors all of a sudden, you very easily could have gone the life of a Charlie, but you went the life of a Chuck. And I guarantee you your life would be different in noticeable ways had you been a Charlie. Well, you call me Charles sometimes, though. Totally different from Charlie. Agreed? Yes. Charlie. And you know the thing in New Jersey, I went by Charles. Oh, did you have a little pencil thin mustache, too? I did. You wore nothing but turtlenecks, charlie horses. I think we're done. Oh, I know. There is one more thing, right, about the old eat a balanced diet thing, which they literally say for every single condition known to humanity. Right. In this case, it's really true. If you eat a balanced diet, you're going to get some good calcium and potassium, magnesium, and that's really going to help how your muscles operate. Those minerals are super important to your muscles. Yeah, especially I think I read sodium and potassium have like a 23 to one ratio for your intake is what you're going for on a daily basis, which is harder to do than you would think. But as I think, sodium goes in, potassium comes out, and vice versa. And when they're doing that, they actually produce this battery, this electrical charge across your cell that helps conduct electricity throughout your muscles. So, yeah, you want to have these minerals and good amounts, and you also want to have water, because water is like the thing that all these magnificent metabolic processes take place in. So if you're dehydrated and you lose a bunch of electrolytes, or your electrolytes are out of proportion, you're much more susceptible to muscle cramps of all variety. So, yeah, eat a banana. Or I saw an avocado is a really good balance of potassium and sodium, too. We eat a lot of avocado in our house. Same here. You may found five for 99 cent avocados yesterday. Yeah, she's like, they must have been about to rot or something like that. And I checked and they were all pre ripen. They're like, on their way to being ripe. They're not rotted at all. She got them from HMart and I just couldn't believe it. You're like she got it at Covet R US. No. I'm worried. I hadn't thought about that part. No, I don't think that's the case, Kovodara. Great. You got anything else about Charlie horses? No, sir. Are you having one right now? I'm not. Well, that's good, then. That means everybody, that short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts. My heart radio. Visit the Heart Radio App app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
da6901a8-cd70-11eb-b4ec-7f16ea3fd5f1	Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/seven-no-wait-five-mysteries-of-the-art-world	When you get a bunch of artistic types together into a community – aka, the art world – some intrigue and mystery are bound to arise. Listen in as Chuck and Josh cover strangeness around Van Gogh, Caravaggio, Raphael, and Vermeer – plus don’t miss Hilter!	When you get a bunch of artistic types together into a community – aka, the art world – some intrigue and mystery are bound to arise. Listen in as Chuck and Josh cover strangeness around Van Gogh, Caravaggio, Raphael, and Vermeer – plus don’t miss Hilter!	Tue, 15 Jun 2021 10:48:46 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=10, tm_min=48, tm_sec=46, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=166, tm_isdst=0)	44838764	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's here somewhere. So this is stuff you should know. The Art World edition. Yeah. You know what I just realized? We record these in twos and we just recorded the Pogs episode. Right. And you didn't say, welcome to the podcast. I didn't. What? I missed opportunity for a great dad joke? That sounds like something I would skip, though. Even had I thought of it, I don't know that I would have pulled the trigger on it. Or I could see you pulling the trigger and then making fun of yourself. Right. I would have just been engaged in self loathing for the rest of the podcast. Well, retroactively, I'm going to say I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast. Now let's talk about art mysteries. I love this one, man. This is great. This reminds me of a Stuff You Should Know episode from years back. For some reason. Well, it's because we don't do these top lists anymore as part of it. Very famously, we used to have top ten on our old houseStep Works website, of which usually there were maybe seven decent entries. I don't think we ever did a full ten on anything. Maybe somebody could probably correct this. But this one actually came in at seven. They didn't even try. And I don't even know. We may do like five of these. We haven't even figured it out yet. We'll see. We're going to play it Fast and Loose. I think that's another reason why it reminds me of an old Stuff You Should Know episode. Fast and Loose. Yeah, Fast and Loose. First you got the fast, then you get the Loose but Never Furious. He wants to be mad. I don't know. They should have called the series Fast and Loose tokyo Drift. I think I've heard before that that series is the highest grossing movie franchise in the history of film, like worldwide. Yeah. You know what's funny is at one point this was years ago, we were talking with Ludicrous about doing something with the network because he's a local guy here in Atlanta. And that's right. I talked to our boss and said, what's he doing these days? I haven't heard any music. And he went, he makes Fast and Furious movies. That's his job now. Yeah, because he's just getting rich off of making these movies I can't even imagine. And plus, also, I mean, they're pretty involved movie making, I would guess. Like I'm sure because there's so many stars involved that the shooting schedule for each one isn't necessarily a year long endeavor or anything like that. They probably have it down to like a pretty fast science by now. But I would think that would eat up a pretty decent amount of your time shooting one of those films every few couple of times. Well, I guess every few years I only saw one of those. I think, man, I'm slowly, like, degenerating into Bob New heart, man. Have you know? Oh, man. Good. Yeah. You could degenerate into worse things than that. But, I mean, like, I'm really hitting that new heart note these days. I've noticed. That's a great note. I love it. I've always wanted Bob Newhart as my podcasting partner. There you go. You've got it. All right. Number one on the list. You want to talk a little Caravaggio? So Caravaggio is my new favorite painter. Yeah. Not just because he was a scummy lowlife swordsman from the murderer. He was a gambler. He had weapons charges against him while he was alive. He was not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination. Very troubled person is a really polite way to put it. But if you look at his art, I had no idea. I've seen so many works of his art, and I never pieced together that they were the same person. And then when I really started to read some criticism of his work, I'm like, oh, my God. This guy, he's considered one of the fathers of modern art. And this guy was painting at the beginning of the 17th century, the early 1000, and just like pogs, he burned hot and bright and fast and furious, actually. Sadly, that's right. That wasn't even forced. Nice work, Bob. Thanks. So Michelangelo Marisi de Caravagio was Italian? Baroque painter. He at one point in killed a man named Ramuccio Thomasani and said, I got to get out of here because I'm in big trouble now. And went away from Rome and fled to Malta, where he had a pretty brief, but, I guess, notable stay. He was only there about six months and kind of hiding out and quickly hooked up with the Knights of Malta and was briefly one of the Knights of Malta, like, for a month. Yes. And painted one of his most famous paintings there the oil on canvas, 12ft by 17ft. The beheading of John the Baptist. Yeah. It was an altarpiece for the Order of St. John, also known as the Nights of Malta. They were going to again put this behind the altar in their church on Malta, and it was actually his little entry fee. They charged an entry fee, usually money, to their initiates or positive, but they accepted this altribus, this giant painting of St. John the Baptist being beheaded. And it was actually as far as the car vagio goes, especially toward the end of his life, it's actually fairly tame because there's not, like, jets of blood spurting out. It's a pool of blood that's being shown. He's painting some really violent stuff. And like you said, he was a master of light and shadow. It's called Kiraskuro. He used it to really dramatic effect, including in that painting. And in fact, one of the other paintings that you might have seen of his chuck. It's called Judith Beheading. Holly fairness. Have you seen it? I have. So Judith, the woman who's in that painting, the woman who modeled for Judith, that was the woman that he killed Bernuccio Tomasani over. Right. Did you know that? I did. Oh, you did? Okay. Well, at any rate, in this House of Works article, they called it a petty squabble, and that really doesn't tell the story. Yeah. Another explanation I saw was that it was over a tennis wager. And this is real tennis, not lawn tennis. And real tennis is kind of like this kooky mix between squash and racquetball and tennis, and it's all indoors, and there's, like, horsesheds basically involved that you can play off the roof. It's really interesting stuff. And he used to play that a lot too. So it was either over a wager or it was over this woman. Her name was what was it? Judith. No, Felipe. Felipe, I believe, was the actual woman's name who modeled for Judith. So he ends up on Malta. He becomes a knight. And when he becomes a knight, he paints his ultrapiece, and he signs his name in the pool of blood, which you're like, well, he's an artist. That seems like something an artist would do, not Caravaggio. This is actually the first and only work of his that he ever signed, which a lot of people are like, okay, wait a minute. Let's examine this. Yeah. And it kind of took a while for it to be even very visible because it underwent some restorations over the years. And in the 1950s, they did a restoration where they really could see the signature. And what it said, I don't know about for the first time, but, like, super clearly, at least. And it said F period. F Michelange. Michelang. And then, of course, everyone's like, well, what does this mean? Because there is no F in his name. It's not like his initial is he saying, hey, screw Michelangelo myself, screw me, or I'm screwed? No, no one really said that they thought the F they're a couple of different theories thought it was shorthand for fratr or, which means brother, because he was one of the knights. And maybe he just meant, like, brother Michelangelo or whatever. And then some other people said no. Maybe it means stands for feset, F-E-C-I-T which is Latin for did. Translating basically into I did it, and it's spelled out in blood. Kind of confessing to his crime. Right. So that's kind of like where the mystery comes in. Was he confessing to the crime of murdering Renuccio Tomasoni? From what I saw most, I can't say most, but the art historians and critics that I saw basically said no, he almost certainly wasn't doing that. For one, everybody knew that he did it. He'd already been confessed in absentia. That's what I thought. So it's not like he was confessing to it. Although you can make the case that he was confessing in the Catholic sense of the word. You know what I mean? Right? Like before God. Yeah, exactly. Or De Bears. That painting still hangs at St. John's Co Cathedral. In Malta, too. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was the altar piece. It was a big deal that they got their hands on because he was a celebrated painter at the time, already in his lifetime. But the other interpretation that he was saying f, as in freighter or brother Michelangelo about himself, that's probably the, likelier, version because he was at the time seeking a pardon from the Pope so he could return to Rome. And by saying, I'm in this holy order, I'm basically like a Catholic holy man now, a leader of the Church, because the Order of St. John, the Knights of Malta, have inducted me. He was basically shouting at, loud and proud by signing that one particular very holy painting that he did. But they said, Nice try, buddy, and they kicked him out for being a, quote, foul and rotten member, end quote. So it didn't work after a month, dude, he lasted a month in the Order of St. John. And it's not like they ran around willy nilly, inducting people. They basically had no idea that they had what was Vic's last name in The Shield? Vic Taybeck. No, not Vic Taybeck. I don't know. I didn't want to the Shield. Oh, you did? That was good. I re watched the last seven episodes the other night over a couple of nights. It still holds up, actually. But anyway, they didn't realize that they had inducted him, the guy from The Shield, and they figured it out pretty quickly. So he made his way back from Malta to, I believe Sicily, on his way to Roman. I think he actually got a pardon and got into another squabble, another sword fight, and sustained some wounds. And between infected wounds, they think he got a staph infection, lead poisoning. He apparently had gone rather mad from being exposed to the paints that he painted with, and then sun exposure, sun stroke on the beach in Tuscany finally killed him. Yes, it does. But his paintings are still just amazing. I can look at them all day. Yeah, me too. I like this stuff. I do, too. So that's Caravaggio. How about Vermeer? Well, I think we should take a break. Oh, gosh. And we'll be back right after this. All right. We had a great cliffhanger with Vermeer. Vermeer, the very famous Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer had a very famous painting, a lot of very famous paintings, but one in particular that has a bunch of names over the years. In fact, it did not get the name Girl with a Pearl Earring until the 20th century. It was called everything from Girl With a Turban to Girl with an Earring had lots of different names because it was not officially titled by Vermeer nor dated even though they think it was around 1665. Yeah, he was just like this dude who lived in Delft in the Netherlands and never left his hometown and had a wife and 15 kids. 15? Yeah, 15 kids. And just kind of painted. And he made probably a comparatively small number of works. I think around 36 are attributed to them. And there's a theory that as many as a fifth of those were done by his oldest daughter, Maria. But he's kind of like this enigma at the time. Not just personally, but also the stuff he was painting. There was a huge movement among the Dutch painters at the time that they would paint, like, these horrific healthcapes or there was a lot of obvious narrative and symbolism just all over the paintings. There was just a lot going on. Vermeer went a different way where he would almost peek in on very normal daily life and capture, like these really just kind of boring or otherwise mundane moments. But he did it in a way that this guy was like the master of light. He makes Thomas Kink look like Puke as far as light mastery goes. So girl with a pearl earring. Everyone has seen it. Like I said, it's very famous of a young girl, looks to be sort of like mid teenage years looking over her shoulder. She's wearing a dress, she's wearing that turban. Very prominent earrings. Large pearl earrings and pearls factored into quite a few of his works over the years. And it's one of those paintings where the eyes follow you, supposedly, which we've talked about in one of our short stuff episodes. Mona Lisa. I think so, yeah. It's the effect of the eyes following which doesn't happen in all paintings with eyes. Oh, no. The Mona Lisa's eyes actually don't follow you. I think that was the big reveal of that one. Was it? Yeah. All right. So he paints his painting and then, of course, the mystery of this one is who is this person? There has been speculation that it might be a mistress. A lot of people think it was his daughter Maria who would have been about 15 or 16. And like you said, some people believe painted about a fifth of the works attributed to him because about a fifth of his collected works. This sounds mean to say, but they aren't up to snuff compared to his other works. So they sort of stand out from the rest. So they think that they may have been Maria's. Good painting still. Yeah, they're still a lot better than anything I can do. Yes. It's not like they were stick figures out of nowhere. They're like this. Vermier seems off, but there was a 1009 novel from Tracy Chevalier The Girl with a Pearl Earring and then the 2000 film adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson who was perfectly cast. She looks quite a bit like the girl with a pearl earring. But this was historical fiction if you've seen that movie and you're like, no, she was the family's maid's, assistant and love interest to Vermeer. I don't even think that was based on anything. It's just historical fiction. Yes. From what I've seen, art critics and historians basically tend to think that there was no person that this was modeled on. It wasn't even necessarily his daughter. In fact, it was kind of a trend at the time, a painting called the Troni, which was an imaginary figure, a person who didn't actually exist. And the point was to kind of show off things like costumes and jewelry, which is ostensibly the point of that painting. But the thing is, the Vermeer, the face that he did and the place that he put her, like, we were talking about how she gets compared to Mona Lisa. She's called the Mona Lisa of the north. Mona Lisa is, like, sitting back in the painting. The girl with the Pearl Earring is, like, right in the foreground. There's very little between you and her. And she's turned around and her mouths open, which apparently was very unusual for painting Dutch painting at the time. And it looks like she's going to say something. I guess that is what entrances people with this image. That what's she going to say. What did he capture her about to say? It looks like she's turning around, like, oh, and this other thing I hadn't told you. Maybe she was an improv comedian. And she was. Yes. You never know. But this is a mystery that will never be solved. Which sometimes I like those kind of mysteries when it comes to stuff like this. Yeah, and I saw that argued as well, that it was like, if we knew who she was, we would lose a lot of the interest in it and we would have found out by now, I think. Yes. And you're right. We probably won't ever know, but because of this so it wasn't, like, very well thought of, and nobody really thought much of it until 1995, and the National Gallery used it as the poster for their big exhibit. But since then, a lot of people have really kind of examined it. And I hadn't noticed this before, but I saw it pointed out. Chuck, if you look at the pearl earring, first of all, it's probably large is how I saw it described. Like, the ear couldn't physically hold up a pearl that size. But then secondly, it's really basically made with two brushstrokes. Both of them are reflecting light. One is from the light source, and then the lower one is reflecting the light off of the collar. And it's pretty amazing that we talk about this. The Girl with the Pearl Earring, this pearl itself is like a kind of a cultural icon, too. And it's basically just two brush strokes, which kind of goes to show how great Vermeer was. Amazing. Have you ever seen Tim's Vermeer? The documentary. I have not. Oh, chuck, you got to see it. It's directed by teller from penn and teller, which makes you think, like, how did he direct if he doesn't talk? But he somehow did. I think he talked in private. It's about what? It's just a bit and it's about a guy who basically figured out that vermeer somehow projected images that he built in real life onto a canvas and then painted them that way. And he actually replicates the vermeer, like, perfectly. It's really just one of the better documentaries you'll ever see. Very cool. Yeah. So what do you think ondrafael yeah. So the mystery here and this actually has a simpsons crossover as well, which is kind of fun because raphael painted a very famous painting called portrait of a young man and is largely described as one of the most famous, if not the most famous pieces of art to go missing during the plundering of great art in world war II by Hitler and the gang. And this is a crossover with the simpsons in that in the fighting Hellfish episode when grandpa abe and burns are stealing art. This is one of the paintings, portrait of a young man. It's one of the paintings that they stole wow. Which shows that simpsons writers, back then at least, we're definitely doing their work, like their research work, because that's a nice little easter egg, I think. Yeah, totally. Doesn't it even talk? Doesn't it say something like someone's guilty conscience or something? I don't know. Am I making that up? I don't know. I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen that one, but it was one of the great episodes, I think. So the portrait of the young man, which they think was a Raphael self portrait. And actually we have no idea what the colors were because the only photographs we have of it were in black and white. But it used to hang in the princess zartorski museum in Poland along with two other really important paintings. Leonardo's lady with an Irmine, which is a stoat I can't remember, kind of a weasel like animal, and then rembrandt's landscape with the good samaritan and all three of those. And everything else in the princes are Torskey museum were swiped by the nazis when they came to Poland and placed in the office of a guy named hans frank, who was the head of the government for the nazis in Poland. Right, yeah. And they almost got these hidden away successfully when Poland was being invaded. They knew that the art was going to be plundered. And so those three paintings were actually rescued by the prince and hidden away in a house in a place that I can't even pronounce Sienawa. Not sure what that is, but they were ultimately found by the gestapo and handed over to frank. And frank they were supposed to go to hitler was going to open your museum. The fuel museum in Lens. And Frank actually kind of kept it for a little while. Hung it in his residence. And then eventually this thing went to Germany and then Austria for a little while. And then back with Frank in 45. Which seems crazy improbable that they would end up back with him. But they did. And the Allies came in to Poland, I guess, and arrested Hans Frank in 1945, and they were able to find the lady with an Irmine and the Landscape with the Good Samaritan. But the Portrait of the young man was nowhere to be found. They found a lot of other stuff, too. Sure, they definitely did. But the three most important pieces in the Princess Zartarski Museum were those three, and two were recovered, one wasn't. And it's very odd to think that they were separated at any time, or that it's even odd to think that two were kept together, but one wasn't. And so because the portrait of the young man was not recovered and it's a Raphael who is one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, it's considered maybe the most important piece to go missing in World War II. Yeah, and along with, I think, over 800 other artifacts they got from him. And they could not go on to question him very long because he was executed just a year later. And since then, there have been a lot of rumors about where this thing ended up. Who has it? A lot of speculation that maybe a private collector in another country has it. I think in 2012, there was a false report that it was supposedly in some bank vault, and they really don't know. It's just sort of one of those great mysteries of a disappeared painting. And my money is on a private collector probably has this thing stashed away. But you would also think that at some point, somebody would talk. You would think so. And maybe they will eventually. Unless it's really Stashed. Well, some people think it was destroyed in that movie monuments meant they show the Nazis igniting it with a flamethrower in a cave, with a bunch of other art, and there's a whole camp that says, now this thing is gone forever. So they did something to it because the Nazis were known not just Plunder, but also destroy art as well. Which just one more reason to love them. Nazis. Yeah. And I think this is oil on panel, so I don't think this could even be, like, rolled up in a tube and put under your bed or anything. Yeah, I would guess not. No, I didn't realize it was on panel, but that makes sense. But the National Museum in Crackhouse bought the entire Princess Zark Torsky collection from a private collector for \u20ac100 million back in 2016. I know. And that included the rights to Portrait of a Young Man in case it's ever found. And for now, they have the original frame hanging empty in the gallery. Yes. It turns out that's the thing I didn't know was the thing empty frames in galleries. It's kind of sad. Yeah, it's sad. It's very poignant. It says, Come home. Come home. We're leaving the light on for you. Come home. Just like Motel Six. This is a roll call. We'll leave the light on for you. All right, well, that means it's time for another break. And we'll be back right after this to talk a little bit about Van Gogh. So, Chuck, before I launch into Sakaguay type tirade onto you, is that how you accurately pronounce his name? I don't know. It was from the filmmaker who dare not speak his name. It was from a Woody Allen movie. I think it was in the most problematic movie Manhattan, when he's with Diane Keaton and some obnoxious person says, I think it's Diane Keaton, says, Van Gogh. And he's incensed. He's like, Van Gogh? Like, how pretentious. Okay, so instead we're just going to go with Van Gogh like everybody else, right? Yeah, sure. Okay. We can cut all that out if we want to donate. Want to talk about Woody Allen, that's fine. Sure, I hear you. So Van Gogh, he was just such a sad, tragic figure. I feel for this guy so much. After learning more about him, we should do an entire podcast on him, if you ask me. Agreed. But instead, here we are going to talk about his death, because there is a mystery surrounding his death. He's very famous for having cut off his ear. He definitely did that. And I had always learned that he did it to impress a sex worker who he was enamored with. And he definitely did give her his ear after he cut it off, but that's not why he cut it off. He cut it off in a bit of angst, basically after having an argument with his friend Paul Gogan, who he was living with in Arles in the south of France. And he said, well, I'm going to make some sort of lemonade out of this lemon I just gave myself. And he took it to his hopeful girlfriend, and I believe she was not that impressed with it. Yeah. So he suffered from definitely depression. There is speculation that he had bipolar disorder. Yeah, I saw it, too. Just sort of long suffering as an artist. He only sold one painting before he died in 1890 at the age of 37. And the story goes is that he shot himself in the chest with a revolver. But it gets a little more complicated than that. And in what year was the book? In 2011. There was a book written called Van Gogh the Life, written by Stephen I'm going to say Michael okay. And Gregory White Smith. And it seems like they sort of launched this idea, or at least really put it in the public forefront, that he was actually killed, almost certainly accidentally, by one of two boys, younger gentleman that he was hanging out with that day. Right. So here's the thing. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that supports that theory that he was killed by two boys. I buy it. It's also circumstantially plausible that Van Gogh died by suicide as well. But even if you take his story and start digging into it and the statements that he made supposedly made, apparently everything we know about it comes from the owner of the inn where he rented a room's, 13 year old daughter. At the time, he was a witness to all this. But even if you take what he supposedly said, it still doesn't add up. That, number one, he shot himself in the chest. And most importantly, that number two, the gun that he shot himself with could never be found. And instead of actually finishing the suicide, completing the suicide, he couldn't find the gun after he shot himself in the chest and just walked back to his room where he died after suffering 20 more hours, but still to the end claiming that he had done this himself. Even if you take all of that together, it seems like no, there's something really fishy going on here. Yeah. So this bullet misses all of his internal organs very improbably because it deflected off his rib cage. And he walked, like you said, to the doctor, who they didn't have a surgeon on duty, so they couldn't remove the bullet. He lived a total of 30 hours after the shot and died of infection. Got to talk with his brother, was speaking to people. So he had every opportunity to say that these two boys that I was hanging out with, that I was drinking, and I say boys, I think they were maybe late teens, early 20s. No, they were 16. Okay. I saw early twenty s. And another thing oh, yeah. But hanging out, getting drunk with them. One of these boys, Renee Sakura, had a gun that apparently misfired a lot. And he liked playing with this thing. He liked to play cowboys, supposedly. He did. And so it all just seems and even his statement, he didn't say, I shot myself. He said, do not accuse anyone. It was I who wanted to kill myself. Yeah. Which is very peculiar as well, for sure. It's ambiguous, I think, as far as like because the idea is that maybe he was accidentally shot and then after he was shot, he was like, this is kind of what I wanted all along. I've been heading down this road towards suicide, and then now it's just done for me. So what seems to have happened is that this gun possibly that it wasn't actually murdered or any kind of premeditated murder, more like a manslaughter where Renee and his brother Gaston were messing around. Basically. He had seen a Wild Bill Cody Wild West Show the year before and became obsessed with it. So that's what he. Was doing with the gun and playing cowboy and that they had accidentally shot him with this gun. That was kind of known to misfire. So the thing was that the gun was never found. Renee went back to school right after that, which was still in the middle of summer break, from what I saw. And the town seems to have circled the wagons around these boys because Van Gogh was an outsider. He was not very well thought of. He used to get really drunk and argue with the locals in the cafe and everything, like, basically every night. And these boys came from, like, a good, well to do family. So for many years, that was just the thing. It just happened. And then slowly, little by little, it seems to have trickled out some support for this idea. Like, no, Van Gogh wasn't anywhere near this field. He said that he had shot himself in. He was actually on the road to the Secretans house. And then finally, years later, renee Secreton said that it probably was his gun and that Van Gogh had somehow gotten a hold of it. It seems likely that he was shot by them, whether accident or not. Yeah. And these two authors, they put forth some other circumstantial evidence, like the bullet went in at a weird angle. That would not have been the angle if you shot yourself in the chest. His more recent works were a little more upbeat and a little more positive and that he was not in that kind of mindset at the time, and that he had recently even written his thoughts about suicide, that he thought it was sinful and immoral. And so they sort of use all this as evidence that he would not have done it himself and that they believe it was an accident. His last words, very sad, where the sadness will last forever. He spoke to his brother, which is tough. Yes, it is. I really do want to do an episode on him. And I think Secretana came out in the 50s even, and denied it. Right. Like, finally, once and for all, he did. But he also said that it probably was his gun and that somehow Van Go had gotten it. Right. But, hey, that ain't my fault. No, but also to backpedal and be like, it probably was my gun, because that was another thing. Everyone's like, Where did Van go? Get a gun. Van Go didn't have a gun, and no one would have given Van Gogh a gun. He was the guy who got drunk every night and had cut off his ear before. That was like, no one in town would have given him a gun. So the fact that he even admitted that it was his gun is probably as close as Renee CircuitAn ever came to confessing publicly about it. Yeah, and it makes sense. What he said was, do not accuse anyone. That really seems like he's trying to cover for these kids that he didn't want to get in trouble. Yeah, because if he wanted to die but also he didn't want to die by his own hand. This is kind of a lucky gift in a very strange way. Yeah. I'm going to that Immersive van Gogh thing in July. Where is that? It is here in Atlanta. It's at the Pullman yards. Oh, yeah. Over in Kirkwood where they shoot, like, every movie in Atlanta shoots there. Right. So, yeah, it's supposed to be pretty cool. It's very neat. Sounds neat. Basically, they just make the stars come out whenever you come in, I think. So you sit in this yellow chair. I think that's the deal. I think you go in and you are surrounded by projected art in different ways from what I can get. I got to check that out, man. Thanks for telling me about it. Yeah, it looks kind of cool. All right, Chuck, you want to finish out talking about Hitler? Don't you mean Hilter? Did you notice Hilter? Oh, my gosh, yes. In the headline. In the headline. Did Hilter really do these paintings? That's great. Oh, yeah, he did them. Yeah. Hilter did these paintings. So we're talking not about Hilter, but about Hitler, adolf Hitler in particular. And as everybody knows, Hitler was a frustrated artist. Yeah. People have made a lot of hay about how possibly the world would be a totally different place had he been accepted into the Vienna Academy of Arts. Well, I don't want to say he came close, but he made two different attempts in one year to be accepted. And they basically looked at his stuff and said, look, man, you have the skill of a draftsman. Maybe you should go into architecture, but you're not going to be an artist. And he said, architecture. That was a direct quote. But this was a huge deal for him. I think I read that in my comp. I haven't read mine comp, but I read an article by somebody who read minecraft and said that he said it was like a bolt from the blue and that he was pursuing this dream that his father would, like, beat him out of. His father enrolled him in a technical school. He's like, no son of mine is going to be an artist. He would beat him up whenever he brought the idea up. And so finally, after his father died, and then he nurses Ailing mother until she died, he got up the gumption to go and enroll in art school. And apparently, he being Hitler, who has been fairly bonkers his whole life, just knew that he was destined to become an artist. The idea that he was rebuffed not once, but twice by this Vienna school, these people were like the guardians of what is art and what is not. And they were telling him, what you got is not. That was a huge deal to him. It was a very big deal. And it's funny, it's just now occurring to me that there was sort of a similar thing with Manson's rejection as a musician by the music industry. I never really kind of really thought of that parallel. But in 19 Nine, Hitler is tracing around Vienna and he is selling watercolors copied from postcards to tourists. So if you've ever traveled to Europe, he was one of those guys that was down by the river. The river van. Yeah, in a van. Selling and literally copied from postcards. So he did that for a little while, made a little bit of money because if you look at his art, it's way better than I could do it's okay. But it's hard to tell with modern art critics. Like, so much goes into looking at a Hitler painting and reviewing it. It's really hard to kind of separate those things. But the general thought is that he had nothing exceptional about him at all. He was the kind of artist that would sell stuff down by the river to tourists. They were fine. He was capable. But they were copycat paintings. He was copying things. He had no point of view. He did this in 1913 as well, in Munich painting Munich cityscapes and landscapes and selling them to tourists. And then in 1914 got hauled in by the police, of all things, for failing to register for the military. Yeah. And then he went down and registered. And then they gave him a physical exam and he failed it. They said it was two weeks to fire a weapon. So they arrested him so that they could humiliate him, basically. And then when World War One came around, he enlisted. And they say, we need everybody we can get. Come on in. Hilter did this army thing, right? So when he rose to power in Germany, one of the things he did was he had his works collected and destroyed. I'm not exactly sure what the thinking was behind that. I guess because he knew it wasn't very good and he needed to focus on his political career rather than his artistic career or have everybody else focus on it, but to no avail. Because I saw a critic wrote in 1936 that his style was prosaic utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling or spiritualism. And this is before I'm sorry. Or spiritual imagination. And this is before he had really become an obvious threat. This is even back then, even without hindsight, people thought his stuff wasn't very good. So, yeah, he had his stuff destroyed. And it was kind of a footnote for a very long time that he was an artist and no one really cared after his death. Yeah. And that was one of the major reasons that he was such an art plunderer during the war and stole as much art as he could from real famous artists and famous paintings because he had all this backstory as a failed artist. And it was interesting. I did see that one of his major, because he wasn't an utter failure at first. He had a backer early on. I think he was a Jewish man. Yeah. Morgan Stern yeah. Which was really interesting. And there was I don't know, man, there's a lot of speculation about what that all meant to him. And people try and draw parallels to some of the paintings. I mean, some of it feels like a stretch. Definitely. Like the cold streets of Munich were painted clearly with a future cleansing in mind to make it look like this. Yeah. Some of that stuff seems like a stretch, but you could definitely read into the backstory, at least, I think, with some accuracy. Yeah. And even if you can't necessarily suss out the future from his paintings, you can make a pretty strong case that his artistic ambitions being utterly crushed had some sort of driving force or impact on his psyche, at the very least. Sure. That and his later political career and dictatorship did not exist in a vacuum. I don't think you can possibly make the case that they were just unrelated in any way. No. I think any sociopath, you can look at their past and see the dots connected, you know? Yeah. So, like you said, this kind of just was the deal for a long time. And then, like anything else, like people wanting to get original. Charles Manson music reels. In the early, late 90s, early 2000s, there was a market for Hitler's work. I think in 2009, a British auction house, someone paid $150 for 15 early sketches and watercolors, including a self portrait. And then in 2015, some unnamed investors paid $450,000 for a set of watercolors. I think there were twelve or 13 that survived. Yeah. The problem is, because he didn't have a style of his own, that he was copying postcards, that he didn't have any formal training, and that he lacked, like, a lot of creativity, or any creativity, it seems like it's really hard to say this is a Hitler and this is a fake, and develops a really enormous market of fakes. Because anybody who's, like, a passingly good artist in watercolors, of street scapes and landscapes, could drum up something and be like, this is a Hitler. And it would be really difficult to say, yes, it is, or no, it's not. Yes. What kind of a garbage human do you have to be to think, I'll do Hitler forgeries and try and sell them to garbage humans that want to collect them? Yeah. And it's not like these are even fetching, like, $10 million a piece. We're talking like, you might get $10,000 for it for your Hitler forgery. Unbelievable. Wow. But totally believable. So that's the mystery of the Hitler paintings. Did he do this? Yeah. Did he do those paintings? You got anything else? I got nothing else. That was a good five. I think we have committed to doing a robust episode on the Gardner Museum heist, because that's a good one. And that was on this list and way underplayed for sure. So keep an ear out for that, everybody. And since I said keep an ear out for that, I think it's time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm going to call this middle names because we had a little discussion in our John Mura episode about how Emily and I and our friends Justin Melissa, one night we're going by her middle names as a joke, and I had the theory that you have no emotional connection to your middle name if you don't have a reaction when you hear it said out loud. And I just meant sort of the non dominant name. It didn't necessarily mean middle names because my brother goes by his middle name. Scott is his middle name, and some people do that. It's a thing, and certainly Amy does. She said I was listening to the show and at the end you were chatting about using middle names and how you don't have an emotional connection when you hear it. I have an interesting situation that everyone in my family uses their middle names, so I've always been called Amy ever since I was born. But my first name is Helen. This causes an interesting situation at airports and doctors appointments where they refer to me as Helen, and I always have to remember that they're talking to me. Big fan of the show. Kept me curious and my curious spirit satisfied over the last three or four years. And it's such a comfort knowing there's always another episode to listen to. Best wishes from the UK. They're always so nice. Amy. Helen. Amy. Thanks, Helen. Amy. We'll just call her Amy as is customary. Yeah, because we say Helen. She's like, who. Wow. I can't wait until they read my listener mail. Amy. If you want to be like Amy and get in touch with us for whatever reason, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…-cryotherapy.mp3	Does Whole-Body Cryotherapy Work?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/does-whole-body-cryotherapy-work	Forty years after a Japanese doctor began using whole body cryotherapy to treat patients with arthritis; the technique has made its ways to med-spas and locker rooms throughout the West. But does it actually do anything?	Forty years after a Japanese doctor began using whole body cryotherapy to treat patients with arthritis; the technique has made its ways to med-spas and locker rooms throughout the West. But does it actually do anything?	Thu, 28 Jan 2016 17:03:18 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=17, tm_min=3, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=28, tm_isdst=0)	33711836	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This delightful program is brought to you by Squarespace. Beautiful websites for beautiful bands like walk the moon bandcom. So the name of their tour is Talking is Hard. It's not that hard, guys. I'm doing it now. Most of the time I can't stop talking. I mean, you literally would have to cut me off one time. I told you. Yeah. Alec Baldwin. We get it. You are talking too much. But you like Squarespace and we like Squarespace. So we appreciate you getting on our podcast to help us plug one of our great sponsors. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseteporkworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryan. There's Jerry Rowland for the stuff you snow. Hi. Frozen Body. This is the second time I've been able to do that on the show. Do you remember the first one? Cryonics Colon high Frozen Body, exclamation point, August 2011. But cryonics is not the same thing as cryotherapy. No. So if you think you guys are doubling up already no. Well, they could even toss out medically induced hypothermia. We did that one too. All different. Totally different. Mostly different. Yeah. Now we're talking cryotherapy. Specifically whole body cryotherapy, because cryotherapy has been around for a really long time. Have you ever had a wart? No. Oh, you never had this happen to you? Well, actually, I forgot I had the planter warts on my feet. Did you get them burned off? I did not. Pleasant. Yes. And those are a bugger. I used to get warts here when I was a kid and I would go to the doctor and it would open a freezer and take out like this crazy jar of metal. Thermos not a jarboard that they collected. Yeah, I thought they feed them to you and that's how you get rid of your wards. Is that an old wives tale? Yeah, I think it is. My mum would take me to the witch and that's how I would get rid of my wart. No, they would just take a little swab of this stuff and put the swab onto your wart and it would just burn it off like they burned it by freezing it because they're using liquid nitrogen. It was so cold that it burns. It basically just burns tissue. You know what I actually have at home right now? I have a spray can of medical freezing spray. Neat. Because I used to go to the doctor to get my skin tags removed because my body is just lousy with them here in my old age. And then you just finally just stole the can so you can do it yourself. Didn't steal a can. I bought a can. You can buy the bought? Yes. On Amazon. Bought? Yeah. Okay. And I got a little sharp clipper. Not nail clippers, but like scissors? No, not scissors. It's sort of in between the nail clipper and a scissor. It looks like something you get at a hardware store. Is it like scissors, but then the ends bent at like a 45 degree angle? No, they look like just a pair of dikes, like in a toolbox, but they are for your toe and fingernail kit. I don't know what those are. I'll just show them to you. Okay. So anyway, I'm going to start blasting them and cutting them off myself, or I'm going to have Emily do it. I'll let you know how it goes. Yes, please take a video of this or Facebook live it. Yeah, that's the new thing. Yeah. Look out for that. People Facebook. It's their version of periscope. Yes, I'm sure they don't really like that, but that's exactly what it is. Yeah. We're going to try it out. Yeah. Burning of moles or skin tags. Not moles. Bring your little clippers and your medical freezing spray on tour and I will film it and we'll just see what happens. I don't know if I could get that through security. You just have to throw it over the metal detector and go. I think so. Got you. So I learned in Boondock Saints. Oh, man, what a movie, man, I've never seen the documentary about Tony Duffy. I can't remember. I think it was the bar owner turned, like, Hollywood wonderkin turned guy who blew it. All right. Troy Duffy. A great documentary. That's his name. It's Troy Duffy. Yeah. I want to see it. All right. So movie sidetracked already. Oh, cryotherapy. I'm sorry. So when you take liquid nitrogen that's really how sidetracked I just got I forgot what we were talking about for a second. Cryotherapy. When you take liquid nitrogen and put it on your tissue, that's local cryotherapy. There's no question that that actually works and what it does. We understand that whole body cryotherapy is different. It's kind of this trendy new thing in, like, health and medicines where you basically get into what they call a cold sauna and are exposed to liquid nitrogen gas and supposedly has a whole range of health benefits, which should immediately set off your skeptical antenna. Yeah. If something like cures ten ailments. It sounds a lot like Snakehold to me, especially when the ailments are very vague. Yeah, I want something that cures the one ailment I have. Right. Hey, it'll help with these eight things. Yeah. And I'm not faulting anybody who's saying, like, well, we don't know how it works. We just know it works because a lot of Western medicine has no idea how their effective treatments work. They just know they do work. So I have no issue with that. The problem with cryotherapy is we should just say right off the bat is there's really no scientific evidence that this works at all. It has maybe a little bit of an impact on inflammation, but we'll get to all that. I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah, don't spoil it. Sorry. I think I already did. Should we edit that part out. No, let's leave it in there. All right. But first, let's go back to Japan in the 1970s. Take the way back machine, which I bet Japan in the 70s was a pretty fun place to be. Winging. Yes. To the office of doctor toshima Is that Yamaichi? And he was supposedly the first doctor to actually use cryotherapy, and in his case, used it to help treat rheumatoid arthritis patients. Still doing it. Oh, I'm sure he has a clinic on an island called, I believe, Kiyoshu. I thought it was going to be Yamauchi Island. It might as well be. I'm sure that guy is getting loaded these days. I'm sure. Because money not. Well, maybe both. Okay. High end Japanese Scotch and money. Yeah, Japanese Scotch is good stuff, but yes, it is. Did you know, seriously, crown Royal Rye won the world's best whisky recently? This is the second time he sold everybody. I'm just so astounded by it. I've yet to try it, actually. I know. Have you? No, but we'll try it on the road, maybe. Okay. If we can get our hands on some so Yamaguchi was trying it with rheumatoid arthritis patients, and then it spread through Europe and eventually made its way over here, where it has become a very trendy thing. And of course, celebrities, if they're in on it, then, you know, it's the latest and maybe not greatest treatment. Because celebrities, they're just like us. Yeah, except they have more money to waste on frivolous things. So I love how you kind of glossed over it, but how it got here. Apparently in the Soviet bloc, they picked up on this treatment that was being used for rheumatoid arthritis in Japan. Soviet athletes. And, you know, it probably wasn't by choice back then. They were forced into these things. Right? Like the old drug Olympics guy. Like, get down off the balance beam and get in that get in that cold sauna. Yeah. But the whole idea that there's some sort of health benefit to cold, it doesn't lie with Yamaji. No, it goes back quite a long way. There's this whole idea that taking a cold plunge. Cold water immersion. Yeah. Like the polar bear clubs. Yeah. In Finland, they call it avatuing tea. So they get in the sauna and then they run out in their bare skin underwear. Yes, because it's Finland. And they jump in the cold, icy waters of the nearby lake. And it's supposed to rejuvenate them and make them gasp for air as their body heals. Right. It's supposed to improve mood, well, increase your metabolism, do all sorts of crazy stuff. But this whole idea that has health benefits, I was very surprised. I figured I would find, like, oh, the Finns were the ones who started this, or maybe in Iceland or something like that. I couldn't find anything that talked about the history of ice swimming further back than what this article comes up with. Which is a guy in New York named Professor Sugarman. Sugarman. Yeah, surely. Sugarman. Yeah, sugarman. But he is the Sugar Man. Sugar man. Yeah. What was that in the 1800s when he was the human polar bear and he would get into the icy rivers in New York and he was a health guy, and so he said, this is helping my body out. You should do it. You think I'm crazy. And by the way, graham crackers cure masturbation. Is that a thing? Oh, yeah. Really? Dude, we've got to do, like, that whole road to wellville thing sometimes. Totally. That was such an interesting is that Kellogg? Yeah, I believe so. From the serial Kellogg. Kellogg. But there was a Doctor Graham who came up with graham crackers. There was a whole bunch of crazy thinking at that time. That was really interesting. I saw that movie way back when, but it's been a while. Anthony Hopkins, right? Yeah. And I think it wasn't Matthew Broderick in it. I feel like it's been a while. Was it made in the late 80s? Yeah, matthew Broker was the one that he was in the Freshman. Did you ever see that? With Bruno Kirby and Marlon Brando. I saw part of that just the other day, actually. Oh, yeah. And I thought, how odd that Brando would agree to reprise his role from The Godfather in a comedic way. Right. Kind of like De Niro has done to lesser success. You know what else is a good Brando movie? Donoan DeMarco. Yes. Not bad. I liked it. Yeah. Although I'm speaking from, like when you saw it back then. Yeah, I haven't seen it in a long time. Yes, I bet it holds up. I bet it's very relevant, timely and topical. They mentioned El Chapo all over the place. So, like you said, they have done some studies that found that doing the ice swims helps reduce chronic pain. But I'll just go ahead and say this about all these studies. We're going to talk about a lot of them. They're just all over the map, and none of them are very controlled or very good. Yeah. So it's hard to really make a judgment call when you're not doing the good research. So the jumping in a lake as part of a polar bear club to make yourself guess, have you ever done that? Not jumping in a lake, but gone into, like, a cold water bath? Well, yeah, I did it in high school in a frozen lake. Oh, so you have done that. Yeah, there was a church camp that had a big, like, 50 foot slide into the lake. And in the summer it's a lovely thing, and in the winter the guys were like, well, we're going to do it. And we did it. And did you go? Jesus. No, I didn't. No. Were you like, how long were you in there? Spill. I had no idea. Well, I slid in and then quickly swam to shore and got out and got warm and ended up on the cover of Guideposts shivering in your little polar bearskinned bathing suit. Yeah. And by the way, people who sent in that cover of Guideposts that they thought might have been me, good investigative skills, because the way I described it, it could very well have been me. But it was not me. No. That one is yet to be found. Yeah. So this idea of jumping in the lake, it's somehow not sure how, made its way into sports medicine, where it became very big. Cold water immersion? Yes. You see the NFL player sitting in, like, an ice tub after a game or a little bronze thing. Sure. He likes his ice baths. He does, yeah. And the whole idea behind it is that you just exerted your muscles. Right. When you exert your muscles, they become basically infused and swollen with blood. Right? Yeah. So one of the reasons your muscles ache after exercise is because they're swollen, their tissue is just larger than normal, and it causes this ache. When you immerse yourself in water, the thinking goes the hydrostatic pressure outside of your body draws the fluid toward your skin, so it draws it out of the muscles and eventually back into the blood vessels. So it creates or it lessens, that aching thing. The problem is, if you're using cold water immersion for that kind of thing, it doesn't really make any sense because cold water immersion creates vasoconstriction, which means it makes your blood vessels smaller, which would make them less apt to accept the blood from the muscles. Well, there's some people that think it actually has the reverse effect and is not doing what it says it's doing, but like I said, the opposite. Did you see that study that I sent you? Which one? That had like, the discussion part had just like a couple of different I don't think so. Well, there's this one study I came across, and it was basically a survey of studies, and it showed this study found that these people's cycling ability after a cold water immersion, like after not jump in an ice bath and then jump on a cycle, like the day after, the cycling ability dropped from 13% to 2%. And the only factor involved was cold water immersion. There's another guy named Joseph Costello. He's an exercise physiologist from the University of Portsmouth in the UK. And he said that there's more evidence coming out that inflammation is actually part of the recovery process. So you don't want to stop your inflammation, you want to embrace it, I guess. Right. Well, one of the ways that your muscles adapt is by basically being torn and rebuilding themselves. And they do that through inflammation. Yes. And that was by the way, I read an article from the Washington Post called the Big Chill Cryotherapy May Be Trendy, But Does It Work? Doesn't sound that way. Not only does it not work like you were saying, like Costello is finding? There seems to be more and more evidence that it actually has a detrimental effect, where if you're an elite athlete, you do not want to do cold water immersion. Yeah. All right, well, let's take a break, and we'll talk a little bit about kind of the cost and what's going on today with this stuff. All right, Josh, a little bit of the nuts and bolts on cryotherapy these days, if you're in a big city, you probably already have a cryospa. It's probably just some spa bought one of these machines exactly. Time in it. Yeah. I don't mean it's dedicated to cryospotting. Well, maybe there's some sure, in the biggest of cities, the trendiest of cities, but look it up on your Internet machine, and if you want to go check it out, you can. It will cost you about $40, or you can get, like, a monthly membership. I saw one in Minnesota which I don't know why they just don't go outside in the winter and accomplish the same thing. But it was $450 a month. But you unlimited cryotherapy, and you don't want to use it more than once a day. So I did the math, and that's still a savings of about $600, $550 if you went every day. Yes. I wonder how much it costs to buy one of those. I'm sure it would pay for itself in ten years. And I wonder if you can eventually just put a tabletop on it and double it as a dining table once you inevitably quit using it. Put a lamp on it. Yeah, why not? Yeah. So 40 or $50 a pop, and you will be in the it's really cold. I think that's an understatement. Yeah. And it's gas. We need to be really clear. You're not in cold water. No, it's dry gas. And that's what saves you from things like frostbite or freezing to death or getting hypothermia, because that's right. It's gas. That liquid nitrogen. When it's exposed to the warmer temperatures of the air and it's released into that thing, it immediately gasifies. Yeah. And we're talking negative 256 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 degrees Celsius. Negative. That is colder than anything on planet Earth. Right. So if you could find a liquid that remains liquid at those low temperatures right? Yes. You would basically immediately die when you immerse yourself in it. And the reason why gas you can expose yourself to temperatures of gas like that rather than liquid, is because liquid has a higher heat capacity, which means it absorbs heat more readily, and it's a great conductor of heat. So it wicks that heat away from your body, I think 25 times faster than air does. Yeah. So you can withstand this cold temperature. Again, negative 256 degree. Right. The coldest temperature on Earth right there in that little cryosauna. There's nowhere else on Earth that's even remotely close to that. But you can withstand it for a certain amount of time. I think three minutes is the maximum time that they suggest. They say two to three minutes, which I guess that's a plus. You pop in there, you're gone five minutes later. Oh, yeah. If you own one of these things, it's like printing your own money, aside from the lawsuit payout. And you will, like I said, two to three minutes at the most. And it penetrates no more than a half millimeter below the surface of the skin, in the case of the gas. And here are some of the things they say it will help with anytime. The first one is destroys toxins. And my radar is up. Yeah, because that's such a broad claim. Increases metabolism. It's another one that she loses. So you'll actually lose weight. Right. Boost your immune system, slow aging. Like, all of these sound like something you'd see on the subway at in New York. What are the four broadest health concerns you have? Human. Yeah. Well, that happens to take care of all of them. I'm surprised it doesn't say, like, helps you get sleep or helps if you're getting too much sleep. Right. There's probably a spot that advertises. That probably so. And the reason that they can do this is because Chuck is unregulated. Yes. There are some states that now offer suggestions on, I believe, one state. Just one. Nevada. Yeah, the one where a lady died doing it. Well, let's go ahead and talk about her. Okay. Because we're not laughing at her tragic accident, because it was awful. We're laughing at the ridiculous lack of oversight on this extraordinarily dangerous machine. Exactly. This is in July 2015 at a place called Rejuvenice. But they threw real with that. Yeah, I think so. Maybe that's an all cryo spa. It's a med spa in Henderson, Nevada. And this lady who worked there went in one day and noticed that the machine was already on. And then on the floor next to the machine, she's no, in the machine. Oh, she was still in the machine? Yeah, with it on. Oh. I didn't think you could lay down in this thing. I thought it just set you up with your neck sticking out. I think she crumpled. Okay. Yeah. So this thing is kind of shaped like a barrel. Yes. It's not like a bed that you lay down in. No. It's like you remember or that one. Or unlike old timey cartoons where, like, a guy is taking a schwitz. Like, they go into that machine and their head sticks out, but inside is basically like a wet sauna. I don't know what you speak okay. I can picture it. Okay. Say you got into an iron lung and then they stood you up. Okay. Just like that. Well, at any rate, she found her co worker, Chelsea I have no idea how to pronounce it found her frozen solid. Dead, obviously. Yeah. And what they think might have happened was that because this lady knew how to work the machine, she used the machine herself, worked there and was an advocate, so she knew the dangers. So they're thinking is that maybe she bent down to pick something up, got too much nitrogen in her body because you need that proper mix of oxygen, and just passed out and then froze. Because they found that she died from affixiation, not from being frozen. Right. And she was had she taken one, maybe even two breaths, it would have been virtually pure nitrogen. And at that concentration or that lack of oxygen in the air she was breathing, it would just take one or two breaths for her to immediately lose consciousness. When she lost consciousness, she was using this thing alone. There was no one to see her. Which is why she didn't die of being frozen death. She died from asphyxiation. It's that inert gas asphyxiation that we talked about in the lethal injection episode. Like, it just takes one or two breaths, and that's it. Yeah. And now the state of Nevada has some recommended they basically said, hey, why don't you just say you've got to be over 18, you got to be taller than 5ft. No history of stroke, seizure, or high blood pressure. It's almost like to ride a roller coaster, except for the age thing. Not be pregnant, not have a pacemaker. And these are just suggested guidelines in Nevada at this point. And they also said it would also be good if in your office, you knew CPR and you had defibrillators and a working phone that could call 911. Yeah. But again, all just recommendations at this point. Nevada also recommended that spas who offer cryotherapy post signs that say, there's no scientific evidence that this does anything. So we'll talk about it. And you got to sign a waiver, too, that says, I could die. Right. You want to talk about the science after a break? Yeah. Okay. So, Chuckers, again, there's a lot of people who are like, this is all hooey, which is weird that it doesn't do anything beneficial, but the only thing that it's been shown to even remotely have an effect on is inflammation. There's very little discussion about whether it affects inflammation. That's why Yamuchi originally was using this stuff, to decrease the inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis suffers. Right? Yeah. So it definitely does decrease inflammation, but other than that, everything else is kind of a bogus claim, or at the very least, it's a claim that's not backed up by any real science. Yeah. And again, there supposedly is mounting evidence that inflammation you don't want to reduce necessarily as an athlete, and that could be a vital part of the process of healing and regenerating. That's right. So in 2015, there was one study that only had 64 participants, and what I found was that they basically picked, like, young, fit, white dudes for the study. And you just can't do that if you're going to get an accurate result. And I think that's what happened. They got a result that most legit scientists have just had to throw out, basically. Right. Well, the 2015 study was a survey, and it pulled all of the available studies, and all the available studies together only came to a population size of 64. And yeah, like you said, they were homogeneous, basically. Yeah. So that's not good. There's not a lot of investigation about this stuff. There's not a lot of oversight. Yeah. They found another 2012 study that said they found no difference between cryotherapy and just the regular ice bath. Right. That like an athlete might take in the locker room. So why pay all this money to go to a cryotherapy session? So the people who say that say, well, your chances of hypothermia are a lot less because you're wet. Yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah. Well, you're not wet in the cryosphere. All right. So your body is going to maintain its temperature a lot longer. It's not going to lose its temperature or heat as quickly. Right. So it's not as dangerous as what some proponents would say unless you're wet going in. Yeah. Which has happened. This story just is mind boggling to me. Which one? The guy the sprinter. Yeah. Who really should have known better. Right. His name is Justin Gatlin. He's an American sprinter for Team USA. Yeah. World famous, world class sprinter. Right. And he was training down in Orlando for Korea World Games, I think. The World Championships. And it was hot because it's almost always hot in Orlando. Right, sure. And he goes straight from his workout to the cryosauuna. Yeah. What I want to know is why don't they have people with towels saying the one thing you don't want to do is get in here wet? Yeah. I just don't understand. I don't understand it either, but it's different oversight and just being dumb. Right, but you can make the case that he was very dumb. He walked right into the cryo sauna wearing his wet socks still, and I think possibly his wet shoes, and he immediately got frostbite. Yes. His feet froze and he was hobbled, basically. Couldn't even put on his running spikes, so I think he had to withdraw. No, he actually ran and lost to Usain Bolton for yeah, lost big time. But apparently he's back to form, according to this. But the problem was he got frostbite from wearing his socks in his shoes, and the blisters and the scars that formed after them were perfectly lined up with the tops of his socks and his running spikes, because that's what he was wearing wet in the cryosauna. So at least one person has died. You can get hobbled from it, even if you're an elite athlete, if you're not using your noodle. Yeah. What else? Well, this one lady sued the company because she got frostbite on her hands because they recommended she wear wet gloves. I have no idea why they would say this, but the recommendation was to wear wet gloves, and she ended up getting frostbite in her hands. It wasn't, like, accidental. They said you should wear wet gloves. Yeah. So in this article, it's pretty great what the spas reply was to this lawsuit. They said that, hey, she signed a liability waiver, and she wasn't insuring her own safety, so apparently she should have been smart enough to not listen to them when they told her to wear wet gloves, is what the spa's reply to the lawsuit was. One of the thoughts on why this might help is that it might just be a placebo effect. Well, okay. Yes. So now we really it's been kind of obvious. We're both a little skeptical of this, I think it's fair to say. Right? That's right. I'm not being judgmental, though. Like, if you want to try this and you feel like you're getting some sort of benefit from it, knock yourself out. Just do it safely and smartly, please. Yes. But the skepticism is largely centered around the idea that this is a placebo effect, especially with things like pain relief. Anything that goes beyond inflammation is probably a placebo. Yeah. They did a study in Australia in 2014. They had 30 young men put them through what they call a high intensity workout. So they get sore, and then they divided them up. They had 15 minutes in one of three tubs of very cold water, and nothing like the cryotherapy even just cold water. Okay. I think it said 50 degree, one body temperature water, and then one tub with body temperature water with magic soap. They basically said, this soap will be beneficial for your recovery. And the results showed that they all had equal benefits from the cold bath and the magic soap bath, and they all reported less soreness. Basically equal between the cold bath and the magic soap bath and the magic soap. Yeah. All three baths basically being equal. No, I think the normal bath didn't show as much improvement as the cold bath and the oh, yeah, you're right. Cold bath and magic soap bath, but regular, warm, non magic soap bath was whatever. Yeah, but that strongly suggest that there's a placebo effect in effect. Yeah, I kind of bundled that. It's okay. Yeah, you get it. Everybody still loves the truck. Okay, this is weird. Do you have anything else? One more study from a lady named Dane Laroche from the University of New Hampshire 2013 study. He found no difference in soreness of strength or strength between runners who iced and who didn't. And like you said, there was a slight drop in inflammation, but muscular benefits were actually what they did was it would ice one leg and not the other. And they actually found muscular benefits from exercise were greater in the leg that didn't get ice. Right. So maybe. Having the opposite effect. Right. Which makes sense again. Number one, they're finding out that inflammation in the muscles is part of recovery. It's something you want, like you said, right? Yeah. And to work against that seems like that would reduce recovery and hence reduce performance afterwards. Like, it might make your muscles ache less because they're not inflamed or engorged with blood. Right. But it's not helping your performance. Right. And that's ultimately what all the elite athletes are after. They're looking to be better the next day. Rather than, my muscles ache, I don't want to feel them anymore. Yeah. I wonder how many things we are going to look back on today. Like we look back on ancient medicine. This is just like that Road Dellville stuff. Yeah. And think, can you believe that in 2016 people would get into nitrogen gas chambers yeah. And freeze themselves? That's why it's kind of like what I thought. This is behind us by, like, 100 years or something, but we're still doing it. You know why? Because I think as long as there are humans on the Earth, they're going to be looking for that fountain of youth and they're going to pay and try things that seem silly. Yeah. But I will continue to keep an open mind about the possibility that this does have some sort of overlooked effect that we don't understand yet, because it is pretty serious. Exposing yourself to that, like, that's just too pronounced of a difference than our norm. I bet. At the very least, it sucks to go through. I'm never going to try it. Yeah. Okay. And I don't even mind being cold. Yeah. I think even if you don't mind being cold, you would mind this. It's probably like torture, maybe. So it looks like it. Yeah. If you want to know more about cryotherapy, you can type that word into the search bar athousetworks.com and since I said search bars, compare list in the mail, I'm going to call this painful shot. Hey, guys. My name is Emily. Recently discovered your show and have been binge listening walking around campus. I'm a freshman at Harvard University. She drops the h bomb. The Crimson. I recently listened to Anesthesia and loved it, but one thing stuck out. One of you, I believe it was me, said something along the lines of getting an injection into your gums is the worst experience, but I think I can debunk this. No, no. When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I broke my nose in a high jumping accident during track practice. I am definitely afraid of needles, but when I went in to get it reset, I got five injections right up my nose. Can you imagine a needle in your nose? No, dude, no. I had to be pinned down because I couldn't control my hysteria. Not only that, they didn't even numb it high enough in the nasal bridge, and I still felt my nose being reset. Plus, my nose is still crooked. I think it gives my face some character. Emily, I haven't seen you, but I bet it does. I think the lesson here is no high jumping. Yeah, she says, I think this beats your gums thing. Sorry if it made you squirm, but I've heard you cover enough things that made my skin crawl to be convinced that you two are not squeamish. Not true. No, that one's pretty bad. That is from Emily with a y. Well, thanks a lot, Emily with the Y. Well, I guess we kind of appreciate that. Yes, we do. Let's just go ahead and come out and say it. That was awesome. If you want to see if you can make our skin crawl, give us your best shot. You can try it on facebook. Comstepyhealth. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast HowStuffWorks.com you can tweet to us@syscapodcast.com, and you can go type whatever you want into the home page of stuffyouro.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com."
8a7e9fe8-4a58-11e8-a49f-0b2537382dc5	SYSK Selects: How Grief Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-grief-works	You can probably name the five stages of grief - from denial to acceptance - they've become pretty well known since being proposed in 1969. But later researchers are finding that grief is rarely that cut and dried, and it may not be as widely experienced as we once thought. Join Josh and Chuck as they look at the sad science of grief.	You can probably name the five stages of grief - from denial to acceptance - they've become pretty well known since being proposed in 1969. But later researchers are finding that grief is rarely that cut and dried, and it may not be as widely experienced as we once thought. Join Josh and Chuck as they look at the sad science of grief.	Sat, 03 Nov 2018 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=307, tm_isdst=0)	38883241	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing Poolsite, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects I've chosen how grief works. It's an episode from April of 2013, and it covers everything you ever wanted to know about grief. Like, do animals grieve? Of course they do. Don't be ridiculous. And if you happen to be grieving right now, I hope this episode helps. So sit back and enjoy or whatever you might do with it. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes the stuff you should know the podcast. Good grief. Yes, good grief. I looked it up. What did you come up with? Well, it just struck me because Charlie Brown says it's where I know it from. Then I thought, where did that come from? Because I wanted those things. And it's just apparently they think it's just what's called a minced oath, like when you substitute God for good gravy or good googlies. I got you great googly, moogly moogly. But then I thought grief was weird because that's such a specific thing. But then good gracious gracious is very specific, too, and, like, ill fitting. So I guess it's just immense oath. Good grief. Well, maybe good gracious came from good grace and somebody was just feeling a little buzzed on schnapps and they added gracious instead. Maybe so. Minced oats, good gravy. That's good. That's probably the funniest thing that will happen in the show. Hopefully. That wasn't even that funny. Yeah, but this one's not supposed to be funny. It's about grief. Yeah, and I think we should point out from the get go that this is about grief. Human grief. Western human grief. But that's not to say that there aren't different types of grief and that humans are the only ones who do grief. In fact, I have a story for you. Yeah, I got a little animal action, too. You do? That was the funniest thing in this episode. The story took place back in the spring of 1999 in Utter Pradesh State, India, specifically in the town of Lucknow, and even more specifically at the Prince of Wales Zoo. Okay. There was a 72 year old elephant, female elephant named Domini. And Domini was hanging out in her little house at the Prince of Wales do, when all of a sudden, she got a younger, pregnant friend delivered to her named Chum Pecali. And Chumbaali was, as I said, pregnant. She was actually on maternity leave from her regular gig, where she would just let tourists ride on her back. Okay. All right. And so she was taking the Prince of Wales to basically just have a nice, comfortable term and then give birth. And Domini just fell in love with Champagoly. This is so sad already. So she basically became a maternal figure. Chump of Collie, they were best friends. Chump of Collie would lay around, and Domini would stroke her pregnant belly with her trunk. They just got really tight, which is very normal in the elephant world. Yeah. So you can almost imagine that Domini was growing excited as Champaguli got closer and closer to her due date. And when finally she did go into labor champagne. He died during childbirth and gave birth to a still born calf. And Dominique, I guess, they let her come in and hang around the body because elephants are known to grieve. Even as far as elephants go. Domini's story is a little pretty bad. She cried over the body for a while and then went over to her enclosure and just stood still for a week. Right. You're killing me. After the week during this week, she stopped eating. She got to the point where her legs swelled from basically starvation and dehydration until she fell over, and then she just laid there for what turned out to be the rest of her life, where she wept and refused to eat and refused to drink and grieved over the death of her friend and finally died herself a few days later. And the vets tried to keep her alive. They did what they could, but they said in the end, in the face of Domini's intense grief, all her treatment failed. Jeez. No, they're buried next to one another. I had a dog situation like, that similar when I was a kid. Yeah. One of my dogs died and they were best buds, and the other one, just, like, was never the same, and died about three months later and seemed healthy at the time. And I went out and laid down the dog house and cried nice when I was, like, seven. Devastating. That's a wonderful thing to do. That's working out your grief. Yeah. But as far as the animals go, it really is pretty evenly divided among scientists who say, yes, they show all the signs of grieving and that's what they're doing. And then others that say, no, they are not grieving, we are putting that on them as humans. Yeah. I totally disagree with that. Yeah. It's really two camps. We've talked about this before. Yeah, we've run up against this before. And I don't think either one of us have changed our positions at all. I think they grieve. But then you hear, like this one great ape was famous recently for carrying her little dead baby around for like, three days. And other scientists came out and said, this is a long gestation period. They have singleton's. Having a kid is a big deal. And so she's carrying this baby around in hopes that it will come back to life. And it's like in a comatose state and it's a practical, adaptive, evolutionary thing that's happening. It's not grief. And then I think you're heartless. Right? Yeah. They're grieving because they took the baby chimp and made a purse out of it. That's a good sign after that. Well, but then for animals I don't want to get too sidetracked, but you have to think, like, when some clearly show signs of what looks like grief and some don't at all. Like the chimpanzee in the same arena, they eat other chimpanzees while they're still alive and screaming. Well, those are the ones that back talk. Or they go off the die by themselves and there's no grieving. Or they will make like if one of them is dying, that will kill them. Right. But imagine you're an outside observer of the human species. We lose chemical weapons on one another and yet we still have funeral practices. I know. It's interesting. I wonder why certain animals do and certain don't, though. Yeah, it's very interesting. Well, getting back to humans, the human realm of grief there was a man who recently was married to his wife for 62 years and she died. And on the way to her funeral, he died in the back of the limousine. Oh, really? Yeah, which I thought was incredibly sweet. And then his daughters they died at the funeral? No, they put a sign up. They decided to just have a double funeral. And they put a sign up at the wake that said, Surprise, it's a double header. And then buried him next to her, like that day. Well, I guess their family has a good sense of humor, at least. But the point is yeah. That is, they use the sense of humor to grieve or else they weren't going through grief. And the point of that whole thing is that there's no set way that grief works. Which is great, because we can say just about anything here and still being the right. Exactly. Because psychology is still grappling to define the process of grief. And some very recent studies that you found show that grief is not present in everyone and that everyone deals with it very differently and there's not really any specific way to handle it. There's just some great general guidelines. And we should say grief is a very personal thing. Yeah. And I myself have experienced the spectrum of grief in my life, including family members passing away. Not to be too cold, but some are you super grieve for, and some it's like, well, they were very old and they had a great life and we saw this coming. And that's one of the things that's one of the types of grief, anticipatory grief, they say, is probably easier because you're working that stuff out over time and it's nothing like an accident or a child dying. Unanticipated grief. Well, it's completely different. Yeah, it is. You mentioned anticipatory grief that's like if somebody's got a prolonged illness or something like that, you have the chance to say goodbye ahead of time, maybe deal with these emotions. Exactly. And then once death actually comes, you've been prepared for this for days, weeks, months, right, yeah. And a lot of times, maybe there isn't any quote unquote traditional grief going on at all because you're just so prepared and it's just a matter of executing all the things that you need to do if you're the person that's in charge of that kind of thing. Right. Like you're so prepared, you blow off the funeral to go to the grocery store like a serial killer, if that's the case. Psychologists call that kind of grief anticipatory grief, basically the money grief, because it's about as light as you can get post grief, post death, I should say. Right, yes. And then again, I want to say there's probably a listener out there who helped their husband or their mother through a long bout of cancer that the person finally succumbed to that's. Like, that's absolutely untrue. I agree with you wholeheartedly again, there's no specific. Like, no one can tell you what your grief was. Again, it's personally, these are very broad strokes. Okay, then, like you mentioned, unanticipated grief. Right, yeah. From my experience, I had a friend that fell off a building and died. Definitely the hardest. Someone young, an accident. But still, if you want to talk about five stages, I'm not a big believer that that's the case because I didn't experience all those stages at all. But again, it varies. Someone might experience ten stages. It does. But the point is, with unanticipated grief, like, you or your friend didn't wake up that morning like he was going to die. Right. But he still died. And you have to deal with it all of a sudden. Yeah. And then there's ambiguous grief, which for my money, is probably the worst kind of grief. This is the kind of grief that comes where, say, if you have a loved one who is kidnapped and you never hear from them again. Yeah. Or never felt that one. Your parents abandon you as a child, or just something happens to somebody and there's no real resolution or closure. Yeah. Or it doesn't have to be even death. It can be like your girlfriend. You come home to a note on your bed and you never hear from her again. Or a wife, I guess. Yeah. Because I guess we should also say that grief doesn't just have to come from death. No, of course not. Grief is basically the deep and poignant distress caused by bereavement, and bereavement is the state of being deprived of something or someone. So that could be through death, whatever. Yeah, exactly. But yeah. So those are the three types of normal grief just off the top of our heads. We made those up. Right. Yeah. And you mentioned the different kinds of the different stages of grief. That's just such, like, a pop trope these days. Yeah. The five stages. But it was actually new just as recently as 1969, when Dr. Elizabeth Cooper Ross came up with the five stages of grief that you always hear about today that any ten year old could probably recite to you, but have since been kind of deconstructed and changed and questioned and challenged. But these are kind of the roadmap to go through grief. Right. Yeah. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Right. And denial is just basically saying you're not true, that they're still alive. Like, what you say is a lie, and I don't want to be anywhere near you because you're lying to me right now about something very horrible. Yeah. I've never experienced that, even with my friend who fell off a building like that's as sudden a news as you can get over the phone. And I'm just not the kind of person who's like, no, that didn't happen. I was like, man, it immediately hit me that had happened. Yeah. And I started from there, I guess, but I didn't experience anger either. But if it might have been my brother, I might have experienced anger. You raise a very good point. There's different, I guess, risk factors. There's different elements to grief. And some of it is personal. Some of it has to do with how close you are to the person. Sure. Some of it has to do with the type of person you are. You're a pretty resilient person. If you were very sensitive, bookish type, you might have taken it a little harder, you know what I mean? Yeah. You have a very strong, tight support group. You do. Yeah. So I would say that probably helped quite a bit. I'm sure you had a group of friends that helped you through that. They were probably friends with the kid too. Yeah, absolutely. So you went through it as a group. Yeah. Going through something alone is always hard, even if you think you're a loner and don't want to be around anyone you're probably not doing yourself any favor. Right. And then lastly, you had prior experience with grief. You'd throwing yourself down in the doghouse when you were seven, so you had that experience to draw upon and to know you can make it through it. It does get better. It does go away. Yeah. So you're going to have the hardest, normal kind of grief if you are, like you said, a loner with no support group, if this is the first time you've ever experienced grief, if you're the sensitive bookish type and if you were extraordinarily close to somebody. Right, right. Yeah, totally. And in fact, I used to do acting exercises in college. I took this acting class, and believe it or not, I took one acting class and I was not very good at it. And he used to tell us to try to do, like, crying exercises and stuff. So what do you think of my brother was always to go to, like, imagine my brother had gotten killed or something. I would just like, boom, waterwork. Yeah, your brother tried myself cry if I thought of your brother dying. I know he's a beloved guy. Good guy. I'm just kidding about the other family members. All right, so anger is the second one. Yes. It is pretty self explanatory. Yeah. Bargaining fascinates me. Like, the idea that you feel like you're suddenly in a position to make a deal with God to reverse the circumstances or bring the person back or take away the pain, that's just so crazy. And you think of somebody bargaining with God or some higher power, and they're, like, looking up, talking to the ceiling or the sky. And that is one of the normal stages of grief. Yeah. I just find that fascinating. I did that when I was young with girls. Oh, yeah? Well, I was heavy into church, very emotional kid, and girls like, it was one of those deals like, God, just please just come back to me. I promise I'll do this and I'll do that. Yeah. But I'll clean behind my ears. Yeah. I grew out of that pretty quick because I realized it didn't make any difference. That girl is either coming back or she was hitting the road. Exactly. And God probably had little, if anything, to do with that. That's right. He was dealing with bigger problems. That's right. After that's, depression. And this one's kind of tricky. If you go through the stage of depression, if you do, it's not necessarily requisite. Right. They're starting to wonder if possibly you're already depressed. Yes. And if you are already depressed, that probably means you're going to maybe get stuck in the stage for a while, or you might go through a depressed stage and then come out of it. Right. It's not necessarily but the problem with this stage is that depression is a recognized mental disorder, and grief is not considered a mental disorder. Right. And yet, in one of these five widely accepted stages. You go through a period where you have a mental disorder, but it's part of a normal process. And that's basically like taking psychologists and throwing them into the thunderdome, greasing them up with chicken fat and handing them battle axes and saying, like, explain that. That's the funniest thing. The last one is acceptance, of course, when you are finally able to move on. And I found that one fairly interesting article where they charted this and they said it would look like a W. Is that right? Like the high points and the low points. Yeah. Which I guess denial is a high point. And then it goes down to anger, up to bargaining. I guess if you feel like that's getting you somewhere, maybe it's an update. Maybe. At the very least, it's manic, I would think. Yeah. Back down to depression and then finishing the W with a nice bit of acceptance. Yeah. And as you said, we've sort of been studying this for like, 30 or 40 years, and there was always that five stages thing, but recently they're looking more into it and they've done some studies with widowers and widows, and they found that they really oscillate wildly from day to day. Right. And it's not necessarily going to be A-W-I felt great today, and really, my spirits were up and I was even laughing. Then the next day they were really sad. And it just really is all over the map. Right. But I think overall, what they're finding is that on a long enough arc, people emerge from it and it seems to be somewhere in the order of six months to three years. Seems to be. And I think that the outliers are maybe six months to three years. That's such a ridiculous time frame. But I mean, like, if you study enough people, you can probably create make up, like, three months to five years. Right. No, totally. And then say anyone else is an outlier. Right. But that's the thing. That's why everybody is very wisely. They avoid saying things like that. It's almost a respect for the process. Like, no one wants to come out and say, no, this is how it is. Yeah. Because you can't, and that's a mean thing to do. And actually, grief is in danger of being medicalized. In the DSM Five. One of the proposals, there's always been an exemption to bereavement with depression, like a depression diagnosis. If the person has recently gone through the process of grief or is in the process of grief, you can't diagnose them with depression. You can, but you're not going to get reimbursed for any meds. You prescribe them. Right. Well, under the DSM Five, they're taking away this bereavement exclusion so that doctors can get reimbursed. That's good. Yeah. But it medicalizes grief. It says no and now it's a mental disorder. Well, when it's not supposed to be. And it's a story slope a temporary disorder, though. You would hope so. Yeah. Alright. Very keen insight. Nice work. Thank you. Psychology Today. Yeah. Is that where you got it? Yeah. Okay. You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo Holistic, made with only whole meat, no meat meals and probiotics. For digestive health, our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find Halo Holistic at chewy amazonandhalopets.com josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for take off into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage Bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see and the Cityadvantage Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. So should we talk a little bit about dealing with it? I guess, yes, it's good advice, but it's also anytime I read something where they're like, take care of yourself and eat right next or something. Yeah. Avoid drugs and alcohol. Yes, but it is very much true. It only is going to make things worse if you wallow in this and abuse yourself with drugs and alcohol. And don't eat. You don't think there's stuff all night. There's no therapy to pouring like half of a 40 out on the curb for someone who's gone and then drinking the other half. Yeah, I mean, sure, but don't do that every day for like weeks and weeks starting at 09:00 A.m.. Yeah, I mean, I think me and my friends got together and got really good and ploughed after we got the news about my buddy. We weren't in there to avoid alcohol. My advice is to avoid it after one time. Yes. Okay, so in addition to avoiding drugs and alcohol, eating right and getting regular exercise, just the standard stuff. What was that? Also in jet lag, every time it's anything, there are some really good suggestions to dealing with grief. If you find yourself overwhelmed by a profound sense of sadness, there are things out there that you can do to make yourself feel better. You can write a letter to the deceased that's said to help booking. Yeah, why not? Throwing yourself into, say, making a memorial, like those roadside memorials or a video clip show. Who knows? Actually, you know what? When my friend died, I did a video, see, because his family put together a website, like a memorial website, and I had video footage back then of him, and I did a little video for the family, but it ended up really being, like, a great thing for me. It made you feel better. Absolutely. Yeah. So basically, putting yourself into a project where you're thinking about this person, I imagine this isn't an article, this is just me doing some armchair psychology. Sure. But I imagine it forces you to remember good things about the person. And so during this time, when you're possibly a little more emotionally fragile than usual, you are being reminded of positive memories, positive things as well. Maybe that's why that would help. But it definitely does help, for sure. Because when you're going through and doing, like, a scrapbook, it's these great memories and these pictures, and you are remembering the good stuff and the life. Right. Which is, I think, how everyone wants to be remembered. Sure. It's like these great lies that we have. Exactly. You want to be remembered as a lie. Yeah. I mean, I'm one of those people that always wants my funeral to be a little bit more of an upbeat affair, as much as it can be. Whereas some people like, no, man, I want people really sad. Right. I want to be mourned for days. Not me. Yeah. So you want the upbeat affair? Yeah. Okay. Have a party and make fun of me. Okay. But not like Gigi Allen's funeral. I have to research that one. I can only imagine what it was like. Yeah. Pretty hardcore. Pretty much. Okay. Yeah. Did they inject his corpse with heroin or no, he's buried naked, though. And he lived naked? Yeah. You can do some research if you feel like, okay. Man, he died in a horrible way. Didn't they find him, like, murdered in an alley naked and never found the murderer? No, I think he killed himself. I thought he was murdered or odd. I thought he was, like, stabbed to death. I don't think so. He used to threaten to kill himself on stage. That was his big thing, was that he's like, one day it's going to happen. I thought his big thing was, like, pooping on stage. Well, he did that a lot, too. Yeah. He kept that promise, man. Sidebar on GG. Who knew Gglan was going to show up in the grief episode for real? Another thing you can do to, I guess, kind of help through the grief processes to throw yourself into a project that you think the deceased might appreciate. Yeah. Or some organization they might have been affiliated with. Right. That's what I meant. Yeah. Like, if you lose someone to cancer, maybe get involved with the Cohen Foundation or one of the other groups. Or apparently Mad Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded in memory of a deceased person absolutely. Killed by a drunk driver, one would imagine. Right. There's just a lot of stuff out there that you can do yourself. A lot of people pretty much immediately go to therapy, at least initially, to get a little help, to get some insight, some advice, whatever. That's not necessarily the case for everybody. And they've definitely found that therapy is not even necessarily helpful for everybody. There's a lot of people out there who probably wonder if they're dead inside because they don't grieve like supposedly everyone else does. But study after study is finding that actually people who go through significant grief is a fairly small portion of people who experience a loss. Yeah. Didn't we have a study in here? Yeah, right here. What they do generally is they track groups of widows and widowers for a period of time and just have them remark about how they're feeling on a day to day basis. And this one was for up to five years, I think. And between 26 and 65% had no significant symptoms in the initial years after the loss. Yeah. And only 9% to 41% did. And there's a big variability there, but they said it's partially from how the symptoms were measured. And in another study, they found that about 21% experience what you could diagnose as depression after the loss, and only about 11% had trouble with it, like, couldn't shake it after six to 18 months, I believe. Right. And 10% of people who lost a spouse felt relief. These were people that had reported being unhappy in their marriage. Right. So there's that. Those are the ones that dance on their spouse is great. I guess so. And I don't necessarily think it's that cold, but there could be some mild relief if you genuinely weren't happy in your marriage. And it doesn't mean you're dancing on graves and partying, but it might just be like, all right, well, now I can go move to Cabo San Lucas like I always want to do, and hang out with Sammy Hagar. My wife hates the ocean. Yeah. And now I can do that. Right. And my wife also hated Sammy Hagar, but I'm going to go hang out with him. Yeah. They also think that men may grieve heavier, even though it's at long believe that women do. But I think a study like that is sort of silly. It's so variable, like, from person to person, I don't know. Right. But we say all this to point out that if you don't experience what other people would recognize as grief, there's nothing wrong with you any more than there is if you experience grief. Exactly. What psychiatry and psychology have started to pay a little. More attention to is what's been termed complicated grief. That is interesting. Technically, if you go, say, several months to where your life is really, really interrupted, you can't sleep, you can't eat, you're having trouble focusing on anything but the death of this person, the loss of them. Yeah. You start to seriously doubt things very important in your life, maybe like religion, even if you have lost a child, like, there can't be a God, that kind of stuff. Right. Or conversely, if you can't even mention the person's name or hear the person's name, basically, if your life is disrupted for many months, then basically everybody from the Mayo Clinic to the EPA says, maybe you should go see somebody about this. Yeah. Because it can also manifest itself in aggression and violence, self destructive, physical self destruction. So it can complicate it as an understatement here for this kind of grief, I think. Right. So there's different kinds. If you go see a counselor with what's considered normal grief, they're probably going to help you let go of the person while still honoring their memory and recognizing them and the impact that they had on your life. But to get out there and live your own life, they're going to try to reach the same goal if you have complicated grief, but they're going to do it a different way, and they're probably going to encourage you to really form an even greater bond with the person now that they're deceased that you can nurture and hold onto and carry around with you. That makes sense to me, yeah. In this case, it's not like you can't tell a parent who has lost a child, like, and you need to work through this and get over it. Right. And that's actually one of the risk factors for complicated grief, is the death of a child, the death of somebody that you are possibly codependent on right. And very close to, or the death of a sudden death, usually from trauma, say, like a murder or something like that. Those are risk factors for complicated grief. So I would imagine that if you had a loved one who was murdered, you probably are already getting some sort of professional attention, and if you're not, maybe you should. Well, yeah. And what we're basically talking about is the difference between grief and trauma. And when you've experienced it to that degree, trauma is a whole different deal. They'd say it feels unreal, and it can be terrifying. Terror is the most common emotion. It's common if you have dreams about a deceased loved one. But if you're having traumatizing, dreams about yourself being endangered, then you've crossed the line from grief into trauma and complicated grief. Yeah. Heavy stuff. It is very heavy. Losing a pet is, for some people, a very, very, very big deal. And other people, well, people that aren't into pets at all don't get it. And then some people that do have pets are just more equipped to deal with the loss of a pet and not like it's a loss of a human. But for people like me and Jerry over there, I know that losing a pet is, like, equivalent to losing a family member. And the grieving process is about the same, I would imagine, if it's that impactful. And my advice is you should talk to other people who have similar feelings, because one of the things that can be toughest about losing a pet is when you talk to people who don't have pets and don't think it's that big of a deal to lose a pet, and that can make things a lot worse. Well, they say that if you do experience the loss of a pet and you find that you're grieving over it, you should go ahead with the grief. Yeah. Don't feel embarrassed or dumb for that. Of course not. Go right down the dog house and cry like a six year old. Yeah. You got anything else? I ran across one thing. There was a guy in 1083 named Paul Rosenblatt who carried out a study of, I think, like, 56 Victorian diaries of people who had experienced loss. Interesting. And so grief is definitely cultural and also historically bound, too. He found that the goal for these dires was to keep the person alive around them all the time. They would try to sense the person around them or maybe sit in their favorite chair because they could tell that they were still there in some way or whatever, and that under those circumstances, they found that grief never really seemed to ever go away, that it was something that they carried around for the rest of their lives. And in fact, one of the things that the Victorians did was they would wear black for a year, I believe. Yes. And then dark colors after that, especially if you were a widow on the anniversary. You wear black, too, right? I think so. And you're expected to carry around this grief for the rest of your life. And one of the things they also did that actually still around today was bereavement photography, which is post mortem photography. Yeah. We've done a thing on that. Have we? Yeah, we did, didn't we? Yeah. And we got an email just as recently as today from a woman who lost a child and had a cast made of the baby's hands and feet. Really? And she said that it was something that has very much helped her through. I didn't hear that one yet. Yeah. She said it was a gift from the hospital to help them through their grief. And the hospital said, you might not want it now, but we really encourage you to have this done, and we'll pay for it, because years from now, you may really be happy that you have it. And she said they were absolutely right. Wow. That's really great. Yeah. What was that email in reference to death masks. Okay, yeah, but it just happened to come in today when we were researching grief. Wow. Yeah, that's about it, I guess. Yeah, that's it. A to Z, grief. We touched on every single thing possible. What a downer. Yeah, I guess. If you want to learn more about grief, you can type that word into the search barhouseafworks.com. Remember, I before E, except after C. Chuck hold on, let's take a message break, huh? You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid. Your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up, because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the city Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the city advantage. Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more@city.com Adventure and travel on with cityadvantage. So, Josh, you can, by the way, to jump back, look into more grief on our website. Or you could go to Google and look at Pikmi coats. The help too. That's what I would say. All right, so now, not listening to Mail josh, today we have administrative Details. Nice, Chuck. Well done. All right, this is going to be an ongoing thing because as usual, they stack up. Well, then, we have very busy work schedule and we like to say thanks to as many people as possible. For those of you who don't know, administrative Details is a segment that replaces listener mail in which we read out thank yous to fans who have sent us stuff. Tokens. Yeah, anything. For example, a postcard of Rafa Newy from Ryan Convert. Thank you for that. Nice. That's Easter Island. Okay, jacob Board sent us Yellowstone Park shirts, postcards, info, cards, hats. Oh, yeah, because he works there. That was a pretty sweet gift. And he gets a discount. Thanks to Shanti Diva for the postcard of the monkey knob. Casey Herring sent us cookies, and they were delicious. Yeah? Which cookie? The delicious one. Okay. Not this crappy one. We got a wedding invitation from Rachel and John Reed. Oh, yeah? Congratulations. I'm surprised no one's asked us to officiate. I do that. Oh, man. You just opened the sluggate hitch safe. Inventor Tim Freeman said it's a hitch safe. And that is a little thing that you stick in your trailer hitch. If you have a truck, pickup truck. And it's got a little key and this hollowed out. And you can put your wallet and stuff in there if you go kayaking and lock it up. I didn't see this. Well, because you don't have a pickup. Okay. Do you get a trailer hitch, buddy? We'll split the hitch. Okay. Happy year. Yeah. Let's see. We got a Christmas card and postcards, plural, from Becca Evans at UCSC. All right. Justin Norman sent us an ergoesque and iPad holder. And I'm actually using the one for the laptop on my desk. It's quite lovely and it's handmade wood and you can find that@woodfold.com. Yeah, that's really a site to behold. It's amazing. It looks like plastic, right? But it's wood. Yeah. We got a Christmas postcard from Davini B, who for some reason was dressed as Wilfred from the TV show Wilfred. So thank you, Davini. Laurie and Leonard sent us some yummy chocolates from Figis in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Yeah, that was lovely. We got a copy of the book brushing the Teeth of Elvis's Monkey, and a nice letter from Nurse Beth. So thank you for that. