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Going Up: Elevators | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/going-up-elevators | Elevators are way more interesting than you might think. In this week's episode, Chuck and Josh board the lift to enlighten everyone as to the ins and outs, and ups and downs, of these handy people movers. | Elevators are way more interesting than you might think. In this week's episode, Chuck and Josh board the lift to enlighten everyone as to the ins and outs, and ups and downs, of these handy people movers. | Tue, 19 Aug 2014 14:26:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=14, tm_min=26, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=231, tm_isdst=0) | 42073590 | audio/mpeg | "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. 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@city.com adventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles, Debbie, Chuck, Bryant and Jerry. Jerry has a personal story in this one that I teased. The NSA podcast. That's right. Which we recorded, like, weeks ago. Jerry has been stuck and rescued from an elevator. Jerry, it turns out, was stuck in an elevator. A crowded elevator for 4 hours. Crowded with NASCAR people, as it turns out. Yeah. NASCAR fans who were in town for a race, I guess. Right? Yeah. And she had to get rescued through the top. Through the top, which we learned from this research. You can't get yourself out through that top because it's bolted on the other side. You got to have someone come it's for them to get you out, not for you to get yourself out. Right. Sorry. John McLean. Yeah. What you did is impossible. Yeah. And there weren't even bolts on his and he just, like he kicked it off. Exactly. Yeah. I think there was, like, a screen. Yeah. This ended up being way more interesting than I thought. Well, let's get to the interesting stuff, shall we? Sure. Okay, so, Chuck, we can begin to begin by talking about elevators and who invented them. Yes, and it should come as no surprise, because if I had a dime for every time we sat in the studio and said it started in ancient Rome, seems like everything started in ancient Rome or China, but in ancient Rome, they did use you could call it an elevator. It was a lift. Yes. It's not like an enclosed elevator, but it was like a platform with pulleys that they would lift things up actually doing the work of an elevator. They used people, livestock, water, screws. Which means Archimedes was involved. That's right, yeah. You know, I knew a friend in New Jersey, a bartender, when you would ask what the score of the game was, a football game, he would just breeze by and go, Lion's ten Christians. Nothing. No matter who is playing. It's one of those bartender jokes, I imagine. He said it a million times and probably got it from someone else. Right. Just an aside. Well, but we're talking about as far back as 336 BC. Archimedes. Ancient Greek. Syracusian, maybe. Yeah, he's from Syracuse. Go Orange. Go Orange. And so elevators in the concept, and a functioning elevator has been around for a very long time. It wasn't until the 19th century, though, that they really started to take shape in a way that we see them now. They were basically just these platforms that lifted you up and you needed an ox. I think we should talk about Louie. Which one is he? XV 20, 515? Man, I always get that backwards. 25. He's not a Super Bowl. Yeah, King Louis XIV. He had what some people say it was the first modern type elevator with his flying chair. It was on the outside of Versailles. And his mistress, it was built for Madame de Chateauro. That sounds like a made up name. No, that was her name. And she lived up on the third floor and would go sit in her little box and lower herself down right to the king's balcony, and they would do the devil's business. And it was very convenient for him. He also had flying tables at dinner that would lower food right at his chair. Like a dumb waiter. A really dumb waiter. And he would clap his hands, I guess, and call for the flying table, which bring me another guinea hen. Yeah. I love guinea hen. Yes. Dumb waiter. By the way, it's a pretty insensitive term for that thing. Sure. And lazy Susan, what's that all about? That's very derogatory. Did you know Lazy Susan was supposedly invented by a Chinese American restaurant tour at Chinese restaurants, it's where they're invented. Named Susan. No. Did you know that? That it was invented in a restaurant? In a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco in the 50s or 40s. It doesn't mean but that's what it's used for. Is that some revelation? Sure. Okay. I would have guessed it was invented around the same time as by the same people who invented the butter churn. Okay. Time frame is what you were remarked. I thought the Chinese restaurant kind of threw me off, too, the whole thing. So at any rate, elevators had been around for a while. Louie the 15th got clever. He had one that used a system of ropes and pulleys, which conceivably. His flying chair was conceivably the first elevator, the first modern elevator ever built. But it wasn't until the 19th century like I said, that they started to really take shape, and they still had the kind that were used for industrial purposes, like for mining or storehouses or things like that. But then passenger elevators really started to take shape. The problem was they were extraordinarily dangerous. Yeah. People died. A lot of people died routinely. If you had a rope system, a rope system, cable system, or tension system, those are three names for the same thing, which basically uses a pulley and a rope to lower and raise a box that you stand in and you're a human being. That's that kind of elevator. Yeah. As opposed to a hydraulic piston system, which is what they use pre industrial revolution, which makes a lot of sense now. I'm sorry, they used the post industrial revolution, but pre rope and pulley system, modern elevator, the kind we see now. Yeah. But you couldn't have a very tall building because your piston had to draw down, and if you wanted to go up, you had to draw that thing down just as far. Yeah. The piston had to be as tall as the floor of the tallest floor of the building. And then you had to have that pit that was equally deep. Right. That's right. That's a deep pit if it's a tall building. That's right. It's not regrettable. Yes. That is a little segue that humanity took with the piston or hydraulic elevator. And apparently they were still popular in mansions. Yeah, sure. And have you ever seen the movie lady in a cage? No. It's a black and white movie with Jimmy Khan overacting like a crazy as a hoodlum in, like, the can't remember the name of the famous star who's the woman in the cage. But the cage is an elevator that's trapped between floors in her mansion, and things go really badly for her. Wow. It's a good movie. I have to check that out. But the rope and pulley system, the reason why it didn't become the modern elevator until the 1850s is because there was no safety mechanism. Those ropes would break. And like you said, a lot of people died because the whole thing would just go all the way down to the shaft and kill everybody on board. There's nothing to stop it, which is some people's greatest fear. And we'll get to that stuff later, like what might happen. Yes, we will. Teaser. But along came a guy named Elijah Otis, whose last name you might recognize. Yeah. In 1852, he and his sons said, you know what these things need? They need a safety device. People don't die. And so they created and debuted, very famously, the safety voice at the 1854 New York world's Fair when he dramatically got in and said, cut the rope. And they cut the rope, and it fell like a foot. And then the safety device break. And everyone went, wow, that's awesome. It worked. That's right. And it's like it was attached on a spring and as long as the rope was tense, the spring would stay tripped or no, unriped. Yes. And then when the tension was released because the rope is no longer there, the spring will go and the brakes, like you said, would come out. And that's basically still in use today on a lot of elevators. Like this thing that he created in 1852. They still build it into brand new elevators today. Yeah, some of them. It's a notches cut into the railing that guides the elevator. So when those little things spring out, it just clicks into the next notch. Some wedges go into them and they can't go any further. Yes. And you're like, oh, man, thank God for Elijah Otis and his sons. Right. So a lot of people say, well, Elijah Otis invented the elevator, the modern elevator. He did not, actually. He invented the safety mechanism. He invented the non killing elevator that allowed rope and pulley systems to become ubiquitous and used in all sorts of buildings and for people to trust them. And so he probably created the modern elevator industry, is a better way to put it. Yeah, I mean, he formed an elevator company and the Otis brothers and did pretty well with it. Yeah, he's dead, but his company is doing great. Oh, yeah. I think like 80% of elevators are Otis elevators. But he's dead. Yeah, he's very much dead. This is well over 150 years ago. Right. There's another Otis who is contemporaneous to Elijah Otis, but his first name was Otis. Otis Tufts. Yeah. What are the chances? Apparently pretty high. Yeah. Lot of Otis is back then. Yeah. So this Otis tough fella. He actually invented what we would recognize as the first modern elevator a couple of years before Elijah Otis got his patent on his safety mechanism. And it was basically a car with automatically opening and closing doors. Yeah, you could sit down, there are benches, which all of the early elevators had, which apparently we'll get to later is why we all face forward. Yeah, well, sure, that's one reason. And just to not be weird, it's another one. But he had a really good idea that was extraordinarily safe. Otis Tufts did. His elevator basically had a hole going through the middle that was threaded. And so his elevator acted like a nut that was going around a very long screw that went from top to bottom. That's what the elevator went up on. So I guess you would turn the screw and the thing would probably be pulled down or pulled up and there's no safety issues whatsoever. But it was very impractical because it was very expensive. And again, this screw would have to be at least as tall as the building. Yeah, that's a big screw. Yeah. So he was not able to sell a lot of them. He did okay, but it wasn't widely adopted because it was just impractical. Yeah. Everybody kicked into the curb yeah. And said, hey, these Otis brothers have really got it going on. They're safe, they're efficient, and we can scale this out. It's a scalable product. All right, so that's the story of how the elevator came to be. Yeah. That's the end of that one, right? Yes, it is. All right, well, right after this break, we are going to talk a little bit about safety mechanisms and why you don't falter your death now. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Afflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Afflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's Aflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Aflac's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Visit aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. 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 rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. All right, so we talked a little bit about some of the safety, but let's talk a little bit about how an elevator works. Modern elevators use a cable system where the cable is looped over a sheath. It's very simple, actually. And I say cable, but several cables, right? And it just has a grooved rim surface. The sheep does and basically there's a counterweight on the other side. Elevator goes up, counter weight goes down. Elevator goes down, counter weight goes up. Each of those cables, by law, is required to be able to hold the elevator fully loaded, plus 20% by itself. But they're still like four to seven to eight tables, usually per elevator car. So you would have to have all of those eight snap in order to put yourself even in the slightest bit of danger. But that's when other fail safes come into play to help you from dying. Right. So the elevator cables are not going to snap pretty much ever. No, because not only are there all of these extra cables, there are elevator inspectors who examine the cables to make sure there's nothing wrong with them. And he's like, seven of these are shot, but you still got the one, so it's fine. So the cable snapping is not going to be a problem. But if all of the cables did snap, if somebody got up there and cut through within a seedling torch yeah, let's just say that happened. The car, the elevator car would basically fall about 2ft because remember we talked about that thing that was invented by Elijah Otis that's still in use today? Well, there are some things that are connected to governors. The cables that are bolted to the top of the car and run through the sheave, which is basically a giant pulley. They also go through a governor speed. Governor. And when that governor starts spinning really fast, which tells it that the cables are spinning really fast, it automatically trips those wedges which go into the grooves into the rail that the elevator car runs on. So it will fall about 2ft. Yes. And that's just it has I mean, there are different kinds of braking systems, but that is certainly one. Another one is this kind of brake shoe, basically, that goes around the rail. Yeah. Like a roller coaster. Right. And then when the governor poly senses that it's spinning too fast, it trips those and they just grip the rail. Either way, you're going to fall just a feet, a foot or two. Yeah. And I don't think we said that it's an electric motor that spins this sheath that pulls the cables up and down. Right, I thought that was obvious, but we should point that out. We should. And it's a pretty elegant system, actually, because the counterweight and the elevator weigh fairly close to the same. So the motor that's running the sheath only has to overcome the force of friction to basically tip the balance between the two so that whichever one is lower will pull the other one down. That's how an elevator goes up and down. So let's say the cables have been cut and this diabolical villain that wants you dead in a very expensive and time consuming way. There's a lot of easier ways to kill somebody. Yeah. Has also somehow removed all of the safety. That's what in elevator jargon, the safety mechanism are called safety. Yeah, that's the fact of the podcast. What happens then? So you're saying you are just plummeting, you're in safe free fall. But as this article points out, it's not quite free fall because there's going to be friction because it is on rails. And you're not in a vacuum. No. And what's more, because you're not in a vacuum, there's air beneath you. And this elevator car that takes up most of the space in the shaft is compressing the air beneath it, so it's created a cushion of air. And like you said, the friction from the rails is slowing the whole thing down. So, yeah, you're not going to enter free fall, which is where there's no force of gravity exerted on you at all. No, you're going to be slowed down, but you're definitely going to feel like you're falling. You're going to be moving at a rate of speed, a dangerous rate of speed, but at the very bottom, there are shock absorbers built in and it looks like a big springy spongy thing. And that's basically what it is. It's a cylinder piston filled with oil, usually. And so that'll help you out a little bit, too. Probably keep you from getting killed. Yeah. Depending on where you fall from. And there's apparently one instance in the history of elevators, at least in America, where that's actually happened. Yeah. Where these cars have fallen. Modern elevator cars have fallen from a significant height. And it was in 1945 when a B 52 bomber accidentally ran into the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, and basically cut the cables, the safety brakes, everything on two elevator cars that drop from the 79th floor. Yeah, this happened once all the way down. And the one woman who was aboard survived. That's right. 79 floors. That's 800ft. It's a long way. Yeah. And that was 1000 945 cushioning. Right. I imagine it's a little better now. Well, one of the things that saved her, though, is that she was in the corner of the car because the elevator cable started to coil up beneath it as it fell down, pushed through the bottom of the car, and it was she was drunk. And you know what they say, if she's smoking a cigarette, the whole drunk then think your body is that a misnomer that your body can accept, like an accident more readily if you're drunk because it doesn't stiffen up. I've always heard that that might be a wise tale, maybe. All right, so let's talk a little bit about if you are going to die or suffer a devastating injury on an elevator, chances are no, you have a .005% chance of dying on your average elevator ride. How did you come up with that number? Well, how do you do any average? You multiply. Well, we won't get into the math, but 18 billion passenger trips on elevator per year. 27 people die on average per year, and most of those are people that work on elevators, repairing them. So your chances are, they say, greater of getting struck and killed by lightning. Right. And everyone knows that you shouldn't worry about dying in an elevator. And it says that Escalators are ten times safer. That's not necessarily true. That's what the elevator people say. It depends. They did a study of senior citizens with, like, a median age of, I think, 80 years, and found that there were a higher number of accidents on Escalators, but zero fatalities over this 14 year period, whereas there's fatalities and elevator accidents, and we should say, like, there's a very slow or slim chance of being injured in an elevator. What'd you say, 5%? Yes, that's a small chance, but it does happen. Yeah. And if you do die in an elevator accident, it's pretty gnarly. Did you see the lady in China? Yeah. Well, there's all kinds of stories that will put the fear of God into you. This one lady, Suzanne Hart, in 2011 at Executive New York, stepped onto her elevator, the door closed on her, grabbed her and took off up the shaft and killed her. And not in a pleasant way. No. That same week, a woman at Cal State Long Beach had the exact same thing happened to her. As she was stepping on the elevator, the car just suddenly went up and took her with it. They cut her in half. Yeah. Wow. A nurse in China, same thing happened to her. Apparently, statistically speaking, if you're going to be injured by a malfunctioning or killed by a malfunctioning elevator, it's going to be while you're getting on or off, and the thing starts moving up without you realizing that it's about to happen. Because if it does happen, it happens pretty quick. Yeah. I started since reading this, I've started getting on and off of elevators for very fast. Well, that's one thing that you should do. You should also pay attention to your surroundings, what's going on. That's the problem. Because getting on and off of an elevator is a pretty mindless thing to do. Yeah. And as Nick Plaumegartner points out, who wrote probably the greatest article anyone's ever written on elevators in the history of humanity. It's in the New Yorker. It's called up and then down. And how many articles did you read to compare it to? Just this one, too. I would put it up against any other article you can come up with. There's someone out there that wrote one that's like, josh didn't even look at mine. I would read it if they thought it compared. Anyway, he points out that not only is it like a mindless thing getting on and off of an elevator, we don't even think about what's going on during the elevator ride. Our brains are basically like, I'm on eleven, I go through these doors, and now I get out of the doors and I'm on 15. Well yeah. And people they've done studies like it that way. Other they've thought about, hey, maybe we should make the elevator clear so people can see what's going on. And that people around me said no, I don't want a clear elevator. Right. I don't want to see those cables. I want to get in my little box and get spit out on whatever floor I push the button for it. Right. And the whole Musac yeah, musac came about to calm people down on elevators to drown out the noise of the elevator mechanism working and just to calm people down. Yeah, because if you're elevator phobic it means almost 100% that you are claustrophobic and you don't like being in that small space with those people. And experts say that if you have a big elevator here you just got basically your fight or flight response is being hijacked in a situation that's truly not dangerous because that's when it's supposed to kick in. But the idea of being trapped in Jerry's case with NASCAR fans is enough to make her possibly hyperventilate and have a panic attack if she is also claustrophobic, which about 5% of people are. Well, I think elevator phobia and claustrophobia overlap kind of. Yeah. But they're not one in the same, right? No. Okay. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. How do you get over that? Well, I mean it could be genetic. Some people think that phobias like that are genetic. Others think that it comes from being trapped in something when you're a kid and it comes out later when you could always go the CBT route and have a doctor lock you in a small box over and over until you get used to it. That's basically what they do. I think also though, probably the more common therapy would be exposure therapy, where you and your doctor go to the elevator down the hall in the doctor's office building and go up and down a couple of times. I read an La times article about this psychologist who treated people with a fear of elevators and she said that you start out by just looking at the elevator and then maybe getting on for a second, then getting right back off. And she said over the course of probably about ten rides, by the 10th one it's gone. Yeah. So it's treatable. It's very treatable. But I read another article in the New York Times about this woman who said I have a phobia of elevators that's so bad I don't even want to confront it. Like I don't want to get over it. That's too much of a hill to climb to get to the other side. Even if it just took ten elevator ride, that's just too much. And people who have elevator phobias lives are altered because of their fear of elevators. Like there's lots of places they can't work. Yeah. Even if you worked on the second floor of the building. If the buildings locked, the doors to the stairs lock behind you. Yeah, like us. Yeah. Then it doesn't matter if you work on the second floor. You could only conceivably work on the first floor. Yeah, we don't have the option of taking the stairs here because I've made that mistake taking a private call on the stairwell. And you get locked out. You got to walk all the way down. Yeah, and some people, I imagine, too, have fear of heights. One of my friends moms couldn't stay above, like, the third floor of a hotel, even. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, even when the blinds closed and everything, she knew she was high up, and that freaked her out. For that reason, I can't stand glass outdoor elevators. Yeah, I forgot we shot a scene. Oh, that was not fun. Was that the peach tree or the inside the Marriott here? The Marriott. But the Marriott here has a very cool interior glass elevator that goes up really high and yeah, I remember. You did a good job, though. Well, yeah, I was fine on that. It was the skycar at Stone Mountain that got me. Oh, the sky bucket thing. Yeah, it just takes you from one side of the park to the other. Yeah, the thing that you spit off of. No, it's enclosed. The one I rode was just like a ski lift, basically. You're on this one with me. Didn't we shoot at Stone Mountain? Oh, no. Okay, I know what you're talking about. I thought you're talking about Six Flags. No, the sky bucket. I probably wouldn't like that either. Yeah, you're talking about the tram that takes you to the top of Snow Mountain. Yes, it is fully enclosed. Yes. And remember, there's like a pole going through the middle that I was holding onto and just staring at the floor. Well, that's one of those things where if they have to stop it, it swings back and forth and you're reminded I'm hanging from a cable and a big heavy car. Oh, man. Okay, so we'll talk about some elevator etiquette tips. We're going to help you be a better human being, apparently, right after these messages. Hey, Chuck. Hey, dude. We love squarespace, don't we? Yeah, we sure do. They are the go to tool for building online websites, which is the only place your website should be. That's a good point. And not only will you have a website, but it's going to be super good looking. People are going to think you're a design pro. It's all based on drag and drop. Very intuitive. You don't need to learn how to code. And they have awesome customer support, 24/7 email support, live chat. It's all there, right for the taking. And if you want to make some money with your website, all plans have commerce options. So from hosting an entire store to accepting donations, squarespace has you covered. Plus, because they're a modern company, your website is going to look great on every device, your laptop or tablet, even on your mobile phone. And that is important. Chuckers sure is. So right now you can try Squarespace risk free. Go to squarespace. comStuff for a free 14 day trial with no credit card necessary. Chuck and I put our credit cards down so you guys don't have to. That's right. And if you like the product, and we know you will, it only costs as low as $8 a month. After that, it includes a free domain name if you sign up for one year. Yes. If you use the offer code stuff, you can get 10% off your first purchase, too. So go to squarespace. comStuff and use our offer code stuff. You'll love it. All right. There's a couple of people that I think are awesome. One, his name was Edward Hall, and he's a scientist in the that invented Proximics, which is basically studies how much personal space people like. And what he found out is Americans have four different categories of personal space public space, which he found that people like to be 12ft apart from one another. Social space, 4ft, personal space, a foot and a half, and then what he calls intimate space, which is right upon somebody. Yeah. The other guy is a dude named John J. Frewin, and he wrote something in 1071 called the Pedestrian Planning and Design. Just called pedestrian planning and design. It is the go to handbook for if you want to build a subway or if you want to build an elevator car or anything where you're squashing people together. That is still the go to for how many jerks can we fit in this box? Right. Comfortably and safely. Right. That was all taken into consideration. And all of those things. What? Those are not taken into consideration on our elevator cars. They basically go way beyond that foot and a half of personal space. Well, yeah. It goes by weight only. Right? Yeah. And if it's a busy time, all of a sudden, you can find yourself in intimate space with all these other people around you in a tiny little box. So let's talk etiquette. When you do find yourself in a situation like that, one really good way to prevent being in a crowded elevator car and from stopping people in an elevator car unnecessarily is following what's called the two flight rule, which we can't do here at our office. No. We're an exception. And the reason why we're in exception is because if we try to take the stairs, the door is locked behind you, and you're trapped in the stairwell, and you have to go back down to the ground floor, which is the one door that's unlocked. Right? That's right. Why do I feel like we're helping a stalker? Like the schematics of the building? They're like, oh, that's an interesting detail. You will regret sharing that do we have stalkers? No, they're all trapped in the stairwell. That's who those people are. The two flight rule basically says that if you are going one to two flights up, take the stairs instead of the elevator. Okay. It keeps people from having to wait while you get off a distance that you could have conceivably walked and should, for your own health, walk. Sure. Another rule they always touchy do you hold the door for someone or not? I always think of Curb Your enthusiasm. Did you ever see that one when Larry feigned as if he was going to hold the door open and wouldn't do it? I didn't see that one. I would have assumed that the topic would have covered, like, six consecutive episodes. Yeah. Now he very obviously was like, oh, let me reach for this. And then, of course, he ends up on the same floor, in the same waiting room as the girl who didn't hold the door for and I think she does it to him later. Of course, in true TV fashion, but the author of the thing that we read said if you're on the elevator by yourself, you should always hold the door open for someone. Yeah. But if there are a bunch of people on there, you might want to just not do it and say, hey, get the next one. Yeah. Because you don't have time to take a straw poll to see what everybody on the elevator thinks. And you're not necessarily in charge of everybody, so you don't get to decide if the door stays open. So the decision is you can't decide doors are closing on their own. Exactly. If it's a full elevator, then TS. Yeah. And it depends on the amount of elevators. Like, we have four elevator banks in our office, and I feel like other detail yeah. I feel like there's going to be another one coming very soon. Yeah. So it's not a big deal. And I don't expect anyone to hold the elevator for me. In fact, I will say, go, don't reach your hand out and stop the elevator for me, which apparently is very dangerous. Not necessarily reaching your hand out, but jumping on an elevator with the doors closing. Yeah. You don't want to do that. I do that all the time. You do it, but do it at your own peril. At my .0015 risk. Yeah. Here's something I didn't know. Chuck. You're supposed to stand in a single file line no matter how many elevators there are. I think that's true. Like, if you work in the Empire State Building, you're going to get huge lines. Most office buildings, I don't think, have lines like that. Depending on the size of the office building, they might have this type of elevator call system where you go up to a little keypad or something. Yeah. The dispatch system. Yeah. You type in what floor you're going to, and the computer tells you what elevator to wait for. You can only take one elevator, but the elevator is going straight to your floor, and it just waits until enough people to fill it up, come along, and then that sends you on your merry way. If you don't have that and you do find the line, supposedly you're supposed to stand in single line. Did not know that. Well, it may not be true. Again, I think if you have that many people in your building to warrant align, then yeah, but ours is pretty big, and there's never like a big crowd of people. Right. But you bring up an important point here as far as the stops go, and there is a term called elevatoring which I never heard, and that is the discipline of designing an elevator to work efficiently, basically. And one of the things that they have to look for is probable stops. And they have actually calculated this. A guy, his last name is Fortune, has a probable stop table and says that if there are ten people in an elevator that serves ten floors, you're going to make six and a half stops on average. That half stop is tricky. Yeah. Ten people on 30 floors, nine and a half stops. So it's just interesting to think about, like you can avoid all of that with either the dispatch system or the World Trade Center had the sky lobby where you could take an express up to the 30th floor, get off there, and then get on the local right and just go to whatever floor you want to. And then the same guy, Mr. Fortune, who is an elevator consultant, one of the foremost ones, I gather, from that Nick Plum Garden article, he also told Plown Garten that you have to factor in what's called wait time. Yes. Which basically in an American office, billing supposedly the interval, which is the total length of time it takes for a single car to go all the way up and all the way down, divided by the number of cars, then you have your wait time that should be no more than 30 seconds, with the actual wait time being about 60% of that, or 18 seconds. So in an American office building, you should not have to wait for longer than 18 seconds for an elevator. Yeah. And he's carried it one step further, which is you want your handling capacity of the building, that is, the amount of passengers, the percentage of passengers of the building's population that you carry in five minutes. And he says 13% is a pretty good target. You want to hit that 13% range. And in general, in England, people are over elevated, and in places like India and China, they are under elevated. Not enough elevators. Yes, but in England, they're lousy with them and they're just carrying one person at a time. Apparently, people have like two, three elevators in their house. Chuck, I have one for you regarding etiquette. Okay. If you are in an elevator, a man and a woman are exiting the elevator at the same time. Okay. Should the man let the woman go first? And where are we? You are at a Guard concert and it's just the two of us. I am always one to say ladies first, but I have seen Ms. Manner says in a corporate environment, you should treat everyone equal and not do things like ladies first and hold the door open for a lady. And I think the Manners mentor, Mary McKee, would like us to correct. She's not Ms. Manners. Oh, is that someone else? Yes, she's the Manner's mentor, but she says if you're in an office environment, people are supposed to be equal, so you don't have to let ladies go first. I say I'm a Southern gentleman, so I do that kind of thing. If it's a crowded elevator, it's every person for themselves. You should just get off if you're at the front, standing in front of the door, it just makes more sense. It can easily get very clumsy and confusing and just awkward if you're like, oh, well, I get out of the way. You go first. No, it's not. And the lady would probably be like, this is creep that wants to get behind me. Right, exactly. And also, if you're on a crowded elevator and you are in front of the doors, the proper procedure is to step off and let people out instead of just trying to wedge yourself into somebody's groin. Right. Just like step off. The same as if you're on a subway. You can get right back on. Don't worry. But I see a lot of people not doing that. I wonder why. I guess they're lazy jerks. Yeah. You step off. If you're the closest to the door, you step off and you leave your hand there, your arm there to get dropped off. Yeah, basically. But you're keeping it from closing on the people exiting, but you're also keeping it from closing on you so you can get back on. You're not going to lose your place. No. You're a martyr. Yeah. And then when you step back on, as per the rules of social norms, according to these people who study it, everyone just sort of files into the proper place. If it's just two of you, you probably should stand well apart from each other. There's four of you. You're probably going to migrate to the corners, and then if it gets super full, you're going to be touching some folks. Yeah. But normally up till five, it follows the face of a die. Yeah, that makes sense. And you face forward. And again, that's supposedly because there used to be benches in the backs of elevators. It would be so weird if someone just got on and just walked straight to the back of the elevator and stood there. That would freak me out. I would get off that elevator. What if they just turned around or facing you? No, if they just got on and just walked straight and just face the back wall. I'd be off of that thing so fast because they got something up their sleeve sure. That I don't want to be a part of. But what if you were toward the back of the elevator facing front, and somebody got on and stayed by the doors, but just turned around and it's facing you? That's equally creepy. Sure. And then they're between you and the door. So I wouldn't even know how to get out of there safely. Right. I'd probably bowl the dude over, and then he'd be like, what's your problem? You just start crying. What about your phone? Well, I mean, this is personal thing, I guess, but I think you should never talk on the phone when you're several feet from a stranger. Barely anybody gets coverage on an elevator anyway. They just stand there on the phone the whole time. I go, did we get cut off? Yeah, that's even more. He says, hello? Hold on, I'm on an elevator. You say, I'll call you back. I'm on an elevator. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have my conversations in front of people either. Sure. Not that they're super private, but that's my biz. Sure. You got anything else? No. I do. If you've seen internet videos about did you see the one on the train in Asia where people were just packing themselves on and pushing people on like sardines? Apparently in Asia, there is a much, much higher tolerance for personal space when it comes to subway and elevators and getting around. Americans have many more hang ups. Well, we have a huge nation that we've spread out through and have enormous pockets of unpopulated areas cropland. We like our land and our fences. Good fences make good neighbors. That's it. I got nothing else. It's elevators. Pretty much. Seriously. Go read up and then down by Nick Plum Gardner in The New Yorker. It's awesome. I did have one more thing, actually. What? He makes an awesome point in there that if it wasn't for elevators, the world as we know it would not even be the same. Because verticality is what has allowed us to grow as people. Because if it wasn't for verticality, we could only expand outward. And there's only so much outward expansion you can do that's. Right. So elevators themselves have shaped the way mankind has populated this world. Nice. Pretty interesting. It is interesting. I never thought about it before that way. It's an interesting article by far. Article ever written on elevators. But we have plenty of articles on elevators on the site, how stuff works. You can type elevators into the search bar there, and it'll bring up a bunch of different articles. You can read those. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. When I call this, you guys may have legitimately saved our son's life. Wow. Right? Hey, guys. I want to say thank you and tell you that it's quite possible that your show on Allergies saved our son's life yesterday. And this just came in. So this is very recent. Henry, our three year old, was playing outside and was stung by a bee near the wrist on his left arm. I didn't think anything of it because he's been stung before and not appeared to be allergic with no reaction. So I made sure the stinger was out and handed him over to my husband to calm him down. Thankfully, my husband dustin, remember the allergy podcast you did and how you said sometimes it takes the first exposure for the body to decide if it's a response to a specific allergen? So Dustin kept a close eye on Henry and noticed that the left side of his face started to swell within minutes. I know. We rushed into the emergency clinic where he received a shot of epinephrine, a dose of antihistamine, and prescriptions for both immunosuppressants and an EpiPen. He is doing fine, back to his normal, wild self, thanks to the information in your podcast and Dustin's quick thinking. The first thing Dustin said to me after leaving the clinic was, you realize stuff you should know saved his life, right? Oh, that's so cool. I know. Thank you for everything you do, guys. We always love the podcast, and now I have even more reason to appreciate it. That is from the bex Dustin, Lindsay, Silas and Henry. Thanks, Bex. We appreciate that. Permission to read it. And she asked the husband and he was like, heck yeah. People need to get the word out on this stuff. Yeah. Watch your kid after they get stung by beat. Yeah. Don't just laugh at them. Yeah. I would say we didn't necessarily save anyone's life. It would be more the parents, of course, and the medical emergency people. Yeah. But we're glad that knowledge could kind of ease that inched along. Yeah. So if we've done anything that even remotely smacks of saving a life, we always love hearing about that. Believe it or not, it's happened more than once. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast athowstuffords.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyoushodenow.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 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 life health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco pet Supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
8db1c4a4-ba8a-11e8-a624-7ff5a892de16 | Short Stuff: Our Shortie Halloween Spooktacular | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-our-shortie-halloween-spooktacular | Join us today as we read three short horror selections from Ambrose Bierce. | Join us today as we read three short horror selections from Ambrose Bierce. | Wed, 30 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=303, tm_isdst=0) | 11592229 | audio/mpeg | "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 Citi comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Terry. Let's get reading. Yes. This year we decided to do a little shorty Halloween, too, because we did our short stuff on Ambrose Beers. Started poking around his short stories, and he wrote some super short ones that are kind of tailor made for this, I think. Yeah, it's almost like he was born in the 19th century, thinking, one day Josh and Chuck are going to have short stuff. I want to give them something to work with, maybe so. So to prepare everyone for a Halloween spooktacular, which will be out tomorrow, we wanted to do this. That's right. Chuck, you want to start? Yeah, we'll start with the story. One Summer night this is a good one. This is a good one. Here we go. One summer night by Ambrose Beers. The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not seem to him to prove that he was dead. He had always been a hard man to convince that he really was buried. The testimony of his senses compelled him to admit his posture flat upon his back, with his hands crossed upon his stomach, and tied with something that he easily broke without profitably altering the situation. The strict confinement of his entire person, the black darkness and profound silence made a body of evidence impossible to controvert, and he had accepted it without cavill. Henry Caville, but dead? No. He was only very ill. He had with all the invalid's apathy and did not greatly concern himself about the uncommon fate that had been allotted to him. No philosopher was he just a plain, commonplace person, gifted for the time being with a pathological indifference. The organ that he feared consequences with was torpid. So with no particular apprehension for his immediate future, he fell asleep. And all was peace with Henry Armstrong. Before we go on here, Chuck, I just want to point out so this man has come to his senses in a coffin. Yes. Been like, Well, I guess I'm dead, and then went to sleep. But then he went to sleep. Yeah. That's some mellow gold. Totally. You want me to pick up here? Please. But something was going on overhead. It was a dark summer night, shot through with infrequent shimmers of lightning, silently firing a cloud lying low in the west and portending a storm. These brief, stammering illuminations brought out with ghastly distinctness the monuments and headstones of the cemetery and seemed to set them dancing. It was not a night in which any credible witness was likely to be straying about a cemetery, so the three men who were there digging into the grave of Henry Armstrong felt reasonably secure. Two of them were young students from a medical college a few miles away. The third was a gigantic man known as Jess. For many years, Jess had been employed by the cemetery as a man of all work, and it was his favorite pleasantry that he knew every soul in the place from the nature of what he was now doing. It was inferrable that the place was not so populous as this register may have shown it to be. Back to you, Charles. Back to you. Outside the wall at the parts of the grounds, farthest from the public road, where a horse and a light wagon waiting, the work of excavation was not difficult. The earth with which the grave had been loosely filled a few hours before offered little resistance and was soon thrown out. So they're grave robbing here, right? Oh, yeah. It ties in. Very nice to do our episode on grave robbing. That's right. Removal of the casket from its box was less easy, but it was taken out, for it was a prerequisite of Jess, who carefully unscrewed the cover and laid it aside, exposing the body in black trousers and white shirt. At that instant, the air sprang to flame. A cracking shock of thunder shook the stunned world and Henry Armstrong tranquil a set up with inarticulate cries. The men fled in terror, each in a different direction, for nothing on earth could two of them had been persuaded to return. But Jess was of another breed. In the gray of the morning, the two students, pallid and haggard from anxiety and with the terror of their adventure still beating tumultuously in their blood, met at the medical college. You saw it? Cried one god, yes. What are we to do? They went around to the rear of the building, where they saw a horse attached to a light wagon hitched to a gate post near the door of the dissecting room. Mechanically, they entered the room. On a bench in the obscurity sat Jess. He rose, grinning. I'm waiting for my pay, he said. Stretched naked on a long table lay the body of Henry Armstrong, the head defiled with blood and clay from a blow with a spade. Wow. So Jessica business? He did. He said, oh, you're going to sit up right now while I'm trying to make some money? No, we're not going to have that. We're going to put you back in the grave. Well, that was great, but we have more to come. Everyone, we have one more short story from the great Ambrose Beers. That we will read after these commercial messages. 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 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. 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 Sherpaline 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. All right, so, Chuck, we're going to do president of Hanging. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, I'm going to start this one. All right, take it away. An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads and was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality. This brought him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living, murder being an acceptable means. To that end, it occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and never could be traced beyond. This was so in the case of old man Baker, as he was always called. Such names are given in the Western settlements only to elderly persons who are not esteemed to the general disrepute of social and worth. As affixed this special reproach of age, a peddler came to his house and none went away, and that is all that anybody knew. All right, we're talking about peddlers being murdered on the road. I have to say, Ambrose Beer makes me look succinct. Yes, you can write a paragraph about like a lightning bolt flashing in the sky. In parentheses. All right, here we go. Seven years later, the Reverend Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well known in that part of the country, was driving by Baker's farm one night. It was not very dark. There was a bit of moon somewhere above the light veil of mist that lay along the earth. Mr. Cummings, who was at all times a cheerful person, was whistling a tune which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse. Get on, boy. Like that. That's friendly. As he came to a little bridge across the dry ravine, he saw the figure of a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty forest. The man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy stick, obviously an itinerant peddler. His attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction like that of a sleepwalker. Mr. Cummings reigned in his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave him a pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat in his vehicle. If you are going my way, he added. The man raised his head, looked him full in the face, but neither answered nor made any further movement. The minister, with goodnatured persistence, repeated his invitation. At this, the man threw his right hand forward from his side and pointed downward. As he stood on the extreme edge of the bridge, mr. Cummings looked past him over into the ravine, saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man again. He had disappeared. Wow. I think you can take us home. Okay. The horse, which all this time had been uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror and started to run away. Before he had regained control of the animal, the minister was at the crest of the hill, 100 yards long. It's like a football field. He looked back and saw the figure again at the same place and in the same attitude as when he had first observed it on the 20 yard line. Then, for the first time, he was conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his willing horse would go on. Arriving at home, he related his adventure to his family, and early the next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, john White Corwell and Abner Razor, surprised he didn't talk about those guys here returned to the spot. They found the body of old man Baker hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge. Immediately beneath the spot where the apparition had stood, a thick coating of dust, lightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge, but the only footprints were those of Mr. Cummings horse. In taking down the body, the men disturbed the loose, freeable earth of the slope below. It disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered by the action of water and frost. They were identified as those of the lost peddler. At the double inquest the coroner's jury found that Daniel Baker died by his own hand while suffering from temporary insanity and that Samuel Moritz was murdered by some person or persons. To the jury unknown. The end. One of the least satisfying endings of any short story ever. Samuel Morris. They didn't even name the guy until that point. Oh, yeah, I thought that was great. I mean, I love Ambrose Beers for some reason, but not for that reason. You know what I mean? You get the feeling that at the end of that book, he's just, like, face down in a methadone torpor, right? And a trough of whiskey. Well, Chuck, I think that was short stuff, huh? That's right. Special super short Halloween edition. The point of this is to get your prime for tomorrow's spectacular. So don't miss it, everybody. And because I said, don't miss it, everybody, that means short stuff is stuff. You should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
424ba974-53a3-11e8-bdec-2723708cb650 | What are paraphilias? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-are-paraphilias | Josh and Chuck dive into the world of paraphilias so you can get the skinny in 45 minutes or less. | Josh and Chuck dive into the world of paraphilias so you can get the skinny in 45 minutes or less. | Thu, 26 Sep 2019 14:42:03 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=14, tm_min=42, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=269, tm_isdst=0) | 50115886 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, it's me, Josh, and this Wednesday, October 2, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas, to do my live End of the World show. I'm going to be at the North Door, and you can get tickets at Nd venue.com them. So come see me because it's going to be pretty boss. And there's a few tickets left, and they're going very fast. If you want to come see me and Chuck for Stuff You Should Know, live in New Orleans on October 10, you better go to Syssklive.com. You'll get tickets and info there, and you will be very happy that you did. So. See you guys in October. 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, and there's guest producer Lowell. I didn't say Noel. Everybody. I said Lol. He's a first timer, and he's here to party. Is that why he has the beer bong? Yes, which we didn't even call beer bongs. We just called it funneling beer. Yeah. Oh, is that a beer bong? I didn't realize they were one and the same. I think so. It must be regional. I just thought, like, the crazy college kids had come up with some new thing that was a beer bong that was different than a funnel, but okay. The good old days where you did keg stands and beer bongs. I think I did one of each of those in my entire college career and was like, no, these aren't that great. I never did a kickstand. They're really hard. I don't understand them at all. They don't make any sense whatsoever. Well, I think the idea is you're upside down, right. But you're drinking the beer is going in the opposite direction as you're standing. All right. I'm not sure what the effect is supposed to have. I'm sure if there's a head rush involved I don't know. I always thought it was dumb. It makes way more sense to do one of these beer bongs and then do a handstand really quick. Yeah, I mean, I funneled a beer, too, in my day, but that wasn't really my bag either. Okay. Just drinking like a normal human being. Yeah. You know, me as a freshman in college, sitting back with my Brandy Snifter and your smoking jacket. That's right. Slippers. Well, obviously, Chuck, since I said smoking jacket and slippers, we're talking today about paraphilia, which could be the case if the smoking jacket and slippers was the only way that you could achieve erection and completion. What do you mean, completion? Like, ejaculation. Oh. I got you, Completion. That's, like, such a great way to put it. Man, it's so crisp and sterile. Is it too late to issue our COA? Yes, it is, but we should anyway, you mentioned yeah, I figure since this is about paraphilia, unless you don't know what that is, then you probably don't have your kids listening already, but we're going to be talking a lot about stuff like, you know, ejaculation and completion and completion. Abnormal sexuality. Yeah. Which that you might as well the can of worms has been opened because you said the word abnormal. Yeah, that's what paraphilia means. Like pera, the prefix means beside, but really in the usage, especially with psychology, pera means like abnormal, not normal. And then feli means love. So it's abnormal love, which is kind of a funny way to put it, but it's a lot better than the way they used to put it, which is like, deviance. Sodomy pervert. Perversion. Yeah. So it's actually a huge, massive step forward to call it paraphilia. Yeah. I actually found a couple of quickie definitions that don't even use the word abnormal. Great. That I felt kind of nailed it a little better. One is Psychology Today says a condition in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depend on, fantasizing about and engaging in sexual behaviors that are atypical and extreme. Okay. And then the other one says, you become sexually aroused by an object or activity that most people don't consider sexually stimulating. Okay, yeah. That one is more interesting. That makes a lot of sense. That second one, my favorite one, is not hurting yourself or anybody else. Just go with it. That's a definition that I can get behind. Right. And that will also bring up the distinction, which we're going to be focusing a lot of this on, between a paraphilia and a paraphilic disorder. Yeah, because the whole point of studying paraphilia is not to be like, well, look at this weirdo, let's poke him and see what comes out, see what brings him to completion. It's instead to help people who are distressed by the fact that they have an atypical object or desire of sexual arousal. Right. Like there's some sort of compulsion that they can't disregard and it's causing them distress in their lives or it's harming their lives in some way or and this one is even more important that there are paraphilias that involve other people that are not consenting. Right. That's a big, big problem, too. It's a big enough problem when it's affecting your own life, but when it involves somebody else who does not want to be involved in your paraphilia, then it's a big problem. And the courts frequently become involved. Yeah. So this is mainly an overview, so we're not going to get too much into specific paraphilias. Although tell me you didn't have a bunch of ideas for further episodes. Dude, I'm so glad you said that. But also, did you hear like, a million people just go, oh, yeah, but can I read through some of these real quick, though, at least? Yeah, let's do that. So common paraphilia voyeurism is one I think we all know what that is. Sure. The Peeping Tom. This is listed, which kind of I don't know. I didn't know it was going to be on here. Transvestitism. Yes. Cross dressing is a better way to put that. Sure. We'll talk a little more about that one later, because it's a good example. Exhibitionism. Yes. Which can be just, you know, if you like acting in porno films, you could be an exhibitionist, and it could be very fulfilling. Or more frequently, from what I understand, you can expose your genitalia to person. Yeah. In a parking lot. And the thing that I read about exhibitionism and males, what we commonly call like, flashers, they don't get gratification from the other person, being like, oh, hey, ten out of ten, or let's go, something like that. They get their gratification. This is the whole point of their exhibitionism, is from the shock, from the surprise that they elicit from the other person when they suddenly expose their genitalia. Are you surprised by that? Yes, I was, actually. Really? Did you think it was like a legit? Come on. I guess I always did. Now that I think about it, it is a little ridiculous, but it never occurred to me that that is what they were going for with that shock or surprise. Got you. Yeah. Which makes the whole non consenting thing even worse. Yes, for sure. So, fetishism and this is interesting because I think a lot of people think a fetish is just any atypical sexual desire, but a fetish specifically is a nonliving object, like a shoe, like a high heel shoe or something that excites you sexually. Whereas if you say, like, oh, I've got a foot fetish that's actually called partialism. Yes, that's right. And it could be a foot fetish, it could be a breast fetish, it could be a butt fetish, whatever. But I think with partialism, it's specifically part of the human body, right? That's right. Okay. But the other stuff, it's like a non human object, like you said, a shoe or something. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Like a nice candlestand or smoking jacket and slippers. That's right, a candlestand. What are they called? A candlestick. Candlestick. What you used to murder people. I forgot the candlestick. There is fraudulent. That is when subway creeps rubbing up against you. Right. Non consenting. Obviously. Again, yes, non consenting. There is SNM so sexual sadism and sexual masochism. So do you know the difference? I'm sure you do. Sure. Masochism is self harm, self abuse, or enjoying being abused or humiliated or sadism is inflicting that on somebody else. Correct. You're doing really well. Thank you. We should turn this into an Internet quiz pedophilia, which everyone knows. What? That is terrible. It is terrible. And there's a lot more to unpack with that. So much so I think that one deserves its own episode. Oh, for sure. And those are the most common. Less common are somnophilia that is fondling a person who is a sleeper unconscious. I would guess that's also unconseding, too. Yeah. Although I imagine you could act that out in a consenting way. Yeah. And I wonder if also that's like an introductory level beginners class for necrophilia, because the lightest form of necrophilia is the other person pretending they're dead. All right, so necrophilia 101. That's another one that deserves its own episode. Yeah, for sure. And I know which other one you're going to pick, too. There's telephone scatalogia. Yes. Prank calls, but obscene variety. Like Philip Seymour Hoffman and happiness. Right. Not the pursuit of happiness. Right. Different altogether. Right. Really different. Like the opposite of each other. Yeah. There's coprophilia. That's an obsession with poop. Maybe being pooped on. Sure. Just poop in general turns you on. Europhilia. That's obvious. Right. PP. And then Zoophilia. Yes, ma'am. Which is you might think, like, wow, that's gross. The person is engaging in acts of bestiality. That's the new name for bestiality is Zoophilia. But one thing that a lot of people overlook, or at least I did until I saw the documentary Zoo. It also involves non consenting partners for other people, but not an animal. The animal can't consent to that. And so it's basically a form of rape, but it's animal rape. Yeah. I never saw that documentary, man. I know. It's been many years. You've been wearing that T shirt every day. Yeah, the Iheart Zoo. Yeah, I watch Zoo and all I got was this lousy T shirt. Right. But it's like, I want to recommend it, but at the same time, I also want to be like, stay away. You're going to change in some ways, some of which you might not be fully okay with. It's a tough one, but as far as documentary filmmaking goes, it's about as close to a masterpiece as there is. All right, sold. Although it did get a lot of flak check for a lot of recreation, if I remember correctly. I think the whole thing might have been voiceover and recreations. Wow. How specific do they get with those recreates? Oh, very like it's just slightly out of focus kind of stuff. Interesting. Yeah. All right. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how they did that. So the important thing to remember about these paraphilias and this is we're not talking about the disorder part, but it's important to what language people use, because for many years and still in many circles, things like homosexuality have even been considered a perversion. So things have evolved over time, but depending on who you are and where you are in the country even, and what your political affiliation might be, there still might be a lot of damning language to use for what some people consider immoral. Yeah, and you kind of hit it on the head. Homosexuality was considered a disorder until, I think, late 70s as far as the psychology community was concerned. And things change, but it all basically boils down to morality. So much so that it's like the fact that there have been laws against certain sexual acts and that those have changed and evolved over time really kind of underscores this idea that society says this is not okay because we think it's weird. Right. Or this is not okay because you're harming somebody else. But the fact that it changes or evolves really kind of shows that in a lot of circumstances. Especially when it comes to the kind of paraphilia where you're just involving yourself and you're not harmed by it in any way. It's not causing distress that there's really little reason whatsoever for anybody to be legislating or moralizing about that because it doesn't really have anything to do with anybody else. Right. So for sure, illegal acts, and thus, I guess legal acts in terms of peer ophelia, there are problematic behaviors too. Right. And that is, like you mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned masturbation. I didn't, because I don't know that I mean, I'm sure there is a paraphilia where all you want to do is masturbate, but that seems more like I don't know, it just doesn't seem like a paraphilia to me. I could be wrong though. Well, the whole idea of problematic though is like if you're so consumed by masturbation that you can't go to work or you leave work so often that you miss meetings. And basically I think the point is what could be a harmless behavior can be problematic if it's all consuming and affects your job or your home life or your social life. Right. Or it's causing you to be arrested so you miss work the next day. There's actually multiple people, but one man was arrested. I guess making love to a car is how you would put it, which is mechanicya mechanotherhelia. Interesting. And there's another guy who claims to have made love to over 1000 cars in his lifetime and as far as I know, he's never been arrested. And he seems to be totally great with the idea. He said that his peak sexual experience was airwolf. I was going to say with like a 57 Chevy. No, I don't know how else to put it. Made love to Herby before Herby. The Beetle, like the real thing. Or he had it recreated, as far as I know, the real thing. But airwolf, chuck airwolf. He got with airwolf. The plane. The helicopter or the helicopter. Okay, I couldn't remember. Yeah. The JamMICHAEL Vincent helicopter from the TV show. But this guy, that guy, he seems to be totally fine with it because he submits the interviews and poses for photos that show up in the paper from time to time. But I don't think he's ever been arrested. So his would just be a paraphilia. The guy who got arrested, his would be a paraphilic disorder as far as the DSM Five is concerned. But it sounds to me like this guy just didn't get caught because you can't make love to Airwolf and Herbie legally. I guess you can't. You're right. He's a got to be in, like, a museum or something, right? He's dancing along the line. Unless he has a lot of money and he's like, hey, I'll pay you a look the other way while I get an hour with airwolf. Or he's the night watchman at the Hollywood Car and Air Space Museum. But even that, that would be technically illegal, or at least he could get fired for that. So that would be a paraphilic disorder, then. This is all very interesting stuff. It really is. But also, I want to point this out, like, if you're starting to feel a little bit confused and it sounds like we're just kind of throwing stuff at the wall, welcome to the world of studying paraphilia in the field of psychology. Yeah, absolutely right. Should we take a break? Yes. All right. Let's do that. And we'll come back and never talk about airwolf again. Okay. So we're back and we're more confused than ever. I thought we started out really well, descended into genuine confusion. That's right. Which is very easy to do because, like we said from the get go, the definitions change so often, and what is acceptable or not acceptable and immoral or not immoral is all a matter of opinion. So it's kind of hard to dive into this stuff, really. Is that's why, over time, the definition of paraphilia is kind of expanded and contracted? And the ones that tend to be called out in the DSM, which we'll get to in a minute, some of them make total sense, like pedophilia being in there. That's like something that psychology should take a keen interest in addressing. Other ones don't make any sense. Like transvestism cross dressing, where, like, if you are into wearing women's clothes and you're a man and that is how you achieve sexual arousal, there's no problem with that. And it shouldn't be psychologized. But then the field of psychology would say, well, there are people who are into cross stressing and they can achieve sexual arousal without it. But they find this very distressing. It's running up against society's expectations of what it means to be a man. They are having trouble rectifying that, so we need to play that role, too. So over time, as we were saying, paraphilias have been distinguished, most recently, I think, in 2013 with the DSM Five, between just an atypical sexual interest and an atypical sexual interest that causes distress in the person or involves non consenting people. That's right. But over the years, a lot of these terms have changed in their meaning. Up until the 21st century, 2003, people are using words like sodomite or sodomizer, even though it sounds like something from the Bible, which it is, for sure. And antisotomy laws were on the books until Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court said that these laws are not constitutional. That was an interesting case. There was a weapons disturbance reported at a private residence. Houston police were called and they entered the apartment of John Lawrence and saw him with another adult man engaging in a private and sexual well, you just killed two birds with 1 St right there. That's right. Consensual Sex Act. And they were arrested for deviant sexual intercourse in violation of Texas statute that said basically two people of the same sex can't engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. It was held up by the State Court of Appeals, but then eventually overturned 63 by the US. Supreme Court. And that was they were arrested in 2000 and the Supreme Court ruled in 2003. And when they ruled in 2003 against Texas, they said, you 13 other states that have sodomy laws on the books, they're null and void. Now, you cannot outlaw people's consensual sexual behavior in the privacy of their homes. You just can't do it. Well, yeah, but the way they did it was they said it violates their Due Process Clause. The due Process clause of the Constitution. Oh, how so? Well, I mean, if they're behind closed doors in private engaging in a practice right. Then to arrest them for doing something is a violation of their due process. You know what I mean? I don't to me, it's more just like it kind of follows in that great American tradition of if you're not hurting yourself or other people, what you do behind your own closed doors is fine with everybody else, we'll just look the other way. Well, that is true, but they have to frame it, I think, under the guise of the Constitution. Yeah, but I just don't see how that has to do with due process. Because in due process, being like, you have the right to be defended by a competent attorney and in a court of law in front of a jury of your peers. I don't know. I mean, Anthony Kennedy wrote, their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. I mean, I agree with Kennedy. I just don't quite understand where he's coming from. No, I hear you. Maybe one of our wonderful listeners will write in and say, I'm a constitutional law professor, and here's what he meant, maybe. So it's a big deal, like, you were saying that we started calling paraphilias rather than sodomy laws because it's basically psychology saying, thanks a lot for this religion. We're going to take the reins from here and we're going to take it out of the realm of just religious moralization and put it into scientific study. And that was a big transition. We said earlier that laws against certain sexual acts have been on the books for thousands of years now. Oh, yeah. Some of the earliest they found were from BCE 3000 years ago in Assyria, the Roman Republic. And that was just kind of how it stood, the Bible legislated against things like bestiality, homosexuality, adultery. There's just always been kind of moral codes and consequences that society said, if you break this moral code, as far as sex is concerned, we're going to bury