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and bust through my books here. We got. How Colon? Why how we do anything means everything by DOB Sedman. We got swing colon to search my father, Louis Prima nice by Alan Gurstel. Science Nearly explained by Dick Maxwell. And that is on Amazon. And kindle. The vampire combat manual from our buddy Roger Ma, who sent us the zombie combat manual? And I imagine pretty soon we're going to have a werewolf combat manual. I would hope so, because Rogers getting lazy and Truncalist, which is a children's book from Sean Antoniac and Matthew Antoniac. That was sweet. It was like a graphic novel. Yes. And they sent us some cool stickers from eight one One Graphics.com. Yeah. So those are my books. Nice. Let's see what else we got. Another postcard from Rapid. Newe from Emily B. That rhymes. Wow. Yeah. We got Trifold wallets from Trifold. From Trifold Wallets. Nice. Man. You should get paid for this. There's a dude named LARC who kind of went all over the place. And he went to Los los Cabos. Of course. Sammy harry's place. Seattle. Philadelphia. Calgary. Montreal. Nova Scotia. Kind of took us with him and sent us postcards along the way. So thanks a lot. Large. Erin Cooper. Thank you for your cool foam core poster versions of some of your best stuff. You should know photoshop jobs. Yes. I love these. It's not the first time they send those either. Thanks a lot, Aaron. It's a regular coupe. We got a nice postgrad from Michael Storer. Carolyn Larson magnetic Skulls. Yeah, those are awesome. Like a day of the dead skulls of her own art, I believe. I think so. I've got her down, too. And I have her website. It is. I believe Carolynlarsonartcom. If I come across it, I'll correct myself if that's wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Okay, I got one more for now. Okay. And then you pick one more good one, and then we'll pick this up again. Jennifer Dunaway sent us a knitted tree scarf. And this is just a scarf that you go and you pick a tree, and you put a little scarf on it. And it's pretty darn cute, and it makes the city more beautiful, nice. So thank you, Jennifer, Donald, for that. And then I got a nice handmade birthday card for me, specifically nice, from SYSK Army member Courtney Hoover. So thanks a lot for that, Courtney. And that's administrative details for this week, part one. As far as this list goes, we've got this for the next six months, and I am right. It is Carolynlarsenart carolinelarsenr.com. Yeah. Get a tree scarf. Yeah, that's what I say. And the skull magnet. All right. Okay. Let's see. If you want to tweet to us, you can join us on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffydnow. You can send us a good old fashioned website. Visit to stuffyouhadnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com summer school's out? The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you grow RAL back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-11-23-sysk-nuclear-forensics-final.mp3	What is nuclear forensics?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-nuclear-forensics	Nuclear forensics is a lot of things - from UN sponsored inspections to tasks more on the down low. But either way, the job of these men and women is to root out possible nuclear weapon threats. It's a fairly unknown and thankless task, so allow us to she	Nuclear forensics is a lot of things - from UN sponsored inspections to tasks more on the down low. But either way, the job of these men and women is to root out possible nuclear weapon threats. It's a fairly unknown and thankless task, so allow us to she	Thu, 23 Nov 2017 14:00:04 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=327, tm_isdst=0)	45888652	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hello, Seattle. Hello, Portland. We're coming out to see you this January live. That's right. What are the dates, my friend? January 15, we're going to be at the Moore Theater in Seattle. And on January 16, we're going to be a Revolution hall again in Portland. That's right. Tickets are being snapped up fast, everyone, because love us out there and we love you right back. So just go to sysklive.com for all ticket details. We can't wait to see you. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Brolin. And it's us. Stuff You Should Know. The Nuclear Investigators. I thought this was really neat. I did, too. I had a silly title. I thought, how good is this going to be? And our article was good enough. But then you found that great article from economists. Economists, yeah. Man, that was good. Yes. Our article was written by Robert Lamb and it was great. But it gets even better. Yeah. People should I think this is one of those, like, take 20 minutes out of your day and read the New Detectives from The Economist. Just good, like, and we'll give you a good over here, but good knowledge to have, you know? Yeah. Because you don't really think about this. But there is, in my opinion, thankfully, an international network of people who are dedicated to preventing people from getting nukes who shouldn't have it, depending on who you are. Right. I looked up this question, like, is it the right of any sovereign nation to have whatever nuclear technology it wants? Yeah. And I saw that's, actually. Apparently those sites, like debate.org and debate prep sites or something, they'll have like a bunch of different brain teasers. Yeah, something like that. And that seems to be mostly where it lives. But I found this one guy on Forbes who argued that is not the case, that if you have not demonstrated an allegiance to liberal democratic principles and freedom and that you're just looking out for your people, that your role is the government. That is to say that if you're an autocratic government, you don't have enough sovereign credit to enjoy the right to nuke. This is how this guy was arguing against, like, North Korea having the right to a nuclear program. Right, right. But my thing is, I think it goes even further than that. I think that that assumes because he was also saying at the same time, if you are a friendly nation and you are a liberal democracy, you kind of should have the right to a military nuclear program. But liberal democracies can change over time. The nukes are going to remain. So what was once a friendly nation may not be 30 or 50 years from now, but they're still going to have a nuclear stockpile or some governments dissolve. Look at the USSR. They had one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals still do, but then the government just disintegrated, and it turned into the Russian Federation, which has arguably much looser control over the nuclear stockpile. And we talked about this and how easy is it to steal a nuclear bomb? That episode we did. Yeah. I think after the Soviet Union dissolved, that was a really scary time, and we continue to see the fallout from that as far as the black market trade on nuclear, either weapons or the technology or the information or the pieces parts, the mouth parts, as we like to say around here. And luckily, like you said, there's a field called nuclear forensics. And as Robert Astutely points out, they have sort of a three track challenge on their hands, which is a what they do is they monitor places and countries and organizations so they can basically stop them from developing nuclear arms. If they're not supposed to be people on the no no list, then they track extremist groups and smugglers and try to find out where these there's a lot of we'll get to it later, but a lot of stuff goes missing, which is super scary. Yeah. Can I just interject here for a second? In 2011, the United States announced that it could not account for \u00a35900 of weapons usable nuclear material that it had previously shipped around the world. Wow. It's gone 5900. They said it was enough for dozens of nuclear warheads. And then finally, the third thing that you will do as a nuclear detective or in the field of nuclear forensics is if something does happen, if there is a radiological attack or a nuclear bomb that goes off or is launched, they are the ones who will investigate the scene, just like you would any crime scene. Exactly. Yeah. So those are, like, kind of the three things that a nuclear forensic detective, I guess, is the best way to put it would be involved in doing. And there's a lot of other science around it and research around it, too, which is why you very rarely find somebody who is a full time, at least in the US. I should say, is a full time nuclear forensics expert. Most of the time, they're doing the science that's helping the field. Right. So there's a project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to identify the elemental signature of the uranium that comes from all 150 uranium mines that have ever existed on planet Earth. Right. So if you come across a sample of uranium, you can trace it back to its point of origin. That's something that you would do if you were a nuclear forensics expert when you're not actually, like, say, investigating a case or carrying out a routine inspection of a non military nuclear state, that kind of thing. Yeah, they're like football referees kind of inside gigs. Right. And it's pretty cool that these guys even exist. Right. The idea that there are people out there who are inspecting states, and by states I mean countries. Obviously I'm using it in like the security kind of way. People out there whose job it is, is to say you are not holding up the international standards. We think that you are going down the road toward a military nuclear program. That's not allowed. We're going to tell yeah, and Robert has a neat little way to put we talked about mutually Assured destruction many years ago, I think, in a show. And in 1900 and 7190 nations signed the treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, aka NPT. Is that confusing? Akampt, I think that's like the acronyms, the abbreviation of the Non Proliferation Treaty. That's right. I think. But he talks about mutually Assured destruction like this, like a movie standoff. And I always equate this with Reservoir Dogs, like two people aiming a gun or three people aiming a gun at one another. If you are all three aiming a gun at one another, then there is a likelihood that no one will fire because you could all die and maybe you will just lower your guns. And that's sort of the idea with Mutually Assured destruction. If we all have not all, but if these nations have nuclear weapons, they know that just exchanging nuke fire, everyone's seen war games. You can't win. You can't win. The trick comes in when someone else comes into that room, like in Reservoir Dogs, when Lawrence Tyranny comes in at the very end and they're already pointing their guns and then you've got a new gun on the scene and that's when everybody dies. Right. Or I guess probably an even better analogy is that with the Non Proliferation Treaty, if somebody came in, if say, Barbara Streisand came into the standoff in Reservoir Dogs and a complete surprise twist in the director's cut of the movie and said, everybody calm down, lower your gun, here's a little number from Yentl, right? And she does her little number and it just charms everybody into forgetting their troubles and they put their guns up and that's that. That's the aim of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. It goes even further than that. Imagine if Babs, as she was walking around doing her number from Yentl, she was like taking everybody's guns up too, and then maybe disassembling them quickly with a little jazzy number going and that was that. So not only is there the Non Proliferation Treaty, it was saying, everybody calm down. That's mutual assured destruction. I guess the Non Proliferation Treaty comes in and says, not only are you going to calm down, let's get rid of some of these nuclear weapons too, let's disassemble them. Right? But when Lawrence Tierney or Barbara Streisand walk in with a gun, aka NPT, aka having another nuclear player, all of a sudden that disrupts the weird balance that is mutually assured destruction. It does, for sure. But which is why I think 190 nations ratified the nuclear Non proliferation Treaty, which says, yes, all of you guys with all your big nukes and everything, get rid of some of those. We don't like them being here on planet Earth. The problem with that is that the organization that was created to oversee this, the International Atomic Energy Agency, I think, yeah, basically, they amount to nuclear accountants, right. Their whole jam is that they go in and they say, the international community says that you can have nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes, for power generation or for your hospitals or whatever, but you can't have a military program. It's not hard once you have one to have the other, right? Once you have a peaceful program down, it would not be very hard to translate that into a military program. The IAEA is tasked with coming to your country, coming behind your borders and looking at your program and making sure that it's nonmilitary. And if everything checks off, they can turn around and say to the rest of the world, this country is keeping their promise and all they have is a peaceful program. Everybody can be friends with this guy. Or if they find that there is evidence of a military program, they say, guys, you're going to want to hear about this. North Korea over here is secretly working on a nuclear program. And we've done our jobs. Now it's up to the international community to figure out what to do about it. Right. But here's the thing. They're a UN organization. So these are the above board. Let me come and knock on your door and get an invitation to come in and inspect your stuff. I got all my machines, all my gear. They can sniff out radiation and you allow me in or you don't allow me in. This isn't the clandestine FBI and spy agencies that very much also do the same thing from satellites and all kinds of other ways on the ground. But the IAEA, it really depends on these UN mandates and cooperation from the countries. So, for instance, in 2002 and 2007, north Korea said, kindly leave our country. And they had to do so. Yes. It's not like they draw a gun then and say, no, we're here to inspect your stuff. Don't you get it? Right. But what they do is basically go tell the people with the guns. Right. So that's like a real red flag. Sure. To not let the IAEA access. You can look everywhere in this room, right. It's not a thing. Or to kick them out. That really raises red flags. And it did in those instances, too, right? Yeah. So, yes, they are toothless. I mean, it is, after all, a UN body, but they are backed up by the collective might of the nuclear military nations who say basically this is the status quo of the world. There are eight countries that have a nuclear program. Most of them are allies and they are tasked. Those allies have taken it upon themselves to say, no one else can have a nuclear program. You're not supposed to have a nuclear program. You're not supposed to be billing nukes. We say, if you can have a military nuclear program, and we say no. And every once in a while, a state that is not part of that group comes up on their own with their own military nuclear program. And when they do, the other countries have to decide what to do about it. Yeah, the IAEA does very good work. It works to a certain degree. Like in 2003 when they said, hey, Libya, hey Iran, we have evidence now that you have a military program going. And so Libya said, all right, I'm going to give that up. Iran at least gave up their suppliers in Pakistan. Yeah. AQ con. Yeah. And they do good work. They won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. However, depending on who you ask, like, the United States may say, you guys are being too nice and too lenient. Countries that are getting inspected say, well, I think you're actually being a little bit too nosy. So it's definitely the above board approach, UN. Style, to getting this curved. Right. There are a lot of other ways to look into whether or not somebody has a military program. We'll take a little break and we'll talk about those. How about that? Yes. So, Chuckers, we were talking about the above boards way where the UN politely knocks on your door and does some inspections and there's some cool stuff that they have going on, right. Like they install digital cameras in the facilities and they're like set and programmed to take pictures if there's movement near, like a piece of equipment that could turn this peaceful nuclear program into a military program. And then they're all timestamped and dated and ordered sequentially so if there's any missing, some software will catch the fact that a picture has been deleted. And now all of a sudden you've got an international incident, right? That's right. They also use laser surveying equipment to survey the layout of the oh, what are they called? The centrifuges. Yeah, the piping of the centrifuge. You have to have a centrifuge to have a peaceful nuclear program. Right. Like you take uranium and uranium has like zero 7% uranium in it. Uranium or I should say, the stuff that you find in nature. Now, to create nuclear fuel for a nuclear power plant, you've got to isolate the uranium 235 isotope. And you do that by spinning it in gas in a vacuum so fast that you're hitting like 70,000 Rpm and it separates the isotopes. And then those things are connected. All those centrifuges are connected by tubes of gas so that the isotopes you want all kind of mingle and migrate to the place you want them to where you collect them. And then all of a sudden you have 3% concentration of uranium. Now you have nuclear fuel that you can use for peaceful purposes if you keep it going, if you make some upgrades to your whole composition and rearrange the pipes a little bit here and there, and you can get that stuff up to 90% concentration of uranium 235. Now you have weapons grade uranium. Now you can build nuclear warheads with that. What the IAEA does with their laser survey of these centrifuge gas pipes is they survey them, digitize that, and then do it again when they come a year or two years later and see if there's been any alterations or modifications to that pipe that it would indicate that they're trying to make that uranium even more enriched. Yeah. So this is the IAEA's good work that they're doing. And this is when they, like we said, go to countries that say come on in. Then there is a whole other problem that is terrorists and drug cartels and basically the black market, nuclear black market. And that's a whole different deal. You can't go knocking on their door and they're not going to say, come on in. You probably don't even know where their door is, which is the whole point. So if you're wondering how big of an issue is this, how much should we worry? Just go read a little document called the IAEA Illicit Trafficking Database. It's a little frightening. So what they will do is it's not very long. They have like a two or three page report. And I think the most recent one I saw was 2015 numbers where they will basically say how many incidents of unauthorized acquisition, possession, use, transfer or disposal of nuclear or radioactive materials were there. And the good news is it's gone down. There was some huge spike in 2006. When you look at these charts, I have no idea what happened in 2006, but it's sort of level. And then 2006, it just ramps up. Like, I think there were 130 something cases in 2006 compared to just over 40 in 2015. Yes, that's a pretty big spike. It's a big spike and like, the graphs really stand out, so I don't know what was going on then, but it's still a little scary to see just how many cases there are where things go missing or things are not disposed of right. Or things are acquired or sold on the black market. And this is just the stuff they know about. Yeah. These are just the ones that got caught. Right. And that whole non proliferation, it's a double edged sword as well as far as the nuclear black market goes because, yes, you're disassembling nuclear warheads, but then that means that nuclear grade plutonium or uranium is now being transported somewhere for storage or something like that. Right. So it's back in play, I guess. Whereas before you'd have to steal the whole nuclear warhead, now you just have a big lump of weapons grade uranium that's being transported across the Atlantic. Yeah. So that represents a change in security too. I wonder if there were a bunch of nuclear warheads that were disassembled that year. I don't know. I bet someone knows the answer though. I want to know that we're right in. So like you were saying, there is the whole black market that represents an entirely different side to this and there are plenty of terrorist organizations and just what you would call bad actors, which is hilarious, but it's also pretty sinister if you think about it. Who would just like to get their hands on this kind of stuff? Some of the people that they're selling it to are representatives of countries that want to have their own military program, like North Korea or Iraq, I should say Saddam Hussein or Iraq, which were both successful in creating nuclear programs right under the noses of the international intelligence community. Yeah, well, we'll get to that a little bit later. Like how some of the ways that they can skirt this stuff. Okay, but the good news is that you can't just get uranium at the corner store, right? You can only mine for it in certain places. You can't just get that uranium and throw it into a hand grenade casing and then you have a little tiny nuclear bomb. Well, that's a dirty bomb at least. Well, yeah, there are such things as dirty bombs, but as far as like, nuclear warheads, they have to be made in very special ways with very special materials. And the good news is that, I won't say it's easy, but it is all pretty trackable to a certain degree on like, these nuclear forensics teams. They can generally find out even by examining the uranium, like where it actually came from or where did this casing come from. It can be tracked pretty readily at this point. Yeah, and that's where the nuclear forensic scientists are also doing like the day to day science to create a database like the signatures of uranium from the 150 mines around the world. Right. That's where that stuff kind of comes into play. When you find something, the dude who's smuggling it, he may give up whoever he knows, but that doesn't mean it's going to lead anywhere. Actually studying the material that he was smuggling, it can frequently give up more information than that person even knows. Yeah, for sure. But to do that you have to catch the material when it's coming through your border or your port. But there's a number of ways to do this, right? Yeah, you can do a lot with satellite imagery, of course, but you can only do so much with satellite imagery to really find this stuff. I mean, the good news is radiation gives off radiation or the uranium and stuff like that gives off radiation. But ideally you need to be on the ground and fairly close to it to read it. Yeah, the detectors have gotten way better. Supposedly they need like, just a fifth of the mass that it used to take to set off a reading. But yeah, you still have to be I think the next generation will be basically a football field, an American football field. Length pretty good. 100 yards. Yeah, 100 yards. Roughly 100 meters. But that means that you have to have a person in a hostile nation walking around with a detector within a football field of a nuclear facility. That's a tall order in a lot of cases, right? There are detectors that are attached to satellites that can detect radiation into the atmosphere. That's amazing. Yeah, and apparently they've gotten a lot better, too. But the problem is that radiation there's a couple of things with actual radiation, it can be shielded relatively easily with a thick layer of concrete or lead, and the stuff that does escape can get absorbed into the atmosphere. So I think the detectors, like satellite detectors, are getting much better than they were before. And probably the stuff that we know about here in this article is probably ten years old. I'm sure we're far more advanced than this article would say as far as something like a radiation detector attached to a satellite goes. Like even the two year old article you think is behind yeah, I think so. Public. Yeah, I get what you're laying down. So I think that it's probably much better. But again, radiation, it can be shielded. One thing that nuclear detectives have figured out, though, is that there's a part of a nuclear reactor not a part of it, but something that's created in nuclear reactors neutrinos that you can't do anything about. They're going to escape because they pass so easily through matter that they will actually travel through solid Earth, unfazed by anything that comes in contact with. And they've created this. Did you see Cosmos? The reboot with Neil degrasse Tyson? Yeah, I saw some of them. Did you see the one where he was in a boat in, like, a neutrino cave underground? I did not. So it's really neat. Like, he was standing up in a boat in this really dark cave that had, like, little lights or something kind of starlight. It was a romantic scene. And where he was this cave underground I think it's the one in Ohio where it's underground in an old salt mine, and it's filled with water, and it's underground to protect it from cosmic rays that could give off false readings. But it's meant to pick up neutrinos that are traveling through the Earth from nuclear reactors, right? Yes. And the way that does that is since neutrinos interact, like, almost not at all with matter, which is why they can pass unaffected through solid Earth. When it comes in contact with a certain atom in water, it gives us the faintest flash of light. And if you have enough water this is actually a pretty rare occurrence when it happens. But if you have enough water, it's going to happen eventually and you're going to be able to detect it with underwater photo sensors. Right. So what they've done is fill this old salt mine with a huge like supposedly it will take like a million tons of water to detect neutrinos from 1000 km away. But when a hostile nation, or a nation that's not supposed to have a nuclear program runs an on off cycle of their nuclear enrichment reactor, or they're enriching their nuclear material, you will be able to detect that through neutrinos in your underground cave. Neutrino detector. Isn't that insane? Yeah. Think about how much trouble that is. But that it actually works. It's amazing. I think it's amazing too. Neil degrasse Tyson is the man. Can we just say that again? Oh, yeah, for sure. All right. Should we take a break here? Sure. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit more about sort of the latest and greatest technology we have going, as well as some other sneaky ways to hide this kind of activity right after this. All right. So I can't stress enough that this great economist article called The Nuke Detectives, I really learned a lot from it. It kind of starts out by talking about and this is if you have not prevented someone from getting nuclear materials and they are actually doing nuclear tests, which ideally you have stopped the process before that. But let's be honest, sometimes things slip through the cracks. People get their hands, or countries get their hands, or rogue nations and terrorists get their hands on these materials and they want to test out bombs and things. They are now using some amazing equipment. Seismographic equipment. Would that be the way to say it? Yeah. To detect this stuff to the point. Now, there's a group called the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, and that's a fancy way of saying they listen around the world with these seismograph machines to the point where Doctor Zurbo, which is the greatest name ever I know, especially for international nuclear scientist Dr. Zurbo says now it is impossible to test the smallest nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth in secret. They will hear it. It's amazing. Yeah. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. Right. Is that correct? That is correct. So I saw it listed somewhere, but this article kind of lays it out. They have 170 seismic stations worldwide. Yeah. Eleven underwater hydroacoustic centers. So you can detect the sound waves in the ocean, 60 atmospheric infrasound listening stations. They're just showing off at that point. I know. And then 96 radio nuclear sampling facilities. I think that's the ones that the satellites that can detect radiation leaks. Yeah, I think that's like that. So, yeah, like around the world they've got it locked down. You cannot set off a nuclear weapon and them not know about it. That is correct. Another big thing that they're doing now is network analysis. Software. After 911, America really started ramping up as everyone knows their listening skills and not like polite, my friend, has some issues they need to talk through away. Right. You know what I mean? Like me. So they now have all the software that can the feeling I get is what the software now does. It's able to just draw from all these different areas, whether it's email or social media or phone calls or receipts and credit card transactions like Prism. Yeah. And it'll feed it all into these software programs now that will eventually narrow it down to, hey, this person might be a baddie because they have ticked off not as an angered, but they have checked so many boxes in our software system of activities that they're undertaking that you might want to go take a look at them. Yeah. And the things that did you say the name Aura or a I did not. So Aura is a good example of this kind of software. It's from Carnegie Mellon and basically it has been adapted to not just track terrorists, but to track nuclear scientists now, I think like 30,000 of them around the world. Yeah. So if you're a nuclear scientist and you're in the prime of your career and you publish an article every 18 to 36 weeks on average, according to the computer, and all of a sudden you just stop, you're going to set off a red flag. They're going to wonder why you stopped publishing at the height of your career, and they're going to say, it's entirely possible that they got drafted into a nuclear military program where you would not be allowed to publish. So that might set off a red flag. And then there's another computer I think the Pentagon is set up called Constellation the Whopper, which again is probably yeah, it's probably 20 years out of date by now if it's in this article. But this Constellation is a computer that takes the information from all these other computers, all these other softwares, and puts them together and says, oh, well, not only did that guys stop publishing at the height of his nuclear science career, he also just moved within commuting distance of a facility that is suspected by army intelligence of possibly being holding nuclear centrifuges that aren't registered anywhere. Yeah. And there are other programs. There's one software program that uses what's called combinatorial mathematics, and what they do is they analyze data to end up with a set of criteria called centrality between this and degree. Centrality being how important someone is in the system, between this is their access to other people and the degree is the number of people they interact with. Right. And the idea there is what they're looking for, generally our network members that have high between this and low degree. So those are probably like osama bin Laden is a good example. Like toward the end, he has access to a lot of people. But he's not interacting with a lot of people well. He's like a high up, a higher up, I think is what it indicates. Somebody of importance in the network. Right, yes. And this is all extremely GWiz, but then you hear about, oh, it's actually being applied in real life. Back in, I think, 2010, 1112, at least five nuclear scientists working on Iran's nuclear program were murdered. One of them was like picking his child up or dropping his child off at daycare, just gunned down by guys in the street or car bombs or something like that. And the one thing that they had in common was that they were all working on Iran's nuclear program. And they think that the Mossad used intelligence that was gathered by this type of software program to figure out, if you kill these people, it will really screw up the program, because they're important figures in this program. Even though we don't know them, we know their names, and that's it. We don't know anything about them. Just based on this metadata that these programs put together, we can tell you that if they weren't around any longer, it would set the whole program back. And they did. Yeah. Like I was saying earlier, the good news is, if you want to build and again, we're not talking about dirty bombs and stuff, but if you want to build a nuclear warhead, there are very specialized parts that you have to buy in order to do so. They have a software that monitors the stuff around the world. And what this article calls, they reveal choke points, basically, that they can monitor, like the ceramic composites for the centrifuges that you have to have in order to pull this off. There's only so many companies that do that in the world. I mean, that's the good news. You can't run out to Walmart and buy the stuff to make this happen. So it makes it a little bit easier to monitor what's going on to a certain degree. Right. That's got to be a huge help, man, having that. Yeah. Especially together with human intelligence, which apparently is still one of the best ways to find out about a nuclear program. Sure. There was this one, I think Syria was working on their nuclear program, and with the assistance of North Korea, they built a facility where they lowered the floor yes. So that they could start their military nuclear program in secret. And rather than a cooling tower, they connected to a nearby reservoir with underground pipes, and they had this whole thing set up. And if you were looking at it and you were a military analyst looking for evidence of a nuclear facility being built, you would immediately check that building off the list because it was too low, too close to the ground. It wasn't tall enough to house a nuclear facility. And they did, I'm sure, over and over. I'm sure they saw this building plenty of times. And it wasn't until some human intelligence gave it up that it became clear that actually this is a nuclear facility. So you can fool sure, even the nuclear detectives can be fooled is, I guess what I'm saying, which is kind of surprising. But one of the ways that you do that is you figure out how to build your nuclear program inhouse you get detected when you start to spread out through the black market or to that company that makes the composites needed for centrifuges. Yeah. Like Iran, for example, they used in that same article. They can mine the uranium themselves in the country, which is a little scary. And then they can also, or they at least had been working on producing those centrifuge rotors instead with carbon fiber instead of the special steel that they need to outsource. So all of a sudden, you're not on that list, you're doing it in house. It seems like from reading this, the good news is they're getting more and more specialized equipment that you can detect stuff from further away, and our capabilities and the software is getting better and better. But these places are also finding more and more ways to sidestep traditional manufacturing means, which is kind of scary at the same time. Yeah. Apparently Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program that he was working on that he was able to come up with I was mentioning it earlier, where he did it by basically going retro. He used the process of separating uranium isotopes through electromagnetism rather than centrifuges, so he didn't need centrifuges. And apparently it's so low tech and so out of use that no analysts were looking for evidence of that, so they just totally missed it. But he was still able to come up with a nuclear program using that old, outdated technology purposefully, from what I understand. Wow. Yeah. And then, of course, North Korea's nuclear program was just a total surprise to everybody. I mean, people suspected it and were very concerned that it was going on, but it wasn't until Kim Jong UN or Ill, I can't remember which one it would have been, but back in 2010, they invited a Stanford professor out and showed it to him so he could go tell the world. And it shocked everybody. I remember when that why in the world did they let that happen? Yeah, I mean, I don't know how it happened. I think it happened because of that guy we mentioned earlier, AQ Khan from Pakistan, who is the father of Pakistan's military nuclear program, who was educated in Europe and stole some blueprints for making nuclear weapons and went about building Pakistan one. Right. Yeah. And then they started turning to countries like Libya, Iran, North Korea, and offering basically turnkey military nuclear programs based on Pakistan's designs for like, $100 million. Wow. And then he ended up as a scapegoat for his nation and was placed under house arrest, luxurious house arrest. But still, from what I understand, the guy was very upset about this because he went from being treated like a god to being treated like it's his fault that there's nuclear proliferation among rugged states. Right. And was finally released a few years, I think, five years later. That guy, he deserves his own episode. He was fascinating. I think he still is. I believe he's still around too. What's his name? AQ con. Can we call it the Wrath of Con? That's what they did in the Atlantic. Did they? I couldn't believe it. So the big question is, and the economist thankfully asked that could you build a nuclear weapon in secret? And there's a couple of opinions there. They asked the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, former Foreign Secretary Riyaz Mohamed Khan, and he said, no, can't do that in secret anymore. But there was an anonymous American State Department counter proliferation official who said it's not impossible, so don't be fooled. Yeah. A little worrisome. Yeah. I mean, you really like to think that nobody could do this anymore, but apparently it is getting easier and easier. But as you said, it's also making it easier and easier to detect. It's like any illegal operations. It's like a game of cat and mouse on the development side of good guys developing stuff. Bad guys developing stuff. Yeah, it's really interesting. But in this case, this game of cat and mouse, you have some of the smartest human beings on the planet who have banded together to say, no, we're not going to let this happen. Yeah. Okay, well, if you want to know more about nuclear detectives or nuclear forensics, start digging because there's plenty out there. And man, is it fascinating. Since I said it's fascinating, it's time for listener mail. So before we do listener mail, buddy, can we talk a little bit about our old friends at the Cooperative for Education? Oh yes, Chuck Coed. Yeah, the quick download with Coed is we went to Guatemala quite a few years ago with them. They invited us to come down, you, me and Jerry. I went down. We saw the great work they do, like real on the ground hard work, helping children of Guatemala pull themselves out of poverty through education. Yeah. It's in our two part Guatemala special that everybody can go listen to if you haven't heard it. And get this, Chuck. So Coed has another drive going on and they are making it their mission to keep 1000 girls in Guatemala from dropping out of school by 2020. That's amazing. Dude. It takes twelve years of education to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala. But a poor rural Guatemala has only one in 20 chance of reaching that milestone. Right? So they are literally identifying young women to literally keep them in school. Like it's not some nebulous campaign and you're not sure where your money is going. You are helping a young woman in Guatemala stay in school and get educated. Yes. So you can sponsor one of those girls for $70 a month, or if you want to do half of that $35 a month, coed will match you with another sponsor to make sure that there is a student who is able to continue her education and therefore eventually break her family out of the cycle of poverty that dropping out of school. Perpetuates. Yeah, it's really great. They're awesome people. So if you weren't a good person this year and you want to make up for it here before the end of the year, or if you want to start off 2018 in the right way, go to one thousandgirlsinitiative.org. And that is all spelled out, not the number one thousandgirlsinitiative.org. And you can actually pick out the student you want to sponsor is just the best. Coed is great, and we're really happy that we're still working with them. Yes. So keep up the good work, Coed. And you guys, please go help these guys out. All right, now, on the listener mail yes. I'm going to call this restaurant Health Inspection from a manager's Perspective. Okay. I do have permission to read this. I love listening to the show on health inspections. Guys, I want to throw in a couple of tidbits from my point of view. First, you were spot on with just about everything with your research, including how some employees take no exception to sanitary practice. Those employees tend to not have a very long career when the health inspector shows up and you see the staff start to scramble. In the business, we call that the two minute drill. And that is not to say that we don't keep our restaurant up to standards, because we do, but we want it to be perfect. Typically this made me feel a lot better, by the way, reading this. Yeah. Typically, the HD comes to the restaurant at the most inopportune times right in the middle of a busy lunch service. That point, the kitchen is cooking 100 dishes at the same time. Servers are running drinks and taking orders. Dirty dishes are stacking up a bit in the back. With the Health Inspection pass fail scale being so specific, the slightest thing can fail you. Anything from an ice scoop in the ice bin to a fruit fly or a steak resting at temperature that is off by two degrees. We as managers, like to continue to train our staff, keep things tidy, but also have a few quick fixes in order to maintain that a rating. Washing hands is a must anytime food is handled, especially when the inspectors are on site. As you know, it's a very nerve wracking time while they are checking every nook and cranny. That is why we managers are required by law to get Health certified to ensure we are training out staff properly and not allowing any boots in the Brunswick stew. He said bratwurst stew. I saw that. I think he might be insane. As always, thanks for an incredible podcast and providing us with information on things we may not usually have knowledge to prior. All the best, Derek. He said PS. We have remarkable cuisine at my place, so if you ever are in the area, come on by and we'll treat you to some great food. We have the best broadworld stew in the region. Well, he didn't say what restaurant he worked at. Oh, actually, it's in his email. Okay, I'm not going to read that, but they're in Boston, so maybe okay, let me go back to the Wilbur. We can go get some Boston cream pie cake and then some broadwood stew. Delicious. Yeah, cool. Thanks a lot. What is the guy's name? Derek. Thanks a lot, Derek. That was a great email and yes indeed, it made me feel a lot better too. Chuck. If you want to make me and Chuck feel better, well, just send us an email first. You can tweet to us. I'm at Josh I'm. Clark and S-Y-S-K podcast Chuck's Man in the Facebook pages at Charlesw, Chuck Bryant and that stuff you should know you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseforks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouw.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today."
4486679c-53a3-11e8-bdec-bf837dbb8c3a	Aspirin: The Wonder Drug	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/aspirin-the-wonder-drug	Humans have been using a form of aspirin for pain relief since at least the Sumerians. But in recent years we’ve come to learn the wonder drug is indeed awe-inspiring, from preventing heart attacks to possibly protecting humans from cancer.	Humans have been using a form of aspirin for pain relief since at least the Sumerians. But in recent years we’ve come to learn the wonder drug is indeed awe-inspiring, from preventing heart attacks to possibly protecting humans from cancer.	Thu, 17 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=352, tm_isdst=0)	45258368	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry out there coated in powder. And this is stuff you should know. The Aspirin edition. Why did you pick this one? I've been reading a giant book on Aspirin and yeah. Biography behind the scenes backstage. Cool. Aspirin, all the ups and downs. Like behind the music, basically. Yeah. I don't remember why I picked this. I just don't remember. But I did and I'm going to stand by it. Remember when aspirin OD on itself yeah. That's some nasty stuff to OD on too, it turns out. I would think so. I mean, not only the result, but just the taste. I don't like the taste either. But haven't you said that you're like a goodies headache powder, dude? Yeah, goodies are BC. That's a lot of aspirin and we'll get to this, but if you have like a heart issue, they recommend you take something like 85 milligrams and a goodies and a BC is like 850. Holy cow. Is it really? Yeah, plus caffeine. It's a big dose of aspirin. Plus acetaminophen too. It's powdered, et cetera. It's what is the same formula? Well, they're both different, but yeah, one of them is I can't remember which one. I think Goodies is powdered, et cetera. Yeah, I think BC does not have DC Dominicin and just has caffeine and maybe more caffeine. Wow. It's like the joke cola of headache powders. But point is, I don't take that a lot anymore. And I don't mind the taste. I know it grosses a lot of people out, but I don't love it and I don't just let it sit on my tongue and dissolve forever. I wash it down very quickly. Right. But I'm not like I got you. Just be better. You have no problem with the drain. You're okay. Funny guy. So we are talking to Aspirin today, and it is kind of tough, I've realized, to overstate the importance of Aspirin as far as like, the world's medicine cabinet goes. Like, there is no other drug that has been sold more than aspirin in the history of humanity. Did you know that? Sure. Okay. Or was for many, many, many years until other INSEADs started making the scene. For decades and decades, aspirin was sort of the go to for a lot of stuff. That's true. Alright, let me see if I can impress you with this. Okay. One of the great things about Aspirin is it's synthesized from nature. That it's actually a perfected version of something that you would find in a number of plants, salicylic acid, but specifically it was willow that yielded up her secrets for mankind humankind to use as a medicine to make things better. Yeah, that's a lot of medicines. And Emily has gotten really into herbalism here in the last few years. And that's kind of one of her beliefs is that the medical and pharma industries have synthesized things and gotten rid of a lot of the great parts of the plant she feels like are of great use to human beings to make the synthetic versions. Okay, fair enough. In this case, though, with aspirin I would argue that it is the improved version of nature's version. Oh, yeah. I think so. And we'll talk about why. But like I said, it was the willow plant that people realized pretty far back, chuck, I believe it was at least as late as the sumerians, I think they were clay tablets found that basically said, are your joints achieve? Try a little willow leaf tea, it'll fix you right up. Yeah, I don't think they had the name for it at the time, but it was salicylene, the ingredient, and you could boil it down into a tea like you said. You could dry it out and powder that bark up and pound it down and work it through a sieve and get, I guess, an early version of goodies. And you would everything from the Egyptians. There's the Ebbers Papyrus, which is kind of a fun little cookbook textbook, medical journal kind of thing, right. That has recipes for myrtle and willow leaf tea for joint pain. Great chili recipe in there, too. Great chili. Too bad they didn't know about FreeDOS back then. And by the way, speaking of freedoms yes. You know, there's actually a chapter in our book about frito toes on dogs. There is. I know. My momo is in it. I think that we don't talk enough about the fun chapters of our book. There's a lot of heavy stuff, but there's also a chapter about frito toes, which, if you don't have a dog, it is the smell of corn chips that a dog's paws can emit. Yeah, that was kind of one of the more fun chapters, I think. It was a good chapter for sure, because we talk not just about that, but not just about how humans perceive the smell of dogs paws, but how dogs perceive the world with smell, how different bacteria can make different smells. And it was a good one. I liked that one. Although I like our whole book, to be honest. I finally got it two days ago. Ray, what did you think? Well, first of all, I was very happy about how many they sent. I thought they were going to send me a couple of books. They sent me a big old box of books like they did you. 25. And it was just really great to hold in my hand. It's awesome. It looks great. It's the size we wanted. It looks like a real book. It is. It's a legit book. Which is weird to see our name. I know. Did they put your name on the box? No, your name was on my box. Is that right? They put my name on my box, too. What do you mean? It just said the book title then by Josh Clark. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it said. I think they just didn't print the whole thing. Okay, well, I like my idea that they were going to personalize each of our boxes. Wow. Nice touch. Glad I am. This just sounds like lazy box printing, but I got you. It didn't hurt me. Okay, well, yeah, I wasn't, like, trying to rub it in. I was just thinking that they would have personalized your box, too, but you're like, I'm going to save that box, but whatever. Yeah, actually, can you send me your box? Sure. Okay. I'll send you the box with a big old load of poop in it. Yeah, there's like a foothold where it used to say Josh Clark. So, anyway, you can preorder that book stuff you should know an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. But back to aspirin this book was I don't even know where I was talking about. Oh, people like Tiny the Elder and Hippocrates had written about aspirin, or it wasn't aspirin yet, but cellicylene as. Basically, early on, it was all about reducing fever and reducing arthritis, joint pain, inflammation. And it's still really good for that, too. The, aspirin it turns out, is a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug and insect people realize that it was useful, like you said, for joint inflammation, for a fever reduction, which makes it anti pyretic, which I think is a great word. And we knew about this for centuries. And apparently Europe introduced to China for once rather than vice versa. But then it just kind of fell away. It fell to the wayside kind of out of human knowledge. Although it was still there, nobody was thinking about Willow any longer until malaria became a big thing. When the age of discovery began and Europeans started to colonize other parts of the world, including South America, malaria became a bit of a problem. And one of the remedies for malaria we figured out was cinchona. Right. I always said chinchona, but I think it is cinchona. I always say chinchona, too, but I'm looking right at it and I don't see that first h, unless it's a weird pronunciation thing. I think I've probably just been saying it wrong. Okay, well, let's say cinchona. Then we'll pronounce it correctly for once in our lives, and that's a different kind of tree whose bark works really well to treat malaria and not just treat malaria, but also reduce fevers as well. But the problem is getting it from South America can be very expensive, or it certainly was in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. So it caused this one guy, European doctor, I believe, or at least a researcher named Robert Edward Stone, to look for an alternative for it, and he came upon Willow. He rediscovered Willow again for the treatment of fevers and inflammation. And by the way, I think we mispronounced it. Is it cinchona? No, it's neither. That's so us. I just looked up real quick. It says it's sun Chauna. Okay. I like that one. It almost sounds like quimby saying chowder. So weird. So sunchona. Yeah. Edward Stone goes looking for an alternative, and he starts looking at the willow bark and its properties and does a pretty decent study for back then in 1763 and found that a four hour administration of willow bark powder would reduce fever pretty consistently. And like I said, it was a good study for back then. There were some other Europeans who were also extracting the active ingredient from willow, and it was kind of happening all around the same time. I think a guy named Larou did the best job of it in the early 18 1829, and what they got was the substance salicine. Right. So basically, they isolated the active ingredient in willow bark and not just willow bark solicitor salicylic acid, which probably sounds familiar if you've ever used some sort of skincare treatment, say, to combat acne, because it actually goes in and dissolves the stuff in your pores. So it comes in handy like that. When they isolated it, they found out that actually this pops up elsewhere in nature. It's actually a kind of hormone that plants use for their own immune response. And you can find it in everything from willow or myrtle or meadow sweet to jasmine, peas, clover. It pops up everywhere. It's a pretty common plant hormone. And it was isolated finally in the early 19th century. Yeah. And there were a couple of other kind of important side roads on the way to aspirin that happened. One in 1853 when a French chemist named Gerhardt He invented aspirin by accident, but he wasn't very refined in how he did it. It was not a very good quality. It was pretty impure, not very effective. So it was not paid very much attention to. But we'd have to mention him. And then in the some German chemists figured out how to produce it synthetically. They learned the chemical structure of salicylate, which is just kind of crazy to think that they could do stuff like that back then, that they were that advanced in learning chemical structures of something like that. I was impressed by that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And they figured out how to produce it synthetically, made it very much available, very inexpensive. That was a big one. All of a sudden, it was a very popular fever reducer and pain reliever, despite its side effects, which are mainly stomach problems and tinnitus. Yes. But the thing is with that, especially tinnitus and nausea, it can be really bad if you take too much. It's temporary, but it can be a real problem. And over time, they also found out that it can produce long term chronic effects because it's so hard on your stomach, because, again, you're using the same substance that you use to clean out the pores, dissolve the stuff in your pores that has a big effect on your stomach. And in fact, we would find later on that it erodes your gastric, mucosa, your stomach lining, and that can produce all sorts of problems on its own. In the short term, it makes you want to just throw up and die if you take too much aspirin. And that's what we figured out with salicylic acid. And that was the point of aspirin, was to figure out how to create how to take this really useful, important drug that had been known for millennia by this time and make it so they didn't have any of these unpleasant side effects. And that's where aspirin came from. Yeah. So maybe we can take a break and come back and talk about a very sort of legendary company out of Germany called Buyer right after this. All right. If you heard me say Buyer, and you're thinking, Dude, it's Bear Aspirin. What are you, German? No, I'm not German, but that's how you pronounce it over there. It's Buyer. We pronounced a bear over here. They were originally a die making company, but like so many other companies involved in chemistry, they could pivot very easily. And you start discovering things when you're working in chemistry that might make you more money. And that was sort of the case with Buyer. And they set up a pharmaceutical wing and said, hey, we're discovering these other things. You can make a ton of money in pharmaceuticals, and this is just sort of the beginning of that. They had no idea what they're onto. Right. But they started a pharmaceutical wing and said, one of our first things we want to try and do is to create a version of salicylate that doesn't have all these nasty side effects. Yeah. And there's a long standing story in the chemistry community that a guy named Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist who worked for Bear, was trying to figure out a way to make salicylic acid more easy on his father's stomach. His father had rheumatism, which is a chronic inflammation of the joints, and he had to take salicylic acid a lot. So Felix Hoffman was trying to figure out how to help his dad out when he stumbled upon the recipe, or what would become the recipe for aspirin. That's right. So all of this led to one of the most popular drugs in the history of the world. There is some debate, like, with everything like this, it seems like sometimes it's hard to tell who exactly is given credit because history is written by the victors. And in this case, well, there's three men. There's a fourth dude named Carl Doisberg who is included as being a big person in the development because he was a marketer, and his marketing skills were a big, big reason why Aspirin was so successful. But a lot of people point to Felix Hoffman as the quote unquote inventor of Aspirin, because on August 10, 1897, in his notebook entry, he described adding acetic and hydride to salicylate and created aspirin. I'm going to say it if you don't say it. It's called aspirin spring acetyl man. Acetylcellic acid. Yeah, it's kind of fun to say. It has, like, a acetylcellic salic acid. It's the acid that you love. But Chuck calls it aspirin because it's easier. And he can call it that legally because aspirin is our proprietary epinum, as we'll see. Put a pin in that. Wow. Something should we leave that in? Sure. All right. I think that's our gift to the listeners. That's some end of the year zaininess right there. That means our brains are entering the December bush phase. Yeah. Boy, is it. I'm looking forward to that break. I know you are, too. Yes. Everyone, I think we said this before. We take a few weeks off at the end of the year, and it's just to not have to research stuff for three weeks is really nice. That's all. You guys don't notice because we make sure we record extra episodes in advance, but we actually do bulk up the kitty, as we say. That's right. So just real quick to put a button in this. Felix Hoffman is said to be the guy who created this. A guy named Arthur Icangrun said later on he actually wrote a letter to Bayer from a concentration camp during the Nazi the Third Reich because he was Jewish. And he said, I was the one who came up with this, but my records were expunged by the Nazis. Other people were like, I'm not sure if that's true or not. And a guy named Heinrich Dresser, he said, it doesn't matter if it's true because I rediscovered this stuff. I told both of these guys not to mess with this. They did anyway. I took their research, published it, didn't give them credit. And now I am the one, officially, who is listed as the inventor of Aspirin, even though it was really Felix Hoffman and possibly Arthur. I can groom who did. Yeah, and I guess you could do that if there isn't any patents being filed. You could literally just sort of publish something and steal someone's work, which is I don't know, it's kind of weird to think about, but I guess the law was the law. But they did file patents. And, I mean, Baer realized pretty quickly this is at the same time they were coming out with heroin, too. So Bear had two really big hits, from what I read, within a couple of weeks of each other. And Felix Hoffman was central to both of them. But with Aspirin, they were like, this is kind of a big deal. Everybody loves salicylic acid and the effects that it has, but they hate the side effects. And we just got rid of them. So they patented it and they came up with the name Aspirin. So the A is a nod to the acetic anhydride, the acetyl part, the spur, is a reference to the botanical name spyrhoea ol maria, which is the name for meadowsweet, another source of salicylic acid. Right? Yeah. So that would be aspira. And then they added the in at the end because that was just sort of one of the naming conventions for medicines. Just like we have cane, like cocaine and cylin. For antibiotics, they would add an in. So aspira became aspirin. Yeah. So if you picked up the box and you're like asper, what is this? You get to the end and see the in and be like, oh, it's a medicine. That's right. So Germany patents this in 1900 in the United States. After patenting it in Germany, and everywhere they could, they would try and get a patent. And it's been sort of an interesting story since then because after World War I didn't even know this kind of stuff happened. But Germany had to surrender their patents to countries that had defeated them, and one of them was aspirin, so they couldn't prevent competitors all over the world from making their own version. They did retain the trademark in a few different countries. But that is, like you said earlier, that is why you won't see aspirin, or you don't have to list it with a capital A because it's just one of those what do you call it? Proprietary epinem. Yes, I love those. Yeah, those are great. Yeah. You don't have to list it. You don't have to say aspirin. Aspirin. Correct. But some historians actually make the case, Chuck, that World War II happened because Germany was treated so harshly after World War I that it led to such draconian, basic revenge on Germany and the German people that it allowed a guy like Hitler to rise as this populist and gain control. Yes. I didn't know about the patents either, but that kind of jibes and dovetails with that whole view. Yeah, it's like, give us all your art and patents. Right? What else are you going to ask for? Land? Sure? I guess, but sure. And they did do that. Remember the Nazi gold episode we did? Yeah. So there's another side story to all this that came out of World War One as well, and that there was an embargo on phenol by England. England said, hey, we make a lot of females over here, and it's an active ingredient and a lot of stuff, including aspirin, but not just aspirin explosives, too, which is one big reason why we want to keep a lid on this thing. We're going to make sure that Germany doesn't get any. There wasn't anything official in the United States banning anyone from selling phenol to Germany, but it was definitely looked like as, you were aiding people who were at the very least, the enemy of our enemy, if not our enemy yet, because we hadn't entered World War One yet. But that didn't stop Thomas Edison from selling phenol to the Germans during World War I did it. No. Germany was looking at losing one of their most profitable drugs and said, all right, we're going to send a spy over there to secretly buy phenol from Thomas Edison because he loves to blow stuff up. He's lousy with it. And I think it was just exposed when one of the conspirators accidentally left his briefcase on the train. Right. And it was a real black eye on not only buya, but Edison as well. Yeah. And I mean, like, a lot of people are like, oh, wow. They were trying to keep the Germans from having aspirin during World War I. Again, you could use female to create TNT and other explosives. So that seems to be the reason why. Which makes Thomas Edison, he actually created the phenol himself and then selling it to the Germans all the more shady. Yeah, totally. So it was definitely a blemish on Edison for sure. And he eventually stopped selling it to them and then donated the rest of the US. Army, I believe. Right. So Buyer is selling a lot of aspirin as a powder at first, kind of like what we were talking about earlier. But they figured out that people and this is kind of how a lot of medicaments were powders at this point. And I think aspirin from Buyer was one of the first ones to be made into a tablet. And they said, hey, if we can compress the stuff into a little tube, it won't make people wretch with disgust from how bitter it is. You can just pop it in your mouth, wash it down with some liquor sure. Or absent or something, some Schnapps Peach Knobs Peak Snaps, and people will take it more readily or at least not want to not take it. And it really worked. And that really popularized the use of tablets, kind of, from that point on. Yeah. Not just with aspirin, but with all medicines. It introduced the public to it, and Bear was actually with their aspirin. They were also I think we talked about this in the tylenol poisoning episodes. That they were the ones who introduced the cotton ball to pill bottles. And they did it to keep the aspirin from breaking because they were worried that somebody would take a broken tablet and it would be too little of a dose. Or they would take a bunch of broken tablets and it would be too much of a dose. So they put the cotton in there to keep them from breaking. And with the advent of gel caps and coated capsules and all that stuff, there's never been a need for the cotton ball any longer. But we've all gotten so used to it, we would be suspicious of opening a bottle of pills without it, even though it's totally unnecessary now. I love that little cotton ball. That's a great, great it's at least one of the better cotton ball facts out there. Well, I like anything that can be repurposed, like a twist on a loaf of bread that ties that up. Oh, sure. Or you got to use that cotton ball. You get a great you don't stick it back in your pill bottle, do you? Or do you? Yes. Okay. I actually go to the trouble of taking it out and getting the pills out and then putting it back in like a total schmuck. That's all right. I tried to use those things. What I do is I just wrap a toothpick with this cotton and I use that as an ear swap. That's not bad. Not bad at all. Yeah, the toothpick that came with what comes with the toothpick? I guess from the pig in a blanket or something when you went and used the bathroom for free at Ashoney's but refused to eat there. I still have all these things left over from being a kid from the lower middle class. It feels weird to throw away a twisted or those rubber bands that come around. Asparagus. Yeah. Who throws that stuff away? Nobody. You got to use that stuff. No sensible human being. I don't know about using the cotton from a pill bottle as a QTIP with a toothpick. It's actually very dangerous truck, but I like the spirit behind it. You know what I mean? Yeah. You should not do that because toothpick is way too savvy to be putting into your ear. Yes, for sure. And you shouldn't be using those ear swabs anyway. Right. From what I understand. One more fact. One more cotton based fact. Remember Q tips were originally called baby gaze. That's right. Yeah. Little Baby Gaze. What was that from? The ear wax episode? Maybe or Ear Candling? Maybe. I can't remember. Don't do it. Don't ear candle, everyone. Nope. Emily's got that shirt now. Friends don't let friends ear candle. Right. Teenage ear candy. Don't do it. So Buyer is selling a ton of aspirin. They've always sold a ton of aspirin. I think the most recent stat that Ed was able to dig up was from about nine years ago in 2011, where worldwide there was about 40,000 tons of aspirin produced. And in the US, americans were taking 10 billion aspirin tablets a year. Yeah, billion. It's a lot of aspirin. In 1950, it was the world's most purchased drug, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. I also read that in Argentina, in part because they have a change shortage, like a legit one going on there. One of the things you might get is change at the grocery store, gas station or whatever, is a couple of tabs of aspirin. Oh, nice. Sure. If you need it. Why not? Yeah, sure. They love their aspirin there, for sure. So aspirin is one of those drugs where for many decades they had no idea how it worked. It was prescribed a lot. It eventually made its way to OvertheCounter in the 1920s. It was one of these things where they knew it worked because they did tons and tons of studies were like, this stuff is really effective, and the side effects aren't terrible. As long as you're not using a ton of it, it's pretty safe. But it's really complex when you try and figure out how exactly chemically any drug works in the human body because of what happens when it gets in your body. It's really hard, even still, to pinpoint the exact path something takes when it's a lot easier to say, well, hey, who cares? We've got 10 studies that show it works. Who cares what chemical processes at work? Yeah. We just know that it does work, and in this way. And we also know from all these studies that it has this side effect and it might affect this group more in this way than other groups. Apparently, Aspirin has the largest chemical database of any compound anywhere. I don't know if that's true or not. I read it in a Croatian brand profile of Aspirin, but it's a great knock your socks off kind of fact, if you ask me. Yeah. But they eventually did learn, didn't they? They definitely did learn that it does work. And exactly how I guess. Yeah. That is kind of one of those rare examples of how we did figure it out, isn't it? I think so. In the late sixty s and early seventy s, and they were building off the work of Harry Collier, John Vayne and Priscilla Piper. They figured out that there was a substance in the body. It's weird. They kind of figured it out in a roundabout way because they figured out what the substance was that actually causes inflammation in the body, which is the release of prostaglandin. And they figured out that insids actually stopped this from happening. And Aspirin is an insect, like we said, in a roundabout way, they ended up figuring out how it worked. Yeah. And so prostaglandins are like a whole class of hormones that are produced at the site of, like, an injury or an illness to help your immune response. Like inflammation, pain, all sorts of stuff that basically says, like, this needs to be taken care of, and we need to get some immune response here as fast as possible. And so Aspirin blocks prostaglandins from being released by enzymes called cycloo oxygenase, which kind of kick off the production of prostaglandin. And they figure this out. So this is how it works. This is how the anti inflammatory process works. And it was a big enough deal that John Vane received the Nobel Prize for in 1982 for medicine. Yeah. And they also figured out, and this is kind of key with Aspirin. Not only does that enzyme inhibit that release, but it kind of can do it permanently, which is what separates Aspirin from what's the one the other one, the big famous one, advil. Advil. Yes. I'm blanking because I never take any of that stuff. Really? I'm an Advil guy. I try not to take it because I don't want my kidneys to blow up inside of my body. When will you take it? Like headaches? Basically it's a headache. If my headache is bad enough, I will take it pretty rare that I actually do. But yeah, that's my go to because the other stuff doesn't work. Like Tylenol doesn't work. I mean, it doesn't do anything for me. It's weird. You get headaches, like regular? No, it's pretty infrequent, I have to say. I have been, like, the last couple of weeks, but yeah, I probably have more Advil in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last couple of years in the run up to the election. That's pretty funny. Yeah. I don't ever get headaches. I mean, the rare hangover headache, but I don't get just like, regular headaches for no reason. Yeah, no, I normally don't either. What do you take? Oh, wait, we establish this BC, right? Yeah. And that's again, just for hangover cures. I hate that. That's the only time I use that stuff because I don't want to come across as a drunk. But it's the rare hangover remedy. Got you. Okay. Yeah. I think that's what most people use that stuff for, too. Yeah, it's the caffeine in there. It really gives you a little boost. Sure. But all you got to do when you're approaching 50 is learn when to stop drinking. Right. But the problem is, as you're approaching 50, it takes, like, one drink to get a hangover. Oh, no. Really? Sure that doesn't happen to you? No, I'm good. Okay, good. So there was one other thing that happened, too, when people were studying aspirin. This is the point so many people are taking aspirin that an average doctor conducts basically a straw pole or some sort of study on his patients or her patients to investigate the effects of aspirin. That's exactly what happened with one doctor in, I believe, the 50s named Lawrence Craven, who basically said, I've noticed that there's some sort of weird connection between more blood loss and tonsilectomies that I'm performing on my patients. It seems like the people who take aspirin regularly bleed more. And he figured out that aspirin is a blood thinner from this. Yes. And I guess let's take a break now. I was going to say to save something for a surprise, but that was the surprise. But we'll talk more about that right after this. All right. So we spoiled the big surprise. Josh spoiled the big surprise, which is the value of aspirin. More and more over the years has been especially once other insets came on the scene and took a lot of the market share, has been less fever reducer, less pain reliever, and more anticoagulant and more hay. This can really help you out if you have potential heart condition. Yeah, because they figured out there's another prostaglandin, thromboxane a two, that forms platelets in the blood. Like if you have a cut or something like that and your blood eventually clots, you can thank thromboxane a two for forming the platelets or joining the platelets together. And aspirin specifically keeps that from happening. And like you said, the other end said, don't do that. It's just aspirin. And from that discovery, aspirin was saved from probably obscurity. There was a point in the, I think the seventies, eighties, nineties maybe even, where aspirin didn't even make the list of top ten over the counter pain relievers. It had fallen so far out of favor. Yeah, it was like that's. Your parents pain reliever, right. It was not cool. It was not hip. Aspirin was going the way of the dodo. And then they discovered this anticoagulant, sort of I mean, not a side effect, I guess it just became a cross use or something, and then it became the main use. And there are a few different reasons why you might take something like it's usually like a baby aspirin. It sort of depends, but it's always very low dose. But primary prevention, if you've never had a stroke, you've never had a heart attack, but you may be at risk for something like that. Your doctor might say you want to get on a daily baby aspirin. Not always, because the benefits are somewhat uncertain and there are other risks. Like, again, it thins the blood, so if you get cut or something, you're going to bleed a lot more. And they don't exactly know why, but it helps prevent heart attacks, better for men, strokes better for women. It's so weird. It is very weird. But that all falls into the banner of preventative aspirin taking. Yeah. And because it can cause bleeding, and it can also cause potentially gastrointestinal bleeding from messing with your stomach so bad, even a low dose, but a chronic low dose that they say unless you have a high risk, you probably don't want to start that regimen every day. So basically don't start taking aspirin without talking to your doctor first. That's definitely one of those caveats that you want to say, too. Yeah, absolutely. Secondary prevention is the next one. If you have actually had a vascular event, if you've had a stroke or a heart attack, then you will probably almost assuredly be prescribed to take that daily low dose aspirin because it is statistically significant that they have found there are large, large reductions in subsequent heart attacks and strokes. If you've already had one and then you start that low dose, isn't that nuts? Yeah, it's amazing. There was a study in 1994 that estimated I think it was a British study that was published in the British Medical Journal that aspirin probably saves 100,000 lives a year back in the mid ninety s at least just from that secondary prevention. It's amazing. And then there's acute vascular events. Eg, you're having a heart attack or a stroke. Right now they say, go take an aspirin, at least one aspirin, maybe two, and it will actually possibly save your life. Yeah, I mean, they've done study after study and it has significant increase in survival rates. So Chuck, there's some other weird stuff that they're like, we don't really know how this works. It's just typical aspirin stuff. We just know that it works that are starting to become like a pretty substantial body of medical literature about other benefits that aspirin provides, not the least of which it seems to prevent some forms of cancer. Yes, cancer is a big one. It might slow or even prevent dementia onset. They've shown that there is some evidence that it reduces mortality for women that are high risk for preclampsia, which is sort of a high blood pressure thing that happens to pregnant women. Yeah. So yeah, they're just now and like you said, there's been more studies about aspirin than any other medicine and they haven't stopped because they're still discovering things like this. Yeah. So with specific kinds of cancer, it seems like colorectal cancer is the one that people benefit from the most, at least as far as we know right now. There's one study that found a 38% decrease. This is a 140 person population study. Yeah. Population sample. 38% reduction in the chances of getting colorectal cancer if you took a daily aspirin regimen. It's amazing. It's not all great, though. Like we said, they're the regular side effects, like the bleeding and the stomach issues and potentially stomach bleeding. They've also found that it suppresses immune response and they don't fully get that. But they do think that I think the low dose aspirin is not hindering the immune response, it's really just the higher doses. But they figured out, well, actually, we can use this on like, graft operations or organ transplants. You can give somebody aspirin and it will help keep the body from rejecting it. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Historically, they have sort of looked back now and said, I think all this heavy aspirin use might have hurt us in the past. With things like the 1918 flu pandemic, the mortality rate could have increased because they were just like shoveling aspirin down those third throats. Yeah. What else? There's a couple of other things. Again. There's that GI bleeding. They found that if you already have a blood clotting disorder, you probably don't want to take aspirin. And I read somewhere that Rasputin actually gained favor from the Romanoffs from saving one of the Romanoff kids lives who had hemophilia by saying that they needed to stop using any kind of modern medicine, which included aspirin, which probably saved the kid's life because it kept the blood from thinning in a kid that already had hemophilia. And they thought Rasputin was a magical healer for that. And then another thing we should mention in the they discovered that giving Aspirin to kids really increased their chances of something called Ray or Ray syndrome, R-E-Y-E which causes brain swelling. Brain damage very often leads to death. And this was a big discovery, and a lot of guidelines went in place where they all of a sudden, kids using Aspirin went down by 90%, which at the time was, along with the increase of other insects, really put a hurting on Aspirin's market share. Yeah. No, they found that if you cut the use of Aspirin, the rates of Ray Syndrome in kids went down 90%. So they were like, stop giving your kids Aspirin. So it went down by 100%. Yeah, basically. And it was already like you're saying, I mean, the other end said they cut into their market share, and that one almost killed Aspirin. It was just that the heart protectiveness that brought it back. Yeah. Another thing that almost killed Aspen and Bayer was after World War One. They were bought out by IG Farbin. And if you know anything about Igfarb and that company they manufactured, Cyclone B. Very scary stuff. But Bear survived all that. The dissolution of IG farming eventually happened, and they were able to kind of just say, hey, that wasn't us. We weren't doing that. We are the good old fashioned Aspirin and heroin people. Right, exactly. So over the years, they figured out, like, okay, there's still problems with Aspirin that we could stand to still keep going. Like, the whole GI bleeding thing seems to be a problem. So they come with different formulations. And Ed, who helps us with this one, turned out that there was at least one mentioned that they tried a chocolate coating of aspirin, which sounds delicious, but he couldn't find any other place that had that. No, but they did make the just easier to swallow and less bitter coated versions. They did. And let's not forget Bufferin. Remember Buffering? What was Buffering? Even Buffering was an aspirin with an acid attached to it that was it kept your stomach from getting upset. And apparently, Baer also came up with a version that had a coating so strong, it survives your stomach and it dissolves in the gut where it's needed, where it's absorbed. You just poop it out. Yeah. Totally useless. It's called bear. Useless aspirin It's called corn. That's how they coded it. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, since Chuck said he's got nothing else, and I said I got nothing else, and we're just both presuming that Jerry's got nothing else, it's time for listener mail. This is from Alex Ramos about the Bay of Pigs movie. And by the way, we should issue a quick correction. I had one, too, but I know that you very much misspoke when you said Roberto Clemente was dishonorably discharged. Oh, thank you. Yes. That was just a mouth error. We knew that it was honorable, and I didn't catch it at the time, either. So thanks for those. For Yen. Pittsburgh. And who wrote in? Yes. And then there was one. I did, I think. Oh, yeah. Rabbits aren't rodents. I got that, right. No, but rodents are rabbits, right? What? All right. Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania. Love your show, guys. Started listening a couple of years ago to ease the pain and monotony of scraping off old wallpaper in the house my wife and I had just bought and have been a devoted listener ever since listening to Bay of Pigs. Right now, I haven't finished yet, so I may be jumping the gun. You're not. But you are musing about making a movie one day about the Bay of Pigs operation. I want to let you know that there sort of is. There's a Coleman Francis movie called Red Zone Cuba that is partially about the Bay of Pigs operation and also, for some reason, about a tungsten mine with hidden treasure. It's a real snooze fest, plotting and confusing, which is why it was picked up by Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in the day. It's a film for derision. I may have actually watched it then, if that's the case. I don't remember it, though. I don't remember that one either, saying their commentary is great. It makes it watchable. I love the show. Keep it up. Also, in the off chance you read this on the air, I wouldn't mind you plugging my artwork. Of course Alex will plug your artwork. I'm a self taught painter, mostly painting realistic still life pieces in acrylic, and my work can be found at Alex Ramosstudio.com. That is R-A-M-O-S. Very nice. Nice plug, Chuck. That was beautiful. It's good. We don't plug stuff a lot, but we love artists, and people are out there trying to scrape by here in this weird time. Yeah. And I'm not seeing it right now. When I just clicked it, though, I think I clicked on the wrong thing. Okay. God, did you just fall for a Phishing Scam? I don't think so. I think just went to Ramosstudio and it's Alex Ramostudio. Yeah, we're going with Raymond, although I'm not seeing it there either. Famous Raymos is. Maybe call Alex from now on. Well, if you want to send us a confusing email, or at least confusing with a confusing URL, we love those because Chuck loves to try them on air. And then hilarity ensues. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ffeine-final.mp3	The Duality of Caffeine	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-duality-of-caffeine	Caffeine is a heck of a drug - at the same time it's both good and bad for you. Learn the good, bad and ugly about this everyday stimulant in today's episode.	Caffeine is a heck of a drug - at the same time it's both good and bad for you. Learn the good, bad and ugly about this everyday stimulant in today's episode.	Thu, 14 Jan 2016 18:27:06 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=18, tm_min=27, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=14, tm_isdst=0)	45227856	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Hey, friends, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted in compatibility, Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on e. Harmony. Attention, everyone on Earth. Get in your nearest plane and fly to one of the few cities to see us for SYSK Live. The live show. Yes, an all new live show, by the way. Yeah. We are sold out in San Diego, San Francisco and Austin, Texas. That's right. But you can still get tickets in Dallas, Atlanta, Birmingham and New Orleans. That's right. And also, this is Chuck, by the way. That's Chuck. I will be appearing on noon, January 16 in San Francisco at the Eureka Theater as part of Sketch Fest on the amazing JV Club podcast from the amazing Janet Barney. Yes. Part of the Nerdist network. Yeah. And I think I'm going to be revealing all kinds of childhood and teenage truths. It's going to be awesome. So if you want to know more about what I was like as a teen, january 16 at noon at the Eureka Theater is where to do it. You can get those. Just go to the SF sketchfest site and navigate to that date and you can get tickets there. Right on. But otherwise we will see you on our Warmer Climbs winter tour. Yeah, and go check out Sysklive.com for any ticket info and all that is brought to you by Squarespace. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there totally throwing us off with some new hocus pocus 2016 head stuff. What? Yeah, she's messing with it. You guys don't know this because through the power of the magic of editing and publishing and publishing, you think we've just never been gone from the office. Yeah, but we've been gone. I have no idea what episodes we released. I've been so out of it. Yeah. I took six weeks of paternity leave and I did by proxy and you did by proxy. Yeah. So we've been gone from the studio for a while and just wanted to say it's. Glad to be back, buddy. Yeah, it is nice to be back, buddy. Good to see you again. It's been a long time. What's happening in the meantime? I lost another tooth. Yeah, my stupid front. The tooth next to the one that came out broke off at a Falcons game. Oh, well, there you go. God was cursing you for being at the Falcon. So I have another stupid flipper and another eight months of eight months. Really? Yeah, until I get the permanent implant again. I'll be out on tour with no tooth. You can't even see it. You have to literally pull your gums back or your lips back to your gums. Or if I laugh a lot, which I'm trying to just lead a more somber life. Well, I plan on making you laugh a lot on stage so people might see it then. What else? You got a dog? Yes. We got a puppy named Momo. You want to talk about Momo? Momo is very sweet. She's a sweet little Shizu poodle. How's that going? She's a little fluff ball. Very good. House trained or sharp? Yes, good. Right off the bat. We crate trained her. At first I was like, crates are meant to put a dog in crate. And then I started to read up on it. They love it. Yes. It's like her den. It's her little room, like her bedroom. In fact, when we took away the crate from our youngest dog Charlie, because we needed a breakfast nook, she was kind of like, dude, you took my room away. Yeah, that was my room. Yeah. We plan to keep her crate around, like, as long as she wants it. Sure. But just she won't be pending it against her will at certain times until she's house broken. She's basically there. We're like, what are you doing? You're about to pee, right? She doesn't actually have accidents in the house. We're just staying on top of it. That's great. What else happened? We had holidays. Yes. Good. Christmas in the new year's, I guess. Yummy's. Birthday. And it was just a nice time off. Like, I had this big to do list, and none of it got done because it was raising a puppy. Replace that. Yeah. How's your kids, Ruby's? Great, man. And I did the same thing. I had a big to do list and found myself just kind of being like, could you do this? Or I could just play with my kid, right. Or watch making a Murderer Yeah, I did watch all that. Did you stay here in, like, a day? We'll talk about that. We probably shouldn't talk about it. People want us to do a podcast on that. I know, like a follow up, maybe. It's not as bad as the request to do a podcast on the case that Cereal covered. I think Cereal got that one covered. No, of course not. I could maybe do a follow up on Making of a Murder. I think we should revisit Exonerations and the Innocence Project again, because when we did that one, we had no idea what was going on, and now it's really, like it's really coming through true. So, yes, let's do that. Oh, I've been playing a lot of I got a PS four. Oh, yeah. I've been playing Fallout Four with the dog and their dog companion. Well, you can have a dog companion, so of course I chose it. Okay. But it's really awful because the dog gets hurt a lot and struggles around whispering and bleeding. Do you have to put it out of its misery ever? Well, no, you can heal the dog. But I went to message boards and everyone's like, don't heal your dog. Just trust me, it will heal itself. Don't waste your medicine. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm sure you waste your medicine every time, don't you? Well, yeah, it's tough dog whipper. And it's like, I'll be okay. Don't mind me. Dog Meat. That's his name. So that was a big time off that we just covered, and that's all that happened. Jerry, how about you? That was great, Jerry. I'm glad you had a nice time as well. Jerry also had a nice break with her little baby, Annez. She told us this through a series of blinks she did that we've worked out over the years. Yes. Nice job. All right. So sorry about the long intro, but I felt like we needed to catch everyone up, even though you didn't know that you needed it. Right. And maybe it has something to do with caffeine, because we did such a good job when we recorded those ones that were released over the break of predicting things we would be talking about at the time. Who could tell? Exactly. So I'm a little caffeinated right now, believe it or not. What a shock. I don't drink nearly as much coffee as I used to because I really realized it really does have a detrimental effect on my mood. Oh, really? Say in the car. Car is a really good example of me and caffeine. You're a little ramped up in the car anyway, so that probably didn't help. Right? Well, I'm working on that, but part of working on that is just not drinking as much coffee. Yeah. I think a good title for this could be Mixed Messages, because in studying caffeine and we did one on coffee, we dabbled in this a little bit, but all the research is caffeine can be really good for you and help a lot of things, and caffeine can be kind of bad for you, and it's kind of both, or it can be both. It's just things like that. Unless we have, like, a completely misunderstood model of addiction and the parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system. Unless we don't know those things, then, yeah, coffee is both, for sure. The weird thing is, like, everybody realizes that caffeine I think I'm probably going to do that a lot, this episode, because they are virtually interchangeable. Sure. But it's not really. But caffeine, it has a lot of really bad effects on you, and a lot of people know that just from having experienced it. You're right. It's the beneficial effects that are so surprising. They do seem to, like you say, agreed. So, Chuck, I drink today I've had five cups of coffee and Diet Mountain Dew, and it is 140 in the afternoon. Right. What time did you get up? Seven, eight, nine? Yes, I'm counting on my fingers. Six and a half hours. You've had five cups of coffee and a Mountain Dew? Right. And that's cutting back. Yes. Oh, man. Yeah, and it's cutting back because this afternoon I won't keep going. Oh, so you stop. This will be my last, probably. Really? For the day. Yeah. Okay. And I'm above average for the United States, and I could have guessed that. But the average for the United States is actually on the worst end of the spectrum as far as caffeine consumption goes. Yeah. The latest information I got is the US. Was 16th in the world in per capita consumption. Yeah. Not even 10th or 9th or anywhere above 10th. No, 16th. If you want to know who leads the world right now, I think it's the Netherlands, is what I found. I found Finland. Oh, really? From 2013? That was the most recent I saw. Well, the most recent I saw said the Netherlands at 2.4, with Finland at 1.8, but that is not what I saw. Really? Yeah. Where were the Netherlands on your list? I don't remember. I just saw that Finland was number one at, like, 2.4. Oh, wow. And, like, 9.6 coffee beans per person per year consumed. Well, I bet the top ten is kind of interchangeable and fairly static, though. Sure. As in the sameish countries in different orders. Yeah, because, I mean, coffee consumption patterns, I guess they could change fairly rapidly, but they don't change in the blink of an eye. Well, think about how much Starbucks changed coffee consumption in this country. Didn't ramp it up. Oh, yeah. Like, think about how many people now swing by Starbucks at, like, 03:00 p.m.. Whereas before, they may not even have drank coffee. Don't you mean CHARBUCKS? Yeah. Actually have no skin in the game. Yeah. Well, you know me. I don't drink caffeine that much. No, I know. It's very mellow. Yeah. I don't know. I'm starting to think I should drink more coffee, though. Why? Because of the health benefits. Oh, yeah, we'll see. We'll get into all that. But in the top ten you have Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany. Scandinavia loves their coffee, apparently. Slovakia serbia Czech, Republic poland Norway yeah. Then eventually the US. Cold countries. Not bad. Although Brazil loves its coffee as well. I think they're like number ten or eleven or something like that. Good coffee. I didn't see they weren't even in my top 16. We had different lists made by two different caffeinated. Weirdos. So the US, the FDA, and the AMA right now, I think they raised it to 400 mg a day from $300 just in that case of changing coffee consumption. Yeah, I think it's now to 400 mg a day, as they said, should be like the upper limit of what you should drink and what is cool to drink for your health. Right. Not by being cool. You could drink 100 cups a day and you'd be super cool. Right. That's why I drink coffee so much. Yeah. I want to be cool. So what is that, 400 mg a day? That's about two eight ounce cups of coffee. 400 is, yes. Like high octane, right, coffee. But it's no more than maybe three. Well, and that's caffeine, though, that's not coffee. Right. So you might also be drinking sodas or eating chocolate or eating on a cocoa NIB that's packed with caffeine. Yeah. It does show up in all sorts of surprising places, including I looked this up, decaf coffee as well, we should say. Yeah. Still got some caffeine in there, right? Yeah. A cup of coffee, 8oz of coffee can have anywhere from like, 75 to 200 ish milligrams of caffeine in it. Okay. Decaf coffee still might have like, 20 milligrams. Wow. And, I mean, it doesn't sound like much, but if you're pounding decaf coffee because you love coffee, but you're trying to cut back on caffeine, stuff can add up. Interesting. Yeah. I knew there was some caffeine, but maybe that's not is that negligible? 20 itself? Just if you drink one decaffeinated cup of coffee a day? Yes. Okay. I think on the overall effects of your health, it would be negligible, but both ways. Because, again, the coffee giveth and the coffee taketh away. Yeah, sure. It's a double edged drug. Yeah. And it is a drug. And it's also in tea, which we'll get to as well. But yeah, it's a drug. It naturally occurs, like, many drugs, but it is a stimulant called Trimethyl Xanthene. Nice chemical formula. Ch. I think there's a ten in there. What I say? 10? Yeah. Which, I mean, if you're on a CD or something, they get the point. Oh, man. This podcast is close to CB chatter as you can come quick. Segue here. I used to love talking on the CB because my dad had one in his Jeep. Oh, yeah. And remember when CB culture was huge in the 70s? My buddy John Pendel now is a trucker. You met John where? At our New York shows. Tall Johnny Pindale. He's a trucker now. Okay. And I got to hang out and get in his truck. And he does not use a CB. And he said that he might get one, but it's not like the standard thing anymore. What is now? Texting, cell phones. He said if you really want to be a part of that big truck or culture, you can do the CD still. Well, you can just be a lone wolf. He's a lone wolf. Got you right now he is. He needs one of those jackets like Lenny and Squiggy used to wear. Yeah. It was fascinating that we need to do an episode on Trucking because when I saw him, all I did was ask questions, basically. Yeah, it's fascinating. Does he have his own rig? No, he doesn't own that means truck. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, well, hey, Johnny. And he listens to the podcast now. Hey, Johnny. Yeah? You don't need a CV if you listen to stuff you should know. No, we are your CV company. All right. So anyway, caffeine. He does drink a lot of caffeine. I think that's where I was going with that. Yeah, but that really had nothing to do with it. I brought up CB's because you said H 10. Why don't we take a break and get our C legs back? Our P legs were a little rusty and p as in podcast, not urine. I thought you're in urine. Oh, man. Oh, hey, I'll tell you something about this break. I learned that there's something, something called mixturition sinkope. And mixurishin is a lot of people think it means two P. No, urination is two P. Mcturation is the urge to pee. Sync hope is a fainting spell. So there's a condition out there called mixturation sinkhope where people faint after they pee. Wow. There's also one called defecation syncope where people faint after they poop. They have no idea. I think Elvis had the most severe case of that. Alright, well, don't let that happen to you during this break and we will be back right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy. Which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thieves have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to Lifelock.com stuff. That's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets. You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes and overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create, learn more@ibm.com It automation. Have we got it together? That was like a half a second. Are we good? Yeah, I guess so. All right, we're going to give it another staff here. So, caffeine, I think that's what we're talking about. It's a drug, and in its pure form, Chuck, it is a bitter tasting crystalline powder. That's right. It's actually very closely related, at least in its effects to opioid antagonists like heroin, cocaine. Yeah. Caffeine. Yeah. And I will talk a little more about the effects on the brain, but it does have these effects, and it uses the same mechanism as these drugs, and therefore it can cause addictions just like these drugs as well. Yeah. And like I said, it occurs naturally. It's in the coffee bean and in chocolate and tea. But it's also added artificially in things like soda. And I looked at the sodas to get the most recent amount. And Pepsi One right now, I think has the most caffeine. Man. Do you remember jolt and vault? I used to drink a ton of Vault. I'm sure you did. Well, I would drink one right before the podcast, remember? And I'd just be like talking 1000 miles an hour. Yeah, the good old days. I've settled down quite a bit. You have? I'm happier for it. Pepsi want at 57 milligrams. Tab is number two at 48. Diet Coke 46. You will work your way down to regular old Coca Cola at 33 milligrams per twelve ounce can. And the FDA regulates how much caffeine you can put in a soda. A soda. That's the key. That's right. If you're an energy drink like Red Bull or any of those other gross tasting things, I don't like them personally, that people love them. I just don't like the taste. But that's the workaround for the FDA because they're not considered sodas. They can put lots of caffeine and sugar to the tune of about 80 milligrams per 8.3oz, which you're likely the case of Red Bull, that's a lot of caffeine. It does seem like a lot, but some people love to take it even further. And there's like those five Hour Energy shots. Oh, yeah. I have had those before. I have not tried it before. I don't know why. I think I was doing construction work and I was really tired and I was at the big box store and it was right there at checkout. I was like, Let me try this thing. Yeah. And it ramped me up. I felt like a speed head. So in that little two ounce shot. There's 200 milligrams of caffeine, like a high end amount in a coffee in that little two ounce shot. Okay. And I think those are the coffee has the most of any beverage. I think espresso, ounce for ounce has the most well, I mean, from the coffee bean at least, or espresso bean. Not like an artificial drink is what I meant. Yeah, we got an espresso maker, and it has some pronounced effects. It's crazy how different it is from coffee. Yeah, I like an espresso every now and then. Sure. And I like my coffee every now and then, but just every now and then. If you want the health benefits, though, and you're like, I don't drink that much coffee. You should just be injecting pure caffeine chunk. Can you do that? They do it to mice. Yeah, that's a good point. As we'll see later on. True. Probably again, it's been several weeks since we've done this. I need to probably throw out a disclaimer there. That was a joke, right? Don't inject caffeine into your blood. If you can even get your hands on pure caffeine, do not inject it. You probably shouldn't inject anything, let alone the pure form of anything, because even too much water can kill you. I always remember that. Everybody even too much water can kill you. And I did look into caffeine overdoses because I was curious, and it doesn't happen much because you'd have to drink so much of something that it makes it unlikely. But there have been overdoses blamed on caffeine pills. Okay. What's the milligram amount? What's the dosage amount that it got? I can't remember this one kid died in Connecticut, like a 19 year old that I think he had like a dozen or two dozen caffeine pills. I think the deal with caffeine pills, it's concentrated and it hits you all at once. So taking a lot of it is just like overdosing on any kind of stimulant. I think it's a stimulant, yeah. That's some weird stuff to you, including killing you. And like you said, truckers. We already talked about coffee in the coffee episode, right? Yes, but some of it bears repeating. Like the lighter the roast, the higher the caffeine content, typically, because the roasting process actually bakes out a lot of the caffeine. I thought you were going to make up a clever rhyme like, the lighter the roast, the darker the toast, or something. No, that doesn't make any sense. The rhymes got to at least make sense, or else it's just rhyming words. How about the lighter the roast? More caffeine than most. About that. That's great. That actually makes sense. And so if you want to extract the most caffeine out of your diet, I actually came across a website called Bulletproof Exec. You know that bulletproof coffee thing where you put, like, butter in your coffee? No, it's like a diet thing. I think it AIDS in pooping. And butter in your coffee. Yeah. Butter in your coffee is called bulletproof. It's actually not bad. If you like that, though, take it one step further and use coconut oil. Okay. That's even better, because it's got a little, like an almond joy creamer. Wow. But like an oily version of it. Yeah. Anyway, this bulletproof exec, they had a post about maximizing your caffeine intake, so you can suck it to your underlings throughout the day or whatever most efficiently. Right. And one of the things that they said is that grapefruit you should eat more grapefruit because grapefruit contains something called narragan or narragen, and it actually slows the removal of caffeine from your brain so you enjoy its effects longer. Nice. Yeah. So a morning breakfast in the 1950s of coffee and half a grapefruit is all you needed. Yeah. And then your noon cocaine bump just to keep you going to drink Coca Cola. Yes, exactly. And also, if you want to maximize your caffeine intake from coffee, you should look at the beans you're drinking. So Arabica, which is, I think, the most prevalent coffee, it's 1.5% caffeine, but Robusta 2.4%. That is Robusta. As far as I know, that's the highest caffeine content, naturally, of any coffee bean. So a light roast robusta is going to basically with your grapefruit. Yeah. It'll be like getting kicked in the chest by a mule. Wow. And doesn't that sound appealing? That's what every bulletproof exec wants. Wow. It shows you how to be a more efficient robber baron. So let's get down to this, man. How does caffeine actually affect your brain? Because it does affect your brain. The whole point behind taking coffee and stuff like that is as the guy who wrote this article oh, the three guys who wrote this article, including you. Yeah. I did a little update on this. I forgot. Using caffeine, it's a form of self medication. Of course. That's why most people drink it, I think, to get that boost in the morning. Sure. Or in the middle of the afternoon. Yeah. And I'm sure people love the taste and stuff. It's not like they're holding their nose and forcing the strength down their throat. Well, that's what, like, five hour images for. Those. Doesn't taste very good. Do they not? I've never tasted one. I've always wondered, but I've never wanted to experience this effect so badly that I tasted it. It's like just that synthetic fruit taste. Does it taste like, medicinal at all? Yeah, it's not good, in my opinion. Well, it's just 2oz. You get it over with real quick. Right. You just suck it down, and you're done. Punch a wall. So how does it work on the brain? It tricks your brain, actually, by mimicking something called adenosine. And it's kind of remarkable, actually, because what it does is it mimics adenosine and then does the opposite of what adenosine does, which is to try and help you sleep. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So you have a sleep wake cycle. Right. Part of the sleep cycle is adenosine. Latching onto the adenosine receptors on your neurons. They're sleepy. Yeah. It does make you sleepy because it slows the function of your neurons down. It's a big buzzkill, basically, it's a drag. Adenosine is well, it's great. Yeah. It helps make you sleepy. And what caffeine does is it gets in there to the same receptor. It binds to the same receptor as adenosine. Because your brain thinks it's adenosine. Yes. It puts on its adenosine costume, pretty much, which consists of, like, a sparkly one piece jumpsuit. It's a onesie. And it not only doesn't slow your neurons down, it apparently speeds them up. Yeah. So your brain starts going haywire. That's part one of what caffeine does to your brain. It not only doesn't slow your brain down, it prevents the thing that does slow your brain down from slowing your brain down, and it actually speeds your brain up. Haywire. And not only that, but adenosine usually well, not usually. Adenosine always causes your blood vessels to dilate, and caffeine causes them to constrict, which sounds bad, but one of the pluses and we'll get into the benefits, but one of them is constricting. It can maybe help you avoid headaches and migraines, and that's why caffeine is in things like anison or my override BC or goodies Headache powders that I use contain caffeine. Yeah. That's my secret. Hangover helper. PC powder. PC or goodies acts fast. They work really well, too. Both together a little. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. So caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, right? That's right. It constricts your blood vessels. And like you said, that can actually help your headaches, because a lot of headaches vascular headaches, I guess, is what they're called, are when your blood vessels are too big and the change in pressure in your brain gives you this horrible headache. Right. So while this is happening, your body thinks these neurons are firing. Your pituitary gland says you must be in trouble because you're supposed to be going to sleep, buddy. Yeah. There's clearly a bear coming at you I don't know about. Something's wrong. So let's send you some adrenaline. We talked ad nauseam about fight or flight, and your body thinks that's what's going on. When you drink coffee or caffeine, it says here you need this adrenaline because, like you said, you got a bear coming your way. And all the hallmarks of fight or flight kick in which, man, this used to be, like, our go to. Yeah. And now it's just such an accepted part of everything. That's right. Do we even need to save the things anymore? No, go ahead. Okay. So your pupils dilate. Your breathing becomes more rapid. You get more breaths. If you're eating something, you stop digesting it because your stomach doesn't matter at that point. That's right. Superfluous. Your blood pressure rises, your liver releases sugar in the bloodstream. So you can get some extra energy. You're ready to go. Basically, it's like time for some action. Yeah. And that's why you drink that cup of coffee. You might feel tense, like you in the car. Yes. Or agitated. Right. It's because your body thinks you're about to be in a big fight with the car next to you, which ends up it's this weird reverse cycle. It ends up causing that fight. Yeah. You'll also find if you drink a lot of coffee, like me, a big knot develops in between your shoulder blades. It's just below your neck. Nice. It's just yet another result of your muscles tightening and you being ready for action. Thanks to the fight or flight syndrome. So your brain has been kept from getting drowsy. It's been sent to basically like a Lucy esque assembly line of chocolates. The fight or Flight syndrome has kicked in. That describes, like, a significant amount of the effects of coffee. But there's a big one that's missing still we haven't touched on, and that is it's pleasurable effects. It makes you feel good. Yeah. Because it's a stimulant and it's a drug. And just like all the other illicit, illegal drugs, this one is just accepted, but it has the same effect. It's going to release dopamine. And that's the pleasure center activation center. Right. And it makes you want more of it. And so that dopamine is flowing and your body is like, man, this is great. Yeah. So it's like heroin and cocaine. It doesn't actually make you overproduced dopamine, but it keeps dopamine from being absorbed as quickly. So you get its effects longer and more than you would if you weren't under the influence of the drug. Just like heroin. Just like cocaine. Caffeine, again, it uses the exact same mechanism. It's just to a weaker degree. Which is why, again, people aren't shooting caffeine. Right. And this is a bad idea, we should point out, varies from person to person the effects of caffeine on the body because it metabolizes differently in everyone. So some people might be like, I don't get jittery at all, or I can go right to sleep after coffee. Other people, I'd like to see those people on an espresso shot of Robusta. Yeah, I'll bet they wouldn't be singing the same song. Other folks, I used to wait tables and I would have people come in at lunch and say, like, no, like their friend would get a cup of coffee after. No, I'll be up all night. Yeah. Are you serious? Did you say that too? No, I always think it was a little weird, but like I said, it may keep them up all night. Yeah. It's their own jam. Because people know their bodies, so just go with the decaf in that case. So there are plenty of negative effects, like keeping you up all night, as well as positive effects with caffeine. And we're going to talk about those right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes. LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that roll up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. It automation. All right, so you've got the one, two, three punch. Your body is enjoying the caffeine. It's blocking that adenosine. You're going to feel alert and awake. Right. It's got that adrenaline going and it's rewarding you with the dopamine. So it's going to make you want to drink coffee. But I mentioned the vicious cycle. It is a bit, because after coffee comes the inevitable crash, like any stimulant drug, and you want more of it to get back up again. So you're going to have that fatigue and maybe even slightly depressed feeling, and then you have a little bit more of that caffeine and it's going to get you going again. And that's sort of the cycle that you find yourself in, which will eventually, even though you might not think it is, it's going to affect your sleep patterns. Yeah. That cycle kind of continues on into the next day, right? Yeah. So coffee has a half life of 6 hours. Caffeine. Caffeine, yes. I told you I addicted this to you. It's all right. Caffeine has a half life of 6 hours where if you drink a cup of coffee that has 200 mg of caffeine at noon, at 06:00 P.m., you'll still have 100 mg of caffeine in your system. That's right. So it's like at six you drank a Red Bull and a quarter right then. Right. Not exactly what you want. And then at midnight, you would have 50 milligrams left, which is like more than a Coke. It's like a Mountain Dew's worth of caffeine in you. Again, not really what you want. So, as the authors of this article, including you point out, you may fall asleep, but that caffeine stimulation is probably going to keep you from getting deep sleep, and deep sleep is what you really genuinely need. And I think after researching this, reading that sentence, I'm like because I think the light go on basically like that. That is how I live my life is I don't sleep deeply. Even though I sleep deeply, I don't think I get actual deep sleep. You know what I mean? Right. So then you wake up craving the caffeine again. Exactly. And that's where that cycle goes on and on, where it's really tough to quit it. Yeah, it's very interesting. If you are pregnant, there are some studies that suggest, and we should say there have been a lot of caffeine studies. Yeah. This article says like 19,000 since the 60s. I'm sure there's seventy s twenty thousand by now, easily. And they are somewhat conflicting. So we always are going to say like this study suggests, because they aren't hard and fast rules. Right. But if you're pregnant, some studies suggest that 300 milligrams or more per day could lead to low birth weight in your little BB kids. I read one article, like five experts talk about caffeine and children, and they all said that's not great for kids. No kids drink coffee these days, do they? Yes, but in the form of those coffee drinks that are super sweet and creamy and everything. But they drink like if you walk around the mall, you'll see like, eight year olds with, like, a coffee drink just walking around like it's nothing. I went to the mall the other day for the first time in probably five years. Yeah. How was it? Awful. Was it? And I hated every minute of it. And I'm not going back. The mall is another place that is another thing that puts that like not in the back. Just too many people in one place. Yeah. It's no good. And with the baby strollers, just like I wanted to put a spoon in my ear. Which mall? I went to perimeter. Okay. We got new pillows, so it was like I had to go to the mall to get pillows because you got to put your head on it, even through the plastic. Oh, yeah, I know. I've been pillow shopping. You know what I mean? Yes. Your pillows are great, though. Oh, yeah. If you get a good one. Yeah. I've been on a bad run lately with pillows. Where I've gotten the last two, I've got one. Wasn't very happy with it. I want to replace it. It's better, but still not quite happy with it. Do you just use one pillow? Really? One soft pillow. Wow. Yeah. Anything else? I'm like, oh, my neck. I got to have one under my head. I got to have one behind my head, between my head and the headboard. And then one tied to your face. No. And then a clutch to hold on to wrap up with. Wow. It's the best. Yeah. That's three pillows. Yeah. You sleep with three pillows, Emily. Yeah. Six total. Jerry, tell us in Blinks how many pillows you sleep with. Three. Three as well. I think you're under pillowed. I guess. So if you sleep with one third of the pillows you do. Here's a pillow tip, though. If you're buying, just wait for a Macy's one day sale. Oh, yeah. Because pillows are expensive. Good ones if they are. And 50% worth it very much. Get your hands on a good pillow. Yes. And Macy's does it twice a year. I think maybe Memorial Day and Labor Day are their pillow sale days. They had one going on after New Year's. I am wrong. There you have it. All right. So we were talking about sleep and the shopping mall where kids were drinking coffee. It all comes together. It does. But all five of the experts said your kids shouldn't really be having too much or any caffeine. Right. And they didn't say because of, like, the health effects. Basically, it was just like sugar. You don't want your kids heart rate increased a lot, and their blood pressure increased, and it's just not going to do yourself any favors as a parent and a caffeinated child. But I genuinely believe that you can go through experiences like that as a younger kid, and it'll make you a keyed up adult, a higher strung adult. Oh, you think? I do. I have come to believe that that experiences in childhood very prominently shape who you are as an adult. Very much so. I've come to mind, I guess if you're 13 and drink a lot of coffee and you get anxious, you'd probably be an anxious adult. I believe that. Probably. Keep drinking coffee, probably to stave off the anxiety. When did you start drinking coffee? Or did you always drink a lot of soda, too? No, I guess it was more of a grown up for both. Oh, really? Yeah. I drank a lot of Koolaid as a kid, and, like, the straight up tons of sugar in Koolaid. Yeah. And I drank, like, some we called it pop. Oh, yeah. Like fago and Pepsi and stuff up in Toledo. But I think it was, like, as an older person twenty s. Thirty s that I started drinking, like, coffee in earnest and Coke. That's how it should be, I think. Sure. I definitely didn't drink coffee as a kid. No, that was gross. Yeah. Added to the taste of it was just really foul, I thought. But I really learned to love the taste of coffee. Yeah. And I enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee on a camping trip or a cold day. Sure. I just never took up the regular habit, and not for any reason other than I just never grabbed me. I never took it up. Yeah. It wasn't like a stand, though. I'm not going to start drinking caffeine and everybody who drinks coffee can rock. No, because my brother in law and my mother in law drink more coffee than any humans alive. More than me. They're both wonderful. Yeah. They're like, let's brew a pot of coffee, not a cup of coffee. Yes, and let's just drink it until it's gone, then brew another pot. Yeah, I know, but they get a lot done. They're very accomplished people. They sleep several inches above the bed. One of them is a general in the Marine Corps. That shows you where he is. Yeah. Actually, that's my mother in law. All right. How about some health benefits? Right. There are a lot, believe it or not. They've done a lot of studies, and they found everything from helping out to not develop Parkinson's disease to dropping your risk of various cancers. Cirrhosis. How about this? Two cups a day supposedly will cause an 80% drop in the odds of developing cirrhosis. That's amazing. Yeah, I drink a little bit, so maybe I should drink coffee. I wonder if it has to do with stimulating the fight or flight syndrome, where your liver releases more sugar to give you more energy or something like that. Maybe. But what's weird then is so that would be more sugar in the bloodstream, right? Yeah. Too much sugar in the bloodstream can lead to diabetes. Right? Right. Well, coffee actually is shown to reduce your risk of diabetes. Yeah. There's a Harvard study that involved 126,000 people over 18 years. They followed their collaboration. That is a good study. It's a great study. Unless they fudge the results, but saying they didn't. What they found was that people who drink one to three cups of coffee a day are 9% less likely to contract diabetes. Right? Yeah. You think it ends there? No, it does not. So people who drank six or more cups of coffee per day, if you were a man, your chances of contracting diabetes were reduced by 54%. That's substantial. And for women who drank six or more cups a day, their chances of contracting diabetes or 30% of developing diabetes, 30% reduction. I got another one. Four cups a day, 50% less chance of mouth and throat cancer. And I don't know if it was this Harvard study or another one said it could reduce suicide risk in adults, even. Kind of makes sense, I guess, in one way. Which way? I don't know. I take that back. Well, maybe you run from self harm, even. Maybe, like, you flee or fight or if it just maybe it could battle your depressive systems by picking you up or something. I don't know. Yeah. Explanation than mine. Mine was stupid. There's evidence that it prevents cavities, actually. Oh, really? Yes, which is kind of surprising, because that is if you're doing a study on coffee, that's if you don't put anything in your coffee, putting cream and sugar in. Yeah. You're going to get your cavities on. Right. You kind of do both. Right. Just depending on your mood. I typically go toward black. Right. But every now and then, you throw a little vanilla creamer in there every once in a while. Yeah, if I want to treat. Special treat. Right, but caffeine can hurt your teeth in that it causes teeth clenching, too. Well, which is one reason I'm losing teeth as I grind my teeth at night. Yes. So maybe I shouldn't drink more coffee. It could be, yeah. But like you said, it giveth and it takes away. Do I want teeth or do you want my liver to hang in there? And no diabetes, right? Yeah. Good point. Alzheimer's. The Bird Alzheimer's Institute in Tampa did some experimenting on lab mice, injecting them with caffeine, like you said earlier, and not only did it protect them against developing Alzheimer's, but it helped reduce symptoms if they already had it. They haven't tried it on humans yet, but as it goes with mice, many times it goes with humans. Yeah. Hopefully, we could all be injecting caffeine at some point. That, to me, is also counterintuitive, too, because Alzheimer's disease is potentially a buildup of plaques in your brain that's the result of not getting enough deep sleep, because when you sleep, your glial channels expand and your brain is bathed in cerebral spinal fluid. That makes sense. It cleans out those plaques. Right. But it only happens when you're sleeping very deeply. But if you're not getting very deep sleep with coffee or caffeine, then I would think there would be a higher risk of Alzheimer's. It's still fuddling. It is. And I've also found conflicting studies on memory. Johns Hopkins says that it's a memory enhancer, but I've seen other studies that say it's memory Dhansor. Yeah. Again, it's like it's tough to kind of get down to the brass tacks when you have conflicting studies. If you exercise, coffee is your best friend. Caffeine is. Yeah. I've heard of, like, Olympic athletes that will shoot espresso right before a race. Yeah. Not only does it give you a jolt of energy and everything, but apparently it has ergogenic properties, which means that it delays fatigue. Right. Yeah. And it helps your muscles use glycogen. Their energy stores more efficiently, too, so it can help you run better. Interesting. Yeah. As far as cognitive abilities, the one study I found from Johns Hopkins Medical School said that while you think it is increasing your cognitive abilities, what it's really doing is just taking you back to normal for a short period. That is chilling. Yeah. And then when it wears off, you're actually below man. Yeah. I don't know. I hate to think that I don't want to quit coffee, though. That sucks. Quit smoking. Yeah. You lost weight. Yeah. Keep your coffee. That's another thing that I did during this break, is put some of that back on. We'll drink coffee and go exercise. All right. If you want to know more about caffeine, you can type that word into the search bar. How stuff works. Don't forget in this case, the E goes before the I. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. This is from Maddie in Virginia. Hey, guys, I'm a 22 year old college student in Virginia. I want to start off by saying thank you for the wonderful podcast. I like this email. 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I know that you guys help people not only gain valuable knowledge, but you also improve lives and put smiles on many faces. I don't think you'll read this on the air. Psych. And I don't even know if you all will even receive this email double sight. But if you do and it's right on the podcast, I just want everyone listening to know if you're going through a tough time and are struggling, things will get better. There are always people who care about you and who will help you. Nice. Warm our cockles. Yes, my friend. And hang in there. What a wonderful message. That sounds like trite things to say. Yes, unless you're going through some time, heals wounds and it's darkest before the dawn. But they're try and true for a reason, because they are true. I think you just tried and true. Yeah, but I think you just improved the phrase. Yeah, but they're not tried. They're true things. Hang in there, people. That's my message. 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87462360-3b0e-11eb-9699-8fb87e4fbce3	What's the deal with blue people?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-blue-people	The famous blue people of Kentucky are no longer blue. But why were they like that in the first place?	The famous blue people of Kentucky are no longer blue. But why were they like that in the first place?	Thu, 09 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=343, tm_isdst=0)	44559131	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. We are so glad to be coming back to SF sketchfest this week. The best comedy festival on the land for our first live show in two years. Yep, we're going to be there on Friday, January 21, at 07:30 P.m. At the Sydney Goldstein Theater, to be specific. And if you want tickets, then head on over to sfsketchfest.com or cityboxoffice.com and search Stuff You Should Know. That's right, it's a vaccinated only show and a masking up show. So everyone be safe. Get out there and come check us out live. We'll see you on January 21. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And Jerry was just here. She said, peace out, suckers. And this is stuff you should know. Of course, it was nice of her to log on to say goodbye. Right? We're just kidding, Jerry. She's been busy lately. Yeah, that happens. It totally happens in this busy go go world of 2021, almost 2022. The double deuce this year has just flown by. Really has, I think, mercifully, because this is going to be part of the lost years when we look back. Yeah, it felt like 2020 took 18 years. Right. And somehow 2021 has just been in a snap. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. I don't think anyone does any more, Chuck, so don't feel bad. Can we shout out to the people and sources that helped us along for this one? Well, our buddy Dave Rus wrote an article for how stuff works. TADA. And I found a great article from Wired. I forgot how much I love Wired. That's from Mallory Pickett and BBC News. ABC News NPR Morning Edition, which is always a fun. Listen. National Library of Medicine here in the US. And then, as always, I feel like it makes appearance in every episode. Jamaicahspital.org. That's right. Surprisingly helpful. Yeah, maybe not surprisingly. I wonder, is it Jamaica, Queens or Jamaica, Jamaica? Oh, you know what I was thinking? Jamaica Jamaica, maybe. Jamaica, Queens. Yeah. Should I? Jamaica scene? Jamaica, Queens. My neighbor across the street neighbor is from Jamaica, the country. And I feel like a heal now because I was like, hey, that hospital website is great, Pat. She's like, what are you talking about? She's like, okay, great. Glad you like some random hospital website. Oh, boy. So we're talking today. You went and found some medical stuff. That's why you went to look@jamaicaaspital.org, I'm guessing because we're talking about a really interesting condition and actually a few kinds of conditions that have something unusual in common, and that is that the people who suffer from these conditions have blue skin. Blue skin. You heard it here first, everybody. Even though this really first started hitting the presses in 2008. Yeah, you didn't hear it here first. This is all over the Internet. But we're talking about not the blue man group, but the blue people group of Kentucky, it's a family, I guess. It's pronounced Fugate. It's not Fugati. No, that's Italian. He was from France. Well, that's a spoiler. Oh, is it? I'm sorry. I take it back, everyone. It's not a spoiler, but for some reason, when I saw that the original Martin Fugate was from France, from I'm not sure what part of France, but I was like, that's surprising. I was like, I don't know why it would be. Yeah, he could have come from anywhere in the world, and he would have been, like, a completely overlookable person, I think, totally lost the history had it not been for the rare genetic mutation that he happened to carry with them. And even that wouldn't have gotten him into the history books. Chuck even that wouldn't have. Instead, it took Martin Fugate to happen, against all odds, to have found a wife who he was not related to, who was a total stranger from a totally different country, who also happened to have that same rare genetic mutation. And when the two get together, capao blue kids start popping out. That's right. He came over from France to Kentucky to the blue hills of Kentucky, ironically. Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about that in 1820. And like I said, he was from France, and he was an orphan, so he didn't know a lot about his family as far as whether or not any of them were blue, I guess. No. Or if so, he wasn't piping up about it. Yeah, maybe he just kept it quiet. But he did marry a redheaded American name Elizabeth Smith, and they headed on over to troublesome Creek near Hazard County in Kentucky and set up a homestead there. One of the doctors from one of these articles said, it's maybe one in a 100,000 chance that you even have this genetic mutation. And he said, but once you start I guess there's no other way to say it once you start inbreeding, which can happen in the one eight hundreds in the ruralness of Kentucky, he said, that can go down all the way to, like, one in eight chance. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. I was surprised it was even one and eight. But there's some little fluke of genetics that you have to when you're talking about probability and genetics, it's a little more difficult than half and a half straight math. Yeah. So apparently Martin himself possibly had a little bit of blue to him. His wife Elizabeth had no blue to her. She apparently have very pale skin and bright red hair. But when the two got together and those two genetic mutations donated their mutations to that specific gene, the kids that they had were irresistibly blue. There was no confusing. It's not like, yes, Martin kind of blue. Have you ever noticed maybe you need to breathe more deeply. This was like, straight up blue kids. I've even seen them described as dark blue. Not even a bluish hue or tint or tinge. Dark blue skinned children. Yeah. Four of seven were blue. And it's funny you said that the mother was not blue tinted, but I imagine, like, before they knew about genetics and inbreeding, if she would have been a little blue, that might have been a reason to get together. You know what I mean? No, I don't explain. Well, blue man happens to meet blue woman, and they're like, jeez, there's another one like me, and we've been sort of embarrassing, and maybe we're cast out a little bit, so let's hitch our wagons together, because there's probably nothing wrong with us having kids. Right. Because medical science had known that at that point. Right. It's a story as old as time, Chuck. But it was just complete happenstance, though, right? Yeah. And I wonder also, it was significant to me that they pointed out that his wife, Elizabeth Smith fugate skin was almost translucent. It was so pale, because I wonder if she donated that to her children, which allowed the blue to really shine through even more. Maybe it's possible. Like the ultimate recipe for blueness. Exactly. And they actually became known as the blue family, and they were not particularly proud of their blue skin. I think they were a little freaked out about it. I think that their neighbors may not have particularly treated them well, and so they already lived in, like, a pretty isolated part of appalachia, but they took pains to actually isolate themselves even further. And one of the consequences of that was something you touched upon, that that meant that their son married their aunt and cousins married cousins, even if they were way too close to be marrying. And so one of the products of this inner marriage was an entire small regional population of blue families, or families who have blue children, blue family members, because these neighbor families were still blood relatives of the few gates who initially settled this area and just started reproducing through inbreeding. That's right. And the condition that they had is not a skin condition at all. It's actually a blood disorder, like you mentioned, and it's called medemoglobinemia. Is that pretty good? Wow. So it's not meth? No. Okay. I'm glad you said it first, then. I actually took great pains today to look up between this and the other episode we're recording. Pronunciations. Yeah. And when you look at Medemoglobinemia, that is 17 letters. It's a mouthful of letters. Yeah. Pure hell. It's really one of those that I looked at over and over and just could not get it right in my head until I went and looked it up on the Internet, and I was like, It's not so hard. All right, let me try. Let me try medemoglobinemia. I think it's more of a T than a D. Okay, what about a TV? You want me to try that one? This is like the worst acting audition ever. My team. What's my motivation here? To get through this episode. Okay, fair enough. So we're going to touch a little bit on melanin throughout this episode. But you remember melanin from our, I think, pretty good episode on sunscreen and suntans, right? And this is special. Cells in the body, in the skin, make melanin, and melanin is responsible for coloring your skin. And there are all kinds of different melanin disorders, whether you have too much or too little, whether it'll make your skin lighter or darker or whether or not it happens in patches. I had a friend in Los Angeles with Vida LIGO, which I have a friend, too. Oh, you do? Which leads to patches of light skin on the body. Is that what Michael Jackson claimed to have had, too? Yes. Was that verified? I don't know. I don't know either. I really don't know. I just remember there was a big stink when that came out, and everyone was like, yeah, right. Well, the reason why it was like, really? You got vidiligo because it's usually patches, like the melanocytes. The melon and producing cells just kind of poop out or crap out in an area, and it leaves, like, patches without pigment, not your entire face without pigment, but who knows? Well, I think what he said was that he bleached his skin to match the light patches, was his reasoning. Oh, well, that's fairly reasonable. You know, if you're self conscious about vital, IGO and you have a ton of money, you could do something like that. Who knows? Who knows? Should we talk about skin color or should we take an awkward Michael Jackson break? I think we just did. But the point is this I think you're making, Chuck, is that changes in your skin color typically have to do with a lack of or an overproduction of melanin. Right. And that's right. What we're talking about metemoglobinemia, right? Yes. Is actually a blood disorder. It has nothing to do with the skin. It just shines through that super translucent skin that we have. Right. So what's going on here in the body? Okay. Are you surprised I'm asking you to do this? I'm a little surprised. I thought we may be tagged team this one, but okay, so you have, like, a pinkish shooter, typically being Caucasian, because there's not a ton of melanin that's blocking the blood supply underneath in your tissues. It's kind of shining through, and your blood is red. And the reason it's red, Chuck, is because the reason why blood is red. Well, remember in school, they teach you that your blood is blue until you get cut and then it hits the air. Yes. That's not true. And then it turns red. That's what you hear on the playground in elementary school from dumb kids, but that is not true. And I bet you anything kids are still spreading that mistrust on the playground. Yes. It's got some staying power, for sure, as far as rumors go. And you know what? My dad will sue your dad for all the money he's got. Did you guys threaten lawsuits? Sure. We were very litigious kids. Did, though. It was very funny. We were like little puritans in Salem Town. That's right. So blood is red. That was the question, right? Yeah. Why is blood red? Right. Because I don't know. We've talked about this before, but it's because our red blood cells have hemoglobin. It's a protein, and it gets its red color from something called heme. It's a compound that has an iron atom in there, and that iron atom is the key. That's what binds with oxygen and allows red blood cells to get oxygen all over the body. And that's sort of what makes us tick. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, that oxygen is super important. So we want to have super red rich hemoglobin blood. Right. Our bodies also produce something else called metemoglobins, I guess is how you would pronounce it. That is not how I've been pronouncing it in my head, but these metemoglobins are basically the same thing as hemoglobin, but they have a different kind of iron attached to them. The iron they have is like there's really no other way to put it. Actually, there's plenty of other ways to put it, but one way you could put it is that it's rusted. It's oxidized iron, which means that it's missing an electron that it would need to bind oxygen, which means it's useless for transporting oxygen to the blood. So if you have a bunch of metamoglobin built up in your blood, your blood can reasonably turn blue. You also may have some problems breathing because you don't have any oxygen in your blood, although that's not true. I'm sorry. You would be able to breathe perfectly fine, but it wouldn't clear up necessarily the lack of oxygen in your blood because it's on a blood level rather than something to do with your lungs. Yeah, that was my one question, because doctor after doctor has confirmed that metabollobinemia doesn't present any health issues. But how can that be possible? That your blood is having trouble carrying oxygen to your body. And it doesn't matter. I had a really hard time with that. Too. And the best I could come up with as far as an answer. Which is not definitive. But the best I can come up with is that there's a threshold where your blood will turn blue. Where you have enough mathemoglobin in there that it's blue. But there's not so many metimoglobins that you're actually having trouble with your oxygen in your body. So it can turn blue long before you actually suffer from the effects of low oxygen. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And isn't the threshold to turn your skin blue, like, a really low percentage, even, like, 1% of metemoglobin? If your blood is 1% of matemoglobins, you can start to turn blue, right. So it doesn't take very much, which means that you have 99% of the globus in your blood are hemoglobin, which means you're still able to get all the oxygen you need. You just have maybe a little less than somebody else. That's my best guess from what I saw. And I think at this point in our understanding of metabolic globalmia, it's as good as anybody. Well, that sounds like a perfect place for a break. Okay. And we'll be right back to talk a little bit more about this and other interesting blood conditions right after that. So, Chuck, we're talking about metemoglobinemia, and the reason I think one of us said earlier that the body naturally produces these things, these metamoglobins, but we also produce an enzyme that can convert excess metemoglobins into hemoglobin. And it's got a doozy of a name, which I just love. May I take this one? Yes. This enzyme is called reduced nicotinemide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome b five reductase. One of the great alltime nickname sparky. It has no nickname. You have to say the entire thing every time. And so this enzyme reduced nicotine mine at an iron dinucleotide cytochrome b five reductase is actually capable of converting the iron from its ferric state and metamaglobins into its ferrous state, which is capable of binding with oxygen, like the kind that's found in hemoglobin. So, for all intents and purposes, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome b five reductase is capable of converting metimoglobin into hemoglobin. And most of us are able to do that. But if you're like a fugate and you have that rare genetic condition where both parents donated that mutation to you, and you develop metamoglob anemia, but there's some reduced amount of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome b five reductase, which means that that metemoglobins that you naturally produce are able to build up and accumulate in your blood. And when they do that, that's how you start to turn blue. That's how you cross that 1% threshold. That's right. And this is one of the rare times where you can actually have a genetic condition that's pretty easily solved. And in this case, it's just a pill. And the guy who figured this out has sort of an interesting story in his own right. His name is Madison kawen or kawaine kaweene. Although I like cow wine, it doesn't sound like you'd be tasty, but I'll bet it gives you a pretty good boss. He's the grandson of a pretty famous at the time, poet out of Kentucky, and Madison was the third of the Madisons. And this is just a side note. Very sad and interesting. His wife was poisoned and murdered by poison oh, no. In the 1960s, and no one was ever caught and charged with a crime. And it kind of remains one of Kentucky's sort of biggest cold cases. Wow. I did not see that one coming. Yeah, he and his wife and this other couple were out drinking all night. Supposedly just got sloshed at a country club. He Madison didn't even make it home. I think he stayed the night there. But the other man from the other couple drove his wife home, apparently just dropped. They had another nightcap and she woke up dead. Well, I didn't wake up dead. She died. And they thought it was just alcohol or some natural cause, but then they found these two, like, little needle pricks in her wow. Where they think she was, I guess, given a shot to pass out and then poisoned, and I can't remember the poison. It was some sort of like acid or something. Wow. But, yeah, really interesting. Neither here nor there as far as this goes. But that's the sad story of Dr. Madison cow Wine's wife. Was he a suspect? Because I would have suspected him. I don't think so, because he wasn't even there. That's the first thing I thought. But apparently it was pretty verified that he slept it off at the country club, I guess. Crazy, because one of the things that he became famous for, if not the thing he became famous for, was injecting people with some fairly weird stuff. I know. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it is weird. You're not buying it? No, I don't want to cast versions on somebody. I don't know enough about the story, but just very odd. Especially judging from this 92nd story. Right, exactly. I conclusively solve this case. I've seen enough law in order to know that the husband almost always did it all. That is probably true, but probably not in this case. But at any rate, he was a hematologist at you at University of Kentucky, and he heard about these people throughout the world and really wanted to kind of get to the bottom of this when a couple of them well, I don't think these were few gates, but Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, I guess, happen in some other family. I know that combs is we knew a combs from Kentucky. We had a friend that we worked with for a little while. Oh, really? He never struck me as blue. Yeah, he never struck me as blue. But I wonder if he is related to the CoMSES. Who knows? Which would make them buy somehow fugate. Because again, these families in the Fugate area were all, if you went back far enough, fugate. Right, exactly. All right, so these people walk into his office and what happened? So here's the thing. They didn't walk into his office. He went and found them. I read an article about him and he became maybe a little obsessed with finding these people, wanted to know what the heck was going on. So he actually went out in the woods and would wait for them. Every once in a while we see one and he'd chase them, telling them to stop, and of course they would run off. So he figured out another way to do it. He moved to Hazard County near Troublesome Creek, and he started asking around at clinics like, had anybody ever treated a blue patient? And he finally struck gold. Blue gold. When he spoke to one nurse at a clinic that said, yeah, this one woman came in with blue skin, and she was really self conscious about her skin. She came to the back door, was really just kind of meek and embarrassed. But, yeah, we've treated a blue person before. So Cow Wayne basically hung around this clinic until more blue people came in. And this is where he met the Richie siblings. Yeah. So he started to dig into their family a little bit. It became pretty obvious to him that it was a genetic disorder. And he started digging around other stories around North America and found an Inuit population in Alaska who had the same condition. I'm just going to call it this condition now. Okay. I think we've said it enough. Sure. At least I have. Yeah. And he said, well, these people were interbreeding a lot because they were very remote as well. And so he said, I think we understand the problem here. How do we fix it? Yeah. I don't know where he got this idea, but he used something called methylene blue, which was already, like, in wide use. It's used to stain tissue because it affects some cells differently than others. It was a malarial treatment, which malaria can actually produce metemoglobinemia. I'm suddenly having trouble saying it because we haven't been practicing lately. And what it does is it goes in and it interacts with the reduced nicotinamide adenine, dinucleotide, cytochrome, b, five, reductase, and basically gives it a boost and helps convert all of that excess metemoglobins into hemoglobins in patients with metamoglobinmia. And so I don't know where he got the idea, but he tried it and apparently injected the Richie kids with it, and they stopped being blue, like, almost on the spot. Yeah. Like, minutes later, they returned to a standard color, and they were overjoyed. Could you imagine being like this your whole life? Getting a shot and looking in the mirror a few minutes later, and you're like, oh, my gosh, it's gone? It's actually really sweet because they were very self conscious, the whole family. I mean, this family retreated to the woods. People didn't know where they lived, and they lived, like, 5 miles away from them and knew that there was this blue family still had no idea where they lived. That's how far they retreated from society because they were that self conscious. So, yeah, I'm sure it's a pretty joyous occasion for them. There's going to be a movie about this at some point, right? I can't believe there's not. There's a very famous interview with Cow Wayne in a magazine called Science 82, and there's also a really famous painting that somebody did, and it was just kind of lost the history, who did it. And I read this article, I can't remember what it was on, but this person tracked down the artist, the initial artist, and got to see the original because it's been scanned so many times, it's really lost a step. But the original is apparently really something to see. Should we say the quote that Coin had in that Science 82 article? Totally. He said when they walked in the office, he said they were bluer and hell. Very Kentucky. Yeah, totally. All right, so over time, few gates started moving away. Like some of the younger population of the family got out of Hazard County. And it's so hard not to make Dukes of Hazard jokes. I've been just sidestepping the whole time. You've been doing really great. Thank you. But they started to move away over time, and basically that's going to stop the inner breeding, and that's going to make fewer and fewer blue babies. And as of 2012, I think some were still blue, but not today. Yeah. I think now that there's a treatment, an easy treatment, because they don't even have to be injected anymore. Like, if you're blue and you don't want to be blue, just take a methylene blue pill once a day and it goes in. Apparently, once you excreted out the methylene blue, you go back to being blue. So you have to take it daily. But I'll bet there are members of that family now, and I'm just guessing here, but that are proudly blue now that they know that they don't have to be blue. Some of them, I'll bet, make a choice to be blue as kind of like a pride in their family heritage, I'm guessing here. Well, the thing I saw that there was one, and that was the one in 2012 that was still blue, like, by choice. I think so, yeah. Just didn't take the pill. Got you. Wow, that's neat. But not today anymore. So this is not the only way you can get bluish or any I guess silvery skin is another thing that comes into play here with this next disorder. And this is one called Algeria. And some people are bluish, some people are silver. If you've looked up blue people or silver people online, you have no doubt seen Paul Harrison. They called him Papa Smurf. And he is all over the Internet as one of the more famous cases of Algeria. Yeah, he kind of emerged as I don't know if a cautionary tale is right because that was not his purpose, but whether he meant to or not, he served as a cautionary tale about taking colloidial silver because that is what turned him blue. And it didn't just turn his skin blue, it turned his mucous membranes blue. So if he, like, flashed his teeth, his gums were blue. The inside of his mouth was blue. The inside of his nose was blue. He was blue. Blue in hell. As Cow Wayne would probably put it. That's right. And he did it because he saw an article about how silver ions basically restored some cut flower back to life again. And he thought, well, that'd be really something to see what it can do on a human body. I want to be a fresh Daisy. Right. And he wasn't the only person experimenting at the time. Like, apparently for a while, it was an overthecounter drug. We've been using silver for a very long time, but he was somebody who used it every single day. He was drinking, like, a ten ounce drink of colloidal silver. He figured out how to basically make his own colloidal silver potion, and he also rubbed it on his face, too. And so in very short order, he started to turn blue. Because that is definitely a consequence of using silver. Too much of overexposure to silver. That's right. And this can happen if you work in, like, a silver mine or something. Right. Like, it can be one of the side effects of mining in silver mine. I also saw that in the old time. Not even that old, but just pre digital photography processing. Photograph processing. Sometimes you could actually develop Algeria from exposure to the silver dust that was used to expose photographic plates, I think prior to the don't know when they stopped using that. I don't either. I spent a lot of time in dark rooms as a kid because of my dad. Because you were a dad. Go in there, turn on that red light, and sit there and think about what you've done? No, my dad was an amateur photographer. Well, I guess in my professionally sold stuff, but he did his own developing, and I learned how to do it and did it some through high school and then kind of quit doing it. It was a lot of fun, though. Dark rooms are very, like, peaceful places. Is that right? Yeah, they're dark, obviously true. And you're in there for a long period of time, and it's just very nice. Usually by yourself, but unless you're in a teen romance movie and then the cute girls in there with you well, I always associate them with the murderer finally coming into focus, and they happen to be standing right next to the photographer is developing it. So to me, dark rooms are very tense, scary. Like, as the photo paper, like, comes into photos. Yeah. Very tempting. It shows the calls coming from inside the dark room. Right. Where were we? Okay, so what causes this is an excess of silver ions in your body, and when they're exposed to light, they react by forming dark deposits on the skin that end up looking silverish. And the bad news about this is, once you've got it, it's there. You can't take a pill and get rid of it. No, it's irreversible. We don't have a way to remove excess silver from the tissues in. The human body, and that's all it is, it builds up. Normally, the body can excrete small amounts of silver that we're exposed to from, like, touching silver or snorting silver, that kind of stuff. Like, we pee it out, we poop it out, and we get rid of it. But if we overcome that threshold and our silver ingestion exceeds our ability to excrete it, it starts to build up in the tissue. And so if you're drinking your own ten ounce colloidal silver home brew every single day, you're going to overwhelm your body's ability to excrete silver very quickly, and it's going to build up and build up and build up, and pretty soon you're going to be blue or silver blue. That's right. And if you look up images of carousel, you're probably also going to find pictures of Stan Jones, a libertarian politician in Montana who around Y two K, said, you know what? I think things are going to go south and we're not going to have any antibiotics, so I'm going to start making my own again, CLOA silver solution and drink that stuff. And then there was a teacher in Brooklyn, too, named Rosemary Jacobs, who, very sadly, I think, got nasal drops with silver when she was a kid. And she was sort of not sort of, she was very silver for life. Yes, she was. So these people, again, have proved to be cautionary tales to most people who are like, oh, that's what happens if you take too much silver. I'm not going to take colloidal silver supplements over the counter or anything like that. I'm just going to steer clear silver altogether. Because one of the problems is there's not a lot of peer reviewed evidence, if any, that suggests that silver has any beneficial effect when taken internally. Right. It is actually antimicrobial. It's pretty clever to use silver, like in the pre scientific days, but there's nothing that says like, yes, if you drink a colloidal silver home brew, it's going to have any effect on your life or your health, and in fact, it might actually turn you blue. Despite this, people still take colloidal silver pretty frequently, apparently. Alex Jones touts it, Gwyneth Paltrow touts it, dr. Oz touts it, and if it's not actually harming you, there doesn't seem to be any harm from it aside from potentially irreversibly turning blue. But there's a larger harm that I saw chuck to society in general, and that silver is an antimicrobial of last resort. That is, they're figuring out how to use it against antibiotic resistant bugs like MRSA. Silver will get in there and even kill MRSA. But that silver resistance may be developed in bugs by all these people taking colloidal silver supplements and drinking colloidal silver home brews and stuff like that, that is actually creating silver resistant microbes, which is not a good thing for anybody. All right, well, let's take our second break. Good. Yes. And we'll talk a little bit more about cloidal silver right after this. All right, so you mentioned earlier that kind of in passing, that cloidal silver had been used premstream medical science coming on board, and it's really true, and they were kind of onto something. And like you said, there are some antimicrobial properties. So people like planning the elder Cyrus to the Great, they both touted the use of silver. Monks in the Middle ages use silver nitrate to treat ulcers and burns. And it was used a lot. It's kind of, in a way, before we had real antibiotics. One of the first antibiotics, yes. Again, externally, it messes up microbes, and we're not exactly sure even still today what the mechanism is. The guesses are that somehow penetrates the membrane of bacteria and prevents it from replicating properly. Or it does, like, some one two punches on enzymes that the microbes need to survive, but that it will leave your human skin cells alone. It just attacks microbes, weirdly bacteria specifically. So, yeah, it was like an early antibiotic, and it actually kept stayed in use for a long time. Nowadays, you'll find it in, like, wound dressings. Sometimes sutures will be coated in silver replacement joints. Artificial joints will have some sort of silver component to it to protect against infection. But we were using them internally for a really long time, up until the 60s even. I think babies got, like, silver eye drops when they were born, which I had not heard of until yesterday. I had neither silver nitrate to prevent eye infections. But then they found out it can actually cause eye damage and burn the skin. So they really worked on just sort of what's the word I'm looking for when you make something less potent by mixing it with water? Dilute it. Diluting it right on the tip of my tongue. You did it. No, you did it. So they learned how to dilute it. But the problem with diluting it in a formula is it wasn't an exact science. Like, they didn't know exactly how much silver was still going to be active. And so you couldn't really use it as a medicine anymore because it was either too weak to do anything, or it was so much that you risk turning blue. So eventually they just scrapped it as a medicine and said, I think in 1999, the FDA said, this isn't a medicine. You can't advertise it as such. So they said, all right, we'll just say it's a supplement and just move it to the shelf 4ft away. And the FDA said, and that's what happened. And you can still get this stuff. That's why Gwyneth Baltro uses it. Yeah, again, it's one of those things where it's like, yes, it makes sense. Silver has antimicrobial properties. There's probably some microbes in your body you don't want, so take some silver and see if it works. But again, there's just not any peer reviewed evidence that backs us. Up. That's not necessarily to say that it doesn't work. Just because there isn't peer reviewed evidence that backs it up doesn't also necessarily mean in the same breath that there's plenty of peer reviewed evidence that says it doesn't work. I'm not suggesting anybody take the stuff, I'm just saying there's not peer reviewed evidence to back up that it actually does anything. And if you do take it again, you risk permanently irreversibly turning blue. Yeah, and I should point out I don't know anything about Gwyneth Paltrow's current usage, but her appearance on Dr. Oz in 2013 was when she touted it. She may have given it up, who knows? Who knows? Paul Carson never gave it up, though. Chuck he died in 2013 as well, same year that Gwyneth Paltrow outed herself as a silver user. And Paul Caracon, he apparently used Colloidal Silver, that home brew he made up until the end. Like he never stopped, even though he apparently retreated from the public eye because he was tired of being treated like a freak or a weirdo and had some rough years toward the end, apparently, after he went public. But he still kept up with the Colloidal Silver, although that doesn't seem to have been linked to his death. He was also a really heavy smoker for many years and he suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Yeah, I guess his point was probably, well, I'm already blue. Yeah, like, why stop now? Can't get much bluer. So what else you got? Well, I just thought we'd wind it up with this little kind of sidebar. This doesn't really have anything to do with being blue or silver, but I thought it was an interesting find that they basically determine there's something called representing that has happened to people to go their skin both darker and lighter. That has nothing to do and it's funny, this article kept calling it intermarriage. What they mean is yeah, what they mean is having sex and having babies of two different skin colors, but they keep calling it intermarriage, which I guess is very sweet. It's just such a lovely way to put it. It is, but they know that repaymenting happens regardless of intermarriage. But what they found recently is that this has happened a lot faster than anyone thought. And we're talking about 100 generations, or as little as 100 generations, which is a long time, but over the course of human history, it's not that long. Yeah, it's not that long. Usually generation is chalked up in about 20 years, so we're talking as little as 2000 years. The groups that were once lily white went back to being dark, and groups that were dark can turn into a lily white population. And that it's just basically more evidence that race is strictly a social construct. Skin color has nothing to do with anything but the amount of melanin that our genes tell our bodies to produce, which is triggered by the amount of UV exposure that we have over something like 100 generations. Right. And so if your family lineage moves from a place that has lots of UV near the equator to a place that doesn't have much daylight or vice versa, your body is going to adapt and melanin production is going to change. And over time, your entire family's skin color can change. Yeah, because we actually need UV. Right. But we just need a certain amount of it. If you have too much, you can get skin cancer. Apparently. It can have reproductive issues. If you get too little, it can also have issues on your bone because we use UV to produce vitamin D, which we use for strong bones bone density. So our bodies have figured out how to kind of adjust depending on that UV exposure by producing or slowing down melanin production. That's it pretty amazing, pretty neat. But it is surprising that it's well, actually, it's not that surprising that it can happen over 100 generations or 2000 years, because the body is very responsive to its environment. We adapt very easily, so it's not particularly surprising. Although it is neat. Yeah, I mean, it surprised the scientists. I think they just thought it was quicker than they anticipated. So if you're a racist, just stop and think that somewhere down your family line there is a white person or a black person haha. Or in the future. Yeah, that's true. That's right. So take that. You got anything else? I have nothing else. All right, well, if you want to know more about blue people or cloidal silver or pigmentation, go start reading up on it on the Internet. And thanks again to all the great sites that you found in putting this really good episode together, Chuck. And since I complimented Chuck's episode putting together skills, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one of the many thanks we got for the not NRA but the mRNA episode. This is one I think for both of us. Like we were super stoked to do and in retrospect, very proud of. We're stoked. We were super stoked. Not just stoked, bra stoked. Plus, there's no way to say stoked without sounding like a bro. No, no way at all. Stinks too, because I'm not a bro. But I do like saying stoked. It's fine to say stoked. Be loud and proud. Like the last remaining blue fugate. So this is from Mark, and it was a really long one that I'm going to sort of summarize. The first part is that Mark works in healthcare information technology and had a rough go of it over the past couple of years. Like so many people working alone and listening to our show, which he said helped quite a bit, losing some close friends to covet and seeing all this up close and personal. So Mark had a tough time. So he says this after working for almost two years on the Coba 19 problem, the last thing I wanted to hear was your podcast about Mr. NA vaccines. Understood. When I saw the topic pop up on my player, took a deep breath and decided to listen anyway. I knew almost everything you shared on the podcast, but became enthralled in the recap of this amazing story. To my surprise, I was again brought to tears with a recognition, one that you two share of these brilliant helpers who use their gifts for the benefit of all humanity. At the risk of making you blush, you, too, are part of those helpers. You presented this Mr. Nah episode with a childlike curiosity and relatable simplicity that anyone with doubts on taking the vaccine would reconsider. I can't believe that I have to say this, but facts help and facts shares are helpers. I might also add that letting go of any biases to let your curiosity, curiosity take hold is heroic. And that is for Mark. And boy, I'm going to read that one another 100 times today. Yeah, just print it out and fold it up and keep it under your pillow. Yes. Thank you, Mark. He wanted his last name to be with help but appreciate Mark. You've done, Mark, and hang in there. Yeah, same to you, Mark. And that was very high praise. Thank you very much for it. Means a lot to hear something like that. One other thing, though, Chuck, that Mark reminded me of, that people with metemoglobinemia actually can blush blue, so they get bluer. Yeah. Isn't that neat? I guess that makes sense. Thanks for that, too. Mark, even though you had no idea you're setting us up for it, you did. So you're just basically an altogether great person. If you want to be a great person like Mark and write in to, let us know whatever you want to let us know, we want to hear from you. You can wrap it up and spank it on that bottom until it's blue in the face and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio O app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…llercoasters.mp3	How Rollercoasters Work, Minus the Fun	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-rollercoasters-work-minus-the-fun	Whether you're a rollercoaster fan or avoid them like the plague, there's no denying that these contraptions are striking examples of physics at work. So how do they actually work? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down the mechanics of rollercoasters.	Whether you're a rollercoaster fan or avoid them like the plague, there's no denying that these contraptions are striking examples of physics at work. So how do they actually work? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down the mechanics of rollercoasters.	Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:04:21 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=15, tm_min=4, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=118, tm_isdst=0)	35269993	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopforcecom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the audio podcast that is now transcribed and available on the blogs. Was it there? Yes. The deaf and hard of hearing community is ready to go. Yes. Josh and that is exciting. Expand the group of people that can get on the train. You know what I'm saying? I think so. I hope so. You're talking about getting to experience the podcast on the bandwagon. Yes. I know what you're talking about. Chuck, are you ready to do this? Yes. Have you ever? My arms are up. You've been on a roller coaster? I am a roller coaster guy, yeah. I wouldn't call myself one of those guys who, like, make special trips to States just to ride the coaster, but I've always been a fan. There are plenty of people who do that, and not just the States. Like, Japan is big with roller coasters as well. Dubai. And do they have huge roller coasters? I could totally see. Yeah. One of them is on the list. I didn't get the list. I'll share it with you. Well, I can't wait to hear it with the other few hundred thousand people at the same time who are listening to this. Chuck I am not a roller coaster guy, despite being from originally, Ohio, which is the home of arguably the greatest amusement park in the world, cedar Point. Yeah. Sandusky. Yeah. Right there on the water. It's nice. It is very nice. On the other side, you have the Breakers Hotel, Katava Island, where my family vacationed for many years when I was a kid. And we would go to see your point pretty frequently. But from a very young age, I was terrified of roller coasters because let me paint you a picture. When I was, I think, three, my dad said, Josh, here we are at Disney World. Why don't you let me take you on this great ride called Space Mountain, which now is very tame. When you look at it, it's not tame to me, since it's been on it. It's still not tame, all right? Even from a three year old to a 20 something, it's no different. Okay. Because I've been completely spoiled on roller coasters. Now, I was a very young kid. My dad was taking me on Space Mountain. I had no idea what to expect, and I'm damaged goods now. Really? Did that just put a dent in it for you? It did. Now, if I can get the courage up to actually go on a roller coaster, I have just an amazing time, for sure. But it's the standing in line and going up the first hill that I can't do it. I can't do it. Chuck yeah. I had a similar experience in that I would not ride roller coasters. But I really enjoyed the park, Six Flags, obviously, here in Georgia, and we had the family seasons pass every year. And at a certain point in age, my father said, you're going to go on these roller coasters if we're going to pay for you to get into the park. Hanging out with the Banana Splits is not worth the money. Well, here's how bad it stuck for me, is I would wait in line the whole time because I was with my family, and then when the time came, I would walk through the car to the other side, and I used to have terrors that they would like I would slip and fall on the seat and the bar would come down and that was it. It's like a Scooby Doo themed park. Yeah. So he forced me to go in, I think, the Mind Mender, and I never looked back. I was like, thanks, dad. That was awesome. That is really great. That's the exact opposite of my story. And that one came out really well. Yeah. So I like them now. Yeah, sure. Yummy is actually ruined on rollercoaster because her dad took her on Space Mountain as well, but he pretended like he didn't know what was going on. He was freaking out, and that just ruined. So our kids never going to go on a roller coaster because both of his or her parents are going to be too nervous about that. Plus, the older you get I mean, I went to Cedar Point a couple of years ago, and it's harder when you get a little older. The lines seem longer, the heat is more impressive. Sure. And these roller coasters seem more rednecky. Yeah. And these roller coasters now are like astronaut training. I can take a lot, but I would get off of some of these thinking. Man, you're talking about the top thrill dragster. Oh, they've got a bunch of them there. That kind of made me feel queasy, and it was fun, but it also tested the limits of my intestinal fortitude. Nice. Well, let's talk about this. Okay. I have to say this article by Tom Harris, who's on par with the Grabster, in my opinion. Yeah, Tom's good. He basically breaks down exactly what's going on on a roller coaster. And I was kind of hoping that understanding this would make me feel better about it. I don't think it's had any effect on that at all. But at the very least, now you and I can explain what the deal is with roller coaster. That's right. Let's start chuck, let's take it back to 16th century Russia. Who would have thunk it? That's where it all began. Josh you're right. Originally, they had these ice slides, very steep wooden slides covered in ice. You got a little sled, and I imagine it looks sort of like the long, straight water slide that they have today. Or I took it like the ski jump, but without the jump part at the bottom. But it wasn't just a sled. This slides were covered in ice. The track was but then at times you could also ride a block of ice. So you can imagine some crazy 16th century Russians riding a block of ice down to 70 foot slope into a sand pit loaded on vodka. Yeah, probably. That is all roller coaster historians agree, the beginning of roller coasters, right? Yeah. And the next step is a little somewhat disputed, but the best story we found was that the French got on board and said, we're going to build one of these. But in France it got hot, the ice melted. So they said, well, let's just wax the wood. And then they said, hey, let's just put wheels on it. And all of a sudden you had a wheeled roller coaster in 1817. Yeah. First one. Yeah. The first one was the Russian mountains of Belleville on Francis. The Ruzza Belville. Yeah. And like you said, 1817. That was introduced. And from that point on, that was kind of like the explosion of modern well, I don't want to say explosion of modern roller coasters because it took a good 30, 40, 50 years. But after that, it exploded. Right. Yeah. The United States and Pennsylvania in the mid 1800 had the first one in the US. And it was sort of like they still have these two that go up the side of a mountain. I know. I've been on the incline railway in Tennessee. Yeah, that's sort of what it's like. Terrifying, too. It basically was an old coal line that they would take you up in a cart slowly, and they call it a scenic tour. And then I get the impression they would let you down a little more quickly. Yes. Adding to the thrill. And this is like 1850. It was the mid 19th century, and it cost one dollars. And I went and I did the West Egg inflation calculator. 25 88, $2,010. What a rip. I don't know, man. I mean, this is it no other thing even resembling a roller coaster in the United States. You're going to pay $25. Either that or playing Russian roulette. Yeah. It probably ensured those rich people, too. Sure. Which rich people in old coal cars. Yes. So from that point on, Pennsylvania apparently has had the longstanding tradition, longstanding history of roller coasters, because they had that called the Mount Chunk Switchback Railway. That was that first roller coaster you described. And then they had real ones, like Kennywood Park. Still there one of the first amusement parks. Yeah, it is still there. And then, of course, the world famous Coney Island. And then the 1920s happened and there were as many rides as many rides, I don't know, roller coasters, but there were as many rides in operation in 1920 as there were many states. No. As there are roller coasters today. Oh, really? Yeah. So they replaced the old, obviously. Well, yeah, that's part of it. But at the same time, you would think, like, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and there'd be more and more. But the Great Depression in World War II kind of cut the head off of roller coasters and amusement parks for a while. It wasn't until the that the advent of the modern roller coaster that you know and love today and I hate really began. Right. So you don't even go to parks probably, then. Right. What's the point? I went to doing wood. That was fun, but we wouldn't ride that roller coaster. That's pretty low stress, I would think, as far as because there's so much other stuff to do. It's no cedar point. No cedar point. It's just like shame, humility, shame every turn. So should we talk about some of the components of the train itself and how it works? I think we should. Because really, I was surprised at how ridiculously simple this is. Yes. And you know what? I didn't know and maybe I'm a dummy, but I didn't realize that almost all of the ride is based on just Ford momentum. And so it's acceleration and gravity. Yeah. All those things combined. But it's not like there are points along the track that like, oh, we're slowing down. We need to give you an extra magnetic boost at this point. Right. Yes. It's all found in that initial first hill. Yes. Which you're carried up the hill many times by a chain lift. That sound probably strikes fear in your heart. Yeah. Or the slower version is even worse. Yes. And that is sort of like a bike chain on a loop. And there's a motor that's just kind of turning. Yes. There's a gear at the top and a motor at the bottom. And you hook onto it with something called a chain dog. It's basically a hook, and it pulls you up the hill. Like on a conveyor belt. Yes. And then releases you at the top. And then physics does its thing. Right. And then another way to get up the hill is the catapult launch lift, which is slightly more sophisticated. What was the name of the ride? Kingdoctor. Yes. I had an idea, actually, that might be magnetic. Yeah. Well, there's basically two ways to do it. The linear induction motor produces magnets, and they are attracted to one another. And the motor is attached to the train cars and the motor is moving along the track because of these two magnetic fields that are attracted to one another. And it's pulling the train with it. Yeah. And that can generate really high, precise speeds all of a sudden. Which I prefer being shot out of a cannon on the kingdom. Exactly. And then another way to do it is to have two sets of wheels that are spinning really quickly that kind of grip the train cars and then shoot you up there, too. Both massive acceleration. Initially, I think. I don't know what the number is, but zero to 60 in the blink of an eye. Yeah. Is it the top speed or the top thrill dragster? I think it's top thrill drags. Okay. So that one goes to 120 miles an hour in a second or two. Yeah. It's a top speed of 120. And you must get that right out of the gate. Right. And then lastly, the really big component that operates roller coasters are the brakes. Yeah. And they're not so different than any kind of disc brake in theory. Basically, it clamps down on these metal fence and the pads slow it down when the little 16 year old pimpley faced kid pushes the button. Actually, it's all computers, but yeah. Don't scare people. I like to think that your life is in that boy's hands. Right. That one teenager from The Simpsons. I forgot to push the button. So those are the components of the these are the moving parts, right? Yeah. But then you also have the track itself, which is basically broken down into two categories. You have steel coasters and you have wooden coasters. Right. Woody's, I think, is there affectionately known by enthusiasts by sickos, actually, I don't know. I think they're called Woodys. I might have just made that up. So, obviously, the woodies are those big old school ones you still see. I don't even think they make wooden ones at all anymore, do they? I don't know. Because the tallest one is the son of the beast at Kings Island or King's Dominion. And that one is old. That's like 80s. Yeah. And I would imagine they keep topping them if they were going to keep building them. Well, so the deal obviously, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. There's not nearly as much flex in stiff wood planks, so they don't do a tons of twisting and turning. It's really just about up and down, up and down. Plus, height is a big factor as well, I think it's so high. The sun of the Beast is about half as tall as the highest steel coaster. Yeah. Right. And I would imagine expense is kind of a big deal. Maintenance is huge because these are basically like railroad ties. Every few feet and they're interlocking and supporting each hill and twist and turn. They're just inherently more dangerous because they are less precise. Yes. But for nostalgia, you can't beat it. That is true. Then, of course, you have the steel track and these are the ones where you suddenly can go upside down on a corkscrew. Yeah. And you can dangle from it and basically just come as close to death as possible. Yes. Josh is when tubular steel first made its debut. And here you got wheels that are made of polyurethane or nylon, sort of more like a skateboarding wheel. Yeah. They generally have, like, wheels on top, wheels on the side, wheels on the bottom, and it's just clamped down on that sucker. Yes. Very well. Yeah. Don't be afraid, then. There's other ways that the train car can be attached to the track. You can have a suspended coaster, which hangs down. Yeah, I love that. From a track above. Those are fun. And it's not fused, so you can kind of turn or flip out to the side. That's awesome. Flip out in general, yeah. And then there's the inverted coaster, which is the same thing, except it's fused to the track. It's not going from side to side. Rigid is the word I'm looking for. Right. Yes. What else? You've got? The flying. That's when you're in a seated position, but you're first. Yeah. But you're rotated up, and I think that's the one at Six Flags, you're, like, sitting flat, and then they pull you up and backwards until you are completely 90 degree straight down, and then they'll let you go and you start from there. Right. There's also ones where you're sitting, and then, like, the car actually reconfigures, so you're flat. So your chest is parallel to the ground as if you're flying. Right? Yes. Okay. Is that the fourth dimension? I think fourth dimension would be maybe like if you have a suspended coaster and it was on a ball bearing joint, so when you went around a curve, you could actually do a 360 and kick out to the side. It's not just forward, back, up, down. I've written a fourth dimension. Are they horrible? No, it's basically you're sitting in a seat that's like a wing that is on the outside of the track. So you have the track in the center and these two little wings on each side. And as you're going through these loops, your car itself, your seat itself is actually performing loops as well, sometimes in the opposite direction of the loop you're currently in. That sounds awful. Yeah, it sounds like also what you just described is a pipeline coaster as well, where, like, the tube, the steel tube is going in down the middle of the car. The fourth dimension is just an extra spin on the pipeline design. Right. Spin, literally. Yeah. I didn't even mean that. And then, of course, the stand up. The traditional sit down. Yeah, stand up. You like those, I think I've only been on one and I liked it. Yeah. There's the Loch Ness, I think. Kings island. Yeah. I don't know too much for you. Well, it didn't add much of it. You're like, I have to stand up all day. I go on a roller coaster so I can sit for a while, for my money. The ones where you hang down in the seat, like, if you sit on the outside front row of those, it's just like it feels like you're flying. Yeah. A lot of fun. Yes. I've not been on one of those probably never will. And then, of course, there's Bob Sled wheeled trains on a Ushaped. Track. Probably the most dangerous and old timing of all, I would think. Basically like the retro Russian sled thing. Except that the black device. That's right. Okay, so there you go. There's a roller coaster. These are all the parts moving, and otherwise, it's physics time. Now it is physics time. So, Chuck, basically, a roller coaster ride is an interplay of two forces. You have gravity, the downward pull of gravity, and the force of acceleration. Yeah. Acceleration, to me, is where it all happens. Okay. I mean, they're all actually working together along with the visual cues, which we'll get to is really what makes it happen. But the acceleration, to me, is where you get your rush. Okay. This is physics, but it's actually pretty interesting because we can explain things like the feeling of your stomach leaving your body, that kind of thing. Yeah. So don't go away. Okay. Chuck to gain momentum, to generate speed. Velocity. Forward momentum inertia, I think, is what it's called. Right? Yeah. Just about every roller coaster has a first hill, right? Yeah. That gets you going. It's always got to be the tallest one, right? Yes. And when you're at that point, you are at the peak of what's called potential energy. As you're going up the hill, you're increasing potential energy until you crest the hill and gravity takes over, pulling you downward. Right. And at that point, your potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, which is that downward momentum. That's right. So as you go further and further down the hill, you lose potential energy, you gain kinetic energy, and then every successive hill after that takes advantage of a constant change between kinetic and potential energy to keep your speed going, to get it going faster, to slow you down. And that's how the roller coaster stays going as quickly as it does throughout the whole ride, and it stays in motion. Mr. Isaac Newton had a little rule. Let's call it a law first law of motion that something in motion tends to stay in motion, and that's what's going on here. And the roller coasters are precisely designed. Like, you don't want to go down that first hill and go up the second hill and be like, oh, I couldn't quite make it. And then you're going back down. Although the kingdica has been known to not be able to make it up that hill. What? Yes. It happened to me once. We did the first TV commercial for The Kingdom of I was working on it, so we wrote it, like, a dozen times without anyone there, and a couple of times, and it may not do that anymore. They might have been working the kinks out. You get shot up straight up in the air, and you come back down and do it again. They relaunch you. It may still happen. You have this look of terror, Josh, is just falling over. So let me get some smelling salts. All right? Jeez. Okay. See, I love it, though, because you get two shoots out of the gate, which is the most fun part. Yeah. I mean, I could see how you would appreciate that. I find that it's just awful. I wish you hadn't told me that. I'm never going on that thing. All right, so like you said, object in motion tends to stay in motion, and there are opposing forces. But any roller coaster track is going to be designed to take advantage of building up potential energy and then releasing it as kinetic. Right. Yes. So while this is happening, you have acceleration, but you also have gravity, and gravity is constantly exerting a downward pressure on your body. The reason gravity is exerting that pressure is because chuck, did you know that the Earth's atmosphere actually has measurable weight? And it's considerable. Okay. Can I tell you what it is? Yeah. Four close 4.41 quadrillion tons. Wow. So that's four comma 41, and then 13 zeros. That's a lot. That is that's a lot of weight. Obviously, it's not pressing down on you all at once, or else you would be crushed into oblivion. Right. Pushing up. Right. Well, gravity is pushing down, and you should conceivably. If the Earth was like a kind of a warm marshmallow, you'll go right into the center. Yeah. But you don't, because the Earth isn't a warm marshmallow, so the ground actually presses back up. Right. There's pressure from the resistance created by the ground, and that's the sensation of weight. Exactly. Because the bones in your feet press up to the bones on your leg and et cetera, et cetera, and all of a sudden, you feel like you have a little bit of weight to you. Right. Yes. So that's the feeling of gravity. Yes. Then acceleration has its own feeling. Yeah. And that's my favorite, because that's when your body and it's interesting because it's an opposite force acting on you. If you're being shot forward at 100 miles an hour, you're going to be feeling like you're being pushed backward. Right. And with both gravity and with acceleration, you feel the opposite, like you're being pressed down by gravity, but you feel the resistance from the Earth yeah. Because you're a nurse is different than your little train car that you're in. Well, that's the same. Yes, it's the same. With acceleration and gravity, you feel the opposite feeling. So, like you said, when you're being shot forward, it feels like you're being pressed back in your seat. That's actually your seat pressing on your back, which that's the fact of the roller coaster podcast. Yeah. That's great. Actually, I think we'll get to the mine with the stomach thing. Okay. And then similarly, Chuck, when the roller coaster slows down, you feel like, say, the harness or the safety bar in front of you pressing into you yeah. Right. So you're feeling the opposite sensation, like the bottom of the hill, let's say, is when you'll feel most heavy, and we're using air quotes usually say that, but I stole it. Right. The other reason for the sensations that you feel is that you're in the car, and the car is being acted on in its own way. Yeah. That's different than the way you're being acted on. So there's not just an interplay between these forces, but there's an interplay between you and the car. Like the seat pushing on you, the harness pushing on you, or maybe even feeling like you're lifting up. Right, right. So talk about that. Yeah. That is the cool weightless feeling you get. You reach a certain point eventually where acceleration and gravity balance each other out, so that's where you feel weightless. Actually. Should we get to the stomach part? Yeah. What's going on inside your body is you're not a solid chunk of wood. Most of us aren't. Most of us are comprised of different organs all placed in this gushy body inside. So these things are going to react differently. Your different organs are going to react different apart from one another. So if you have that weightless feeling that is actually your stomach having less force exerted on it in a downward motion. So you feel like your stomach is going up because it kind of is. Yeah. And that's when you're coming down a hill, and the force of acceleration and the force of gravity are equal. That's airtime, baby. Well, airtime is when acceleration exceeds gravity, and you feel like you don't just feel like you're being pulled upwards. If you let go, you will lift up in your seat. Right. Because, again, the forces are acting differently on the car than they are on you. And it's just like a cartoon where, like, your head stays here and your neck elongates. Yeah. It's virtually the same thing. It's based on that principle that our bodies aren't solid, like you said. Right. And that'll happen, obviously, in a free fall ride or when you crest the top of a large hill, you'll feel like you're coming out of your seat because you are. Right. So that's airtime when you are actually out of your seat. Right? Yes. That is the free fall. That's the money moment. That's when you place the penny on your knee and you watch it float. Yeah. It's kind of dangerous, probably. Well, it depends. We shouldn't recommend that. Let's not. Okay. And then Chuck, so you've got the interplay between you and the car. Yeah. These two forces acting on you, gravity and acceleration. And then also, like you said, there's visual cues. The way that a roller coaster designed is so that things are whooshing past you. You're taken into a concrete bunker. All of a sudden, you feel like you're about to smack your head on it. So you have not just the physical feelings, but you have empirical sensations of just going really fast in a very dangerous way or very dangerous place. Yes. See, my fact of the show actually is not the stomach, but the fact that you as a person, your body cannot feel velocity. And it sounds weird to say that, but if you think about it, if you're on the bullet train and you're standing on the bullet train, you're not going, whoa, pushing towards the back of the train. The only thing your body can feel is a change in velocity, which is acceleration. Yes. And they use that constantly on a rollercoaster. Yeah, that's what they're doing. They're taking advantage of the visual cues and gravity and acceleration and kinetic and potential energy, and they're giving you the right of your life. Okay. So if you don't close your eyes on a roller coaster because you're missing out on a very important aspect of it, is what I say. Yeah. Close your eyes. I have a picture I used to I don't know where it is now of me on the Millennium Coaster at Cedar Point. And it was like one of the official pictures they take you after the scariest hill, and my eyes are wide open, but my body is clearly vacant. I've left my body for that moment. Did you evacuate your bowels? No, I evacuated my body, but not my bowel. Okay, that's good. I will now admit to that. I got a Cedar Point with you so bad now. Maybe someday. Okay. I mean, you've got in laws up there. Yeah. So is it safe? I know that you have a heights things, so that's probably where a lot of that comes from. But is it safe? Are you in danger? It depends. Well, not really. Last week there was a three year old that died at a place called Go Bananas in Chicago. Really? And yeah, it looks like basically a three year old shouldn't have been on this ride, but it doesn't look like there was any kind of roller coaster air. The kid crawled out from underneath the safety bar, fell out, fell like three or 4ft, which wasn't bad, but fell onto the track and was hit by another car. So it does happen. But this is so infrequent. And that was such a freak occurrence that to answer your question, the way you wanted to hear it, yes, it's safe. Well, we have some stats here from the article. Josh, in 2006, it was a little old. 335,000,000 people visited theme parks, and 6500 of them sought medical attention that year. But as Tom Harris points out, these are people who visited theme parks. So for the whole theme park, not just the roller coasters, it could have slipped on the way into the bathroom. They could have gotten in a fist fight with Captain America. That's right. So that's total injuries or total people seeking medical attention. Only 130 of those required overnight hospitalization. And so that means. Your risk of serious injury just by entering a park is one in 25 million. Your chances of fatal injury is one and 1.5 billion. And your chances of a fatal injury in a car crash are 15 and 10,000. And they always use car crash. Yeah. Go feel safe in your car now. I guess the most dangerous thing you can do is get in the car. Yeah. Okay. I wonder though, how much of that obviously has to do with the fact that we don't ride around in roller coasters that frequently. Yeah, we ride around in our cars pretty frequently. So I wonder if the time spent and made it comparable, like how much that margin would narrow. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, in 2003 and the Brain Injury Institute of America studied brain fatalities and they found that these people had something going on beforehand. So it's not the ride. People who suffered death from head injuries or brain injuries yeah. Or people are coastal. Yeah. They had undetected brain conditions already in place. So our advice is those little warnings that you see, like if you have a bad back or you're pregnant or high blood pressure, those aren't just there willy nilly. You should take heed and don't go on the ride if you fit any of those descriptors. I feel so bad for that family in Chicago. I do too. That's awful. I have some world records. Should we go over those? That's a rough transition. It was. Yeah. Let's do it. Tallest is the kingdaka at New Jersey, 400 and 656ft total with a drop of 428 ft. 90 deg angle. Yeah, I saw it. Oh yeah. And if you are a roller coaster person or you are thrilled by roller coasters or terrified by them, you can go on to YouTube and type in a roller coaster name or just roller coaster. And people love to make little videos from the first car of the roller coaster ride. And it's pretty much a POV experience. Very shaky one. Yeah. The fastest is in Dubai. That is at Ferrari World. And the ride is the Formula Rosa and that goes 149 miles an hour, which is really fast if you're not used to going that fast. There are twelve coasters worldwide, Josh, with a descent angle equal to or greater than 90 degrees. I think the Millennium coaster has one. They go up to 97 deg. You're actually like you're inverted, you're angled back the other way. And the Millennium has a safety bar and that's it. Oh, is that it? Yeah. So you really feel like you're about to just flip right out of the car. Terrifying. The largest Woody is the son of the Beast. I think you mentioned that one. The screen machine here in Atlanta was for a very short time in the early 70s. It was like 100ft tall. And the fastest Woody is 78 miles an hour. And that's also sun in the beast. It's like a wheezing sound as it comes into the station. The oldest one is leap the dips. What it's called? Leap the Dips. That sounds like an old timey road. Oh, yeah. Step right up and leap the dips. No, it is at Lakemont Park in Altuna, Pennsylvania, and it was built in two and it's still running. That's another one in Pennsylvania. Yeah. Pennsylvania is the heart and soul of this country's historic roller coasters in Ohio. I just decreed that. Okay. So again, you can go on to YouTube, check out some pretty cool first person viewpoint roller coaster rides. Also, one of my favorite things to do is to look up photo spreads of abandoned amusement parks. There are some really cool ones across the world. Creepy. And then you should I strongly recommend and I think you can join me in that. Right, chuck in going to read this article how Roller Coasters Work. It has an entire section on how loop the loops work. Physics. Chuck and I opted not to cover that. But there's a whole bunch of pretty cool stuff and cool pictures. Yeah, in there. And little animation, too, on one of them. Yeah. It's just a quality article. Yeah. So before you hit the park this summer, you can pour your friends to death by telling them all about how it works. Exactly. You can type in rollercoasters, two words in the handysarchbar athousepworks.com to get that article. And I guess that brings up listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this for a good cause from an old friend. Note that's from my friend Jason Jenkins, and he lives in Japan, married a Japanese lady. Is he the one you're talking about in the nuclear Meltdown podcast? Yes. Okay. My only friend in Japan, although we have lots of podcast fans here and you are like friends as well. So Jason writes in Jinky is what we call him Jinkie here Apollo as well. Buddy, despite what you may have read, we are all alive and not turning into an outtake from the latest biohazard sequel. Not 100% back to normal, of course, but Tokyo and 90% of the country is much more work a day life than a lot of the media make it out to be. I could go on, but I'll leave it at there. I write to pitch a possible interesting podcast or article for the site. Have you heard of Quake book? Have you heard of quickbook? I have. You want to describe what it is? Basically an expat, an American expat. I think British expat in Japan got a hold of some tweets and basically turned, I guess, on the ground social media coverage of the quake and the tsunami and the nuclear crisis into an ebook. Basically like a coffee table ebook. He got this whole I think he used Twitter to enlist somebody to do translations and it just became this huge, massive grassroots push to kind of document this from the people's view, right? Yeah. And it was titled two minutes and 46 seconds after the quake struck. So immediately, this thing was launched without even probably knowing what they were launching at the time. Yeah. But now there are 30,000 words of short personal accounts and the like from 200 writers, editors, designers, artists that have all chipped in for this thing. Very cool. So Jason goes on to say, amazing project. Completely crowd sourced through Twitter and then pitched to Amazon, who agreed to waive their usual cut. So all of the money made by this ebook goes straight to Japan Red Cross 100%. He said no one made a sin on it. Completely volunteer. These guys went from an initial idea to writing to production to products in one month. It's really astounding, if you think about it. Several famous semi famous peeps contributed. William Gibson, Yoko Ono, Barry Eisler, Jake Adelstein, et cetera. I'm not directly involved with it, but a lot of my friends are, either in writing their stories or helping to put the book together. Editing, layout, PR, et cetera. We are all trying to get Quickbook as much attention as possible, and that is from my buddy Jason Jenkins, and I'm going to blog about it and send it out on Facebook. And if you want to support Japan Red Cross, which you should, then go out and buy QuickBooks because, you know, it's 100% of the profits are going. Where do they get a Chuck? Amazon? Yeah. I mean, I'd say that's a good place. Or just search Quickbook on your favorite search. There's QuickBooks Twitter feeds and Facebook and all that stuff. And it's a great way to support the calls over there. Very cool. Good for you, Chuck. Good for Jankie. Yeah, you have to meet Janky one day. I'm sure I will. Maybe in one of your trips. Which opinions? I'm sure I will. We'll run into each other, maybe. So Tokyo is a small town. Yeah. I'll get into Tokyo and just be like, Janky. You never know. Janky. That's it. All right. If you have a picture of yourself terrified on a roller coaster, we want to see it. You can go post it on our Facebook page. That's facebook. Comstuckyyshonow. You can tweet it to us. S Y SK. Right. And then, of course, there's always old fashioned email, which we still always love to get, but don't necessarily respond to every single one because trucks getting up there in years. You can send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howstep works.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The house deforce iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1224690947881hsw-sysk-tibet-altitude-sickness.mp3	How do Tibetans avoid altitude sickness?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-do-tibetans-avoid-altitude-sickness	Due to the region's elevation, the average traveler to Tibet often experiences altitude sickness -- a condition caused by a lack of oxygen in the blood. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn how Tibetans have adapted to life in high altitudes.	Due to the region's elevation, the average traveler to Tibet often experiences altitude sickness -- a condition caused by a lack of oxygen in the blood. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn how Tibetans have adapted to life in high altitudes.	Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=297, tm_isdst=0)	11966339	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, friends. You know, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted it in compatibility. Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Objects carry a lot of power. They tell stories about people, places, or a time in history. On Mysteries at the Museum, the podcast from Travel Channel don wildman searches for objects that tell shocking stories of American history. Like the ordinary blue mailbox that changed the course of a massive spy case in the Cold War. Uncover the histories behind extraordinary objects. Listen to Mysteries at the Museum on Apple Podcasts spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. This podcast is brought to you by GoToMeeting. The best way to hold meetings over the Internet? Reduce travel expenses, save time. Just hold an online meeting with GoToMeeting. Try it. Free visit gotomeeading.com stuff. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Where? Right there. Oh. You okay? Yeah. How's it going, Chuck? It's going great. Good. I'm glad to hear it. I don't know how many times a year you go to Tibet these days. I had to cut back to two just because of finances in the economy. Yeah. I mean, jet fuel is very expensive. Do you ever fly first class, business class, nothing but oh, wow. Sometimes I fly it in the cockpit. It's awesome. Which is above first class, actually. Oh, yeah, definitely. That's like pilot class. Do you know a pilot? Is that how you get in or do you kind of break in? No, you just show up like, hey, how's it going? I'm an Amiable guy. They let me in there, then they lock the door, of course, for safety reasons. Sure. After you're in. Yes. Yeah, I can see that. Well, when you've been to Tibet, which, as I'm sure you know, is the rooftop of the world right there's all sorts of villages, like, high up on these mountains. Have you toured any of them? No, I've never been to Tibet. Okay, all that was a lie then. I thought you meant Tibet. Georgia. You fly to Tibet? Georgia. Yes. That's a short flight. It is. Okay. Well, no, Chuck, we're talking about Tibet, the much disputed province outside of China. Right. I'm not entirely certain. Is it a part of China yet? I don't know. And I actually look today and to see if it was, in fact a country and I think technically they still have to call it a region or province. I got you. And I know they have the government in exile right. By the Dalai Lama, who I actually saw once. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. Okay, so anyway, that's the Tibet we're talking about, where the Dalai Lama hails from. Right, okay. Well, it turns out that there are villages everywhere. I've never visited either, I just read about it. There's villages on the tops of these mountains, which is why it's called the Rooftop of the World. And these people are living at like 16,000ft above sea level, which is really high. Really? Denver, our mile high city, is like 5000ft above sea level. So these people make Denver look like nothing. Yeah, it's technically, I think, the 3.3 miles high country region. Right. That's what it's more commonly called. Yeah. So if you go, if you're just a regular sea level dweller like you or I, and we go visit Tibet, especially when we're visiting like these highest villages, generally we would get hypoxia. Exactly. Altitude sickness, which is like nausea, dizziness, vomiting, shortness of breath, you can actually die from it. And so you're sitting there puking your guts out, wishing you were dead. And all of these Tibetans are running around happy as clams. Right. Sherpas are laughing at you. Sure. Yeah. They're doing somer salts and pointing and laughing. You're wondering what is going on here? Why aren't these people all dropping dead of heart attacks left and right? What's going on? Obviously what you would think is, well, they're used to it, which makes sense. Right? Yeah. That's kind of an easy way to explain it. It is, but when you think about it, they shouldn't be used to it. Humans shouldn't be used to hypoxia. So have you heard about how Tibetans avoid altitude sickness? I have, Josh, I read your awesome article and it actually was really interesting, I thought. Yeah, I did, too, actually. It was one of those assignments where I was thinking, this is going to suck, but it turned out really well. And that actually has been my experience. The more I thought the article was going to suck, the better it turned out. Yeah, I saw that same experience, actually. Yeah, it's kind of cool. So, Chuck, a little background on hypoxia. Right? Right. All it is, it's a lack of oxygen in the blood. Right. And of course we need oxygen to carry out all sorts of vital processes like staying alive and metabolism and all that. Sure. Okay. So these people have been trying to figure out how the Tibetans aren't hypoxic. Okay. Yeah, I know. It's coming. They actually are hypoxic. I know, I was kind of amazed by that. It is. It's a little amazing. These people are running around, they're hypoxic because they're not displaying any symptoms. Right. So this, of course, raises a little bit of curiosity among researchers. If Tibetans are hypoxic, how are they not showing symptoms? Right. Why aren't they just vomiting nonstop? 24/7. Yeah. What a bad country that would be. I don't think people would want to go to Tibet if that's the case. The national flag is some guys like this projectile vomiting. Yeah. So these researchers, I think they were from I can't remember where they were from. Maybe Emery or something. Case Western. Case Western. Same thing. Close. In Ohio. Yeah. So these guys from Case Western Go, and they actually did this really hands on investigation. They used instruments that consent different types of particles and air. Right. And they ask Tibetans to breathe into this. To mouth breathe, yeah. I know. It's one of your favorite subjects, mouth breathers. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, if they're being asked to mouth breathe, as long as it's not like, your default setting, I don't have a problem with. Right. So they weren't like, your arch enemy key for Sutherland famous mouth breather. Yeah. Okay. They were mouth breathing. Agreed. But they were mouth breathing with Case Western instruments in front of them. Sure. And this is what the people found. This mystery has been solved, and it's pretty interesting stuff. When we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. That's like the big star of our exhalation. That's what everybody knows about. We also exhale this stuff called nitric oxide, which our body gets rid of as a waste product right. Through respiration. The thing is, nitric oxide actually helps dilate blood vessels. Okay. So the Tibetans have actually their bodies have acclimated to Hypoxia by keeping more of the nitric oxide in the body. Right. So their blood vessels are dilated more all the time, which means their heart has to work less. Right. Which makes it easier to deliver the oxygen throughout the body. It's pretty cool. It is very cool. Okay, so now we have a perfect example of evolution and isolation. Some humans have gone up to where humans aren't supposed to be and have adapted. They're not the only group that's done that. There are some other groups, right? Indeed. So my hypothesis would be that these other groups would display the same phenotype, the same trait. Right. You would think. Anyone living at a high altitude anywhere in the world because we evolved more or less at sea level. Is that correct? Yeah. And we're sea level species, and we're a subtropical species. Right. That's where we're supposed to be. We're beachcommers, essentially. Pretty much, yeah. But of course, we've got our Nordic friends up north, and we have our friends down in Chile and these people in Tibet. Right. Humans live where we're not supposed to live. And the Tibetans show that we can adapt. Exactly. But wouldn't you think that we would all adapt the same way, given the similar situation? I would think so. But we found out or you found out through your research that's not the case. Yes. And actually, this has been known for a while the Tibetan case Western study was, I think, within the last decade. Yeah. 2005. There's this Frenchman named Francois Viol, I believe. And in 1890 he visited the Andes. This is another high altitude, mountain dwelling people, martu Picchu, way up on the hill. South Africa. Right. So he goes down there because he had the same question a century or so ago. He wanted to know how these people were living at high altitudes when they should be suffering from hypoxia. Do you know what he found out? I do. And was it that they keep more nitric oxide? No, actually, he theorized and is correct that they had more red blood cells, a higher red blood cell count. And that's important because red blood cells contain hemoglobin, which is sort of like the FedEx man of your body. Hemoglobin delivers oxygen. Right. So their bodies produce more red blood cells. More red blood cells. I guess every part per million of blood can hold more oxygen than yours or mine. Right. Okay. So we've got two high altitude dwelling groups of people that have evolved in isolation, but have evolved to have adapted differently. That's pretty interesting. Yes. And there's a third. There is a third. Do you want to tell them about it? Yeah. This is the highlands of Ethiopia, which I didn't realize Ethiopia had highlands. I don't know much about that place. I didn't either, actually, until this very article, which is the great part about our job. We learn things all the time. Yeah. So they don't have either one of these, as you know. No. And they're living in a high altitude as well, I think the Tibetans live the highest up, but both the andy and dwellers and the people who live in the Ethiopian highlands, they're living at a high enough altitude that they should be hypoxic. Right, right. And also with studies of them, they haven't turned up any of the Ethiopian highlanders. They haven't turned up any kind of adaptation. Yeah, that's the one that really is strange. Right. They don't have any kind of oxygen delivery system like extra red blood cells. They don't maintain their no levels more than normal people. And it's possible that we just haven't found the phenotype, this adaptation. True. We haven't figured it out yet, but for all intents and purposes, these people should be dead, dying or vomiting, at the very least, all the time. Right. But they're not. No. It's weird. Yeah. And Josh, reading this article, it made me wonder, and there may be studies on this, if people from Tibet, in the Ethiopian highlands, if they have trouble when they come down to sea level or below let's say they went to Amsterdam for the weekend, which is half of Holland, resides below sea level, like, up to 20ft. Yes. I wonder if they have problems breathing or if their body adapts to that quickly or whatever. Or if there'd be, like, a rush of oxygen. Exactly. They get too much of it. Right. They might feel high all the time or something, which would be kind of cool. Of course it is. Amsterdam. Yeah. Right. I think that they would probably feel high no matter what. And hello to our Dutch friends. We love you. All right, so other than the Ethiopian highlanders, I mean, the questions have been asked and answered. We know why the Tibetans aren't hypoxic, and we also know why the andean dwellers aren't hypoxic. Right? Well, actually, Tibetans are hypoxic. Yes. How they deal with it. Right, sure. So I think we'll probably revisit it once we finally figure out what's going on with Ethiopian highlands. I think that's a great idea. And stick around to find out which article that Chuck and I think you should read. In these trying economic times, they'll save your finances. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need, right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. 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If you're looking to devalue your house for some nefarious reason, this could be a how to guide for that as well. Sure. Like spite. Fantastic. Well, you can find all this stuff, everything we've talked about@houseofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. 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https://podcasts.howstuf…talgia-final.mp3	Nostalgia is not the most toxic impulse	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/nostalgia-is-not-the-most-toxic-impulse	Nostalgia is a funny thing. It's not home sickness, it's more connected to emotions and a time in your life. But is nostalgia worthwhile? Nascent science says it just might be.	Nostalgia is a funny thing. It's not home sickness, it's more connected to emotions and a time in your life. But is nostalgia worthwhile? Nascent science says it just might be.	Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:22:27 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=13, tm_min=22, tm_sec=27, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=91, tm_isdst=0)	36641394	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Chuck. Let's go over the stuff you should know Concert calendar, my friend. We are hitting the road for the Springhead Sprung tour. We are going to be at the Neptune Theatre in lovely Seattle, Washington, on April 8, my friend. The next day, we're going to head south to Portland, Oregon, the Revolution Hall. April 9, we are going to Houston, Texas, my friend. Nice warehouse. Live on May 28, Memorial Day weekend. And finally finishing up Denver, Colorado at the Gothic Theater on May 29. Two more dates coming. Yeah, keep your ears out. And in the meantime, if you want to get tickets, you can go to Sysklive.com, powered by squarespace, and we'll see you guys on the road. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. There's so many things I could do right now. I could sing the My Buddy theme song. I could sing the theme song to Thunder the Barbarian. I could talk about top baseball cards. Yeah. And that rock card stick gum that came with it. Yeah. I don't think they have gum in baseball cards anymore, do they? I think they just gave up. The ghost wants it. Nobody wants it. It took out some kids eye and that was that. Yeah. Nostalgia. So I think we should dedicate this show to John Hodgeman. Let's I thought we kind of implicitly dedicated every show to Hodgeman. Well, we do. Why explicitly this time? Well, he is on record time and time again with the following quote nostalgia is the most toxic impulse. Oh, yeah. He doesn't like a Christmas story, does he? I don't think he's seen A Christmas Story, but he is very adamant and has been on record many times on his own podcast. Judge John Hodgeman and to me in person, when he wants to go on about how much he hates nostalgia, about how bad it is and his deal, and I'm going to mention him quite a bit in here. So he's either going to listen to this and be like, oh, my God, it's about nostalgia and these are my friends, or he's going to skip it all together. I could see him skipping it all together because he doesn't want to hear about it. We maybe should clue him in and be like, Husband, you're in the field. He'll listen to it a million times if we tell him that. So his notion is that it's a longing for a better time that does not exist, that we look back with rose colored glasses and it was not, in fact, better, and that it's toxic to do so. Right. And that's absolutely the correct definition of nostalgia. But the idea falls apart at the end when he says that it's toxic, because quite the contrary, nostalgia has been proven again and again to be quite helpful. I don't even agree that that's the definition of nostalgia. I don't think it has to be longing for a time in your past, because for me, nostalgia is not longing for that. It is just very warm remembrances and wrapping myself up in that. Man, I wish I could be 14 again. You don't wish you could be 14 again? No, not at all. What's wrong with you, Chuck? I wish I could be 26 again. Nostalgia. It's a pretty dope time in one's life, nostalgia, but I don't look back and say, man. And I also take issue with sometimes things were better back then. Yeah, but Hotsman makes a pretty good point, and so do the social scientists that support this point. Basically, by definition, when you are experiencing the emotion, this very complex, weird, understudied emotion of nostalgia, you're thinking about something in a way that it really kind of didn't actually happen. Like, the negative stuff gets cut out. Like stepping on a rusty nail right after that great memory from camp or whatever. That part gets cut out. And I disagree with that. Just the good stuff. So I'm talking about, like, the studies that support it. Yeah, but I don't think these studies are right, because it's subjective. It's very personal. I can remember well, that's social science for you. I could remember the smell of my grandparents house, their first house, and how much I loved it. And that one summer I went on my first plane trip, and I also remember biting my tongue off playing soccer and how awful that was. I don't edit that out and be like, no, everything about it was great. Like, no, I bit my tongue off, and it was terrible. Okay. I think that what you're talking about is the difference between reminiscing, which is more of an episodic memory, and nostalgia, which is almost purely just an emotional memory. No, it's an emotional memory. All right, well, then you'll just have to say, I believe you, Chuck. I believe you, Chuck. All right, so let's go back in time a little bit. There's a Swiss doctor named Johannes Hoffer Nice in 1688, and he was studying some Swiss soldiers that were stationed abroad, and he said, you know what? There's something going on here. They are depressed, they're anxious. They can't sleep. They're tired. They're even having heart palpitations and fever. They're angry really easily, and they just can't stop thinking about their home. It is almost as if they are homesick. Right. He coined the term he coined the term nostalgia from Greek nostos, which means to return home and algos, or algos pain. So the pain of yearning to return home yes. Is what he described. He literally said it's a cerebral disease of essentially demonic cause ideas of the fatherland, making them sick and longing for home. It's a no brainer. It's like these guys are fighting a war and they'd rather be back home. Yeah. It sounds like he was describing PTSD, though. As well. Yeah. Maybe because when these attendant symptoms that he talked about, like not being able to sleep or eat and having fever and heart palpitations, that's not nostalgia. Yeah. But Johannes Hoffer did set the tone for nostalgia for centuries. So either it was viewed as a physical malady or disorder or disease or a psychological one up until basically the 1980s, to tell you the truth. And at first, because the Hoffer's study of the Swiss soldiers, they actually thought that possibly it was just the Swiss who were afflicted by nostalgia. And one of the other alternative explanations for it was that the constant clanging of cowbells had done something to the nerves connecting the eardrum to the brain. That makes sense. And was basically driving these people crazy, wanting them to making them want to go home. Right. Or at least heal the cowbell. Right. Yeah. Get it off the neck. You want to hear something weird? Sure. So Hoffer also said that the ideas of the fatherland that were vibrating in the soldiers brains, he said that that was brought on by animal spirits. And I read this yesterday. The same night I was reading an article by Dr. Jack Cavarkian about human experimentation among the condemned and executed. That's what I do. Right. He mentions animal spirits whoa. In the exact same way. So apparently there was a time when they thought that they called what we would now call the electricity in the central nervous system. Animal spirits. Right. So it was old terms. Right. And I ran across it twice in one day wow. Which is basically the botter minehof phenomenon. Right. I just thought that was so weird. Yeah. And that's pretty obscure. Very obscure. It's not like, oh, I saw 1111 on the clock again today. Right. Those people. Animal spirit. All right, so fast forward a little bit. And like you said, for many years, it was looked at as a mental illness called melancholia or immigrant psychosis. Yeah. That was another thing. They thought that just immigrant semen soldiers and kids who went off to school were the ones who suffered from it. Yeah. Basically, you get shipped off somewhere and you yearn for the place that you liked better. Right. Which is called just homesickness. Homesickness. Right. But not until the 80s even did it begin to get separated. Yes. And this article points out very astutely. I thought this one was pretty good. That home is Julia Leighton Joint. Yeah. She's been around household works for a while. She's a vet? Not a veterinarian or a veteran soldier, although I don't know Julie. She might be both. Yeah, she could have. You never know. Served the MP dogs as a vet in the army. In the army. Homesickness, Julie points out, is distressing, which makes a lot of sense. And it's different from nostalgia because nostalgia generally is even though it is complex and we'll get to all that, it is generally looked at as a feeling of like pleasant feelings wash over you when you think of the good old days in direct contradiction to Hodgman's wacky ideas. All right, so let's talk about it. Okay. Since it was up until then, the late 1980 is viewed as basically an attendant symptom or somehow tied into depression or some other psychological malady. It wasn't until very recently that the social sciences started to say, I don't know if that's necessarily true, let's look into it. So the actual study of nostalgia itself is extremely new, and it's still very much understudy, which is to say that the social sciences has not yielded any kind of definitive answer as to what nostalgia is, where it comes from. There seems to be a general consensus that it is an emotion, but it's a complex secondary emotion. Meaning it's not anger, it's not fear, it's not joy, but it seems to be secondary. And it seems to spring from society in the same way that a secondary emotion like embarrassment or self consciousness has arisen from our experience in society. Nostalgia seems to have come in the same way. Yeah. And they've noticed some trends, which is about as good as you can do when you're studying something like nostalgia. And when we talk about some of these real studies, they're frustrating for me to read, but we'll get to those. But some of the trends, if you are a worry wart, you might be a little more prone to nostalgize because you're trying to escape your worries and think about a happier time when you're on the beach, toes in the sand, maybe. And the experts think that if you are in transitional periods of your life, you're going to be more prone. Like if you're a kid growing into an adult, or if you are in your forty s and fifty s and you're transitioning into fifty s or sixty s. Well, I'm in my 40s from middle age into senior adulthood. Yeah. These transitional big transitions in your life, you might be a little more prone to sort of look at your life and think, because what have I done with my life is also tied to nostalgia. And that makes sense utterly and completely, because what they found with nostalgia is that it's like you said, it's a means of escapism. And during these times where you're going from adolescents into young adulthood or middle aged into old adulthood, that's a place of fear. What's coming next? And you start thinking about the good times that you've had almost involuntarily it seems like nostalgia happens. I'm a little nervous right now. Let me nostalgia it's almost like an involuntary mental trigger that takes place. Although that is the thing Julia points out that people can use it almost like a bag of tricks if they are prone to depression, to call upon these things. And it's like nostalgia can be a tool. I mean, you'd have to kind of conjure it up. Sure. No, I know you can, but that's not necessarily how it happens. And they found that there are plenty of things that trigger it. Like music, like smells, different. Things that basically serve as mnemonic devices in the formation of emotional memories. And the thing that's come up from the study that has been done on nostalgia is that it seems to be universal. It's not culturally bound. And the triggers that trigger nostalgia are also universal. So it'll be like a social memory of a social experience with friends and family. Sure. And that might be culturally bound, like Thanksgiving here in America or Canada, where they have fake Thanksgiving a month early. But then it might be carnival down in Buenos Aires or something like that. So the actual experience might be culturally bound, but the trigger itself, having a good time at, like, a holiday is universal. Yeah. So let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about triggers more after this. And we'll let Hodgman take a deep breath and maybe run around the block because I sense he's getting angry. So we're back here we are. We have to establish that because I got confused. You mentioned music being a trigger. That is very powerful. So powerful. And again, it's variant among people's, individual experience. But music, for me, I still like, thinking about this is huge nostalgia trigger. But I think I realized that almost 100% of the time, it's a song that I haven't heard for a long, long time. So if I hear Jay Giles'fanscenter fold, great song, reminds me of elementary school in a very powerful way and even specific things. But I've heard that song a gazillion times. I hear it once a week on classic rock radio. So it doesn't flood you with nostalgia? No, no more. We've heard it too much. It's over. You right. But if I hear a song from all of my CDs are packed up in the attic, and most of those are from like a certain period of my life where I bought CDs. So if you hear True Blue, you just start weeping. Not True Blue. More recent than that. But if I hear a song from one of my CDs from the mid ninety S that I just may not have heard in a long time, that is like super, super powerful. Well, like what song? I don't know. Just like a song for my La. Days, maybe. Okay. Or just something I don't listen. Like something from college that I don't listen to anymore. And it's like, never played on the radio. Like I'll hear Urban Dance Squad, Deeper, Shade of Soul. Deeper Shade of Soul. Remember? No. It sounds like a pretty 90 song, though. Yeah, it was very ninety S. And you never hear that song anymore. Sure. So if I hear that song, like, just now, I just sang a little bit of it. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great. I'm not feeling toxic. Hodgeman's mad at you right now. I know it feels wonderful. John, stop. And I don't want to go back in time to then either. I'm just remembering like, man, what a great song that takes me back to college. Yeah. And the reason why songs tend to be so powerful and potent, especially from a certain age. Typically adolescents. Right. Supposedly has to do with the way the brain is working. Right. Then everyone says teenagers have like raging hormones going on. Sure. Well, there is a lot more brain chemistry floating around than happens throughout the rest of your life. So it's easier to form very powerful emotional memories and when you're listening to music at that age, so that when you go back and listen to it, it's basically going back into your card catalog of a brain and unlocking that emotional memory so you get to experience it a little bit again. And then that's nostalgia brought on by music. Yeah, that makes sense for me. The one that gets me the most is scent. Yeah, scent and taste for me are really powerful too. So, like the smell of pillsbury, cinnamon rolls and orange rolls. It's like Christmas. Age eight. Wow. Like every time now. Do you ever eat that stuff now? I just did yesterday. As a little trip down memory lane. Yes. Well, not as it but it inevitably brought it on. Okay, so you didn't say like, I'm doing a nostalgia podcast, I'm going to go get some of those sweet rolls. No, it was totally coincidental, actually. Like the animal spirits. Yeah. What I've been doing lately is seeking out things that I haven't had in forever just to see what happens. Oh, yeah. Basically you're the other day. You're like Strange Days. Remember that movie with Ray finds? Yeah. Boy, that takes me back, but with nostalgia. What flavor? Slurpee. I did the same. I always did a mixed cherry and coke. Oh, nice. And I haven't had a slurpee since probably like high school. And that taste was so familiar and exactly how I remember, but it wasn't like, oh, this takes me back to those days. This is interesting. I ate a circus peanut the other day. Oh, gross. They're awful. But I haven't had one since I was probably ten. I've avoided those my whole life. Yeah. And the other one that gets me remember when you were a kid trick or treating and you would get those chewy peanut butter treats and the waxy wrappers? Yeah. I don't remember what they're called. There were no name. And like 50 people are going to email. Oh, really? Sure. Yeah. It's got to be that orange. Like those man, instant nostalgia. Yeah. Nice. Not toxic. Yeah, it's wonderful. Peanut butter twix can do that for me. It was one of my first favorite candy bars. I thought you might say like, it takes me back to 2008. No, they had peanut butter twists in the 80s. They tried it for a little while. They were awesome stopped. Yeah. They don't have those anymore, do they? Oh, now it's back. Oh, it is. Okay. Is that one in your pocket? It's been tucked into my cheek right now. So taste, they think, induces nostalgia pretty heavily because the pathways carrying information from taste buds are in the limbic system, which is where scent is as well. Yeah. And your olfactory bulb is super duper in the limbic system, and it's actually got a direct connection to the amygdala, which helps experience emotions. And what's the other component of the limbic system? The hippocampus. Yeah, the hippocampus, which sorts and stores memory. So your olfactory bulb itself is almost literally plugged in to the two components of your brain that form emotional memories. Which is one reason why cent can trigger nostalgia so powerfully too. Yeah. I wondered if that means that if it's more immediate, then it's stronger. Like if it's just a quicker link, maybe like literally the pathway is shorter. Right. Could be interesting. That's what Layton supposed. Yeah, I don't think she pulled that out of her head. I think that's the common belief right, for something that they don't understand that much. Yes. And I think that's probably got to be coming through to dear listeners right now. There's a lot of grasping at threads going on, in part because it is just very early on in the study of nostalgia. There's not a lot of people studying it, and so the number of theories is kind of narrow, but a lot of it does make sense. Yeah. And when you look at these studies, which we'll talk about, so many of them hinge on you're feeling nostalgic. All right, let's do something to you, right? Or you're not feeling nostalgic. Let's do the same thing to you. Yeah. This is a very tough study to pull off. It totally is. And that's a big problem that the social sciences run up against, is like they are studying subjective reports. Well, the average person can't tell you how they're feeling even when they sit there and think about how they're feeling. So there are standardized questionnaires that have become accepted in the field that say this scores a person's feeling of nostalgia. There's actually a questionnaire that is designed to rate how nostalgic you are at the time you take it. There are ways to say it's not just totally willy nilly, but when you compare it to something, say, like biology or something like that, it's slightly whisper. Agreed. Should we take a Wispy break? Yeah. And talk about some of these studies after this. Yeah. All right, buddy. We teased on some studies, and I don't want to say I made fun of them, but I think you pointed out some of their inherent flaws. Sure. So let's talk about them. Here is one where they had subjects read about different things. One was a tsunami disaster, like one bad thing, two good things. One was a disaster. One was the successful landing of a space probe, another one was the birth of a polar bear and a zoo, which, I mean, depending on like that right there. You might hate polar bears, you might hate zoos. It's a good point. Yeah, it's a real good point. I think they probably shouldn't use that now. And it's a problem with any kind of standardized questionnaire, whether it's the Sat or the standardized questionnaire for nostalgia. Totally. So after reading these, they answered questions assessing their current levels of nostalgia. What they found was the people who read about the tsunami were the most nostalgic, which led them to believe that people call upon nostalgia when they're not feeling good about something, right. And not use it. That is the prevailing predominant theory of nostalgia these days. That it is. You can do it voluntarily, but it's basically an involuntary defense mechanism when we experience what's called discontinuity. And discontinuity comes in many forms, but all of it amounts to a reminder that we are going to eventually die one day. And that thought can come in all sorts of different forms. It can come when we have a relationship that's breaking down, when we're far away from our social network, there are any number of ways that we're reminded of our own mortality. Right? Yeah. And one of our big defense mechanisms is growing nostalgic. And it's basically built in suicide prevention because it makes you wonder, like, if we didn't have a way to get back on track, like through nostalgia, and you just entered a period of discontinuity and never got back to life's good again, where would we be as a species? Who knows? So nostalgia seems to be some sort of evolutionary trick where when we look into the void and think, oh God, I'm going to die, or my life is meaningless, or whatever, we experience nostalgia and it has this incredible flood of beneficial effects on the person who's feeling nostalgic. Yeah, I thought this one article was pretty great. When they were talking about discontinuity, they referenced Sweet Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and I think Young. Right? Like, I know you know the song. No. Very popular. Can you sing it like an urban Dance Squad song? No. Come on. You know, sweet juice. I swear I don't. If you have heard any Crosby sales and Nash song, you've heard this one. It's very famous. I'm thinking Bob Seger right now. Is it the Bob Seger song is what you mean? No, but here's the line by Stephen Stills don't let the past remind us of what we are not now. Right again. Hudson is not alone in his criticism. It seems like nostalgia could lead you down this road where you're just like, oh, the past is so much better than the present. But apparently from the study of nostalgia, it does the exact opposite. It affirms the meaning of your life. It reminds you that you are loved now, here and now. And it gets you back on track after an experience of discontinuity, which is bizarre. I'm going to sing a little bit of it. Okay. I am yours, you are mine we are what we are what have we got to lose? Right. That's that song I got you? That's a good song. Yeah, it's a great song. It's better than the Bob Seger's song, I think. There is no good Bob Seger song. That's not true. Name one. Old time rock and roll no. Terrible. Worst song ever. Turn the page. Awful. Like a rock. Awful. Catman. Do Kill me. There's one, though. That's not bad. I think we've had this conversation before. I think I've been on record as being a big Bob Secret hater. I'm not big on them either, but there's at least one or two. Oh, you'd love them. You want to get married to them. All right. It's enough about me and Bob Seger. Yeah. See, you got uncomfortable, so I'm having a moment of discontinuity. Yeah. We were talking about the studies. Right. Well, I think what we were saying was that if you look at nostalgia from the way that Hodgman looks at it, which makes sense, you would think, well, nostalgia is a bad thing, when, in fact, studies have shown that nostalgia actually gets you back on track. When you're feeling like, oh, God, I'm going to die one day, or, oh, I'm not loved, or whatever. Rather than getting stuck in reminiscing about how great the past was compared to the present, it reaffirms that the present is pretty great. Yeah. They said, and we always say they it's sort of an ambiguous body of people. I know. Sometimes we get called out by people who are paying attention. Yeah. Who is they? Researchers of nostalgia say. Yeah. They that positive mental states include higher self esteem, more socially connected, more generous, more altruistic, more optimistic, worry less about the future and death. Yeah. That makes it a part of terror management theory, which we actually did a really cool episode on. It was one of those sleepers that probably not a lot of people listen to, but it was awesome. Yeah. And they did some other studies, and this, to me, is really interesting. In China, was one study, and elsewhere, they have determined that nostalgic feelings might literally make you warmer. Right. Like physically warmer. And when I said the warm thing washes over you, they think it might have played a role in evolution. Like when you're colder and you think of these thoughts, you get warmer. Yeah. From this study in China, they found that the study participants, when they were cold and they were nostalgizing, they were imagining themselves that they were remembering an experience in a warm place. Right. And apparently it had the effect of making them feel physically warmer. Yeah. And less susceptible to the pain of extreme cold. And another study, they had nostalgic and non nostalgic subjects hold their hands in 39 deg Fahrenheit water until they couldn't take it anymore. And if you were feeling nostalgic, you could hold your hand in there longer. So that proves that it warms you up, right? Not really, but it's interesting. It is interesting. All of this is pretty interesting. And there is supposedly a point where nostalgia can become harmful, too. It's called pathological nostalgia, where you basically do get locked into the idea that everything used to be better back in the day or whenever at some other point. But it's rare compared to what's called personal nostalgia, which is all the nostalgia we've been talking about. And then there's the social nostalgia, too. Right? Yeah. Like when you didn't even live through it. Yeah, like 17 year olds today wearing like, a Nirvana T shirt or a Misfits T shirt or something like that, or being into that music or thinking, like, how great the 90s were. And it's like, dude, we live through the 90s. They were not great. But it's the same thing. Like, I love 80s stuff. Sure, I lived through the 80s, but I remember thinking the 80s sucked. And then as an older person, when the 80s came back, I'm like, yeah, the 80s were pretty fun. Yeah, I think that's kind of accompanied sometimes, too, by this feeling of like, I was born in the wrong time. Right. Like, man, I would have been a great hippie in the just don't fit in here in the 90s. Sure. Personally, I think the 70s were probably the greatest decade of all time. Yeah. But that's ignoring the fact that Richard Nixon was president. There was an oil embargo there's, all this bad stuff. Whereas I'm just thinking, like Dazed and Confused type 70s where everything was just great and happy and laid back. Sure. And that's nostalgia. It washes out the negative for everyone but you. Yeah. I would say Richard Linklater is one of the more nostalgic filmmakers. Sure. He really plays on that. Yeah. Supposedly his new movie that's coming out is going to be awesome. Everybody wants some. Is that what it is? Yes. So it's like they're confused, like four or five years later, right? Yeah. He said it's sort of like a spiritual sequel. Like, not the same characters, but just sort of 1980, the advent of when things were transferring to go from yes, it's going to be awesome. He's the best. That was a great movie. Daising confused. Agreed. So the other thing that they found is that they did a study clay Routledge of North Dakota State did a study there specifically. Are they with a name? Yeah, a real guy. So complain to him. He did a series of experiments with English, Dutch and American adults. So he kind of had some different nationalities going on. It's not exclusively American, of course. He let them listen to his songs from their youth and read. Lyrics. And afterward, people said they were more than likely to feel loved and that life is worth living. More affirmation when they remember these good old days. Question 28 do you feel life is worth living? Check yes or no. And finally, I got one more thing. Well, they do recommend that you not fall into that trap of pathological nostalgia yeah. Of comparing the present to the past so much. And they also found that certain kinds of people aren't as great with nostalgia. So maybe you should not indulge in nostalgia if you are leery of intimate relationships they found, or you're an avoidant person. It says they have reaped smaller benefits from nostalgia compared with people who crave closeness. So I don't know what that says about Hudson, but let's throw that out there. So what's your number one nostalgia thing? What gets it for you more than anything else? Probably music. I got two things that are tied for first. Okay. The smell of a used bookstore or comic book shop. That smell of like that, I guess, rotting paper. Reminds me of Mad magazines from back in the day. And they love them. The fat Christmas lights. Oh, yeah. I could just faint from the nostalgia. Yes. They were the big tacky ones that are coming back now. That's all my family ever used. The big fat ones. Yeah. It was like more Christmas light. Do you know what you call those? Tree burners. Yeah. We never caught a tree on fire, but they get pretty hot. You know what my dad did for a few years is, as we were opening our gifts, toward the end, he would start dismantling the tree and pruning the limbs and putting them in the fireplace. He would literally burn the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. Wow. That's very efficient. Was he German? One way to look at it now, I should say, is he? He is not. Okay. And I wish I would have given you a specific nostalgic thing, but you did. Urban Dance Squad? No, just music in general. Taste, smell music. Got you. Nice. Put those three together and look out. Chuck's eyes roll back into his head and Hodgman claps over him and says, Get up. If you want to know more about nostalgia, you can type that word into the search Barhouse workers.com. And I said, search bar says time for listener mail. This is from Christina about the makeup episode. Points out some good things in it. You guys have to weigh in on how makeup works. I think you failed to adequately acknowledge something. We are not, in fact, at a stage where makeup is truly optional for women. We said that, basically. Did we? Yeah. At the end. Well, I think we said it should be your option, but I think she doesn't feel like it truly is an option right now. We said that. We said the very fact that there was, like, taking a picture of yourself and posting on Twitter without makeup was rebellious, says that it's still not really an option. We said that, all right, so forget it, Christina. We're not reading right now. We're going to read it. While many love wearing makeup, many women simply feel obliged to wear it and are in fact, penalized if they choose not to. Comes in the form of failing to be promoted, maybe, or taking seriously, getting raises, even being hired. It is a hugely expensive habit, too, especially if you like to buy the prestige makeup brands. Nice. So she recommended to people, read an article from The Atlantic, which is always a good recommendation, called The Makeup Tax, and it kind of sums up the problem like this. Women invest time and money into doing the makeup because it impacts their relationships and their paychecks. While both genders tend to buy haircuts, shaving cream and moisturizer, the price of makeup is something men never have to worry about. And then she goes on to point out just how expensive the gap is between, like, a man's haircut and a woman's haircut, even. Yeah. Oh, it's huge. Well, it depends on where you go. Yeah, but I mean, if you're a woman that goes to not super cuts, right. It depends on where the man goes, though, too. If you go to a salon and you get, like, a cut and color, as a woman, you're paying, like, several hundred dollars. Sure, but that's the color. Jacking it up. I don't mean to be contrary. I agree. They pay a lot more money. Is it Christina? Yeah. I go to great clips. Big shout out to great clips. Nice. There's a free cut in your future. So Christina says, yeah, after my 10th cut, you have the card. No, not a card, but they give you a receipt every now and then. It says 15% off your $8, which amounts to $8. It's actually more than it's like 14 or 15. But remember, in tipping it's 14, I give 20. And you were like, what? Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. She finishes up with, I look forward to a day when wearing makeup is really, truly a choice for anyone of any gender in both individuals and institutions. Respect those choices. In the meantime, I choose to save my pennies and stick it to the man by not buying makeup and normalizing my own bare face. Good for you. Christina is a California native listening in Dublin, Ireland. Nice. Ahoy. As they say in Ireland, this is it. Yeah. All right, let's find out, I think. I hope. Thanks a lot, Christina. All points agreed. If you want to get in touch with us, like Christina did, whether you're in Dublin or Los Angeles or wherever, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffysheanow. You can send us an email to Stephen Stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ields-mccoys.mp3	What Was the Deal With the Hatfields and McCoys?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-was-the-deal-with-the-hatfields-and-mccoys	It was America's most famous family feud, but the history of the Hatfields vs the McCoys is fraught with bias and inaccuracies. Dig into a disagreement in 19th-century Appalachia that became a very big deal around the world.	It was America's most famous family feud, but the history of the Hatfields vs the McCoys is fraught with bias and inaccuracies. Dig into a disagreement in 19th-century Appalachia that became a very big deal around the world.	Tue, 29 Mar 2016 14:24:16 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=14, tm_min=24, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=89, tm_isdst=0)	41527270	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Chuck. Let's go over the stuff you should know Concert calendar, my friend. We are hitting the road for the springhead sprung tour. We are going to be at the Neptune Theatre in lovely Seattle, Washington, on April 8, my friend. The next day, we're going to head south to Portland, Oregon. Revolution hall. April 9, we are going to Houston, Texas, my friend. Nice warehouse. Live on May 28, Memorial Day weekend. And finally finishing up Denver, Colorado at the Gothic Theater on May 29. Two more dates coming. Yeah, keep your ears out. And in the meantime, if you want to get tickets, you can go to Sysklive.com, powered by squarespace, and we'll see you guys on the road. See how in Portland you're selling out fast. Get on it. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseupworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Bryan is staring at me right now to make me feel uncomfortable. Jerry's over there. I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my head. Where would you like me to look? In my ear. That's always so weird, someone's, like, looking are you doing it right now? Like, right at your hair or the motherboard. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Try my other ear. Oh, yeah, that's the stuff. The right sorry. That's your left ear. That's my left ear. All right. I remember that look. Watch this. Chuck, after seven years, can you see that I can wiggle ears independently? Yeah. Drives you me crazy. So you sit around and do it? Probably. I try. Not like a good husband. Chuck. Yes. We have a bit of an announcement here. Yeah, you tell me what we just heard. Yes, we are in the room with either a Hatfield or McCoy. Jerry doesn't know which family she's related to. She just knows that she's related to one of them. Yeah, literally, right before we pressure Cord, she's like, oh, by the way, I'm related to one of these families. I'm just not sure which. And a family member told her cousin Tyler. Was that who it was? I don't know. I think that's what she said, the cousin. I get the impression from Jerry story, though, that she sort of, like, glazed over and that's why she doesn't know. Right. But she does carry a six shooter on her hip, and that explains that this is McCoy on the barrel, maybe. Right, but does that mean that it's a bullet from the McCoy or for the McCoys, the mortgage remains. Good points. So we are talking about the Hatfields and the McCoys. For those of you who don't live in the United States, you probably have heard of the Hatfields in McCoy's. It's a pretty legendary feud. Yeah, right. We've heard of some of your history. UK. Sure. Australia. Matthew Flinders. There's a name drop for you. Yeah. So hopefully you've heard of the Hatfields and the McCoy. Yeah. If nothing else, there was a big miniseries, a few years ago on television. Yeah. With Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, and apparently it was really dramatized. Yeah. Is it fictionalized? Yeah, sure. cinematized and not quite fully accurate, but at least they brought attention to the feud because it needs agreed. So the halffields and McCoy is a family feud. So much so that in 1979 the Hatfields and the McCoys were on the TV show Family Feud, apparently for a full week, from what I saw. And I read that legend has it that it actually inspired the TV show, but I didn't get good verification on that. No. There have been other family Feuds. Right. But none are as famous as the Hatfields and the McCoy, although at the time there were more famous family Feuds, but the Hatfields and McCoy just lived on took it to another level because all of the murder yeah, there was a lot of murder. It was mountain folk versus mountain folk, families that had been intermarried and worked for one another and had lived together for decades, if not longer, alongside in this little area along the Sandy River, I believe the big Sandy River in something that's called the Tug River Valley. And on one side, mostly, the Hatfields lived on the West Virginia side in Logan County and right across the river on the other side in Kentucky, the McCoy's lived in Pike County. And that's how it was for days gone by. Yeah. And they were not new to the United States. So I guess it wasn't United States then, was it? Yeah, okay, sure. We're talking about the 1850s was way off then, but they came to America many years before that. Apparently the Hatfields were some of the very first to come to the New World from Northern England, and the McCoy's are obviously from Germany. Well, the Hatfields were originally the heath fields in England. That sounds way more British. Yeah. But you know how you do? You come over to America and you dumb it down a little. I know Heath Ledger changed his name to Hat Ledger when he got here, didn't he? All right, pete and the McCoy's come from Scotland, of course, you could probably figure that out. Moved to Ireland before they came to the New World. And the first known McCoy was John McCoy in America. When was that? 1732. From Belfast, Ireland. So did they move directly to the Tug River area? Is that where they settled? No, the McCoy first settled in Maryland where he was a prominent landowner. And I think the Hatfields first moved to Tug Valley in 1820 and the McCoy in two with their twelve kids. Really? These families had grown up living and working with each other. It was not just these two families in the area. There are plenty of other families, but they were neighbors, coworkers, boss and employee. They were husbands and wives. They intermarried. They were living together for decades. Yeah. I think the two that originally settled at Tugfork were the actual parents of the two main protagonists or antagonists? I guess they were both. Yeah. Our story really kind of begins round about the civil war. This area of the Tug river valley was mostly Confederate, and both the Hatfield and the McCoy's were Confederate sympathizers, if not outright confederate soldiers. The antagonist or protagonist, the patriarch of the Hatfield family, when the story begins, his name was Devil Ants Hatfield. Right? Yeah, that was his nickname. His real name was William Anderson Hatfield. Yeah. But Devil Ants. What a cool name. Yeah. And I saw a couple of different explanations for where his nickname came from, but my favorite one was that his mother said he was so mean, the Devil himself was scared of him. Yeah. I saw one that said he was 6ft of Devil and \u00a3180 of hell. They had stupid sayings back then. Yeah. It didn't quite add up, especially in the backwoods of Kentucky and West Virginia. They just said stuff. They just made up names, as we'll see throughout this whole episode. But Devil Ants himself, from what I saw, he was described as somebody who took life by the horns. Right? Sure. He was very much a self made man. He became a pretty wealthy timber merchant over the years, but he was a violent man. Well, he had some violent tendencies, for sure. Yeah. And if you want to trace back the reason for the Hatfield McCoy feud, I think from everything I read, there isn't, like, one single thing. It's often blamed on the pig deal, which we'll hear about coming up. That seems to be the one that historians point to the most these days, though. Yeah, but it's sort of a convenient way of telling the story, because what better way to kick off a few than with the stolen pig, right? Definitely. There were other problems or issues between these families before then. Right? Yeah. But the point is, there are a lot of different things going on, and one of them was, like you said, devil Ants made a lot more money than McCoy as a timber guy. So on the other side of the river in the Kentucky side, pike County, Kentucky, there were the McCoy's. And at the time that Devil Ants was the patriarch of the Hatfield clan, a man named Randall McCoy. Old Randall was the head of the McCoy clan across the river in Kentucky. Right. Yeah. I just get the sense that he had his sort of smaller business and was always a little bit envious of the larger timber business across. Very much so. Yeah. The way that I saw him described was if Devil answer was a man who took life by the horns, ol Ranul was somebody who got hooked by life's horns, and he was very bitter about his lot in life. Got you. His father, I saw, was described as didn't much care for work, didn't leave his kids, anything. So his son had to be a self made man, but he was a self made man who never really made himself. He married a woman named Sarah, and Sarah's father died and left them some land, and he was able to homestead on that. So that's how he was able to establish himself, was through his wife's inheritance of her father's land. But it was enough to set them up. They were fine. They weren't prosperous, but they weren't just completely poverty stricken like Randall had grown up. Right. But just across the river. And this other family that he had to deal with and work with and just kind of see and interact with was a man who he had made himself. And definitely Randall was bitter about that idea and the comparison between himself and Devil Ants. Yeah. And I think some of the McCoy's even worked for some of the Hatfields, which is always going to be a little tense when you feel like maybe that feeling of superiority comes over one family because you're working for me. Right? Yeah. So there's definitely, like you're saying tension. Right. You can point to maybe these guys coming into their own as the heads of the family when the tension really started. For many years, historians pointed to a specific incident as the source of the family feud, but that's since been abandoned. So, like we said, the Civil War is about the time when this story really starts in earnest. And most of the Tug River Valley was Confederate. Devil Ants and possibly Randall McCoy were part of what we're called the Logan Wildcats, which was a militia. But during the Civil War, they were an actual army unit of the Confederate Army. Yes. And I saw where Devil Ants was, even the leader in one place, but I didn't get that verified a bunch either, at very least, was in the brigade. Right. And I got the impression that if he wasn't a leader, he was a de facto leader because that was just his type of personality. Devil Ants don't answer to nobody. Right. You answered to him. That's right. That was a great Devil Ants, by the way. So I think the leader of the Logan Wildcats is another character who will come up later, and his name is Jim Vance. Yeah. So Jim Vance, he was not a very great guy, from what I can understand, but I'll let him paint his own picture. Okay. Is he coming in? He will in a little bit. Instead, we're going to focus on a guy named Aza Harmon McCoy, and this guy I don't have a beat on, he decided in just complete contrast of the place where he grew up, he was going to join the Yankee Union Army. Yeah, and he did. But he broke his leg and left the service after, I think, a year. While he was in service, his commanding officer in the Union Army ordered him to fight devil Ants because there were rumors that he was a Confederate spy. Oh, yeah. So Harmon fights Devil Ants, loses the fight, and I didn't get a sense of what kind of fight it was. Whether it was, like, weird, a gun battle, or whether he literally just, like, spit on his boot and took a swing. I'm not sure. I don't know if that was even in the miniseries. So they get in a fight, he loses, and then the Union troops went after Double Ants at that point, which is really what caused a lot of the early issues. And then later on, Harmon shot a friend of Devil Ants while stealing his horse. So in turn, he killed Harmon's commanding officer in the Union Army. Okay. There's a lot of bad blood. The guy was like, literally, general Bill France was peeing off his porch like I do. And Devil's, he shot him in cold blood. I hope that does not happen to you. I really hope so, too. That'd be a bad way to go. It gives you pause. Yeah. After the war, after Aza Harmon McCoy came back home, I did not realize the tensions were already that high. I had the impression that was just because he fought for the Union. I didn't know he had been made to directly target Devil Ants. Right, yeah. Well, Devil Ants and the Logan Wildcats basically sent AA message saying, watch yourself because we're coming for you. And he very wisely went off and lived in a cave for a while. He hit out. And so with this guy, you're like, why did he go fight for the Union? Was he an abolitionist? No, he had a slave, and the slave kept him alive by bringing him food and stuff while he was in the cave. So I have no idea why he went and fought for the Union. It's weird. The fact that he did, though, meant that his own relatives, his own McCoy, including Randall, his brother, really were just kind of like, yeah, the Logan Wildcats are out to get you, and you brought this on yourself, so we don't really feel for you. And they didn't apparently make much of a problem, or they didn't take issue with it when the Logan Wildcats tracked him down in the cave and killed them. Well, he was actually coming home when they killed him. I think he finally thought, like, surely after all this time, they've forgotten about this troglodyte. Yeah. So he was walking home to see his family that he hadn't seen in years, and Jim Vance shot him. That's how long he was in the cave. Well, that might have been part of the war as well. Got it. But it's after a few years, man alive. Well, actually. Mandette aza harmon McCoy is killed by the Logan Wildcats. And apparently, at first, everybody thought it was Devil Ants who did it, but he turned out to have been bedridden at the time. So he had an alibi. And they think instead that it was Jim Vance who led it and probably killed Aza, who is Devil's Uncle. Okay. And strong ally to advance was so ASA Harmon is dead. The first shot has been fired in the family feud. So thought the historians for years, and then I guess after interviewing actual Hatfields and McCoys, they realized that, no, actually, the McCoys were like, he brought it on himself. Yeah, we made peace with this. And no charges were even brought in the murder of Aza McCoy. Yeah, I saw one article that described it as a murder agreement, which apparently used to have that, like, blood in, blood out, and everyone's like, all right, even Steven. Okay, so, Don, yes, the first death has occurred in the Hatfield McCoy feud, but it has nothing to do with the Hatfield McCoy feud. Technically, yes. That seems like a pretty good time to take a break, don't. You agreed, sir. So, Chuck, we're back. And Azaharm instead. Things are whatever between the Hatfields and McCoy. Nothing big is going on. Even if there were any sort of skirmishes or little fights or run ins or that kind of thing, I get the impression that the families, when they saw each other, there was, like, a slight percentage that the sides were going to get in at least a fist fight and not take, like, potshots at another with their guns. I just think they probably just didn't like each other very much from the beginning. Right. So it's possible those things went on. Nothing big happened, though, until the pig the pig incident. And apparently it wasn't just one pig. It's what it's been boiled down to. But it was several. Yeah, and it was a big deal. If you think about a pig, stealing a pig is not a big deal at the time. There's a book called The Feud by Dinking Dean King. Dinking, it's so weird. Dean King. And he said, where was their next meal going to come from? And how could they feed the children in the winter? They were lucky enough to have one pig or razorback for sale or trade. The proceeds were used to acquire flour, sugar, coffee, sometimes shoes or boots for their families. It was a mainstay for the family. So these days, you hear a pig or even a couple of pigs, and you think, what's the big deal? But in the region at the time, these pigs were very valuable. So it was a big deal. Right. And in the front, I saw a dude. Well, yeah, and that was another thing. Again, we're talking about backwards Appalachian folk in the 19th century. There's a lot to the idea that you had stolen their property, which as it should be. But even that aside, I saw this historian on a CBS Sunday Morning clip from a few years ago, and he explained, like, you can feed a sizable family for a month with a single pig, and this guy stole several pigs. So the guy who was accused of stealing the pig was who was it, Chuck? Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield. Okay. Right. So old Randall himself said, floyd Hatfield, cousin of Devil Ants, I know that you stole those pigs, and I'm taking you to court. While they went to court. The problem is the local magistrate was a Hatfield, but in this guy's favor, his name was preacher was his first name, I believe. And he was basically what amounted to the local judge in the Tug River valley. He tried to make it a fair trial. Is he the one that placed it in McCoy land? Because the trial took place in McCoy territory. Yes. Right. And he made sure that the jury had six Hatfields and six McCoy's on it. He did. And nobody else. No joke. Yes. So weird. But he was trying to make it as fair as possible. Right. And so they had a trial where Floyd Hatfield was tried for hog theft. Have you ever had something stolen from you? Sure. Not hugely valuable, but yeah. It's one of the things that irks me most. It's very irritating. There's something about just someone taking something that you work to buy that just really boils my blood. Now, imagine if they took that thing that you work to buy and they were directly taking food out of your child's mouth at the same time. Yes. It makes you mad. I pull a Hatfield. The weird thing is that the McCoy and the heffields at this point are saying, we will leave it to the courts. Sure. So they did go to court. They did try to have a fair trial, or at least the preacher did, or preacher Hatfield. Preacher, judge. Right. It's confusing. And the jury was split, except for one who was a McCoy who sided with the Hatfields. His name was Stellkirk McCoy, another made up name and selkirk. He voted that because of a guy named Bill Staton who had testified that Floyd had not stolen the pigs. He said, you know what? I'm not going to contradict Bill Staton. I know him to be truthful or whatever. Plus I work for Devil Ants in his logging operation, so I'm going to vote pro Hatfield and exonerate Floyd. And Floyd got off, and old Randall went nuts. Yeah. Satan was the main witness, and he was a relative of the McCoy, but he was married to a Hatfield. Right. And while they did intermarry, I saw that there was way more marrying within the family to avoid intermarrying. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of first cousins that were. When you watch that family feud clip, you can go find it on, I'm sure, on YouTube. But there is a mental flaws article that we found that had it embedded at the bottom. Yeah, that's where I first heard about it. When they're introducing the families, they keep introducing one another. It's like kissing cousins. This is a kissing cousin, Diane. Right. The families are saying that there was a lot of inner marriage within the family itself. Well, they were probably just joking, right? No, on Family Feud, you don't think the guy doesn't sound like he was joking. Did he kiss his cousin on TV? No, but Richard Dawson kissed her. He kissed everybody. That guy kissed any woman who had stand still long enough. What a flirt of Richard Dawson. He didn't change his name even though he was British. Well, you don't know that. That's true. It could have been Richard Dimsum or Chumley Dawson. That's a great name. Old Randall has just lost this court case. Yes, and even worse, he was made to pay the Hatfields court costs for taking him to court. And remember, we characterized old Rayl as a kind of a bitter man. Anytime life handed him lemons, he just squeezed them into his eyes out of anger, right? Yeah. And he went on for this for basically years about how this is a miscarriage of justice, how Floyd had stolen his hogs. And so now, anytime Hatfields and McCoys, depending on their allegiance to the clan or clans, any time they saw each other, they were shooting at one another, they were getting into fights, they were throwing rocks. One of Devil Ants sons was standing there when old Rayl rode up once, and old Rayl started railing on him about how Floyd had stolen a hog. And the McCoy or the Hatfield son grabbed a rock and just threw it at old Randall's mouth. Just crushed his mouth with a rock. Because that's what you did back then. Yeah, it was sort of like, you killed my brother Harmon, but you stole my hog. I'm cool with the brother killing. Carmen had it coming. Right. But that hog never hurt anybody. Yeah, we were going to eat it. So did we cover the fact that Satan, two years later, was killed? This is inaccurate. Is that not true? Bill Staton Jr. Was killed. Bill Senior was not killed in the skirmish. This is another big was that retribution, though? Okay, for his pause? Yeah, because remember, after the hog incident, in the hog verdict, the half filled in the coin did not fight it out right then at the magistrate's office at Judge Preacher's place, right? Yeah. But every time the clans saw one another, they would shoot at each other. They were getting fights, they would take rocks to the faces. And then it culminated finally in this really truly violent incident between Bill State and Junior and Paris and Sam McCoy. Right? Okay. So Bill State and Junior is out hunting, sees these McCoy sons and says, I'm in a world of trouble. I better take a shot at one of them. And shoots. Paris McCoy in the hip. And Sam McCoy was like, you shot my brother. You're going down. And he shoots Bill and wounds him and then goes over and executes and point blank in the head. And this is Bill Jr. Bill Jr. See, I got another article that said it was Bill, but it also said he's Bill Stanton. So I'm starting to doubt all kinds of accuracy. There's a lot of inaccurate stuff. So I got, I think, the description of that incident from a really great book by a guy named John Ed Pearce. It's Days of Darkness colon. So, you know, it's legitimate the feuds of Eastern Kentucky. Yeah. So there's been, like, serious bloodshed here. Now, one of the and this is direct retribution for the hog stealing verdict. A man has been executed point blank in the head, and the two McCoy boys just tried to get away with it. Yeah. So blood is spilling. Fast forward a bit to 1882, and three of Randall sons are attacked, stabbed 26 times, and shot Ellison Hatfield, who was Devil's younger brother to death. Right. And that was on election day, and election days were, like, drunk in affairs. Do you remember when I think in the Bars episode, we talked about what was it? Get people drunk and doing something for the planners. Yeah, bumble planting. The was election day, so everybody would get super drunk. And when you get two clans that don't like each other super drunk in the same place, they get in fights and people get stabbed 26 times and then shot in the back. Yeah. So those three sons of Randall were actually arrested and were presumably going to go to trial, but vigilanteism took hold, and they were kidnapped on the way to the trial by the Hatfields. And they said, we're going to take care of this our way. Yeah. And I don't know if they let them get away with it, but they got away with it. No, they did not let them get away with it. This was a huge turning point right. When the Hatfield or the McCoy boys were intercepted by the Hatfields and taken across the river to West Virginia, which is basically like taking them to Fortress Hatfield. Yeah. Country justice was going to happen. Yes. But Devil Ants vowed that if Ellison made it and didn't die, he would not kill these McCoy boys. But Ellison succumbed to his wounds and did die. And so they took these McCoy boys out and tied them to trees and shot them, I think more than 50 times or something like that. So you were saying that they got away with it. Not for lack of trying. Right. It basically set off this huge issue. Like this was even for the Tug River Valley chuck, this is pretty flagrant frontier justice. You're not supposed to do this. There's a magistrate named Preacher who is supposed to settle this kind of stuff. Right. So a guy named what was Perry's name? Perry Klein. You know what? This is too big. We need to take a break. All right. And get to the story of Perry Klein. Okay, so we're back checking. We have a new guest. His name is Perry Klein. Come on in, Perry. You're an attorney. He was married to Martha McCoy. And here's the deal. Years before, there was a situation where Perry Klein was cheated out of, I think, 5000 acres of land. Was he cheated? I didn't know if it was actual justice because he had supposedly been cutting timber from Devil Anne's timberland. Well, here's the deal. Everything you read will say it depends on who you sympathize with is how you think Perry Klein and really all of them were viewed. Sure. So I read articles that said that he was cheated and articles that said he wasn't cheated. And I think the family still today, like, while there is a piece which we'll get to, they still disagree over Perry Klein's role. Okay. But Perry Klein was married to a McCoy, actually. ASA Harmon McCoy's widow. Right, yeah. Martha. And so he had lost 5000 acres. Really? Yeah. That's how much he was forced by the court to cede to Devil Ants for allegedly cutting his timberland. Yeah. So he had a retribution in mind as an attorney. Right. So when the Hatfields executed the three McCoy boys, perry Klein used it as a chance, depending on how you look at it, either use it as a chance for retribution or his family allegiance was stirred up. And he, being an attorney, had contacts with the governor bunker, I believe, of Kentucky and said, Governor, there's some horrible stuff going on down here that's being perpetrated by some West Virginians against some law abiding Kentuckians, and you guys need to do something about it. And it worked, actually. Yeah. They reinstated the charges and basically put out awards on the head bounties on the head arrest bounty, that is of the Hatfields, including 6ft of Devil and \u00a3180 of hell. Yeah. Devil Ants himself, his sons, some of the family allies, dogs, his uncle, Jim Vance. Yeah. I think there was 20 men who had indictments against them. And since they had indictments against them and they were hanging out in West Virginia, they had bounties on their head. And one of the bounty hunters, the main bounty hunter who came around, it was a problem that they had bounties on their head because any crackpot who wanted to could come and take shots at those guys. And it was happening quite a bit. Yeah. They wanted to collect some dough. Right. But there's one guy in particular who was a real thorn in their side. His name was Mad Frank Phillips. And Frank Phillips was a bounty hunter extraordinaire. He was about as legally gray as you can get and still not be just on the darker side of the spectrum. And he made it basically his personal war to get as many Hatfields across the river into Kentucky as he could. So he would carry out. Raids on the Hatfield stronghold in West Virginia and basically just abduct Hatfields and bring them to Kentucky so that they could be put in the Pike County Jail. And while he did this, he was also executing people left and right. Like Jim Vance. He shot and wounded, saw that he just wounded them, walked around from behind, and while Vance was begging for his life, shot him in the head. And like this is Frank Phillips mo. He would execute you just as soon as he would capture you. Yeah. And this was becoming a big deal in the press at this point. Newspapers started carrying the stories and became bio accounts like national news and legends. Everyone knew about the Hatfields and McCoys by this point. Right. And the press apparently very much sighted with the McCoys. They painted the Hatfields to seem like backwoods, murderous rednecks who just caused trouble everywhere they went and painted the McCoy innocent, law abiding victims of this whole feud and the whole legend. Like you're saying, it all begins about right here, what amounts to almost a war between Kentucky and West Virginia. Yeah. Because Frank Phillips kept going and getting people and bringing them back to Pike County. And West Virginia got involved. And the two governors were basically standing toe to toe, almost about to go invade, sending National Guard troops across the border. But instead, they left it to the courts. And actually, this court case about whether it was legal or not for Frank Phillips to have abducted the Hatfields and taken them to the Kentucky jail reached the Supreme Court, actually, which is pretty amazing. It is. And the Supreme Court said, you know what? It probably is illegal, what happened, but Kentucky is a sovereign state and there's really nothing West Virginia can do about it. So go ahead and try them. But before the trial, actually, and while these abductions were going on, these raids carried out by Frank Phillips, the halffields, like I said, it was a big deal to them that they were bounty hunters out to get them. And they came up with a plan to just end the whole thing. In 1888. A murderous killing spree is what they came up with. In January of 1888, a group of Hatfields said, we're going to attack Randolph McCoy and his entire family. Little cappy, double answer's son and an ally to Jim Vance kind of led the way, and they ambushed them at their home on New Year's Day, 1888. Randolph actually escaped, which is they're kind of coming after him. And he's the only one who escaped. Well, they were coming after the whole family. Yeah. The whole intention was to just murder this whole family. Part of the problem, yes. And Randolph was the key guy. He actually got away. His son Calvin daughter Alafair were killed in what they called crossfire. But they were let's get real. And his wife Sarah suffered a crushed skull. She was beaten so badly. Yeah. So they set the house on fire. Alafair opened the door to put the fire out, and she was shot and killed. And then her mom, Sarah, wanted to come and comfort her dying daughter. And when she came out, they beat her head in with the butt of a pistol. I think Cap Hatfield did. And then Calvin provided cover for his dad and ran to attract their gunfire so his dad could get away. And it worked, but Calvin died as a result. And then two other daughters, McCoy daughters, survived. So Randall and two daughters survived this attack on his family. And this is when it was like, if the press isn't paying attention before, now they really were. And basically everybody was outraged at this legend. Chuck is 100 something years old, right? Yes. And it's easy to kind of see these people as caricatures or just historic. But when you think about what the Hatfields plan to do and tried to do to the McCoys in that case on New Year's 19, 1888. Yes. The New Year's Massacre is what it's known as. That's, like, objectively despicable, no matter when it happened, going after an entire family to kill them. Yeah. To wipe out a legal entailment. It is. And it really kind of brings home, like, the actual humanity of all of this. Yeah. So it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and they decided, you know what? These hat fields should be tried. And in 1889, they were tried in eight of the Hatfields and their supporters were sent to life in prison. And one, Ellison Mounts, who people think is the son of Ellison Hatfield and his first cousin yeah. It was actually sentenced to death. And the one issue here was a lot of people now think he was a kind of a scapegoat because he was mentally challenged and maybe an early false confession happened. Right, exactly. And if he didn't do it, or even if he did, he really got screwed over by the prosecution. They said that if he confessed and cooperated, that he would get a lighter sentence, when really he was the only one who confessed and he was the only one who was hanged. And his dying words, I think, were, the Hatfields made me do it. And then they hung him. Yeah. There were no public executions at the time, but that did not stop hundreds of people, thousands even, from coming out and watching anyway. Right. So it was a public execution. And what's odd, though, is ten men had been captured by Frank Phillips and had been indicted and tried, and nine of them got life in prison. Ellison Mounts was hung, and this was apparently enough to, I guess, modify Randall McCoy. At first, I think he tried to rail against the verdict, but ultimately it was enough to just calm him down. And he went and lived a quiet life. Quiet, haunted life as a ferry operator, I think, and lived to like age 88. Yeah. And about a year later is when the families both said, enough is enough. It's called a truce. And from I think it was an eleven year period, almost 24 people were killed in both families. Wow. Like close to two dozen folks over an eleven year period. That's legit. Yes. That's a family feud right there. That's a big feud. And Devil Lance lived to ripe old age, too. He lived to, I think, 83 or something like that. 73? That's not that old. Well, he was born again at 73. I think he lived until his 80s. Really? But he was paranoid for the rest of his life because I think there were still bounties on his head. So he moved to an island and carried a rifle with them at all times for the rest of his life. Well, if you look at pictures of the families, they all had their guns. I mean, that's what you did back then. But it's funny to see a picture of like 20 people and twelve of them are brandishing weapons. That's right. In the one photo that will ever be taken of them, they've got their gun out, too. So since then, they've been all over the place. In pop culture. We mentioned Family Feud. There was an Abbott and Costello movie in 1952. Buster Keaton did a movie, too. Oh, really? I hope you'll McCoy. Yeah, he was on Looney Tunes. Excuse me? Mary Melodies. Big distinction, but still Bugs Bunny. Nowadays. There are even some medical professionals who think that there was a condition that the McCoy had that led them to be violent. What it's called? Von Hippolyndau disease. And these geneticists study dozens of McCoy descendants and said they have a really high rate of this disease. It's inherited, it's rare, produces tumors in the eyes, ears and pancreas, and a notable side effect is high blood pressure, racing heartbeat, and increased aggressive behavior, increased fight or flight hormones. And it was the McCoys that may have had that, because from everything I've read, it seemed like the Hatfields would have been the one to have that. Wow. Maybe I'm a victim of contemporary press bias. Media bias. You got anything else? I got nothing else. There's other stuff. There's plenty of stuff that I'm sure we didn't hit, and you should go read some of the cool books written about this stuff. I got one more thing, actually. Here comes World War II. Life magazine uses the families as a way to unite America's war effort by featuring them in a big photo spread. The Hatfields and McCoys like working together in factories for World War Two. That's awesome. Yeah, and I think they even met recently, and they're still out there and they're still meeting and talking about this and disagreeing friendly disagreements on people like Perry Klein and who was the other guy? Madman Munt? Frank Phillips. Mad Frank Phillips. Who remember I said he was legally gray? Yeah. He married a McCoy who ended up who had had a baby with John C. Hatfield. They ran off together and got married Frank Phillips and Nancy McCoy and ended up being prosperous bootleggers in the region. Wow. Well, and there was also a spurned romance, too, that led detentions. I forgot about that. Yeah. Rosanna McCoy and John C. Hatfield. Yes. They had a little trist and a child together, but the child died, I think aged eight months from measles. But he kicked her to the curb before that and then went and married her cousin Nancy, although there were no curbs back then. He kicked her to the riverbank to the creek side. Yeah. Again, we could probably keep doing this for another 45 minutes, but we're not. If you want to know more about Hatfields and McCoy, just go search it in your favorite search engine. Since I said search engine, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this just a nice little email of thanks from a nice person. Okay. Hi, Joshua. Chuck and Jerry. I'm a young 30 something who lives in Berwin, Illinois. I just recently started listening to podcasts and came across how stuff works. And you guys, I'm a nerd at heart and your podcast feeds my inner beast. I listen to you on my way to work on a train like Dr. Seuss at work again and then on my way home from work. I'm so addicted to learning new things. Scrolling through the feed is exhilarating, so I'm dying to listen to them all. Jennifer, I'm not sure if you know this. If you follow us on itunes, you might think they're only 300, but they're more than 850 ish, right? Yeah. That's for all of you out there, and you can find those at our website. Back to Jennifer. I've told all my friends about the podcast. I even make my husband listen while we're cooking. I can't get enough of all the cool topics you talk about. Since I listen to you every day, I thought, you know what? I'm going to send an email in hopes that it is red on the air. And if not, at least you know you have another dedicated listener. Thanks for spreading knowledge. And that is Jennifer Hardy. And Jennifer, sometimes when I get dared to read things on the air, I do. It works every time. Not every time. Flattery will get you everywhere. If you want to let us know how great you think we are, we love hearing that stuff. Obviously, you can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can post it on facebook. Comstepyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffiesteno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-02-15-sysk-harriet-tubman-final.mp3	The Harriet Tubman Story	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-harriet-tubman-story	Harriet Tubman is a legendary figure in history, but the details of her life are even more remarkable than what you may have learned in school. Listen in today as Josh and Chuck pay tribute to a true icon of African-American history.	Harriet Tubman is a legendary figure in history, but the details of her life are even more remarkable than what you may have learned in school. Listen in today as Josh and Chuck pay tribute to a true icon of African-American history.	Thu, 15 Feb 2018 12:00:04 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=46, tm_isdst=0)	45469019	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. We are going on tour in 2018. And where are we going? On April 4, we're gonna be in Boston at the Wilbur. You can get tickets at the Wilbur.com, Chuck. And then on April 5, we're gonna be in DC at the Lincoln Theater. And you can get tickets for that a ticket fly. That's right. And then we're going to two new cities, right? Yes. On May 22, we're going to be in St. Louis. You can get tickets on ticketmaster. And on May 23, we're going to be in Cleveland, and you can get tickets there@playhousquare.org. And then there's one more. Chuck that's right. We're going to wrap it up in Denver, specifically Inglewood, Colorado, at the Gothic Theater on June 28 and possibly adding a show on the 27th. Stay tuned for that. Yes. And you can get tickets@axs.com. So come see us live. We'll have a good time. Come on out. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know in Black History Month. How are you doing, man? I'm tired. Are you? You've been burning the candles at all three ends, huh? I didn't know candles had three ends. And look at it. When they work as hard as you check, they got three ends. So bright. How are you doing? Are you holding up, at least? I don't know. It's TVD now. You see these circles? Yeah. They're a little pronounced. I wasn't going to say anything, but that's fine. Yes. I guess they're not circles. They're half moons. Yeah, well, they're half moon is the size of half dollars. A lot of people say circles under their eyes when they're not circles. I wonder if they're just seeing the rest of it. Like their mind is filling in the rest. Who knows? Maybe they're all just insane, seeing something we're not. Maybe so. Well, at any rate, we're all pulling for you. You need any soup or anything? No, Jerry's got that as he can smell. Yeah, it's kind of nice. The stage airs. What is that? It's her. Well, she won't talk. Right. She's doing sign language for Ramen. I love Ramen, don't you? Sure. Nothing perks you up like Ramen. Except a really great history story. That's right. We're going to do that today. Way to go. Choosing this one, Chuck. Was a this request of yours, or did it just so happened it was on the site? No, I've been wanting to cover more famous women in history, and obviously during Black History Month, this is the perfect time to talk about Harriet Tubman. And this article points out, and I thought very astutely like her legend and her icon ship. Iconoclastic ship, yeah. Is so great that I think sometimes a lot of people may not even know the nitty gritty details of her life. I mean, I know I didn't. I was raised in America in the school kid into the mid 90s, we could even say. And like I knew of Harriet Tubman, I was taught to honor and respect her for what she did as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. What I didn't know is that that was about a third of the reason why she's famous and legendary. Yeah. I mean, the school lessons were shamefully short because that's about all I learned was just about the Underground Railroad, her role in it to a very limited degree, that they taught us that it's not her role, and that was kind of it. Yeah. But the fact that there is so much more to this woman's life. She just did so much. She packed so much life in, whether it was by her own accord or against her will, she had a very long, full life. And the fact that we know about the life of mid 19th century black woman who was born a slave in Maryland that we know this much about, it really speaks volumes. I'm glad that there's this much out there, and it seems like there's more and more being added to it every day. Yeah, it definitely helps that in the 1860s, there was a very famous biography written by Sarah Hopkins Bradford, one of the earlier biographies. And since then, we've learned some more stuff and cleaned up a bit of the truth from the legend. But it only got better. Yeah. I mean, the stuff that is verifiable fact is still just astounding. It kind of makes me feel like a lump and a loser. I'm not doing much of my life. Well, we're teaching people about Harriet Tubman. At least it counts for something, I guess. All right, so you want to start at the beginning? Yeah, in the beginning, of course, because Harriet Tubman was born when she was born, there weren't great birth records for black people in the United States at the time. So we don't know for sure when she was born. 1825 is what she has claimed on various documents later in life. But I've seen everywhere from 1820 to 1825. So somewhere in that range. Yeah, this article in Hustle Forks says 1822. I've seen that in various places, too, and that is shameful in and of itself. Yeah, but again, it's not like the people who were not keeping records on slave births at the time were like, this lady is actually going to grow up to be one of the most legendary women in American history. So we should probably note this. The thing is, even though they didn't note her birth, because they didn't realize how famous she was going to be, she started to make a name for herself pretty early on in life. She had about five years to kind of be raised as a child before she was hired out as basically an infant rocker. Her job was to stay up at night and rock an infant to make sure that the infant didn't cry. And every time the infant cried, she would get a lashing, from what I understand. Yeah. And just reading through kind of her early life, it seems like well, let me couch that for 1 second. Okay. She was one of nine children born in, like you said, in Maryland and Dorchester County, unless they pronounce it Dorster Doyle. Doyle county. Yes. Which is along the Eastern Shore to Benjamin Ross and Harriet Written Green, and she was actually born very beautiful name. Araminta Ross. Yeah. I had no idea about that, did you? No. And her parents called her Minty Ross, which is just a very kind of cute nickname for a kid. It is. And she was actually a third generation slave in America. Her grandmother on her maternal side was named Modesty, and her family has done some research and concluded that Modesty was almost certainly from the Ashanti Group and was stolen either from the Ivory Coast or Ghana, and then was taken eventually to Maryland, where she was owned by a guy named Athow Patterson. Is that right? Patterson, I believe so. The thing about that and the reason why this guy really kind of figures into the story in a cringeworthy way, ethel Patterson, who then owned Harriet Tubman's grandmother and the mother, and then Harriet and her siblings, because they were all from the same line he had in his will, that when any of them turned 45, they were free. They were what was called manumitted. Yes. The problem is he was dead, so he wasn't around to enforce his will, and that actually never happened. So even though on paper, legally, harriet Tubman, all of her siblings, her mother and her grandmother all should have been manmitted whenever they hit age 45, absolutely none of them were. Yeah. And her father did gain his freedom, but was still married to a woman who did not have her freedom. And you don't hear about this a lot in the history books, where families were divided between free and owned, which makes a bad situation even worse. Yeah, and I'd like to look into that because that kind of popped up here there almost casually without much explanation. So I wonder what that was like. Was it just like you both went to work and did basically the same labor, but one of you was paid for it? Was there, like, less physical punishment or coercion? What was the distinction? Yeah. I'm not really sure. I'm curious. But like you said, what I was setting up was after she worked as a child care baby rocker of sorts, and got whipped on the neck by the woman of the house every time her baby cried, which that's a whole other thing. Yeah. And again, she's five at the time, five years old. She went on to work on the farm later on when she got a little older, and by all accounts, for the rest of her working life as a slave, was much preferred working on the farm and basically was like, I don't want to work for these white women, they're worse than the men. Right. Or at least in her case. Plus, also, I mean, she was pretty able bodied. She supposedly was super muscular from doing physical labor for so many years and was pretty good at it. Yeah, 5ft tall, and from what I could tell, just as strong as could be. Right. So the owners of her family, ethiopatison's daughter and son in law, they were kind of like Michael Fosbender's family in Twelve Years a Slave. They were not at all wealthy plantation owners, but they were just out of the social hierarchy at the time, able to afford and keep slaves. But rather, since they didn't have a huge plantation for their slaves to work on, they would hire them out. That's how Harry ended up, like, working at age five, rocking babies. Or she was hired out to go get muskrats out of traps and swamps and stuff like that. Just like basically whatever somebody needed an extra hand for, they would contact his family and the family would hire out their slaves just to make ends meet, basically. Yeah, that's right. And I think most of her brothers and sisters did the same thing from what I could tell. And she grew up working and eventually they brought her inside as housemaid, even though she preferred to be outside. And once again, once she was inside, she would be whipped from the mistress of the house if her work and her dusting and her cooking and dishwashing was not adequate enough for her. Right. And she suffered. It was just part of daily life, basically, until this incident as a teenager really kind of changed things for her. She was in a store and there was a fugitive slave that was I couldn't quite tell if he's in the store or just trying to get out of the store. But her overseer went to confront this fugitive slave and Harriet, I guess, got the bug of trying to help a slave getaway early on and literally got in this man's way to let this fugitive slave get away. He already had this weight, this iron that he was, I guess, trying to swing and throw at this fugitive slave. And he ended up hitting Harriet in the head and caused a really severe head injury to her. Yeah. For the rest of her life she had traumatic brain injury because, I mean, getting hit in the head with a two pound weight, that's bad enough, but the fact that it's happening in the middle of the 19th century and there's basically nothing they can do for you medically. She was late as well. They didn't exactly send her to the best hospital in town. So she as a result of that brain injury, it's been later diagnosed that she developed narcolepsy cataplexy they called it at the time, sleeping sickness. But she developed this thing where she would just fall asleep out of nowhere. No matter what she was doing, she would just fall dead asleep and would stay that way for hours sometimes and could not be routes. Like you could not wake her up at the time. And then during these periods, she said that she would have very vivid religious dreams, and they kind of attribute her super religiousness, I guess you would call it that. Really? She carried throughout her life kind of came from these dreams. She was an extremely devout religious person, and a lot of it was this idea that she was being kind of personally guided by God through her life, thanks to those dreams. Right. And that anarchy. The repercussions from being hit in the head like that did not serve her well in her life as a slave either, as you can imagine. Her overseers, they were not sympathetic to the fact that she was injured and could not be roused. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. No, she was recovering from her head injury still, and they were trying to sell her, but couldn't find any buyers. And that also is kind of pointed to as one of the driving forces for what made her escape. Finally, when she's like, I'm out of here, she was very worried about being sold off and separated from her family, so she would have rather had control of the situation and separated herself from her family. She could come back if she needed to. So she was worried about being sold off because she just couldn't work like the others anymore. And she took off on March 1849 for the first time. She escaped. Yeah. And she was married by this point in 1844. She married a free man named John Tubman, and the marriage wouldn't last long, but she did keep that name and then began and I'm not sure why, but began using her mother's first name, which is Harriet. So that's how she became Harriet Tubman. And her husband refused to go, basically, when she said, I'm getting out of here. So she got her brothers Henry to run away with her after a couple of weeks on the Lamb, Ben and Henry. It was a scary life out there as a fugitive slave. And they said, you know what? I'm going to go back. And she said, well, she went back with him initially, but then said, you know what? I'm out of here. And this time she went all by herself. Yeah. So the following September, September 1749, she left again by herself. And basically it was a rehearsal for what she would do later on as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. She traveled at night. She used the North Star as a guide. She stayed during the day with Quaker families who were abolitionists that would hide her under the threat of persecution and prosecution. I should say, yeah, this is 1849. So at the time, the laws weren't quite as strict, but as we'll see, they definitely got stricter. But it was still like, you could go to jail or get in trouble for housing a fugitive slave. So these people were definitely putting their necks on the line to help her. And eventually she made her way through Delaware and into Pennsylvania, which was a free state. I don't know if it was ever a slate state. I think it was probably founded as a free state. And when she got into Pennsylvania, she compared it to showing up in heaven, basically. Yeah. The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven. The direct quote, which is just a wonderful thing to say. And I can't imagine the feeling after being on her own, her husband wouldn't come, her brothers went back to be so brave, to go on her own, although she did get help along the way and to finally reach Pennsylvania. Man, it's just unbelievable. So the thing is, though, is she apparently always said later in life, and a lot of this, we should say, is from that biography from Sarah Hopkins Bradford, which is contemporary. It was done while she was alive in 1869. So this is her telling her own story. But she said basically right out of the gate, she was glad to be in Pennsylvania, but there was a part of her missing, like she left her family behind. Her husband was still back there. She never gave birth to a kid, but later on she would adopt a kid. But she had, like, nieces and nephews there, and she just felt like her family was back there and they needed to be free as well. So she resolved basically from the outset to get them whenever she could. That's right. And that's a good place to take a break. I thought so, too, because it sets up her work on the Underground Railroad. And we'll talk about that right after this. All right, Chuck, so we're back 1849 and late 1849. Harry Tubman has escaped and made it to Pennsylvania, and she settled in Philadelphia. She got work as a housekeeper, a cook, and she was getting paid now for doing labor, which is totally novel to her, from what I can tell. And what she did with this money, rather than, like, go buy some nice stuff or have a ham dinner or do whatever with it, she saved it to fund her trip back into the slave states, into Maryland, below the Mason Dixon Line, to retrieve her family. That's what she did with her money. Yes. She didn't even get Eagles tickets. Actually, that's the basis of what she did with her money for the rest of her working life, which is to save the rest of her life. She worked her whole life to make ends meet, and most of the time, it was because she could support herself, but she was also supporting other people as well or trying to help other slaves escape. Yes. So the Underground Railroad, we should probably do a full episode on that at some point. Oh, my friend, we did. Did we? June 2011. Well, no, Mondra, I don't remember that. It was a good one six years ago. That's good. Well, we got to bring it out for SYSC Select. Yeah, for sure. In fact, maybe we should do that this month. So I do remember now. It was a good one. It was. But the Underground Railroad, it worked differently depending on who you are. There was not one. Like growing up as a kid, I always thought it was some direct line that they always use the same path. But the Underground Railroad, depending on who you were as a conductor, which is what they call them, you had your own connections, basically. And like you said earlier, sometimes there were these Quaker families, but they were always friendlies who would help put you up and guide you from spot to spot along the way. Harriet Tubman ended up using because she knew these land along the coast. She would go the route that she knew best as a friendly area. And they had all these ways of communicating in front of their owners and their overseers. A lot of times through song, they would use religious passages and seeing things sing these biblical songs that had all these secret messages in it. And of course, all the while, the overseers have no idea that they're actually sending secret messages to one another. Yeah, one of them took was that they were headed to Canaan, which is meaning you're heading to the afterlife heaven, I guess. And what that actually meant in code for the slaves who are preparing to escape was that they were heading toward Canada, which is about as free as it gets, it turns out. Yeah. She would go generally during the fall and during the spring because the days were shorter and the weather was a little more friendly. She would leave on a Saturday because Sunday was a day of rest for the owner, and they wouldn't find out till Monday morning, and it wouldn't be posted and published on Monday, probably not even Monday morning, because it's not like it was hot off the presses. It would probably wouldn't even get out till later on Monday. Right. Well, if they only published the slave notices once a week, that means that the ones that came in on Monday wouldn't get published to the following Monday. So we give them, like, a full week of time to escape. Oh, did they only publish on Monday? That's what I got. Okay. I didn't see that. Yes, she was a pretty sharp text. She would also say, I'm going to meet you here. She would pass information along to the slaves who are preparing to escape. That she was going to conduct, where to meet, and it was invariably several miles away from where they lived so that it would become very clear if they had been followed by the time they met up with her. She also kept a pistol very famously with her, not just to protect herself or the people that she was conducting, but also to let the people she was conducting know that if they decided they were going to turn back, she was going to shoot him, because she just couldn't risk them giving them up and betraying the rest of the group. So once you were on the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman, there was no going back. You were going on until you reached a free state or were captured. It was one of those two. Yeah. The Tubman train goes in one direction. Yes, it does. And that is north. That was what she put on her cards. That's right. And T shirts, actually, I think she had T shirts, too. All right. Like you said, she doesn't make a trip. She makes trip after trip after trip. There's a lot of speculation on exactly how many people I believe in the original biography, and the number you'll hear a lot is 300. But they have done some investigating since then, and some people have said it may have been, like, 70 people, with another 70 that she kind of trained and taught and empowered to leave. But either way, it's a lot of folks. Yeah, for sure. 13 trips, too. I mean, that's 13 trips back to where she was considered a fugitive slave. Yeah. And eventually had a pretty sizable bounty on her head. I saw $40,000, which is about a million dollars in today's money, which means that there was a million dollars for her capture. And she still never got caught. People still never got her from Philadelphia, because just as she would steal down to below the Mason Dixon Line, slave stealers would steal up above the Mason Dixon Line and capture slaves and bring them back, especially ones that had a huge bounty on their head. So the fact that she had never been captured and that she kept going down below the Mason Dixon Line, supposedly at one point, she had to go through her old town where she had escaped from back in 1849. And the fact that she kept doing this stuff and her legend grew, like, she just became a legend, like, in her own time. Yes. And this is after 1850. You kind of hinted that things got even worse. That's when they pass Congress, passed the Fugitive Slave Act, and this basically required all citizens to assist in recapturing fugitive slaves. It's not like you had to work full time doing this, but if you knew about it and you didn't do something to make it happen, and you were then liable. So basically everybody was unless they were confirmed friendly, everybody was after them. Right. For sure. And that Fugitive Slave Act, in addition to well, it did a lot of things right. So before, it was kind of like if you were in a Northern free state, the fugitive slave laws didn't really apply to you because you were in a free state. The fact that the Fugitive Slave Act made it a federal law. Now everybody in the US. Was subject to this Fugitive Slave Act, and it was one of those laws where you could be punished for not doing anything, like just looking the other way. You could end up in jail for six months and be fined $1,000. So anybody who was already helping on the Underground Railroad was at risk before, but now they were really an even more substantial risk after 1850. And as a result, the end of the Underground Railroad got pushed further up from Pennsylvania up to New York, all the way up to Canada. That was the end of the line for the Underground Railroad after 1850. Yeah. So as this is going on, as she is over a decade, going back and forth down the Eastern Shore of Maryland freeing slaves, she is also successfully speaking at abolitionist fundraising meetings. She was well known, and they would ask she was a public speaker, obviously very much on the down low because she was a super big target for the slave catchers, like you were saying. But this only just enriched her legend that she would take breaks from rescuing slaves to go speak at a fundraising meeting. Yes. And one of the reasons she was doing that in the first place was to make money to fund her work on the Underground Railroad. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, absolutely. Because I imagine that most of those families were doing this for nothing, but I imagine they probably had to pay people off along the way. Yeah. Especially in Canada. Apparently, you could bribe the border guards pretty easily to say, oh, you're visiting? Well, enjoy your time in Canada. Right. And people would settle right across the Niagara River in St. Catherine's, ontario is where a lot of them ended up. All right, so in 1860, a very famous incident, and this is one of the most well documented stories of the time. This was in Troy, New York, and there was a captured slave named Charles Nal. And that was his real name. I can't remember the name that he had been given, but his real name was Charles Nal. They were trying to get him back to Virginia after he had been captured as a fugitive, and everybody knew about it, including Harry Tubman. So she disguised herself as a little old lady. And if you've seen pictures of her, almost all of them are as a little old lady. It's kind of hard to picture her as a young woman, but she dressed herself up as the little old lady that she would become in photos. She slipped into a building a government building in disguise, and then basically gave the signal to all of these people in town who mobbed. As soon as Nal was brought out under the streets, they basically just mobbed him and took him away. Yeah, she went get him. She went swarm, swarm. But it worked. And I guess they just had enough people to overpower them and whisked them away on a riverboat. Yeah. And these were federal marshals that they overpowered? Yeah. It was like, we'll be taking this guy from you. Amazing. That was in 1860, you said? Yeah. That was the same year, I believe, that she did her last trip on the Underground Railroad. Her second to last trip was her parents, who were very elderly at the time, but they ended up settling in St. Catherine's, Ontario, at first, and then her mother was like, It's too cold here. So Harriet moved them down to Auburn, New York. It's upstate New York where the winters are nice and mild, right? Yeah, exactly. Almost muggy. That was her penultimate trip on the Underground Railroad. The last one, she went to go get her sister Rachel, who she'd been trying to reach for a decade, and she went back in 1860 to get her and found that Rachel had died, actually. So she ended up taking a family that was prepared to leave the enols. Did you read about them? Yeah, I mean, Harriet Tubman was not one to waste a trip down there. As sad as she was about her sister, she was like, all right, I'll take you guys. Yeah. So the animal's family was, from what I can tell, a younger couple with an infant child. And Harry, it was like, we're going to have to dope up the baby because we can't have that baby crying. So I just happened to have some tincture of opium and we'll give the baby some of that. So they kept the baby pretty high on this trip to make sure it didn't cry and give away their position. And that was her last 118 60. Yeah. And so, like we said, they relocated from Canada to Auburn, New York. She bought land she was a landowner, remarkably, in the 1850s in Auburn, she bought seven acres of land at a very friendly price from William Stewart, right? Yes. And he was the guy who bought Alaska later. That's right. So yeah. So she's a landowner now, which is pretty significant, like you're saying. Should we take another break? I think we shall. All right. We'll finish up with Jeez the rest of our life, which was also remarkable. So, Chuck, the end of that Underground Railroad, that was basically where my study as a younger lad of Harriet Tubman left off. The rest of it I had no idea about. Did you? I had heard things here and there, but I for sure was not taught this in elementary or high school. Well, lay it on them. Well, the. Civil war breaks out in 1861, and the governor of Massachusetts, john a. Andrew, was very much an abolitionist, and tubman was a friend of his, and he said, you know what? Who do I know that is super stealthy and super sneaky and has a knack for making her way around the woods without attracting attention and can get information from us about the confederate army? How about my little buddy Harriet tubman? Yeah. And so she became a spy. Yeah. The governor of Massachusetts tapped her to become a spy for the union army. So he paid for her passage down to hilton head, I believe, south Carolina. And she was enlisted officially under the cover story that she was there to give out, like, blankets and food and clothing to the slaves that were escaping amidst the chaos of war. There was a lot of slaves that were making their way to union camps and finding shelter there. And her role, supposedly, was to make sure that they were cared for. Like I said, that was just a cover story. What she was actually there to do was to basically lead an intelligence gathering scouting group, basically assemble a guerrilla scouting special forces group behind enemy lines in south Carolina. And that's what she did. Yeah. I wonder if any of the union soldiers, when she showed up and said, I'm here to give out blankets and stuff, they're like, yeah, right, I know who you are. You see those muscles? Yeah. You're not giving up blankets. We know your track record. So specifically, she worked, it seems like, most often with African american troops. Once Lincoln authorized African american troops for the union army in 1862, she would go ahead of these teams and do everything from try and get information on confederate positions and armaments to working with these guys. In June 1863. It's a really cool story. She accompanied Union colonel James Montgomery up the kambahi river, and this is in south Carolina, and they were going to conduct a raid. And so what they found out was there are all these mines that had been set up by were they by slaves or by? So under the direction of the confederates, they had slaves go set mines out in the river. And so she went and found the slaves who had set the mines there so they could tell her where it was. Man, that must have been nerve wracking. It was, because not only did she go find out where it was, so that's step one, which is huge. She went and got the intel of where the mines were. She was in charge of leading directing the union ships around these mines. Yeah. I'm sure she's had her fingers crossed the whole time. But prior to that, even she had also led a raid of the scouts that she had assembled to gather intel and to get supplies behind confederate lines from some sort of confederate encampment. And that made her the first woman in US history to command an expedition force in wartime. Yeah. But sadly, for all her efforts, she was never given military pension like she should have. Federally, that is no, so that's like that's a whole other can of worms. Right. So she successfully makes it through the Civil War, and starting right, I think in 1865, she applied for benefits, right? Yeah. She asked for something like $30 a month. Even though scouts in the Civil War were paid $60 a month, regular soldiers were given a pension of $15 a month. She asked for 30 and she was denied. Officially, the reason she was denied was because there was no documentation. Remember? Officially, her cover story was that she was handing out blankets and all that. And that first petition for a pension started a 34 year quest to finally get recognition in the form of a pension from the federal government for the amazing amount of stuff she did in the Civil War. And finally, despite the fact that there were cabinet members and congresspeople and governors who were personally involving themselves in this matter, trying to get this pushed through the Pensions Bureau was like, we can't do it. If we give it to her, it's going to open it up for all these other people. So it just so happens that she married a Civil War veteran who was much younger than her, and when he died, she started collecting a pension. So she got a pension not because of all of the stuff she did in the war. She got a pension because she married a Civil War veteran, a man who died, and she got a widow's pension instead. Yeah. Well, she would eventually go get her own pension, but not for the work. She does a spy, but for work she does an army nurse. Right. So they upped it finally, in 18, 99, 34 years after she applied from, I think, $12 a month to no, $8 a month to $20 a month was what she got for the rest of her life. Yeah. And guess who she spent that money on? Philadelphia Eagles tickets. Yeah. No, she spent it to open up a home. Well, she bought some more property adjacent to her own property there in Auburn, New York, and she started a home for elderly African American people. And seven years after that, she was kind of getting up in age by that point. So she turned the property over to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, where she went and said, you guys, can you please still run this thing? They said, no problem. And she lived next door to it until she got old enough to where she needed to be in the home that she founded. And that is where she finally passed away in 1913. Yeah. The family legend is that on the day she died, she had been bedridden for a while, but she suddenly regained her strength and got up out of bed with some help and ate some food and went around and just kind of shuffled around from room to room just taking in the house, and then went back to bed and died. Man, which is pretty neat. Yes. And in between that time when she was living in upstate New York, she farmed, and she, by all accounts, was a great farmer and lived off the land, and the life was okay for her. But she also had a lot of fresh out off of the Civil War, had a lot of rude awakenings. It's not like things instantaneously changed for African Americans in the United States. One case, in fact, she was on a train, and she had what's called a soldier's pass, which she could ride the rails for free as a soldier, and she legitimately got this pass, and the train conductor wouldn't accept it. She got into an argument with them, and then he got together with other passengers and physically threw her into the baggage car, which broke her arm, broke three ribs. She couldn't work for months. And famous Harriet Tubman had basically was forced to be bedridden for a while, except handouts from her neighbors just to keep her family fed, because she had her arm and ribs broken at the hands of a conductor. And is that horribly ironic? Yes. So that happened right after the Civil War, right? Yeah. So she was nursed back to health, and like you said, she made ends meet, farming, selling. I think she was known for selling pies and root beer, and gingerbread is what she sold, which is pretty happy stuff, really, if you think about it. I bet that was some good gingerbread. And she lived with her parents. Remember her mom complained about the weather in St. Catherine's, Ontario? So she moved them down to Auburn, New York, to her land, and she cared for them. And she used some of the money to put one of her nephews, who she earlier helped escape from slavery through school. He studied to become a teacher and moved down to South Carolina and taught, and he eventually became part of the reconstructionist legislature there. She used her money pretty wisely. Yes. She opened the old folks home. She did a lot of really great stuff from the day she first got paid till the last day of her life. Yes. She got married again, too. She married a man union army veteran named Nelson Davis, 22 years younger than her. Yeah, that's the guy she got the pension from. That's right. And they married in 1869. And on her gravestone it says Harriet Tubman Davis. And she ended up being buried with full military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, which is really great. They commissioned a Liberty ship, the SS Harriet Tubman, during World War II. She's been in well, they're developing a couple of movies right now, one with Viola Davis, which she's fantastic. So that should be good. Yeah. What else? National Historic Landmarks from where she lived. National Register of Historic Places. And then finally, a couple of years ago, president Obama and his administration said, you know what? We are going to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill. We're going to put Harriet Tubman on it. And it's hard to tell if that's still an active thing, because all we know right now is current Treasury Secretary Steve Nunchon basically is declining comment right now and saying, we got a lot of other stuff to focus on. I saw follow up two weeks later. That's the latest I saw. But two weeks after he initially said that they were proceeding, that it was basically going through, but that it wouldn't be out until after 2026, because I think the $10 bill and then the $5 bill were scheduled to be updated first and then the $20 bill. So she's in the queue. She's in the queue. Yes, for sure. And that won't be the first time she's appeared on anything. She was on a stamp, I believe, back in 1979. I think she might have been the first African American woman on a stamp. It's pretty significant. But her being on currency, that's just a sea change in America and one to be proud of. For sure. Yeah, for sure. So what else, man? You got anything else on her? I got nothing else. That's Harriet Tubman in a nutshell. God bless her. If you want to know more about Harriet Tubman, there's tons more stuff out there. There's actually a really good site that we both use called, I think, Harriet Tubman.org don't spell out. I think that was just me saying that they have a lot of really good information on there. You can look for this article on Houses Works.com by typing it in the search bar, too. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Instead of listener mail today, we need to shout out our Kiva team, because we have not done that in a long time. I know we've been kind of neglectful. So Kiva. Orgteamsstepychinnow. Or you can just go to Kiva and look up on the teams. Many years ago, we started those of you who don't know, kiva is a micro lending organization and website where you can donate money in small amounts to entrepreneurs and business people all over the world who don't have the means to raise money themselves for their small businesses. And then you can relay that money once they pay it back, or you can draw it out if you want to draw it out. So we started a team many years ago, and I haven't looked in a while, and I was astonished. Have you seen what we've raised? No. All right, hold on to your hats. Okay, the stuff you should know. Team has now raised $4.7 million. What? How about that? That's amazing. That is 169,000 loans, 9912 members, man, and just to give you guys an idea of how this works, eight or nine years ago, put in $350, the only money I've ever put into it. And since then, that money has been reloaded to the tune of $2,300 over the years. So you can even put in $50 and just keep reloading that over the years. And through all those eight years, I looked at my account today, I've only had $42 in losses. That is not bad. Not bad at all. So that's money that does not get paid back. And as you can tell, that does not happen much. Yeah. And if you want to join our team, go to Kiva.org teamstepychnow. And our team is led unofficially, officially by Glenn and Sonya, who keep things going pretty smoothly for us over there. So thanks again, Glenn and Sonya, for everything you've been doing all these years. Yeah. So I think a goal we can set right now we always set money goals, but since we have 9912 members, why don't we try and get to 10,000 members? Okay. And that is not much. That's like less than 100 people signing onto the team, loading a little bit of dough. Let's do 10,000 members by the summer, by June 1. Yeah, that's easy. And $1 trillion by June 1 as well. That would be great. And it's really cool. You can see if you go to your account, they have follow ups from people who you loan the money to, like, real stories of what happened with your money. And they're always just great stories. And it's a really easy way if you have five cups of coffee worth of money laying around yeah. To donate it. Yeah. And if you want to know more about it, we've blogged about it extensively. So go to stuffysheno.com and look up Kiva, and it should bring up a bunch of posts and for a good, I think, overview to just go listen to the microlending episode from back in the day, too. That's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can you can do that. You can do it on Twitter at Syskpodcast or at Josh Clark. You can do it on Facebook, facebook. Comstuffyshowcharleswchuckbryant. You can send all of us an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web, stephyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com you."