you up to your neck and stone you to death, or something like that. Right, right. But then in the 20th century, I think slightly before the 20th century, as psychology started to develop, one of the first things it said is like, this is right up our alley. We're going to take this over and in. Austrian scientist named Friedrich Solomon Krause coined the term paraphilia and it started to kind of transition into the scientific study. Yeah. And there's another guy named Johny or Money, I want to say Moni, because if he's a sexologist named John Money, it doesn't get any better than that. And apparently he's a really prominent researcher, paraphilia, and he kind of brought it into the forefront as far as using that word. Yeah. And I mean, just because Fredrick Solomon Krause coined it in doesn't mean that psychology adopted it. And it wasn't until 1980 that the DSM started using paraphilia in place of sexual deviance. Wow. Yeah. So they've got a lot of catching up to do. And what they're involved in right now is trying to figure out what the heck is going on and exactly where the boundaries are between what they're supposed to be studying and what's none of their business, really. Yeah. And there's a couple of psychological manuals that are often looked to, and we talked a lot about on the show about the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. We haven't talked as much about the International Statistical Classification of Diseases. There's a good reason for that, Chuck, because neither one of us knew it existed. I didn't know it existed. And apparently here in the States, people default to the DSM a lot, which is why we know much more about it. Obviously, the ICD is published by the who, the World Health Organization, but they don't offer a definition, even a blanket definition of paraphilia. So the DSM is sort of the default and it's important that it's used because the DSM is used. I mean, this can determine whether or not you get custody of your kids or like their real world ramifications for sure. For having a paraphilia. Do you say having a paraphilia or engaging in paraphilic acts? Probably both. But it's not just like we want to label people. It's like there are consequences, whether illegal or not illegal. Someone could go into divorce court and say, you know what? My husband can only achieve orgasm in a high heel stiletto heel. And a judge might think that's perverse and deny custody. Right, yeah. I mean, that's a big deal because if you think about it, like, psychology isn't getting together and saying, we're going to create this book that outlines what's normal and acceptable for human beings, and you guys go use it to throw somebody in jail. That's not the point. They're doing it to try to help people who need help. Right, that's right. But that doesn't mean that other people aren't coming along and figuring out how to use that to put other people in jail or gain custody of their children. I mean, there's really no faster way to undermine someone's credibility or just cast aspersions on them. Is it aspersions or dispersions? Dispersions, I think. Cast dispersions on them, then to frame them as a sex pervert in court when you're talking about custody of children. Right, that's it. So psychology has figured out, or psychiatry has figured out in the last few years. It just doesn't operate in a vacuum. And it has to really pay attention to what it publishes in this bible of normalcy that is the DSM. And they're getting better at it, but they still have a long way to go. But at least they're awake to this idea that, no, the stuff we say is normal, we have to worry. It just so, because if we do it wrong, people are going to go to prison for a very long time. Yeah, they might not should be in prison, necessarily. Yeah. Especially when they use words like unusual and bizarre in official definitions, because that's so subjective. And again, it's not a legal manual, so it's very tricky territory, but the words are really important. So they started out, I think, in the first DSM paraphilia was called Sexual Deviance, and the definition was just forget about it. And then it evolved. It got better from there until the DSM Three, where they said that a paraphilia said that bizarre imagery or acts were necessary for sexual excitement, and that these imagery and acts were persistent, involuntary, repetitive and involved. And this is a big deal because what's just gone is kind of the persistence or the intensity of it. And then now they're kind of getting into the meat of what makes a paraphilia. It involves a preference for the use of a non human object, repetitive sexual activity with humans involving real or stimulated suffering or humiliation, or repetitive sexual activity with nonconscending partners. Subway creeps. Right. Or pedophiles or yes, subway creeps. So they really kind of hit it on the head, I think, with the DSM Three R, if you ask me. Like they said, here are some things that we consider atypical, and that here's how they can be problematic. Yeah. I think calling it unusual and bizarre was sort of the problem with NDSM Three. Right. And is that not in four and five? So Four definitely had a different definition. Are we still talking about Led Zeppelin albums? Yeah, exactly. That one said Zoe. It said recurrent intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving nonhuman objects, the suffering or humiliation of one self or one's partner. And there's a real preoccupation with BDSM among psychiatrists. Don't ever let a psychiatrist tell you otherwise because they're lying to your face and then the third one is children or other non consenting persons that occur over a period of at least six months. So they dropped unusual and bizarre then. They did, which rightfully so, they also called out children specifically, I think, kind of to add a little bit of legality to the whole thing and to kind of say, this is a separate special case. This is beyond just non consenting, and then they added that it has to persist for at least six months. Yeah. That's interesting, because up to six months, it's just a bad streak you're on. I guess. So everywhere I looked at, and other places too, outside the DSM, I did see where these predilections is that the right word? Sure. Are basically permanent. So it's not like it changes. So if you got a thing for the high heel shoe, you're probably always going to have a thing for the high heel shoe. And in the same way, if you have a thing for children, you're probably always going to have a thing for children, which is a big problem. And I was joking, by the way, that anything up to six months is just a bad streak, especially when you're involved with if you have a paraphilia that involves a non consenting person. Yeah, but I wonder why they said that for six months. I don't know. It seems like it maybe should just be for any amount of time. Yeah, I think they're kind of moving into the right direction. Where so in the DSM Five, it's unclear whether the DSM Five actually changed the definition or not. This article says that it stayed the same, but what they did was they separated them out and said, okay, look, we recognize that there are atypical sexual proclivities that don't harm anybody. They're just not typical. Not everybody has a thing for women's high heeled shoe or the tailpipe of air wolf or something, you know, like not everyone does. But as long as you're not harming anybody and it's not having a negative effect on your life and you're not distressed by it, if you're out there living your best life wearing women's high heels shoes around your house and just loving every minute of it, like, go with God, that's great, that's fine, that's different. We're just going to call it a paraphilia. Paraphilic disorder is where it does cause the stress or it does involve somebody else who doesn't want to be involved, and now this is what we should be paying attention to. And then, so people say, okay, that's great psychology. You're going in the right direction here, but just get paraphilia out of there entirely. Just don't even include those. Because what they warn against is the fact that it's in this DSM, this Bible of normalcy. Right. The very fact that it's in there suggests that there's something weird about it and abnormal about it. Psychiatry said as much by including it. Yeah, it's like a. Mental disorder of some kind. Right. And so even if you don't fit the criteria for a disorder diagnosis, a paraphilic disorder, if you say where women choose around, even if you're enjoying it, you still are in the Bible of normalcy called out as a weirdo. And then that kind of thing can be used against you in like, a custody hearing when it really shouldn't be. You're probably not going to be wearing your high heels in front of your kids because you're probably involved in sexy time. And if you are doing that in front of your kids, you got a whole other disorder that needs to be addressed that really has little to nothing to do with high heels. That's right. So this is the hornets nest that is currently paraphilias and the DSM and psychiatry in general. Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break? Sure, man. All right, let's take a break and we're going to talk about why humans have paraphilia to begin with. All right, so we're talking a lot about a lot of interesting things. Some people might think this is pretty out there, that someone would make love to a car. Sure, maybe. But I'll bet if you really got to know your neighbor, you'd be pretty surprised. Yeah. Who is it to sing that song? No one knows what goes on behind closed doors. I think you're thinking of that song about nobody knows what it's like to be the bad man behind Blue Eyes. That's The Who. That's the World Health Organization. That's John Fogerty. What? I'm pretty sure that's John Fogerty behind blue eyes. I'll give you Bob. Seeger, as a maybe, it's the who. The quadrupedia. Okay. All right. John Fogarty. What song are you talking about? What pokerty song did you mean? Oh, I didn't mean I'm so mad at you right now. Where was I? Even? Okay, here's the deal. Why do we have peripherals you hear these things. It might sound very unusual to you, but there are still people that they didn't wake up one day and say, you know what I'm going to try? I'm just going to try making love to a car for kicks. Like, this is something that is in someone's brain, some might argue in their heart, depending on how you feel about stuff like that. It's not some choice that someone is making just to be different. They found that it's probably genetic and probably caused by environmental factors, some mixture of both. They can't point to some gene and say, hey, here's the gene that causes an obsession with an object. And they can't say for sure what behaviors like environmental factors and behaviors at home might lead to it. Right. Or how much I know for years. And still, like Freudian, psychologists are bound and determined to say that if your mom spanked you, then you're going to want to be spanked sexually later in life, right. By a woman you hired who looks just like your mom. Right. But that is very reductive. And although things that happen in your childhood may play out later on, you can't always say exactly how. Yeah. So you might ask, well, then what does psychology what can psychology explain? Nothing. Basically nothing about paraphilia is understood how they develop. And there's so many competing voices, like you said. Not really. One of them has been proven wrong. They've all kind of got their support and their detractors and their different schools of thought, which is a really head scratcher in this day and age in nearly 2020, that we have virtually no idea how paraphilia is formed, like you said. Are they genetic? Who knows? Maybe we will find a gene one day. But what about nurture? We all develop sexually at a certain rate and at a certain time and under certain circumstances. So if you happen to get a late spanking right around the time that you're becoming pubescent, maybe you will kind of get a little turned on by spanking. Or if you work at a shoe store. Right, sure. Yeah. Or if you were raised in a very sexually repressive environment. Well, maybe that sexuality has to come out somewhere and it's going to come out onto mom's shoes or something like that. It's going to find a way, just like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park did. So will budding sexuality in a young kid. It's going to find its way out. And then maybe that's where paraphilize come from. They really have no idea. But they have done studies that actually don't clear anything up at all. Yeah. The studies are problematic for a couple of reasons. One is because a lot of times there are studies conducted on criminal behaviors. Yeah. Almost all of it is because they're the ones that are in jail and they're the ones easiest to study. And it's hard to get someone that's not a criminal, just a regular society, to step forward and take a survey and be super honest about something that may be their deepest, darkest secret. Sure. So it's really hard and problematic to study. And they have found a few things as far as the genetic component goes. There was one study of five families where they had confirmed pedophiles, and they found a lot of evidence that pedophilia can be multi generational in some families and then across single generations. And others, like three brothers, are all pedophiles and single family. And so you would say, well, obviously there's a genetic basis. But a behaviorist would say, well, maybe that it spans multiple generations because it was a learned behavior and it was carried on in that way, so it doesn't clear up anything whatsoever. They usually find paraphilia between men ages of 15 and 25, although it can vary wildly, of course. Sure. And there are other reasons that people put forward that maybe they've generally found them in men and not women. How we study things with a male slant could be one. The fact that men may be more apt to act out maybe in a violent way if that's their paraphera, or brazen enough to get on the subway and do something like that. It's also way more socially acceptable for, say, an exhibitionist woman to get into film and be able to fulfill her exhibitionism that way. Whereas we don't usually film naked men very often, so the exhibitionist man needs to just kind of walk around town. Donald Ducking it. Porky Pigging it. That's what I mean. I'm sure that the Disney Corporation is happy with either one of those definitions. Yeah, it's Warner Bros. And Disney. They're both mad at us now. Yeah. They did find in that same study some comorbidities with low intelligence and interestingly deafness and blindness. That is interesting. And then some other studies have found some predominance in left handed people. Yeah. Again, none of that means anything at this point. It's just here's the data point I turned up, right, from five families. It's not very good study. Right. That sexologist. John Money, he wrote in the 80s, he wrote a book called Love Maps. And I think that was really authoritative on paraphilias. And his thing was that it's learned behavior that comes at a certain point. And our Love Map, which combines like love and lust in normal ways, gets vandalized in some way from some traumatic experience, or it could also be in some fun experience. But the introduction of this additional data point in the development of this Love Map creates a paraphilia that has to be, I guess, corrected through something like cognitive behavioral therapy. Sometimes drugs are used, SSRIs are used sometimes, and then in certain cases, they'll use things like chemical castration. Actually. Yeah, we talked about that in a few episodes, if you like. Yeah, I don't remember which ones. Well, definitely the one with what's his name, the Enigma machine. Alan Turing. With Alan Turing because he was chemically castrated. Did we do an episode on the Enigma machine? No, but we talked about him, and I believe or was that just the TV show with the Turing test with CAPTCHAs? I don't remember. It's all such a fog right now. Here's something. If you ever hear someone in conversation, say, if you were sexually abused as a child, then statistically you're going to grow up and do that to someone else. Not true. I saw both. Oh, really? I saw that. It is true. I saw that was largely refuted now. Yeah. I found a site called Smart Gov. It sounds made up, but it seems real. But it was about paraphilias from a criminal justice point of view. And it said outright that it's not a guarantee in any way, shape, or form, but that people who sexually abused children are sexually abused children are more likely to sexually abuse children than people who weren't sexually abused as children. How interesting. Yeah. That brings up a really important point here. There's a big distinction between sexually abusing a child, raping a child and being a pedophile. They're not necessarily one and the same. Well, what in that a pedophile can be a pedophile and not act upon that instinct? That's one version. Another version is if you're a child rapist, you might not really have much of a desire for children. You just had a desire to rape somebody, and that child happened to be handy at the time. Right. So there is, in two different ways at least, there's a distinction between pedophilia and child rape. And this is where that whole legality thing kind of comes in. Oh, right. And that pedophilia is not a legal defense. So if you commit a sex crime, you can't go to court and say, I plead a parapheliac. Yeah. Which is kind of surprising, because if you kill somebody and you go and say, I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, they're probably not going to give you the death sentence, where if you're diagnosed with a paraphilic disorder, they're going to totally set that aside in considering how you should be punished. What's weird, though, Chuck, is since 1990, the actual opposite has been allowed to develop, too, where if they convict you of something as a sexually violent predator, SVP, I believe it's what it's called? Senior Vice President. Right. They can keep you in jail longer. They won't keep you in jail. But they'll say this person shows that they have signs of being like they have a paraphilia toward child molestation, toward pedophilia. So they've served their sentence for attacking this child, but now, under the law, we can actually commit them to a mental asylum, a hospital, indefinitely, to keep them from harming somebody else. So that's one way that the DSM can be used, to keep people in jail for crimes that even committed. This is like the prevention of future crime, which, as far as I know, is completely contravenes the spirit of the law in the United States. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's a Minority Report stuff, right, but that's what they've been doing, using the DSM. And for a little while there, they were able to do it because the DSM had the word or in the wrong place that basically said, you qualify as the definition of somebody with a paraphilic disorder if you've committed a criminal act that has something to do with a paraphilia. Now, that's part of the criteria. It's not its own criteria, but for a while it allowed these laws to basically say, yes, this person committed this criminal act. By definition, they have a paraphilic disorder, and people with paraphilic disorders have basically a chronic, ongoing illness disorder that we need to keep them out of society indefinitely for. Yeah. I know that you have seen the great documentary Capturing the Freedmans from 2003, and we talked about a documentary to really take you on a roller coaster of how you feel about things like this. I remember I've only seen it the one time, way back when, but it just rocked my world as far as letting you come to your own conclusions, which I think the best documentaries do. Yeah, I haven't seen it in a while either, but I remember feeling the exact same way about it. Yeah, really interesting stuff. What else do we have in here? We talked about treating it with cognitive behavioral therapy. There's another line of treatment. I guess it's still called treatment. And they're not trying to say. Don't do this. But. Hey. Maybe we can take something that you clearly want to do that's problematic in your life and just construct your life in a way so it's not so problematic and you can still do that and it's not causing you or anyone else any harm and make it a positive part of your sexual identity. Yeah, I would guess, like, for example, something like cross stressing. I think it's a really good example of how somebody might feel distressed about having that paraphilia where they could really benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy with a therapist who basically said, hey, is your wife okay with this? Yeah. What's the problem here? Is it really because you're disappointing your parents? Maybe that is it. Well, both of your parents are dead. They aren't paying attention anymore. If you really are enjoying yourself, like, maybe just go with it. It doesn't matter what society says. That would be a really beneficial situation for somebody who is experiencing some level of distress where it just came from the fact that they had an atypical sexual proclivity and they were distressed by the fact that it contravened or it was in contradiction with society's norms or expectations. And that was it. That was the whole point problem. Right. Or if there's a real world situation, like it's butting up against your job or a social relationship maybe constructed in a way where it doesn't do those things, and then it's just all good. Yeah. Maybe save the enemas for after work. Like, don't leave work to go get an enema. Unless your job is giving enemas, then you're in hog heaven, I guess. So. That one, by the way, is called let me see if I can find it real quick. What, do you have a master list on your phone there? No, I just wrote that one down. Yeah, right here. Plasmophilia. Really? That is a paraphilia regarding receiving enemies, as far as I can tell. So you would receive an enema in order to achieve completion? That's right. Interesting. Yeah. I feel like there's probably nothing that isn't defined. I think it's one of those things. Was it Rule 42? If it exists, there's porn about it. Yeah. I mean, the Internet, in a good way has brought these people together because of many people for many years, felt very alone in this stuff. And we should also shout out kind of loose friend of the show, Kevin Allison from the comedy troupe of the State on MTV many years ago. He has a great podcast called Risk All Caps. R-I-S-K. Exclamation point. And Risk doesn't necessarily deal with this, deals with it's just really good people telling kind of risky stories about their life that they normally wouldn't tell in a room full of people. But Kevin has also championed fetishes, and the people in Paraphilic basically consenting parapheriacs who don't have a disorder and kind of helping them to be right with themselves and to be more accepting of others. It's really kind of interesting and cool. Yeah, I think that's the way it should be. If somebody has a kink that you don't jive with but it doesn't have anything to do with you, just remember, it doesn't have anything to do with you, don't judge them. Yeah. Kevin is a really good dude. Yeah, that's cool. Way to go, Kevin. You're doing God's work. By the way, it's Rule 44. Lowell corrected me. Thanks, Lowell. What did you say? Rule 42? Yeah, I think I said 42. 42, 44. Whatever it takes. I was thinking of the hitman Agent 42, and that's 46. Right. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, well, look for some more specialized episodes on Paraphilia coming down the pike, but for now, that's paraphera. If you want to know more about Paraphilia, the Internet is wide open for you. That's right. Since I said that it's time for listener mail. The Governor is off. The Internet is ready to be goosed. Yes, goose. I meant that is like an engine revving thing. Never mind. I know what you meant. Yeah, this is a short one. Hey, guys, remember we had that listener mail between Jeremy and Kate? Yes. From the MSG episode about the Chicago thing? Yes. So we have Maggie chiming in now. All these people are so kind. I love it. Great. Your listener mail conversation between Jeremy and Kate from Thursday's MSG episode had me smiling. And after the mail from Veronica, I couldn't help but continue this trend. So, to Veronica, I am also a Stuffy Chanel listener and also a teacher in Chicago. And I was also at that show. Being a first year teacher is extremely challenging in so many different ways. So please be sure to take time to take care of yourself and stay positive. I promise it gets easier. Good luck with the new job, and welcome to Chicago from Maggie. Beautiful. That was so nice, Maggie. Nice, people. We're basically going to turn listener mail into a what was that? What's that one section like? I saw you somewhere. Were you the guy on the train who helped me through the door? You were so hot. I want to meet you and bring your puppy to our date. That's right. Yes. Well, regardless, I think that was very sweet. Who is that from? Maggie. Maggie. That was a really cool email. And congratulations to you also for being a teacher. You, too, are doing God's work. That's my new thing I'm going to say. Maybe that'll be a t shirt. I do God's work. I listen to stuff you should know. I love it. Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Maggie did, or if you want to get in touch with another listener, apparently you can go on to STUFFYou Known.com and follow our social links. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is 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. 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 author topsy 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." | |