https://podcasts.howstuf…sk-sxsw-2012.mp3	How Comic Books: Live from SXSW	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-comic-books-live-from-sxsw	Although you might not be a fan of comic books, there's no denying that they have a fascinating place in American history. And -- as if that wasn't interesting enough -- Josh and Chuck decided to break down the story of comic books live at SXSW.	Although you might not be a fan of comic books, there's no denying that they have a fascinating place in American history. And -- as if that wasn't interesting enough -- Josh and Chuck decided to break down the story of comic books live at SXSW.	Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:28:08 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=17, tm_min=28, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0)	53878365	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporicscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With with me, as always, is Charles W. Tuckers Bryant. And I would say about 100 people here in Austin, Texas, at south by Southwest say, hey, people. I think we figured the solution was we were in a bigger room across the way last year. Smaller room seems fuller. I think there are probably a few more people here, but just make the room smaller. Yeah. That's the easiest way to go about things. Yeah. So for those of you who are just coming in on the recording, we've already done the bantering, so we're going to get to it, I think. Yes, Chuck. And we'll have questions at the end, by the way. Yeah. We may replace listener mail with the questions if they're good questions. Right. Okay. We probably should have included that before we started recording. Well, I don't have a listener mail, so we better have questions. Okay. All right, Chuck. Josh, have you ever heard of an actor named Nicholas Cage? So Nick Cage suffered some misfortune in the beginning of 2000. It was a rough time for him. He suffered misfortune long before that. This is, I think, the start of it. This was before oh, I know what you're going to say. Okay. All right. Well, just indulge me. Nic Cage on January 21, 2000, filed a police report because somebody broke into his house and stole his Action Comics Number One. That's not what I thought you were going to say. What did you think of I thought that was the release date of Ghost Rider. That's what I thought you were going to say. It's funny you bring that up, though, because he did Ghostwriter because he's a big comic book guy. And it would probably do any comic book movie that you asked him to because he's big into it. He had an Action Comics Number one, which is the debut of Superman. Right. It was worth, like, $1.1 million, and it just vanished. And ten years later, there was a guy on the case. There was a detective who's working the case the whole time, and he got a tip finally from a comic book dealer that this one issue of Action Comics Number One had turned up. And they were pretty sure that it was the issue, like Nicholas Cage's issue that had been stolen. And they check all the identifying marks, the scratches, you know, like the fold from the mom who is yelling at her kid that she's going to throw this out. A piece of the hair plug. Exactly. Somewhere on the back cages. Yeah. Elizabeth shoes, lipstick. So they identify it as Nicholas cage's. Action comics number one. He gets it back. They found it in a guy who bought a trunk from auction from one of those places that sells stuff bound in storage sheds or storage store places. So I guess the moral of the story is go to those auctions. Oh, he bought one of the full bins. Yes. And it was in there, this comic in it. Wow. So he's just feeling loaded. And then all of a sudden, Nicholas Cage comes on and it's like, that is mine. Right. And he was very excited to get it back. This is April of 2011. He turns around and sells it for $2.1 million, makes a million, just sitting there after he already collected insurance money. Really? Yeah. So it wasn't that special to him. No. And he pretended it was. But the point is that if this story fascinated you, as I hope it did, it's coming out as a movie from the guys who created Reno 911, who played a Dangler and Jr. You got familiar with Reno 911. They're making a movie about this whole thing about the caper of the whole incident. Yeah. With Nick Cage as a character and everything. It's very like, is Sandra Sandberg going to play him? They don't know who's going to play me. That's an excellent thing. Yeah, he does. I don't know if you've seen the SNL sandberg. It's pretty great. Is that right? Yes, it's really good. So it'd be great to be to see Andy sandberg doing Nic cage doing Elvis. Doing tiny Elvis. Yeah, exactly. Tiny. So I say all that to ask you, Chuck, if you've ever read a comic book. Wow, that was a good one. You know, I have, because we have talked on the show. I can't remember which one. I was searching my brain when we were prepping for this. We talked about our love or my love of Archie comics growing up because I was a little baptist boy and I wasn't into all the action heroes, although I guess there was really no conflict there now to think about it. But I had what we'll talk about, the spire Christian comics. I had one of those for sure. And I was into Archie, and the Archie people were kind enough to send us a bunch of swag after we recorded that. I didn't get any of that. I did. I kept it because you said that Archie was like wussy stuff. Oh, I remember. So I took my little Archie boxer shorts and I went home. Yeah, but yeah, they did listen, that was very cool to know that they're still out there pumping them out. And I was into, like, Archie and Richie Rich, a little bit of superhero stuff. But this is the big disclaimer. I know we're going to get murdered on this one, because anytime we do a topic that is like religion to people, like comic books artists on people, we are going to get killed for it because we are definitely not experts in comic books. That is a live version of COA. That is that's very good stuff. Chuck, cover our beat. So we're talking about comic books today. Are you guys fans any really big? Somewhat. I like, bad response. It's good because you'll be like, that was okay. The people who clapped, I'm sorry. Are there any huge comic book fans that really know a lot about it? Because we'll probably ask you to come on. Sort of okay, that's good. I was hoping for nobody that's good. One guy is fine. I want, like, Kevin Smith in the back row. I'm like, no, I know I look like you, but stay away. So we're going to talk a little bit about comic books, about the history, how they're made famous comic books. Not Richie Richard. That's it. That's the only mention of Richie Rich? All right. I mean, this is the time of Occupy. You realize you can't talk about Richie Rich without people tearing you to shreds. You're right. I will say that we can probably skip most of the beginning because in this article from Housepworks.com is very thorough. Who wrote this? Do you know a guy named Nathan Chandler who I've never met or heard of, but he did do a bang up job. He did a bang up job, but he spends a full page talking about defining what a comic book is. And I can assume we all know what a comic book is, but I will say that I did learn that the little gutters I never knew that the blank panels they have blank panels to fill in spaces, and they're called gutters. And I also always kind of took for granted the flow of the comic book. Yeah, a lot goes into the way your eye follows the comic book. And if you ever look at a comic book, sometimes dialogues up here, sometimes down here. Sometimes it's just action and the dialogs over here. But they put a lot of forethought into the layout of the comic book. I thought it was kind of cool. Right? And that's why it's called sequential art. It's another name for a comic book. And speaking of art, comic books are usually lumped in together with jazz and the mystery novel as like a pure American art form. I kid you not. I believe it. So I think that was a great explanation of the comic book gutters, and I think it's a good assumption. Everybody knows what a comic book is generally. Right? But I think that the history is kind of something. This fascinated me, and, like, man, I went to town doing supplemental research on this. If I get a little off at any point, be like, fine. No, I love it. Okay. Do you know what the first one was? Well, I do. It's right here in front of me. 1842. Generally credited as the first comic Book is The Adventures of Obediah Old Buck. Have you seen it? Did you look it up? I did. And the first thing I wondered is whether or not Obadiah wasn't it Obadiah stane from Iron Man. Jeff Bridges in the movie, someone answered him. Yes. Is that right? I wondered if that was just a nod to that first comic book. Possible Badiah is not the most common name, but you did see it. It's just like panel after panel of action and there's, like, narration. I don't think he actually talked at any point that I saw. So it's kind of like a silent movie, almost, too and then it was just basically action. If you can call, like, rowing down the river with your hat action. Like, four panels, I think. But it was the first time anybody ever put sequential art and text together. And this was ostensibly the first comic book anyone's ever created. Yeah. And it was 1842. I know I said that, but let that sink in a minute and think about 1842. What's going on? So it was a pretty modern thing for the time, I guess. What do you think? It's pretty Swiss. Well, it was Swiss. Rhodolpha. It was very nice. I was going to say Rudolph toffer I think that was nice. He went to that trouble. Yeah. He was a teacher and an artist in Switzerland. Did he do this in Switzerland? I think so, because these were translated. It says, made his first appearance in America. And it's a truly American art form invented by my own fact against me. Okay. Well, then, yes, it was American in origin. It was. So fast forward from toffer right? Yeah. To 1895 with the appearance of a kid, with what I did you see this guy? I did the yellow kid. Some sort of developmental problem or something like he was also the predecessor of the shirt Tails, apparently, because a lot of the action and narration appeared on his shirt and it would change from time to time. But the Yellow Kid was the first humorous comic strip. And I use humorous really liberally because it wasn't funny at all. Well, comedy in 1895 was like, if you weren't dying that day, then it was pretty funny. We don't have the play. Exactly. Isn't it funny? So The Yellow Kids comes along and he's the first one where it's like, okay, you can pick up a newspaper and find something that will just take your mind off of everybody dying and give you something to laugh about for a second. And it happened sequentially, too. And there's speech bubbles or else he says something on his shirt. Yeah, the speech balloons. They've used them in political cartoons before. But this was like where the speech balloon really took hold as a comic. Remember, they just wrote everywhere in political cartoons. I got a little nugget for you, too. I don't know if you want to hear it. The Yellow Kid, the comic The Yellow Kid was inspiration for the term yellow journalism, evidently. Is that right? Yeah, because it was first used by someone, I think, from The New York Times said this yellow kid journalism because he was in a Hearst newspaper, I think, and they were mocking Hearst, and that eventually came yellow journalism. Nice. Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you. So the old kid runs around doing his thing for another maybe, like 35, 40 years, and then all of a sudden, the boring part of this podcast is over. People start figuring out that people think the yellow kids funny. It took about 40 years to test the water. Right? And then finally, people actually like this guy, so let's start making new characters. And all of a sudden, you have, like, Dick Tracy Popeye. Who else is in there? Little Orphan Annie. Yes. And these are all characters that are still resonating today, obviously. Right. And then right after that, a little company named Eastern Color, who eventually did you realize this? Eastern Color became EC Comics Entertaining Comics, which gave rise to Mad Magazine, which is like, end of story right there. EC Comics is the most important thing that's ever happened to humanity. Yeah, agreed. Right. So Eastern Color starts printing, like, all these comics that are appearing in newspapers, puts them together into, what's? The first comic book. And they're all reprints. And Proctor and Gamble pays for this and starts giving them away with, like, toothpaste or some sort of weird toiletries from the 30s. What were they using back then? I have no idea. And that kind of gave rise to the idea that you don't just get your comics out of the newspaper and you can kind of see, like, these things are, like, these steps, these huge, monumental steps are taking place, like, closer and closer together, because that was 1933, and I think it was 1935 that somebody said, you know what? I'm tired of paying all these fees to reprint all this stuff. I can just find some guys it's the Depression and pay them next to nothing, maybe assign some armed guards to make sure they work 24 hours a day and just publish all new material. Yeah, the Eastern had given these away through Proctor and Gamble, and they actually sold a few after that because they thought, hey, these are really popular. And then that's when they started saying, you know what? These reprints are getting old. Let's come up with original material. And in 1935, DC Comics, in 1934, they were formed actually, Detective Comics is what it stood for and stands for. Unless they changed that without my number. No, it's still okay. And they were the first ones to put out something called New Fun Comics Number One. And that was like, a Chinese restaurant or something. Should I not have said that? Is that okay? This is live, but it's not going out. Okay, good. And that was the first time that there was a full comic book of new stuff as part of a sequential series that people could follow that was ostensibly the first real comic book, was born. And the 6th issue, I'm very determined that comic book, what was the new fund comics number one. Okay, so number six put together two guys named Jerry Siegel. And what was the other guy's first name? Joe. Joe Shooster. And within a couple of years, those guys put out the first superhero ever. His name was Superman. Let's get a round of applause for Superman. Exactly. Superman changed everything. He was the first superhero. He was the first costumed one. So he said, it's all right to wear tights if you can throw a car. Sure. Right. And he gave rise to basically comic books as we know it today. Everything you think about with comic books and superheroes and being able to take a bullet in the chest and have it just ricochet. Which, by the way, are you familiar with the George who was the guy who played superman? George Reeves. George Reeves, yeah. And then Christopher Reeves was plural or do I have that backwards? No, you have it right. Have you ever heard the story when a kid came to one of his appearances because George reef played Superman on TV in the so kids showed up with his dad's gun to shoot Superman. Right, because in the opening credits of superman, like, some bad guys are shooting him, and he's just standing there with his chest out and bullets are ricky saying, then one of them throws his gun and he ducks. Yeah, I thought that was weird, but a kid showed up after seeing all these many episodes of this and to some publicity appearance and was going to shoot George Reeves. And George Reeves said, kid, it would work if you shot me, but that bullet would brick a shade off and hit somebody in the crowd, and you kill them, and you don't want to do that. So the kid that gave him the gun and then he went exactly. Yeah. So that was a superman aside. Ben Affleck played him in a movie. George Reeves, right. Yeah. Hollywood land. There you go. He's a pretty messed up guy. No, you're thinking of Bob Crane and auto focus. No, you really are. No, they were messed up in two entirely different ways. Okay, I got you. So DC also gave rise to once superman came out, or soup, as we like to call them, they also gave birth to Batman and the whole detective comic series. And the detective series is still going today, 800 issues. Well, by the time this is written, I'm sure it's way more than that. 800 plus. 800 plus issues. Still going strong today. Yeah. Longest running comic title ever, the DC series. Right. So that was 1939. A Batman came out. 1941 was a big year, too. Wonder woman came out in all star comics number eight. And anybody who listened to the lie detector podcast will know that the guy who invented the lie detector, a psychologist, was William Marston. I believe that sounds right. He also created wonder woman, and really? Yes, he did. You know this. And he was a psychologist who lived with two wives and the children he had with all of them under the same roof, supposedly, happily. But he was huge under women's lives and truth telling, which is why one woman has that lasso of truth. He created the lie detector. Really? Yes. You know this? I don't think I remember that. Okay. I was, like, zoning out on linda carter at the time, I'm sure. So world war II came along, as we all know, unfortunately. And that was when superhero comics were really big. And not only that, but walt disney comics were really huge. Yeah. And they mentioned donald duck and mickey mouse, obviously. But the most popular of the disney comics and actually the most popular comics during the most popular period of comic books was uncle scrooge McDuck. Yeah, he's like the biggest one, right? Yeah. But I remember I had a few of those as a kid. Yeah, I'd like ducktails. It was a good show. Yeah, he really figured big into that one. It was great. But world war II, speaking of yeah, that was huge for comics. Yes, because even before the US. Entered into the war, comic book characters were beating the tar out of adolf hitler on a monthly basis. Like captain america. Sure. He debuted his number one edition comic book, had him socking hitler in the face. It's a pretty awesome picture if you ever want to check it out, especially if you hate hitler. That was par for the course for comics at the time. Like, they just beat up on hitler and the germans or the japanese every month. Right, sure. So that was kind of a big deal. And speaking of nazis and comics, you want to mention hansi? Yeah. Did anyone grow up here in the read any of the spire christian comics at all? You did? All right. One other person. That's how popular they were. My grandmother, god rest her soul, grandmother mills, worked at a baptist bookstore in tennessee, and whenever I would go to this bookstore, she would tell me to pick out some comic books, which I thought was really cool, like free comics. However, being at the baptist bookstore, the only thing they had was spire christian comics, and they didn't have any superheroes or anything like that. They didn't even have archie at the baptist bookstore. And spire was really big at the time, man named al hartley, he was a cartoonist. Converted to christianity in the late sixty s and converted like 25 family members. Right. Did he really? Yeah, he just went to town. He went to a fair meeting, came home. I was like, that's it. We're all christian. I don't care what you have to say. You're christian, man. Right. And he worked for archie comics and tried to work in some of the christian storylines through archie and then the publishers were like, archie is as clean as it can be, but we really need to tone this down on the religion thing. Wait, let's the publishers of the archie comics told this guy to tone it down? Yeah. That is significant. It was pretty significant. And lucky for him, a publisher called fleming h. Ravel came along and said, you know what? I want to start a full line of Christian comics. I will call it spire christian comics. And you can go to town, dude, as much as you want on whatever you want. And he did with hanse, who I will show this little picture. I know. I wish we had that up on the that's okay. This is lo fi. That is hanse, the girl who loved the swastika. That's the subtitle. Yes. From 1973. And I actually did not have this one, but I did have no, but. I had the Johnny cash Christian comic, the tom landry Christian comic, and the very awesome story, the cross and the switchblade in which a thug mugger is turned by the guy. He mugs a pastor. And the pastor is like, come with me. Let me tell you a few things that happens a lot. But hansi was huge. She was a young girl in sue den land, and the Germans invaded, and she was very glad the Germans invaded because they brought books for her to read. They took her to a Russian prison camp, and they raped all of the women except hanse because she was too skinny. I don't even know what to say about that. I don't know. But she was very fortunate to get out of that, obviously. Eventually, she finds her way to an American camp. She's very pleased because the soldiers there treat her well and moves back to America, finds a husband who introduces her to the bible. And then it was all over after that. She opens up halfway houses in California and doesn't age over the period of, like, 60 years. Now, that was the critics. Big problem with this one was that she doesn't have her age. That was the problem with this company. But time still went on. So, like, 60 years later in the book, she's talking to people about where she started out, and she's still teenage hanse. So do you want to drop the bomb on him? I'm not sure what you mean. It is based on a real story. Oh, yeah. Is that the bomb? Okay. I thought it would have a much bigger impact than that is why I call it the bomb. I would have been like, do you want to mention that last thing to him? Yeah. Thank you. All right. Yeah. What was her name? I can't find it. Oh, yeah. Maria anne. Hirshman. I like hanse more. Yeah. Hans is a very marketable name. So world war II, it was big for comics. Whether you're beating up hitler or publishing Christian comics about girls, who love swastika. It was huge. Yeah. There were also some propaganda comics in the 40s about communism. Is this tomorrow america under communism in which the speaker of the house was subverted before assassinating the president and the vice president and smashing a statue of the virgin Mary. That's some serious propaganda going. I've got one for you. Speaking of propaganda. So Jerry Siegel, one of the guys who created superman because superman beat up Hitler on such a regular basis, joseph Gerbils himself called Jerry Siegel circumcised physically and intellectually a beatle. So, man, if you take off Joseph Gerbils and to say something publicly about you, you're doing something, right? Agreed. And I think they were. But the big thing besides beating up Hitler and coming up with Hanse that world war II did the comics, was that it created like, a whole new readership in GIS. The American government actually sent comic books out to the front. So you had a whole new group of grown up guys who are like, this is pretty cool. I like beating up Hitler, but I'm also into western and science fiction and horror and crime and just like more adult themed stuff. And I also want to see some more nakedness than I'm seeing in comics. And I want to see the f word, not just like the dollar sign in an asterisk or something like that. So it changed the readership of comics. So when everybody gets back from the war, comics themselves change, too, from that demand. So you have horror comics, you have western comics, you have crime comics, and comics get way more hardcore, way cooler than they were before. Right? Agreed. But they actually step over this line, supposedly. Yeah, because a man named Frederick Worthham, a psychiatrist in 1954, wrote a book called the seduction of the innocent. And he kind of threw it out there that these comic books are what are leading our kids down this awful path of destruction. And parents, of course, bought into it big time. Yeah, well, basically he was saying, like, comic books are going to turn all of our kids into serial killers. They're all doomed. Some are probably already killing, and you don't know it, and your parents. So just pay attention to your kids and get rid of the comic books. And actually, Binghamton New York had a comic book burning. Oh, really? Based because of this book. I got a friend from there. He never told me about that. It's a dirty secret among the towns book. So the comic book industry decided, you know what? We're going to take a big financial hit here if we don't do something. So maybe we should self censor because censorship is illegal, right? Yeah. Is that what they say? They came up with what they call the comic code authority, the CCA. And it was all self imposed. And up until, I think, last year, DC comics still subscribed to this, right? Yeah, it's crazy marvel stopped in, like, the Think. So this is way too long, but I'm just going to read you a few highlights. General Standards part A. The big thing was to not endorse crime or to make crime seem like something kids would want to do. So you couldn't explicitly present unique details or methods of a crime. You didn't want any copycatting going on. You could never show kidnapping whatsoever. The actual word crime could not be any larger in font than any other word. General Standards B. No walking dead. No torture vampires. I don't even know what that is because they also include regular vampires. So I guess torture vampires, those are the worst kind of vampires. Those are not Twilight vampires. No ghouls. No cannibalism. No werewolfism, obviously, which is not even a word. Yes, it's werewolf under dialogue. No profanity smut, no vulgarity precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities. Didn't want to make anyone feel bad about themselves. Can I say my favorite? Yeah. Wherever possible, good grammar shall be employed. Is that in there? Yeah. I didn't even see that. Religion. There's only one rule. Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible. Nudity is prohibited. And this one is what I think personally inspired our crumb to take up a pen. Female shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities. So our Crumb was like, what? Oh, really? Yeah, and we mentioned that because joking aside, this is what actually gave rise to underground comics. Yeah, because comics from that point on stocked. And actually, I think sales drop between 1954 and 1956, like 50%. Oh, really? Yes. And this is the comic book publishers doing it themselves. They came up with this code. They established this authority, and any time you finish a comic book, you have to send it in. The CCA would be like, change this, change that, and then we'll approve it. So then, yeah, it drove everything undergone because it's like sordidness can neither be created nor destroyed. So it has to go somewhere. And it went, like you said, into our crown. Right. It went into underground comics. And comics is spelled with an X, right. Just to kind of separate it from other comics. And because they're X rated, which they are very proud of. This was the all of a sudden, they were tackling with underground comics. They're really good stuff. Sex, drugs, politics. With cats, though. Well, Fritz the Cat was one of the big ones. But along with all these sort of tales, comic books also grew in respectability because they started real literary works all of a sudden were being created. Right. Like, the art got better, the storylines got a lot better. Yes, the writing got better. Yeah, because it was like, hey, we were back from World War II. We want mature comics. And here they are in nowhere band. So people wanted that. And if there's demand with anything. You're going to get it. The other thing that underground comics created besides our crumb stuff, harvey PCAR was another big one. Sure. That was a great movie, wasn't it? Kind of proved that you can take something, like, in comic book form and add real literature to it, real art to it. And that eventually gave rise to the graphic novel maker, a guy named Will Eisner. Yeah. A contract with God is generally considered, even though they had used words like graphic before, which they don't like, by the way. They don't like graphic novel because it sounds dirty. You know what I'm saying? Who doesn't like that? The comic book people apparently never liked the term graphic. Really? Yeah, that's what I hear. And a novel, like a drawn novel had been used, but Will Eisen actually printed on the front cover. A graphic novel by Will Eisener. Right. And he thought he coined the term, but apparently it was some fan who had, like, years before. Yeah, but everyone says will eisner. We'll go with that. So that gives rise to this whole idea that you can create something that's longer than 20 to 30 pages that has real meaning to it, where the characters are just messed up, including these people who are supposed to be heroes, because that's something that's been simultaneously evolving. Too. Will Eisner was the first person to create a superhero spirit yes. Who is just deeply flawed. He wasn't always successful at fighting crime. Like, he failed. He had problems. So him coming back and creating the graphic novel is not really surprising. It's almost like he's sending a precedent for years later. Right, but it gave rise to, like, art. Spiegelman's Mouse. Yeah. The Alan Moore's Watchman, which is the only graphic novel I have read. Is it good? It is awesome. I've not read it. Yeah, it's way awesome. Did somebody just gasp? Yeah, it is gasp worthy, I think. And then Frank Miller, I have not read any of his stuff, but I have seen some City. Yeah, I enjoyed that. And he did 300, too, right? Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah. The ABS in that movie. Man. For those of you who aren't here to have to wave the sweat off. He did The Dark Knight Returns. Too. Which gave rise to. Like. All the Batman movies that we know and love now. Because Batman also originally kind of started out flawed after The Spirit. And then he turned into. Like. Just this well. He turned into the show Batman. Which was awesome in its own right. But if you're in the comic book industry and you're trying to prove that comics are legitimate art forms and Adam West is doing his thing on TV every week, like, it's really kind of undermining your case. Right? Yeah. There were no ABS in that, by the way. No, there was flab. Adam west had, like, some serious love. There was. And speaking of, so we talked about the guy who wrote the seduction of the innocent. One of his big problems with comics was that robin and batman were clearly homosexual. Robin was drawn often with bare legs, frequently spread apart while he was standing. And he was, I think, clearly only attached to batman or something like that. That was one of his big problem. Well, I think they were the inspiration for the Smiggles ambiguous. Yeah, don't get me started. It's one of my favorite things ever. He talks about it all the time. I do. Stan lee was actually one of the first people to start having flawed superheroes as well. But they weren't completely messed up in the watchman. No, but he was stan lee, who was, like, one of the founding guys at marvel, as everyone knows. I'm sure he was working within the structure. The underground comics guys, they didn't have anybody to answer to. They could do or say whatever they wanted to. But Stan lee, he was working for marvel. It was a major publisher, and he had confines to work with him, but he was trying to kind of push the boundaries here, there, and he was doing it with flood. Like spider man. He's just a total screw up. Well, he was the first guy to kind of introduce characters that their powers were a curse and not so much a blessing. He had the fantastic four who three of them. It was a big blessing. But, of course, the thing I always want to be human, but Tony stark was a big jerk, as everyone seen in the iron man movie, if you're not a fan of the comic book. And he was forced to become iron man to live to keep living with that punishment, that thing I don't know what it's called. Yes, the flex capacitor. And of course, spiderman. He didn't choose that. He was a little nerdy kid who got beat up and got bit by a spider. The hulk, very tortured character. He didn't want to be the hulk. He hated being the hulk. He hated being lou fragno. Yeah, he certainly did. But it's pretty cool that stan lieber actually was his original name, and Stanley was when he became but he kind of took it to a different level, even further than Eisener, I think. From what I understand, he also helped create the shared universe. Like, all marvel characters live in the same universe. That crossover a lot. And that was, like, groundbreaking when he came out with that. Like, everybody takes it for granted now, but that's a big deal. Yeah. And it's the guy I can't remember the article that I read. But the guy that I read talked about the sharing of characters. And he said other people had people appear as guests and other comics. But they were the first people to really build this universe and have this carefully constructed forethought to where you felt like at any given moment. A different person could show up. And it wouldn't be like. Oh. Wait a minute. There's hulk, all of a sudden, it would make sense. Right? Exactly. I thought it was pretty cool, and I think it was comic cube that you got that one from. Yes. So Marvel household name obviously says, DC comics. They account for eight out of every ten comic books and DC together. Yeah. Which total that whole ten accounts accounted for $417,000,000 in sales in 2011, which is substantial, if you ask me. That ain't nothing on manga. Manga. Manga, manga, mangaes, whatever. These are comics in Japan, and we're covering the United States pretty much exclusively, but they are huge in Japan, and in 2007, the total sales were $3.6 billion in Japan alone. I know. And that same year, 175,000,000 of Japanese comics in US. And Canada. So they're popular over here as well. Yeah. You mean I went to Japan, and everywhere you go where there's manga being sold, there are 18 kids just standing there reading. I'm, like, totally smoking cigarettes. No, they're all wearing, like, school. This is a whole country of good kids. They don't smoke cigarettes yet. Like, they wait till adults and then everybody smokes. But they're all wearing, like, their little shorts and their blazers and everything, reading manga, like, just crazy stuff. Yes. And those are generally black and white, is that right? Yes. Okay. I'm not the manga expert. I've just been to Japan once. That's more than me, my friend. So we've talked about the history of comics. We've talked about manga. What else is there to cover? Let's talk about some of these, some of the top artists, because the part on how they're done is really not super interesting. No, I think bear's mentioning, though, one person isn't creating a comic. There's the writer, there's the pencil who draws rough sketches, the anchor who comes in behind, and substantializes everything. Right. The person who does shading. Well, there's a colorist. Yes. And then the letter. Yeah, and the letter. I thought that was kind of cool, actually. Yes. You don't think about the font that much, but it really matters if it's bold or something. They make these decisions of these choices, but really it's like, is it bold? Not bold or squiggly. Yeah, that's what the letter is coming up. You mean fear, right? Pretty much. Or intrepidation. I think it's a word. It is, yeah. So we searched a comic cube, and I'm not sure what this other one was, because I didn't know who people generally considered the top artist and writers of comic books, but this dude has stan Lee in the marvel gang, including jack Kirby and Steve ditko, the people who created spiderman, fantastic four, hulk, thor, iron man, silver surfer, and number five. Yeah, this guy's I don't know much, but I thought, come on, dude, he was clearly drunk when he made this list. Well, Harvey kurtzman is number one, and kurtzman was famous for his military comics, and they were not very pro military at all. They were very much showed the downside of war and showed the ugly brutality of war. But he is the man who went on to later create tales calculated to drive you mad, which became mad magazine, which Josh and I had were huge fans of. Yes. So hard. He also oversaw tails from the crypt because that oh, really? That was easy. That was eastern color. I thought I heard a gasps about tales. Is that you? Wow, that's awesome. Big tales from the crypt man. Gasps in one podcast, that is 200% more gasps than we usually have. Go ahead. I don't know where you were going. Well, I thought it covered some of the artists too, because the writers get a lot of due, but you never hear a lot about the artist. And Lou fine, one of the first big stars in the 1940s. I got him at number ten. Not bad. Okay. And Frank Frazetta, who I didn't think I knew until I looked him up, he was a comic book artist for a very short time, and then was one of the few guys to go on to mainstream art. And I was like, I still haven't heard of this guy until I clicked on Google images, and then I went, oh, the guy who did the Molly Hatchet album covers. Nice. And he did all those awesome fantasy paintings. It was really cool stuff. I'm a fan of yes and ages album covers. And Iron maidens. I think Iron maiden has the best album coverage. I don't know who did those. I don't either. Just saw okay. Small clap for iron maiden. Neil Adams. They have listed at number three. What did he do? He was the guy who brought along modern techniques from the commercial art world. Got you. And he applied it, and he sort of revolutionized. And people generally say that as far as art is concerned, you have the Kirby area era, and then you have the Adams era. So he was that important. And Kirby is number one. Captain America. Xmen. Hulk. Fantastic. Four. Yes. Forget about it. What about Steve Bilko? Who? Steve Bilko? Not to be confused with Steve Biko. You're thinking of sergeant Bilco, the Steve Martin movie. No. It's thinking of Steve Biko. Steve Ditko. Yeah. Dito. Not to be confused with Mike ditko. I think he cocreated spiderman and I think was the first guy to draw spiderman. Yeah, like the comics we grew up with, it was Steve Dicko and Jack Kirby. Yeah. I'm sorry. The comics I grew up with were Jack Kirby and Steve Dick. I grew up with everyone else in this room except you. Got anything else we should talk about, Mouse? Maybe for a second. Yeah, that was a big deal. That was arch Beagleman, and he won a special Pulitzer prize for his comic book, maus maus, and it told the story of he and his father in Nazi occupied Germany, and he used a very tried and true technique of using animals as people. So the Jews were mice, Germans were cats, of course, and Poles were pigs. And I thought, Is that tried and true? And I thought, oh, no, every Disney movie I've ever seen has animals not as people. And again. Shirt tails. Yeah. Ducktails. No, shirt tails. I don't know shirt tails. You don't remember shirt tails? No. We got three cats. What was shirt tail like? Some crime fighting menagerie of panda and, like, a fox and moose. They lived in this tree. And then they all jump into something akin to the great space coaster, fly off to handle a problem, solve a mystery. But they would, like, whatever emotion they were feeling would flash on their shirts. That was their gimmick. And this is a cartoon that it was a great cartoon. I don't know how I missed this. Yeah. I was in the Baptist Bookstore. I think your grandmother would have been okay with shirt tails. You never know. It was not very were the shirt tails tucked or untucked? They weren't even wearing pants. Now they forget about it. Maybe not. It's all over. Yeah, I got nothing else, actually. Watchmen. You keep saying that and following, but we should say Watchmen is so great, it was named one of the 100 best English language novels in Time magazine in 2005. So I should say it all, even though the movie I liked, because I liked the book so much, wasn't so great. Did you watch it? The movie? The Watchman movie? No, it was good. It was faithful. Well, I just remember, like, just a big sense of depression just kind of settled over America for, like, two weeks after that movie came. Yeah, definitely not an uplifting story. No, I meant because it wasn't as good as everybody else. Oh, yeah, I think you're right. So let's see if you guys want to learn anything more about comic books. We actually have a bunch of comic book stuff on the site. You can type in. Comic books. C-O-M-I CSP O-O-K-S. Yes, in the handystarchbar@howtofworkscom. And that will bring up this article. And I said handy search bar. I didn't even just say search bar. I said handy search bar, which means it's time for Q and A. Whoa. Yeah. Unless no one has any questions. Thank you very much. So does anyone have any questions that have nothing to do with comic books? I'm just kidding. Okay. Hi, what's your name? Oh, hey, we got a mic. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, we can hear you. Well, no, we're recording it up for the recording. Also, by standing up, you release it from any kind of liability for your ebook. What if I squat hat? It's too late now, pal. What type of screen process did you, Josh, go through when you were kind of picking out your co host, because before you had podcast for five minutes long, you had different few people that were the household force.com. Chuck, just start working and like, hey, let's do a podcast, or, I need somebody to do 30 minutes of podcasting with me. How does that work, Josh? So for those of you who don't know, chuck and I haven't always been together. I know there was a dark time pre chalk. It's crazy. I want to forget about it. It very much came about the way that the podcast came about, where I have a boss who came along and said, hey, why don't you get together with Jerry and make a podcast? It doesn't matter that you don't know what a podcast is that you've never heard one. Just go do it. So we did. We tried a few people. There were editors at the time. That's how they were picked. And then all of a sudden, I think you went to Connell, didn't you? And you're like, Dude, I want to know. I didn't know what was going on. Well, then, just out of the blue, Connell was like, hey, let's do this with Chuck. And we tried it with Chuck, and, man, it was like the first moment he sat down, I was like, this guy smells good. Things just seem, like, different now. This recording system. I'm not sad. Everything just seems cool. And then he opened his mouth, and it was like fireworks, dude, I don't even know how to interpret that. That's how it started. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, we were buddies at work and had similar sensibilities, and it just sort of made sense. I'm frankly a little shocked that they didn't pick me to begin with, to be honest. I am as well. I mean, we're buddies already at work. We knew each other, and we, like, palled around and everything, but, yeah, I think it was just kind of like a baptism by fire. And then they're like, it's chuck time. We got number two. Yes. Hi. Hello. Hi. So I'm curious what a topic is that maybe you guys keep saying, oh, we need to do this, we should do this, we should do this, and you just never get around doing it. Something that you'll probably say the same thing. I would say Scientology. Sorry, was that what you're going to say? That Scientology is one that we have been asked to do many times that we want to do. But they are very litigious group, and we don't have that much money. I think we're scared to do one. Yeah, I am. I mean, John Travolta is in Georgia right now shooting a movie, so they could just send him over to our house. There was a moment where it was like, hey, maybe we will do psychology, because the FBI was investigating them. There's always stuff on public record, which is the big problem, is every source that we would come across would be just about hearsay from disgruntled people, ex members, whatever, and it's very one sided. So all of a sudden there's a possibility that we were going to have all these sources from FBI investigations and then it just stopped and we're like, well, if the FBI is not doing it, we're certainly not going to do it either. They have guns? Yes. Over there in the glasses, actually. Oh, sorry. Yeah, this person over here. Your next started ten minutes, Greg. Hi, my name is Cara and I live in Guatemala with my husband. Oh, we're big fans of your country. We loved your podcast. Those two podcasts you did in Guatemala were awesome. Thank you. For those of you who don't know, we went to Guatemala with Jerry. We were invited by a group called Co ed, who's a nonprofit who does great work down there and they paid for us to go down there and it changed our lives in a lot of ways. I want to compliment you on it because you did the history section really well, which most people don't do one thing that I want and actually Brad was like, man, I wish I'd gotten this before I went to Guatemala because it really served as kind of like dummies on Guatemala. It was really great. Well, we were dummies in Guatemala. Well, you know, one thing that I wanted to ask you is were there some stories or some other things that you left out, like how you went about I mean, you talked a lot in your second Guatemala podcast about how there was all this material that you didn't include or things that you could have included but you didn't. And I guess I'm wondering, was there one thing in particular you didn't include in that podcast that maybe you could talk about? It probably had to do with bronze, a copper rum, probably the nectar of Guatemala. That's good stuff. I think there was just so much that went on. There wasn't anything in particular, but when you're there for how long were you there? Like four or five days, I think. Five days? Yeah, it's five days and six nights, I think. Yeah. It's hard to encapsulate that in 2 hours. There was definitely nothing we were covering up. No. Beautiful country though. I gave a sacrifice to cigarettes and some cane liquor and I quit smoking like two years this May. So it definitely helps. So it works. I guess that's to answer your question. Yeah, over there, I think she had a question. Yeah, she's like, no, not anymore. She's like, it was about Guatemala. So my question is related to research. So we pretty much live in a world now where most people, including like, if you're in school, will do research, I guess, on the internet. So I was wondering for each topic, like a, if you're doing research online, how do you try to validate a particular fact and then also, do you ever go outside of the Internet for validation or more research? And if so, what are your sources? It's almost all Internet research, which is kind of the way it is these days. It is. I've written one article where I went to the library and I've written a few hundred articles for how this works. And I actually had to go to this rare books library to find the one book in print as I was writing about Elizabeth Bathrous, this Hungarian countess who's like, the world's most pollinatic serial killer. And it was really hard to find any good stuff, like decent sources on it. But I knew that there was one book out there. So I've been to the library one time and I'm like, not this place has been before. That right, exactly. I was like, what is this place? All these weird books. There's pencils, but that was pretty much the extent of it. There's so much good stuff online. I think five, six, seven years ago, you could have really put somebody down and said that they just do their research online. There's so much good stuff, especially if you know what you're looking for, what you're looking at. If the fact you're kind of looking up appears in almost the same wording, and source after source after source, well, then you need to go find something else. Yeah, that's not a good thing, actually. It's always very good to just find a couple of sources for a fact, especially something that's just kind of outlandish. It's a lot of common sense, and then it's a lot of, like, knowing who you're getting your sources from. We have since virtually stopped writing since we've been working on the TV pilot, and since we've been podcasting so much lately that we rely on how stuff works. Articles. All of our articles are based on just the House of Works article. And then we do supplementary research, and I guess that's all we need, the House that Works basis, because we know that there's the same amount of attention and dedication has kind of gone into the research to write that article that very rarely do we run across one where we're like, this is just flagrantly wrong. The Donner Party. Yeah, check out the Donner party when we tear that poor kid apart. I don't remember who's coming out soon, but when we do, we call them out because it's bad research, and we hate bad research because it makes us look like jackasses and we hate looking like jackasses. But it's almost all online. Thanks. We got one more. Perfect. Man, this is petering out nicely. I love your podcast. I listen to all the time. I was just wondering what a day in the life of Josh and Chuck looks like. You said you don't write as much anymore, but how many podcasts do you do per week? What's the pilot going to be like on your schedule? Funny you should ask. This is not a plant, by the way. Great question though. Thank you, Tim. Yeah, we record between two and four a week and we release two a week. So we tried to build up what we call a kitty, like Jerry likes to call it. So like when we go out of town or when we're shooting TV stuff, we can still release on a regular basis. Because if anyone wants to start a podcast, everyone always asks for advice. You always have to release it very regularly. The biggest mistake podcasts make starting out is they'll release one and they'll wait a few weeks and release another one. But that Tuesday. Thursday. Man. People count on it coming out. And so we record two to four. We have a little video podcast now this is kind of fun. And we record twelve of those a month that we alternate every other week. So generally a day in the life is us researching and studying. We call it studying. It's a lot of reading and Josh memorizes way more than I do. We take a nap on Carpet Squares at 02:00 PM. Shop. Yeah. 02:00 PM. Every day. Butter cookies and juice. Yes. Then martini time after that. But since you did mention the TV thing, we would like to invite everyone here tomorrow to Fadotirish Pub on Fourth Street. And we are having a variety showpremierparty for the TV pilot that Science Channel has gone out on them and been really awesome to let us do. And it is at 05:00. It starts goes till nine. And we have john Hodgeman will be there, our old bud and a guest for John. Or just a clap. Okay. John will be there. And comedy from Eugene Merman who's very hysterical stand up. And our buddies, the Henry Clay people will be playing music and local band Crooks will be playing music. And Lucy Wayne Wright Roach who plays Jerry on the show will be playing music because she is also a very talented singer songwriter guitar player. And it's going to be fun. First hundred people get a free drink, which is always nice. Everybody just ran out right now, gotten a lot of so yeah, it's going to be a good party and we thanks Science Channel because they are super awesome and have really stuck their necks out to give us a shot at a TV pilot, which hopefully we'll see later on this year. Is that good? You are good at that, man. Thanks, man. I'm getting better at it. Yeah. Anything else? I'm good. Does anybody else have any questions? We have 1 minute. Man, this was perfect. As a matter of fact, everybody give yourself a round of applause. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much for coming. Let's see. If you want to contact us you can reach us on Twitter at syskpodcast. If you don't follow us, it is a jam. Facebook.com stuff you should know. Also quite the party. They could have gone and seen Willem Dafo right now, by the way. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. I wish I had a $5 bill to give to everybody. Or you can email us at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join House department staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1226414285078hsw-sysk-cia-lsd.mp3	Did the CIA test LSD on unsuspecting Americans?	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/did-the-cia-test-lsd-on-unsuspecting-americans	As more and more time passes, the Freedom of Information Act provides increasingly disturbing stories of illegal CIA operations. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about MKULTRA and illegal CIA operations in the United States.	As more and more time passes, the Freedom of Information Act provides increasingly disturbing stories of illegal CIA operations. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about MKULTRA and illegal CIA operations in the United States.	Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:55:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=14, tm_min=55, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=316, tm_isdst=0)	25145359	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. This is Joe. Chuck. Chuck. Yes, ma'am. I am Chuck. I'm here to you. Prepare today, as usual, that kind of method approach to podcasting. No, I know what you're getting at. No, I did not. You just feel a little hanky. I'm hinky. I like it. I'm hinky. Can you pull yourself together? I'm together. I'm with it. I'm fine. This is kind of an important one. It's a little out there, but it's all true. It is. Okay, so you're fine? I'm fine. I'm good. Let's do it. While we're talking today about a certain set of experiments carried out by a certain government agency known as the CIA yes. And they carried out an experiment with another three letter word. LSD. Right on. Unsuspecting American. Yes. I think most people would not expect to hear those six letters together in the same sentence. This is not widely known. No, it really isn't. And frankly, it should be. I think it's kind of one of those things that supports just about every American's notion of what the CIA is up to at any given time. Right. And yet it's just so out there, so fantastic that they actually did this that it's kind of hard to believe, but this is documented. This actually happened. It did. Okay. Do you want to give a little background first? Well, how about you tell us how we know that this stuff happened? Well, because it's on record. It is on record. It's actually factually on record. Yeah. There are a couple of congressional hearings on it. Exactly. And what amazes me is this happened in the 1950s, which is even less likely, because when you think about LSD acid, as they call it, as the kids call it, you think about the 1970s and 60s, woodstock. Right. But it was actually in the 1950s when it was first being experimented with. And we're talking the early 50s, too, apparently. We were really full on into the Cold War, and we believed everything we heard about the Russians. Apparently, the CIA found out that the Russians were involved in some sort of truth serum, mind control, mentoring candidate experiments. Right. And they found out that the Swiss pharmaceutical company that will ring a bell of people who've taken acid and listened to our podcast Sando's Pharmaceuticals. Right. They had this stuff that was first created by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman. It was LSD 25. And they apparently had 100,000 hits. 100 million. 100 million hits available to anyone who wanted to buy it was on the open market. They were legitimate pharmaceutical company. And this is back when, as a lot of people don't know, LSD was an actual legitimate pharmaceutical. Right. It was also often used later on for therapy. Did you know that? Well, in the States, Kerry Grant was huge in the acid. Really? I kid you not, my friend. Wow. He took many a trip, and he actually I can't remember who he's married to. It may have been me, a pharaoh or somebody. Right. He essentially chased her off by being so insistent about his wife undergoing acid therapy, LSD therapy, that she was like, you're a freak. I could see that. Yeah. Okay, so let's get back to the sandos things, right? Forget carry grant. Yeah. They've got 100 million hits of acid on the market, which, I mean, really? The CIA heard this and they're thinking, okay, 100 million hits. They could take out New York, La. The Russians could get this into the water supply, and all of a sudden, we have a population that's not listening to us anymore. Right. I guess they wanted to create some sort of a chaos or mass hysteria or something like that. Or at worst, like the Manchurian Candidate program. Unwitting assassins who carried out these murders and had no recollection of doing it or being programmed. So they're like these perfect assassins. Right. They kind of suspected that LSD might help with that kind of thing. So when the CIA hears that these hits are on the market, they scramble to buy them. That's what I love. It turns out there's only how much? 40,000, I think, in the US. Good old US. Government said, we'll take all of them. Yeah. So they bought 40,000 hits of LSD acid in hand. They start carrying out their own horrific experiments. They went camping. No, I'm just kidding. All right. They built camp fires, right? That's how a burning man actually started. So they have all this asset and they say, well, okay, we have to figure out how to make our own man sharing candidates and figure out how to use this as a true theory myself. It just so happened that this asset was purchased at a time that the CIA launched this project called MKUltra. Right. And this project was huge. It actually doesn't stand for anything. No, I never found it either. There were some other projects, like MK projects that did stand for things, but Ultra, it didn't stand for anything, which is unusual. Yeah. So they carry out MK Ultra, which is 149 sub projects. And it's this vast range of basically figuring out how to get into people's minds or kill them like one. Apparently, they had magicians come in and teach CIA operatives, how do you sleight of hand to poison people's drinks? Yeah. I can virtually guarantee you a lot of magicians were shot in the back of the head after they gave that class. I bet that was during the big magic freeze of the 1950s. Yeah, that would account for it, wouldn't it? Yeah, that was one sub project. Another was using electro convulsive therapy to get people to talk. Right. Which I'm sure is a lot of fun. But it worked, too. Yeah. There was radiation treatments. They wanted to see how much radiation people could be exposed to. And this is actually one of the more horrific aspects of it. There's a video on YouTube if you, I think, type in something like MKUltra testimony or radiation testimony. There is a woman who's testifying at a hearing. I think it's one of the 1970s hearings, and she's talking about how I think she was an orphan, and she and everybody else in the orphanage were made to be test subjects by the CIA. Not an LSD, but, like, radiation and all that. It's clearly broken. She's a broken person now. She's much older by this time, and it's just crazy to see somebody who actually was experimented on. She's an American who has all these rights just got thrown out the window. Well, yeah. And I know that they experimented on prisoners a lot, too. Yeah. Specifically black prisoners. Right. So here's where we get into some of the Shadier LSD experiments. That's one of them, right? They go into a black prison and basically against the inmates will, as far as I know, test LSD on them. Now, imagine taking LSD in prison, right? I can't think of anything worse than that combo. Now, like I said, this was an all black prison, and it was just bad. That's just a bad experiment. Another one was they lured heroin junkies. Yeah, I love this one, too. And how did they lower them? They paid them in heroin. CIA pay these people in heroin. And this is again documented fact. Right. There are a lot of other experiments going on. And actually, the stuff was so rampant, as you know, Chuck, that the CIA actually developed in acid culture for a while. They did. Within their own system there. Yeah. They used to dose one another at parties. Right. They used to take it themselves recreationally. At any given LSD conference, retreat, something like that, people are probably running around on acid. I know. Reading your article, it seemed almost unreal. Yeah, clearly. And it sounded like the 1950s and the CIA, it was almost like a prank, like, hey, Agent 99, let's just go drop some acid, and Agent 88 drink there. That's almost precisely what happened. That is crazy. There'd be, like, a group who dose somebody, and then everybody would be watching them. Like, a half hour later, the joke would be on him, and he'd spend the next eight to 12 hours. Sure, whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, the CIA was well versed in how it felt to take acid, but the CIA operative isn't the average American. No. So they wanted to experiment on normal people. And I say normal kind of unwillingly, because they did have a certain criteria of who could be targeted for it. So they went to kind of the see me underbelly of cities, and they found, like, hookers and junkies and exactly. Who else? Well, the guy the pornographers. Yeah. The guy who found these folks posed as a pimp. Is that right? Yes. Kind of had an alternate personality. Let's talk about these people. All right, there's this guy, all right? His name is Dr. Sydney Gottlie. This guy has a club foot. He overcame an almost debilitating stutter, and he went on to become the chief of the technical division for the CIA. Now, this guy's greatest hits among carrying out the LSD experiments was developing Agent Orange. Another drug that he had tested by the people who were conducting the CIA or the LSD test eventually gave way to erectile dysfunction drugs. Right. He did a lot of crazy stuff. Some less solid evidence puts him in Africa at the time that Ebola broke out of nowhere. Right. Maybe not a coincidence there. Yeah. Was he a medical doctor? He was a medical doctor. He was probably from what I understand of him, he probably had several doctorates to different degrees. That makes me so much better. He may have been a chemist, actually, now I think about it. But I think he did have medical training as well. That's the guy who's running the head of this he's the head of this experiment. Right below him is one of the most legendary characters you will ever hear about in your life george Hunter White. They need to make a biopic film about this guy. I can't believe they haven't already. He originally white originally started out he really first made a name for himself by posing as a heroin trafficker for the better part of the 1930s and busting up this Chinese opium ring, and he took down hundreds of people. But to get there, I'm sure he had to smoke opium quite frequently, and he basically infiltrated this he took a blood oath with this Chinese gang he was in, and he eventually took him down. So that's how he made a name for himself. But he didn't really I hate to use this cliche he didn't play by the rules. Not only did he not play by the rules, the guy is totally amoral. He was a completely amoral character. A bit of a rogue agent. Yeah. I think he just kind of went whichever way is lie, whichever way the asset told him to go. Pretty much, yeah. Because he was definitely one of the ones who took the acid. Right. So it all starts with him. Like, the most that we know about the LSD experiments, they go back to George Hunter White. So White gets tapped by gottlieb to carry out these experiments, and it all starts in New York. He didn't have a safe house or anything like this. This guy was doing these experiments on his friends at first in his apartment in New York, basically having acid parties without telling them that they were going to be taking assets. And actually, you could argue that George Hunter White held the first acid parties in the history of the earth. Right. This guy was really. He'd make up batches of martinis and serve them to his guests. And of course, the picture of martini was spiked to God knows how much LSD. Well, that's one of the things too, I was wondering is, at the time, they were just starting to experiment, so they didn't even know what was a full dose, what it would do. This is how they found out. Yeah. And he had a terminology for what happened if you had a bad trip. He called it the horse. Right. One of the reasons we know so much about this is because George White kept diary of notes for his experiments. At least to maintain some semblance of experimentation, he took notes on it. But yeah, so he'd serve as guest martinis, right. And then just sit back and take notes after it started kicking in. There was a whole subgroup of close friends of his that were actually inadvertently recruited and they would bring their friends and he actually had this kind of swinger social group and swinger, by every definition of the word, white apparently was into spike heel boots. He'd do anything for a woman in spike heel boots. Who wouldn't know, right. His friends were just imagine, like the 50 shade ball porno swinger groups. And this is what White was at the center at, except he was unbeknownst to all of his friends, a CIA operative experimenting on LSD with them. So this needs to be a film in the works. I'm telling you. I would go see that so many times. So he's carrying out all these experiments and again, there was a certain subgroup of friends who loved it. Years later in the lot of this, information came out and it just fell to the wayside for reasons I can't understand. But a lot of them were like, we loved acid, george loved acid. We just took acid all the time. Some people didn't like acid, though. Exactly. It can go one of two ways generally, when it comes to electricity, not really a middle ground of a thing now. So there's this one woman in particular named Barbara Newsom. Oh, I felt terrible. And she was like, I can't believe that. A young mother. Yeah. And she was married and her husband was actually kind of a CAD, from what I understand. He was part of White's little swinger group. But I also got the impression that he was kind of peripheral, wanted to be in further, but they just didn't think too highly of them. But White thought his wife is pretty hot, so he waits till her husband's out of town and invites her over. And Barbara Newsom was not really hip to what was going on. Now, she had a young kid at the time, she had a 20 month old baby that she brought to the party. Right. So she clearly did not know what was going to be totally unaware of what was going on. So White doses are anyway, right? Yeah. And the part of the problem was, white quickly got bored, especially if you were on a bad trip. There was no padded room that he took you to, and he didn't handle like a hash pipe or anything like that. You were on your own. He wanted you out of his hair, and that was that. So it was a big bummer for him, I guess. Exactly. At the very least, it made him irritable. So he'd turn you out on the street, just tripping your head off, and that's what became a Barbara Newsome. She was turned out on the street, she had a bad trip, and she went home. She never told anybody about it. Her husband later pieced together. They eventually divorced. Right. She didn't even know what happened to her. No, I don't think she had a clue what happened to her. She became depressed. Her marriage fell apart. She ended up being committed on and off for the next 20 years. Right. And also, again, from the research I did, she was probably a little more fragile than the average person, and something else could have happened to her in her life that put her through this. Right. The fact is, this woman was experimented on. It's documented fact. She was one of White's test subjects, and her life fell apart. Right? Sure. She kind of represents the bad side of these experiments. Yeah, I would say that's definitely the bad side. And one person died, isn't that correct? Yeah. Dr. Frank Olson. His son really has taken up the charge of trying to get the truth exposed. His father is definitely documented as having been tested on at one of those parties. Right. And now imagine his father was an army scientist, a research scientist whose specialty was in delivering poisons through aerosols. He was a lab rat. I imagine his social skills weren't as quite refined as maybe Whites or anybody else's. He goes to this party, and they give him a shot of dose quanto. Right. And he does not handle it well. No. And this is a Thanksgiving, too. It was around Thanksgiving. These guys clearly had no qualms about this. One lady had a baby, this guy for the holidays, and he skipped Thanksgiving with his family because he was so freaked out. They actually contacted the closest CIA approved doctor, who was, I think, a podiatrist or something like that. But he was the closest physician. I think the guy was in Virginia, which is close by to where this CIA Army conference took place. And so Dr. Olson is just freaking out, and he's doing it very loudly. I think he kind of took everybody off guard with his reaction to the LSD. Right. They bring this doctor, and the doctor is like, this guy needs some serious care, and basically we need to kidnap him. Right. And he has corns on his feet. Podiatrist always notices those things. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's his training. So they basically sequester this guy. They call his family and say, your husband isn't going to be home for Thanksgiving. He can't make it. Right. Basically, don't ask any questions, or any Thanksgiving, as it turns out. Right. Eight days after his bad trip, he goes out the 10th story window of a hotel in New York. Right. And it was apparently suicide. That's how it was ruled. But years later, I think in 1992 or four, his son, who actually started a website, the Frank Olson Project, very interesting stuff. He had his father's body exhumed and there was evidence of premortem blunt force trauma to the head. Right. Which kind of suggests this guy was probably murdered exactly a couple of years after the body was exhumed. Ike Feldman, who posed as the pimp, we'll get to him in a second. In an interview with Spin Magazine, he said George Hunter White was doing the acid test in New York at the time this guy went out of the hotel window in New York. Right. So you put two and two together. No one ever has definitively, but it kind of seems like the kind of guy, Whitewise, he didn't seem to have qualms about stuff like that. No. Okay. New York is over. Yeah. This is where it gets good and sort of predictable when you look back. But they move the operation to an actual a funded place in San Francisco, of course. The apartment called the pad. Yes. Literally. It was called the pad. And basically, I get the impression that White left his swinging social scene and his wife behind in New York and he goes and takes the show on the road by himself in San Francisco. Right. And at first, let me describe The Pad real quick. It's this little apartment with kind of bohemian art on the walls, and it was probably pretty close. One of the main features is a two way mirror with a little hollowed out room behind it. And that looked out onto the main living room. Okay. So basically, White used to take a bunch of acid and he would pose as either a merchant seaman or some sort of starving eye artist. And he go into San Francisco and basically find the prostitutes and the johns and the drug dealers, and he'd round them up and bring them back to his place and just dose them with acid. Right. And they didn't feel bad because they considered these people just the dregs of society. They figured they were degenerates anyway. But I think that there was probably a pretty wide threshold of who was fair game and who wasn't. Like, I'm sure if you were caught with a nude mag under your mattress and you were married, they would have considered you fair game. Like the generator it is. Here's some acid. Yeah. Right. So at first, White's rounding all these people up, right. And he's basically just partying with them in san Francisco on asset gaining their trust. Right. Eventually, he recruits Ike Feldman, the guy that we mentioned who did that 1000 994 Spin Magazine interview. Right. And Ike Feldman is just a badass. He is a tough, grizzled, old fringe of the law cop. Right. He does whatever. He's like the model for Vic Mackey from The Shield. Whatever has to be done to get the job done, whatever. It doesn't matter how many times you break the law, if at the end, you're bringing in the bad guy or whatever. So he gets recruited by White, who basically goes and takes his rightful place behind the two way mirror to watch how Feldman brings in the prostitutes and the johns. And it got a little freaky from there. Yeah. And it kind of made me wonder if the whole culture of San Francisco was kind of known in the 60s as the counterculture, the revolution, the free love, the Summer of love. If the CIA actually kind of helped create this in the 1950s, I can tell you most decidedly it did. Yes. And the reason why. Here's the punchline to the whole thing. This makes this whole thing beautiful and elegant, as a mathematician would put it. One of the people who signed up for the legitimate experiments actually, I think it was at a VA hospital or something with a fellow by the name of Ken Kesey. Yes, ken Kesey was in orderly at a mental hospital at the time. He was basically researching for his later book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Casey's other claim to fame was he was the founder of the Merry Pranksters. Right. And the Merry Pranksters hung out with the Hells Angels, the Grateful Dead, rode around in a colorful bus and basically were the establishment of the hippie movement. Right. And the Tom Wolf book electric Koolaid Acid Test is a great read. Oh, it's a great book. Yeah. And it really gets into this period in our history, and it's about Kesey and the Mary premises. And Kesey was one of these willing participants in a test subject by the CIA on LSD. He was given it a couple of times, realized, Holy cow, I love this stuff. Found out that Sandos was the company that was making it, got a bunch, shared it with his friends once it went illegal. He also befriended Stanley Owesley, who is, like, the premier underground acid chemist in the 60s. Right. And it all just kind of went from there. So directly, the CIA led to the birth of the hippie counterculture and any remnants or traces of it still alive today yeah. That they later would condemn. And cops would put the beat down on the hippies and the beatniks and just kind of funny. That was kind of created by the government. It's amazing. It is. It's beautiful. So that's the story of the CIA and LSD and the Gingerbread Man. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so stick around because it seems almost unimportant. We're going to tell you what article makes Chuck want to go out and eat a McRib or too right. LSD to the MC Rib. What a second round for? That right after this. Okay. Thanks for sticking around. Chuck? Yes. What makes you want to eat a McRib? A man. Well, what doesn't make me want to eat a McRib, Josh? The McRib is a temporary menu item, a featured menu item that you see at McDonald's occasionally. And as you know, it's some sort of pork product compressed into the shape of ribs. Bones at all. Yeah, but there are no bones. It's just part of the pork product it represents. And they put it on an oblong bun, slather it with some sauce, and it's delish. You're preaching to the choir, friend. I had those, and I'm hooked on them as well. But this isn't a McDonald's commercial. No. So you should tell them the article. Well it's, I think, top five McDonald's menu items that didn't make it. It's a bit of silliness, but it's kind of a fun reading. It is. It's very interesting, actually. I took it it's written by our esteemed colleague Jane McGrath, who did a heck of a job with it. It's almost a glance into the corporate culture of McDonald's right. And marketing and how it goes wrong. Terribly wrong. Yeah. There are two things on there that I would like to have seen. Shamrock shank. Yeah. Love the shamrock shake. I've never had one. Oh, do they're? Great. And the other was the what was the one that keeps the hot side hot and the cool side cool? The McDLT. Yes, that's right. I would have liked to have seen those on there because I just love the packaging for the McDLT. Right. The thing is cool, I think that in the green movement these days, that wouldn't go over because it's twice the packaging. Yeah. Well, you can read all sorts of stuff about the green movement and plenty of menu items that didn't really make it for McDonald's. Right. And don't forget to read about the CIA and LSD. All of them can be found by typing in some clever words in the search bar on howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houstofworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housetofworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented thousand and twelve Camry. It's ready. Are you? Yeah."
bf9f89c8-9b94-42ac-9cc2-ae7000d1e783	The Delightful History of Pubs	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-delightful-history-of-pubs	In today's episode, Chuck and Josh dive into the wonderful history of the public house. So pull up a stool, grab a pint and have a listen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	In today's episode, Chuck and Josh dive into the wonderful history of the public house. So pull up a stool, grab a pint and have a listen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.	Thu, 07 Apr 2022 12:49:14 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=12, tm_min=49, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=97, tm_isdst=0)	47063539	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here. I'm mute and the this is stuff you should know. G'day. Why are you doing an Australian greeting? Just pubs in Australia. Okay, fair enough. I had a really great pub experience in Manchester. I know. You told me about it. Was it the one I can't remember the name of it. Where Morris the Smith had that photo shoot? Or was that the same story? Probably the same story. That was outside of the Salford Lads Club. Yeah, very famous photo. But I wandered inside a genuine old school, like, basement Cask Ale pub in Manchester, and it was great and authentic and on such a lean like, I've never seen a floor this slanted in my life. That wasn't like house of tricks. Oh, I remember that in the end of Greece a long time. Because I need a man. I don't remember that. Did they go into a Lenny house? Yeah, I believe they do. Or a bouncy house or rolly, something like that? Yeah. This one is so Lenny that you felt like if you were in the front of the pub and put your pint on a table, it may actually slide. Wow. It was really Leanny. So the point of going to this pub was to get so bent that everything straightened out for you. I don't know. No, I had a couple of beers. It was just great. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. Really old places and having a beer in an old place. Yeah, I love it. Definitely. Yeah. I had a couple of nice pub experiences, too. I went to one I can't remember. It was in Dublin, right down from the Guinness factory. I don't remember the name of it, but it was super old. It was a really old pub. And I wish I could remember the name, but shout out to that pub. That I can't remember. But I'm with you. And I think it's not just us who appreciate pubs for their homeiness. And, Chuck, I believe that what you went to would be called a local, a traditional, independent English pub. Yeah. A neighborhood pub and pub, we should say short for public house, to the few people who didn't know that. Now you do. And these things are so pubs are so essential to England and to Ireland, as we'll find, too, that the essay is Tillere Belloc wrote that when you have lost your ins, being in pubs, for all intents and purposes, drown your empty selves, for you have lost the last of England. I love it. Yeah. So where do we get pubs from? The Romans. Duh. It is true. Before there was a United Kingdom and there was Roman occupation, we're talking about 43 to 40, we talked a lot about Roman roads and their big network of roads and that was one of their big accomplishments, linking places together. And so along these routes, they had what were called taberna, T-A-B-E-R-N-A-E what we know as taverns. And it was what you think it's like a place where a traveler can stop, have a little food, and these establishments have wine. Yeah, because the Romans were not so for wine, pretty much wine forever. Right. So the way that you would know what house to stop them, because this isn't a time where they were designing shopping malls and strip centers. The tavern looked a lot like everybody else's house because it probably was somebody's house. But if you were new in town, traveling along this Roman road, and you wanted to figure out which place was the actual tavern, you would just look for some grapevines hanging over the door. That was basically the universal symbol among Roman occupied areas for a tavern. But when they pushed further and further west, when they got to England and occupied it, they said, there's not that many grape vines here. What else can we use? They started using bushes. Right. And we'll talk a little bit all over the place about the interesting pub names, because that's kind of one of the fun things sure. About pubs, is their interesting names. And if you see pubs, name the Bush or the Bull in the Bush or the Holly Bush. It's sort of thrown back to this old tradition where they would hang stuff above the door to let you know, come on in and have a drink. Right. Pretty great. It's kind of what all pub lore circles back to, is how awesome their names are. Yeah, I agree. What happened to the Romans? Chuck. Do they stick around and is there a Roman president of the UK today? No, they left and the Anglo Saxons took over. And they liked to drink ale. Yeah, they said to this wine stuff, we were just pretending all this time to like wine while the Romans were here, we actually like ale. And the Anglosaxons I didn't realize this. I was like, okay, what's the difference between the Anglosaxons and the Normans and the Vikings? And apparently there's plenty of differences. The Normans, I guess, came up to conquer, I think, 1066 from the south, from France, but they originally still were Germanic. I think they had some Norse people mixed in. So I said, okay, well, who lived in England originally? And apparently it was the Celtic Brittons. Okay. So this is the first group that came in after the Romans. The Romans came and conquered the Celtic Britons. They left. I don't think I'm saying that right, because I have a tick or something like that. Brittons. So then the Romans subsequently left, and the Anglo Saxons came in and replaced them. And the Anglo Saxons were the ones who said, let's all start drinking some ale. That's right. An ale is not beer. Ale didn't have hops, which is the big differentiator there. Hops will come along later. And people still like that ale. But people also like the beer with the hops, for sure. I think it was the Dutch who said, hey, you should try these hops, man. They'll knock your socks off. And when they did in the 15th century, the Brittans said, let's do this. We're okay with hops from now on. We're like beer. They said, It didn't knock my socks off because I wear sock gardeners. Right. But they loved ale so much that it was like a part of their meals. Whenever they drank something, they usually drank ale. And I think we talked about this in the beer episode. I don't remember. Bars maybe. Maybe. But if you were a housewife, a house wife, you were probably in charge of making ale for your family. And if you were really good at making ale, the town might know about it and they might come and try to buy some of your excess ale, and you might end up supplying ale to thirsty travelers who pass through. And the next thing you know, you're running what's known as the ale house. That's right. They were called ale wives or Brewsters. And if you want to indicate, like, the Romans hung the grapevines and bushes and things above their door, they would have an ale snake or an ALPOLE, which sort of from this drawing Dave sent. Dave Rus helped us with this. Can you just give Dave a woo? Sure. It looks sort of like a witch's broom. It was a big stick with branches tied to the end. Okay. And they would hang out a window or above the doorway, like a flagpole over the doorway kind of sticking out of the house. And that meant, Come on in and have a drink. Yeah. And you would it was really important to the Anglo Saxons and other subsequent groups that kind of came over and took over England to say, like, the hospitality is really important. And they actually started to kind of regulate it a little bit, in part because became so popular that they're like, this is something we can tax, but also we don't want any kind of social issues arising from this. So I think it was King Edward the Peaceful who started passing, like, the first laws that regulated drinking establishments in England. Yeah. And he said, hey, how about one of these in every town or village? And he said, everyone went, okay, I guess we can live with that. But I don't think it was just to limit it. I think it was also to make sure that there was at least one in every town, that every town had one, too. Like, there were probably towns that didn't have and they're like, you need to get on the trolley. Yeah. Some people are probably like, hooray. And then towns that had more than one went, okay, yeah. We got to flip a coin. Yes, exactly. And then he also moved on to say, and maybe we shouldn't drink as much as people. And everyone went, Wait a minute, we've been drinking ale for breakfast, literally. And he said, how about this thing? It's called a peg tankerd. And it's a big two liter drinking vessel that has these pegs, vertical pegs, and you're only allowed to drink down to the next peg, and then you got to pass it along to your friend and then they can drink down to the next peg. And if you drink past your peg, then you're taxed to penny. Yeah. It's a super hygienic setup. Yeah. In two liters. I mean, that's not that much. Well, I don't mean for, like, per person, but like, think about two liter soda. How many people were sharing that? Sure. I mean, like two, three, four. All right, so a liter is 32oz. Yeah. So it's about two pints. No, pints 16oz. Yeah, you're right. So yeah, it was about two pints. No, I'm thinking of a court. I think a court and a leader are pretty close. Regardless. You're right. It's not that much. It's a couple of man, I've had a 40 since college. It's been a while. Did you ever drink forty s of Styles? I had Sainte's. Elliot Smith says that great song styles Heaven. My gym was not forties, but for a little while in college, I would drink Schlitz. And I know I mentioned this before, the Mickey's big mouth. Yeah, sure. But I can't imagine drinking that swill now. That's why I was going to say, even at the time, st. Ives was terrible stuff. Yeah. I never understood. Even among the malt liquors that came in 40 ounce bottles, styles was gross. What was the eight ball? Old English. Old English, yes. I think that may have been tied with Sainteydes. It was all pretty gross. Yeah. The early drinking days are just nothing to be proud of. No, it's like you call this orange juice, you call this a Cape Cod. Right. But now we're more refined in our old age and we drink very tasteful, small cocktails. Sure. 40oz at a time. I've actually dialed it back to almost nothing these days. Oh, yeah. Get better sleep. Yeah. And better next day. Really? Yeah. Better sleep, too. It's more than next day to me. That's why I was just like, this is not okay. Yeah, it's good as you get older. You got to dial that back. Didn't you say you don't get affected by it very much? Like hangovers? Yeah, I don't really get that hungover. And if I do, then I willingly wait into those waters. Oh, I see. Yeah. Like, I know it's coming and I'm like, just one of those nights. But yeah, those are few and far between these days. You schedule a blood transfusion for the next morning? No. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break, and then we'll go to the Emerald Isle right after this. All right, let's do it. Are we in Ireland? We are in Ireland. They got pubs here? Yeah. So they had their own kind of pub culture, despite the fact that the Anglo Saxons never made it into Ireland, which I didn't realize, but they devised their own kind of system of hospitality as well, like the Anglosaxons did, that said, hey, if you got people coming around your town, you need to make sure that you can take care of them. That's right. And what is the law pronounced? How is it pronounced? Brahon. Okay. B-R-E-H-O-N? Is that what you're going to go with? Yeah, it runs with Brittan. I'm sure we're pronouncing that wrong, but that was sort of the system of legal hospitality that you were talking about from originally, from the 6th century, and it comes a lot, but it definitely put a lot of emphasis on hospitality. And kind of like in England, they said, hey, every town has to have a hostel, which is also sort of code for pub, but you could spend the night. I guess I didn't quite understand this. It said it had to be located at a main crossroads with four doors open in each direction. Is that symbolic or did they literally mean, like, don't make them walk around the corner to get in? I don't know. I really don't. Maybe travelers were generally dumber than they are today back then, I'm not sure. And they could only move in straight lines. That's what I said. But additionally, under the law, you couldn't have an empty cauldron. It always had to be ready to go with ale. You had to have on hand raw meats and cooked meats ready to serve, also animals ready to slaughter. And that any time traveler showed up 24 hours a day, you had to serve them. That was just the hospitality was that emphasized. It was almost like the local chamber of commerce was in charge of writing the laws for that. Brehan law. Yes. Twenty four seven. I love it. Yeah, like backstreet. What was that? Remember that club, back street that was open 24 hours? Wow. In Atlanta, right. That was the late night place. Yes. But it was open 24 hours. For real? Yes. I didn't go there much. I mean, I was not living in Atlanta during its heyday. Okay. That's what I mean to say. I got you. I was all about back streets. I just didn't live there. I see. So in England, we're kind of marching forward through time. I think it was between 13 and 1600. This is when things kind of made the shift over those few hundred years from someone's home where the lady made great ale, to an official, like, licensed what we would call a pub today. I still don't think they were called public houses at this point, right? No, not until the Victorian era, I think the late 19th century. All right. But they were actually licensing places in the 1005 hundreds, and they made a distinction between the three different kinds of places where you could serve booze. The ale house, which we talked about. You could only sell ale and beer, though. Then you had your taverns, which also sold liquor and wine and food, and then the end where you could spend the night. Yeah. One other really big shift that took place during that time, from ale houses to common brewers with licenses, was that the licenses were given to men. So the custom of making ale and eventually beer, moved from women to men exclusively. Basically, it was taken out of women's hands. Yeah. And it feels like an industry that's still very much male dominated, as is the wine industry. But I know there's a lot of support behind female brewers and wine makers these days, so that's always a good thing to seek out. Yeah, well, there should be, but there were a lot of pubs per person back then. There's a census from 1557 that basically showed that there was one licensed pub for every 187 people, whereas it's about one for every 657 people today. Which, I mean, if you've been to England anytime recently, like, there are a lot of pubs there. Yeah. So imagine there were that many more back then, or that fewer people, I guess, is probably the, likelier, thing. Yes. Same amount of pubs, just a lot fewer people. Yeah. I always love working out dumb stuff in my head live on our episodes, but there's a good example of it. We had a great episode on Jen. I didn't think that was done, by the way. It doesn't matter. It's a combination of both, I think. More pubs and fewer people. I appreciate you. You're being very magnanimous on your birthday. Gin. We had a great episode on Jen, but if you remember from that episode in the 1700s, jin became a very sort of evil liquor and there were moves to ban it and limit gin drinking. But while this was going on, beer was on the rise and England was all in on beer, basically saying, like, we're not saying don't drink, we're saying gin is bad and the ale and beer is really good. Yeah, they definitely accepted it from their ire. And there was a really good, I guess, a political cartoon. It was two different panels in it that was produced in the 18th century by William Hogarth. I think it came out in 1751. And on one side is Beer Street on the left side. On the right side is a very similar picture, but it's on Jin Lane. And if you look into what's going on in those pictures, they're very two very different pictures. And Jin Lane, it's basically, like, just has been ravaged by gin. There's a mother who's, like, her child is toppling over a wall where it had just been breastfeeding because her mom is now, like, trying to figure out how to buy some gin. There's some children fighting over a dog or fighting over a bone with a dog. I think a tradesman is pawning his tools all for gin. And then if you go over to Beer Street, it's a different picture altogether, for sure. Yeah, everything's happening on Beer Street. People are working hard, they look good, they're making art, and they're drinking beer. But what's funny is, if you look closely on Beer Street too, it's struggling a little bit, too. There's, like, boards over one window. People are definitely crocked. It's just hilarious that they didn't try to make it perfect. Like, there's still, like, just some frayed edges around there on Beer Street too. I thought that was kind of funny. And then the third panel was Weed Avenue. Nothing bad was happening there. Now everybody's just kind of sitting around. Yeah, there's a lot of PlayStation admin. Yeah, I forgot what people do. What, when they smoke pot? Yeah. I can't even come up with a decent joke here. Well, let's move to the Victorian area because that is when we finally get our name, the public house. And this is when things really sort of as did much in the Victorian area. Man, why do we keep saying that? The Victorian era took on a shine and a fanciness and these places became pretty swank. Yeah, because well, Jinn was vilified and run out of town in the middle of the 18th century. By the middle of the 19th century, it had come back member in a different form. Originally, it was Dutch gin and then London dry gin made its mark in the 19th century. And everybody's like, oh, well, this is fine. We're making it here. And we like jin again. And so they built Jim palaces starting in the 1840s, and they were very, very nice. They had, like, marble bars and they were just really well decked out. And the pub started kind of replicating that vibe when they were being built or remodeled or whatever. And so pubs started to add, like, bars. Apparently they didn't have bars before. I guess it was just all comfortable chairs and, like, tables and things. Yeah, yeah. And so they added bars at this area as well. Pretty awesome. In Ireland, we're again going chronologically around this time. They had some interesting, like, the pubs over there. And I think this is true to a certain degree in England, too. But they were more than just the place to go drink. It was sort of the center for public discourse and activity. Some of them operated other businesses, like, some acted as banks during the daytime or post offices. And then there was the Coroner's Act of 1846 that basically said, pubs have these great cool sellers, and that's where dead body should be taken in our village, to be stored until the funeral because every pub has got a very cool basement. And that wasn't just the most common thing at the time in homes. So the Coroner's Active, 1846, I think, demanded that a dead body was brought to the nearest pub. Yeah. And some publicans people who own and operate pubs said, oh, okay, I can make some money doing that. And they started installing, like, marble bars in the basement, the sellers of their pubs, to better accommodate corpses and cadavers that came their way. So they became undertakers as well. And it makes me wonder, like, how many Irish pubs have these marble slabs that the corpses used to be laid out on still today? I would love to see that. I mean, imagine going in to a pub for a pint and ended up getting a tour like that. Yeah, that'd be really cool. It'd be like you suddenly woke up on Weed Street, right. Weed Avenue. Dang. And then what about this other thing? This is really cool, I think I love it when someone creates a drinking law that also has a tremendous gaping loophole for people to jump through. And that was the case in the 1870s in Ireland to kind of tame down the pub scene. They said, all right, you got to close before midnight. And you can only go to these pubs at any hour if you're what's called a bona fide traveler, which means that you have traveled in good faith at least 3 miles, not just 3 miles to go get your drink, but you're really traveling. Right. So some Dublin pubs picked up stakes and moved about 3 miles outside of town. Yes, sir. Anyone in Dublin who went there had to be, by definition, traveling, and then it was just a blurry line whether you were a bona fide traveler, whatever. So they found that gaping loophole to drive through, drive their horse and carriage through. Yeah. It's one of those hard to enforce things like cutting through a gas station to avoid a red light. So you also said, Chuck, that the Irish pub served as these, like, community centers and English pubs definitely do, too, but I feel like the Irish pubs actually kind of codified it with things like the Coroner's Act. Yeah. But they really served as even greater community centers, maybe even more vital community centers or vitally needed ones over here in the US. When the Irish started coming over to America beginning in the 1840s, they brought with them their knowledge of how to build and operate a pub. So Irish pub started springing up and they very much served as, like, the glue for the community there. Yeah. Taverns especially. I know that here in Atlanta, any time there is a big political discourse and activity and they need the persons I know. You know what I'm going to say. They need the person on the streets. Take the news crews will invariably go to manual Savern, sort of right. Near the Virginia Highlands in Atlanta. And it's a great old, traditional sort of American style tavern that's been around for a long, long time that was owned by a local politician named Manuel Malouf, and as a result, he would have events there. And it became sort of just known for political discourse in Atlanta. So that's where the news always goes. I thought you were going to say they went to Back Street. It's not still open, is it? I don't think so. Is it Manuels or Manuals? It's Manuals. Okay. So Manuel's tavern was established in 1057. Seems kind of old, but apparently there are still taverns in operation today that date back to the colonial period, even. Like there's one in Newport, Rhode Island, called the White Horse Tavern that says it's been open since 1673. Yes. Not the New York White Horse that is 200 years old or younger. Oh, is it? Yeah. I mean, you think like the White Horse Tavern. No, it's the oldest thing in New York, and not even close, because I guess it's pronounced the Francis Tavern in New York is from the 1780s. Yeah. Apparently George Washington took his troops there to toast them after the British finally left the North American continent. I'd never heard of this place. I was disappointed because I like to try and check out the old haunts in New York, and I thought I knew them all, but this one, it's down there in the financial district at the very lower tip of Manhattan, and it's just not an area I get to. I came across a mention of a place called Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop down in New Orleans, and it's not a tavern or a pub, but it's supposed to be the oldest bar in the United States, and it's supposedly dates from 1622. Wow. And that it was called a blacksmith Shop to throw off the authorities. It was actually not only a bar, an illegal bar, but also a hideout for pirates who would plan and sell their stolen goods there. And it's still open today, from what I understand. Have you seen the new pirate show? Our flag means death. No. Is it any good? Yeah, it's very funny. We just finished dopesick did not see that. It's not funny, but it's really good. What's the story there? It's about the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma and how they created the opioid epidemics single handedly in the United States. And it's not a documentary? No, it's a drama well acted by every single person in it. Incredibly well written, well directed. It just keeps moving through eight episodes. It's on Hulu, and it's just nuts to realize that we all just lived through that and didn't know what was going on and are just still only waking up to the damage that this family did. Well, our flag means death is much more fun than that. I'll check that out. You check out Dope sick, and I'll check out our flag means death. Okay, I guess we should take a break. Take a second break, and we'll come back and talk about pub names and pub games right after this, all right? Names and games. Nice. You're not going to bite? No. All right. One of the fun parts about pubs is their names. Some of the names at the beginning, like we mentioned, the broom that they would put out front, sometimes they got tired of that and they would just put out other things, like a boot or a copper kettle. And that's where you would have pub names like the Boot or the Copper Kettle, especially if you were an illiterate population at the time, which a lot of people were. For a lot of the history of pubs, you would say, I'm going to the Copper kettle. Not because there was a sign that said the Copper Kettle, because they had a copper kettle out. Yeah, that was really helpful in that sense. And then over time, as literacy became more and more widespread, they would write the name out and include a picture still for the people who couldn't yet read. Yeah, that's why they had those cool signs. It's funny, like, if there was only one per town, they should just say, I'm going to Beer. Right. That's all they needed to say, going to Ale House. But those pub names are really weird in a lot of cases. Even if you are English, you might think some of them are really weird. And a lot of times you can kind of trace the history of that town or that area through the name of the pub. A lot of times they trace the larger history of England, like the push and pull between Catholics and Protestants, the push and pull between the monarchy and Cromwell and his cronies during the English Civil War. The names kind of reflect these changes over time in some ways, too. Yeah. I think it was King Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades. There are a lot of these pubs that were on the routes of the pilgrimages and soldiers making their way over there. And so you would see, there was one that's I think still around called Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem, little on the nose. And another one called the Saracen's Head, also on the nose. Yes, I saw that. Ye old trip to Jerusalem. They have, like, caves underneath the actual current structure that they still use for seating today that are definitely dated back to the 13th century. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, I mean, like, it's legit some of the other names that kind of have come along. Like I was saying, when Cromwell and his Puritanical people took over and I'm sorry, I misspoke, that wasn't during the English Civil War. This came later, I believe. But Cromwell, when the Puritans took over and deposed the king, there were a lot of pub owners who said, well, these Puritans aren't super. Into a lot of the names that we have, like Baconalia that got changed to Bag of Nails, god Encompasses US, which you're like, why would they change that name? And I remembered the Puritans would have taken that probably as taking God's name in vain and would have very much frowned on that. Okay. So instead they went with the much less Satanic goat encompasses. My favorite is Katherina Fidelis, which is a reference to Queen Catherine of Aragon became Cat and Fiddle because right there in the middle of Hollywood in Los Angeles, there is still the Cat and Fiddle Pub. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's a place I used to go to back then. I don't know if it's still the case, but back then there were not rumors but verified accounts of Morris hanging out at the Cat and Fiddle during the day, drinking Guinness. And I used to always go by there and wonder if he was sitting out. Yeah. Would you, like, just put your hands on the window and look inside? No. They had this great sort of hidden outdoor courtyard I see off the street that was really lovely. But I had some really good times with the Cat and Fiddle back in the day, and it's still around, I think. Chuck another thing that people would do is cast their lot with the monarchy. So you see just the Crown, which I saw that they would take the name of the Crown because if you did something like the Cat and Fiddle or Katharina Fidelis, when that monarch was no longer on the throne, you might have to change your name. But if you just say the Crown, you're basically saying, I'm down with the monarchy. Yeah. Boy. The Crown, I think, is one of the more common club names. It's number two, from what I saw. Number one is Red Lion, which comes with all sorts of coats of arms. And Royal Oak is number three, after the tree that King Charles II hit in from Cromwell and his Protestant cronies. I did look up. There are a bunch of websites that have, like, the top 20 weirdest names or whatever. Yeah. And I was looking through the was one that was pretty good. Sometimes it was what the people did way back when. There's one called the Blacksmith and the Toffee Maker. So it was kind of on the nose, man. Can you imagine living in town with, like, a bona fide toffee maker? Yeah, I love toffee so much. I just live there. I'd live outside of their house. One is called the Job Center. And this is in depth. For real? Yeah. And it was a former Job center, and they just renamed it the Job Center. Oh, okay. And then what is the I can't find the one with a really long name. That was kind of fun. Here's one. The Camel and Artichoke. That's pretty fun. Or the pyrotechnic's Arms. Well, that was a big one. So there was probably a fireworks factory around there, is that correct? Yes, it was built on the side of the fireworks factory. Yeah. So clearly that was a fairly recent one. But it follows a long standing tradition. Like if you served carpenters, you call your place the Carpenters Arms or the Golden Fleece, if you had like a bunch of wool workers who frequented your place. Or if you set up shop to attract like, the sporting types you'd have like the Fox and the Hound or something like that. Yeah, the Dog. The lady in the tramp. The lady in the Tramp, where you can share spaghetti with no silverware. That's right. It's very cute. You end up kissing in the end. So you said names, but the second half of your titillating rhyme said games that promise games. What kind of games are you delivering on? Well, of course, darts. I used to be quite a dart enthusiast and played in dart leagues. Oh, really? Yeah, through college and then in my post college, I guess, early 2000s Atlanta stay for a few years. Before I moved back to La. I was still into darts. Loved it. I think we should do a whole podcast on darts. When I moved to La. They had nothing but the soft tip electronic game darts, which is that's not good. No, you can't even do that. So it didn't even bother. So I kind of fell out of playing. But my friend Justin, who I've referred to a bunch who, you know, is still very big in the darts and one of the best dart players around, he does quite well in like, regional tournaments and like, stuff. Wow. Well, does Mr. Fancy Pants Justin, who is so good at darts, know that it originated with English archers? I don't even know if he knows the history. I'm going to ask him. Oh, you got to tell him. And don't tell him I call them Mr. Fancy Pants. He doesn't care. Apparently it did. That's right. And sells wine. Apparently it was English archers who would, like, draw targets on oak casks behind the bar and would shorten their arrows and use those to kind of keep their marksmanship steely edged. That's right. And you know what? I feel bad. The other day I thought about mentioning he and Melissa's Wine Shop without saying the name because we say so many names of places. And this is one of my oldest friends. So here in Atlanta, in the neighborhood of Kirkwood, you can go to Dawn Beijus wine shop. Melissa's Portuguese, and Dan Bejesus is Portuguese. They have a great selection of Portuguese wine, but all kinds of great wine. And new dude that they just hired, I just met the other day, I was talking to him for a minute and he went, by the way, big stuff, you should know. Fan. Oh, yeah? Yeah. So we chatted up for a little while, but you are more likely to see me there than anywhere in Atlanta. If you ever want to stop by, there's a 30% chance on there and it's conveniently located in the old Back street building. It's conveniently located next to the police station. Oh, is that convenient? Yeah. So for the police, yeah. But here's the deal. You're next to the police station, they're either just getting off work and they don't want to be bothered, or they're just getting on duty and they don't want to be bothered. I guess you're right. That is the perfect place to drink, I guess. So you just sit outside and drink and mock them as they come to and fro. Yeah. And I can walk home and ride my bike. Oh, well, there you go. So it's convenient for you, is what you're saying. That's right. So another game, Chuck, is skittles. Yeah, I didn't quite get this. It's very easy. It's a bowling game, but instead of ten pins, you have nine pins, and instead of a ball, you have a disk that is about the shape and size of a cheddar cheese wheel. Oh, okay. You just roll it at the pins. All right. In the south, they call that tire bowling. That's great. I could totally see people doing that too, in the south. And then there's one other one. I mean, darts really rules all, I think, over there for pub games, but something called bat and Trap dave dug up as an outdoor pub game. That seems to be sort of early version of cricket. It's pretty neat. I watched a video of it and these people seem to be taking it quite seriously at the pub. But there's like a little gadget that holds a ball and you tap one end of the gadget, which knocks the ball into the air, and then you hit the ball and it looks very much like you're using a cricket bat. I'm not sure if it's called bat or not. And then the other people feel the ball and rather than being out or not, it's now their turn to knock down a target that's located ways away from them. Where you just batted with the cricket batches is big here in the States at Bars. Now, it has a tad bit of an element of bocci to it, but knocking things down with bocci. So I guess Botchy and dominoes plus cricket equals baton trap plus beer. That's right. Oh, yeah. You're not going to play bat and trap unless you've been drinking. That sounds like fun. I think you'd be like, what? What is this? So should we wrap it up with what's happening with pubs these days? Yes. So the decline started a while ago. Dave mentioned the late 19th century, and this is when sort of the first move of what people see as the beginning of the end for the all encompassing neighborhood pub is when brewers struck up deals with pubs to only sell their beer and they became known as tied houses because they were tied to the one brand. And in the 1890s it's hard to believe this is happening not long ago but 90% of the pubs in the big cities were tied houses. Yeah and it just kept going and going and escalating through the 20th century too in Parliament said this sounds really weird like we need to get a handle on exactly how widespread this Tide houses thing is because a bunch of the brewers started kind of consolidating into mega breweries and they found that 75% of all of England's pubs were under the thumbs of six brewers and by far Bass controlled the most. They had 7300 pubs that were tied to them. And here's the thing if you have a pub that's tied to you all they can do is sell your merchandise. All they can do is use glasses with your logo on it. All they can do is sell your beer and you basically set the price whatever you want. It's almost like having a franchise basically. And so Bass had 7300, Whip Bread had 6500 and Courage had 5100 and then there were just three other brewers that own the rest of them and that has a really homogenizing effect on everything. It's kind of like wherever if you drive to any town in the United States you're going to find like an Old Navy and a TJ Maxx in the same everything. Well that's one thing if you're talking about like reasonably priced jeans and off brand bars of soap it's a totally different thing when you start messing with the institution that is essentially the soul of the nation and that's what was going on through the 20th century. Yeah and I think it's gotten even more out of hand now because a lot of these pubs and we've seen sort of the same thing with craft brewing here in the United States getting bought out by big brewers but what hasn't really happened to my knowledge in the United States is the actual bars haven't been bought out on mass but that's what's happened in England and they're called pub cos these big corporations have bought up like tons and tons of these pubs as sort of a real estate play. McDonald's and a lot of people the criticisms are like this is a real estate play like you're not even in this to make a good experience at the pub. It's just about sort of the building and the land. Right? And they also are really strict over margins like if the stock prices fluctuate they might find ways to cut costs back. Hub yeah they don't care at all about customer experiences or consumer experiences and apparently the smoking ban of 2007 and then also the lockdowns from Coronavirus really put a hit on a lot of pubs. A lot of pubs were lost I think 5000 pubs were lost in the last five years or something like that. In England alone, but I strongly suspect they're not going to ultimately go anywhere. And evidence of that is a group called the Campaign For Real Ale, which I think kind of suggests that there's always going to be this man, I guess I might as well just say it, this thirst for genuine pubs in England and places like Ireland as well. Yeah, so they're trying to kind of go back to that throwback to where it was true ale or real ale, before it was hopped up and carbonated like beer is in that sort of cast condition ale in the basement type of thing, run by a sellerman, or I guess you would say a seller person these days, hopefully. And there's a push to get those going. There are lists that the Campaign For Real Ale puts out a good beer guide that lists 4500 camera approved pubs. But, yes, Coronavirus, I saw Dave listed some of the oldest ones in England still in operation, and he listed Ye Old Fighting Cox, founded in 1793. That was for a while in the Guinness Book of World's Record for oldest pub before they said, you know what, we can't really verify this stuff anymore, so we're not even going to list these places. Right, but that one closed in February. Oh, no. 1793. Chuck 793. Did I say 17? Yeah, yeah. 793. It closed in February. And the owner, they still use Republican. He said, I'm just Republican. I'm not a politician. And so he was kind of just speaking to the lockdowns and someone else will probably open it up. Peter has gotten involved and said, you should open it up and change the name from The Old Fighting Cocks and Only serve vegan food. And of course, people over there just love that idea. So we talked also about Sean's Bar. It's supposed to be the oldest pub ever, and it is pretty close to being verified because Archeologists in the 70s found stuff in the walls and actually the walls being made of dog and waddle, which I think we talked about in the Bars episode, and it supposedly dates back to the invasion of the Vikings around 900 Ce. And it's still going strong, as far as I know. Yeah, that's old man. There's also the Old Ferry Boat Inn, which claims to have been operating since 560 in Cambridge. It's a great name, and I don't know if that's documented or not, but I was looking at that place and it may be the most charming beer garden outback I've ever seen in my entire life. Which one? The old Ferry Boat Inn. Oh, yeah, I looked that one up. 560, you know, Cambridge, probably pronounced Kurmbersurch. Kufster. I know. As it was coming out, I was saying, I'm going to get an email for this. Good stuff. So that's it for pubs, everybody. If you have a pub near you, especially a local, which is an independent pub, go support it. Okay. And since I said go support it, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. And you know what? Last facto I wanted to throw in, we don't need to get into it. But I just had no idea that the term gastro pub came from London. It seems like a very American sort of name. Sure. But it was coined in London in the early ninety s. Ninety s is when some of the pubs started saying, hey, let's stop serving bangers and mash and let's start serving some. They call it stuff that you would eat on vacation. Basically on holiday. Right. On holiday. Good stuff. Yeah. And since Chuck said gastro pubs, now everybody is time for listener mail. I'm going to call this suggestion for something that we're actually going to do. This is from Ron G. Hi, guys. Just want to offer up a suggestion for land acknowledgments. The way I found out about them was through a seminar I attended last year. The host of the seminar was a minister of a Buddhist temple up in Sacramento. And before he began the seminar, he read a statement acknowledging that the land that the temple was on was previously occupied by, and I think he named 1234 different indigenous peoples. And so when I looked into creating a land acknowledgement for our own temple here in Los Angeles, it seemed like a lot of organizations, mostly educational institutions, have already done so. But there's some controversy behind it. But there seems to be a lot of good stuff out there on the topic, and I think listeners might enjoy it. You may even want to create a land acknowledgment for your studio. Nice. So your listeners can hear what it sounds like. And that is from Ron G. It's a great idea. Ron. G and Ron. We're going to do this one. This is in the works already. Yeah, that's what I was saying. It's a great idea. I remember when we were on our Australia New Zealand tour, I think at pretty much every venue, they did a land acknowledgment at the beginning. That's right. They sure did. It's pretty cool. So it's a little bit of catching up we have to do here in the United States. Yeah, it's all part of the least we can do. Right, well, let's see. If you want to get in touch with us, like Ron G did, with a great suggestion. We love those kinds of things. Send them to us. You can wrap it up in an email and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows."