Maggots: Good For Healing Wounds, Turns Out | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/maggots-good-for-healing-wounds-turns-out | Cultures around the world over the years have been inspired by, then repulsed, then inspired by maggots' ability to heal persistent wounds. We are in an inspired-by phase right now. | Cultures around the world over the years have been inspired by, then repulsed, then inspired by maggots' ability to heal persistent wounds. We are in an inspired-by phase right now. | Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:15:02 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=19, tm_min=15, tm_sec=2, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=314, tm_isdst=0) | 36258054 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and no one no one else is in here with with us yet again, because we've graduated to the point where we don't even need a producer. We need somebody who presses record and leaves. Yes, that's it. Because we're pros. Yes, that's right. But we are prosaic. Yes, but definitely not pro. Apostrophe. Very few things drive me crazier than that. And I know it's stupid and pedantic, but to see, like, somebody take out a huge billboard or something, and a word has an apostrophe that shouldn't prose, people say, like, leave it to the pros, and they'll put an apostrophe. Yes. And that graphic designer should be docked a half a day's pay, maybe $80. Something we want to issue, and you probably would get this from the title of the episode, but we want to issue a meal warning. Oh, good thinking. Because we've gotten complaints in the past when people are eating and get sick listening to some of these. Yeah, this would do it. Possibly for some people. I was fine. I ate a runny yolk egg sandwich while I was white rice. Yeah, right. It didn't bother me, but I could totally see how it could send people. I also want to say, if it comes up, do not go Google Image search wound sloth. Well, I just put do not Google Image Search magnet therapy at all. Okay, sure. But definitely stay away from wound sloth. S-L-O-U-G-H. Yeah. Wow. And definitely don't look at wound sloth while you're eating. Yeah. Okay. So that's all out of the way. Yes. I predict we're going to be kind of excited about this one. I'm feeling a little pumped about it. Well, we did cover in Ten Bizarre Medical Treatments, leach Therapy, which is still being used, and I'm surprised this wasn't in that article, to be honest. I am as well. But this gets its own special deal. Well, it should, actually, because it's a pretty amazing thing. Agreed. We're talking about maggot therapy. It's a great band, by the way. Yes, it is. They were awesome. So are they really? Or is that a band name? Well, it's a band name to end all band names. There probably was a bad name. It's called Maggot Therapy. Maggotment therapy. Larval therapy or bio. There's another one called, I think, like biodibridement or Therapeutic Wound. Myasesis. Yeah. And that's basically all of them. No matter what you call it, no matter how you church it up, it is the application of live maggots fly larva purposefully to an open wound in order to help that wound heal faster. Yeah. And better. And cleaner and all that good stuff. Everything Doth Punk said. Oh, yeah. Should we talk about some of the history of this stuff? Let's just say that one more time. Okay. Maggot deprivement Therapy is taking live maggots and putting them in an open wound on a human being or an animal. It's used in veterinary medicine as well, wrapping it up tight and letting them just eat the dead and dying flesh in that wound. Yeah. Why do you get your foot tickled? Oh, I would be so skewed out by this. I just wanted to make sure that everybody knows exactly what we're talking about. Right. And goodbye to everyone. Everyone who fainted. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about the history, Chuck, because this is in use today, but it's actually pretty old. Yeah. I mean, some say it's even an ancient tradition, like in places like Burma and Central America with the Mayans. They were smart enough to know that maggots do a pretty good job of consuming human flesh and can be used for good in that regard. Yeah. At some point, I guess healers noticed that people who had maggots in their wounds tended to have wounds heal. And actually, as far as the Western literature goes, that's exactly how magnet therapy first finds its way, first crawls into the medical literature. It's from a French surgeon named Embras Paret. Yes. How would you say it? I don't know. I don't speak French. Embras Paret. You say pare even though it doesn't have the little what is that, an accent? Ago. Yeah, it's just the e. Right. But he was a 16th century surgeon and he noticed that people didn't necessarily fall over dead if there was a maggot in the wound. Yeah. He was the first doctor to actually come out and say, I had this patient with a big skull wound. Right. And unbeknownst to me, there were maggots in there. I saw them crawling out one day, and even though they had a lot of bone, the guy was great. He healed. Yeah. Like, he lost a hand sized slab of skull and he lived. And I think it might have something to do with the maggots. Yeah. And he presumably wore a helmet for the rest of his life, probably. He had a big, soft skull there. Yeah, I guess so. That was followed in with the mid 1700s by another Frenchie baron, Dominique Jean Valley, and he said, you know what? On this Egyptian expedition, these blue fly maggots are actually doing the right thing and helping us out. So it's almost like these doctors just noticed this. Exactly. And it meant enough to them that they were like, I should probably write this down. This is going to be my great contribution to medical history of the history of science. Right. So it wasn't until, I guess, the Civil War that a doctor actually said, I'm going to purposely put maggots in a wound and see what happens. And that doctor was John forney Zachariah. He probably didn't tell this patient that. I think probably he was just like, just bite down on his broomstick and look the other way. Do you want to lose your foot, or do you want to try something really weird? Well, supposedly in studies, 95% of people, modern patients who are offered this therapy say yes to it. Well, yeah, because I think that's what it comes down to. It it's a last resort, basically. It's not the first thing they offer. Not necessarily. Right. So, anyway, Doctor Zacharias, he had a great quote. He said, during my service in the hospital at Danville, Virginia, I first used maggots to remove the decayed tissue in hospital gangrene, and with my eminent satisfaction, in a single day, they would clean a wound much better than any agent we had at our command. I use them afterwards at various places. I am sure I saved many lives by their use, escaped septicemia, and had rapid recoveries. Period, end quote. Pretty great. Yeah. So he was a huge believer and not just a passive observer like people who came before him. He said, yeah, I put maggots on wounds, and it helps. That's right. And people experimented with it for a little while until a guy named Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch came along, a microbiologist. And germ theorists that basically said, this is disgusting. We might want to not do this. Yeah. Maggots are dirty. Yeah. And it's true. Maggots, naturally, in the wild, carry lots of pathogens with them that can infect us in other ways, can make a wound worse, can actually kill you. So the idea behind germ theory, as far as magnets go, is right. Yeah. But it seems like there's this long history of necessity and disgust with maggot therapy that kind of Wayne ebbs and flows. Right. And necessity rears its head on the battlefield. It did in the Civil War and it also did in World War One. There was a surgeon named William S. Baer, and he was working on the front lines in France, and he used maggots on stomach wounds and open fractures. Yes. And he found, to his great satisfaction, just like Dr. Zacharias and the others before him, that this stuff actually worked. Yeah. And he actually said, you know what? I have some further advancements. Maybe we should put a bandage over this thing so it doesn't completely discuss the patient. Right. And let me put bandages around the wound so they don't start creeping onto the healthy flesh and doing damage or just itching you or creeping you out further. Right, exactly. Which are still in use today, these techniques. He also pioneered another huge technique, and this is after the war was over, ten years later, when he was back at Johns Hopkins, he pioneered another really important technique, and that was using sterilized maggots, like germ free maggots. They were raised as eggs in a sterile environment, and so when they were introduced to the wounds, they weren't carrying these pathogens anymore. And he found this is the jackpot. Now you can use maggots from now on. That's right. And there was a big boom in the 30s, up until the mid 1940s, or more than 300, American hospitals were using maggot treatment, maggot therapy. And then in 1944, antiseptics came along, or new antiseptics, and they said, you know what? Maybe there was another lull in the use of maggot there. Right. Necessity didn't spur this stuff, and they went back to just being gross again. There was a guy who, by the 80s, wrote what this one article calls the majority opinion. Fortunately, magnet therapy is now relegated to a historical backwater of interest, more for its bizarre nature than its effect on the course of medical science. A therapy the demise of which no one is likely to mourn. That's just that kind of Western medicine hubris sure. Where we can do anything except everything. That's right. And in the 1990s, a dude named Ronald Sherman and Edward Pector basically championed the technique again and kind of brought it into the modern age. Yeah, and still very much is ronald Sherman is one of the first, I think, to receive a license to produce sterile maggots for use as medical devices. And there's another guy over in the UK. Named John Church who brought the maggot therapy into the four. So it was an ancient thing. It's found to be disgusting, found to be useful. It's found to be disgusting. It's found ways you can make it better. It's found to be disgusting. And then now that this idea of complimentary medicine is kind of regaining some traction again, I think it's here to stay, though. I think so, too. Unless someone comes along in ten years, you know what? It's disgusting. Well, you know, the chuck. I mean, probably what we're seeing is the next thing that'll happen is there'll be some huge leap, some huge development in science, and science will get its hackles up again and great about itself, and we don't need any of that stupid nastiness. And then we'll find that, no, you still can't beat Good Old fashioned maggots. And that should be the title of this thing. You can't beat good old fashioned maggots for healing a wound that won't heal otherwise. It's a great title. So you want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it. And we'll go treat our own wounds, and we'll be back shortly. All right. Okay, let's talk about diabetes for a second. More than 23 million Americans are affected with diabetes, and one thing that can happen is nerve damage, especially in the extremities, the hands and feet and the toes and the fingers. Your blood vessels become hard, and they don't circulate the blood like you need. That can lead to open source called ulcers, which can become infections, which can spread to nearby bone, which can lead to amputation. Yeah, and all of this is a lot. All this is just from prolonged exposure to high levels of blood sugar, and they're not sure how they can do it, but yeah, the blood vessels not helping pump blood very well get nutrients so your tissue can die. But also that neuropathy, that deaden nerve cell, that actually makes it hard for you to notice. If you have, like, a really bad ulcer on the bottom of your foot, you can't feel it. And so you don't get treatment early enough so an infection can get out of hand. And when it spreads to bone, that's called osteomyelitis. That's problematic because that very quickly will lead to an amputation. And there's some pretty shocking stats here from this article that Tom wrote about. Was this sheep jam? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, for sure. But about amputations from diabetes. Yes. 70,000 toe, foot, and leg amputations each year in the United States alone. So crazy. And they say around the world, they estimate every 30 seconds someone gets a limb cut off because of diabetes. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah, it really is. And we will do it on diabetes for sure. Oh, yeah. I'm surprised we haven't already. Yeah, me too. But amputation is used to halt the progress of an infection. Yes. And that's usually the last resort. But what Tom points out is that there are plenty of doctors around the world, I imagine, that aren't aware that you can use maggots or have you ever done it before. And if you are facing an amputation from, say, like a wound, a persistent wound, a chronic wound that won't heal, you may want to suggest maggots to your doctor. You may have to actually take the initiative on this one and say, let's make sure that amputation is the absolute last resort. Let's see if we can put one more resort in there before then. I'm willing to let maggots crawl inside my body in this wound, this open wound, if you're willing to apply them. And they, like most doctors, love hearing when patients suggest treatments. Oh, they do? They love feedback. They love to be guided in their diagnoses and prognoses. Yeah, love it. That's a tough jam. I get it. Doctors are frustrated a lot these days with self diagnosis and online doctoring. Sure. But you should also be your own advocate. We've seen that before. Yeah, it's your leg. If you want to keep your leg, you tell that doctor to go get some maggots. You're going to replace them with the doctor who will I can find a guy. Yes. I can get a guy by noon that will put maggots on that wound. And actually, there's a group, I think Ronald Sherman, the guy we mentioned earlier, who's like the US. Champion of magnet therapy. There's a group called the Beter Foundation, BTR Foundation, and they have all sorts of resources for people in that very situation, like how to talk to your doctor. If your insurance won't cover it, let them know, because they say insurance actually, most insurance covers magnet therapy, but most insurance claims, people are not aware of that. So you may get denied at first. And here's how to talk to your insurance company. That's a great resource. It really is. That beats going to your doctor and saying, well, you know what, Josh and Chuck said, hey, you're not going to like hearing this. You think you know it all. Doctor, please take a seat and be put maggots on my feet. Right. And that's the other thing, too. We wouldn't be suggesting this, and the Beta Foundation probably wouldn't be such advocates for it if it didn't work so amazingly well. Study after study and we'll talk about the details of it. But there's so many studies out there. Again, Sherman, who agreed, is an advocate, but in a peer reviewed journal, published a survey of studies that he could find on maggot therapy. And it's very clear that it works really well, and not only necessarily as a means of last resort, but even just compared to the standard of care using, like, hydrogel or other things that you might use to treat a chronic wound. Maggots destroy it. They leave it in the dust. Yeah. And if it doesn't work, it's not going to hurt anything, from what I can tell. Yeah. It just puts off how much longer before they amputate your foot? Pretty much, yeah. So what will happen is they will well, let's get into this a little bit. Okay. There are four different and where did you find this? Was this a research paper? Yeah, this is by Ronald Sherman. Mechanisms of Magnet Induced Wound Healing. Colin, what do we know and where do we go from here? It was in the journal. Evidence based Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2014. That's right. And he describes four different phases of basically healing a wound. Homeostasis, inflammation, proliferate. Man, I'm so bad at that one. Yeah, keep it coming. Proliferation. Nice going. And remodeling and maturing. And what happens is the cells get to work, they recruit other cells, they alter their activities and basically say, let's get to work cleaning on all four of these stages right. To help heal the wound. Yeah. And any one of those stages, the next process can stall out. Sure. Normally it stalls out at inflammation because the infection gets out of hand and the body can't fight off the infection faster than it's laying the extracellular matrix for the new cells to be rebuilt, the new tissue to regrow. And that's a common thing that leads to chronic wounds that just won't heal. And that's where maggots are really useful to basically interrupt that stall right. And get the car moving again in the right direction. That's exactly right. They Kick started. So Debridement is removing dead tissue, and that is really where maggots excel. They said in here, each maggot can chew. Well, they don't exactly chew, which we'll get to. They remove 25 milligrams of necrotic material, dead flesh, in just 24 hours. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. And there's actually three ways that maggots clean a wound, but Debridement which is getting in there and just cleaning out, physically removing that dead material. That's like the key. Yeah, that seems to be the key. And then there's also antimicrobial activities like actually killing the bacteria that's killing the flesh, leaving it cleaner than when they came in, which is amazing. And then even more astounding, stimulating new growth, like the presence of maggots in your wound, stimulates new tissue growth around your skin. They're just like wonder creatures who knew? One of the ways that they removed the dead tissue is just by the nature of what their body is like. And they have these little prickly spines all over their body that act as a surgeon's, raspberry or firewood. Basically, just the fact that they're moving around on the wound is going to file the stuff down and scrape the wound, which helps loosens it up. It's like a plow. It burrows through this dying and dead tissue and it loosens up. That's part one of deprived neurons. Part one. There's another part of it, which is the digestive enzymes that they excrete and secrete. It's called alimentary secretions and excretions ASE. It's basically their digestive juices, right. And they puke these up as they're moving around and they just puke them everywhere and it dissolves this flesh. Yeah, I remember in the Body Farms episode, we talked about this, one of the old classics. Sure. And that's why I said earlier, they don't bite or chew something. They just liquefy it and then suck it in. And this ASE stuff is so greedy that it liquefies more dead flesh than the Maggots can even consume. And they consume quite a bit, like you said, 25 milligrams. That's a lot for a little tiny maggot in one day. But even more than that, they're liquefying even more of this dead tissue. So that part of the process of maggot debridement therapy is draining out this liquefied necrotic tissue that's become liquefied from the elementary or the ASE stuff, the digestive enzymes. Right. So you've got them burrowing around, you've got them puking into your wound up liquefying the dead tissue, leaving pretty much entirely the living tissue alone, and then you just kind of drain out the stuff that's in there. And the reason that Maggots are considered by the FDA, a medical device rather than a drug, is because the whole process of debridement isn't just a reaction to the chemicals, it is part of that mechanical movement of the maggots through the wound. So it's a drug? It's a device. It's a device. Well, they are a device. Look at them. And those that the secretions are so potent. They have basically DNA destroying qualities. They not only just break down tissue, they destroy the DNA. It's pretty amazing stuff. It is. Should we take another break? Yeah, I'm a little excited. We probably should. I'm going to go to the vomitorium. Are you grossed out slightly? I am not in the least. What does that say about me? I don't know. You have a stronger stomach, but I don't necessarily I'm just excited. All right, well, go watch me vomit, at least. That will gross me out. All right. Well, that was disgusting. It was. It made me throw up in turn. Here's a couple of questions. Does it hurt? Maybe a little bit at first, yeah. I don't get the feeling that it's extremely painful. It probably depends on the wound, but it can the first few treatments can apparently be a little bit painful. Right. There's actually two mechanisms for the pain. One is that you have an open wound, right? Yes. And you have maggots crawling over the exposed nerves in your open wound. That's not going to feel good. No, it won't. And then number two, pressure in the wound can increase as the maggots get bigger from eating so much dead flesh. That's right. So, yes, the cure to that is painkillers, which, frankly, if you have an open wound with exposed nerves, you should probably be on those anyway. Sure. You will be. So it probably won't hurt because there'll be some sort of pain management going on, but you will still feel most likely, unless the doctor completely numbs the area, maggots crawling around inside the wound. See, that's the part that gets me is actually thinking about undergoing this therapy myself, is what gets me. Not like, seeing it or reading about it, but thinking about having an open wound on the bottom of my foot and having maggots creeping around in there. See, the thing is, I think anybody would feel that way. There's very few, including myself. I'm not grossed out by