https://podcasts.howstuf…timber-final.mp3	Timber! How Timber Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/timber-how-timber-works	Throughout much of the world, the forests are being managed through sustainable timber harvesting practices. This has come at the cost of much legal battling and a century of practice. ?	Throughout much of the world, the forests are being managed through sustainable timber harvesting practices. This has come at the cost of much legal battling and a century of practice. ?	Thu, 21 Jan 2016 17:30:21 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=17, tm_min=30, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=21, tm_isdst=0)	62663442	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This delightful program is brought to you by Squarespace, beautiful websites for beautiful beverages like kombuchadog.com. I guess kombucha means black mushroom tea, but it's much more fun to say kombucha like chicken chimichung. I never really wanted chimichanga. I just like to ask, how's the chicken chimichanga? There are two takeaways from what Alec Baldwin just said. One, the show is brought to you by Squarespace. And two, Alec Baldwin called our show delightful. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Post nasal drip of some sort. And that makes this stuff you Should Know. It makes this room infection zone. Oh, Jerry, are you sick? No, she's not sick. Are you? No. Good. She's just snotty. That's fine, as long as she's not sick. Are you sick? No, man. How are you feeling? Great. Good. Tired. Are you? Well, you're a dad. All dads are tired, don't they? No, it has nothing to do with it. Oh, yeah? No. Why are you tired? Just didn't get enough sleep last night. Okay. But not because dad stuff. Okay, we'll leave it at that. How about for building a wall? It's back away from that question, shall we? Instead, Chuck, take my hand and let's wander off into the forest. This is pretty neat, I got to say. I was excited about this because A, it's dense like a forest, b, it's cool like a forest, and C, it provides a great canopy over our heads. It does? A canopy of knowledge. Yeah, I reverse engineered that last one. Oh, you did? Yeah. I was like, man, he is on a roll. We're going to get some stuff wrong on this one. I don't know if that's correct. I feel like any time we tackle something that's in any industry like this, the people in that industry are going to have way better current information that we will. I think it's funny because I picked up on the same thing, not just with the industry, but also with the battle over forestry rights. This is a minefield, my friend. It really is, because this article was written a number of years back and is very friendly to the forestry industry. It's not like extraordinarily conservation minded, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, well, I don't think I had a slant. Drop a bombshell. No, I don't think I had a slant. I saw it as pretty neutral. I don't know, man, but here's how confused I was, and we'll get to this later. But these initiatives and certification programs that we'll get to later, I didn't know which one I should like and not like at the end. I can tell you. Well, save it, okay? All right. Because I need somebody to tell me what to like and not like I can tell you. Just save it. All right? I'm saving. Let's talk about forests in general, Chuck. Yes. Well, let's talk about our country a little bit. The United States? Well, even more. Let's talk about our continent. Okay. North America. That's right. When settlers came over here, there was a lot of trees. There were a lot of trees. Do you remember in our pigeon episode, like, the idea that there are so many what was it? Passenger pigeons that died off. They were just driven to extinction because of humans. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's past. I remember I got confused in the episode about which one it was a very confusing thing. And they think that ultimately the pigeons have been managed by Native Americans who were wiped out by disease. So that when the first Europeans really came along, they saw tons of pigeons places overrun with pigeons because there was no one there to hunt anymore. Right. Yeah. Same thing with the forest. They think there was so much forest cover that it was because the Native Americans who had managed the forest before had all died off, or largely died off. And then what we thought was just this crazy stretch of forest that had always been there. It was actually fairly new, but it's probably not the case. Well, at any rate, way back in the 1600s, about 40% of land north of Mexico was trees. Yeah. Not too bad. No, that's a lot of trees. And trees are great because they give us wood. I mean, they led to Pre medal. It was all about wood. Yeah. Ships, buildings, houses, wagons. William Harrison wrote this article. Yeah. He makes the very smart point that we came and cut down trees and basically built a new nation. Yeah, certainly a new economy, several new nations. Out of wood. Definitely. For sure. Like, literally out of wood. If you're talking the world and planet Earth, about 30% is forest land. And Russia and Brazil lead the way because they have huge tracks of land. Yeah, but as a continent, actually, Europe is the most they have the most forest of any continent, the most dense. I believe that they have 1001 million, which is a little over a billionaires hectares. .4 acres, right? Sure. The total number of acreage, if you're in the US. Of forest land throughout the world, 1.58 billion acres of forests, is that the most broad definition of a forest that includes everything and that's in the US. No, that's the world. 1.58 billion in the world. Got you. Yeah. Because in the US. If you talk to a forester, they will say, everyone thinks that you see a bunch of trees and that's the forest. But they would narrow down that definition to at least one acre of land, which has at least 10% tree cover. That's a good definition for a forest. I'm on board with that. Well, if you're talking that definition, then the US. Has about 750,000,000 acres, 766 in Canada, and that's forest, my friend boom, we're done. Yeah, there was a minefield, but we navigated. But this is about timber, and that's different than forest. It is different than forest. So a forest is that definition that you just said? It's an acre of land with 10% tree cover, right? Yes. Timberland is a type of forest land, but it has to have a certain amount of usable trees on it, or timber to make it timber land, right? Yes. I grew up in a forest, actually, now that I think about it. Oh, yeah. By that definition. Nice. What was it called? It's called Chuck. South Chuck's House Forest. Yeah, I think we had like an acre and a half, and most of it was trees. So more than 10%? Oh, yeah. Easy. You had a dense forest. It was pretty dense. That's awesome. Did you learn to climb trees out there? No, but I used to get poked fun at because I didn't grow up in a neighborhood like most kids. It was just a street with like six houses in the forest. Who would make fun of you for that? What were they saying? Well, it's cool to grow up in a neighborhood when in the 80s, hey, man, I grew up in a neighborhood in the wasn't that great? I was jealous, man, because everyone else would sneak out at night and then go to their friend's house, and there were swimming pools and tennis courts and it was just like me and my brother in woods. But I guess I can say I got older and everyone was like, dude, your house is awesome. You live out in the middle of the woods. Yeah, well, plus you're lucky to have your brother to hang out with. He's a great guy. True. Yeah, good point. You know, I had a door that led out to the back porch when I was growing up. It's like there's no sneaking out. I just opened the door and went out for my room. Go ahead, come and go as you please. No, I wasn't supposed to, but there wasn't a lot of sneaking involved. It was opening the door and quietly closing it. You didn't have to. I always wanted to shimmy up a drain pipe to my room. Have you shimmying up or down? Down is a lot easier than up. I could have shimmied when I was ten or twelve, though. Ain't no shimmying anymore. So people have sent in that guide posts cover. Is that you? No. Okay. It's just some other playing the trumpet. Yeah, I never played the trumpet. It doesn't look like you, but I was like, now. And it may not have been a four piece picture, but I think it was okay. Someone will find it. I hope so. Okay, so let's get back to timberland. Yes. Timberland is a forest that's capable of growing something like 20 cubic feet of commercial wood per acre per year. That's right. That's it. And people estimate two thirds of our nation is forest land and 502,000,000 acres of that is timberland. Yeah, that's not bad. Not bad at all. So the key here, though, is, and this is where the big debate comes up, we're not going to get into it necessarily now, but the key is that, yes, you can have a forest that is capable of growing 20 cubic feet of commercial grade lumber timber a year, but you also want it to be able to regrow yeah. Sustainable harvesting. Right. So what you're after is what's called a net annual increase. This article calls the net annual gain. That's wrong. It's a net annual increase, which means that the amount of stuff you're growing in a given year is more than what you're harvesting is the difference between a gain and an increase. I'm just saying the industry term. Oh, got you. Yeah. I looked up annual gain and they said you must be city folk. Right. Basically it's pretty simple. You just want to take less trees and you're growing in a particular year or that you have than you have in reserve. And actually the United States has been in an annual gain for decades now. Yeah. It's a real concern. It's a cause for worry that we over harvest trees. Well, we used to man that. We DeForest. But if you look at the historical data, we are growing more trees than we're taking every year. Yeah. I think the status since 1920, we haven't made anything worse. Right. And apparently, and since the 50s, we've gotten way better. I think the four times the 70s were like kind of bad. But I think that was like the transition decade. Yeah. What this made me really appreciate were early conservationists like Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. Because post Civil War and during precivil war, even people just sort of took what they wanted and did what they wanted with the land. There wasn't a lot of foresight. And so early conservationists were really fighting an uphill battle back then. I think. So I just have a lot of respect for them. I need to say, you know what, I don't know if this is smart. What's going to happen in 100 years? I know you need your log cabin. Jebaaya. What's mind boggling to me is that debate still goes on. Yeah, that's true. But not even just with timber, with, like, climate in general, climate change, things like that. Agreed. All right. So if you're a scientist, you're going to classify forest usually by what kind of trees are there. For instance, the tropical rain forest, you're going to have broadleaf evergreens, a boreal forest, you're going to have needle leaf evergreens. Then there's a temperate forest, which is like what we have here in the Southeast. Yeah. And the US. Are five major regions. Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain, north, south. And I love it. Alaska has its own region. Yeah. Just because it deserves it. And there's a lot of trees up there. Yeah. And in fact, there's been a little bit of a scandal recently as far as Alaska and trees go. Really? Yeah. Is that a tease? It's a tease. Okay. But we're going to consider a couple of regions here, and we're going to mainly be talking about the United States because that's where we live. Yeah, but there are trees everywhere. Yeah. And you can apply this to a lot of places, but east of the old Mississippi is the hardwood region and west is softwood. And if you're talking hardwood, gums, maples, oaks, walnut. Very hardwood walnut. Mahogany. Is mahogany in there? Actually not. I think mahogany is a tropical rainforest tree. Is it? I'm an idiot. All right. No, you're not. That's what I get for coming up with something on my own. Soft woods. You're talking pine, spruce, hemlock, Douglas FIR, redwoods. Those are soft woods. Sure. And we're just getting started. There's a lot of information coming your way. Should we take a break here? Should we? I don't know. It sounded like you were working up toward that. That was a break you set up, wasn't it? All right, let's take a break. We'll come back and we'll talk about why wood is good. All right. Wood is good because you can use it for lots of stuff, which we'll talk about. And I didn't realize this, that we've been using it for a very long time, at least one and a half million years. Right. Starting with fire and, like, clubs. Yeah. Did you realize that we'd harnessed fire that many years ago? I don't know if I really thought about it. That's a long time for people to be building fires a million and a half years ago. Yeah. That completely reshaped my ideas of hominids from 1.5 million years ago. What did you think about them before? Not that they could create fire. They're a bunch of cold dopes a little bit, maybe that they just kind of made do with what came their way rather than actually making fire. Yeah. We should do a podcast on the origins of fire. We did do it on fire. Yeah. But I don't think we covered, like, the first fires. Did we or did we? Probably not. Yeah. I think I've since seen Quest for Fire, which we talked about. Yeah. Good movie. I kind of want to talk about my favorite part, but this is a family podcast, so I won't. Yeah. It's pretty brutal in a lot of ways, isn't it? Yeah. All right, so why is wood good? Like I said, you can make stuff out of it. Another big thing is carbon sequestration, which is why you hear a lot of people battling clear cutting for us, because carbon sequestration is great. It traps carbon, so the build up of CO2 is reduced. As a matter of fact, trees account for 70% of the organic carbon locked in the earth. Yeah. That's why that canopy is important. Right. They also provide habitats for all our animals and birds and insects and all the plants and good things that we love, and the hydrologic cycle. So a forest will help soak up rainfall and filter the water as it becomes groundwater. All very important stuff. Yeah. If you like drinking water, you can thank trees for helping keep the soil in tip top shape to filter out all that nasty stuff. Yeah. So, yes, forests are extraordinarily important. Right. What is good. But you also can make pretty good use of it, too. Like, if you're a clever primate like we humans are, you can not only use it for fire, which a lot of people still do around the world, firewood is still a huge use of wood, of timber around the world. Nothing beats a natural wood fire in a fireplace in your home. No, it's true. But do you remember when we shot those Toyota videos at Carnegie Mellon? Oh, yeah. And one of the innovation things was like a filter, like an easy, cheap, portable filter for cooking fires, indoor cooking fires. I remember that because that was a big problem. People were, like, using wood fires to cook with, but they were doing it indoors and, like, suffering all sorts of lung problems. Yeah. And that still happens in non industrialized nations. Yes. Is that what we call things? It says it's the primary fuel for cooking and heating in developing countries. Right. Non industrialized. I think that's even better. All right. So here in the US, though, and a lot of countries these days, only 7% of timber is used for, I guess, heating and cooking. Yeah. There's a big push against even that 7%, too. Really? Yeah. I agree with you. But it's wasteful. Yes. Okay. Well, I don't have a working fireplace, so I just like them. You just like the idea of it? Well, I want one, but I have one of those old houses from the 1930s that it's expensive to get. It retrofitted. Have you ever gotten an estimate on it? Yeah, I need chimney work. I need a bigger firebox. They said something like eight or ten grand. The guy tried to talk me out of it. Yeah, the dude. I was like, you don't want to make money. Yeah, I want a fire. And you're like, I don't know, it's pretty expensive. I wouldn't all right, it's voiceful. So 7% goes toward that lumber, which we'll get to in a minute, is about 53% in the US September. Yeah. And most of that goes to new house construction, it turns out. Oh, really? That makes sense. Pulp and paper are 32% and then composites, like plywood and veneer, the other seven. Right. Although I think we're missing one percentage point, aren't we? Or are we? Yeah. I wonder what that is. It's the mystery percent. God knows what they're doing. Is that 1% of wood? All right, so it said the word lumber. And lumber isn't just cut wood. No, just like timberland isn't just forest. Yeah. No, forest isn't just timberland. Right. Lumber is actually a specific thing. It is wood that is squared or rectangular. So when you go to the hardware store and you see all the two x fours and two x sixes and all that stuff, that is lumber, because it is square. If you point to a post around post and go, give me three of the lumbers, they'll say, Boy, where did you come from? Yeah, you're wrong in a couple of points here. So that's called roundwood. Actually, that's not included in lumber. That's a little nitpicky if you're outside the industry. I think I agree with you wholeheartedly. But if someone points that out, then, I don't know, punch them in the face with the two X four. Right. That's not lumber. That's wrong with? Remember Hacksaw Jim Duggan? Didn't he attack people with a two x four in the WWF? I didn't want you a ton of wrestling. I'm pretty sure he has, like, a two x four. That makes sense. It's violent construction. It's about a 50 50 split with lumber in the US. About half goes to construction and about half goes to pallets, crates and furniture. Yeah. I didn't know it would be that high. I read an extraordinarily interesting article on the pallet trade. I'm sure it's there's like a whole cartel controlling pallet that people rebel against, and there's like, pallet thieves and counterfeiters. It's a really interesting I'll see if I can find it. I'll post it in the podcast page for this. Well, pallets, you can make a lot of cool things out of pallets. And a lot of people are finding other uses, so they think you can just go behind the grocery store and take them. So now a lot of places have big signs that are like, do not take these pallets. No. Especially if they're blue. Like, that's stealing. If they're blue pallets, you can get the place where you stole them from sued. Yeah, that's the thing. If the palette is blue, it's not for you because you'll get sued. That's right. If you make furniture, you're going to like hardwood, like oak and maple, because it's durable and it has that lovely grain and mahogany that we all love so much. Right. The soft wood is no slouch either. No, but pallets are used in hardwood, too, because it's sturdy. Right. But yeah, soft wood is a different deal. And they usually use software for construction lumber, too, because it contains fewer knots and things like that. And actually, soft wood is used chuck more for construction lumber because you can make it long and straight. That's how you want your construction lumber, long and straight. Nobody wants like kind of a topsy turvy house. Yeah. Maybe a crazy person, but most people don't. They want straight plumbing houses. Yeah. Although it's tough if you've ever done a home rental project to find straight plumber these days. Is that right? Yes. You go in there and they all seem like they're warped and bent. And if you're amateur like me, it doesn't help you out. Any of your lumber is not straight. No. You want straight lumber. I don't know how to make up for that. Like my buddy Isaac in Kansas to help me do my house. Right. He would go pick out stuff and I would say, this is curved. He'd be like, I can account for that, but I can't. He's got, like, a special organ in his brain. Yeah. It's called smarts construction. Carpentry. Smarts. Okay. So that's lumber, right? Yeah. You can also make paper out of wood. Yeah. This might be the fact of the podcast. Are you ready for this? Yeah. Paper is made out of wood. I thought you had something else. No, you got me. Have we done one on paper before? Because this seemed awfully familiar. No, but I will say this touched off, like, five different topics that we should cover. Paper being one of them. All right. The origin of fire paper. Yeah. What else? Deforestation in earnest. We're going to touch on it. And then there's a couple of more, I think. Okay. Pornography. Just kidding. So let's talk about the cellular structure of wood, because it's very important. Well, especially when you're talking about paper. Yeah. Like that was not just a non sequitur. It actually makes sense. Exactly. So trees, like everything else, are made of cells, correct? That's right. And when you take enough of these cells and stack them together, you can create something as strong and tall and rigid as a tree. But it takes a certain kind of cell to make a tree. Yeah. The cells, if you think of the walls of the cells, they make the tree strong. And there are a couple of chemicals that make up these walls. Cellulose and lignin. And cellulose is flexible and bendy. And Lignin says, no, I'm your glue cellulose. I'm going to keep you more rigid because I don't want you to bend. They work together yeah. To make sure whether Cellulose likes it or not. Yes. I always wondered about that. It has to go along with it. It's like I wanted to bend lignin, get out of my face. Right. Lignin is like, no, no coloring outside the lines. So if you separate those things, which we've been doing for a long time now, you can get the cellulose fibers and actually make something called pulp, which will eventually make paper. Right. And you can form it into a mat, press and dry it and bleach it and turn it into paper, like you said. You can also make other stuff, too, technically. Fiber board, the stuff that they used to put on the backs of dressers and things these days. Fred yeah. That's actually made from paper pulp. Yeah. I should say if you're at another hardware store and some guy that works there, lady says, what you want to use is MDF. What's that? Medium density fiber board. Okay. And that way they won't think you're city folk. All right. You can say. Yeah. MDF. Sure. Totally. And then they'll know your city folk. I'll be like, give me three of those MDS. And then you have hard board, and that's even stronger than fiber board. And it's just I think it's harder because it's pressed together with so much pressure. It's more dense. Yeah. Fiber board is pulp and glue. Pressed together hardboard is the same thing. But press together, like you said, under pressure and then completely different. Actually. Although it does seem like it would bear a pretty striking resemblance. Is particle board, right? Yes, these are composites. Plywood and particle board are both composites. Right. But they are different. The difference between MDF and particle board is MDF is well, particle board is cheaper and it's made out of sawdust, whereas the MDF is made of actual fiber right out of pulp. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like, Chuck, you realize that stuff you should know has hit such a stride, but we're talking about particle board. It just hit me. Plywood is when you take if you look at plywood on the side of it, you'll see that it's a lot of little veneers pressed together. That's what they're called. Veneers. Veneers. Plywood is great, but if you really want something that's just as tough, just as durable, but cheaper, you're going to go for the oriented strand board OSB, baby. Which is basically like plywood made out of particle board. Yeah. And it's all but replaced plywood and construction these days, home construction. Because it's cheaper, it is stronger and more durable. And I was wondering why it was stronger. And it's because it's right there in the name. It's oriented. The specific orientation of the wood strands makes it stronger. Okay. So it's not just haphazardly tossed together and pressed, I guess, by God, specifically oriented. Right. Invented 1963 by man. Yes. In California, I think, actually. Nice. Yeah. So your OSB, if you go into your hardware store and they'll say you either want MDF or OSB. So I know what I'm talking about, so don't try and trick me. Right. I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck, the lumber truck. All right, where are we now? Are we harvesting it? Yeah. So to get to this point, to get to all these wonderful products of lumber timber. Sorry, man. I have a lot of trouble not confusing lumber with timber. Lumber is timber. Timber is not necessarily lumber. That's what I was taught as a young boy. So when you harvest timber, there's a couple of approaches, right? Well, there's several approaches, but they really fall under two umbrellas. One is to take everything to hell with ecology. Approach called clear cutting. Yes. That is, all these trees can make some money. Ergo, I'm going to cut down all these trees. Yeah. Typically over five acres. Is a clear cut? Yes. Anything under that is called a patch cut. Okay. Although people disagree on that definition, too. But the suggestion is that under five acres, an area that small could recover being effectively clear cut. I'm not sure it has to do with recovery. Oh, it has to do with the amount of money you made? I don't know. I'm not sure. All right. But with clear cutting, you just go in and you cut down everything. It's pretty straightforward, really. It takes slightly more thought to come up with a good what's called a Silva culture approach. Silva culture takes into account the idea that you want that area that you cut down to grow back, to renew, so that, again, you hit that net annual increase rather than decrease to where the amount of trees you have in stock or growing in a particular year is actually more than the amount of trees you harvest that same year. Right. To do that, you have to be selective. You have to be smart in the number, amount and type of trees you cut down during any given tree cut. Yeah. With clear cutting, when you hear that, you would just think, like, why would anyone argue that that's a good idea? But people do it's very controversial. If you're in the timber industry yeah. Forestry industry. Forestry industry. You will think in good confidence that you can say that clear cutting is fine if you do it the right way. I don't get that. Yeah. They said that there are seven conditions, that if you meet them, then it's actually better. That sounds like propaganda. Do you want me to read the conditions? I do. Because when regenerating tree species that need full sunlight to stimulate seed sprouting and seedling growth. When dealing with sparse or exposed shallow rooted trees that are in danger being damaged by wind. When trying to produce an even age stand and a stand I found as a group of trees that are the same species, age and condition that you can manage as a unit, that's a stand of trees. Okay. When regenerating stands of tree species that are dependent on wind blown seed rootsuckers or cones that need fire to drop seed. When faced with salvaging over mature stands or stands killed by insects, disease or fire. When converting to another tree species by planting or seating. And finally, to provide habitat for wildlife species that require edge new ground and high density, even age stands. I couldn't make sense out of any of that. Well, one of them really stuck out to me, and it was that for when you're cutting down an entire area that's been hit by pests or disease. That one makes sense to me. Especially if you're trying to contain an epidemic. Yeah, sure. Clear cut. That makes sense. Everything else, I mean, there's some logic to it, at least. It's not just total madness. Yeah. Opponents to clear cutting will say it increases. Soil erosion, water degradation, increases silt in streams and rivers. Esthetics is the main reason that most people are opposed to it, or that many people are sure, is that it just looks like a wasteland. Right. Well, the problem is also with clear cutting. It sets the stage for invasive species of, say, like fast growing weeds to overcome seedlings, and it keeps the forest from regenerating. So therefore, clear cutting. Most people, I guess, except for the people who came up with those seven conditions, tend to believe that it's an unsustainable method of harvesting timber. Right. A more sustainable method is shelter wood cutting. That's the type of silver culture. Yeah. And that's when they use partial cuttings over time. We're talking over ten or 20 years, only two to four harvests where things can naturally regenerate during that time frame. Right. That sounds like a good idea. It is. There's also seed tree harvesting, and then selection harvesting, which is where you basically go in and say, this tree, that tree, that tree. Yeah. That are more marketable. But proponents of clear cutting say that's worse. I don't know why, though. I can see what they're saying. Think about it like you're artificially selecting, and you're disrupting the balance of the ecology of the forest by saying, just these great oaks leave all these other crummy elms. Yeah, but the thing is, you're also affecting the ecology by cutting down everything. Yeah. The ecosystem. I would like to hear from someone that really knows their stuff, that is a proponent of clear cutting, to explain it better to me than the Internet did. Please do. All right. So when you do use any kind of Silva cultural technique, and you're not just clear cutting, you have to go through the forest and figure out what trees you're going to take a lot of times, and even with clear cutting, they will leave trees that are, say, six inches in diameter or less in size. They're too young. It's like how you leave fawns when you're deer hunting. Yeah, the exact same thing. I love the name of that process when determining and surveying the land to work it all out. It's called cruising. I'm going to cruise the forest. Right. Everybody drives around the forest with the pack of cigarettes, roll up in their shirtsleeves. Next comes selling. And I got confused with tree filling the correct way, so I put a little post on Facebook, and I had a guy named Gabriel Fridley who worked as a Forest Service fire and fuel management dude, and he said I've cut hundreds, if not thousands of trees. So you want to hear what he says? Yeah. Because we would screw it up. I guarantee it. Okay. Are you about to say that you know better than this guy? I don't know better than this guy, but this article was definitely wrong from everything I found. Yeah, that's exactly why I asked. He said, terminology changes depending on where you are and who you're talking to. There are a number of different ways to do so, but the safest and most common is to cut a wedge out of a tree, measure about a third of the diameter, measuring about a third of the diameter of the tree in the direction you want the tree to fall. That's where I would just stop. Yeah. My brain just shut down. Yeah. Then cutting this wedge will require two cuts, a flat cut and then a sloping cut that meets the flat cut and freeze the wedge. The combination of these two cuts is commonly called the face cut. Okay. So then the bat is on the side of the tree in the direction it's going to fall. Correct. And it's like a triangle. Yes. The bottom cut is 90 degrees. The top cut is 45 degrees, I think. So okay. The wedge acts as a hinge, so the tree falls in a safe, controlled manner. Then there's the third cut, most commonly called the back cut, which is a straight cut in the opposite side of the tree, about halfway through the diameter of the tree, maybe a little more, and that's about two inches above the bottom cut on the other side. Okay. From what I saw, and he said, ideally, you want to leave 20% of the diameter of the tree intact between the back cut and the wedge, and that's called holding wood. And I think he said holding wood is just what it sounds like. It holds the tree together to make, like it's not coming down on your head. Basically, it holds it together until you're ready. He said if you've done these two correctly, three, actually, you should be able to simply push the tree over with your hands wow. Or drive a wedge into the back to bring the tree down. I bet that's pretty awesome to push a huge tree down with your hands and yelp. Timber. Yeah. So thank you to Gabriel Fridley. Yeah. Thanks, Gabriel. And for firefighting, forest fires. Yeah. It's pretty neat. Or starting them. Oh, come on. No. Forestry service does control burns. Oh, yeah. I thought you meant, like, because there have been cases where they've found arson and it was actually a fireman or his mother firefighter. Do you remember that? No. There was a dude who was a wildfire firefighter who was not getting enough work. That's what I was thinking. Was it the mom? The mom went and set a fire so that her son could make some money. God bless her. Not really. But the mom that just wants to take care of business. First one. Right. That's nice. So, Chuck, you've gone through you've cut a bunch of trees. The first thing the loggers do is they hop all over the trees and go and they cut all the limbs off. Yes. Right. That's called bucking. Yeah. And then once you've got the tree bucked, you cut it into huge logs from top to bottom, and then you tie the logs up or you chain them to a tractor and you skid them along a skidding trail that's right. To what's called the landing area. All right. And they pre plan these skidding trails. Yeah. This is very important. Not just Willynilly, because they are trying to protect the forest at the same time. Yeah. Because if you have a bunch of tractors driving out with lots and lots of heavy logs, heavy logs attached to them, you're going to compact the soil like this was a tree ten minutes ago. Right. Now it's a log. Yeah. Huge logs. And so if you're going to compact some area of soil, you might as well just compact the same area of soil rather than a bunch of areas of soil so that the rest of the forest can stay healthy. And when you get to the landing area, these logs are going to be basically graded and sorted, and some of them are either going to be sent straight to the pulp mills to be created into paper. Those are predator logs, generally. Right. Or fiber board or something like that. And then others may be sent in the higher grade stuff will probably be sent to sawmills or concentration yards, which are basically the second stage of these landing areas, where these people say, we're going to put all these specific species of trees over here because this one saw me likes only oaks. So we're going to send them their oaks. Right. So either the landing area goes directly to sawmill, or there's that extra step of the concentration yard in there. Yeah. And if this sounds dangerous it is. And depending on what year you're looking at, logging is either the one or two. Aside from commercial fishing, most dangerous job in the United States, at least. Either way, you can find documentary television shows about these professions on Discovery channel. That's right. Check your local listings and other channels. This past year, I think it was commercial fishing. Airline pilot was number three. I find that very unnerving. Yeah, right. That's what I thought. I thought planes didn't crash much. What's up with that? I don't know. Well, my fear of flying just came back. Farmers and ranchers are four, in case you're wondering. Mining machine operator, then roofers, sanitation collectors, which I thought was interesting. Are you sure? It's not like military jet pilot, dude, soldier wasn't even listed in the top ten. An airline pilot. But like I said, I think they go by death in that previous year. I don't care. So it probably depends on if we're at war or, you know okay. But airline pilot was still in there. It was dude, and then truckers and industrial machinists, especially ice road truckers, probably. Yeah. For real. I'm sure among truckers that they probably have a higher mortality rate. Well, you are shilling for discovery. I think that was on history. Okay. You're shilling more for discovery now than when they owned it, which is weird. It is weird. What do you think podcaster is? Podcaster pretty cushy. Unless apparently you're on a commercial airline, like a one in 10 million chance of death. Yes. If you're a podcaster on the job death. You know, we could figure that out if we knew what math was. I'm trying to think if, like, how we would die from doing this. Flying somewhere to do a live podcast, probably. Right. I would say if somebody locked the door and Jerry started a fire in here, then we could probably die from par. Actually, in our case, it would be if Jerry finally snaps and just murders us both. I don't know. I think we could fend Jerry off. So, Chuck, once the stuff hits the sawmill, we'll go there. We already kind of hit the pulp mill, which stink, by the way. One of the foul smells on Earth are those can I just say egg fart? No, way worse than that. I thought it was like, that real sulphury smell. Now, that's well water down in Florida. Okay. This is like it's its own smell. All right? You've surely smelled it before you ever been to a chicken farm. Okay, you're right. That might be the worst smell of all. Didn't you use to work on chicken farms doing software or something? Yeah, not on farms. Okay. But other people in our company would go to the farms and teach them how to use the software that smells so bad, which is imagine that job going, teaching these people that have been, like, literally counting chicken heads for their entire life, teaching how to use the computer to do it. They were not receptive many times. Talk about hunting and pecking. Yeah, there was a lot of hunting and pecking. So at the sawmill, right? Yeah. When you're cutting up well, when you get a bunch of logs, you're like, these are some good logs, but I can't do much with this bark. You can use mulch, that kind of thing. Sure. Actually. Bark. I didn't realize this bark represents basically one of two organs of the tree. There's actually three. Should we talk about the inside of the tree a little bit? Yeah. I thought this is interesting. Yeah, me too. So the bark is the foam. It's the sugar conducting cells. Flow. Flow. And basically it just provides energy. It transfers energy throughout the tree. Yeah. Like the internal piping. Part of it is the flow. Yeah. And there's that one Bugs Bunny song it makes, like that Bugs Bunny assembly line song. Totally powerhouse power something. Yeah. So that's the sound that makes if you listen very carefully in a forest. True. There's another set of internal piping, the tissue called the xylem, and the xylem carries the water up and down the tree. And they are well suited to do so because they are like pipes. They are shaped like piping. Right. So the Folium, that's bark the Xylem, that's the wood inside. And in between the two, you have a thin layer that's basically stem cells. It's called the cambium. And the Cambium produces flow and Xylem cells. And it produces Xylem cells inward. Right? Yeah. So the part of the tree that's closest to the bark is also the youngest. Yeah. The heartwood. No, that's in the center, that's the sapwood. Further inside, deeper into the tree, that's the older Xylem. And that's the hardwood. It's just the oldest part of the tree. Yes. And when the log gets to the sawmill, they're going to basically separate those two things because there's different uses for stapwood and for hartwood. But the first thing they're going to do is get rid of the bark. Yeah. They put it in a debarking drum and it's kind of like a nightclub. Everything rubs together. Yeah. They put several different logs in and let the logs rub their own bark off one another. Yeah. They put on little music. It's pretty horrific. Machine. Like you're a tree and all of a sudden you have a naked tree. Right. Strip the skin right off of it. Then that bark can become mulch. And what else? Oh, fuel. Fuel? Pretty much it okay. Decorative mulch and fuel. But once you've got that naked log, you're all set. So you want to cut the staff wood from the heartwood because the hardwood is extraordinarily strong and you use it for posts and timbers and beams and things like that that you really are going to put a lot of weight on. Yeah. Flooring sometimes. Right? Sometimes. And actually, there's another article I read once about this commercial diving company down in central Florida that their whole job was they would go down in the swamp and raise old cypress logs from the 19th century that have just been down there since then. Yeah. And they sell them as, like, reclaimed original heart of Cyprus for flooring people pay mind boggling amounts for because this log was felled 100 something years ago and it just sank. It happened to be one of the ones that sank and they couldn't do anything with it. Back then, there were so many cypress trees that they just didn't even bother with those. So now these guys go down and dive and identify them and raise them up and then sell them. That junk is heavy. Yeah. And actually, that perfect. Time to mention my buddy Jason from Dancaster Guitars. He built me accustomed Telecaster replica. And they used old wood from a dam in Georgia that had been underwater for like, 100 years. That's really cool. And this thing is the heaviest guitar. It's beautiful, but it's tough on my back. Is it worth it, though? Yeah, man. I mean, it's gorgeous. The wood they get is really just heavy and dense and gorgeous wood. And they got this big load of it from a dam that they tore down in Columbus, Georgia. And so they've got all this wood now that they're making these sweet guitars out of. Would you name your guitar? I don't really name my guitars, although he wanted me to. Yeah, they name your guitar. I got four guitars. They're one through four. You should name one Joni and one Chachi, at least. All right. Keep them right next to each other. And one Fonzie and one Ralph mouth. Now, who is Fonzie's? Leather Tuscadero. Yeah, Pinky Tuscadero. Well, they're sisters. So was Pinky the younger sister? I think Leather was the one that looked like Joan Jet and Pinkie was the one that looked like a Bombshell model. I had the pink sweaters and the big poofy hair. So which one did he date? I think he dated Pinky. Okay. Leather, she didn't need god, she was a rock and roller. I think I remember who you're talking about. Yes. I don't remember. Pinky Tuscadero. I definitely remember Leather tuscaderoo. Man, whoever wrote that show was a genius. Right. Well, what they're doing is they're satisfying everyone. They're like, you like the ladies rough and tumble, or you like them dressed up in pink with, like, poopy hair. Right. Do you like them with an Italian name? Right. Where are we? Have we debarked? Right, yes, we have debarked, to answer your question. Okay, so we've debarked. You got a naked log. If it's going to be paper, it's going to go to a chipper, which cuts the log into little squares about two inches by a quarter of an inch thick. And they're going to mix those chips up with chemicals and stuff. They're going to put it in a digester. It's a big pressure cooker. And that is what separates that cellulose from the lignin that we talked about earlier. To get your pulp. Yeah, I'm going to get that lignin out of there. Yeah. And it's wet. It's fibrous. They bleach it to the proper shade, mix it with water again, form it into big mats, and then press them under these incredible rollers to press out all that water. Right. And then there you go. You've got what will be paper. Right. And if you're making lumber, you send your log to the ScoobyDoo Headrig, is what it's called. Yeah. Man, those things are awesome. The thing that people are always tied on going towards yeah. And just cuts the log in half or it cuts the edges off and maybe, like, just cuts out the heart. It just sort of roughs it out. Right. And then you have a couple of other types of saws. There's a trimmer that squares the ends. Before that, you have an edger, which creates the well, the edges for your lumber. And then, of course, there's a whole other process involved in making roundwood, aka. Posts, which are not lumber. Evidently, your heartwood is going to be older, obviously, because how you can tell a tree by the rings, those inner rings that we talked about, the Xylem. Right. And as the cambium is creating more Xylem cells, they're going on the outside of the heartwood. Yeah. The tree is growing outwards, and there's going to be more knots in that heartwood, too. Branches past it's sturdier. But a lot of people would also be like, I don't want to see knots. So they're not going to use it for yes. Or I do want to see knots. Yeah. Depending on what you're doing. Sickos. Like a good knot in the right place. For instance, my guitar has a beautiful knot in the center of the back. That's just gorgeous. Joni. I would call this one pinky Tuscadero. Okay, so that's pinky tuscadera or maybe leather tusk. Leather tuscaderos. But I actually looked up knots. I was like, Wait, what is a knot? Not even thinking. Of course, it's just a former branch. Oh, I didn't think about that either. Yeah, it's either a branch base or a branch bud. That never happened. Huh. Do you know, not only did I not think that that's what it not was, I didn't even think what it not was. Yeah. All right. And the last part of that process is you got to dry the stuff out. So you stack it up, sort it out, and you dry it in the kiln. Correct. Yeah. All right. Just like you made something out of clay. Should we take a break? Let's take a break, man, and then we'll take it home. So, Chuck, you kind of mentioned, like, early conservation folks that you were in awe of John Muir. Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. John Muir was cool. Weirdo. Yeah. And these people reacted to this rampant deforestation that was going on. Like, there was a significant amount of logging that happened between the 17th century and the mid 19th century. Yeah. Up to 30% of the original forest land by the end of the Civil War was gone. Yeah. And we're talking about a billion acres. Wow. That was originally there. So 30% of that gone. Right. Unbelievable. And there was what was called they were worried that there was going to be a, quote, national famine of wood. And it wasn't just conservation at the time. Like, plastics had not been developed. Sure. Cheap, easy metal alloys weren't developed until, say, the mid 20th century. Right. Yeah. We really used wood a lot. And also for fuel, for cooking, for heating, all that stuff. We needed wood, so it was going to be a big deal if we ran out of wood. And as a result, a lot of people got behind these conservation efforts, and especially the government. Here in the United States, all government levels own forest land, but for the most part, the federal government owns the most. And they don't just protect it and say, this is off limits. They say, you guys can come and pay for the right to cut down some trees from here, but you're going to follow our rules. Yes. 323,000,000 acres of federally owned land in this country is public forest land. So either like national forest or I guess to be used by the logging industry if you meet the right conditions, I guess, yeah. But I think even national forests fall under that umbrella as well. Yeah, I didn't mean that they were not the same. What does happen sometimes is say an animal will be placed, an animal that calls forest land or timberland at home will be placed on the endangered list. And as a result of that, the forest industry will just completely shift. And that was the case with the Mexican spotted owl in the what happened to that guy? So the Mexican spotted owl was on his way to becoming extinct and it made its home in the western softwood temperate forest. Right. And the US government decided that this was enough of a problem that they put it on the endangered species list and protected it. And that meant that its habitat was protected, which meant that all of this public land that all these logging companies used to go and log on, they couldn't log there anymore. A lot of they did not like that decision. No, they didn't. It was enormous. And you know that a federal agency is doing its job when it's being sued by conservationists and logging companies right? Yes. At the same time over the same thing. Sure. Or else they're not doing their job at all, depending on how you look at it. But eventually the Mexican spotted owl was protected, its habitat was protected. And so the forestry, the timber industry shifted eastward. And so there was a shift not just in direction on the continent, but also in where they were taking timber from. Right. So now more timber is taken from privately held lands in the east than public held lands in the west. Because of this one type of owl completely changed the complexion of the timber industry in the United States. But the timber industry is doing just fine. Yeah. And it's a real testimony that they can't the Mexican spotted owl can't adapt, but the timber industry can, apparently. You ever see owls in Atlanta? Yeah, I have before. Boy, they're amazing. I love owls. Gorgeous in that wingspan. It's remarkable when you see one fly yes. It's like, whoa, that looks bigger than most birds. Yes. Have you ever had one, like, perched outside of your window while you're trying to sleep? Well, we have one that lives behind our house. Does it keep you up? No, we've seen it a couple of times and we hear it a lot, which I love. It doesn't wake me up or anything. Oh, we had one that was keeping us awake. Really? Shoot it? No, it went out and shine a flashlight in its general direction. Yeah. And it piped down. Never heard from it again. Oh, wow. So he got the message. Got you and we were out of the list after that. He's like, that guy with the flashlight. He's bad news getting out of here. All right, so the federal government owns a lot of land which is managed by some different bodies, but they try and do their best job with things like the Healthy Forest Restoration Act sign in 2003 by GW. Bush right. To help protect forest land. So, Chuck, it's about here, though, that this is when I was like, I feel like we're really waning into unexplained territory. A dark forest. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, I suspect a lot of green washing going on. And so I started poking around and I found that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative is very frequently accused of green washing the SFI. Yeah. So you know how, like, fair trade? You'll look for a fair trade label and you'll be like, I'm going to pay a little more for this because I believe that the people who made it were paid a better wage than this competitor. That wasn't fair trade. That's what the Sustainable Forestry Initiative seal of approval was meant for. That you could look for it on, like, a ream of paper or something and say, oh, well, this paper was harvested using, say, shelter cutting techniques or some sort of Silva cultural techniques that promote sustainable forestry. Okay. The thing is, there's some other groups, say, like, Forest Ethics is a nonprofit kind of watchdog group that has come out and really aggressively said that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative is basically just a green washing front operation. Really? That's funded by paper companies. It was international Paper. International Paper, yeah. There are a couple of others. I think Warehouse was one, maybe, that fund this approval or organization. So it's a BS, from what I can tell. Really? It looks that way. It's very disconcerting. Fortunately, there are some that do appear to be utterly legitimate, and the chief among them is the Forest Stewardship Council. Okay. They do the same thing, but they're the real deal. So this article you sent me, there are a lot of major brands dumping the SFI. I saw that and I was like, oh, that's terrible. But they're moving to the better standard. Is that correct? That's the impression I have. Okay, that makes sense now. Yeah. Rather than bearing the SFI seal of approval or buying paper that bears that seal of approval, because it's not even necessarily the paper companies that are doing this because they're the ones funding the SFI. Right. It's like Office Depot is no longer buying SFI sourced paper. Okay. I'm guessing they're probably going with the FSC. The Forest Stewardship Council? So Hewlett Packard at Amp, T, pitney bowls, allstate they buy a lot of paper shouting them out. Right. Because they're doing the right thing, it sounds like. Yeah, that makes more sense. I was confused. I thought they were dropping the SFI, which was a good thing. But this is all clear now. Thank you. Hey, don't thank me. Thank forest ethics, who apparently routinely get ceased and desist letters from paper companies in the forest or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. And then Chuck, the Forest Service itself is often criticized for being in bed with the timber industry. I'm sure that Alaska thing I was teasing earlier yes, what is it? There is something called the Big Thorn Timber Sale. 6000 acres. 6200 acres of 700 year old forest in the Tongues in southern Alaska up for sale for clear cutting. Wow. Clear cutting. And the problem is like old growth forest. Yes, it is. That's exactly right. The problem is not just that people are worried that the forest won't recover, but that this forest is also used by other industries, like fishing industry, tourism industry. These people are like, we're using this acreage. Can't just come in and cut it down. Here's a couple of lawsuits to stop that sale. And I guess a federal judge in 2015, I think March ruled no, go ahead. You're well within your rights. Wow. Maybe disgusting. But go ahead and sell 6200 acres of old growth forest in Alaska for clear cutting with the presumption that it will go to a logging company. Yes. You'd be great. I don't know. Warren Buffett bought it. He said, I'm going to build a small house in the middle of it. And that's it. That got you wear a cape. Deforestation is the thing. And I agree with you. We should definitely do an episode just on that, right? Yeah. But that's not the only threat to the forests of the world. It is a serious threat, but manmade, threats are not the only threat. No, there's a few more natural threats. Insects, of course, specifically invasive species like the Eurasian gypsy moth came here in the 19th century. And when it's a caterpillar, it eats the leaves of hardwood trees, like a lot of them, to the tune of since 1930, defoliated more than 80 million acres. That is so many East Coast forest. Yeah. 80 million acres just on the East Coast. This little caterpillar. So that's an insect disease is a problem. I know here in Georgia, we've sudden oak death is a big problem. And since it was originated in full 40 years after that, 95. Yeah, I remember when this happened, it was probably Clinton's fault. It was Clinton's fault. Since then, it's killed more than 1 million oak trees. Yeah, it's no gypsy moth, but that's a lot now and then. Lastly, invasive species are a real problem. Kudzu, that was the other one I want to do. Yeah. Oh, you want to do one on kudzu? Heck yeah. So kudzu is a great example of an invasive species. It's a non native, fast growing vine that and I think it's native Japan has plenty of natural predators that like to eat it. Sure. Right here in the United States. In the Southeast United States where it. Was given as a gift by Japanese businessmen in the doesn't have any natural predators, and it just grows like crazy. And the problem is, it grows up and over trees, and it uses the tree structure and then creates its own canopy around it. It basically creates a Dyson sphere around a tree. But it's a reverse Dyson sphere, right. It's accepting the sun from the outside rather than harvesting it from the inside. Tree death is what it means. I know. Don't you hate seeing that? I just shake my fist at Kudzu, like, Get off of that tree. Just stay on the ground. But do you ever take time to go out there with your scissors, Josh? Yes. And cut it off that tree very frequently. Mile a minute weed is another good example, apparently another Asian import that has choked the mid Atlantic region. I guess the lesson here is if an Asian business person ever gives you a non native plant as a gift, smile politely. Say. Thank you very much. Also, don't make eye contact. So thank you very much, but I cannot accept this gift. But would you like to go have a lovely sushi meal? Nice. Anything else? I got nothing else. So that is timber. If you want, go type that word into the search bar. Howstepworks.com? And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this coolest tattoo I've seen in a while. Hey, guys, listen to Satanic panic today. And I loved it. I loved that episode, by the way. It's good. Yes, we got some good feedback. Jerry's even nodding. She hates most of what we do. She's not even aware of most of what we do. She was born in 1982, this writer, and she says, I remember family members talking about parts of our home state of Kentucky that were lousy with Satan worshippers. One of the things I like best in the episode was when he talked about the influence works of fiction had on Superstition. Made me think of how I've encountered this in my own life. I have a great love of Ouija boards, and in fact, I don't think she's heard the episode on Ouija boards, but she didn't reference it. Oh, that was a good episode. So, Carrie, we did an episode on that. You should listen to it. I think they are pretty, and I have great memories of playing with one as a kid. I have quite a few at home. I have quite a few Ouija board items, including a tattoo on my chest. And she attached the photo. She's got, like, the upper lettering of the Ouija board right across under her neckline at the top of her chest. Under sternum? Yeah. And when she wears, like, a dress with that exposed, it's just lovely looking like that font and everything. Yeah, I saw the photo and I thought it was really cool looking nice. But of course people are going to say, like, what's up with this girl? Yeah, when do we deboard? This has led to some very interesting conversations, of course, with people. A lot of people really like it, like me. But some have been a little freaked out by it. Thanks to movies like The Exorcist and more recently Ouija, the Ouija board has been given a lot more power and I feel that it really deserves. I've had my tattoo for over a year and have not noticed any paranormal activity surrounding me. And I've not been possessed and I have not had a demon used my chest as a doorway to our world. So I think I will be okay. We'll see. Keep up the great work. That is from Carrie Parenthesis. Like the movie. Lot of horror movie references in that. Yeah, I thought it was a very cool tattoo. Nice, man. Well, Kerry, right? That's right. Okay, thanks a lot, Carrie, for writing in. And if you want to write to us, you can join us on Facebook.com, stuffychannow you can tweet to us at sciskpodcast. You can send us an email to Stuffpodcasterhouse Worksh.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshoot.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com."
421ac156-53a3-11e8-bdec-47bcc6ac7a78	Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 2	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/iran-contra-affair-shady-in-the-80s-part-2	As the operation expands it also begins to unravel. Word starts to leak out of the illegal stuff the Reagan administration was up to, Congress and the press investigate and people start to point fingers. Spoiler alert – they all got off scot free.	As the operation expands it also begins to unravel. Word starts to leak out of the illegal stuff the Reagan administration was up to, Congress and the press investigate and people start to point fingers. Spoiler alert – they all got off scot free.	Thu, 08 Aug 2019 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=220, tm_isdst=0)	41969885	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Attention, Portland, Maine. We are coming there very soon. You guys need to buy your tickets now. Yeah, not just Portland, Maine, but as you know, outside of Boston, this is our big New England debut. Sure. So people should come from all over. Oh, yeah. You don't have to just live in Portland. They'll let you in the city to see us. Yeah, you can live one of those little rocky islands and you can boat over and see us. Right. So however you get there, just be sure that you're at the State Theater on August 30, 2019 for our show, because it's going to be great. Ask the people in Chicago. Ask the people in Toronto. Ask the people in Boston who will have seen us the day before. Just buy some tickets, go to Sysklive.com, and come see us. August 30, State Theater. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be took. Brian there's. Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Iran Contra part two. Starting now. Go. Maybe we should do a quick catch up. Okay, well, we're still going to, like I just went to sleep. No, it's true. So what's going on here is the United States Congress has decided that we cannot fund the Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, shut off funding. So the Reagan administration makes a deep, covert push to continue doing so through a bunch of fun and shady ways. Right. They're fundraising. They're directly arming the contrast. They're training them, doing all sorts of crazy stuff. Yes, but if you know that this is about Iran Contra and you're like, what about Iran. What's going on here? I haven't heard anything about Iran. Keep your socks on. Well, here we go. This is where Iran enters the picture. Right? You can take your socks off. All right, go. Are your socks on? I've got a little footy socks. Yeah, I do, too. Cool. Oh, Jerry does. Too sweet. It's the way to go. Jerry has those true footies where you can't even see them at all. I can see you. Mine peak out just a little, which I'm not a huge fan of. Check out mine. Yeah. No CMS. No CMS. Okay. Enter Iran. That was a great intro. And it just went away. That's right. So on the other side of the world, from Nicaragua, there was another foreign policy disaster simmering that Reagan had going, and it was in the form of Iran, and specifically, it wasn't even in the form of Ron. It was in the form of a problem that America had. It doesn't really have much these days, but definitely did in the where Americans would be taking hostage around the world, but specifically, almost exclusively by Lebanese terrorists who were, if not working on behalf of Iran, were definitely sponsored by Iran. And regardless of who is president, the fact that there were hostages being held by another country and there wasn't anything we could do about it, that was a real blemish on the presidency. It was not a very proud thing to think about for America, but that was this reality for a while there. Yeah. So Iran at the time this is the early 80s. This is just a few years removed from the Iranian Revolution of 1979. And this is where we've talked about it before. Go look up photos of Iran in the mid 70s, pre revolution. And it looks like London in the swinging sixty s and seventy s. Yeah. Very hip place to be. Iranian revolution happens. Fundamentalists take control of the government. There was previously the Shah of Iran, who was friendly to the west. Sure. Friendly to America generally. And the Ayatollah Khomeini Komini. I've always heard Khomeini Komani installed Islamic theocracy and bad things started happening pretty quickly. Yeah, it was about as quick a turn about face politically and socially as you could imagine. Yeah. For a whole country. Yeah. But not everyone in the country, as we'll learn. Like, the whole country didn't just change overnight. No, but the Islamic theocracy was in power. Very much so. One of the things that happened was they were not very fond of America or Americans. And the American Embassy was famously stormed and 66 Americans working there were taken hostage and held for more than a year. This is stuff I really remember, like 440 days or something. Yeah, 444 days, man. The Iranian hostage crisis. I remember this as a nine year old very clearly. Really? Oh, yeah. I have no recollection of it. Yeah, it was a big deal. Yellow ribbons and it was on the news constantly. I remember entering the room and being like, what does this have to do with rainbow bright turn this newscast. I even remember. So what happened was Jimmy Carter did not get these hostages free during his rain, but sort of the opposite of who Jimmy Carter was during his administration is iron fisted rain, the days of terror. But within a few days, and that may have cost on the election, but within a few days or hours even of Reagan's inauguration, the hostages were freed. And I remember as a nine year old hearing kids parenting their parents conversations, it was really Carter that had him freed. All the work he did up until then, and then other kids saying, Are you kidding me? As soon as Reagan got an office, they knew that they were toast and that Reagan wasn't going to be a patsy like Carter. And I was like, what's? A patsy? Who are these dudes? No, but I remember very distinctly it's weird, like on the playground hearing the stuff that's funny. Yeah, a little nine year old. I definitely didn't hear this when I was a kid, but I remember hearing later on as a grown up still in the rainbow bright, that it was Reagan's campaign was somehow in touch with Iran and that they brokered this. It also got them to wait to release the hostages until after Reagan was in office, but the timing was not at all hours after his inauguration. No accident. It's a little fishy, you know what I mean? But whether it was that's funny that I'm sure somebody's parents were like, yeah, it's because they were so scared of Reagan. They knew that they better release these guys. That's totally not the case because there were other hostages taken by other Lebanese terrorists who were probably sponsored by Iran, and they were held throughout Reagan's presidency. Yeah. And that's sort of a big part of the second half of this story, was the fact that that was very embarrassing for Reagan. He didn't like hostages being held on his watch. No. But he had campaigned against negotiating with terrorists under any circumstances. So he's stuck now. Yeah, because he's basically saying, if you get taken hostage, you're on your own. We'll use our rhetoric and whatever we can to influence you being released, but we're not going to negotiate for your release. That's just the way it is. And that's a long standing American policy. Right. And it makes sense, because if you negotiate with terrorists, then that's just going to lead to more kidnappings because they know that you're open for business, like anywhere in the world. Yeah. There was a kidnapping of TWA Flight 847. Very, very famous one. You know, the picture of the pilot leaning out of the cockpit and the guys in the picture with the gun behind them, that was 847. Right. I remember that one. That was probably nine then, and that was just scary because they were flying all over the place. You had no idea what was going to happen. People were being beaten on the plane. One Navy guy was beaten in shot and throw, his body thrown on the tarmac. Yeah. It seems comparatively tame now in a lot of ways, as compared to the things that used to go on tank McDonald's hijacking and kidnappings and hostages. The 80s were nuts. They were nuts. But Pacman, right? Pacman Fever. Pacman Rapping, Rodney. It was crazy, right? Is that Roddy Piper? No, rapping. Rodney Dangerfield. His big hit. Oh, yeah. No respect. What about the Icky shuffle? That was a little crazy. Was that 80s? Sure. Late eighty S? I guess so. Okay, I got one for you. Okay. The Bears, what was their thing? Oh, the Super Bowl shuffle. The Super Bowl Shuffle, right? Yeah. That was pretty eighty S, I think they were 84. Yeah. My band every year plays for sure, one gig at Decaturs, Porch Fest, and every year we try to do a theme, and this year we're doing 80s sort of new wave. And I jokingly suggested Pacman Fever, the Rap and Rodney. Are you guys going to do it? No, songs are terrible. Do you have a synth player playing with you? I bought Emily a keyboard and she's learning. Awesome. She's going to be like, Wait, hold on. I hope not. That's cool, man. Now she's practicing. I've heard her do that. And she played piano when she was a kid, so it's not the biggest stretch. I've heard that one blondie song that she just brought the house down. Yeah. One way or another. Yeah, we might bring that back because that's 80s. Yeah. Or was that 70s? It was so close on the cusp. I seriously doubt anybody is going to throw a beer. Can't answer for it anyway. Porch Fest, everyone. I'll publicize it in October. Nice. So Reagan's hands are tied in every way possible because he can't negotiate with Terrace. The only option is to send in a covert Delta Force team, which Carter tried that and it didn't work. It didn't always work. You could lose your own men. And I think that's what happened in Carter's case, right? Yeah, for sure. So what he can do, though, without anyone knowing is totally negotiate with terrorists. Yeah. Just as long as the American public doesn't know. Sure, yeah. And that's what happened. And he followed that Reagan playbook where it's like, okay, I said this. Well, if I just change this one little part, it makes it all fine. That's right. Again, as long as the American public doesn't know. So while Reagan said America will never negotiate with hostages, they didn't say Israel will never negotiate with our bad terrorists for hostages. Right. So actually, Israel had a longstanding policy of negotiating with terrorists. They would kidnap people from the other side, and then they'd be like, all right, I'll give you five guys I've only got two. Let me kidnap a few people. Okay. Now I have five. There would be negotiations for hostage exchanges all the time yes. Between Israel and Palestine. Right. They just knew what they were doing. So they said, okay, well, if Israel goes to Iran and says, hey, you know this American over there, why don't you get them released? We can help you out with some stuff. What do you think about this? Yeah. So earlier when I mentioned the fact that Iran as whole cloth did not change overnight as a country, the government did, but there were still some plenty of people there that were a little more moderate in their views. And the Reagan administration had a channel to them. Right. So he was talking to them, these more moderate factions and making a little headway, and they were like, by the way, we'll totally give you these hostages if you give us arms. Yeah. Because Iran was fighting the Iran Iraq war. At least half of it. Yeah. And this is just where stuff is just totally crazy because we were funding both sides. At the very least, we were advising both sides. Well, I mean, we directly gave money. No, you're right. We sold them weapons and we provided training and intelligence. Right. And this wasn't secret. This was like a real deal thing. We were publicly supporting Iraq, but then we were secretly arming Iran. Yes. I think what they never proved beyond a doubt was that we went to Saddam Hussein and said, hey, why don't you go in there and overthrow Iran? Oh, really? Yeah. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence that that was the case, but never like the smoking gun that we actually encouraged Saddam Hussein to do, so got you. But when you look at how all this played out over the years, it's just maddening. Yeah. It's an S show. Yeah. So Iraq and Iran are fighting. We're supplying both, playing both sides of the coin. Right. And we offered arms to Iran. And who are you going to call? Israel. Not Ghostbusters. Oh, gorbanafar. Well, you're going to call Ollie north. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. I would have gotten there eventually. Yeah. Okay, so remember, all the north is total novice when it comes to covert operations. Not anymore. He's been running the Nicaragua for years now, just doing a bang up job of it. So they're like, well, sure, we'll have him do this incredibly illegal, super sensitive arm sale to Iran, too. Why don't you come on over here, Ollie? And Ollie said, okay, that's fine, but I need to go get the lay of the land. And he actually traveled to Iran with a fake passport under an assumed name, william Peak. Good. With an E. And when he went, it was dangerous enough that William Casey, supposedly Oliver North later testified, gave him cyanide pills so that he could take his own life rather than be tortured by the Iranians if this were, in fact, like, some sort of setup again, right out of a movie. Yeah, but Oliver North went to Iran with cyanide pills and a fake passport. Really good. Yeah. So everything went great, though. It did. He didn't need the cyanide pills after all. He did not. He dealt with, like you mentioned earlier, this Iranian businessman named Gorbanafar, and this guy was ten shades of shade. So much so that the CAA wouldn't even deal with them. No, they issued a burn notice on him in 1983. I don't even know what that is. That means just a TV show. He's dead to us. It's basically stay away. Okay? It's putting him on blast to all the other intelligence agencies in the world. Got you. Persona non gratitude. Yeah, he won't even deal with this guy. And so Oli North is like, yeah, I'll deal with this guy. All right, so with his help, Oliver North set up a deal where it's so simple to look at. Like Israel, you give them your missiles, and then we'll just replace those missiles for you with our missiles. So we're not giving the missiles. You are. And because no American explicitly said to Iran, hey, we're doing this so that you guys will get these hostages released, it wasn't an arms for hostages deal. And so Reagan's vow to never negotiate with terrorists remained in danger. That's right. 508 Tow tow missiles. What does that stand for? Two Blaunched. Optically tracked wireless guided missile which is like the tube launched. There's a tube? And it can be mounted on the ground? Mounted on a jeep. It's super portable, but they'll blow some stuff up. I think I've seen this. You have? So 508 of these made it from Israel to Iran, and then, in very short order, a couple of days later, one of the hostages, benjamin we are minister, who was held by Lebanese terrorists for 16 months, was released. So it worked. It did work. It was a big deal around the White House, too, but they said, let's try it again. But this time, it seems a little messy to get Israel involved. Let's just do this ourselves. Ollie, you think you can handle this? He said, sure. Me and Garbana for have this. So rather than Israel giving arms to Iran, richard Seacord got brought in. Just like with Nicaragua. And again, this isn't, like, years after Nicaragua, right? Nicaragua is at full bore, in full swing. It's still going in. Ollie north is running both operations simultaneously. And so the new set up was the Department of Defense would sell the CIA missiles for $3,700 a pop. The CIA would sell them to Richard Seacorn at cost, and then Seacord would sell them to Gorbanafar for ten grand apiece. And then Gorbanafar would go sell him to Iran for whatever he charged. Iran. Oh, can you imagine? I can't. I guarantee it was more than the ten grand. And this happened multiple times. Over the course of a little over a year, america secretly transferred 2000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in eight shipments yeah. For the release of hostages. Yeah. Ultimately, there are three hostages that got released out of seven that had been taken hostage total. Yeah. And didn't he say ultimately there were three more hostages taken? So they netted out at zero. At zero. Yeah. But that was the whole Iran operation. Yeah, but here's the deal. This price markup means that that shell company and those Swiss bank accounts were making a lot of money, and so much so that I think one of them had $3 million, made an interest alone. So at some point, someone's like, hey, this is a money making operation. Now, why don't we tie a little bow on all this and use some of that money to fund the contrast? Because you guys are doing both of these things and you need money. Congress won't give it to you. Forget the fundraising omelets. Right. We'll just use the money from these illegal arm sales to fund the contracts. Yup. And that's exactly what happened. So to put it in plain terms, america illegally and secretly sold missiles to Iran, used the proceeds from those missile sales to secretly and illegally fund the Contras to help them overthrow their government down in Nicaragua. That's what the Reagan administration did. That's right. That's why it's called Iran Contra. That's where they came together. There was a diversion of funds. Yeah. And I think it was by 1986, congress finally got back on board because of this drum beat from Reagan over the years of how much we need to really do this officially. And keep in mind, congress still didn't know any of this is going on. Right. Secretly. Yeah. And then Congress said, all right, we'll give you $100 million to aid this cause. Diggity dog. You would think that was the end of all the covert stuff. It wasn't, though. No, it still continued on, but now it was legitimized and had even better funding. But that was not the end of the whole thing. Like, everybody didn't just get to walk away and say, that was close, because the whole thing started to come apart, actually. And I say that we take an ad break and come back and talk about it. Great. After this. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office then? You could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services. You need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, Chuck. So, 1986, Congress is back on board. I think it's worth pointing out that that's exactly four years after the Democrats took control of the House in 1982. So I wonder if the Republicans took control back in 86, and that's why the funding got turned back onto the contrast. We could solve this. I like to speculate instead. Who knows if this ever would have even been found out had it not been for the sharpshooting of a young sand, an Eastern soldier named Jose Fernando Canales Alman in October 5, 1986. It was a cargo plane, a C 123 called the Provider, flying 70 Soviet collision Coughs, 100,000 rounds of ammo, rocket grenades and other supplies. And this is one of those things where you said they would fly things over and kick them out the back of the plane. Sure. This is one of those runs. Yeah. The problem with this particular run, though, is that they did this at 2500ft in broad daylight. They got a little lazy, or maybe cocky. I don't even know if it's that. I think it was more like, this is just work. It was an everyday job. By this time. They've been doing it for years, and the operation was just humming along so nicely that it was almost on autopilot. Yeah. So, yeah, they did this one supply drop on October 586 in broad daylight, and there were four crew aboard. William J. Cooper Wallace, Buzz Sawyer, Freddy Vilchis, and a guy named Eugene Hassenfuss. And again, this sliding doors thing. Hassenfuss is the only guy who had a parachute. He borrowed it from his brother, a skydiver, because he thought it might be smart to take a parachute. Right. No one else had parachutes. Had he not had a parachute, this may have turned out differently. It may have. For sure. He was the only one that survived this plane crash because he was the only one who borrowed the parachute from his brother. And he jumped out, landed, made it safely into the jungle. And I think he actually survived and evaded the Sandinistas for maybe a day or something like that before he was captured. And when he was captured, they let him out of the jungle with a rope around his neck, just about as big of a prisoner, as you can imagine, super publicized. There are billboards of him being led around by San Anistas, and they started asking him questions, and he was like, what do you want to know? Yeah, he sang like a canary. He really did. He said, this is my 10th supply mission. I presume that the CIA is running this. I don't know. And he would know this would be something that he could legitimately guess, at least, because he had actually worked on CIA air drops over Vietnam or Cambodia for Air America back in the Vietnam War. Yeah, but he seems like a canary because he's not very high up on the totem pole. His job was to get up there and shove this stuff out of the back of the plane for three grand a month. Right. He wasn't even a CIA operator. He's just a former Marine who had a background working with Air America years before. But by this time, by the time he joins on doing this for the Contras, he was working as a construction worker part time in Wisconsin back home. So this is, like, pretty good money. I think he was getting seven grand in today's dollars a month for basically kicking AK 47 creates out the back of a plane over Nicaragua. Yeah. So he's not the kind of guy that's going to take the fall for anyone. So he's singing like a canary. Even if he had kept his mouth shut, it wouldn't have mattered, it sounds like, right? Yeah. Because all the other guys, including Hassan Fuss, had their wallets on the plane. They had all their employee ID cards. And in fact, I don't even think we mentioned in episode one, the company that was set up to do these drops was set up called Southern Air Transport out of, I guess, Miami. So they all had their Southern air transport ID cards, which was the CIA front. Like, everybody knew Southern Air Transport was the CIA front, so they might as well have had, like, CIA junior badges or something. Right. Or like Michael Keaton and out of sight when he has the big FBI T shirt. I haven't seen that one. Oh, you haven't seen out of sight. Now, is that the one where George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez is he a bad guy in it? No, he's a good guy. He plays Ray Nicolette, who played same character in Jackie Brown FBI guy. Okay. But it's funny because he walks in with an FBI T shirt on and Dennis Farina as Jennifer Lopez's dad, and he's a former cop, and he goes, hey, Ray, let me ask you. You got one that says Undercover Dennis Farina, man class at me you got to see outside. That's classic. All right, I'll check it out. Like one of the better I mean, I know exactly the move you're talking about. Avoided it like the plague. It's so good. Okay. You would love it. All right. So southern Air Transport CAA front. There's also a log book that connected this flight and all the other flights. And then Hasanfuss in his wallet had a business card to Robert W. Owen this is a big one who was working with Oliver North in Washington. Right. So that provided a direct line between Oliver North and some guys who were kicking Kalashnikovs out of the back of a plane over Nicaragua. So that was a really big deal. That when this guy got captured and told the Sandinistas as much as he knew, because the Sandinistas were like, attention, world. Listen to what we just found out. The CIA has totally been funding these Contra rebels who are trying to overthrow the sovereign government, and we think you guys should know about it. Yeah. And it wasn't like you could totally discount that, even though it was from the sand in Eastern. Like, Congress and the American media were like, what? I'm sure Congress was like, wait a minute. Right. This reeks of something that has been happening that we tried to shut down. Yes, because, remember, even if the CIA was briefing Congress, it was either Bill Casey or Dewey Claire, and they were doing a really obtuse job of this, keeping Congress at arms. Link. So anytime something like this came out, almost none of Congress knew the full extent of this, and it was always in flagrant violation of whatever Congress wanted or whatever Congress had agreed to. Yeah. And this was sort of the straw that broke it all open or that broke the camel's back. Broke the camel's back wide open. That's correct. Poor camel. Things have been unraveling for a bit. There was a party in 1985 in Virginia Throne, thrown by Soldier of Fortune magazine. Can you imagine? Now, what's that party like? I don't want to know. I can't imagine. I used to read Soldier of Fortune when I was in my ninja training as, like, a ten year old boy, and even then, I was like, this magazine makes my stomach hurt, and it's in. Can you imagine the amount of blow being secretly done in the bathroom at that party? Sure. But also, they're making snuff movies in the living room, and there's no telling what was going on. As a Soldier of Fortune, we can tell you, at the very least, there is a lot of boasting going on openly about this Contra operation. And again, this is a time when people don't know about this stuff. Yeah. But you know how what happens is you get enough people and enough years, and people start talking, people start bragging, and all of a sudden, you have a couple of gin and tonics at a Soldier of Fortune party. Sure. And you're like, hey, guess what? And that's what happened. Somebody goes, what? Yeah. And you go, Here it comes. Yeah. And they dropped the bomb. That what's been going on. A concerned citizen here is this. I guess he must have been mistakenly invited to soldiers. I don't know how that guy got invited. They just happened to talk to the wrong guy or whatever, but probably that he was like, I am really fearful of my life for saying something about this, but I feel like somebody should know. So he went to a lawyer, a human rights lawyer named David Sheen, and he said, you go tell everybody you put your life on the line. And he did. He submitted an affidavit to federal court, started doing interviews, talking to journalists, drumming up support. White House was like, we don't know what you're talking about. You're a crazy man. Like, this is all 100% made up. And finally, it took a Lebanese newspaper, al Shira, that reported on this deal, this arms for hostage deal, like, in a legitimate newspaper, right? So now both stories have been blown open. You've got Eugene hasn't captured, and the contract operation is blown open. And now Al Shira is reporting on the Iran arms for hostage deal. And really crazy enough, these two separate arms of this one scandal came out within a month of each other, which is bizarre, but that's what happened. And now it was like, it's on the table. America's media knows about it. Congress knows about it. Heads are about to roll. All right, we'll take our final break, and we'll come back and talk about the aftermath of Iran contra. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page, and enter code stuff. All right, chuck, you promised. After math. Let's hear it. All right. Hello. Everything is exposed. Oliver north was no longer in business doing his thing. No. He shut down shop real quick. He did, but not before. Very famously, he and his very 80s haired secretary, fan hall. I forgot. I was like Faun hall. I looked her up, and as soon as I saw her, I was like, right, yeah, fawn hall. Sure. You can forget that hair. She could barely walk through the door. No, it was ginormous for sure. It was so great. I would be fearful around a shredder if I were her, but she was not fearful at all. She and Oliver North spent a day they call it a shredding party. I mean, we will never know the full truth behind this because of all the evidence that they shredded. Yeah. As far as anyone knows, oliver north decided on his own to shred every document he had on it. That's right. And yeah, that's it. Now it's the official narrative that has been written into the history book, which you can just guarantee is not anywhere near the full story. Right. So it all comes out. The Reagan administration start looking around, and they're like, well, who's going to be the patsy for this one? And Oliver North could not escape it, but they were like, he's small potatoes. He'll go down well. I think he was even willing to take the fall. Like, he knew he was going to be the fall guy and was like, okay, that's part of the job. Right. But they knew that the American public, and certainly Congress wasn't going to be satisfied with just Oliver North. Right. So who did they land on? So the official line became this Poindexter, and I guess McFarland would have started it, became fully aware of just how badly Reagan wanted to help the Contras and said, I'm going to do something about this, and tapped all the north and said, we need to help the Contras out. Go help them out, figure it out. And north went off and basically went rogue on his own and set up this whole operation, created this entire network with Seacord, decided to do the Iranian arms deal, all this stuff, basically on his own. Right. Like Reagan and Bush knew nothing about it. Nothing about it. And that the buck stopped at Point Dexter. Ultimately, it didn't go any further. William Casey being CIA, he was basically out of the loop. That was the official story they came out with that's right. And America went, you're kidding, right? This is a joke. Yeah. I mean, I remember these hearings even as a little kid, like, watching these and then watching the news coverage of it. And as we mentioned, Oliver North strolling in there with his dress uniform, and by all accounts, being a pretty stand up guy, like, he didn't rat anyone out. He didn't. But he also there's no way the president didn't know about this. He said, I don't have any direct evidence that the president did know about it, but it's my understanding that the President was fully aware of what was going on. Yeah. What was the deal with this missile supply shipment, though. That's the one thing I didn't quite get. So north got rid of all the documents that he could. Right. Right. Well, north didn't have any control over CIA documents. And at that first missile resupply, where they were resupplying Israel. Yeah. He had a CIA he basically said, hey, CIA, do you know anybody I can use to ship these things? I've got an emergency here. I need to get these to Israel fast. And the CIA being the CIA is still a bureaucracy. They had to document this event. So there was a document out there now right. And not shredded. Right. That he couldn't get his hands on, that he couldn't shred. And so this led to Reagan taking responsibility or saying, okay, I was aware of this Iran missile deal by backdating in order to William Casey saying, I order you not to tell Congress about this, even though you're supposed to. So Reagan basically said on paper, I know about this Iran. This one missile transferred to Iran. Had no idea about the contrast. Right. Okay. And at first, they started out denying everything. Yeah. After this Al Shira story that we talked about, he went on television, Reagan did, and denied everything. He said, all this is just total BS. Yeah, exactly. Now let's stop talking about it, everybody. Ten days after that, Reagan had another press conference where he talked about the Iran operation. And he acknowledged it, but said, what we're really doing here is just trying to sort of send a signal to Iran. That where we want friendlier relations. Right. And it was not arms for hostage. Exactly. So that was ten days after the first denial, and then four months after that, because the reporting would not stop. He basically said, okay, yeah, whatever it started out as, I admit that it devolved into an arms for hostage deal. That's right. Which even that admission, which is the closest he ever came to admitting responsibility for it, even. That's just total BS and fantasy. It was, from the outset in arms for hostages deal. Right. The whole thing was set up to get hostages released, and that was it. So there was no other way to put it, but he denied that to his dying day. As far as fallout, poindexter resigned. Oliver north was fired. Casey died in a hospital not too long after this whole thing was exposed. I mean, like, weeks. Yeah. So the press was all over the president. He appointed the Tower Commission to look into this. The president appointed a commission to investigate the president's own administration's wrongdoing. That's right. And it was determined that Reagan's disengagement from the management of his White House, created conditions such that it was possible that he did not know about this, which that is the absolute best official finding he could have hoped for, because it basically says Reagan didn't know. He had a rogue guy working for him, a true believer, a patriot. But Reagan didn't know about this. And, yeah, he should have had a closer watch on his executive branch, but he didn't. What are you going to do? Let's get Mr. T in here for a photo op with Nancy. There was a criminal investigation, and what they were really honing in on was the $18 million in profits that were made and what happened to that money, where it went. 14 people were charged. Oliver north was tried and found guilty on three counts. One of the counts was for getting a $16,000 security system installed in his home, courtesy of C Cord. With that money, there was a rumor that there was a bounty on his head from terrorists. Right. And Seward hooked him up. Right. Now, that was a big problem for north, because North's whole bag was I was following orders that I assumed were coming from the President, ultimately, and I was doing it out of my patriotic duty and a sense of, as a true believer, that we need to get rid of Communism. And the American public loved it. They were like, Great. Make this man a saint. Right. Congress started to love it, too, and he got off. But that was a real problem because it's saying, well, you took this gift from funds from this illicit arm sale. Right. But it was a gift of a security system to help protect his family. So it's not like it was a gift of \u00a310 of blow. Right. And Nicaraguan sex worker from the sand and Eastern government. Exactly. Seacord was convicted of one count of lying to Congress and the investigators. He basically denied that north received any funds from any of this. So it's still kind of hinged on that security system, I guess. Right. So everybody went to jail forever after that point, right? No, that's not true at all. Hakim got two years probation, a $5,000 fine. Sea Core got two years probation. Is that what he got? Two years probation? So the two guys who are actually running the company that ran this whole thing each got two years probation. North's conviction was overturned on a technicality. And President Bush, the senior Bush on Christmas Eve. This is Christmas Eve. As he was leaving office. Right? Yes. He issued six pardons. Basically let everyone off the hook, including Casper Weinberger, who hadn't even gone to trial yet. No. And neither had Dwayne Claridge. Dewey clergy was going to stay on trial, too. Both of them received preemptive pardons. And a lot of people are like, that was about the shadiest set of pardons anyone has ever issued, because there's a lot of people out there who say, bush really walked away from this scot free, but there is no way he wasn't even more involved in this than Reagan was. Yeah. I mean, George Bush, withheld his subpoenaed diary entries that basically indicated that he had full knowledge of this the entire time, eventually, in 1992, independent counsel Lawrence Walsh asked for these again, and Bush, like, said, I asked you for these diary entries. And Bush was like you did. I didn't fully understand. It was inadvertent. Like, you asked me for a lot of stuff I didn't know. You asked me for the diary in trees. Right. And Walsh was really upset, and he said, the Iran Contra cover up has now been completed, and George Bush is a president who has such a contempt for honesty and arrogant disregard for the rule of law. Yeah. And I mean, the forestalling that the Reagan White House and then later on, the Bush White House did in allowing these investigations to go forward and trying to keep Congress at arm's length. After everything came out, it worked because there were articles of impeachment introduced in the House against Ronald Reagan, and they managed to stave them off to where it was like, well, he's leaving office anyway. Forget about it. This investigation took years and years and years. And then finally, when Bush pardoned everybody, that was it. There was nothing else to do. Everybody who was involved was off scot free. And then the fact that Oliver North had shredded all those documents, they were all lost to history. Like the actual truth is lost to history. Yeah. Reagan, his reputation took a hit, temporary hit. For a while there. He went from 63% in the span of a couple of months to 43% to 47%, depending on which poll you looked at, on his approval rating. And he would get it back, though, despite in the 1990 deposition, the very, very famous deposition where Ronald Reagan said, I don't remember, or I don't recall 88 times. That was a very big deal. It was all over the news. Yeah. It was almost as famous or just as famous as Bill Clinton's. Very famous. Depends on what your definition of is is. Right. Exactly. But Reagan rebounded. He did, man, to the most popular presidency since FDR. Right. Yeah. Upon his exit, his approval rating had bounced all the way back up to the early 60s. Mr. T famously carried him out of the White House on his shoulders on his last day in office. Oh, man. So that's the wrong Contra, man, what a story. Heck of a story. Where's this movie? I don't know. Hopefully we'll get some rights to it after this episode. I want to play fond. Hall. Awesome. That's great. You get Jerry to play fawn hall? That'd be great, Jerry. Well, in the meantime, while we find a suitable wig for Jerry, you can find out more about Iran Contra by going and reading contemporary articles on it. I'm telling you, it's really awesome. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this follow up on the moon landing thing. Hey, guys. In my opinion, the Apollo missions and moon landings are the most significant events in the history of life on Earth. On the question why the command module and lunar lander were launched separated, I think the reason was to allow the command module to be ejected in case of an emergency. The very top of the Apollo stack was the launch escape system. Like an ejector seat on steroids, I imagine they had to keep things as light and nimble as possible for the Les to be effective. I don't think you mentioned something that's really significant. The Apollo Eight mission was the very first time humans went to the moon. On top of being the first time we broke free of Earth's gravity like Eleven, the stakes were incredibly high. They had to first insert the correct trajectory to make it to the Moon, then do a burn to enter the orbit around the Moon, then perform another burn to break free of the Moon's gravity and head back toward Earth. If any piece was not in place, those astronauts would have spent the rest of their lives either orbiting the sun or orbiting the Moon. Apollo Eight also gave us the Earthrise photo. Oh, yeah. I've been hearing a lot about Apollo Eight lately, too. So this person is hats off to you. Jim lovell was born both Apollo Eight and Apollo 13. He traveled to the moon twice, but never had the opportunity to land. That is so sad. Signed a space geek. Noah alloy. Nice work, Noah Alloy. Alloy loy. Great name, too. Thanks a lot for getting in touch with us. We love Space Geeks. We love to put you guys in headlocks and rub your heads with our knuckles until you go stop. It's called a noggy right here on Earth. That's right. If you want a nugget from me and Chuck, send us a Space Geeky. Or any kind of geeky thing. We love that kind of stuff. You can go on to Stuff You Should Know.com and follow our social links. And you can send us a good old fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo, elevate at Tech Tow, Pep supplied plus and Select Neighborhood pet stores."