this, but I wouldn't want maggots falling around my open wound. But I think if your back is against the wall sure, that or lose your foot. I try. I would definitely try. I think absolutely 95% of people would apparently demand and I would demand some high quality drugs. Yeah. And they also have what is it called, amnesiatics? To make you forget about it. Yes. So you can't form memories while it's happening. So maybe that would be a nice thing to do, too. So the other question is, can you just use any kind of maggot? And the answer is no. What they found is the most useful is the larvae of the green blowfly'and. As we said earlier, these things are now grown just sort of like the medical leeches. They're shipped in sterile containers as if it were medicine, even though it's a device. And the BTER Foundation, they go into a lot about this. Like, could anybody do this? And they say, well, no, because you need a prescription. It's an FDA control. Like, you might do it yourself. But they say anybody who can read can basically follow the instructions on the package. Yeah. I wouldn't advise that as your non doctor. Sure. I'm not saying that either, but, I mean, this may be your doctor's first time, too. Their point was, it's not difficult, just follow the instructions on the package. What if your doctor, though, he got the maggots out and he put on his bifocals and was like, all right, let's see how to do this. Right. Or like, he tears the package open. They go everywhere. You have, like, Jerry Lewis as a doctor. Oh. But although they do say you can't just load it up with maggots, there should be no more than eight maggots per square centimeter. Yeah, I saw five to eight. And so when you have the maggots applied to your wound, they're going to make sure that the healthy area around the wound is covered up so the maggots can't get to it. Which goes back to World War II. Yeah. They're going to cover up the wound after they apply the maggots five to 8 /cm\u00b2. Like, you say they're going to cover it up so they can't wander off because maggots like to leave before their work is done. Sure. They want some TV. They're full, pretty much, but they can still eat more if you'll keep them in there. So they'll put the maggots in five to eight, cover it up with this bandage, and basically, they will just sit there and eat for between 48 and 72 hours. And then the bandage will be removed. The maggots will then, sadly, be incinerated or put into an autoclave. That's sad. Or put into a plasma gasifier or bronze and hung on your wall. For real. Like an ant farm. Yeah. Because it's like, thank you for this great contribution to saving my foot. Now go be auto claimed death. I would name them and save them and preserve them. Sure. You'd be violating, I'm sure, all sorts of medical waste laws, but who cares? And then that's what's called a treatment cycle, and most patients supposedly go between two and four treatment cycles. And again, while this is happening, what's going on is the maggots are debriding the dead flesh. They're liquefying it, they're eating it, and they're also disinfecting it and stimulating growth. Right. Pretty amazing. So with the disinfecting, they figured that there was some sort of gut flora that the maggots have that prevents them from being infected by microbial. Yeah, that would make sense, because they're in that rotting flesh as well and they're thriving. Right. So what gives? Well, it turns out that there are a couple of types of I'm not quite sure what kind of bacteria they are. That's not true. The Proteus mirabilis is a type of symbiotic microbe that you find in the gut of a maggot. Right. Yes. And this thing destroys microbial life, so it's killing the bacteria that's causing this infection in your wound. But there's something that maggots this is yet another thing. So think about it, Chuck, like you said, the very structure of a maggot body debrides the wound. That's pretty amazing. This maggot antimicrobial stuff. Not only does it kill microbes. It destroys the thing that naturally protects microbes, which is called biofilm. Yeah, we've talked about biofilm a lot on the show, and it's basically a film, like a literal film. Like, they call it a polymeric matrix, but the easiest way to say it, in Layman's term, it's a film. Right. It's like a protective coating. Yeah. And the little spiny bodies, like, one way they get rid of this thing is by roughing it up, and that's exactly what the little bodies do. Right. And that's part of surgical debridement with, like, going in there and scrubbing a wound with, I don't know, steel wool or something like that, that will break up the biofilm. It also must be awfully painful. Right. Maggots naturally can destroy not just the bacteria, but also the biofilm that protects it, too, which makes them extremely handy with things like MRSA and other antibiotic resistant bacteria and all kinds of ulcers. Right. Not like internal ulcers, but the open wound kind. Right, exactly. From diabetes, from bed sores. And there's been a lot of studies of people with bed sores that have found that maggots helped those kind of alters tremendously. So let's talk about this one study, or a couple of studies, actually. There was one study of spinal cord injury patients that had non healing ulcers, which is the problem. They monitored them over three to four weeks, and they were getting regular wound care at the same time. Like, sometimes it's used in conjunction I think usually is used in conjunction with, like, standard care. And they found that after three to four weeks of magnet therapy, tissue quality and wound size were assessed weekly. And they found that debridement was achieved in less than 14 days, an average of ten days. And none of the control group wounds were more than 50% debrided after a month. A month. Not even half debrided. None of the wounds. Not half the wounds were debrided. None of the wounds were even half debrided after a month. Chuck of the control group. Yes. Amazing where they didn't use the maggots. Yes, that's objectively amazing. It is. And then they did a larger clinical trial and found this time they got 263 subjects, which is pretty good for this kind of rare treatment. For sure. And they found that using the hydrogel, which you mentioned earlier, compression dressings. Just the standard care. Right. That was the control. Yeah, that's obviously the control. It differs significantly between the three groups. What was the third group? The third group used bio bags, which are like a little pouch. He said it was like a ravi. Yeah. And it's filled with live maggots, but it prevents them from burrowing. All it is is using their chemical secretions. Yeah. That, to me, is just like, why go halfway? Right? Exactly. Well, a lot of people are open. I don't want a maggot crawling in my wound, but a bag of them is fine. Doing. The shake shake near my wound. Right. So it actually has been shown to be not nearly as effective as just letting what is called free range maggots burrow through the wound. So they found the median time for debris and was 14 days with free range, 28 days with the bagged ravioli and 72 days for the control. Yes. That's pretty amazing. I don't know. I don't think it should be a last resort. I agree. And I think that increasingly it's becoming less and less of the last resort because you can compare it to the control. Like, the standard of care took 72 days for the wound to be divided. Free range maggots, 14 days. That, to me, says that free range maggots top the standard of care as it stands right now. But like you say, there's a lot of people who are saying this is just a last resort. The next thing we're going to do is amputate your foot, but let's try this one last time. Right. Or in the case of persistent infections from, like, MRSA, where just antibiotics just don't work, let's try maggots and see if we can fix it. And maggots do work. There is a study that found that of 13 people who had MRSA treated with maggots alone, twelve of the 13 had complete recovery and wound healing from a MRSA infection. Mrs. Nasty stuff, too. Yeah, I think. Did we do it on MRSA? I feel like we did. I know we've talked about it. I don't know if it got its own show, though. It may have been in the should we outlaw anti bacterial soap episode. Boy, there's been a lot of them. Almost 800. You got anything else? Surely I do. But I guess not. Oh, yeah, there's one other thing. We kept kind of teasing it. It actually stimulates growth. A couple of studies have found that the presence of maggots produce more blood vessel redevelopment and tissue redevelopment than maggots not being present. So something about them actually stimulates tissue growth and blood vessel growth, which promotes wound healing even more. Up with maggots. Up with maggots, indeed. Man, I love them. I'm so psyched about maggots right now. Well, it definitely changes the way you think about them. Like, next time you see the dead squirrel that you've killed right off your porch, well, they're clearly trying to bring it back to life. Yeah. And you see the maggots, you don't think that's disgusting. You just think those are little things doing their thing, doing their thing. Little things doing their thing. Now I'm going to auto clay them. That's right. If you want to know more about maggot therapy, you can type those words in the search bar@housetoforce.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener. I'm going to call this taking the task somewhat over a turn. Guys, I want to say you are my favorite podcast by far. Been listening since you were just little five minute blurbs. Oh, man, you sure have grown up. I've never written in before, but felt I had to comment on Josh's statement that climate change was or global warming was settled science. No, I'm not disputing the data that shows an increase in global temperatures. While you can certainly argue its accuracy, especially for older data, it's still just data. It's not science. The part that gets me upset about the term settled science is that by definition, science is never settled. And that's in all caps. I think we talked a lot about this as a scientific method. You guys actually did a podcast on the scientific method. So you should know that at best, you can show particular theories supported by existing data and not contradicted by anything we know of at the time. But there's a reason that ultra successful theories like Newton's theory of gravity, einstein's theory of relativity are still theories. They could be completely discredited by a single piece of data contradicting them. So the whole idea of taking a body of facts saying it settled is far more a political concept than scientific one. While people with various viewpoints in the subject would like to have some place to plant their ideological flag, saying something is indisputedly true as opposed to probably false, is simply not something science and the scientific method is equipped to do. In short, science has never settled. You cannot simply say, this is true, move on. That's not how it works. And that is from Spencer Carpenter right here in our own Smyrna. Georgia. We're not in Smyrna. Well, I mean, it's nearby. What I just did is what Spencer just did. Spencer I was using a literary device. I was actually using the same type of argument that non science climate deniers use against scientists. I was basically saying, like, it's done, drop it. There's enough science there to say, you're wrong, let's move on and just all accept that climate science going, it's a layoff. So that was a clever ruse. It wasn't a ruse at all. I was not being literal, like, apparently, which is what Spencer deals in literal terms. If you want to take us to task because you are overly literal, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comsto. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshotoe.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit househopworks.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 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 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." | ||
How Crying Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-crying-works | You probably did it around 70 times last year, yet you probably don't understand the psychological and physiological processes at work when you cried. Don't feel bad - no one does. Join Chuck and Josh as they poke around your tear ducts in this episode. | You probably did it around 70 times last year, yet you probably don't understand the psychological and physiological processes at work when you cried. Don't feel bad - no one does. Join Chuck and Josh as they poke around your tear ducts in this episode. | Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:46:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=17, tm_min=46, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=59, tm_isdst=0) | 38376244 | audio/mpeg | "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 we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the awardwinning podcast from iHeartRadio and salesforce.org about tackling some of today's biggest challenges like climate change, education, access and global health. Listen in is Host Barrattoon Day. Thurston connects with impactful organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors without Borders and the University of Kentucky. Plus inspiring individuals like Amy Allison and Juan Acosta to discuss ways to maximize our impact. Listen to force multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you ready? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. How are you doing? Good, sir. Are you doing good? Yeah. Okay, good. We put the two of us together and you've got a little podcast called Stuff You Should Know. That's what this is. And you get more than that, even though this was an abnormal start. Semi abnormal. Yeah. We've had Devo kick us off before. Yeah. But hey, Devo has got nothing on Rosie Greer. No. You want to talk a little bit about what we're doing? Yeah. Obviously. Children of the 70s might recognize that song. Might be very fond to some of you. Like it is to me from the awesome album Free to Be You and Me. Which Marlowe Thomas headed up this record in the basically build kids up. Make them feel better about if you're a boy and you're a little feminine you like to play with dolls there was one called William Wants a Doll. If you're a boy and you wanted to cry rosie Greer is there to tell you it's okay yeah. It might make you feel better yeah. And there was one about, like, treating your grandparents with respect and it's okay for girls to do boy things and boys to do girl things. It's very 70s. It's okay for girls to punch in the arm. Yeah. Pretty hard. I think there was a song about that. I love the 70s for that reason. It was great, though, man. I listened to this one, like a lot. Did you? Yeah. Mel Brooks was on it. And Anne Bancroft. It was a litany of awesome 70s guests. So. Thank you, Marlowe. Thomas. Yeah. And now thank you to Uncle Chuck for bringing it back. Yeah. Josh, before we go any further, what are you doing? We have a very special announcement that I'd like you to make right now. You want me to make it? And we're doing it at the beginning of the show because not everyone listens all the way through, even though they're missing out. Yeah. So, yeah. Please announce this is a very high honor. Yes. As everyone knows, we're doing a live podcast at south by Southwest on Sunday, March 11, from 330 to 430 in the maximum room at the Drisco Hotel. Right. For badge holders. It's been pretty clear the whole time. I hope so. We've been kind of dancing around what we're doing at this special event, this Stuff You Should know. Variety show the next day, which is Monday, March 12, from five to nine at Fadotirsh Pub on Fourth Street in Austin. Dance no more, sir. No. I hand the dance card over to you, Chuck. Do it, dudes and dudettes. We have been lucky enough to get a chance at television with a TV pilot for Science Channel. The awesome, awesome people at Science Channel have given us a chance for a half hour TV pilot. We made it in the can. Yes. We've gone over. We're in the second round of editing. Yes. Put it all together. It's happening. This pilot is coming together. It is coming together. And that will be the basis of the variety show, featuring an appearance by Mr. John Hodgman. How could we not include Hodgy? He's always here. Eugene Merman, who I'm looking forward to meeting very funny comedians. Yes. Big fan of his. Yeah. Music by Lucy Waynewright Roach who is in the pilot. Jerry crazy. And Jerry will be there, too. We're going to put him right next to another member. Yeah. It's been the plane all along. Our buddies, the Henry Clay people, who have been friends for a few years now. It's crazy. And who you manage on the side. Manage on the side sometimes. They did the score. Joey from the band did the score and the theme song did a lot of composing. Did some good stuff. Yeah. And they will be playing this party. And local Austin band, Crooks, who, it turns out, are also fans of the show. And that just happened. Yeah. I like it when Serendip happened totes so Crooks are going to be playing as well. And they're awesome. Sort of old school country with a little new school rock thrown in. And we will be showing clips from the show throughout the night. We've seen the show how many times, Chuck? And I still like it. I feel like this is a pretty neat pilot. So if you want to be in the know and get a sneak peek at this thing and whatever I said on Facebook today, whatever you think this show is like, you're wrong. Oh, wow. You've been taunting people. I don't think anyone is going to expect what we're going to give them. Okay, well, it's going to air at some point, right? Yeah, spring. But this is the debut, the premiere of the sneak peek clips of the stuff you should know. TV Pilot that's right. Monday, March 12, from five to nine. Fideo Irish Pub. 214 West Forest Street, Austin, Texas. Free drink ticket to the first 100 guests. Yes. You don't have to, like, leg wrestle to find out who uses it. Wow. Yeah. That is reason enough to go. Sure. And this is not for badge holders. No, this is for the public at large. Anybody can come free. It's totally totes free. Well, we're not buying drinks or anything, but it's still like there's no admission. No admission whatsoever. I don't even think there's an age requirement. I believe they serve food. It's like just a restaurant as well. So you don't have to get all drinky. You can just come and sip on some iced tea. Excellent. So is that it? Can we get back to the show now? Yeah. All right. Back to the show we recorded several weeks back. Okay. Wow. The focus, obviously, on this one is Crying. If you notice the title, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I have a little story for you. Have you heard of the movie Water for Elephants? Yeah. It's like Reese Witherspoon and the dude from Twilight. Yeah, Emily saw that. Is it any good? She enjoyed it. Well, I was researching whether or not elephants can cry. And apparently at one of the premieres, I think the premiere in Australia for this movie, the elephant costar was there and it started crying. Really? And apparently everybody was really affected by this elephant just crying in the middle of public. They didn't think the Australians were going to eat them. I don't know what the elephant was thinking. And we're not even certain whether the elephant was crying because as far as we can tell, humans are the only species that cry emotionally as the result of an emotion. Yes, but it is possible that elephants and gorillas are the two likeliest candidates, as it stands now, do as well. But we're so far from understanding whether elephants do that. We don't even know how often humans cry, let alone whether elephants can cry for an emotion. Yeah. There's been a lot more studies done on laughter and its benefits than crying, I found out. Yes, I've noticed. Chuck, we've been doing this, what, for coming up on 20 years? Four years. We're coming up onto our fourth year eventually this year. And I found, like, when we encounter stuff like this, field topics that haven't fully been sussed out, there's two ways it can go. It's either loaded with total BS hypotheses injection sure. That maybe makes sense in a really eight year old common sense way, or are just filled with awesome ideas, basically, are demonstrations of how great humanity can use its mind. Right. This is the former. And I'm sorry for tapping on the table. I know that that's a new habit of mine and that it screws things up, but it's for emphasis. Yeah. As far as the gorilla thing, I can direct people, if you want to cry, to the video of Cocoa the Gorilla, her sign language gorilla. Yeah. She had a pet kitten at one point, and it's very cute. And you see this kitten and Cocoa bonding, and those videos are the best anyway, and she accidentally breaks its neck and Gary Sinese has to shoot her in the back of the head. No, Gary Senise. Actually, I think it was a chokehold. But the cat, of course, gets out and gets hit by a car and killed. And they have on tape the woman going and telling Coco that the kitten is dead. And Coco, I might start crying right now. Wow. Coco starts making the signs for bad and sad and frown and then cry and like, dude, you got to see it. I'm a weepy guy anyway, but I was at my desk earlier just, like, biting it back. But then I really encourage you to go look at the video. Right after that, Coco gets a new kitten. Oh, yeah. That'll just make you feel better all over again. Okay. I'm glad. Is it in, like, the replay screen? It's one of the ones that pops up as the next. It actually has a pop up while you're watching this, like, click on here to see Coco get a new kitten. Got you. But, yeah, it looks like Coco is very much emotional. Whether or not Coco is actually crying and whether or not animals get emotional is under debate, and that's a whole other topic in sure. But I guess the point is we're only kind of beginning to get a loose grasp on why we cry and how we cry. And so the research is kind of insufficient, I guess. But we're just going to go through some of the ideas of what's behind crying. We have something of a good grasp on the physiology of it. Yeah. And this whole thing, this guy that surmised about our ancestors yeah. This one that was so weak. This is BS hypothesis number one. Do you want to take it? Yeah. Dr. Paul D. McClain theorized that our cave ancestors would cremate the deceased, become overcome by emotions, and then the smoke would get in their eyes, which would trigger reflex tears, which we'll talk about. And then all of a sudden, they were just linked forever. Right. Emotion and crying. Exactly. Or death and mourning and crying, which I think that's and that was the birth of emotional tears. I don't buy that one. I don't either. But it does lead us pretty segue into what emotional tears are. Right. They're one of three types of tears that we've sussed out. The first being basal tears, which, with or without Cocoa, you've got right now, we cry every day. Five to 10oz. Yeah. That's a lot. Were you aware of that? Well, I didn't know it was that much. It's almost a bottle of beer. Yeah, it's a good point. That makes me want to cry. What a waste. I don't know why. Yeah. Obviously, your eyes would dry out. So that's just your body's taking care of itself by working up these tiers. And most of that well, I guess just about all of the five to 10oz of basal tears that you produce every day drain through your sinuses, your sinus cavity, instead of streaming down your cheeks. Sure. Which you might get stopped up. They sit and hear a runny nose when you cry. But I get stopped up personally. Do you? Yeah, like, stops up my sinuses. Mine knows runs, generally. Really? Yeah. Well, what are tiers? I don't think we even said that. Oh. Tiers are liquidy secretions of fats, proteins, mucus oil, but for the most part, water. And depending on the type of tiers this is very significant, though. Agreed. Depending on the type of tier, the composition is going to be different. So if you look at, say, reflex tiers, which are designed to rid your eye of some sort of irritant right. Smoke onions. Onions. Do you want to tell everybody how onions work? Yeah. I feel like it's time that we finally explain that one notch that off the list. There's an enzyme called lacrimatory factor synthase, and that is released when you cut into the onion. And then that converts amino acids to sulfonic acid, and then that sulfonic acid turns into sinropanothiol s oxide. And that is what irritates your lacromal glands to cry when you cut an onion. Right. And mine really I think I mentioned this before, mine really go haywire burns it's pretty bad. So I got emily got me those little goggles everywhere. Can you post a picture of you coating onions wearing goggles? I can, actually, sure. I'd like to see them. Well, not cutting onions, but I tried them on Christmas Day when she got them. Okay, same effect. But I'm saying the next time that you cut onions wearing these goggles, I'd like to see that. Okay. So, yeah. You also mentioned another important point. The lacquer mole gland. It's in the upper outer region of your eye, and this is where tiers are produced. That's right. So you've got basal tears, you've got reflex tears, and then you have the emotional tears, the great grand mystery of humanity and why we cry. Right, right. So with emotional tears, from what we can, it is a great picture of you wearing goggle. That's really great. Yeah, they work, too. You look like, wow, that's great. I got to stop right there. With emotional tears, what we suspect is going on is that the cerebrum, which registers sadness, says, hey, eyes, says, hey, endocrine system. You're feeling a little blue. Why don't you go activate the lacromol glands and let's get the crying commence. Release the hormones. Yeah. And I don't think it's any coincidence that you express tears at the same time you're expressing emotion. Right, I would agree with that. And that's what you were kind of talking about earlier, the whole theory of whether or not having a good cry makes you feel better. Right. And you mentioned earlier that the composition of the tiers differs and they collected, let's just call them onion tiers for lack of a better well, we have reflex tears. They collected onion tiers and they collected sad movie tiers and found that the reflex onion tiers were, what, like 98% water? Yeah. Whereas the other ones were chock full of sad proteins like prolactin, which is very much involved in the process of producing breast milk, hence the name is for lactating prolactin. What else are you going to say? That other one? Yes, I am, Chuck. It's adrenal corticotropic hormones. Very nice. Adrenal corticotropic hormones which indicate high levels of stress. So that makes sense. Which is a commonly experienced thing while you're crying. Sure. And then there's Lucine and cafalin. These episodes just turned into like this parade of me humiliating myself. Now, you did well, leucine and cafalum, which is an endorphin that reduces pain and improves mood. Yeah. So it makes sense that you would find these in tiers when you might not in emotional tears instead of reflex tears. The problem is that not all studies who have looked into this, that have looked into this have found that crying does make you feel better. There's been plenty of studies that have found the opposite. Most studies, I shouldn't say, but some studies have found that there's no change whatsoever. People don't feel any better or worse. And one study that required, I think no, there were like 1200 accounts of crying over like 70 days among X number of female college students. It found that crying was preceded by two days of low mood and proceeded by two days of low mood. So on either side of a crying incident, there was two bad days before and after. So there wasn't necessarily an improved mood. Well, and one of the studies that you sent me earlier kind of gave some reasoning behind this, which makes sense to me. One reason might be because laboratory crying, you may not be getting consolation, which might be what makes you feel better. When someone sees you crying, they can patch on the back and buck up camper. And the other was that it's not a realistic setting. Oh, well, the helplessness factor, which made a lot of sense to me, like you're watching the Sarah McLaughlin animals dying thing and a good cry when that doesn't make you feel any better because animals are still dying. Right. So there's this helplessness, like when you're watching the Sad movie, that I can't help these characters. So a good cry isn't going to make me feel any better. No, but it may in a real world setting where, true, you're crying and it's cathartic and somebody's making you feel better and then also explaining to you how things actually are better. And you're like, I guess. Right. So it's kind of a tough nut to crack because when you study something like this, they sit you down in a lab and make you watch Brian's Song. I've never seen it. It's a little clinical. Brian Song? Yes. Oh, no. Okay. Brian song is very sad. Isn't that John Voight? No, it was Jimmy Khan. And I can't remember who played Gayle Sairs, but yeah, it was the famous story of the football player dying of cancer. Yeah. Gayle Serge teammate. Very sad. Speaking of sad and dying, there's a whole I wish I would have looked it up ahead of time. I read an article about people who love these books, but, you know, like Sweet Valley High? Yeah. Imagine if each book was about a different Sweet Valley High girl and they were all dying young, but they were like these brave, like, captain of the cheerleading squad, student, class president, don't ever feel bad for me kind of gals. But they always died at the end. And there's like a series of 50 books of young adult fiction that's by this one author and it's all dying young. I wonder if the purpose of those was to prepare kids for losing friends young, because that does happen in the place where they are dying all over the place. Was it a female author, do you know? Yes. Interesting. I don't remember the name. I'm sure somebody will write and please do. Yeah. Japan. You want to mention that? Yeah. I even looked this up to verify because it sounds a little wacky. But the Japanese, they're always setting the standard for things like this. Totally. They have crying clubs over there where they do believe that it makes you feel better. So they'll get together as a group and watch these sad movies or having read these books and talk about them, just to have a group cry. But you also just hit something on the head and in certain ways that they believe that crying makes you feel better. Apparently it's culturally bound. If you live in a society that doesn't think crying makes you feel better, maybe you're kind of a worse for crying. Sure. You're less likely to report feeling better after crying than somebody who lives in a society like Japan where it's supported yeah, that makes sense. Or where people think that crying does make you feel better. Right. It's like zombies. I cry a lot. I'm a very weepy guy. I know you are. And I think it said one reason we'll go ahead and give away a secret, one reason they think men might cry less is because they sweat more. And if crying is a way to release some of these build up of toxins, then sweat would do that. But the sweat BS hypothesis I cry. I've got an overactive bladder. I know. I've seen you cry, sweat, and pee all at the same time. I'm just constantly leaking fluids. I know, and it doesn't help, believe me, because there's always some kind of fluid right behind it, and there's always another cocoa video coming up. I'm very eye rolly as a result. Yeah, thank you for that. 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. Hey, everybody, chuck here. Did you know there are millions of people around the world hosting on airbnb right now? Yeah. Which means that's a lot of amazing homes that are making people a lot of extra money. And it doesn't have to be an everyday thing. You can host when you want. Like, let's say you're taking a week's vacation. Why not host your home? Because that money could go toward paying for your current vacation or towards your retirement fund or even towards your kids college fund. Yeah, for anything. And listen, if you're worried about your stuff, don't be. Air Cover for Hosts. Let hosts welcome guests into their home without having to worry. You get $1 million in damage protection anytime you're hosting, plus pet damage protection and income loss protection, too. And are you ready for this? Air Cover for Host is completely free every time you host on airbnb. Free with a capital F. With Air Cover for Host, it makes hosting a no brainer, and the benefits really start adding up. So learn more and host with peace of mind at Airbnb Comaircoverforhosts. So what else do we have? Well, let's talk about babies. When we start crying, obviously, is when we're little crying newborns. Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, you cry, you need help. You want to be changed totally. You're helpless, useless. There's nothing you can do, so you cry. I'm hungry. Let everybody know I'm sleepy. Not sleepy. I was looking into this, Chuck. Like, that still doesn't quite make sense, why babies cry. I mean, we take it for granted. It's just babies cry. It's what they do. But when did the first human baby cry, and why did the first human baby cry? And I looked into it, and there was actually this cool study that put up a few hypotheses that aren't necessarily BS. They're very interesting. Of why humans started to cry. And it's like, based on natural selection. Like, the first few babies that cried were selected, one, because it reduces infanticide okay, which is apparently very common in early cultures. It reduces yes. And here's why. It emotionally manipulates the parent and not just abandoning the baby or leaving the baby elicits sympathy. Yes. But it also basically says, hey, I'm a very healthy, fit baby. You don't want to leave me behind. I'm going to be great at picking berries one day. These lungs. Yes, exactly. Now, if I were the type of baby you just abandon and leave for dead, I may just not even be able to get a good cry going. It makes sense. A little whimpering cry might not be as strong. Exactly. So that led to natural selection of crying in babies. And that's why we cry today. At least that makes sense. That's one of the better hypotheses I've run across. I was just thinking my own hypothesis might be that back then, it's not like the mother was always right over the baby like they are today. No, that's not true. The opposite is true. Oh, really? They were more present. They carried them everywhere. Well, then there goes my hypothesis. That's okay. I thought they had to cry loud. It's part of science. Yes, okay. No, I know what you're saying. And actually, that kind of coincides with the reason why you would cry. Because a baby that cries is being abandoned and knows it right. When you're away from the mother for a very long time, that means mom's gone. She's, like, 20 clicks that way and not coming back. Right. That's very sad. Reduces infanticide. So babies cry differently as they grow to communicate different things in an in tune. Parent will tell you that from the other room of that cry probably means he needs to be changed. That cry means he's hungry or has fallen out of his crib and is playing with power tools. Maybe. No. And then at ten months, they think that's when babies start to cry to manipulate their parents for attention. And this, by the way, I thought it was a very sexist article. Did you notice some of the lines? Oh, man, that's when your mascara runs. If the guy had written this, could you imagine the backlash? No, I totally can. I picked up on that as well. I know what you're about to say. I couldn't even bring myself to underline it. I just ignored it completely. Well, I highlighted it in green because I wanted to read it. Here's what the line is. Some studies have reported that women in particular continue this manipulative crying throughout their life in order to manipulate others into giving them what they want. For example, forgiveness, pity, or a diamond bracelet. Tisk. I mean, really? Yeah. Wow. I'm even offended. I was, too. I read that to Emily. She's like, Are you kidding me? Yeah. The author is in trouble. Maybe with us. She is. So you've got manipulative crying at about the age of ten months. Right. But there is manipulative crying as adults. I'm not trying to say there's not, because there definitely is, I think, as a man. No. Sure. For what? What did you want? When you're young and emotional and your girlfriend breaks up with you and you just want her back, man, you just want her back. And maybe if you seem sad enough, she'll feel sorry for you and take you back. So you weren't sad. Yeah. If you weren't sad enough to cry naturally. But I'm still working up the crocodile tears just to crocodiles only cry to excrete excess salt water. Well, that's what I call them, crocodile tears, because there's nothing emotive behind it. I got you. All right, moving on to adolescence. Well, not quite yet. To adolescence. We should say that up to adolescence, from the time that we're infants to adolescents, boys and girls supposedly cry at about the same frequency and amount. Yeah. At least same frequency. Sure, there's not a lot of change or difference between the gender, but when we do hit adolescence and this one makes a lot of sense voice testosterone shoots up, and there's a negative correlation with crying. It decreases. Yeah. They could just get angry with girls. Their crying actually increases. And there's a positive correlation with estrogen production. Right. Which that sounds kind of sexist, but it's true. Physiologically speaking, it's true. Right. And in conjunction with estrogen production, you've also got prolactin, which, don't forget, is found in emotional tears. Right. And a crying researcher named is it William Fry. William Fry. And Muriel Langsit. William Frying. The mystery of Tears. Okay. Friar, I believe, is actually an Alzheimer's research you just did, like, crying as an amusement. Yeah. He's one of those delights in the mood Alzheimer's research, but he suggests that girls have about 60% more prolactin in their bodies at any given time than men. Right. And as a result, they tend to cry more frequently. Four times as much as what he says. Yeah, which is a lot. But again, no one's really done a great big, huge survey on how often people cry. Yeah. This one, I don't know how large it was, but it was a study that had people record how many times they cried over the period of one year. This one found women cried roughly 64 times, compared to 17 in men. And everyone underestimated men and women how much they would have cried. Right. But that seems low to me. Or maybe I'm just speaking personally as a weepy guy, like 17. I was like, I think 64 is low. Oh, yeah. I'll cry. Something I didn't see in here was crying over beauty. That happens to me a lot, too. Over something that's just so beautiful at a concert or a sunrise or something. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It is. What do you mean at a concert? Well, like the music or something. I saw the odd joy at Carnegie Hall one time. When that kicked in, I was so, like, overwrought, I started crying. I thought. Bonnie Prince Billy concert. Not. No. I would cry at a Bonnie Prince Billy concert. The music moved me enough. Sure. I want to say, on behalf of everybody, thank you for sharing so much of yourself in this one. It's making the whole thing way better. I don't mind. Who cares? No, it certainly doesn't. Rosie Grier says so. Exactly. So let's see, man. Also here we arrive at BS hypothesis three. Okay. Men cry less, Chuck, because they supposedly have smaller tier ducts or lacrimol glands. Cry fewer tiers? No, less. Volume. Volume. Because women have larger okay, well, you think that's BS? Totally. Yeah. Well, maybe women are equipped with larger ones because they cry more. Do you think? Maybe. Most of the hypotheses and research on crying is done on the back of cocktail napkins for some reason? According to Women's Health magazine, though, Josh, men typically only cry when they suffer a major loss. And I find this to be true for a lot of guys. Usually it's anger and frustration, or anger is how they express frustration and stress, whereas a woman might be more prone to cry if they're frustrated or stressed. Yeah, that's probably even true for me, and I'm a weepy guy. I think that there's a difference in threshold. Sure. Possibly. Because I think frustration and anger can lead to tears pretty frequently when you reach that point. I think it's just a difference in threshold. There's a lower threshold, perhaps in women, maybe not. I don't know. But I'm saying that would be my take on that. Or maybe men, maybe the stereotypical history of men not being allowed to cry or sign of weakness, maybe that leads to even more frustration. So it's expressed as anger. Which is funny, because there is a study that's mentioned in this article that they did a survey of people saying, does men crying bother you? And do you think it bothers other people? And most people are like, It doesn't really bother me, but yeah, I'm sure it bothers everybody else. And, like, virtually everybody responded that way. So, in other words, people don't mind, they're just not talking about it. Well, it's just like this social ideal or societal ideal that men shouldn't cry and other people are bothered by it, even though no one's really bothered by it, thanks to Rosie Greer. It's called the Greer effect. Yeah, he's a football player, too. I don't know if I mentioned that. Oh, yeah, he's a cool dude. He was also in the Thing with Two heads. The thing with two heads. The man with two brains. No, it may have been William Holden. It was a rich scientist who had his head attached to a convict name, played by Rosie Greer's body. Well, and they were like this odd couple. It was like a creature Feature saturday shocker type horror never heard in the Thing With Two Heads is, I think, is what it's called. Great movie. Trying to get that immediately. That and the incredible melting man. I've never heard of that one either. Oh, that was a good one. Was that because of the Ice Age? No. Remember? That was my hypothesis. I seriously have it. You have a good memory. All right, well, there's a tangent for this episode getting back to men crying, though. They have done some research, and some people think that a noted man crying in public is actually good for your career and good for your PR. Like John Boehner. Sure. Tim Tebow. No. Do you remember when I think Florida lost to Tennessee and Tebow cried? It was Twitter. There was some guy who was like, oh, Tebow, your tears tastes so sweet. It was beautiful to see. Yeah. I don't dislike him as much now, though, because of I'm not, like, some big fan, but I found that once a player leaves or Coach leaves the University of Florida I love Coach Spurrier. You disgust me for even saying that. No. Once I leave Florida. I don't have that time. You keep it to yourself. I found that that's not the case with me. I hate Spurrier. Still, I can't really stand Tebow, everybody I can't stand anybody who has Florida stank on them. Rex Grossman. I don't care who you're talking about. Sure. I can't stand any of them. I like that kind of consistency. I just got so angry. Accidentally licked the mic covered. That's great. What else do we got here? Oh, why we cry again? The field is wide open for any quack to come up with an idea and get it published in an article on how stuff works keeps us healthier. Yeah. By removing toxins. Stress related hormones. But you poopoo. But do you remember when we did how saunas work and we were talking about how yes, you have kidneys and your bladder and your urethra to get rid of all these toxins? You don't really need to sweat, but sweating does get rid of some of it, and every little bit helps. Conceivably. Well, these stress related hormones do exit your body through your tears. I'm not poopooing. It is possible. And I think it's beyond just the toxins. I think that I believe that holding on to these negative emotions is not good, ultimately for your heart and your body. I think a good cry could help. I've seen it and you've experienced I've experienced it. You've seen it. Don't back off now. Yeah, you're right. People from colitis and ulcers tend to have a poor view of crying than people who don't have that, which apparently suggests that if you don't cry, you're going to end up with ulcers and colitis. I don't know about that one. That's true. You gave me something interesting on depression. They studied 44 people with mood disorders. I guess the 40th person just couldn't show up. And they said that they were, in fact, more prone to crying than people who they were comparing them to who didn't have the mood disorder. But if you had severe depression, a lot of times you had an inability to cry altogether, which is really sad to me. Yes, that's very sad. I guess it's just that dead inside feeling good. That's awful. Yes. There's also symptoms of crying excessively, apparently some people with PTSD. Right. One of the symptoms is excessive crying postpartum yeah. Postpartum depression, which I didn't know this 9% to 16% of women suffer from postpartum depression following birth. Would you think it was lower? Yeah. Oh, really? I didn't realize it was that prevalent. Yeah, I did. And I guess it would have to follow birth to be postpartum depression. That was redundant. In this interesting study in Israel, they had men's sniff saline solution compared to real human tears and that they found that when they smelled the real tears, their testosterone dipped. And brain scans showed less activity in areas associated with sexual arousal. So that makes good sense to me, because if someone's really upset and crying, it's not sexually stimulating to you unless you're a real sick person. So I would say it lets us sympathy and lowers your sexy time feelings, which kind of supports the idea. That like a social bonding theory of crying. Yeah. You're signaling to somebody else that you're not aggressive. You're submitting. You're allowing yourself to be vulnerable. So just lay off. For you. Hold me. Don't hit me. Yes. Put the rock down. Did you ever see the doctor cats about the man hugs? I've seen all of them, but I don't remember that. There was one bit where he was talking about the man hugs when the man hug and they slapped. He was like, Men have to do that because I'm holding you, but I'm hitting you. Right? Yes, I do remember that. I think that was doma rare, right? Dr. Kitts? So good. You got anything else? No. I'll post that photo of me with the goggles. It's awesome. I always forget, but someone cooper will remind me. Then he'll turn it into something sick and twisted. 