https://podcasts.howstuf…ture-storage.mp3	How Carbon Capture and Storage Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-carbon-capture-and-storage-works	Carbon capture and storage is a way to filter excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss current methods of carbon capture and storage -- and how feasible they are -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Carbon capture and storage is a way to filter excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss current methods of carbon capture and storage -- and how feasible they are -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.	Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:54:03 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=16, tm_min=54, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=162, tm_isdst=0)	28835092	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"This July. Don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney Nature Films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is the lovely Chuck Bryant staring at our new jute rug hanging from our new wall. What's up, Chuck? We must be like going places. We have a jute rug hanging from the wall. I feel silly because they called it Berber. That's okay. I'm over here feeling stupid. They're both from the same area. Are they of the world? They better be starting. I know. The cool thing is when we're corrected, though, we are literally corrected. I'm sorry. We're corrected by literal experts. Yes. Have you noticed? Yeah, true. Many times. It would be like a jute rug manufacturer or somebody with a PhD in jute rug studies who will email us about that? Or Henry Jute himself. Right. The father of jute Ruggery. Yeah. So other than the whole Berber jute thing, how are you feeling? I'm good. A little tired, but I'm fine. Are you tired? Yeah. Chuck, you should look into energy drinks. I just drank one and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fan. I don't want to taste. No. Good enough. Do you want to move on? Sure, let's do that. What's funny is that came out is like 7 seconds and it really lasted like four minutes. Yeah. People only knew big to the wonder of yeti. Yeah. So Chuck, you may have noticed, and I know you did, because that person we used to relay information to us between the two of us because we can't stand one another. Really. Right. Told me that you told her that you already knew this. You following me so far? No, I don't think anyone else is either. Okay, we already did this one. Yeah. We should go ahead and say that this is about carbon capture and storage and it seemed oddly familiar when I was researching and that's because we did in fact do this last July. But it was one of our little baby podcasts when we first started and it was like five to seven minutes long, something like that. And it just really didn't do this topic justice. And I got to tell you, hot Dog, carbon capture and storage is cool enough and important enough to do twice. Yeah. And don't worry, folks, we're not going to start rehashing things. We have plenty of topics we are yet to cover, but we just want to do this because we're on a little green sweet kick. Exactly. Yeah. And plus the first one just didn't quite do it. Usually when we do a podcast, it stays done, right? Yeah, agreed. This one didn't quite stay done. It was still squirming. We hadn't put the nail into the back of the head yet. We're going to do right here. Yeah. So, Chuck, this one is laden with stats. As I was reading this article, I thought, Chuck is going to go crazy for this one. Give me the first step, buddy. Let's talk about CO2 and the greenhouse effect. Right, let's do. Okay, so we do have this layer of carbon dioxide that allows sunlight to pass through and some to stay. It keeps bouncing back and forth, which we need to or else trees wouldn't grow, children wouldn't skip and play supported for photosynthesis. Right. So we do need it. What would happen if we didn't have this greenhouse layer surrounding the Earth like a warm blanket? Josh, if we had no greenhouse effect, buddy our planet would be about -22 deg which is -30 degrees celsius for our friends who don't use the Imperial system. Yes. So it would be a frozen planet, basically. Yeah. We wouldn't be around. I'll tell you that. So we want the greenhouse effect. We want this stuff to come through and to warm our Earth. The problem is when enough of it doesn't get bounced back into outer space, then it gets a little too warm, because the other direction, we don't have a stat on that, but as you can tell, summers are getting a little hotter and I'm sweating a lot more. We do have a stat on that as far as it getting hotter. Okay, well, emissions I'm sorry, emissions increasing. I kind of bent that one a little bit. Yeah. But from 1970 to 2004, the greenhouse gas emissions have increased 70% over that 34 year period. Right. And there's actually plenty of different greenhouse gasses. You've got like nitrous oxide, methane, even water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas and stuff there. So all this stuff kind of combining traps in the sun's, heat. But worst among them as far as what we're doing to contribute, which is called anthropogenic contribution is carbon dioxide, because between that same period, would you say 1970 to 2004, our carbon dioxide emissions grew 80%. Yeah. That's significant. Yes. Close to doubling. That's a lot. Right. And you remember the chloro hydrofluorocarbons, I think is what they were called. Yes, the CFCs. Yeah. Chlorofloor carbon. They were in aerosol sprays, and everybody was like, oh, God, everything's going to end, and we just got rid of aerosols. Sure. Kind of. We need to figure out a way to do that with carbon dioxide emissions, too. Well, we kind of are, yeah. And what is it? Well, that's what we're talking about, again, which is carbon capture and more importantly, storage, because capturing carbon, I mean, none of it is easy, but what you do with it is what's important. Sure. Yeah. We capture it, put it in the backyard. Sure. Right. You can put it very deep in the backyard. You could get to that. Nice. For shadowing. So let's talk about trapping carbon dioxide first, the capture part of carbon capture and storage, which, if you want to look green, savvy in front of your friends, just toss out CCS. Sure. And they will be. Wowed. Yeah. We've actually been doing this for a while, Josh, you and I. A year at least. Yeah. No, capturing carbon. Oh, yeah. We've been doing that for a while because the oil and gas industries do that. They've been doing that for decades to enhance oil and gas recovery. Right. Because when you tap in an oil reserve deposit in the Earth, there's a ton of gases holding it down. It's pressurized, actually. Right. So the stuff, it comes out really easily, but as the gas that are holding this, they're pressurizing this underground cavern escape into the atmosphere, it becomes harder and harder to get the oil out. So they figured out that if you pump CO2 into these half depleted deposits, it repressurizes it, and it makes the oil easier to get out. Right. So out of that becomes a more environmentally friendly use, which is capturing carbon for Mother Earth. Right. And even more so since we're already or since the oil companies are already using pressurized CO2 for enhanced oil recovery, there's already a network, a system of pipelines and stuff in our infrastructure. Thank you. Wow. I love that word, infrastructure. I do, too. It's very comforting. It is. It sounds like somebody's in charge. It does. So I'm getting ahead of myself. That's part of the storage. Right. Let's keep talking about capture, Josh. There are three main steps to CCS, and that is the trapping of the carbon, the separating of the CO2 from other gases, and then transporting it to a place where you can store it away from the atmosphere. Right. And actually, strangely enough, there's three methods that we've come up with for doing this. Rule of threes. Right. So you've got you love that, don't you? I do. You've got post combustion, pre combustion, and oxy fuel combustion. Break it down, brother. Okay, well, I'll break down post combustion. Okay. It's exactly what it sounds like. Say you've got a coal fired power plant. Coal is super dirty. Even clean coal is very dirty. If you can figure out a way to trap that CO2 that's escaping from the flu, then all of a sudden you've just captured carbon. Right. And one way to do that is to introduce some sort of like gel or compound. I know Georgia Tech is working on one called hyper branched Amino Silica. Wow, look at you. Thanks. You weren't even reading it. No, it wasn't very impressive. It's not even in this article, pal. My brain is mush. There's no way I could do that. Actually, I guess it's because it's so hyper branched, it traps carbon dioxide molecules and actually locks into them. So it's silica. It's kind of sandy. So it works as a filter. It does. So some flu gases get out, but the carbon dioxide doesn't. And the cool thing is it just sits there. It just traps it until it's heated again. Right. And if you heat it in under the right circumstances, you can capture just the CO2 and compress it and get rid of it. That's one example of post combustion. The key to post combustion is you're already burning the fossil fuels and you're capturing as much CO2 as you can before it escapes into the atmosphere out of smokestack. Right. One thing I noticed in that where you said once you heat it again, it leaves behind the concentrated CO2, but it releases water vapor. I wonder if that water vapor is part of the problem as well, though. It seems like it. Water vapor is. Again, it's a greenhouse gas, but it's also a flu gas, which is a mixture of a whole bunch of stuff that comes out of burning fossil fuels. But again, we're after the CO2, but it seems like getting the CO2 separated from the water vapor is a problem as well. Got you. Yeah. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. 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And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code S YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace.com sysksk squarespace. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. So you want to do precombustion? Yeah, sure, why not? This is when carbon is carbon is trapped. I'm sorry? Carbon dioxide, I guess I should say, is trapped before the fossil fuel is burned, before it's diluted with other flu gases, is when you capture it. So pre combustion before it's burned. Right. And apparently, Chuck, what you do is you actually heat whatever fossil fuel you're using in the presence of pure oxygen, and you get this other brand, this completely different thing, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Right? Right. And then you run it through a catalytic converter, and it produces more hydrogen, which is good, because you can actually reuse that for energy to maybe even power this whole process. Right. And then you get carbon dioxide as well. Right. And then you put them in a flask with a chemical called amine. And the amine actually holds the CO2 down. Right. Sits on top of it. Right. And then eventually you can extract the amine and the hydrogen, reuse the amine and trap the CO2. Sounds like kind of a lot. It does. I wonder if we're going to get any cool sound effects, like our distillery. That would be very cool. That would be super cool. And if we did yeah. Didn't you just hear it? Yeah. Jerry is ignoring us right now. That might not happen. So it is a lot precombustion is a big process. Yeah. It's already in use, actually, for natural gas. They've already been using this. It is. The thing is, it's in use in a brand new power plant. The good thing about post combustion is you can run around the country and retrofit old power plants exactly. To capture carbon dioxide. Pre combustion, you pretty much have to build that in as you're building a new power plant. And it's also super expensive. Well, that's a lot of energy. What, precombustion? Yeah. No, I thought it was lower in cost. Is it? Well, the process is lower in cost, but I think it's more expensive because it's not a retrofit. Right. But also it's higher in the cost of energy that it uses to go through this process, from what I understand. I was talking about dollars, buddy. Hey, dude, you still got to pay for energy somehow. Pay now or pay later. Right. And then the last one is oxy fuel. Right. Oxy fuel combustion. Yes. The power plant burns fossil fuel and oxygen, and this results in a gas mixture comprised of steam and carbon dioxide. So the steam and CO2 are separated when you cool it and compress the gas stream. Right. So there you have it. And all three of these capture between 80 and 90% of the carbon dioxide that's escaping, I think oxyfields the most. Oxygen. It like 90%. Yeah. Topping out at 90%. Those are pretty much the three competing ways to capture carbon dioxide and use right now. And it seems like we're talking about power plants a lot. Those are definitely the focus of carbon capture right now. Right. They're huge emitters of carbon dioxide. There is, I think, a Southern Company plant in Juliet, Georgia, and it emits more carbon dioxide than the entire power infrastructure of Brazil. Really? Which seems a little lopsided because you just blogged about Brazil recently on a sugarcane biofuel post. Right. Today. And they're very energy independent, thanks to the cellulistic ethanol that they make from sugar cane. Right. So they've been doing a lot site in comparison. But still, one power plant shouldn't be putting out more CO2 than any country. Sure. You would think. Right. But instead less that country is tiny. Like maybe Vatican City. Yes. Is that a country? Yeah, dude. I walked around Vatican City one time by accident. Well, it was my friend Brett and I were kind of well, we were on the wrong side of where we needed to be. And we thought, well, we'll just skirt around this wall here and I think it'll be quicker. And I didn't realize that we were walking around the country. Did you come face to face with the Pope? And I'm just like, no, but it took forever. It was a much longer walk than I anticipated. And now that I realize it's a country, that kind of all make sense. Does it make sense? It does. Got you. Cool place, though, I've heard. Moving on. Yes. So now, Josh, what we have is captured carbon. We got a whole lot of carbon dioxide. What do we do with the chuck? Well, you need to transport it first before you can store it. How? Through a pipeline. Oh, yeah, I already talked about that. Right. That's a good thing, is the infrastructure is in place. And I think here's another stat. There's more than 1500 miles of CO2 pipelines already in place here. It sounds like a lot, but technically it's not. Consider the amount of oil pipelines and that kind of thing. That's true. And that actually I was talking about a lopsided figure with the Southern Company plant in Brazil. CO2 pipeline safety, as far as fatalities and accidents go, is really low compared to, like, natural gas and hazardous materials pipeline, I think to the tune of I've got stats. These are death stats. We're talking between 1986 and 2006, there have only been twelve CO2 pipeline leaks with no injuries and none. Yeah, none. Zip. And over the same period, more than 5000 accidents within 107 fatalities with liquid petroleum pipeline. So it sounds like CO2 pipelines are always safer, but it's a lot fewer. Yeah. And your friend Debbie Ranka thinks that these accidents will probably increase as the CO2 pipeline infrastructure increases in breadth. Right. And we should say Debbie wrote this. We didn't just chat about this. And Debbie threw out her opinion. Right. Debbie wrote this. Awesome. Her formal training is in pediatrics. Right. Debbie a freakgirl.com. Oh, is that her? Nice. Good girl. Oh, you're just plug happy, aren't you? Yeah. I think just for old times sake, you should plug our audio book. I mean spoken word. Alva. Yeah. I'm never going to get that right there in the front of my head. They'll never be the first thing I call that. So now we have it in a pipeline and we are transporting it where it needs to go. Which depends on where you pick it up and where it needs to be for where it needs to travel. I mean, it's pretty simple. Right. But also, we should probably say that you could transport CO2 three different ways, right? Yes. Liquid and solid. Right. And the most efficient is gas. Right? Yeah, of course. Solid CO2, actually is dry ice. Did you hear that? Yeah, I didn't. Yes, sadly. And it's not very cost effective to transport as a solid, obviously. And gas is easier because you can compress it with these compressors, kind of push it through the pipeline every so often. They have these compressors? Sure. And where are you shooting it to, then? Well, shoot. Shooting it to the storage area, Chuck. Yeah. Which depends on what storage you're going to use. What kind of storage you're going to use? Well, what kind do you want to use? I mean, there's only two underground and underwater. Right? Right. What kind do I want to use? What kind do you want to use? If you're king of the world and somebody says, let's do something about CCS, you say, I decree that we're going to store it underground. Underground. All right. Nice. The ocean thing worries me a little bit. They both worry me a little bit, actually. But yeah, let's start with underground. Okay. Let's do underground. Well, Josh, there are some estimates, if you want another stat. You're right. This is chuck full of stats. The planet can store up to 10 trillion tons of CO2 underground, which is 100 years of storage of all human anthropogenic carbon contribution. Which sounds good, but that's really not very long. 100 years. No, but consider this. I was actually, when I wrote the article, can We Bury Our CO2 Problem Under the Ocean, I think is what it was called. There's no telling what kind of technology we're going to have. We could conceivably take that, trap carbon dioxide and exert tons of force and make synthetic petroleum out of it. Yeah. So 100 years is a really long time with the kind of technological advances we've been undertaking in the last 100 years. Right. Yeah. I mean, think about 19 OT nine. And what it was like then. Yeah. I don't like to compared to now. That's a syphilis. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, that's underground. It's pressurized when it's that deep underground. And it behaves more like a liquid than a gas when it's that far underground because it, like, seeps into all the little cracks and porous rocks, which is a good thing. Right. And actually there's a specific rock that they found works really well for carbon storage, and that is basal, which is volcanic rock. Right? Yeah. And they just inject what is it? Do they inject gaseous? Gasified? CO2 gasify. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They injected directly into the rock and actually the rock transforms from basalt into limestone. Yeah. Pretty cool. It converts it into rock. So basically, it's like a hyper accelerated geological process that's going on. But when I read that, I thought, wow, that's great. What a great idea. We just need to run around injecting all the bay salt in the world with CO2, and we'll be set. They will just have a big limestone planet. And then again, I thought, we really don't know what we're tinkering with here. Right. What happens if we have too much limestone on the planet? We can't say. We don't know. True. I can't tell almost I hate to admit this, but I can't tell if this kind of tinkering may actually result in much more catastrophic consequences than just going the way we're going and trying to go. With biofuels, you never know. I don't. A lot of the end of the world movies where it shows, like the future, how mankind was wiped out, the little thing they'll use to turn the story was we were trying to do something great and discovered something we thought was great, but it turned out to be some irrevocable change that led to our demise. You're talking about? Soylent Green, of course. Well, yeah, just a lot of movies like that. But that's a great point, actually, Soil and Green is a great example. Yeah. We're doing something really good, and that might lead to our undoing. Water world greatest movie ever made. Definitely. Maybe. Really? Yeah. What does that have to do with this? It's highly post apocalyptic. Okay. Yeah. I'll have to see that one. Oh, you haven't seen it? I thought it was a cheesy romance. No, it starts out like that, and the twist at the end is mind boggling, right? Yeah. It's like the Road Warrior. So go ahead, Chuck. We're talking underground, or are we done with that part? No, well, we're almost done. What happens is they're studying all that right now, so your fears, hopefully, can be dismissed because they're looking to see what the result will be. Sure. And as far as it goes. I think the oldest underground CO2 storage site is actually under the sea floor in Norway, and it's only as old as 1996. Right. It hasn't had an accident or anything, but it's still only 13 years old. Yeah. It's a baby. Yeah. So, I mean, what happens in 50 years or 100 years? Exactly. And that's what they're keeping their eye on. They're worried about it, too. We definitely have to do something, but I don't know, I'm just a little hesitant. I agree. Well, you want to talk about the ocean? Yeah, let's talk about the ocean. I'm with you. I'm much more trepid about the ocean storage and that again, I wrote an article called Can We Bury Our CO2 Problem in the Ocean? And in that article, there's this guy who came up with the idea of having these pipelines pump liquefied, not gasified, but liquefied CO2 directly into enormous bags in the ocean. Oh, that's right. At the Abysmal plain. Yeah. Not abysmal plane. Abyssal. Abyssal plane. Yeah. But I imagine it's pretty abysmal down there. Yeah. So yeah, down on the abyssal plain. Right. And it's a pretty good idea. The problem is these huge, enormous bags can only store, I think, a day or ten worth of carbon dioxide captured. It would be a lot of bags. It would be a lot of bags, and they end up really quick. And if any one of them ruptured, we don't know what happened. But apparently, from a little more investigation, if we bury this stuff or dump it in the ocean deep enough, which is to the tune of about 11,500ft, 3500 meters nice. Then we can just let it go and hope for the best. That the incredibly low pressure and temperatures will basically globby it, compress it. It'll just be floating around. Terrible idea to me. Yes. With any kind of clout that I may have as a human being and a podcaster, I would like to hear now say that I think just dumping our captured carbon dioxide into the ocean is one of the worst ideas I've heard this year. Yeah, I know. Green piece didn't wild about the idea. No. And they said it's not even feasible until at least the year 2030. Hey, everybody. 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And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code s YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace.com. Fysk, what if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. I have two camps. It's good that we're exploring things like that. Sure, agreed. But it would be much better if we had electric cars powered by solar energy rather than just thinking of different ways to keep using fossil fuels over and over and over. Right. And that's a good point. I noticed green pieces. Kind of not too hip on this either. And I agree with them as well. I think that we basically have to stuff like this really distracts us from making hard decisions and hard choices. This is easy. Our lives don't change at all. It's just the power companies need to go retrofit their old flus with scrubbers of some sort. But for us to have electric cars or to have biofuels, we're going to have to pay more gallon, that kind of thing. So it does affect us. So people aren't paying that much attention to it. Right. That's not to say this is pioneer technology, though. True. I mean, it's very viable. And it's going on now still. Right. Hopefully work is going to be done on a lot of fronts and there will be multiple solutions. You know what my favorite idea was? Did you read it? That little sidebar about the company, Skymind? I did not. Okay. So Skymine has figured out a way where they just take sequestered carbon dioxide and they inject it with salt and water sodium hydroxide. Right. And it creates a chemical reaction that forms baking soda. Oh, really? That's it. Baking soda is good for everything. It is everything. I just think that's the greatest idea ever. The problem is we'd have massive baking soda stores and the baking soda market in which I'm heavily invested, would just bottom out. Sure. So, I mean, I like it as an idea, but financially it would suck for me. Right. No fridge would ever stink again, though. No. We could probably make fridges out of baking soda with that much later on. If they can make a suitcase out of cocaine, they can probably make a refrigerator out of baking soda. The operative word is they. They. But getting back to the water real quick, You're talking about leaking CO2 from the ocean. Remember our little exploding lake podcast? Yeah. That's a great example of what you do, baby, coming up through the water. So that could happen. Lake NIOS. And we should also probably mention carbon sink. Yes. Which is a phenomenon. The ocean actually does absorb CO2 from the atmosphere already. And what happens now is it's sinking to the bottom, ideally. But some oceans, like the Southern Ocean, have soaked up so much that it's not soaking it down to the bottom anymore. It's not sinking. It's kind of staying on top. Right. And that makes the water very acidic, which is not good for fishies. No. Which is again lake NIAS. We have no idea what happened to the marine life. Probably because they were exploded into trillions of pieces. Right. That's tough to count. So, yeah, a little troublesome. I mean, capturing carbon, this is a good thing. Storing it a little more dodgy. Yeah. I mean, we'll see what happens. We're going to screw up this planet one way or another. Sure. Might as well make it quick, like in just a huge, massive eruption of CO2 into the atmosphere that chokes us all to death. That sounds encouraging. Sure. Well, it'll get filtered out eventually, and some strange new life form will eventually take over and screw it up later on. Boy, you're a bright one today. Just a shining light. Yeah. So, Chuck, I'm glad we did this again, buddy. This one's done until next time. Until that carbon dioxide. Let's agree right now, we don't do carbon capture and storage again until that massive eruption takes place. All right? Okay. Deal. Part three. There you have it. Coming. Not too soon. So you know what time it's for, then? It's time for Chuck to plug our spoken word album. Go ahead. Oh, it's been so long. It was on Economics, if I remember correctly. Sure. The stuff you should know. Super Stuff got to the economy. Yes. You can buy it in your itunes store for what was the final price? $4? Something like that. 399. Yes. 395, something like that. Nice. Again. We got really good feedback on it, didn't we? We did, yeah. And that was a good experience. So, yeah, there's Chuck plugging our audiobook. This stuff you should know. Super stuff. Guide to the economy. I can't believe I remember the name of it. Just for all time sake. And that means that it is listener mail time. All right, Chuck, what do you have for us? Baby? Compass? Head catchers mitt? I have something I'm just going to call shocking listener mail. Okay. We have a lot of that lately. Yeah, we had a fan that wrote in that was struck by lightning. Yeah, but not just the fan, but her dog, too. Yeah, and she just kind of offhandedly mentioned it because she was talking about she read that spontaneous human combustion could be caused by lightning. And I was struck by lightning, by the way. And that was kind of it. And I wrote her back. It was like, no, you need to give me some details here because I would like to read this on the air. And I've never talked to anyone who I was struck by lightning. Yeah. So here we go. It turns out it was a side strike, which I never heard of. And she says, a side strike is a really wild phenomenon of lightning. It struck about a half a block from me. It was incredibly bright, and I was blinded for a few minutes afterward. I was knocked back about 6ft but still landed on my feet. And I couldn't here for a good half hour afterward. It was a booming and crackling, yet incredibly quiet, which I thought was interesting. I can't totally explain the sound except to compare it to the sound you get when you skydive, which doesn't help me skydiving. It's kind of like, have you done it? No way. Terrifying. Okay. I believe it the rush of wind booms around you but is definitely still. Would you agree with that? Yeah, similar, sort of. Oh, you were all hammered when you did it. What are you talking about? You can't remember. In my research about lightning strikes and strike victims, I found it incredible that a side strike can occur up to a mile away from something and you can still receive the electrical charge. I saw the lightning strike, but I didn't feel any pain, so I assumed I wasn't hit. Wasn't until later in the day when Burn Mark showed up. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I was totally routed on the spot where I was standing. Rooted. R-O-U-T-E-D. I'm not sure if it wasn't for my dog, I probably would have continued to stand there for a while. Yeah, I guess she was rooted. That makes sense. My dog was so frightened that she just took off running. I was holding onto the lead, didn't let go. So I sort of ran blindly after her to her house. I was an emotional blur for a decent while afterwards. Consequently, my dog's black fur is now very speckled with white hair and let me see. Actually coincide with another of our podcasts. Yeah, she'll be scared of that. And she had cynics across her fingers and toes, little burn blisters. And as far as long term damage, let me see. She has affected her balance and messes with her inner ear, but her frontal lobe is fine, and she's taking neurological exams and psychological testing. And she is fine and normal and considers herself very lucky. I consider her very lucky, too. That is dog. That is Hannah of Tennessee. And we're very glad that you and your little girl poochy are all okay, hannah, I would strongly recommend that you play the lotto as often as you can. Right. Yeah. So if you want to tell us any amazing true stories about lightning, shark attacks, bar fights, whatever, you can send us an email. That's what they call these days, right, Chuck? Electronic. You can send that to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus Probiotics Digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com."
42722838-53a3-11e8-bdec-17893754917a	How Project Blue Book Worked, Pt II	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-project-blue-book-worked-pt-ii	A rash of UFO sightings kicks off a new spike in America’s UFO fever and new headaches for the Air Force, which continues to reluctantly investigate. After becoming a laughingstock for its limp explanations, the Air Force looks for an exit from the UFO biz.	A rash of UFO sightings kicks off a new spike in America’s UFO fever and new headaches for the Air Force, which continues to reluctantly investigate. After becoming a laughingstock for its limp explanations, the Air Force looks for an exit from the UFO biz.	Thu, 17 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=290, tm_isdst=0)	42541226	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. This is part two of that's, right where we left off. Project Blue Book has officially been launched. They're doing a pretty good job of investigating stuff at this point. The salad days. Salad days of official investigation. You know, every time I hear salad days, I think of Monty Python sketch about it's just called Saladades. Great. You should look it up. I'll check it out. Is there blood? I need blood in my monty python. I need a lot of blood. Okay, I'm in, then. So let's talk about if you want to talk to salad days of UFO sightings. Speaking of salad days, this is one of the big years. There were 1500 UFO sightings in 1952, which in 1951, there were 169. So there's a lot. Yeah. Almost an increase of ten times that's right. Pretty quarter of magnitude. That's right. Yeah. So that's a pretty big uptick, I guess you could say. And it just so happens that the Air Force had positioned itself already to investigate this stuff with an open mind. Yeah. And there were some big ones. Like there was one where the Air Force scrambled jets to intercept what they called brilliant objects over Washington. They were on radar and seen visually in the sky. And Major General John Samford, he was the Director of intelligence, actually briefed the FBI on this one and said, it is not entirely impossible that the object sized may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars. Right. He shouldn't have added that last night. No. It really sucked the wind out of his credibility. Yeah. Because he had it going with a pretty good sentence there. And he could have just said, from somewhere else in the galaxy, he might as well said Uranus. He might as well said Martians. So Sanford also, I got the impression he went a little bit rogue here. He held a press conference, from what I understand, of his own accord. Oh, really? Yeah, to reassure the general public that the Air Force was on the case and that, yes, it's true, we can't really explain all this stuff, but we're looking into it. But he included the word however, which is very important. Right. Because what followed that was however, a certain percentage had been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. But there is no conceivable threat to the United States. Right. I don't know if I would have felt better hearing that pressure. I wouldn't have. I would have been like, I knew it, I knew it. The world is about to end. Yeah. Martians. Who knows who's going to replace Tom Cruise and Top Gun? There's this utter chaos and disorder. That's right. So there was an article much the same way that the Saturday Evening Post helped put it kind of a damper on the UFO craze at the behest of the Air Force back in. The UFO fever that spiked in 1952 was helped along by a Life magazine article. But not from the Air Force. Behest. No, it was like the opposite. It was called Heavy Visitors from Outer Space. Such a headline. Yeah. And they said they were offering scientific evidence that there's a real case for interplanetary saucers. And then I think about ten sightings that they kind of just went over in great detail. Right. It was a very long article. It really made the case that, yes, there was probably extraterrestrials visiting us. I thought that was a big issue of Life. Sure. I bet they sold a lot of those. Yeah. And it landed really well and really hard among the American public because they were in the grips of UFO fever again. So while this is going on, it had kind of died down a little bit, this craze. And in fact, I think the Air Force was kind of surprised when it flared up again because it had a little bit died down from 1947 to say, 19 40, 19 50. Then all of a sudden in 52 I don't know where it comes back. It's like a hemorrhoid you thought you'd taken care of. Exactly. That's an exact analogy. Perfect. So the CIA, they had been kind of keeping tabs on this stuff. I wondered about this when I was reading this. I was like, where are they this whole time? That's exactly what they wanted you to wonder and then conclude they're not doing anything. Exactly. Because that would be on the news. Right, right. So it turns out that the CIA was doing something even though it wasn't on the news. There was a guy named H Marshall Chadwell. Where did all these people come from? Yale or something. Great. Everyone involved in this UFO investigation came from Yale. They sound like blue bloods. So he was the assistant director of Scientific intelligence for the CIA, and he basically said, hey, we don't know what these are, by the way. I don't know if you've been paying attention to this stuff, but we should probably investigate it. That's right. So he got a panel impaled there's really no other way to put it. I like that word. In 1952. And it was led by a physicist, a very famous likable physicist named Howard Percy Robertson. He was likable physicist? Sure. He was very well liked in his class at Yale. He would be H. Percy Robertson at Yale, though he wouldn't go by Howie. He loosened the club tie by going by Howard Percy. Yeah. So he was from Caltech and he looked into this thing and they had this panel and they met for four days, 12 hours, a few hours a day. That seemed a little skimpy to me, but whatever. Same here. Only got 3 hours a day to do. They just basically went around the room taking turns reading that Life magazine article out loud. I guess so. And then discussing what they thought about it. So Repellent is still here. He's the head of Blue Book at the time. Still. Heineck was there. He's still around. He's never left. Right? No, he's part of this ongoing project that's an investigation and then other people that were involved that should have been in the room and were in the room and they were all presenting what they thought were the most interesting cases to what would be eventually known as the Robertson panel. Right. The Robertson panel said thank you very much, all of you will be in touch. Don't call us, we'll call you. And they issued a final report and it said that 90% of all UFO cases could be explained by meteorological, astronomical, celestial, known scientific stuff. Sure. Technology that's believable. Okay. The other 10% though, if we spend enough time and energy investigating it, we could also explain those. Yeah, that's where the BS comes in. Their conclusion was that given enough time and effort, 100% of all UFO sightings could be explained under known scientific or technological explanation. So are you saying that 10% of these are so confounding that you can't explain them? And they went yeah, but we could we just don't have enough time. Right, exactly. It's a really passive aggressive way of saying there is no such thing as alien. Yeah, pretty much. But that is ultimately what they said. Yeah, but here's the thing though. They did see that this was the fact that people are citing these UFOs and it was all over the papers. The craze was a bad thing and dangerous even because the Cold War is heating up like we are talking about. The Soviets have been known to secretly exploit the American psyche. That never happens anymore, of course. No, they don't do anything like that. Well, it's like you said, this was the Cold War. That's right. They were known to do this kind of thing and they thought this is a perfect opportunity for the Soviets to come in, fake reports about UFOs, get everyone distracted, worked up into a frenzy, and they start asking them questions about pulsating and throbbing robbing. And they said and not only that, but the Soviets. I read their papers or I have them read to me and they don't have any reportings of UFO sightings. So they're clearly, if there are any, they're keeping a lid on it. And this is our problem that they can exploit. We can't do the same back to them. Right. So all the Soviets had to do would be coming in and be like UFOs. UFOs. Basically like shouting fire in a crowded theater. Which is illegal, of course, as everyone knows that's. Right. This is a problem. This is like with the way the CIA thought. This is something that they need to do something about. So they decided to basically undo that Cold War hysteria and panic. Yes, but they were in a pickle, though, because they're supposed to be tamping down this thing that they feel like they shouldn't even be investigating to begin with. Right. They're denying that something even exists, but continuing to investigate it. Right. So what I was saying is, they decided to say, okay, we need to get rid of this Cold War hysteria. We need to kind of take the air out of this weird phenomenon in American culture. And they decided to do that by exploiting America with a public relations campaign. That's right. Very, as you say, Bernasian. And they said, hey, call up Walt Disney. And they really did. They thought, we're going to get this out in the media. We're going to create this propaganda that's going to sweep the nation on TV and in movies and in newspapers, debunking all this stuff, showing like, hey, this is how you explain this stuff. Right. Saying, like, here's this report and here's the scientific explanation for it. And that they consider that would be very powerful. And I think they're right. Yeah, just basically priming America's pump to where if you're having a water cooler conversation and bring something up about a UFO, there are five people there to say, didn't you see that thing? It's weather balloons. People love doing that. And if you can arm people with that, they will do it every time. And that actually is a pretty good plan for tamping down UFO. It's a great plan. They also decided maybe one of the less great parts of the plan to surveil and keep tabs on UFO groups for anti American stuff, because this was during the McCarthy era, of course. So everybody was doing anti American stuff if they weren't painting their white picket fence. Yeah, and I mentioned Disney, and we both laughed, but that was not a joke. They actually did think about and who knows, maybe they got in touch with Disney about making some propaganda pieces to help them out, because they had done that before. Chippendale originally started out as UFO investigators, but it just kind of one thing led to another. They worked on propaganda pieces before. There was one called donald gets drafted. A Donald Duck propaganda film. Sure. And they said it never came to fruition, but it would not surprise me if they didn't poke around a little bit. Right. Like in earnest. Donald Gets Drafted. That was the one that got released. You mean like the UFO one? Yeah. It wouldn't surprise me if they really did have an official meeting and Disney just said, no, we're not going to get involved. They're like, but we have this idea about psychic children. But I guess it's kind of propsychic, really. I wonder what the message is in Escape from Which Mountain? I haven't seen it in so long. I'm sure there's some very clear message that as an adult, you'd be like, this is what I was taught. Yeah, I mean, I saw both of those. Didn't The Rock recreate that remake it? I think so, but I did not recreate. Makes it sound like he just did it in his head in his living room or something. He recreated that after dinner one night. Right. I really think he was in that remake. No, I think you're right. I never bothered. I didn't either. I liked the guy, though. Oh, The Rock? He's great. I mean, I don't go see his movies much, but he seems like a good dude, right? He does seem like a good dude. You have a sense for these kinds of things, I've been told. There was one TV show. There was a CBS show called UFOs colon, Friend, Foe or Fantasy? Great name. And is this the one that Cronkite okay, I didn't know if that was a separate one. Did I write this that poorly? It's part of the same sentence. No, I know. I couldn't tell if it was me, it was my fault because it says it's in the same sentence narrated by Walter Cronkite. Yes. Okay. No, he did great. All right. Thank you for reassuring. This was in 66, and this was largely over the Michigan sightings. Yeah, we'll talk about those in a little bit. Yeah, just stick a pin in that. But it was big enough that they brought Cronkite out. Concrete. You know what I'm talking about? Sure. Walter concrete. He's a legend. You turn them upside down and shake them, he won't come out of the cup. But in that documentary, it's very much a proskeptic anti UFO documentary where they followed the Robertson panel recommendations of saying, here's this amazing report of the sighting. Here's how it's explained. Here's another sighting. Here's how it's explained. Don't you see now that UFOs are actually really just kind of something. They're not alien. It's fantasy. They called it friendFO or fantasy. They should have just called it UFOs fantasy. Right. Because that was the upshot of it all. So that Robertson panel report, there's something else that was really interesting about it. It had a very surprising knock on effect years later. So the panel was impandled in, I think, the year of that UFO fever outbreak. And its proceedings and its recommendations stayed classified until 1975. Yes. After Blue Book was gone. Yeah, years after it was gone. So I'm sure they figured, like, oh, it's fine, whatever. Just release it. But here's the thing. Up to that point, up to as far as anyone in the American public was concerned, the CIA had just remained quiet on the whole thing. It was all US. Air Force. CIA had nothing to do with it. And so all of a sudden. This Robertson panel comes out. And it's not only their own report. But they also mentioned an earlier CIA panel that had basically the same conclusions that showed that very much the CIA was involved in this and that they covered it up and the people in it gave the alien conspiracy theory a real shot in the arm because it showed the CIA was definitely investigating this and they covered it up. So how can we trust anything that anybody says about this? Yeah, covering it up to begin with just made the cover up. It was a cover up. Yeah. It made something that wasn't a cover up. A cover up, yeah, exactly. By covering and fueled all sorts of conspiracy theories. That's how it works. That's just how it works. The US. Government, probably any government, will never, ever learn, but that is just how it works. That's right. There was another report declassified in 98 where the CIA said around the mid 1950s, they started observing planes that could fly at high altitudes. They started creating them. Yeah, well, it said observing. So I guess they were just observing what they created. Come on, you can't take everything I say literally. And we're talking about remember earlier I kind of teased about the fact that the Soviets might have these spy planes? That's because we had spy planes. The u two spy plane. Very much top secret at the time. Yeah, it's like the old adage, when you point in the sky at the Russia's spy plane, you got three fingers pointing back at your spy plane. That's right. It was very much top secret, like I said, and it could go up to 60,000ft, which is three to five times higher than any commercial plane could fly at the time. Commercial pilots are seeing these things and reporting on them? Well, yeah, because they were silver at first. They weren't painted the cooler black color until later on, I guess, with the touring models that they started to pump out there. And they were very reflective. So at sunrise and at sunset, these things would cast these weird lights. And commercial pilots, because they didn't know this was the thing, they would say, hey, there's something going on way up above me. Or people would see them from the ground. Yeah. Flying really fast, really high, and looking like fire. Yeah, because this started, I think, test runs in the mid 1950s. So that coincides with a lot of these sightings. Yeah. So the CIA memo that was declassified in 1998 basically said, by our estimate of that 701 unidentified reports of the 701 reports that remain unidentified in Project Blue Books files are you two and SR 71 test flights can probably account for about half of those. Right. Which whittles that number down dramatically. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and come back and talk about the return of Heinik right after this. Chuck, this is going so well. Thanks. I'm really impressed. Good. So, hi, Nick. You said he returned, but really he never went anywhere. Yeah, that's true. He's still plodding along doing his thing. He started out at Project Sign. By this time it's Blue Book. It's like us with this place. Yeah. How many times has it changed hands? Yeah. A million. Same old show that we're still here. We're like the Hyneks here that's right. Of how stuff works. So with the years, however, Heineck himself seems to have changed. And he changed probably earlier than he made it public that he had changed. But he later said, you know what, everybody? I actually think that these UFOs are a thing. At the very least, there's some stuff we can't explain, and we should be investigating them way more scientifically than we are. And that really flew in the face of the public face that he had, which by the time he came out and said that had become something of a laughing stock at the behest of the Air Force. Yeah. Like what the change was is Rapelt left in 1953. And he was the dude that kind of had it running like a legit investigatory body. Right. He left, and then Heineck says it basically just became a PR device. And the stats prove it out. It was the unexplained case rate up to 25% that we talked about after Repel left. That went down to 1%. Yeah. Which is just an insult. Even if you're a skeptic, that's an insult. Right. Because, again, they would use anything that they could think of, including planets that weren't even visible in the sky at the time. There was very famously one where I think there was a sighting in Oklahoma, I believe. Yeah. The 1965 yeah. There was the Oklahoma State Police, Tinker Air Force Base, and a meteorologist in Oklahoma who was using weather radar at the time. All independently tracked four objects, one of them on radar. And Heinz in the Air Force who were doing Project Blue Book, representing Project Blue Book, said it was Jupiter, which is not a good explanation for four objects that are both visually sighted and show up on radar. Because Jupiter doesn't show up on radar, and it certainly doesn't show up as four fast moving objects. Yes. And Jupiter wasn't even visible in the night sky on that date. Right. So this definitely kind of like is a really good example of what Heineck was having to come out and say to the public toward the end of his camel's backbreaking. Yeah. And here's the thing. He was still slightly skeptical. I don't know about slightly skeptical. He was still skeptic, I guess. Right. But his whole beef was and he says this is a direct quote he said everything was negative and unyielding in their attitude. Everything had to have an explanation. And I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way. I thought they weren't going about it in the right way. Right. So that was the deal is the Air Force was just sort of an obligatory stamp of not true it was this. And he was like, Well, I don't necessarily think it's alien saucer either, but, like, can we investigate it and get, like, a real explanation at least? Yeah, that was definitely his thing. And then the other thing was that one through line that has kept Skeptics interested in this is credible observers reporting incredible, unexplainable things. That's right. So those two things, the Air Force irking him in the way that they were carrying out the investigation, and these credible observers actually caused him to undergo a conversion. There's a debate over whether it was a slow conversion or a quick conversion. Some people suspect that he was actually a lifelong believer and that he just kind of kept it under wraps. But even after he underwent his conversion, which has been estimated to have happened around 1960, he kept quiet, as a matter of fact, for years. And he didn't want to stake his personal reputation, his professional career, all that stuff on just coming out and being like, hey, everybody, the Air Force is lying to you. Especially considering that the general public by this time had completely bought into the idea that the Air Force was just blatantly and clumsily, trying to cover up knowledge of UFOs and their reality. Yes. He said he was kind of waiting for the big one. Right. Like something so irrefutable that he could actually really go public with it. Right. All right, well, let's talk about the swamp gas in Michigan. This is a March 1966, very famous case. There was a sighting over several days or hundreds of people that reported glowing objects hovering and flying around Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then a bunch of towns along the countryside between Toledo and Detroit. Same thing. 87 students at Hillsdale College in Michigan, and they all said the same stuff, is that we've seen these objects with red, white, and blue lights. One family instead of UFO landed on their farm. Right. I don't know about that one. Sure, but you never know. Yeah, the college students might stretch credibility a little bit, maybe, but it was a big national story. Heineck went there, and it was basically a frenzy, so much so that he had trouble getting interviews with the witnesses as the official representative. Because the press was all over it. Right. Yeah. The press were eating up all of their time. He couldn't interview them, but he finally did, and he held a press conference. And at the press conference, he said, it's possible some of the sightings may have mistaken swamp gas for UFOs. And in this guy's defense, he said some. He didn't say. All right. He wasn't dismissive about it. It's just something he said. But the press took it and it converted it into all basically, the headlines read, Heinek dismissed his sightings as swamp gas, and that was that. Like, he had basically said it was all swamp gas. Everybody knew that scores and dozens and possibly hundreds of people across Ohio and Michigan hadn't all seen swamp gas. Right. That was a preposterous explanation, especially if you laid it on the whole thing. Yeah. Johnny Carson even had an astronomer on to basically refute the swamp gas theory. Yeah, there's a headline. Air Force Insults Public with swamp gas theory. That was in, like, a legitimate newspaper. So it was a ridiculous thing that got it was a dumb thing to say, but I think he said it not realizing that it was going to become the explanation and it was going to make him a further laughingstock. It just so happened that the swamp gas thing was the last straw. That broke Heinex back. Yeah, it broke his back. And there was a senator out of Michigan named Gerald Ford, and he said, I demand a congressional hearing. They said, who are you? He said. I'm Senator Gerald Ford. I'm going to be president one day. Yeah, you'll see, I'll fix you good when I'm president. They said, how are you going to be president? You're senator? He said, well, it's complicated, you'll see. So he demands this hearing, and they held a hearing the following month. And this is when Hinik really got a chance to kind of publicly out himself as a convert and said, my recommendation, Senator Ford, watch your step, is UFO sightings should be investigated by scientists and not the military. And this was music to the ears of the military in a lot of ways. Yeah, they said he said it, finally. Yeah, great. They said, yes, you're absolutely right. We should have somebody scientifically investigate this. And the Air Force, for its part, saw an out of being in this UFO investigating business that it didn't want to be in in the first place. No, they did not that in some way Heineck could just open the door for them. So they said, yes, we agree with Heineken. You guys should totally get some sort of scientific study going. And I don't know if it was Congress that hired them or if the Air Force did, but either way a committee led by a physicist named Edward Condon of University of Colorado, Buffaloes yeah. They took up the task of figuring out whether UFOs actually were a thing or not and deserved scientific study. Right. So this is a three year study in the end, and the objective was to really take it seriously as an academic study. And they did that, right? No, they didn't. It was really just a smokescreen to get the Air Force out of this business once and for all, because Condon basically and there was a bit of a drumbeat in the public of like, you're wasting our taxpayer money. There were some people that thought this was super worthwhile, but most people saw it as like, why is the Air Force wasting their time with this stuff? I would guess that would have been William F. Buckley's position. Yeah, probably so. Yeah, there were some people, especially people in the Air Force, too, are like, this is a dumb thing to do. This is a dumb waste of time. So Condon said, okay, I am possibly the only person on the planet who's in a position to get the Air Force out of UFO investigations. I'll do a little wink wink, nudge nudge, ask a few people if it pulsated or throbbed, and then we'll just release a report that says no. And that's exactly what they did. In January of 1969, they released the condom report, which was, respectively, 1439 pages long. Yeah. But this quote from Condon now in 67, it is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is there's nothing to it. But I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year. It's so smart. It really undermines that. 1439 pages, really? Frankly, whittles it down to about 50. Just with that one quote. The kind of report basically says, hey, everybody, our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby. And the weird thing is, Chuck, is I agree with them wholeheartedly. Yeah. We didn't learn anything except about ourselves from investigating UFOs all these years that we know about. Okay? I'll give you that. Except for toasters. Did that come from a UFO tech? That's what some people say. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. If you're a UFO believer, one of the big things people point to is this boom in technology that came after World War II, round about the time the Roswell crash happened. Got you. And they point to Wright Patterson and say, well, we learned a lot from this, and we started making microwaves and tang and all sorts of stuff. Ended up on the moon. Yes. Those aliens were touching their bread, right? We got to get in on this. I like the real version of it where that guy had a chocolate bar percy I can't remember his last name. Remember he had a chocolate bar in his pocket and melted when he got too close to a microwave. He's like, let's start making popcorn with this thing. And I forgot about that guy. Percy something. We're going to call him Percy Sledge. Okay. I was just about to say that. Were you? I was. So I tell you what. Let's take a break here, and we'll tell you about what happened with Project Blue Book right after this, okay? All right. Project Blue Book closed. There you go. This suspense is killing me, man. December 17, 1969, it was officially closed. The airport sent out a fact sheet and said no UFO has ever been a threat to our. National security. They don't recognize any technological developments. There are no extraterrestrial vehicles. And if you're a Ufologist, is that what it's called, euphologist, then you think it's just all one big lie still. Yeah. There's another documented sighting. Here's the thing with all these documented sightings, it's like, yes, people did say this. Right. That's all that means, though. Yeah. So it's really tough to kind of like coming from the stuff you should know way to be like, well, to contradict this official report, here's this other thing that we should be skeptical of. But there was something that happened at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967, where allegedly ten of our nuclear warheads were suddenly taken offline while this unidentified object was hovering overhead. And that the people who were tasked with watching the warheads were all reported on this. And it was documented supposedly, and that the Air Force's fact sheet, thus that this was never a threat to our national security, was a flat lie. That's right. Yeah. So in the end, the Project Blue Book and all of the other projects that came before it investigated over 12,000 sightings. 701 remained unidentified. If you go by that number, if you listen to the military, like you said, half of those were you twos or blackbirds. Right. Which is like, what, 350 or so. But even still okay, so there's 350. Yeah. That's a lot. Okay, but other people say, no, it's even more than that. Right, exactly. Because these were official investigations, and you didn't even investigate the one that I saw. Buddy. A lot of that stuff goes on that's one. Yeah. And that's actually evidenced in the number of sightings that increased after Project Blue Book. So in 1965, I believe there was 886 reported sightings as part of Project Blue Book. Okay. In 2014, there were 8619. In 2018, there were 3236. That was a slow year. So a lot of people say their force wasn't actually investigating a lot of these. Yeah. And granted, you should know this comes from private groups and citizens who have developed these groups for reporting, like the National UFO Reporting Center, because it's not codified now by the military. So citizens have done this. Right. So take that 8600 number with a grain of salt. But at the same time, it's not necessarily that these groups are drumming up siding. Oh, sure. There may even be more, because at the time in the American public generally knew if you saw something, you would contact your local Air Force base. Right. I wonder how many people know who to contact if they think they see something. I have no idea. I don't either. I would just drive up to Dubbing and knock on the front gate. They'd be like, Come inside forever. Exactly. One of the other things, one of the other reasons that people say, no, the unidentified number is actually way higher than 700 is because if you take those cases where they say it was Jupiter. It was weather balloon. It was some stupid thing we just came up with. Those cases go from identified to actually unidentified. And so that number increases even further. Project Blue book will never die, friend. No, it will not. And something else will not ever die is Heinick is the person who developed the very famous Close Encounters rating scale. If you've seen the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, highly recommend it. First of all, true. Great Steven Spielberg film with the great Richard Dreyfus and Terry Gar, for God's sake. She's in it. Oh, man, she's so good. I miss her. The first kind is and you get one point. It's a rating scale for the believability of a sighting. Yeah, I just love the point things. I got two points. So you get one point if you see a UFO within 500ft. Okay. Not bad. Second kind is two points. Of course, that is a physical effect happens, which is like in Close Encounters, when he's on the railroad tracks, his headlights start going berserk and his truck shakes. Right. And the crossing gate on the railroad track goes up and down. That would be I wonder if there'd be two points for each of those things or two points for the experience. I don't know, because, I mean, you're just running those numbers for each one. It blinked again. It blinked again. Right. And then finally, the third kind, the old three point line that is when you see an alien or interact with an alien. And obviously in the film, that is when Richard Dryfus at the end walks up into that spaceship and takes the hand the aliens and probably like the most unbelievable it's a pretty old movie and it's called The Third Kind. Sure. So the most unbelievable part of this whole thing is that Heineck went from the guy who was saying it was a weather balloon, this train pilot saw Jupiter even though Jupiter wasn't even the sky. Right. Then to the guy who literally wrote the book that founded Ufology. Yeah. What's the UFO experience? Colon a scientific inquiry. Yeah, he just completely basically switched sides and said, there's a lot of stuff that we can't explain here's. All these, you know, all this experience that I have investigating these things. Let's go forward and figure this out. I don't want to be a cynic, but I wonder what salary he had as a private citizen for years and years doing this, being the face of this. Do you think he was like, it's pretty good money, maybe. And then when the time was up, he said, you know what else makes good money? Writing UFO? Books. Okay. Write some books, maybe. From what I can tell, he's a respected person in the field. Sure. In a lot of fields. Actually, I didn't get anything because whenever when we research something, if somebody's like that somebody is out there sniping them right. I don't remember this really coming up. The only thing I saw that was somebody throwing shade was the idea that he had been a believer all along. Right. And he was actually faking as a skeptic. Okay. But he was a pretty believable fake skeptic. That's right. And here's the deal, though. Things did not stop. There was a classified memo that's not classified any longer from October 1969, just before Blue Book was terminated that basically revealed that, hey, we're going to still investigate stuff. It's not part of Blue Book anymore, but here's how we're going to do it and what we're going to do. Here's the process. Isn't that astounding? Yeah. I mean, not really, but I mean, there was a memo that was sent out after Blue Book, right before Blue Book was shut down, saying, don't worry, we're still going to have procedure for reporting this stuff and investigating it. It's just not going to be public. Right. And Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader at the time he had his program, it was all over the news, where it was called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Right. Because I guess Harry Reid thought there's something out there for sure, and we need to look. It was a pet project of his. That's right. You know, both Carter and Reagan claim to have seen UFOs. I think I did know that. I knew Carter. Of course. Carter. I didn't know about Reagan, I don't think. Yeah. Really? Yes, we talked about that. I think we did live at Comic Con. Didn't we do UFOs on UFOs? Yeah, this was better. I agree. This feels more like real. Yeah. Well, if there's anything unreal, it's being at actually south by Southwest, was it? Yes. Okay. No comment. But this stuff still goes on. Even though that project from Harry Reid was shut down supposedly, or shut down in 2012, people involved say, no, we're still doing it. We're still doing that stuff. Right. And here's the thing. When that came out, this is 2017. The guy who ran that program came out and told everybody about it. The New York Times reported on it, used all this breathless stuff, like, really jumped to conclusions with the facts, and then other people started reporting on that. And exactly the kind of reporting that was going on in the in the about UFOs just continued again in 2017. And this is just probably how it's always going to be. Yes. And one of the big things was this 2004 sighting in San Diego from two, I think, Navy pilots. Yeah. And then they released the footage just a couple of years ago in 2017 as part of this New York Times article. Yeah, they released the video footage, and you can go watch it on YouTube. It was released in December of 2017. You can see this flying saucer, right. And you can hear these pilots, these trained Navy pilots. What the heck? Yeah. They're like look at it. Bro. He actually said bro, did he? I must not have the volume up part where he calls them bro. Well, they describe it as a 40 foot long Tic TAC. And then afterward, in subsequent interviews, one of them said, it accelerated like nothing I've ever seen before. And I have no idea what I saw that day. Sure. So the newest spy plane from the future. Who knows? Well, that's it for Project Blue Book, everybody. I'm sure we bless some stuff out. If we did, let us know. Especially if you're a Ufologist. We want to hear from you. And since I said, we want to hear from you, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail. This is just a little shout out about a couple of references that Brad and Sacramento likes. Okay? Thanks for everything over the years, guys. I had to write in to acknowledge Chuck's striper reference in the nuclear semiotics episode. It had me laughing. It took me back. I discovered striper in the late 90s, which is pretty late for striper, really. And they were kind of a joke in my circle of friends. Most of them who had grown up involved in the church. To hell with the Devil has been my favorite. Was that the name of their album? I think so. Or maybe it was just a song. I know. They had an album called The Yellow and Black Attack. Sure. I had these in my record collection. No. I know. I don't anymore. You lie. I wish I did. I'm surprised you haven't gone back. And it'd be a fun party joke. Sure. To see how long it takes people to pick up on it. I would love to hear about Jack's Experience, seeing them live. I'll go ahead and tell you I was into it. Sure. When I saw them live, like black and yellow spandex. Sure. Yeah. And the drummer played. He was set up sideways. I remember. That was interesting. Like, he was turned perpendicular to the stage. To the crowd. Yeah. Like the drum set was facing the side of the stage. Why? Well, I guess because he would sing and the microphone was to his left facing the audience. But it still doesn't make sense. No. So I don't know why they did it. There's a million ways you can put that microphone. That's easier than turning the whole drum kit. No, totally. That guy liked his ABS is what it was. And he wanted you to like his ABS as well. I don't know if I'm not mistaken, the drummer was the brother of the singer, Michael Sweet. I'm pulling this all out. Wow. My hind end. Oh, the heck. So, Josh, my favorite reference of yours was a while ago. I don't remember all the details, but it had something to do with the scene from Harry and the Hendersons when Lithgow was trying to get Harry to go back into the wild. Yes. Do you remember what you said? Yeah, I was just describing how he, like, punches him in the face and says, go. But I don't remember what that was in reference to. It wasn't that long ago. I do remember that no one remembers. You guys have a way of making personal connection with your listeners, and I can really appreciate that. Thanks for keeping things PG, because I love to listen with my kids. That is Brad in Sacramento. Yeah, man. It's kind of the point now where I feel weird cursing. I had to get used to it on Movie Crush cursing, and then it's now it's the second nature. Sure. Has it become weird on Stuff? You should know to not curse as an adult. There's a dividing line. Oh, by camera. Yeah. Nice. Good job. I'm just a big dumb animal. No, it takes a lot of verve and grit and juice to be able to curse here and not curse there. Or the replacement. Yeah. I've always been really good at it because of nieces and nephews and just I was always hyper aware and still am about being in public and, like, people being around that I might offend. Right. I don't want to be that guy. That's good, Chuck. Yeah. Well, if you want to congratulate Chuck on this amazing sentiment of his, you should follow us on social media. You can go to stephyughno.com and check out all of our social links there. Or you can send your congratulations directly to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite show."
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-07-20-sysk-guessing-final.mp3	All We Know About Guessing	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/all-we-know-about-guessing	Guessing is a weird thing. For millennia, it could have meant the difference between life and death. Now it's not as vital, but we still do it every day, whether behind the wheel of a car, or judging what another person might be feeling. From wild guesses	Guessing is a weird thing. For millennia, it could have meant the difference between life and death. Now it's not as vital, but we still do it every day, whether behind the wheel of a car, or judging what another person might be feeling. From wild guesses	Thu, 20 Jul 2017 13:00:03 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=201, tm_isdst=0)	55204126	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. Stuff You Should Know is going on tour. What are the Deeps, my friend? Okay, so starting August 8, in Toronto, that's in Canada. We're gonna be at damn forth music hall. And then Chicago. We're gonna be there the next night, August august 9 at the Harris Theater. Yeah, Chicago. We want to see your faces. Step it up, step it up. Vancouver. The Vogue Theater, September 26. That's going to be a great show, I think, don't you? It's going to be a greater one. And then Minneapolis at the Pantaga Theater, where we've been before. It's lovely. September 27. Yeah. And then we're going to swing down to Austin. It's going to be during Austin City Limits, although it has nothing to do with Austin. City limits will be there October 10. Yes. And then we're going to lovely Lawrence, Kansas. Go Jayhawks. On October 11. And, hey, if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area, this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. If you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well, then you should go to the Bellhouse, october 22, 23rd and 24th will be there all three nights. And finally, we're going to wrap it up here in Atlanta at the Bucket Theater on November 4 for a benefit show where we are donating all of the monies to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. Yes. So for all this information, again visually and for links to tickets, just go to S-Y-S Klive.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstepworkscom? Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there in the corner. Everybody puts Jerry in the corner, but you shouldn't. And this is stuff you should know. She's the opposite of baby. Jerry's back. She's back from the mall. Is that where she's been? Yeah. Remember we said that she was at the mall, she was buying a house, she was doing all sorts of stuff. Okay. But she's back now and things are normal again. Yeah, she was at the beach, and she's now eating in front of me. What? I ate about an hour ago. Do you want to throw up or do you want more? It's this weird in between. I'm drawn to the smell, but I'm also full, so I'm kind of like, yeah. Oh, man, what a life. I know. Eating. Who needs it, right? Me. I do, too. I love eating. Love it. You know what else I love? What really good magic. Like illusions. Well, what do you mean? Because that could mean two different things. Well, let me tell you. So you mean I went to New York recently and we saw this show. It's called in and of itself. So one Man Stage Magic, I guess you could call it that illusionist show by a guy named Derek Del Guardio. It's how you say his last name. I strongly recommend anyone go see this show I think they extended it through the rest of the year. But it's like kind of his life story told through these different acts and just the stuff he's doing is not like, oh man, that rabbit came out of nowhere. Nothing like that. It's all much more psychological than that. But the basis of it is that this guy must be just one of the better guests walking around today. He's just good. He's also like a card shark. It's just a really neat show. It's really original and different. But just to see somebody do something to where they probably are guessing. But they're doing such an amazing job at it that it just appears to be magic. That's one of my favorite things in the world to see. Like when he talks to people and think of a number, except obviously more fun and complex than that. Yes. And I don't want to give any of it away. I don't want to give any bit of it away. Like for anybody who's going to go see it, everyone should go into it fresh. But yeah, just after you see it, go back and listen to this episode again and you'll be like, oh yeah, totally. Now I think the deal a lot of times with that situation is powers of suggestion, correct? I don't know, man. I don't know if that's what this guy's doing or not. No, he's not doing like cold readings or something like that. Like John Edwards? No, nothing like that. But power is a suggestion and that if you can lead someone to think of a certain thing that they then guess that you're, I guess so get it? Didn't even mean that. But that kind of dives into what we're talking about, which is guessing in general. There's this whole science really doesn't have any idea about how we make guesses. All we know is that we are capable of making guesses and that we make guesses almost constantly and that our brain is basically set up to guess. Like our construction of reality is a series of guesses, most of which pan out to be right, but then can also be terribly wrong, which is what optical illusions prove. Yeah, and I thought it was going to be more interesting than it was initially when I picked this one out, so I was a little disappointed. And then we found like other supplemental stuff that kind of helped it, but in the end it felt a little unwieldy. But I think that's just because of the nature of the topic, like there isn't a concise beginning, middle and end to this kind of topic. No, because again, science is pretty well stumped and sometimes, Chuck, if you'll remember, these can be our best episodes. Unless the ones where there's just like a clear cut, completely understandable, neat explanation, those ones are great. And then on the other end of the spectrum, like this one, the ones where science is just kind of like, maybe this is it. I don't know. This could be it. Those are usually pretty good, too. So this one has potential. All right. That's my estimation. Well, I thought it was interesting in our very own house of works article, and they started talking about in days of yore, starting with tuk tuk, and basically up until the point where we could measure things or prove things, there's still a lot of guessing going on. But guessing was a daily survival tactic, right? That's how we learned. Should I go this way and fall off a cliff? I'm going to take a guess. Or should I eat this thing? Will it kill me? Or like in the case of lewis and clarke, I remember clark estimated, and there's guesses, and we'll get into different types, but an estimation is kind of a guess, even if it's informed and well reasoned. In clark's case, of course, he estimated I think he was only off by about 40 miles when they got to the pacific. Oh, really? I don't remember that. Yeah, he estimated 4162 miles. He was off by 40. I mean, that's wow. Remarkable. Yeah, it is. But it wasn't a wild guess. It was clark being a very smart dude who probably took copious notes. Not probably. He definitely took copious notes. Right. But I don't know. I just never really thought about guessing back in those days, you could end up a bad guess means the end of you. Yes. But if your friends were standing around watching you guess, that lizard over there wasn't poisonous. You can just go ahead and eat it raw, and then you keel over and die. They learn from your bad guess. That's called taking one for the team. It very much so. Yeah. That's before the universal editability test, man. Have you been going through the archives or something? No, I wrote that article back then. Got you. That one stuck with me because, you know, I mean, I thought you were, too. I'm cursed with that new information and old information. Oh, sure. Getting squeezed out. Yeah. So, should we get into this? I guess I don't mean to do this. I'm sorry, what thing? I guess, yeah. It's pretty commonplace, but it does kind of underscore just how much we do guess in our lives. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and start it with the brain. Then. Because while you're correct in saying that they don't know the pathways necessarily of a guess. All different parts of the brain not all the parts. But many different parts of the brain are at work. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about what different kinds of guesses can entail. Whether you're guessing someone's age or guessing. Because that involves. Like. Recognition with your eyeballs or a memory of someone else who was a certain age who looked like that. Like recall. There's all different parts of the brain that are lighting up whenever you're guessing something. Yeah. They think that it's a global phenomenon. Right. Is it brainially global? Yeah, exactly. Right. So there's, like, some region of your brain that specializes in the particular task at hand. The thing you're guessing about, whether it's, like, volume or, like you said, someone's age, that region of the brain that has to do with, say, numbers would light up. I think it's the parietal anterior gyrus or something like that that lights up when you're trying to guess someone's age based on how they look at that one, I think. Right. Using the wonder machine. Right. But that's just one functional part of the whole process that the brain is going through. They know that there's a number of different regions that are operating at any given point in time when you're making a guess, but they still can't say, well, if somebody is guessing, this is what's going to happen. Here's the cascade that's going to go through the brain. We haven't reached that point yet. Yeah. They think that if you're guessing about a visual object or subject, then your frontal lobe and occipital lobe are at work. Numerical quantities, like, how many jelly beans are in that jar. That's kind of the common thing. They mentioned that, like, that still happens. Is that still a thing? You know who is a jelly bean jar guessing champion? My wife really is, yes. Long standing. Her spatial reasoning is outstanding. Well, spatial reasoning and numerical quantities are a big part of trying to guess the quantity of something into something. Right. If your brain is kind of specialized in that manner, you are probably going to be better at it than somebody whose brain is not. Right. So Yummy would beat me every time. My spatial reasoning is horrific. Right. Yeah. But I'm really good at recognizing faces, so I'm probably better at guessing someone's age based on their face or possibly how they're feeling based on their facial expression than she might be. Yeah, that's a whole, like, I didn't even think about that being part of guessing. But the emotional thing of guessing yeah. Like someone's feelings or what they're thinking, that's a whole different thing than guessing jelly beans in a jar, which is different than guessing someone's age. It's, like, all lumped into guessing. It's really more varied than I ever considered. Right. Well, let's talk about the different types of guesses you might make that. So I think what you just kind of did, Chuck, was you divided guesses into buckets. Two buckets. I'm trying to decide what the buckets would be called, though. So one bucket would be just kind of working knowledge, and the other would be, say, like, emotional. Right. So how many jelly beans are in a jar? That would be in the working knowledge bucket. What somebody's feeling based on your guess? Based on, say, their facial expression? That's emotional or intellectual. Yeah, that's why intellectual or emotional buckets bam. Just carved them up. But I think those are kind of like the two categories you can put guesses into. Even though you can break types of guesses down further yeah. And breaking them down further, you have your wild guesses. This is when you have no information, no outside input whatsoever. And you often say, this is just a wild guess. If I had to guess, yeah. You're saying here, listen to me. I can speak. It has no basis in fact or reality or anything like that. Then you have your educated guess, which is in the middle, and that's when you have a little bit of information. There's a military term that I had never heard of called Swag, which stands for stuff. We all get no scientific wild ass guessing. Okay. Which is like a guesstimate. But it's a military term, by all accounts. Most people say it started in Vietnam with General Westmoreland and you will hear military people say Swag. And that's when we got a little information. I'm not just wild guessing here. This is a ballpark educated guess. Right. It's not bad. Still less than an estimate. And that's where we have a lot more information. Yeah. Not just a lot more information, but you're pretty familiar, also with the topic that you're guessing at as well. Right. So Lewis and Clark, I think both of them were surveyors, so they would have had a lot of training as far as judging distance goes. They would have had some information to put together. So Clark coming up with an estimate of how wide the continent is and just being off by 40 miles, like you said, that's remarkable. But if you had one of us do it, it would have been a wild guess. So it has to do with the training, the expertise, really, and then the amount of information you have. That's what an estimate is. Yeah. And you may not even know that you have information stored away in your brain that you're recalling. When you're trying to hazard a guess on something. You might think it's a wild guess, but you're really kind of picking out something that happened in your past, maybe. Right. Or another way to look at it is that is intuition, which is, from what I understand, intuition is kind of its own category. But if it's most closely related to any type of those three guesses we just mentioned, it would be an estimate. And it comes from years and years and years of training or exposure to whatever you're guessing at to the point where your guesses don't even seem like guesses. It just seems like foreign knowledge of what you're about to do. Yeah. Like, I used to be really bad at guessing crowd sizes, but through our live shows, I've gotten pretty good at it because when you go to these theaters, how many people are in there? And then you stand in front of that many people. And if you do that, enough times I can now say, like, when I go to a show or something will be like, how many people you think this place holds? I used to say, I have no idea. I know. But now eight or 900 people. Yeah. And you're probably pretty close within 40 miles, I'll bet. And that's just because of exposure and learning. Right. And that actually brings up a really good point that you can actually get better at guessing. And we'll get into that right after this break. How about that, Chuck? Great. All right. So, Chuck, you said that you got better at estimating crowd sizes by just performing at our live shows, right? Correct. So you were terrible at it before. Very bad. But just from exposing yourself to it, going out on stage and exposing yourself to crowds that you could judge the size of, and everybody clapped except that one guy. Remember that guy? Yeah. Nelson pointed and laughed. Nelson to Portland. You got better at it. And when it comes to probably both, but especially intellectual guests, intellectual bucket guesses, you can train yourself to get better at it. And part of that is making a guess, getting pretty much immediate feedback and then learning from that. Yeah. Like, you're wrong. This is what the answer is. It's like anything else. Exactly. You do that enough, you're going to get better at it. Yeah. And there's this pretty interesting I guess it was interesting little kind of sidetrack that the author of the Guests article Aliyahuit took, I have to say no. Is it Leah? It's not Alicia. No, it's Alia. There's no saying Alicia for theirs. Not only is the sea silent, it's not there. Wow. It's invisible. So Alia hoy my hats off to her, because doing supplemental research for this, there are not a lot of people who are coming up with really substantial stuff about guesses. Yeah, it's like it's barren. It's probably the least amount of research I've ever encountered in all of our almost 1000 plus episodes. Oh, wow. So the fact that she put this together, my hat is off to her. But a sidetrack she takes is to teach the reader how to get better at guessing. A jar full of jelly beans. Yeah. Boy, that was exciting. No, I mean that. Yeah. My method was always to pick out a smaller area, like the bottom inch of the jar, count as many as I could and estimate that and then multiply that out. That's actually a great technique. Well, I don't know. I haven't guessed jelly beans in a jar since I was probably twelve. Right. But that was always my method, which has a little there's a little bit of method to it, but it's definitely not as good as this one. Okay. It sounds a little more complex than it actually is, but if you look at a jar and it's filled with jelly beans, you can say the volume of that jar is say a quart. Okay. But then you want to begin with sure. Right. But you can learn, right? You can just look around. Like, here's the point. If you want to get good at guessing jelly beans, it just takes a little bit of work. Yeah. Most people would walk up, say, a million jelly beans, and they're off by 900,000. They're like, well, I'm terrible at guessing jelly beans. I'm going to sleep for the rest of my life. But if you want to get good at guessing at jelly beans, all you have to do is poke around, learn a few things, and then you can basically apply those to every situation. And one of the things you would need to learn is how to judge the volume of the container to start. Correct. So that's one part, right? Yeah. Which most people would do that by comparing it to, like, a milk jug or a two liter bottle or something like that. Right. But in this case, to get a really accurate estimate, you would want to know specifically, say, how many ounces a container held. Correct. And then another thing you would probably do if you started researching guessing jelly beans and jar on the Internet, you would run across some research that found that if you have spherical objects in a jar, they typically take up about if you fill the thing up, they typically take up about 64% of the actual volume of the jar. Yeah. And that's if they're just randomly dumped. Right. So if you come across a jar and you say and it's filled with perfectly round bouncy balls. Okay. Perfectly around bouncy balls. Right. You can say, well, those are spherical, and they're taking up about 64% of the jar. So all I have to do is figure out basically the size of each of the ball right, and then divide it by 64% of the volume, and then bam, you just guessed how many are in there, and you're probably pretty close to right? Sure. So this all sounds mind numbing. I've got a little trickle of blood coming out of my ear right now. But the whole point is you can train yourself to make better guesses, to estimate better. That's the whole point. Yeah. And if it's non spherical, by the way, like if it's peanuts or something like that, or ice cubes, but not disgusting. Circus peanuts. Oh, man, that conjures up so many memories. Did you like those? Well, I think I might have when I was a kid, but I haven't had one in 40 years. But I still remember the taste. You may just have some. She says, they still hold up, and I'm like, I didn't like them then, I'm not going to like them now. Well, they hold up for you in a bad way, right? Yeah, exactly. I know I'm not supposed to yuck anyone's yum, but yo. So if it's circus peanuts, let's say it would be between 50% and 54% of the space, not 64. Yes. So what is Yummy's method? Did you ask her? She said she just kind of knows. So she's a precog? Exactly. She shaves her head once a while and lays around in a VAT of liquid. Wow. That would scare me if that was my wife's answer. If she just kind of walked by and said, I just know, right? Yes. I would be like, well, what else do you just know? Yeah, well, she's kind of unstoppable, too. You have no idea how many cabs we've won at county fairs in the last year alone. Our house is overrun with them. All right, so that's just guessing. Volume of a thing and a thing. It's intellectual guessing. Yeah. Right. But you can train yourself to guess better. What's really up for questioning is whether you can train yourself to get better at the other bucket of guessing, emotional type of guessing. Right. Where you're walking around and you are interacting with other people and you're making judgments about how they're feeling right then, about what they're thinking right. Then what their motives are, how well they're actually listening to you, all of these things. Right. It's part of our interaction with other people. And there's something that two researchers called IX and Tux great combo that back in 1988, established this kind of field of inquiry in which they were trying to get to the bottom of what they called empathic accuracy, which is how accurately we can surmise what someone actually is feeling or thinking just from interacting with them. Some people are supposedly good at it, some people are not. And from what I saw, there's a big kind of push and pull about whether it's worth practicing or whether you should just not do that at all for the sake of your own sanity. And just say, if you tell me that you're in a good mood, I'm going to take that at face value. And if you're actually not, then you're covering up your feelings for your own reason, and that's on you, and that's fine. If you want to just keep them to yourself, that's fine. If you want to share them, I'm here. But I'm going to take what you're saying on face value, so bully for you. That, to me, is sanity. Like, going, how are you really feeling? One can spend a lot of time doing that. So can I share a little bit about myself here? Well, I know it's weird. It feels gross, but for a very long time, Chuck, I thought that I was a born and bred empath, that I could understand what anyone was thinking and feeling, maybe even better than they knew how they were thinking and feeling. And I finally came to the hard truth that I was wrong almost all the time. And in figuring this out, this was really jarring. And it took a little while for me for this to sink in, but once I figured out that I'm actually terrible at reading, engaging other people's thoughts and feelings, it was one of the most liberating things that's ever happened to me because I just stopped and I realized how much of my life I've been walking around wasting just thinking about what people really think. Or do people really like me? They probably don't. Or do they? What do they mean by that look or whatever. And just taking people in life on face value is so much it occupies so much less of your mind at any given moment. It's just great. That's my prescription. Stop trying to figure out what other people are really thinking and feeling. You should just ask me. A long time ago, I would have told you. I was like, you're terrible at that. Yeah. I don't know if I would have listened. It took a little while, but to walk through their own doors, you know what I'm saying? That is well put, man. You're a stoic sage. So cognitive distortion is phrase you hear pop up a lot when it comes to assessing another person's emotions. And these are these inaccurate thoughts that you have in your brain. Sometimes they lead to negative thinking or encourage that. I think probably most times that's probably the case. And then polarized thinking is another bucket, I guess, since we're bucketing everything today, which is everything is great or everything is terrible. And the example they give in this article is simply it's a little boy reading a girl's face that she doesn't like me, but that's a kid in elementary school. You can apply this to anyone walking into a room and basically reading either the room or reading a person and saying, like, I don't like the way that person just looked at me. That's bad. Right. And so I don't think they like me. And those are both of those things at work. Cognitive distortion and polarized thinking. Right. Which I think polarized thinking is a type of cognitive distortion. I think that's the umbrella term for that kind of thing. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think this is kind of where you get to why a lot of people are terrible at guessing or get their guessing wrong, especially when it comes to what other people are thinking and feeling. Is that your guesses, whether you realize it or not, are actually colored and come through a lens of your past history, right? Yeah. So if you were raised in a house where people, your family members are really critical of you and one another, if you see two people in a corner, like kind of like having a quiet conversation but laughing too, you're probably going to think they're laughing at you even though they may not even be paying the least bit of attention to you. Yeah, sure. But because of the history of how you grew up, that's what you're going to guess at. Right. Whereas if somebody was raised in a house where they were instilled with a lot of confidence and, like, a great sense of humor. Right. That person might just think, man, they must be talking about something hilarious. I wish I knew what the joke was. Or they might have so much confidence and sense of humor, they might even walk up and engage them and say, what are you guys laughing at? Right. And if they go? Nothing. Never mind. Then you may be onto something. Right. But there's this blog post and, man, I wish I could remember what the site was. I apologize, site. But it was basically like, stop trying to read other people's minds, was the gist of it. And they actually used that example, and they went on to say, like, even if the person who thinks that they're laughing at them turns out to be right, that's not the worst thing that can happen to you. It's fine. Who cares? You know? Like, some people aren't going to like you. Some people will. It doesn't really matter. Like, if somebody doesn't like you, you got to have a little more self confidence in the life that just completely derail your day. Yeah. And you have to find it within yourself. Yeah, for sure. And some people get that through years of therapy. Some people are born with it, some people never achieve it. Yes. Even if you are born with it, I think you can lose it from time to time. If you're not born with it, you can gain it from time to time, but it's not something I think you have every moment of every day, necessarily. Yeah. Boy, people with just too much confidence are so annoying. They really are, because everyone wants that. I think that's why it's annoying. Sure. It's like, man, I wish I could be that confident about everything. I hate that guy. And then you end up in a corner talking to somebody else about how much you hate that person with so much confidence totally lost on the other person. So I have another theory that's not scientific at all. It's just my personal theory that when it comes to guessing things, your own not well, your past experiences certainly influence it, but your own how you are also influences I think a liar is more apt to think people are lying to them. Precisely. Yeah. No, that's absolutely I agree. I was going to say, that's absolutely true, but I agree with you. Yeah. Because who knows? It's just a theory, right. But I mean, it's based on some pretty ancient folk wisdom. Like that whole thing about how when you're pointing a finger at somebody, three fingers pointing at you, or judge not lest you be judged. Like, when you think about people in that way, you think that they're doing the same thing to you even when they're not. It's your own hilarious little personal hell. Yeah. And it's not always that. Like, I. Think that dude's ripping me off. Maybe you've been ripped off before and that's where that's coming from. Or maybe you've ripped someone off before, but I bet one of the two has happened. I think, though, more what you're talking about is core character traits, though, like being judgmental or being a liar or being a BS or something like that. When you do notice that, though, what's great is there's so much room for growth oh, yeah. When you realize that, wait a minute, I think everybody's judging me because I'm so judgmental, I need to work on being judgmental. What's almost magical is that when you realize that and you work on not being judgmental, you stop thinking that other people are judging you and your life is just freer. Well, there are these psychologists all over this article that Alia just rocked my world with that wrote, and one of them was talking about these interpretations without evidence. And her advice, which is very simple and it seems like a no brainer, though, is to maybe just focus on things you know to be true and not inventing and surmising. Like, well, what if they're talking about this and you're just kind of inventing all that? If you concentrate on what you know to be true, then life gets a lot simpler. Right. But that same shrink also pointed out that one of the big problems with guessing, and especially guessing incorrectly, is that we tend to forget that we're guessing at stuff. We take our own guesses as fact. Right. And since they can be so horribly wrong, if you're guessing that other people are judging you even when they're not, you're going to basically walk around feeling judged all the time because you think that that's absolutely accurate when it's not necessarily fascinating. All right, you want to take a break? I was just going to say the same thing. All right, well, we'll take a break, and we are going to come back, talk a little bit about guessing on tests, how to win at rock, Paper, scissors, and apes and guessing. All right, so we've talked in esoteric terms about guessing so far, but I think what everyone really wants to know is how do I pass a multiple choice test? Right? Because that's another kind of guessing. Guessing runs the gamut from emotional to stuff like this. There have been different theories over the years. Like, well, first of all, back in the day, and I guess until semi recently for like, the Sat and act and other standardized tests, you would be penalized for an incorrect guess. I don't remember that, do you? Yeah, something wrong. It's like a quarter point deduction, I think was the deal. It sounds familiar. I think I may have blocked it out, but they don't do that anymore. So now they say, guess, guess if you don't know the answer. And that has run the gamut from always guess C because it's in the middle to this one person. I don't necessarily agree with this one, but they say just choose the same letter every time. Like, always guess B, and you're going to be right one out of every five times if it's ABCDE. Right. Which makes sense, though. I mean, if you jump around, you lessen your chances every time, whereas if you use the same one, you have the same chances of getting it right every time. Yeah, but this guy wrote he actually did a little studying. Paula POUNDSTONE. That wasn't his name, was it? It was William POUNDSTONE, her brother. Yeah. And he did actual research on he studied tests and did a statistical analysis of 100 different tests ranging from middle school, high school, college, professional exams, driver's test, firefighters, radio operators. He studied all kinds of tests. All right. And he has four, what he calls four ways to outsmart multiple choice tests. And a couple of these make a lot of sense to me. Yeah. The first one, he said is to ignore conventional wisdom because you kind of always have heard teachers say avoid answers that say never, always, or none. So like all of the above or none of the above, don't choose those. And he found the opposite to be true. Yeah. He found that none of the above or all of the above are correct 52% of the time. Yeah. So if that's offered up as an option and you have first of all, we should couch this with always try and deduce the answer with intelligence. Well, yeah. POUNDSTONE says there's nothing none of this is meant to replace knowledge of your subject. You get knowledge of your subject by studying ahead of time. But he's saying if you're facing a question on a multiple choice test and you have no idea what the answer is, there's some techniques you can use to increase the likelihood that your guests will be right. Right. So all of the above or none of the above? If you really have no idea about that, I would say pick that one. It's weird, though, because later on, first he says ignore conventional wisdom, but then later on, the one piece of conventional wisdom I've always heard he says is actually true. That is that you want to choose the longest answer on any multiple choice test. Right? Yeah. Because if you are saying something's true, most of the time, you have to add qualifying language to make it absolutely true, because you don't want somebody to come back and be like, well, that's actually not quite true. So when you start adding qualifying language into an answer, it gets longer than the other ones, and the test writer is probably not going to go to the trouble of making the wrong answers similarly long. Right. So the longest answer is very frequently the correct answer. Yeah, I thought that one was a really good piece of advice. That's the one I always heard that's really the only one I've ever known. Oh, really? Do you remember scantron sheets? Yeah. Were you ever so recklessly wild that you made a Christmas tree out of a test? Did you ever have the gall to do that? I never did. Bad. Because there are kids that listen to this, but I had to take a test one time that was not for school, but was something I didn't want to do. I won't get into the details, but I made a big snake. Well and it was bad. I look back and I'm ashamed of it. I made a mockery of their process and I wasn't that kind of kid. I don't know what happened. I was a good kid and a good student. I'm surprised to hear this. I know, but I feel so bad. It still really stands out in my mind as what a jerk move that was on my part. I'm not only surprised though, Chuck. I'm a little delighted, but outed myself. Yeah. All right. So one of the other pieces of advice from Doctor POUNDSTONE doctor? No, he's no doctor. He did write a book, though. It's called rock breaks scissors. Why does everything have to have a colon, though? It makes it smarter. Rock Breaks Scissors colon a Practical Guide to Out Guessing and Out Winning almost everybody. One of his other ones is to look at the surrounding answers because he's found that the correct answer choices are rarely repeated consecutively. So you rarely get two BS in a row as the answer. So if you definitely know the answer in front of it, the answer behind it, then it's probably not one of those two. So if you've just whittled down your options yeah, not bad advice. No, not bad at all. What else? And the last one is eliminate the outliers. If there's anything that seems like it doesn't really fit with the rest of the stuff, you can automatically get rid of that. And then conversely, if there are two answers that seem extremely close, they probably can be gotten rid of as well because it's the same thing, basically. So if you have, say, five potential answers and one of them doesn't fit with the other fork, get rid of that. Two of them are similar, get rid of those two, you're down to two. You got a 50 50 chance of getting it right. Yeah. I thought the example they used in here was pretty fascinating because they didn't even use the question or give the question on this Sat practice test. They just give the answer for ABCDE, haphazard is too radical, inherent is the controversial improvise is to startling methodical is to revolutionary, derivative is to gradual. And if you just look at the right hand side, you have radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary and gradual. And obviously gradual stands out as just being different than those other words. Right? Radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary, gradual doesn't make sense. Right? That's really a good piece of advice. And then if you look on the left hand side for ANC Haphazard, and Improvised are really close. So he says you should eliminate those two as well. Yeah. I wish I would have had this kind of advice for the Sat. Well, I'll tell you what. That's an actual Sat set of answers. If you ever run into haphazard, radical, inherent, controversial, improvised, startling, methodical, revolutionary, and derivative, gradual, you want to go with the methodical revolutionary. And we just got you into college. Yeah. You ever wanted to take the Sat again? Like, now? No. That's funny. I really don't. I've never wanted to. I've been glad since the moment I finished that test that I was done. I only took it twice. I took it once, and I was like, Good enough. Yeah, I took it twice. I did not score very well the first time, and I scored pretty well the second time. Oh, good. And I was like, I don't want to know which one is the real me. I said. So I'm done. Yeah, I scored blandly the first time, and I was like, that's fine. I'll get by on my wits and real life skill. Hey, look at you. You've done great. I've done. Okay. So you want to talk about rock, paper, scissors? A little bit, yeah. I thought this was awesome. Our friends over at Motherboard, and we can say that because we used to have a short lived column on Motherboard. Yeah. From Vice. Yes. They have a German outfit called, appropriately, Motherboard Germany, and they ran a post called when It Rock, Paper, Scissors every Time with math colon. What's with the colon? They basically got into how, using game theory, you can win at Rock, Paper, scissors basically all the time. Yeah, they did do the research, but they got together with some researchers at the University of Hangzhou in China, and they got 360 students to pair up and play 300 rounds each of Rock, paper, scissors. And then they track that, please let us stop. And they said, no, this is Communist China. Do it again. So they charted all those out and then summarized it with some strategies. I don't know if this you would win every time. No, there's always, like, what they call in rock, paper, scissors, the October Surprise, where somebody just pulled something out of nowhere, like a dynamite. Right. Yeah. Those are offshoots. Remember kids that would do those? Oh, really? Yeah. Some interesting people. Yeah. They would add other weapons, basically. Well, the Motherboard article talks about there's this other guy who came up with a whole different variation of it that's like, 25 or 26 different possible ones. I would never remember all of them. No, how could you? But at least one guy does. No one can remember 25 things. Yeah, right. Okay. There's a few things, and this falls in line with learning how to get better at guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar, if you arm yourself with a little bit of foreknowledge, you can better guess that what your opponent's going to come at you with in a game of rock, paper, scissors. Starting with that, men tend to open a game with rock. Of course they do. Yeah. It's such a man thing, rock smash. Right. So if your opponent is a man and there's a pretty good chance they're going to come out with rock the first time. Go paper. Yeah. Although they do say statistically, the opening scissors is the one that will win you the most games. But I guess that's if you're not playing a man, I guess they kind of counteract themselves or contradict themselves. Statistically, more women play rock, paper, scissors, I guess. Is that true? Here's one. I don't think so. I've been making a lot of this stuff up in this episode. Here's one that I thought was kind of funny. Basically, this is like the Babe Ruth move. Say what you're going to pick before the game. Like, I'm going to pick scissors next. And then the person's like, they're not going to pick scissors, but you just psyched them out. And when you throw scissors, baby, they're going to be blown away because they threw paper and they thought you were going to throw rock. Yeah, it's like The Princess Bride. What part was that with a man sitting at the place talking about the poison drink. Oh, yeah. Remember trying to get the other guy to drink the poison drink? I wish I never inconceivable. What is another strategy to counter attack? So if you played scissors and your opponent plays rock on the first move, then they win, obviously the chance that they have confidence now in that move. So you might be able to guess that they will play rock again because the chances are pretty high that they will do so then you anticipate that. Play paper. So basically it says play the option that wasn't played in the previous round. Right. And you can also mirror your opponent, right. So if you just want around, play what your opponent just played. Because they probably are thinking that you're going to play with the same gesture that you won with a second ago, really throws them off. So the idea is they're probably going to play the same thing that they just won with. And if you win, don't do that. Right? And that will frustrate them too. That's the rock, paper, scissors version of why are you hitting yourself? Right? You get into that thing when you both throw rock and you throw rock again, you both throw rock and you keep that's when the psychological warfare starts, like, who's going to break first and go with paper? And then ideally, you go with scissors and you have thus outsmarted your opponent. Right. So interesting. So we were talking you mentioned that we were going to talk about apes, right? Yeah. I didn't fully understand this, so maybe you can help me. I don't know that science fully understands it. Okay. But basically, let me give you an example here, okay? We were talking about how the brain, they're trying to figure out what regions of the brain are activated to form, like, this cascade of thought that results in a guess, right? Right. One of the things I ran across was one theory of how we guess what other people are going to do is through mirror neurons, where if we see somebody doing something, our mirror neurons are activated and it puts us in a mind of how we feel when we're doing something. And we use that past experience and that current sensation of the example I ran across as somebody grabbing an apple to guess what the person's going to do next. Right? So you would say, well, I know most times when I grab an apple, I take a bite out of it because I'm usually hungry when I grab an apple. That's after I rub it on my shirt to give it a nice shine, right? Well, that's just showboating if you guess the person is going to rub it on their shirt first before taking a bite, that's showing off your mirror neurons are the part of your brain that's triggered that sets that off. Right. That gives you the basis, the foundation for making a guess of what the person is going to do next. And then it gets run through again. That lens of your past experience, your history, everything from how you were raised to what you do with apples to what you've seen other people do with apples, and you come up with a short list of possibilities of what the person is going to do with that apple. And it includes rubbing on their shirt, taking a bite, putting it away in a cupboard, throwing it at a wall, and then you're going to pare down based on what you know about that person. Like, is that person neat freak? If so, they're probably going to put that apple away in a cupboard, which who does that except for neat freaks? And you may be right at your guests, right. Well, they're definitely not wall throwers at least, right. They whittle down your guesses. Yeah, that's how apparently that's one theory for how we make guesses, starting from brain based, going through personal history and then making the guess. And what some research found was that ultimately what we're doing here is called theory of mind, where we have a capability of bestowing the idea that other people have thoughts and feelings on other people. Right. It's so common to us that we take it for granted that we can attribute mental states to other people. But that's a pretty significant thing. And for a very long time, researchers thought that just humans were capable of that. But they found out that, no, actually, some apes at the very least, just apes can do the same thing. They can attribute mental states, like thoughts and feelings and emotions to other apes. And that shows, like, a higher form of reasoning. That was basically the gist of it. Okay, that makes sense. And they found that true in chimpanzees bonobos and orangutangs that's pretty neat. It is. One of the Sacha Baron Cohen, his cousin Simon Baron Cohen is one of the leaders in theory of mine. Oh, really? Yeah, we've talked about him before, remember? Yeah, but one of the big areas that it influences is autism. That people with autism tend to have more difficulty attributing mental states in theory of mind to other people than people who don't have autism. Right, right. But one of the ways that they find this out and I think one of the ways that they detect autism in young kids is by attributing false beliefs to other people. This is like an early part of human development. And apparently apes are good at it. Too. Where you are an observer and you're watching a scene and there's a little boy named Tommy. And Tommy comes in the room and he grabs the Three Musketeers off of the kitchen counter and he walks over to a chest of drawers and he puts it in one of the drawers and walks out of the room. Well, Sally comes in and the narrator says, sally is really hungry for Three Musketeers. She knows it was last on the table. Where is she going to look for the Three Musketeers? And people with theory of mine who are able to attribute false beliefs to other people will say, well, Sally is going to go look on the table even though it's not there any longer because Tommy put it in the drawer. Right. You can know that Sally can believe something that's no longer correct. If you have trouble with theory of mind, and specifically if you're testing for autism, the child with autism might say, well, Sally is going to go look in the drawer, because that's where it is. They have trouble attributing false beliefs to people. What's true is true, and everybody would know that. Right. That's one way that they test for autism. And it has to do with theory of mine. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And it all has to do with guessing. It all has to do with guessing, man. You got anything else? Well, just that Tommy should not be so touchy. Well, yeah, and, like, share the Three Musketeers around. Do you know why Three Musketeers are called that? I have no idea, my friend. It used to be a neopolitan candy that came in three different pieces chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. And they just went with chocolate after a while and kept the name because why not? Yeah. Interesting. Well, that's it about Three Musketeers for today. And hey, Chuck, before we go to listener mail, I want to give a huge congratulations from us to Stephen and jane, our buddies, the bars on the birth of their firstborn child. Yeah, how about that? Congratulations. You guy good looking baby too. Yeah, because they're not all good looking. No, it's true. Especially like right after birth. And because they're New Yorkers, they walked home from the hospital. Like, how great is that? I'm surprised they didn't take the subway. But you do. They are pretty new York. It's awesome. Yeah. Big congratulations. It's wonderful. Congratulations, bars. Okay, well, since we said congratulations, bars, it's time for listener mate. Yeah, this one's a little long, but it's about registering to vote in Texas. I got an email from Monica, and her story goes as such. 2013, I moved from Alabama to Texas, had a really horrific time trying to register to vote. Or I went to the county clerk's office. I looked online to check what I needed, downloaded the application so I could have it filled out in advance. It took my Alabama driver's license, my lease, my birth certificate, and because I'm divorced, my divorce decree stipulating my legal name change. You probably think that would be else you needed, right? No. Once I got there, I was told that the lease was not sufficient proof residency and that I would need to bring two pieces of official mail, like utility bill, tax bill. So I leave after spending the better part of a day waiting in line, waiting for my power and gas bill to come in order to add the other documents. A couple of weeks later, with all of the documents in hand, it took another day off work, went back to try again. This time, the clerk looks over the divorce decree and notices. My name change wasn't to go back to my maiden name. This was a name change that was ordered by a court in Alabama and explicitly spelled out in a notarized document that the clerk was disputing its validity. When I asked what the problem was, he said, well, that's in Alabama. If you want that to be your official name in Texas, you have to go through the courts, have a draw at noon in the center of town with a judge, a shoot out, what's that called? A shootout, a quick draw. Now, he said, you'll have to go through the courts and have it declared here in Texas. After literally blinking at him silently with my mouth agape for a moment, I said, you're telling me that the divorce in Alabama is a valid because it was adjudicated in Alabama that I am going to have to go through the whole process of getting a divorce again for it to be official in Texas? Is that correct? His reply was, well, when you put it that way, it sounds silly, but yes. So I demanded to speak with a supervisor. Clerk got the supervisor, who looked over everything and asked why I didn't just go back to my maiden name, which I replied, it doesn't matter what I changed my name to. You have the official document signed by a judge and notarized and this should be all you need. Because of the Constitution of the United States that all judicial rulings and contracts that are valid in one state are valid in every state. At that point, the clerk walked off, the supervisor said, okay, gave my stuff to another clerk, who simply smiled, entered my application and took my check, pointed me toward the desk where I could get my picture taken. And then she closes by saying, imagine how this would have gone. I would have been an hourly worker, had less of an understanding boss and not known about the ins and outs of the Constitution or didn't have access to all these documents. Chances are I would have been disenfranchised driving around with an expired license. These laws are absolutely created to suppress voter registration and participation, and they work spectacularly well. That is Monica's story. Thanks, Monica. And welcome to Texas, too, by the way. Yeah, if you want to get in touch with us and tell us a real life adventure that has something to do with one of our episodes, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark and at Syskodcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryan on Facebook or at Facebook. Comstuffysheno. You can send us an email, the stuffpodcast athoustepworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder order one week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…t-watch-list.mp3	How to Land on a Government Watch List	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-to-land-on-a-government-watch-list	The U.S. Government's Consolidated Terrorist Watch List keeps track of people who are known or suspected terrorists. But what how do people end up on it, and what happens if your name is similar to a suspected terrorist? Tune in to find out.	The U.S. Government's Consolidated Terrorist Watch List keeps track of people who are known or suspected terrorists. But what how do people end up on it, and what happens if your name is similar to a suspected terrorist? Tune in to find out.	Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:35:52 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=15, tm_min=35, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=230, tm_isdst=0)	31557262	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workxcom. Hey, and welcome to the truck show. I'm josh with me always. Of course. This is Chuck. Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. That's weird star the Chuck show. Sound like you said the Chuck show. Said it twice. You should know the Chuck show. Did you hear it at that time? I did. How are you doing, Chuck? Get out of here. You're fired. I've been waiting for this day for two years. That would be awful in such, like I don't even want to say relief. That sounds awful, but you know how it is. It would be devastating. And also, like, my brain can relax, and then the next day, I'd be all upset again. I know what you're talking you know what I'm saying? I used to have an alternative weekly newspaper, and whenever we were up on deadline, deadline, deadline, and we'd missed the deadline, there was a sense of abject failure that was encapsulated by the greatest sense of relief you've ever experienced. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't think I feel relieved here because we got this, right? Yes. Reassure me again. You got it. Okay, good. Chuck, josh. Okay. We should probably chill out a little bit, because what we're about to talk about is to some, a necessary evil. To others, it's brain dead national security that we should have been doing since 1787. Sure. And to others, it's an egregious affront to civil liberties of citizens. Yeah. But you know what I found? I did some research on the ACLU. I haven't found anyone that says we shouldn't have a watch list. No, but it's just like, hey, if you're going to have a watch list, you're going to do it better than this. Better than this. Yeah. ACLU as well. And I think everybody just assumed I was talking about the ACLU, and I said that some people find it to civil liberties. We're researching this. I had this little tick in the back of my head. Right. It was burning and saying, like, there is something about 911. And it was like, oh, yeah. There were all these different warnings. All these different agencies had information about Al Qaeda. Apparently, Bush was briefed before, like, the month before the New York Times reported back in 2004. Right. And Al Qaeda was being watched. We were aware that there was a hijacking plot, and all of these people, most of them at least, were on watch lists. But the problem was, all of these agencies were in the midst of, like, some serious turf wars. Right. And no one was talking to one another. No agency was sharing this information with one another. Yeah. It's kind of par for the course, from what I understand. Yeah. But I think that changed in large part after 911. Right. What's up? If it didn't change in spirit at the very least, it changed in practice, on paper, because all those different lists after 911 happened were consolidated pretty quickly after 911 happened, I think May of 2003, bush signed something called Homeland Security Presidential Directive Six. And the first one signed in 2001, I believe, established Homeland Security as an agency. Right. Two years later, he signed six, basically saying, have you read it? Two, three, four, and five or six? Six. Is there two, three, four and five? Yeah. Okay. I figured there was 1325. It loses focus towards the end. The last one was signed on Bush's last day in office. And it basically says, all those international treaties we signed that say the Arctic and the Antarctic belong to everybody no one can lay a claim on, we revoked the part about the Arctic. We decided that the US is, quote, an Arctic nation, and therefore it has to protect its Arctic interests, specifically natural resources, as a matter of national security. That's in there. Yeah. So I kind of lost focus for them. But early on, with Presidential Directive Sticks that said, we need to take all of these watch lists and create a central watch list, and we need to actually administer it or administrate it properly. Yeah, that was big. And that created Chuck, the consolidated terrorist watch list. Right. Because it's consolidated. It makes a lot of sense. It sure does. Yeah. So that's the government list that everyone is long joked about. There were lists before, but the one that everybody thought about prior to 2003 didn't bear any resemblance to this one. This is the list. Anyone who's ever been even remotely suspected of being a terrorist what's the language? Engaging in terrorist activities. Right. Suspected to have engaged in constituting in preparation for an aid of or related to terrorism. Yes. And apparently associating with a known terrorist isn't enough to get you on that list. Really? Yeah, because after September 11, there were not many guidelines. It was just sort of let's just put a bunch of names on the list. Yeah. I mean, not that willingly, obviously, but they realized they needed to refine it over the years. And I think in 2009 was the last major revision, a 72 page memorandum in February 9 that clarified what the minimum substantive derogatory criteria was. What is it? Well, it's a 72 page memorandum, but associating with a known terrorist, suspected terrorist, is not enough. There had to be evidence that you actually supported terrorism, and it generally requires more than a single source, which is good. Really? Yeah. Like, hey, this one guy said you were so, boom, you're on the list. Right. So they've refined it some over the years. Right. Prior to 2009, I think it was a little easier to get on there. Yeah. And that's when a lot of the press was generated about this. A lot of the media was up in arms or reporting about people being up in arms there are tons of stories and all that. Yeah. And you can kind of tell how open it was by just the sheer numbers. Right. In 2003, I think the thing opened up for business with 325,000 people, 325,000 names. Yeah. That was in six oh, 2006. Yeah. Now there's over a million, supposedly. See, that number is highly disputed. It is. So the ACLU says a million or more. A lot of people reported that, but that's just the ACLU estimate. The TSA says it's less than $400,000. And they threw in that 95% of those people are foreign nationals. Yeah. But 95% most not even in the country. Even they say, see, I can see them. That 95% struck me as the same as saying, like, one of your buddies being like, I'm 99.99% positive. I wonder how accurate that is. Yeah. It's hard to get stats on this stuff because a lot of it is kept under wraps for a good reason, including the criteria who's on there. And yeah, like you said, for good reason. There is it's a very orwellian circular logic. And of course, I think everyone who pressed play on this new that the word orwellian was going to come up at least once, knowing us. Right. But they are saying that they can't release information on this list because then you know how to beat the list. Yeah. And it beats the service. And I'm a defender of civil liberties, and I will even admit that this is a tough situation because you can't just do everything behind closed doors, but you also can't open it wide open because then it kind of defeats the system in a lot of ways. So this is a tough one. It is very tough when it comes to that. That number of the names on there, it's not necessarily individual people. That's different spellings of single name. Yeah. That's aliases of these people. So there could be a fraction of that number of actual people that are on this list. Right. But there's all these different spellings or whatever. Yeah. Countries are on the list. Not like entire country. Well, entire countries, but not saying your entire country is on the list. It's just, I think countries from that country. Yeah. I think the red flag is raised not necessarily because Israel was on the list recently and they said, oh, that was a big mistake. Israel shouldn't be on the list. Huh. Obviously. Yeah. But that just happened, I think, within the past few months. Is that right? That would have made a great intro. Yeah. I like your intro. Thanks. Yes. So with nominating, right, you said now it takes more than one source to get you on there. That's what they say. Apparently, before that revision, somebody from the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the FDA, the SEC, pretty much any government agency could say NASA. Hey. Yeah. Really? Hey. I think any government agency, anybody from a government agency could nominate you and you're nominated, right? Yes. That means you're put before or you physically aren't, but your name is put before the Terrorist Review and Examination Unit and they start checking things out and then pass you along to the Terrorist Screening Center and the Watch List, if you are deemed by their criteria to be a threat. Right. And the Terrorist Screening Center is a branch of the FBI and they're the ones who are responsible for the watch list. Right. And it's most closely associated with flying. It's a no fly list is what it's often called. Well, no, those are two different lists. Oh, are they? Yeah, there's a no Fly list, there's a select a list, and then there's the Terrorism Watch list. Okay, lay it on me. Well, the no Fly list only has like 5000 people on it. Okay. But it's different. But if you're on the no Fly list, obviously you're also on the Terrorism Watch list. Right. But as I understand it, if you're on the terrorism Watch list, you may pop up when you go through a TSA screening. Oh, yeah. So, like, if you're on this terrorism watch so if you're on a no Fly list, your name pops up and they just take you to prison, essentially. Well, they can do a range of things from take you away to be investigated and frisked and never heard from again, or the people have been arrested. Right, okay. But these are people who are probably, like, known terrorists or not. Okay, but on the no fly list? Yeah, both. That's what created a lot of the problems, is that, like, an eight year old boy was on the no fly list, and this lady researched a Muslim woman from I can't remember where she's from, but she was a Stanford duck Toural candidate. And you can get placed on the no fly list while you're on vacation, and then you can't come back into the country, like band vacation. There are army veterans stranded in Colombia and other countries that can't come back because their name is erroneously on the no Fly list. And it takes a long time to get it off. I would imagine 67 days to get off the Terrace Watch list. Right. That's the average. But I don't know about that. I bet it takes longer than that. Okay. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So, Chuck, I guess when you fly also, there's this program called Safe Flight that's administered by the Terrorist Screening Center all right. Where every flight manifest is checked against the list. That's good. It is good. That's the first step, I guess. Yeah. So the Terrorist Screening Centers, so are they in charge of the select list and the no Fly list as well? It's all under Homeland Security. Okay, but this is FBI, right? Okay. So they're maintaining these lists, but they're also tracking the people who are on the list. Hopefully the right people. But if your name apparently is on the Terrorist Watch List, there is a screen in Northern Virginia. No one knows where. No one can say where. Anyone who knows, and you are a red dot on that screen, and you are tracked constantly, apparently. I don't know if the dot is red, necessarily, but the color changes depending on the length of time it's been since you made contact or a law enforcement officer make contact with you, like since the last time you flew, last time you got pulled over for a ticket, last time they came into your house, whatever, the color changes. But there's someone who watches you when you get pulled over and you're on this list. Well, if you or I get pulled over, your name's run, right? Yeah. If it pops up, then the law enforcement officer is alerting the Terrorist Screening Center. From what I read, most of the time, the Terrorist Screening Center already knows you just got pulled over. Wow. Yeah. Well, that's neato. And that's NPR's reporting too. And it was Dean and Temple RASTON who actually went to the center. Right. It's not like, rumor. Yes. I hope we don't come across as being like, oh, they shouldn't do, like, police terrorists and things like that, because that's not the case. I don't think so. Okay. Although John Lewis the name John Lewis was on the no fly list. John Lewis. I think he's still a representative here, isn't he? Yeah. Okay. I think so. From Georgia, from Atlanta. I believe he's a civil rights leader as well. And his name was on there. He kept getting hassle going through the airport, and not because he was suspected of any kind of terrorist activity, but because his name matched one of the spellings of a name of somebody on the Terrorist Watch list. Right. That's it. Every other John Lewis. Right. That's one good way to find out that your name is likely on the terrorist watch list is getting held up at the airport. Yeah. John Lewis isn't the only one. Very famously. There was a nun named Sister Glenn Anne McPhee. Right. Yeah. And she apparently spent a lot of time getting interrogated, so much so that the Council of Bishops called the White House and said, you got to take her off. How much was she flying, is what I wanted to know. I don't know, since she was hassled a lot. I didn't know nuns traveled that much. Sure. The Sister of the Flying Cross of the Flying Nun. Yeah. And as I mentioned, there's an eight year old, famously, in New York, and even though they came out and said there are no eight year olds on the list, it's a myth. There is an eight year old on the list. I don't know if he still is, but the parents said, no, he's right here. Come meet him. He's a Boy Scout. And the first time he was pulled aside in Frisked was when he was two. Wow. At an airport two years old on the terrorist watch list was frustrated. Yeah. Pretty neat. So that's led to a lot of calls about reducing the watch list, making it more focused. Yeah. And apparently it sounds like Obama made those changes in 2009. Right. What was that? What happened there? Well, what you were talking about, the criteria is narrowed a lot more. Like it takes two sources to get you on the list. Associating with somebody, we'll keep you off the list. And then I wonder if redress has gotten any easier. I don't know. redresses the process of sort of applying to get off the list, and that's for the terrorism watch list, apparently, the no fly list. There is not much of a process going on there, and it's led to a lot of frustration from people like John Lewis. Right. But yeah. Now you apply, and I think you have to apply through the agency. You can't just call the FBI or no, you can't call Homeland Security. You have to apply through the agency that gave you trouble. Got you. Like, the TSA or whoever it is. Got you. And then they give you what's called a redress number. So when you book travel, you include that. Oh, you do? Yeah, and it's basically like, I've been cleared. Here's proof. I'm sure you're not on any list, then. So, Chuck, how do you get on this list? Aside from the obvious of being a terrorist, a known terrorist or a suspected terrorist, while appropriately suspected terrorists? You could be a member of some sort of extremist organization. Like, even a hardcore, like, environmental organization might land you on the list. Like Elf. Yeah. What are they? Earth Liberation Front. Yes. They like to burn down subdivisions that are built over clear cut forests. Oh, really? Really. They like to burn down any subdivision where any trees are sacrificed or whatever. You know the kind of where they go in and cut all the trees down, build everything and then go replant like little saplings. Right. Those kind of subdivisions. Yeah. Elf likes to go in before they're populated and burn them all to the ground. Really? And then maybe leave a garage standing and spray paint Elf on it. That's domestic terrorism. Really? Yeah. The Order of the Twelve Monkeys. It is, isn't it? Sort of, yeah. If you're a member of Elf, if you're like a member of, I would imagine any group that's been deemed a hate group or an extremist group, the domestic group, you might be on that list. You're probably on the list. But again, I think most people accept that at the very least, american citizens are in the minority on the government terrorist watch list. Right, yes, which is what I was trying to say, which is why it's easy for 98% of their people, or 95% to say like, oh, what's the big deal? Wait until you're one of those 5%. Right, sure. You know what I mean? Sure. You found some other ways, too, though. Some more mundane ways. Yes. Sadly I shouldn't say sadly. I found it on maximum. The Men's magazine? Yes. I just did a Google search. It's not like I was like, what does Maximum have to say about this? Right. There are four that I found that I thought were pretty good. One is searching using Google. Could get you flagged. We can be watched under the Patriot Act searching for certain terms, I guess. Yes. Okay. We do a lot of research. Man, that's kind of scary to think about. Well, I imagine that if that's the case, then yeah, just researching for this podcast. Got it. Exactly. Last minute flights. Apparently after a certain number of last minute flights, you will be flagged. And even just doing your immediate flight, like just the first time you do it, they're going to pay extra attention to you because you're booking a last minute flight. Right. And apparently patterns, government loves patterns. And if you're operating within a normal pattern, you're likely going to be less scrutinized. Okay. When you suddenly book a last minute flight, then they're going to be like, well, that's abnormal, and we are going to pay attention to you. Or if you pay with cash, that's abnormal, we're going to pay attention to you. There's certain patterns that the normal average person does without even thinking, and when you act outside of that, then you're going to invite more scrutiny. Apparently, email as well is also under. The Patriot Act likes to be watched. So if you say something stupid on there yeah. So basically you and I are on the list. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. The Homeland security this week said that the terra watch list is exempt from the privacy act, which was brought about after watergate. It basically permits citizens to obtain files about them with the intent of correcting it, which is what this would be all about. And they said, no, we're not under the privacy act. Yeah, and that's the biggest problem with the ACLU, is put a system in place. First of all, like you said, they think it's bloated. Yeah. 2009 justice department inspector general report found that 35% of the nominations of the list were outdated. Yeah, so it's like it's counterproductive even. It's not like they're just saying it's not fair. It's not doing the job that it should be doing if it's bloated. But their whole point is just have a system in place, a transparent system in place where you can go, I guess, redresses that for the terrorism watch list, but it doesn't sound like it's very good system. Well, they also have a really big bone of contention in that this is technically unconstitutional. There's something against unlawful search and seizure, search and seizure without due process or at least probable cause. Right. And if you're an eight year old boy scout, there's really no way of justifying the fact that you're being searched without probable cause. Right. Just because there's terrorists out there doesn't give probable cause to some individual who's not a terrorist to be searched. Right. It's kind of that simple. Yeah. But again, as you say, it's really tough to say, oh, we need to just do away with this. Sure. I don't think that's the case. I think there's better ways to do it. Yeah, I got a couple of more startling things. On the state level, you can't profile federal policies prohibit that. And you can't on the state level either, but they allow states to. They have different criteria for each state on what is deemed suspicious, at least not necessarily. This will get you nominated, but red flags, at least. And in Ohio, I'm sorry, immersion in a purely Muslim environment could get you red flagged. They advise landlords in some states to be alert on tenants who prefer ground floor apartments and who have little furniture. And then the study of technical subjects like engineering. Just engineering. It's interesting. Do you remember when the Patriot Act was first being discussed for three minutes? One of the mandates in it was that postal employees were expected to spy and report on people on their route. And the post office actually pushed back and said, we're not doing that. Yeah, that's right. And they won. It was taken out, but it was in there. Like they wanted to deploy the postal service as domestic spies. They're like, Dude, we just don't want to get bit by dogs. That's all we're asking. We got enough on our plate as it is. I got to redress stat for you, too. All right. That Congo found. This is written by Kristin Conner from mom. Never told you. Yeah. And she's got a new host we should mention. Yes. New co host. Molly is no longer there and they're doing a great job with no. And best of luck to Molly, of course. She's writing her heart out right now. Yeah. Sitting right next to you. Yeah. Anyway, Congreg found this stat, and from 2005 to 2000, and 735 percent of people who complained that were on the redress list, I guess, filed for redress were kept on the list. 45% were either granted lower security or removed. And that's only how many? 80%. 80%. The other 20 were never heard from again. That's what I wondered. It doesn't have anything about the other 20%. It's funny and all that, but again, it would stink if you're on that accidentally. But at the same time, we're also talking about the same government that operated like, secret prisons overseas, too, for a while. Yeah. Or if you're one of these veterans that's stuck in Columbia. Who are you talking about? This one ACLU article I mentioned found there are two army veterans that are stuck outside the United States. And then the New York Times article was that lady with her 14 year old daughter was stuck in Malaysia for a while. That's crazy. And a UK officer, because different countries have their own watch list and Britain has one. He got his wife put on the list so she couldn't come home. Wow. She's been in Turkey for three years until they found out about it. Wow. And then he was fired. Like, he was set to get promoted. And they were like, Wait a minute. They were doing their research. They're like, Your wife's on the no fly list. And he's like, what? Blind me. She's been in Turkey for three years. That's funny. It's an interesting way to get out of whatever he didn't want to do. Yes. Taking out the garbage. He just got trash piled up. Now he's like Sylvia Plat no shell silverstein poem where the girl doesn't want to take the garbage out. Yeah. Sylvia is something silver suits, snout or something like that. And then chuck. Lastly, what do you want to if you want to know, obviously we're not on the list, or we weren't the last time we flew. Because we flew. Nobody took us aside. Although you and I now always get pat downs. Oh, really? I just don't trust that back scatter thing. I don't think everybody knows enough about it. I'm sure it could be fine. Oh, you know the option. You request the pat down every time you interesting. And I have to say, they almost never use the metal detector anymore. Really? Never. So, yeah, we always do the pat down now. And it's nice you get to know the TSA agent a lot more closely as they patting you down with the backside of their hands yeah. And telling you what they're doing ahead of time. I'm going to touch your waistband. I know how to build up a sense of tension. Does it? Yeah. If you want to know if you're on this list, you can just fly, right? Try to go fly. That's going to do something. It is. If you've been pulled over and not detained for, like, speeding or something like that. If you just got in a standard ticket, your name is not on this list. You're not on this list. True. Apply for information about yourself, not to the Terrorist Watch list, but through something called the Specifically Designated Nationals and Block Persons List that the treasury has. So that means you can't do business. Right? Exactly. You can't get a loan. Yeah. You can't do business with these people. It's a way of freezing somebody out of dealing in the United States, making money in the United States, usually because there's some sort of criminal. Right. If your name is on that list, there may be a high likelihood that you are on the Terrace Watch list. Right. And even if you're not, you want to get your name off that list. Because if you want to do business yeah. Eventually somebody can be like, I can't loan you this money, Josh. I thought it was good. It was not good. I wasn't prepared. I think it saved us. No. It always gets so tricky with these civil liberties podcasts because you want it both ways. You don't want terrorists coming into the country, but you also don't want your friend, who's just a friendly Muslim, to be on the list. It's tricky ground. I don't know how I feel about it personally, between you and me. As long as it's amounting to little more than an inconvenience and there's still pressure to make it better, to do a better job of this. I'm for the list, but I'm maintaining a list. Yeah, but being stuck in another country is yeah. Again, it's my personal experience until some terrorist named Josh Clarke ends up on the list, and I'm cool with. It and you're stuck. I'm Jerk Smith from Iowa. If you want to know more about the Terrace watch list and probably end up on the Terrace watch list yourself, JK, you can type in government watch list in the search bar@howstepworks.com. You could also probably search that on Maximum, too. It'll bring up some stuff. And since I said Maxim, that means it's time for listener mail. I thought it was going to be time for top ten Sexiest broads on Reality TV. I'm sure it is on Maximum. If this were on Maximum podcast, for sure. I can't believe that. I bet you that article that they had had not clip art, but the stock photo of some guy, like kind of halfdrunk on a plane, some bachelor arguing with a stewardess. It's in the last one about email. It's saying that if the plane on the way to spring break is delayed, like bomb or fire so they can get off and then drink, this is a very Maximum thing to do. That's a Maximum if I ever heard one. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this did you call for listener, ma'am? Yeah, he did. We hear the day it was in this time I'm going to call this very sweet email from a sister about her sister. Oh, I was hoping we would do this one. I think this is sweet too. I've been meaning to write for a while now, but haven't found an episode I thought it could contribute to. Then I realized how much the entire podcast means to me. My twin sister is married to a Marine. They move all over the country. She's currently in Hawaii. We miss each other dearly and it may sound funny, but your show makes us feel a little closer. We especially enjoy the Shrunken Heads episode. You had a good flow and we're both very witty. We even call each other skullbag. As an inside joke. The Spam episode made us laugh. My sister's name is Tony Anne. In high school, she was nicknamed Tony Spam because of the rhyme and her affinity for the canned pork product just made sense all around. She actually went to Spam Jam last spring, I guess in Hawaii, of course, and was a little disappointed that it wasn't as much fun as she expected. That's a very serious event. Oh, is it? I don't know what she was expecting. Right. We have so many inside jokes pertaining to your show. We run with Josh and Chuck. We hang at home with Josh and Chuck. And I think our friends are starting to think we're actually friends with Josh and Chuck. Anyway, although we are 6000 miles and six hour time difference apart, we love to listen to the show each week and talk about all the jokes and the content. Thanks for bringing my other half a little closer every Thursday. Or if you know about Tuesday, he's missing out on half the fun. If you could read this letter. I know it would mean the world to my twin. If not, I'm just happy to know you all know that your show helps make our separation easier. One half of the stuff you should know fan Melissa from Babylon, New York. That is very sweet. And I guess Tony Anne in Hawaii. Tony Spam. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Tony Spam and Melissa for listening to us and discussing what we say. That's still, after three years, it's just out there to me. What people talk about things that you and I say. Yeah. That's crazy. We're in a bubble in here. Yeah. If we are overlooking some huge pratfall to being on a government watch list or even being a government watch list, let us know. We want to hear you're stuck on the no fly list stories, the terrorist watch list stories. Whatever you got, you can tweet to us s YSK podcast. That's our Twitter handle. Visit us on Facebook. That's facebook. Comstuffiesnow. And you can always send a good old fashioned email to us via stuffpodcast@howtoffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, stuff from the Future. Join House Deforc staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can actually new episodes early. Download the app today."
https://podcasts.howstuf…lar-disorder.mp3	How Bipolar Disorder Works	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-bipolar-disorder-works	Suffering from bipolar disorder means a lot more than your garden variety mood swings. Bouts of mania and depression are just the headlines. There are also theories that there's a link between bipolarism and creativity. Learn all about this disruptive, ye	Suffering from bipolar disorder means a lot more than your garden variety mood swings. Bouts of mania and depression are just the headlines. There are also theories that there's a link between bipolarism and creativity. Learn all about this disruptive, ye	Thu, 08 May 2014 13:00:00 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=128, tm_isdst=0)	35998978	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. 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This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace. comStuff and use the offer code stuff. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckle Bryant that makes this stuff you should know. Jerry's here too. So it's all good. The original gang. Yeah. How's it going? Pretty good, man. How are you? I'm great. Good. Okay, let's get to it. Yeah. Do you have a good set up for this one? No, I think it kind of speaks for itself. I mean, it's bipolar disorder. It's been around long enough, and I think it's been exposed. Sure enough, people have been educated enough that anything I do would just seem jack asses. Well, we were just talking before we hit record about whether or not we know anyone who has bipolar disorder, and I think most people probably know someone. You might not even know it, but I definitely like, I had a very specific friend in college who had it, and I was, like, 20. So you didn't know about that stuff when you were 20? At least I didn't. So it was very weird that's first time I'd ever heard the term, and, you know, he fit the profile as far as being super up and full of life and energy one moment and then super down and very troubled, to say the least. Yeah. And these are words I'm using for my 20 year old self. I just thought, man, he's like, he's super up, super happy, or now he's super down. But that's sort of a rudimentary way to describe it. Yeah. I mean, that is bipolar disorder in a nutshell. That's why they used to call it manic depressive disorder, too. Yes. When did they stop that? I think maybe in the 90s, it seems like, to me. Sounds about right. And you're not too far off from everybody knowing somebody with bipolar disorder because apparently about 5.7 million adults in the US. Are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I think 3% of the population worldwide is estimated to suffer from it. Yeah. And you said adults. It can manifest itself in children, but generally mid teenage years and up is when you're going to first start seeing signs of it. Yeah. 15 to 25, from what I understand. In general. Yeah. And as you said, Chuckers, like, the condition of bipolarity is characterized by intense frequent swings from very happy to very sad. And it's much beyond the average person's mood swings because if you're 15 years old and you're listening to this and you're like, well, sometimes I'm unhappy, and then other times on set, that's normal. Yeah. This is far beyond normal, like, where you are in either case, like, you say, super up or super depressed, it's nowhere near what you are normally. And in some cases of the most severe bipolar disorder, there is no normal. It's either totally one way or totally the other. And the person suffering from it just swings back and forth, maybe over the course of a couple of weeks and lives like that. Yeah. Sadly, we have a couple of stats about the effects. We'll get too early here. You are 40% less likely to have a job if you are bipolar. That seems really high. Yeah. Ten times more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, which has a cyclical effect because alcohol and drugs are really rough on you if you have bipolar disorder. Well, yeah, they can trigger a swing one way or the other. Yeah, I saw that in my friend, actually, in college. And 15% of bipolar patients successfully commit suicide out of the 25% to 50% who try it. And those numbers are startingly high, right? Yeah, that's very high. Start alonely. Startlingly is that word. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about this. I've already kind of given a rough overview, but let's dig into the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Yeah, they're basically they characterize two swings, mania and depression. If you're having a manic episode, you're going to be in a great mood. You're going to be high on life, you're going to have a lot of energy. You're probably going to be talking really fast. It's called lageria. Say what? Lageria. What's that? Excessive talkativeness? Yeah, just really fast thoughts, like everything. What was that movie with Brad Cooper and De Niro? Silver Linings Playbook. No, the other one. You're going to say that although that is what other movie have those two been in together? The one where you take a pill and you can tap into more of your brain, which is DeNiro was in that, too. Yeah. I don't know the name of that movie. I know what you're talking about. It wasn't a very good movie, but exceptional or amazing or something like that. I can't remember. Yeah. This is at the point when people are yelling into their car stereo, including Bradley Cooper. Yeah. He's like, you idiots. Yes. And I can't believe I just forgot about Silver Lining's Playbook, because that directly covers this. Yeah, but what I was talking about was the manic. He was almost manic in that other movie where just ideas all the time at hyper speed and he just couldn't do them fast enough. Yeah. So that's characteristic of the manic episode. Sorry, Bradley Cooper. You're distracted. You don't maybe need as much sleep. You're restless, you're irritable. You might want to have a lot of sex. Everything's just magnified, I think. Yeah. And with a manic episode, all of this is often accompanied by a sensation of euphoria. So most people who suffer from bipolar disorder don't go seeking treatment when they're in a manic state. Right. Because they can like that. Yeah. For some people, a manic state, you can have all these things, but instead of a company by euphoria, it's a company by irritability, quickness to anger. Sure. So it's not all fun and games for everybody, but for the most part, if you're in a manic episode and you're bipolar, you enjoy the manic episodes way more than you enjoy the depressive episodes. Yeah. And I think both are super rough on friends and family, because in the manic state, you don't know quite what you're going to get. Right. Well, you engage in very risky behavior. You may make a bunch of risky investments. You may buy a lot of stuff. Yeah. It can go so far as to you can have psychotic symptoms. So in a manic episode where you're displaying psychotic symptoms, you may think you are God or totally infallible untouchable, can do no wrong, and then that can feed into the symptoms of engaging in very risky behavior. Yes. You could even hallucinate, like full on see things. Yeah. You suffer from delusions and hallucinations. So the DSM says that if you have a certain number of manic symptoms for at least one week, then that is considered a manic episode. So that has kind of changed, apparently, with the DSM Five. This is DSM Four stuff. Got you with the DSM five. I think the prevailing idea was, what's with this whole bipolar otherwise specified, not otherwise specified. It's just a total cop out, which we'll get to in a minute. But the idea that there's like this you don't fit this one or this one, so you fit this generic third. I thought the same thing, actually. I'm glad that's changed. I think they've kind of dug in to diagnosis even more, changed some of the thresholds and exclusionary criteria, and now it's supposed to be a little more laser guided. But one of the things they did change was that, for example, I think, as little as five days of an episode is enough to constitute a diagnosis, rather than, like, a week or two weeks or something. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. And then you have hypomania, which is sort of like mania light. It's just a less intense version of mania. So that's the manic swing. The depressive side of the coin is exactly what you think, but amplified by a million. You're not just sad, you feel despair and you're sluggish and you can't focus, and you're restless and you're irritable. These are where the suicidal thoughts are coming. So it's not your garden variety depression right. That you might feel on a day to day basis, because we all feel that. That's right. And you might also experience mixed symptoms, which is called a mixed episode. So, for example, you might have a lot of intense energy, but you might also be suffering from feelings of utter despair, which sounds like a horrible combination. And basically, you can take, say, any mania and then add to some of the depressive suicidal thoughts. Managing suicidal thoughts. Right. That would be a mixed episode. Right. And then you have something called rapid cycling, which is when these swings are presenting themselves. Do you know what DSM. Five says? I couldn't find that. It had a lot of changes to the rapid cycling. I think that what they found was that drug that doesn't necessarily respond to drugs very well. Right. And they've kind of started to understand rapid cycling a little more, but I don't know what they changed to the diagnostic criteria for that. Well, here they characterize it by a year of at least four episodes of mania, hypomania or depression. Right. So if you have four episodes in a year, you've got rapids, apparently. That's rapid. Right. I think it can be a lot more rapid than that. I think that's the minimum to be considered rapid cycling. Okay. All right. So what are the different types of bipolar disorder today? There's definitely bipolar one, right. Which is here, essentially, your life is going from one end of the spectrum to the other. There's not periods in between, really, where you're stable. Right. That's the most severe, obviously. Yeah. You have bipolar two, which the sequel. That's right. That means you have at least one episode of depression and at least one hypomanic episode, but you could feel somewhat stabilized in between. Right. Which is a big differentiator, apparently, between one and two. And then, like we said, there used to be bipolar disorder not otherwise specified, aka the cop out. Right. And there was a lot of people who were just kind of fitting into this and weren't necessarily getting the right diagnosis. And I guess they've expanded the criteria for bipolar one and two, and then they've also kind of looked into massive depressive disorder and then said, well, this has some aspects of mania as well, and that's technically a bipolar disorder, too. So they kind of did away with it a little bit, I think, because they thought they were looking bad. Yeah, it's so hard to categorize I know they take a lot of heat. It's tough to categorize mental illness because it's so different for everyone. Well, a lot of people criticize the approach. The basis of the DSM is tell me how you're feeling. Right. Which is flawed in and of itself to begin with, because subjective reporting is just completely unreliable. Yeah. But you can't take a blood test and not have a result. And then, secondly, to further subjectively interpret those subjective self reports into supposed criteria, and then saying, well, you have Xx and X, but you don't have X, so technically you're not bipolar, which means your insurance won't cover these meds that you need. Right. The whole system is very screwed up, which is why they're hoping to do things like create blood tests. Right. Say you have bipolar one and it's because of these neurotransmitters are messed up. So you'll respond very well to this specific dose of this medicine. I don't think we're more than ten years, 15 years away from it. Boy, that would be great, but it's going to be a long, horrible ten or 15 years for people who are suffering the most from bipolar disorder. Yeah, that's true. That can't come fast enough. And then the final, unless that's gone away, too, cyclothymia is that still around. That is the least severe, and that is at least two years of hypomania and milder depression swings. And I think also I believe it's still around, but I think it's changed a little, too, and I think that apparently the child psychologists of the field said there's a lot of exuberance and even mania symptoms that are totally normal in adolescents. So let's tighten us up a little bit, because we don't want kids to be diagnosed with bipolar just because their parents think that they're hyper. Right. Put my 15 year old on lithium. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that they managed to kind of change the criteria for cyclothymia, saying this is just above the normal threshold of mood swings. Right, yeah. So like we said, they don't know I don't know if we did. They don't still know what causes it directly, nor do they know how the drugs that treat it are effective. Yeah. Try this out. It's like, we know spaghetti will start to stick to a refrigerator. No know exactly why, but let's throw it at the side anyway. But what they do know is that genetics can play a role. You are going to have an increased likelihood to develop it if someone in your like, if your parents had it, let's say, but they also have these odd outliers, like you could be a twin and your twin has bipolar disorder, but you don't. Right. So it's just sort of a mystery still. Well, yeah, it seems like people are genetically predisposed and then an environmental factor can trigger their bipolar disorder, like a really rough childhood or a bad life event or something really good. Yeah, that's true. But a sudden swing in normalcy and a person that is genetically predisposed to bipolar disorder is what can kick it off in your life. Yeah. We already talked about drugs and alcohol. That can definitely trigger seasonal changes. I think we've talked about seasonal affective disorder sad, which think most people experience a little bit of that. Right. But again, if you're genetically predisposed for the way I see it and this is totally unscientific, but just from researching this right. It seems like there's a normal baseline for brain chemistry, and it's not a thin line. It's like a pretty good sized block. Yeah. And it's easy to also get outside of that one way or the other. Right. And when you are outside of it, you have the symptoms of bipolar disorder. And if you're bipolar one, you're just constantly going from the top to the bottom of that block and outside. It sounds very scientific and easy to understand the block. Well, I mean, maybe not scientific, but easy to understand. Okay. And then if you, say have bipolar two, you can exist within that normal range, but you can be knocked out of it. But your brain chemistry is already predisposed to having bipolar disorder by virtue of being able to overproduce or underproduce certain neurotransmitters. That's what I think will ultimately be the understanding of it. Well, I know they definitely tie a lot of mental disorders to either too much or not enough dopamine. And Serotonin, it's definitely brain chemistry going on. Yes. They think that that's basically the basis of it is just fluctuations in brain chemistry. Yeah. Like super low Serotonin during manic and depressive episodes is charted. Yeah. And apparently serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters that are like, everybody calm down. Let's just keep things stable. Right. That's what serotonin is. And you can have too much dopamine, which can result in both mania and depression. Yeah. And I think too much is also present in psychosis too, so hallucinations, delusions. That's why you can have those. They're such a tough thing to try and study. I'm reading that. I started that book, John Ronson, the great John Ronson, who listens to our show, by the way, writer of Men Who Stare at Goats. Oh, neat. Yeah, he's a fan. And hey, John Ronson. His book, The Psychopath Test. I started reading that. It's super interesting so far. Is it's semi historical fiction? Is it nonfiction? Is it totally fiction? It's sort of a look at how the mental health industry tackles mental health. So it's nonfiction? Yes. That sounds like it's up my alley then. Yeah. I should have said nonfiction right off the bat. You're like, I'm going to make you guess. Yeah, I'll let you borrow it after a finch. And actually, how about that? Okay. And then I will take you up on that right after these messages. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. 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And apparently, if it works for you. Right. Like you said, that's the go to. And typically people tend to respond to that. Yeah, it's a go to for a reason. Sure. Not just because it was first. Right. Or there's a Nirvana song. He was bipolar, right? Sure. Yeah, I think so. And there are alternatives to lithium because not everybody responds to it, not everybody has a good reaction to it. Even somebody who does respond well to lithium, they have to keep a pretty good eye on your lithium levels in your bloodstream. So you have to visit the doctor quite a bit. The whole point of, I guess, the rigmar role that you will go through when you're diagnosed with bipolar and say, I want to combat this with meds is basically shooting blind and using a pragmatic approach to medicating. You into saying, okay, you're reacting well to this one. Right. Let's try a slightly lower dose and see what happens. And with lithium in particular, they keep an eye on it through blood tests. But with all meds used to treat bipolar disorder, they're going to really kind of like, try everything. Yeah. And it's still like, how you feeling? Tell me how you're feeling not let's do this test to read on a screen how you're feeling still. Yeah. And again, part of the reason why is because they don't quite know how some drugs work. They just know that they do work for some people, but not everybody. Yeah. Anticonvulsants is another one that they use, and it's also a mood stabilizer. And I think that calms down when your brain is the parts of your brain at least that are ramped up and overacting. Right. One of the ways that it affects that is by increasing the amount of GABA in your brain. GABA, kind of. What does that stand for again? It stands for gamma aminobutyric acid, obviously. Well done. Thank you. It's been a while since I tried to pronounce something hard. Well, you can use the anti convulsion sometimes even with lithium. Again, it can be a cocktail of drugs that you're on. Right. Depending on what works for you. Atypical antipsychotics can help. They usually use those after they've tried the lithium. I think they try lithium first, unless you're a teenage girl or a pregnant woman. Right. And then the antipsychotics work because they affect the amount of dopamine in your brain. Right. And again, high levels of dopamine can lead to psychotic symptoms, which is why they call the drugs that treat those antipsychotics right. And then benzodiazepine, aka. Relaxants. I think those are used less, probably because they're addictive or can be addictive, or at least they're short term used. Yes, they use them to promote healthy sleep, too, like you said. One of the symptoms, especially mania, is just going without sleep. Like, you got too much to do. Right. And you don't even need it, so you don't sleep. I guess the presence of GABA or low amounts of GABA, which is a neurotransmitter that's involved in getting sleep, I believe staying asleep, too, kind of underlies this idea that your sleep cycle is off, and it's either the result of your bipolar disorder, or it's helping to cause your bipolar disorder. Either way, they found that promoting healthy sleep, for example, there's this thing called dark therapy, which is no exposure to artificial light after dark for a certain amount of time, can help promote healthy sleep and can help stabilize bipolar disorder symptoms. Right. That makes sense. Oh, yeah. It always kills me when I see people on Facebook at, like, 03:00, a.m. Saying on Facebook that they haven't seen yet. Right. Like, well, you've got a little shiny bright screen in your face. Exactly. Start by putting that down and see what happens. Yeah. So, yes, there's all these little clues out there, Chuck, that so many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are on the table. They just haven't been fit together yet. But it seems like there's a kind of a hornet's nest out there. I've wondered, can you live with bipolar disorder without medication? Right. And apparently there's a big divide in the bipolar community. Like there's pro med and anti med, and I've seen comparisons between talking about religion or politics or meds with bipolar people. It's all the same. Like, you want to avoid those things to keep things friendly, but I've seen that some people are like, yes, you can live without meds. Yeah. But you probably can't get to stable without meds. Right. Once you get to stable, then maybe you can. But there's practically no way to get to stable without the help of medications. Yeah. So people who have bipolar disorder will be like, I've been med free for a year, which is great because it means that they have managed to fight off episodes and triggers, but they've done that through other therapy, too, not just avoiding treatment. Right. Because if you avoid treatment, not only does your condition get worse, it gets harder to treat. Yeah. The episodes supposedly get worse as you go. Yeah. Well, there are all kinds of therapies that you use along either in place of your medications or along with and we won't get too much into these because we've gone through most of them before, but cognitive behavioral therapy, of course, family therapy, group therapy, ECT. We did a whole show on ECT, didn't we? Yeah, we did. That was a good one. Yeah. Electroconvulsive therapy and one that I hadn't heard of. Social rhythm therapy. I hadn't heard about this either, but it makes utter and complete sense. Yeah. And that has to do with, I think, getting yourself and your body on a set schedule is much better for you if you have bipolar disorder not only just sleep, but just regulating your day and your schedule. Yeah. And I don't think anybody's suggesting that bipolar disorder is a mind over matter type situation. Like, I think there are very few mental illnesses that more clearly demonstrate the brain based understanding of mental illness than bipolar disorder. Your neurotransmitters and the chemicals in your brain are out of whack. Right. It's as simple as that. Right. What these other non medication therapies seek to do, especially the interpersonal and social rhythm therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, is to get you to confront this thing, to confront your condition and learn to understand it. Like, understand what your triggers are. Understand that you have to have X amount of hours of sleep per night or else you may end up in, like, a manic episode. Understand that you just can't drink whiskey. Maybe you can have a beer, like, every couple of weeks or something, but you can't touch whiskey because you'll end up in, like, a manic or a depressed like, there are triggers out there, and for you personally, these are your triggers, and if you avoid them, you can stay in that stable range right, and learn to live with bipolar disorder. Super interesting. All right, so right after this break, we're going to talk about whether or not there's a link between creativity and bipolar disorder. Hey, chuck. Yeah, we've got a pretty good website, sure. But not everybody does, even though they might want one. Well, we have a team of people putting it together. We do. But just the everyday person walking around out there has a team of people just waiting to help them get their website together. And that's square space. That's right. It is super easy to use. If you want your own website, you can have one with simple drag and drop intuitive features. You don't have to learn how to code and do all that stuff. And even if you get confused, which you probably won't, they have great 24/7 customer support. That's right. They're very design centric. And if you want to create a logo, they have an easy logo creator. You can go check it out for yourself at squarespace. Comlogo. Plus, you have something to sell on your Internet site. Yeah, well, all of their plans have commerce options, from hosting an entire store to accepting donations for your personal blog. Yeah. And it's a very responsive design. So your website is going to look great on every device on your laptop or tablet or mobile phone. It is pretty great, my friends. Guys, you can go try Squarespace risk free. You go to squarespace. comStuff, and you'll get a free 14 day trial with no credit card necessary. And if you like it, it costs as low as $8 a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year. That's right. So just use our offer code stuff, and you can get 10% off of your first purchase. That's squarespace. comStuff, with the offer code. S-T-U-F-F. All right, buddy. There has long been debate on whether or not creative people are either more likely to be bipolar, or bipolar can lead to creative genius. Yeah. Didn't we do an episode on that? Was it in a thinking cap? I think it was in this thinking cap, make me a Genius episode. Yeah. Maybe transmagnetic stimulation. Yeah. It's that latent inhibition kind of thing for schizophrenia and creativity. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, like, a laundry list of very creative people throughout the years that suffer from bipolar, from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix, who wrote manic depression. Sylvia Plath at grilling pool. Axelrose is on the list. Yeah. Graham Green, dickens. Did I say Dickens? No, but you just did. Francis Ford Coppola. Brian Wilson the Beach Boys. Yeah, he really had a terrible episode after did Smile ever get released? Yeah. And it just flopped. Well, it got released recently. Okay. But I'm still lost album. No, it never got released at this time. So something happened that set him off. I guess the rest of the band members wanted to go in a different direction. Well, he was obsessed with the Beatles, too, and trying to be better than the Beatles. Right. Mono was up there. It's pretty good. Yes. But yeah, I guess it never. Got released, and maybe that's what triggered this episode and started the dark years. Yeah. And this was long before anybody understood anything like this is prior to the advent of the use of lithium for bipolar disorder. Oh, yeah. That didn't come around until the so I have a thing that I like to read. It's a little long, but there's this great article from Slate called what Does It Feel Like to Have Bipolar Disorder? And it was written by someone named Mills Baker, and it kind of backs up a lot of what we're feeling here, but it gives you just a little insight. Since we can't talk firsthand, we'll let Mills Baker do it. Do you mind? Please. I think only in their extremes, Armania and depression actually unintelligible to ordinary folks, that is, at their utmost intensity, they're unlike anything a normal person experiences. But at most times, they're not at all so different from the maximally intense moods that everyone knows, just more so, longer lasting and disconnected from normative causes. And that seems to be one of the big points, is basically what he's saying is that it's not so different maybe than feeling manic or depressed yourself, but it's way more intense, it lasts for way longer, and there may not be a cause. Right. And I don't have bipolar disorder, but it would seem like it's to a debilitating degree, like it affects the rest of your life negatively. Yeah. Bipolar is less about short term mood instability than about long term mood cycles. Instability is a part of it, but not the only part. Second, the cumulative effect of these cycles on the formation of a personality is significant. So after a childhood of radically changing interest and attitudes, on such a timeline, one develops a certain excitability, flightiness, distractability, or perhaps that's just me. Again, it's different for everyone, but it is a major part of being bipolar, the personality that is shaped by a lifetime of intense fluctuating moods. So he's taken just a more macro approach. It's going to make you who you are. You can't just look at the bad mood or the up mood. It's going to basically form your personality over the years. Yeah, I would imagine to know what it feels like is to know the quality of the phenomenon, logical experiences a bipolar person encounters that an unaffected person does not. I don't think there are many of these going berserk. Being creative, having an awful temper, not being able to trust my own emotional reactions. These have a certain weight when I list them out. They can even sound unique. But everyone loses it. Everyone has moments of charisma and creativity and success, strength and achievement, and everyone struggles with himself. You may not hallucinate, which this guy does, by the way, but I can bet you understand what it's like for your mind to misbehave and react insanely. If you haven't yet lost control of your life, just wait and for me, the most enduring way that bipolar feels different is in how I cannot trust my reactions. I thought this part was really interesting. Yeah. When someone says something to you and you recognize it as an insult, for instance, as abuse or abuse, your reactive anger is appropriate and you can commit to it, or you can make some determination based on your values and your reason and choose a different course of action. I can't even trust the person even insulted me, so I can't trust my emotional perceptions and reactions. So that's got to make you just feel way out of sorts. You can't even feel like you're trusting your own emotions. Right. That's the one thing that you have is how you're feeling about any given situation that makes up your personality in large part, and if that seems flawed to you or untrustworthy to live. Yeah. And then finally, that is the strangest thing about how it feels. After the dust of the actual disorder settles more than a decade in, this guy is talking about his twelve year, I think. Since he was diagnosed after more than a decade in the open, insanity has abated and visits only briefly. The idea that I'm a secret artist is absurd. What's left is a more or less normal life in which I have to emphasize mental hygiene, like prioritizing regular sleep, for example, and in which I always feel doubt about what I think and feel, as we all probably should anyway. Yeah. And he's on medication and it seems like he has a healthy attitude about it. I think it's interesting to hear people talking first person about mental illness. Well, I'm sure it's a lot easier for him to talk about it now, too. That he's got it licked. Yeah, or coping with it, at least. Right. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a good one. Hopefully it helps some people. Yeah. Thanks to Mills Baker for being open to Slate about the disorder. Yeah, thanks to Slate and Mills. Mills and Slate. If you want to learn more about bipolar disorder, you can type those words into the search bar house to fox.com. It will bring up a very good article and a bunch of other stuff, too. And since I said very good article, that means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this Shark correction. Really? Yeah. Remember how we talked about sharks basically perfected themselves and haven't changed in millions of years? Oh, yes. I was like, we haven't talked about sharks in forever. Now I remember you. Yeah. Well, there's some brand new findings, which is pretty exciting. And Jake Hayes from New York City Fitness and I really enjoyed the Darwin and Natural Selection episodes, guys, and thought you might find this recent study published in the journal Nature that is interesting given the example you gave about sharks. Apparently, contrary to the theory that they barely changed over the past hundreds or millions of years. They may have evolved significantly, actually, from their ancient ancestors and may not be the living fossils we thought they were. Scientists have thought that shark gills were an ancient system that predated modern fish. However, a newly discovered fossil of a shark that dates back 325,000,000 years shows a remarkably different gill skeleton than modern sharks. This fossil provides evidence that shark gills have evolved over time and that it is actually modern day fish. That may be the ones with the old gill systems. The new gill system may have changed over time to help sharks sprint after their prey or pry open their jaws to eat larger things. So he said he just came across this article and I saw it all over the place, of course, like, you know, two weeks after we recorded I think it was even like a day or an hour or something. Yeah, I think you're right. But it's pretty cool info. And that is once again, Jake Hayes from New York City. Nice. Thanks a lot, Jake. We appreciate you. And I think a few other people let us know about it, too. But Jake was from New York City. That's right. So we selected him. If you want to let us know you're from New York City, we want to hear about it. You can hang out with us outside of the podcast on Twitter at SYSK podcast. You can hang out with us on our Facebook page, Facebook.com stuffychano. We also have Pinterest, Instagram, the whole jam. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo. We get it. It because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com."
https://podcasts.howstuf…onshine-cars.mp3	How Whiskey Runners Worked	https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-whiskey-runners-worked	Sure, Chuck and Josh have discussed it before, but it's worth revisiting: Running moonshine led to the creation of NASCAR. Chuck and Josh aren't even NASCAR fans and they think that's cool. Join them as the investigate moonshine runnin'.	Sure, Chuck and Josh have discussed it before, but it's worth revisiting: Running moonshine led to the creation of NASCAR. Chuck and Josh aren't even NASCAR fans and they think that's cool. Join them as the investigate moonshine runnin'.	Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:35:49 +0000	time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=20, tm_min=35, tm_sec=49, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=276, tm_isdst=0)	29613322	audio/mpeg	https://chtbl.com/track/…3c7-ae270180c33e	"Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Dinah Dynasty dinosaur. And Jerry Harry's over there, that's Dino DNA. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that movie blew me away when I was how old I was. Oh, yeah, that's from the movie, wasn't it? I thought it was from a parody of the movie park. Yeah, that's like, the educational video they show. I just remember that first, like, it was amazing when you saw that first shot of the dinosaurs, and they're like, because that was all brand new, take it for granted out like, crappy CG movie that's out today. It was, like, one of the greatest things anybody has ever done. It entirely. I think they're rereleasing it, too, like the 3D. Are they? Yes, the original. That has a lot to do with bootleggers. Chuck, we've talked about this before. Twice. Yeah, I think we kind of forced the circle. It was already bigger. Yeah, well, we did How Moonshine Works episode, one of my all time favorites. Agreed. If you haven't heard How Moonshine Works episode, do yourself a favor with some primo sound design from Jerry. Agreed. We end up in a still, if you can believe it. And what was the other one that we did where we mention this to prohibition. Yes. Which is another good one, which is part of another Circle a Tripart episode. Prohibition addiction. And what was the other one? Oh, rehab. Yes. And everything is so interconnected here. The circle is getting smaller, my friend. The tree of life. Okay, so what we're talking about is moon shining. Yes. Bootlegging. I have Moonshine at my desk right now. Yeah, we discussed just drinking it while we were doing this, and we opted not to because it's not we like to do things in one take these days. Yeah, but yeah, I mentioned the fans of Moonshine, and the thank you is one of the thank yous. We said hello and thanks. Yeah, I remember. It's delicious. Yes, it is. And specifically, one of the things we're talking about that we just kind of covered a little bit. And I think Moonshine I think it was Moonshine was that this really amazing thing. I'm not in the NASCAR. I'm not either. I had a spell. You did? Yeah, like, one year, and then it just went away. Yeah. It is one of the world's biggest sports. Popular, wise, huge. People love to see the cars go around in the circle. Not always just in the circle. That's true. Races. That's true. And I'm not into NASCAR, as I said, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for the sport because it was directly created by Moonshiners. Bootleggers running moonshine led not indirectly, exactly. They literally met in February. Founded the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. That's where Nest car came from. One of the preeminent owners racers and then owners junior Johnson did a year in jail for bootlegging. Yeah, he's from Wilkes County, North Carolina, which was like one of the hot beds, the bootlegging. And by no surprise, it is also north Carolina is like the center of NASCAR. Yeah. It's not a coincidence. No, it's not. So let's talk about this whole thing. What were people bootlegging for? I mean, I know it's kind of like if you want it done right, do it yourself. But when it comes to making booze, there's a lot of really good booze out there. Why not just spend the money? Well, this was happening in the rural south. Okay. A lot going on back then on the heels of the Great Depression hit the south really hard because there weren't factories to go to work, too, afterward or during. And the mills were shut down. The mills were basically the economic engine of the south. Yes. So farming is drying up to a certain degree. There's Prohibition going on. That's a big one. So basically, Prohibition and the Depression are the two big factors that led to the rise. Right. Even after Prohibition, the south still had a lot of dry counties and to this day still has dry counties. It's crazy. It is crazy. 2012, like 2000, they're dry counties. Was it 2012 or 2011 when Georgia voted or let cities vote to repeal the blue law for Sunday sunday sales? Like, just this year, Georgia got Sunday sales. There's like a Mars Curiosity Rover on the planet Mars taking pictures of us not buying beer on Sundays. It's crazy. It is crazy, but yes. So even after Prohibition gets repealed, a lot of Southern counties were like, well, you can't tell us what to do, Johnny Law. We're going to stay dry. And a lot of bootleggers were like, okay, well, I can still sell to these counties, and I happen to have one sweet ride. Right. I don't have a lot, but I got a sweet Ford with an ambulance engine in it. Right. And it goes really fast. A Cadillac ambulance engine. Yeah, that was one of the mods that they would do to make these things faster. So you needed this car not just to show off, but because if you were selling in Dry County, the federal government really couldn't have cared two bits of whether you were or not. Most of the time, though, if you were smart at all, you weren't reporting these sales on your taxes. Yeah, I read that had more to do with it than anything. They didn't want to pay taxes. I mean, it had to do with Prohibition and all that stuff, but it was really like, you know what? We were making the stuff ourselves, selling it to people across county lines. Like, why should I give the federal government a piece of that? Not just whiskey making or moonshining, but also the idea that you shouldn't be paying taxes on that predates the United States oh, I'm sure like the Whiskey Rebellion. That actually came after the United States, but moonshining came before, but the Whiskey Rebellion, one of the first things George Washington had to deal with was because of taxing corn liquor. Yeah, it's an American tradition. Don't tax our booze. Yeah. So all these factors add up to either it's your family business and you're maybe 15, but you've been driving the truck on the farm since you were eight and the tractor so you're like in the south, carol, you don't have a license yet. We shouldn't let you behind the wheel of a car. Right. Are you old enough to reach the pedals or do we have wood blocks? Yeah, exactly. Like the kid in Brother where you didn't like that one, right? No, I liked it. Okay, that kid. And then wood blocks. Right. And short round from Temple of Doom. The good Indiana Jones movie. Or one of them. Yeah, one of two. One of three crystal skulls. The fourth one, right? Yeah. I would put that third in the list, though. I would go Raiders, then Last Crusade, then Temple of Doom, and then I don't even count the last one. So either you're in the family business and they're like, this kid can drive or you can drive, and some other family is like, hey, that Clark kid, he can get on it in that Ford. I sure can. Let's get him to run the shine. And so all of sudden, A, you got a job that pays you dough, but it's not just paying your dough. It's also extremely thrilling. Yes. And a lot of bragging rights going on when you're out running cops. It's like the Dukes of Hazard. Can we just go and say it? Yeah, it is. I mean, you can't read this article without thinking, bow and look Duke. Bow and look Duke. You know what's crazy is not once did I think of really look Duke. Yeah. I mean, the whole time I was like, this is the Dukes of Hazard. Were they moonshiners? No, but it was the same thing, like juicing up your car, beefing up the suspension and the engine so you can outrun the local cops and you know, all the back roads. All right, I don't want to give away too much. Okay. So we've got the depression thing and unemployment in the south, and then we also have prohibition, and these things are coming together. And so all of a sudden you've got 14 year olds who know how to operate cars out running cops. And revenuers. Right, the revenue. So there was a revenue named John Carter, and he became a great source of Mars. No. Okay. Different John Carter. Got you. He became a great source from the laws side. He was one of the guys chasing these people, and he was the source for that 14 year old quote about how by the time these kids are 14, not starting when they're 14. They're driving by the time they are 14. He said they could outraw any lawman he knew. And he was one of the lawmen. One of the ways they did it was, like you said, was by modifying stock cars. Yeah, right. Like taking a Ford coupe and putting a Cadillac ambulance engine in it. That'll do it. Switching engines between makes right. So apparently Chevy engines are easier to modify than Ford's. So you might have a Ford car with the Chevy engine, and they say that if you see it, go to one of these auto shows today. Some of these old twenty s and thirty s Ford's will still have Chevy engines in them. Well, that's where hot rods came from, too. Not just NASCAR, but hot rods. Oh, yeah. And like that whole hot rod thing in California and the 60s, straight out of bootlegging moonshine with the cars. Yeah. Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So the revenuers I don't think we specified. They were the tax guys who came to collect, and they were feds the alcohol tax unit. Yeah. They were sending these guys in from New Jersey and New York to these rural southern towns. And bow and Luke were like, bring it on. Yeah. You don't know these roads. Like I know him, pal. You don't know these roads. Yeah, you don't know your car like, I know my car because I'm the one who modified it in all these crazy ways. I added the turbocharger. I brushed out the piston hole. The piston hole cylinder. Is that a common method, brushing the cylinder? I believe so. Okay. They would modify. They would build in custom switches. We could turn off your brake lights or your tail lights or both. That was a clay call. It was a buddy of junior Johnson. He did that. So what happens is you're flying down the road behind one of these cars at night. And let's say the taillights completely go out and they can pull in a little. Like. Side dirt road or you're following during the daytime and they're banking on a corner and they're hitting the brakes. And the cop doesn't realize that. So he goes flying into the corner and then he smashes into something. It's pretty smart. Yeah. It's so basic, though. You also need really good shocks and struts. And the reason why is because the best thing to do is to not have to try to outrun the costs and just drive right past them and wave like you're just a law abiding citizen. Like, I don't have \u00a3500 of liquor in my trunk. Exactly. And that's the whole point of the shocks and struts. And also, so when you do have to outrun them, your car is not just bottoming out on every divot. Yeah, that's true. And if you do get pulled over, another early line of defense was false bottom trunks, hidden cargo panels, basically just places you could stash liquor. That's true. But who wrote this? Was this The Grabster? No. This was Jamie page. Deaton JPD. As JPD points out, cops would eventually get wise to all these things as well. And then it came down to what would lead to NASCAR, which is, I can drive better than you. Yes. Period. So that's like when the bands or music would start. Exactly. When the cop turned on the sirens. Right. And I know all your tricks, but now the race is on. Right. So you've got these local roads that are often very what is it? Thunder Road, North Georgia. There's a road called Thunder Road, North Georgia, and I think Bob Mitchell was in a movie about it or something back in the day, really? Called Thunder Road, I think. But anyway, it's like a lot of people died, especially revenue, is because they didn't know, like, the curves. It was particularly dangerous. But those moonshine boys knew exactly what they were doing and could take these curves, most of them. A lot of moonshine runners died, sure. In their own cars, on their own roads, just going too fast, too far, too hard. But if you're a revenue, you're at a greater disadvantage because also, you didn't know where to double back and hide out. And there was a move that was created by Junior Johnson called bootlegger's turn, which we've all seen. It's where the car goes one direction, and then all of a sudden, it does a 180, straightens out and drives back the other direction before the car that's chasing it can turn around. Yeah, bootleggers turn. I've never knew that. Yeah. Junior Johnson patented that one. And also later on, we go on to I wouldn't say invent, I guess discover the drafting, which if you don't know what drafting is and car racing, it's when and you can experience this, it's very dangerous. You don't want to try this, but if you get behind, like, a big 18 wheeler on the highway and you're close enough, it often feels like you don't have to hit the gas as hard. It's because you don't you're being sucked up into the wind behind it right along. Right. It breaks the draft, and essentially you're in a little vacuum getting right up on the car behind you. And in 1960, I think, at the Daytona 500, junior Johnson realized this by accident on a practice lap and apparently had an inferior car to the rest of the cars and won the race based on that technique. And then everyone was like, What's Junior doing? We got to do it, too. Right. Let's name it. So they named it drafting. That's weird. I guess drafting makes sense. It does now, but is that just because we know what it's called? No, it's like a draft. I get you. Right. Give me my shawl. There's a draft. You know what I mean? Yeah. All right. Junior Johnson, who was pardoned, too, by Ronald Reagan. Yeah. Because you said he got arrested for not actually bootlegging, but just for going to the still one night. Right. He was caught at his daddy still by John Carter himself. Yeah. When your father has a still in the woods, it's Daddy. He was caught at his daddy still by John Carter. And he did eleven months, three days in prison in North Carolina. No, I'm sorry. Chili, Ohio or Chilli Coffee, Ohio? But he was caught in North Carolina. But apparently, bootleggers and whiskey runners had this reputation of being so honest that when they were caught, as legend tells, when they were caught and sentenced, the judge would frequently let them leave and just go home and be told when to meet the prison bus. Like meet the prison bus. March 21. And when the prison bus showed up, like, at that stop, the bootlegger would be sitting there waiting for the bus to take him to prison. Wow. They were known to be that honest. Yes. Despite their illegalities. Yeah. Well, that was, I think, one of the reasons why Tom Wolf called the North Carolina Wilkes County, specifically bootleggers, the Last American Heroes, because they were kind of they were against the law, and they would, like, kill revenuers, but they were also very honest in their daily lives when they were caught. Didn't you point out there was a movie coming out about this? Yeah, there's a movie called Lawless, and it's based on a book called The Wettest County in the World. Yeah, I saw the original name of the movie up until this year was Wettest County. Yes. Which, I have to admit, it's pretty bad. No, it's got to be wettest county in the world. Or the wettest county in the world. And it's about a county in Virginia. I can't remember which one. And they changed the name to Lawless, and Nick Cave wrote the script. Awesome. He is awesome in every way. And guy Pierce is in it. He plays the treasury revenue guy. That's Nick Cage with a V, by the way. Not Nick Cage. Yeah, okay. Nick Cage of Bad Seeds fame. Yeah, exactly. And Shia LaBeouf to bring it full circle from Crystal skulls. Yeah, I don't think we should bring things full circle. The kingdom of the Crystal Skull. You know, it's two consecutive episodes where it just came up organically. Yeah. Strange. But yeah. Well, this is coming out this month. Recording this. The 29th, I believe. Awesome. Yeah. Can't wait. Because I was thinking, I think I told you this morning when I was reading this, I was like, man, why haven't they made a movie about this? Well, my friend, they have. Okay. I'm looking forward to it. All right, so where are we? World War II? Yeah. Why isn't this still going on? And by the way, this article is not correct. Said that they were running whiskey well into the 70s. Clay Call, who is Junior Johnson's? BFF forever. He was doing it in the 80s. Really? Into the 80s. Yeah. And it was the rise of chicken farming, like mega chicken processing plant that converted all these former corn liquor distillers into chicken farmers because it was just more lucrative. And they're like, well, I don't raise chickens then. Interesting. But he was into the 80s. He said that one of his cars, an old New Yorker from the writer of this hot rod magazine article called something that a doctor or lawyer would use would drive. Right. But it was like one of his prized possessions, because that thing would just haul, too. He modified it. He said that there are bullet holes in it from the eighties. So he was like, real deal. Seriously doing this in the eighties? Because, I mean, this car got bullet holes in the 1980s from bootlegging when was smoking in the Bannet. That was 70s. Yeah, but he just couldn't drive 55. No, they were smuggling beer. I remember that. Yeah, of course. That was what they were doing. Remember the big truck? I didn't know that's. Full of course beer. Illegal coors beer. Yeah. Back then, coors was only out west, and they wanted some in Georgia, so they sent smoky to Texas arcana. Okay. And Jerry Reed to get the truckload, of course beer to bring it back in, like, 24 hours or something. Yeah. Okay, so flash forward a bit in the 30s for s and guess not forward. We're kind of right there in the middle. There wasn't a lot going on, entertainment wise, in the rural south. Right. Didn't have movie theater sometimes. Didn't have a mall. Didn't have a lot to do. So they would clear out fields and make dirt track racetracks. Well, farmers would, yeah. And make some cash off of it. Yeah. Sort of like field of dreams, except they would build a race track. If you build it, they will come. Right. Like days of thunder, except in a farm field. And dirt track was huge. I mean, it's still big. People still race on dirt tracks. But junior Johnson apparently said that he never got on pavement when he was bootlegging. He's like, you have ten to one better odds of losing the cops on a dirt road. Because these cops, I mean, not only did they not know the roads in the south, they were not used to sliding around on dirt roads. Sure. And these guys are just like professional drifters. Tokyo drifters. Yeah, tokyo drifters, not hobo drifters. Right. All right. While this is going on, you've got these southern towns and farmers building these dirt tracks, making a little scratch, but also kind of making a name for car racing. Sure. Like, this is kind of a new thing. Yeah. I mean, the indie was around and all that, but it wasn't kind of big in the south, I don't think, was it? When did that start? Formula one racing, I should say. That was the earliest auto racing this Formula One, I believe, like 1900 maybe. Really? Or they were racing like Mercedes and stuff like that. But stock car racing was very much new to the south. Well, it was, and then eventually bootlegging dried up and these people realized, you know what, in 1947, they got together in Daytona, Florida and said, let's make this like a legit thing. We think there's money to be made here. You guys can drive really fast. These stock cars aren't that much money because back then it was stock car racing that was the whole point, was we want to have the fans identify with these people by driving a car just like they could drive. Yeah, it was all on the driver because it was like you weren't allowed to modify and any modifications you could do are very slight. And they were really heavily regulated and it was all about your driving skills. And they did decide to go that route because it was, like you said, a common bond between the fans and the driver. They're both driving the same car. Yeah, I mean, that brand loyalty is still huge. The Chevy guys and the Ford guys, they stick with the car more so than the driver even. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Of course, now they're much more modified, but back in the day it was called strictly stock. Meaning is that what SS means on some cars? I don't know. You haven't seen that? I don't think so. Yeah, you have. There's like sometimes it'll be like a normal car, like a Monte Carlo, but it'll say SS or something next to it. Maybe. I don't know. Let's look into that. Or maybe it means like super stock now. Might be strictly stock. It means super sweet. But I did find it interesting, though, at the beginning of NASCAR, I read this other article where they said that fans didn't want like it was sort of a slap in the face to have these new cars out there being beat up because it was post World War II and it was kind of wasteful to do something like that. So that's why they got these stock cars. And a lot of dudes in the early days would actually rent cars to race like a car rental. Oh, yeah, yeah. They would just get a rental car. And that's where thrifty car rental came from. Exactly. And it wasn't until later on, I think, were when roll bars were mandated. And then gradually over the years, they became more and more modified. Although they're modified, but it's still a regular car. It's not like digital paddle shifters, like an Indy car. Like you could get in a NASCAR car and theoretically you could drive it. Not well. No. Be surprised. Well, you know, Junior Johnson said that it was a letdown to go from bootlegging to NASCAR. Oh, really? He said, quote, on the racetrack, you're running to beat someone out on the highway, you're running for your life. Awesome. He is 81 years old now. Yeah. And I just read that he is selling his mansion and downsizing, and he sells moonshine. Midnight Moon. Oh, is that his? Yeah, he can buy it on the Web. And he also sells ham and pork rind. I would eat those. I would do. Any other movies you got? No, I got two. Big bad Mama bootlegging movie. Yeah, she takes over the bootlegging business after her husband dies. And then there's a small it's a small part, but it's one of my all time favorite movies. Paper Moon in there. Yeah. Okay. But it has a small moon shining bootlegging part. And I think the movie did you ever see Thunderbolt and Lightfoot? No, I think that had something to do with bootlegging. I might be wrong. What about wait. Dirty Larry? Crazy Mary. Was that bootleggy? I don't know. But Clint Eastwood was in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Actually, no, it wasn't about moonshine. Sorry. But it was about driving really fast. Yeah, I think so. Blue Lagoon? No, that's about six. If you want to learn more about whiskey cars, you can type in whiskey cars with an E to the search bar@housetopworks.com. I would also strongly urge you to listen to our moonshine podcast or Prohibition podcast. Yeah, and there's articles on the site for those, too, so you can type those in Search bar and see what comes up. I said Search bar means it's time for listener mail. Chuck? Yes. We should tell everybody about something very special and dear to our hearts. New York City. That's right. We are going to Comic Con, and we will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October 12, at Comic Con at the Javits Center. It's like our new thing. We did San Diego. Now we're doing New York. That's right. Next up, Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con, you should come by and see that. But after Comic Con, we have one of our famous, famous to us all star trivia nights. Right. Where is it going to be? The Cutting Room. It is at the grand reopening of the Cutting Room in the Flatiron District, which is what's the address? It is in New York and it's in the Flat iron, you said? Yes. And doors open at 730. Trivia goes down at 830. And what is first come, first serve. Right? Free. First come, first serve. We will have a bar there that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us drink. That's right. We'll basically be having a really good time. If you're not familiar with our trivia nights, just come out and check it out. It'll be worth your while. Absolutely. And stay tuned for info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the allstar team. We are filling that out as we speak, but we will have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah. And at the very least, you can come take on me and Chuck, right? Yeah. Okay. It's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October 12, right? Yes. The panels at when the panel is at, I believe, 645. Okay. And then we're going to be at the Cutting Room starting at 830. Tribute starts at 830, doors at 730. Be there, be square. You're good at this. Thank you. All right, is it time for listener mail? Yes. I'm going to call this Shark Attack, man. I have to say, Chuck, you have to go on a Twitter account. You are getting kudos all over the place for shark targets. Nice. People love that. Hey, kudos to all the actors. Yeah. All right. Shark Attack. I just listened to your Shark Attack podcast and was thinking about my boyfriend. You might be interested in his happy ending of his own Shark Attack. Okay. Kevin is his name. He's from South Africa and he was surfing in front of his house one day when he was 16 when out of nowhere a great white came up and chomped down on his leg. Shark disappeared and the one friend he was with helped him back to shore, which was quite a ways, and then went off to the hospital. The doctor patching up, said he was really lucky and figured the top of the jaw of the shark went into the leg while the bottom never made it through the surfboard, which is kind of like that one story we talked about surfboard saving life. The doctor thought maybe the shark bit him in such a way where the fin of his surfboard hit that soft part under your tongue, you know, that part, and hurt the shark, so it swam away after listening to the podcast. Maybe it was just a test bite, though, and the shark didn't have any follow through. Now that we're complaining, of course. Anyway, he left with a couple of hundred stitches and was back surfing six weeks later. I'm attaching a picture of his leg. I'm sorry that it's sideways crazy. And I did look and it was the dude's leg that had big shark teeth in it. I didn't see that one. Yeah, it was good. She said one more thing. We're talking about it just a few weeks ago. And I asked him if he punched the shark or anything like that. I had a zoo books on shark when I was little. I always thought I'd for sure punch a shark. He said it was pretty much the last thing on his mind, which is kind of what I was thinking. Anyway, I love the podcast. And that is from Bethany. And Kevin is the boyfriend. Awesome surfer surfing out in front of his house. That must suck. Yeah. Congratulations on staying alive. Yes. Kevin, right? Yes. And thanks for the story, Bethany. If you have a story for us, especially one about how your granddaddy or Papi or whoever was a bootlegger, a moon signer, something. Like that. Sure, you can send us stuff via Twitter at syskpodcast. And when I say at, that means the at symbol at ampersand, people know that no ampersand is the and sign. So at symbol S-Y-S kpodcast all one word. You can go to facebook. Comstuffyshedono or you can send us an email to stuffpod, test at discovery or more. On this and thousands of other topics, visit housetoftworks.com."

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