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. Hey, everybody, chuck here. Did you know there are millions of people around the world hosting on airbnb right now? Yeah. Which means that's a lot of amazing homes that are making people a lot of extra money. And it doesn't have to be an everyday thing. You can host when you want. Like, let's say you're taking a week's vacation. Why not host your home? Because that money could go toward paying for your current vacation or towards your retirement fund, or even towards your kids college fund. Yeah, for anything. And listen, if you're worried about your stuff, don't be. Air Cover for Hosts. Let hosts welcome guests into their home without having to worry. You get $1 million in damage protection anytime you're hosting, plus pet damage protection and income loss protection, too. And are you ready for this? Air Cover for Host is completely free every time you host on airbnb. Free with a capital F. With Air Cover for Host, it makes hosting a no brainer, and the benefits really start adding up. So learn more and host with peace of mind@airbnb.com. Aircover for Hosts. Well, I was crying. We did pretty good with that one. Did a little poo pooing, did a lot of explaining. You did a lot of sharing. No crying. No, there's no crying in podcasting. There is crying on howstafirst.com you want to go to your favorite search engine and you want to type in how crying works into the search bar. And that will bring up the Howcrying Works article on our sister site. TLC.com. It was definitely TLC. If you want to do that, if you want to learn more about crying, and if you can't remember what we said about the Onion and why it makes you cry and you want to impress your friends, it's in that article. You'll be very happy to see it. That is on your favorite search engine. But townhouse at work. I think I said search bar on there somewhere, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this from Laurie in Germany. I like this one. Germany guy. You recently saved my butt, and I thought I would write in to tell you about it. I'm in an Atlanta girl, originally, who is currently teaching English at a kindergarten in Germany. Does that mean? Garden of Children? I think so. In the last week before Christmas, I showed my kids a Muppet Christmas Carol. One of the best Christmas movies ever, if you ask me. And as I'm sure you know, there are several ghosts in the story, but since it's a kids movie, I assumed it would not be too scary for my wewas. Well, I showed the first half on Monday, and then I was out sick for a couple of days. When I came back on Thursday, I learned that one of my little girls, six year old Annika, had barely slept since she had seen the movie. Apparently, the ghosts were too scary for her. And her mother was apparently stinkzala, which is an excellent German word meaning stinking. Angry. She was stinksala. In an effort to run damage control, I showed Annika and a couple of other kids the pictures from the Muppets article on how stuff works.com, the diagrams, and this was a really great article as far as that stuff goes. Individually, the diagrams showing how the puppeteers control the various types of muppets were a really interesting to both me and the kids and B, a miracle cure for Annika Spears. That cool little behind the scenes tour helped me my wewas. It's a little disconcerting, isn't it? No, that's cute. Help my wewas appreciate the cool design of the ghosts instead of being afraid of them. And Annika's mom was no longer stink. Sauer hazards a hazard to that. Thank you for helping me teach my wee was something new and for helping me get out of hot water as well. That was the first time I've looked up an article after listening to one of your episodes, but I'm really glad I did it. And thank you for what you all do and for the upbeat and open minded attitudes in which you do it. Ed site Dehuma figurative translation you all are awesome literal y'all are the hammer. Fear of the hammer, that is. Lori in Germany. He was definitely no stinksaw. Yes. I love you, German. It's great stuff button. Thanks a lot for that. Laurie and Jeremy, we're glad we could help you out. And I urge everybody and anybody to go check out our beloved sitehousedofworks.com. Mothershipconnectionhousedofworks.com, right? Indeed. If you want to let us know how our podcast has gotten you out of hot water, how Stuff Works has gotten you out of hot water. If you want to go on the site and find an article and say, hey, podcast on this, we're happy to get links like that. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast, you can go on Facebook@facebook.com STUFFYou Know, and you can send us a plain old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. 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? 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 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. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1229352460713hsw-sysk-best-place-shot.mp3 | Where's the best place on your body to get shot? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/wheres-the-best-place-on-your-body-to-get-shot | Although no one wakes up in the morning hoping for a gunfight, we all know life can be unpredictable. So check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn the best place to take a bullet if you get shot. | Although no one wakes up in the morning hoping for a gunfight, we all know life can be unpredictable. So check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn the best place to take a bullet if you get shot. | Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=351, tm_isdst=0) | 16673745 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey. Welcome to the podcast. Stuff you should know. It's what it's called? How's it going? Going, Chuck? It's going great, Josh. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Good. Before we get started, Josh, I'd like to say a couple of words, if I may. Okay. We say this. Stuff You Should Know is just named to itunes 2008 Best of 2008 podcast. And we say this as a thank you to the fans a and as a thank you to our producer, Jerry. This is not a pat on our back. Our producer Jerry works tirelessly to edit to provide the music, makes the sound quality. Everyone talks about how great it is, basically. Yes. Everything we say is wrong. Jerry has to go back, figure out the right answer right. And edit it so that it sounds like we know what we're talking about, essentially. So Jerry's work and the fans that listen is a big, big reason why we were named Beth of 2008. Something we're really proud of. So we just want to say thank you, and let's get on with it. Yeah. How about gun death? How about that? First segue well, Jerry's crying now. I think gun death is a good way to go. Okay. All right. Wow. That was really something. That was great. I'm for Clint. Are you? Yes. Well, I've never seen you get chopped up gunda. Yes. Basically, Chuck, there was a new study that was released, I think, about 4 hours ago. Really? Yeah. Less than that, actually. Wow. And it found that states that have lax handgun laws there's actually ten of them that have really lacks hand gun laws, and I believe George is one of them. Sweet. We're one of those states you can come down and buy, like 50 guns if you want and then take them to New York and sell them. Right. Yeah. Well, states like ours actually have a higher instance per capita of handgun related deaths. Actually 70% more. So that's not altogether shocking. No, it's not. And what's even less shocking is that these statistics are found in the US. Because you can make a pretty good case that the US. Is a gun culture. Yeah. You want some numbers? Yeah. I'm playing in with the stats as we speak. Yeah. United States, in 2007, there were a total of 270,000,000 guns. Yes. And that is 90 guns for every 100 people. Right. And just to put that in perspective, India, which is kind of surprised me, actually the second most armed nation. Well, think about this. India also has like a billion people living there. We have a quarter of the population of India. Right. So, having said that, India has 45 million compared to our 270, and they're the second in the most heavily armed nation on the planet. So there you go. Yeah. So that's a lot of guns. We like a lot of guns for people. I spent some time when I was in high school, I lived in Kennesaw, Georgia, and Kennesaw actually has a law on the books that says you have to own a gun if you live in Kenneth. That was probably passed right around the time you were growing up there. Right. I think it was passed a few years before. Okay. Yeah. I'd heard of it before we came down. Right. And I'm no gun guy, but apparently crime dropped quite a bit in Tennessee, and it also was an end run around any debate over gun control. They just said, no, forget it. We're going the exact opposite way of gun control. Everybody has to have a gun. Right. And clearly the police didn't enter your house and search, which would have been stupid to do in Kenneth because everybody's armed. Right. So it wasn't a very heavily enforced law, but it was a significant one. Right. Everybody in Kenneth's knew it. Right. But we're not talking about gun control today. No. That's not what this podcast is all about. No. Just a setup. Yeah. What we're talking about is where do you want to get shot? What? Isn't that what we're talking about, the best place to get shot? Oh, yes. Actually, yes. And the reason we were talking about guns is because there's so many of them, you have a pretty high likelihood in the US. To get shot. So as a service, a public service of how stuff works, we're here to advise you on the best place to take a bullet if you do get shot, as if you can control that. There are a couple of things you could do. Sure. I mean, you're in a grocery store and it goes down the stuff. It's a fan, that kind of thing. Now you'll know what to do. Right. Or an example I used, if an angry loan shark is like, I got a bullet here with your name on it, where do you want to take it right. Now, you'll know? Right. Okay. So let's first kind of describe what happens when you get shot. Right. Because an understanding of this called wound ballistics, is the field of study of what a bullet does to bone and tissue, an organ. Once you understand that, you can figure out pretty easily where the best place to get shot is. Right. Okay. So wound ballistics. Chuck yes. Kinetic energy. Josh yes. Bullet's entire purpose on this planet is to take the energy that it has when it's shot out of a gun and transfer it to your body. Right. Which is determined by its weight and velocity and trajectory. Yes. So you take all these things together, and actually you can predict pretty well the kind of damage that's going to be done if you are shot in a bone. A bone is going to absorb most of that kinetic energy, if not all, which sounds like a good thing. It's not. It's not. It means your bone is just totally shattered. Right. Which causes, essentially, a mini shrapnel explosion inside your body. Yeah. And the bone fragments actually end up doing I don't know, about as much, but it does a lot of damage to your organs. And they've been known to travel all sorts of crazy places, too. Yeah, I know the big JFK magic bullet theory sounds crazy, and I'm not siding one way or the other, but bullets have been known to do weird, weird things once they hit objects. Wasn't it that Texas senator didn't supposedly hit his elbow and travel up his arm and then go out and then hit JFK in the face or something? Yeah. My brother in law, who's in the Marine Corps, told me a story one time about a firing range accident where a fellow Marine was shot, and it went in his shoulder and traveled across his chest and then down the arm and, like, out the tip of his finger. Wow. Just tumbling. It's just nuts. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So these things are deadly and unpredictable, which is a really bad combination. Yeah. Okay. So that's what happens when bones hit that kinetic energy is transferred to the bone with shatters, and it's bad. And ultimately, here's a little side note. Getting shot through and through and in and out, it's actually good. I mean, you may bleed to death, but you're probably going to bleed to death anyway if it hits some sort of vital organ or major artery. But the bullet didn't manage to transfer all of its energy, which is why it kept traveling. Right. If it stays in your body, all that energy was transferred to your bone soft tissue, which actually it doesn't crush. The kind of wound that a bone sustains is a crushing wound, crushing penetration. Right. Soft tissue or organs, that kind of thing that actually suffers cavitation. Right. This is screwed up. Right? Actually, this kind of surprised me. When a bullet passes through you, through tissue, it creates a cavity that can be up to 30 times as wide as the bullet itself. It's a wide path. Yeah. And it's created by the shock waves. Right. And then the path closes behind the bullet. It's like a split second opening this gulf in your soft tissue, and then it closes behind. But that damage is already done. That shockwave has already just trashed all that soft tissue. Right. So that's bad, too. Right. Which sort of brings us to the specialty bullets that are specially made to do maximum harm. We're talking about full metal jacket bullets. Yeah. Good movie, too. And hollow points, which are designed to fragment after impact, or hollow points are soft and they actually flatten and spread out and create a wider area. Wider than that 30%. Yeah. Because if you have a little pointy bullet, it's not going to make as much. Right. It's not going to have as much of a wider track or create a cavity. So I just call those people killing bullets. Exactly. These things are designed to most efficiently transfer their energy, all of it, to the human body. Right. Now we kind of understand what a bullet can do. Right. The human body. So bone can shatter. Yes. You don't want to get shot in a place that's really bony, especially if it's a bone that's near a vital organ. Right. Say your ribs. Yeah. Your chest is just out of the question. You've got lungs in there, you've got heart. I think the liver is in there somewhere. You got a bunch of really important stuff in there. Yeah. Between your waist and your neck is a lot of organs going on. And if all of a sudden you have rib fragments flying all over the place, then you're in bad shape and also getting shot in the spine. Not a great place. No. Probably lifelong paralysis, if not death. Not a good spot. Right. Your head is a terrible spot, too. Yeah, I know the guy that did you interview him? Yeah. His name is Ed Scismore. Yeah. He said you'd rather get shot in the brain than in the heart. No, he said he'd rather get shot in the heart than the brain. Right. Because you can repair a heart. There's artificial hearts. There's no artificial brain. He also pointed out that there are plenty of people who survive gunshot wounds to their brains. Right. From, I think, 1980 something to 1993. It wasn't that scientific. I'm sorry. It was 1982 to 1993, 66% of the people who came into Cook County General Hospital in Chicago with gunshot wounds to their brain lived. So it's not necessarily fatal to get shot in the brain, but you can be messed up for the rest of your life. Sure. Brain damage. And that's not kind of fun either. No. So you want to stay away from the head, you want to stay away from the torso, the spine. Yeah. And I think, really, ultimately, every single one of our listeners is like yeah, really? Right. What a huge surprise. What an enlightening podcast. Okay, so let's go to the arms and legs and smarties. Did any of you say arms or legs? Because if so, you'd be wrong. Yeah, but my first thought was maybe to get shot in the leg would be a good place, because in the movies they just tie bandana around it and limp off. Yeah. Did you ever see I think it was Rambo. I think it was First Blood part two. It might have been three. Where he gets shot in the side. Through and through wound. And he's down in. Like. Some sewer or something. And he pours. Like. Gasoline or sterno into it and then lights it on fire with a torch. Moderates the wound. Shot. And it just shoots through the side of his body and he screams and everything it's awesome. Nice. It was pretty good. I just got a glimpse into twelve year old Josh. Yeah. I think I was even younger than that, but yeah, that was good stuff. Okay. But again, had he chosen wisely, he wouldn't have gotten shot in the side. Again, close to internal organs. But let's get back to the arms and legs. Right. No good. No, because major, major arteries, the femoral and the brachial arteries run through the leg and the arm, respectively. These are huge arteries. They're responsible for all the blood flow to your extremities, which is pretty important, because without it, they would freeze off when it got down to 35 degrees. Right. And if you get shot in any one of these, if these things become severed, you'll bleed out in about two or three minutes. Yeah. Once I read the part about the femoral artery, it recalled, I've heard a lot on the news about people getting shot in the leg and dying and sure, that's the reason it can be a very deadly place to get shot. So what are we left with? Well, by my count, the head, the chest, the arms and legs are out. So I would just say the feet and the hands. That is right. Probably the best place. And also somebody out there who may say, well, what about the pubic region? The hip? No, there is a nerve bundle in your hip that is by again, Ed Seismore is reckoning the most painful place to get shot. Right. The nerve bundle right there would just shoot pain throughout your body in the most efficient manner possible. Right. So not the pelvis either, but yes. A hand or a foot. Well, there's all kinds of bones, though. It is true. This is the thing. You would suffer some terrible crushing injuries. You may never use your hand or foot that you got shot in again. Right. Number one, you have another one. True. Okay. So let's say even your foot is completely disabled. There are such things as crutches wheelchairs. You drag your foot along behind you with your good foot. Your hand, you'll never work with whatever hand you got shot in the game. But think about the drummer from Deaf Leopard. He droned with only one arm. Okay. Rick Allen. Exactly. Yes. Is that his name? Next one. Yes, it would hurt. But think about how thin your hand and feet are. Right. It could go right through. Hopefully it will go right through. And also those bones that are getting shattered as that high speed hollow point bullet mushrooms into it, and it goes out the other end. It's very unlikely those fragments will travel to a vital organ. Right. So they're far enough away. Well, I guess it makes sense, because whenever you hear about stories about army dudes in various wars who want to get sent home, they shoot themselves in the foot. That's just a common way to do it, to get sent home. Yeah. At the very least, Stewie and Brian did right for the family guy. Yeah, it didn't work then, so, yeah, hand or foot, that's the way to go. Agreed. If someone came running at me with the gun, I would lie down and stick up my arms and legs and my hands in front of my face. Actually, you would be right in lying down. Mr. Sizemore told me if you get down on the ground, you're presenting a smaller target. Okay. His number one advice to any civilian who is being shot at? Run. I believe he may have said, Run like hell. Yeah. I was doing a zigzagging thing, too. That's another good idea, too. I mean, most people can't shoot to save their lives. Yeah. But you could just as easily run into a bullet. Number one, run. Number two, lay down on the ground if you have a choice, hand or foot, right? Correct. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that brings us to right. Listener mail. Listener mail. Okay, so who do we have one from there, buddy. This week? We have one from one Coral Clark from San Jose, California. Coral's got a great name. That's a great name. And we've already talked about the jelly bean thing ad nauseam. The booger flavored beans. Hopefully this one will put it direct, because this is sort of a correction upon a correction that we've already done. So, in one of our podcasts, we talked about booger flavored jelly beans. Josh doubted I have had them and know they weren't just real boogers that I've had. Right. And someone confirmed. But now Coral writes in and says, back to booger flavored jelly beans. Jelly Bellies. While it's true that the trade name Jelly Belly does not market these unusually flavored sweets. The company that manufactures them. Goalitz. Is commissioned to make birdie pots every flavored beans of Harry Potter fame. Which I know you mentioned in our podcast when I toured the California factory. They did confirm that they manufactured birdie pots every flavored beans in their factories using the same process as for Jelly Bellies. Except they did not always use all natural flavors. Bringing new flavors like dirt. Bacon. Spaghetti. Earwax. And vomit. I could go for bacon or spaghetti. Yeah. But I don't know why this would be gross. Well, I agree. I mean, it's a future food, really. Little tiny capsules of bacon and spaghetti. That's kind of nice, actually. Yeah. So he goes on to say, I think you also mentioned bean boozled beans, where the black bean might be a licorice or a skunk spray flavor, and the company Goats, produces those as well. That's fantastic. Coral Clark, right? Coral Clark. Greatest name ever. Thank you very much for writing in. Thanks for the mail. And anybody else who wants to point out a point or revise another point or just say hi or whatever, send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. Thanks for listening. 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?" | |
b89b27e2-3620-11ea-938d-cf4e7c759feb | Short Stuff: What is Latinx anyway? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-what-is-latinx-anyway | We love to keep up with the current terminology for groups of people. Learn about the origin of Latinx today. | We love to keep up with the current terminology for groups of people. Learn about the origin of Latinx today. | Wed, 14 Oct 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=288, tm_isdst=0) | 12432664 | audio/mpeg | "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 small, 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. Hi, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and we are the Short Stuffers who are going to talk to you about a new term for the Latina community, latino community. See, here's the reason for a new term. Yeah, so I remember when we did our episode on zoot suits. Yes. We always try to keep up with the latest correct terminology that people want to be called, because people get to decide themselves what they want to be called. And I think at the time, there were references to a word chicano. Is that right? Did we do that? Did we say that? Well, we did, but we also set it in context if that's what they were called at the time. Okay. And here's the thing. Depending on who you are, where you are, and when you are, these terms have been sort of interchangeable to some people. Some of these terms have been in fashion and then out of fashion, perhaps maybe offensive or not offensive or maybe pride wrapped around a term that other people might think might be offensive. Yeah. And what's interesting is some of those terms have transitioned through all those things over time and geography, too. And to know all that, Chuck, is to really remember, be reminded that when you consider entire racial groups, we tend to think of them as like, one collective whole that share all the same similarities and have zero differences. And this is a very important reminder that no different people consider themselves different things, even within certain racial groups, and then take it one step even further and say, oh, well, that would suggest that racial groups are actually a social and cultural construct, not a biological construct. And then you finally arrived at the right frame of mind to be a human being. That's right. I mean, technically, if you really always want to honor a person and do the right thing, you call someone Mexican or Colombian or Honduran or Guatemalan and get very Spanish and get very specific with the country that they come from. But we, as humans, like to put a collective name on groups of people. That's just what we've always done. In the lot of this stuff comes from this House of Works article and a historian named Paul Ortiz. Who is a professor at the University of Florida. Which we won't hold against him. But he points out that in the even before that. Chicano was a term of derision. But then it was kind of adopted and became a term of pride with the rise of a few things the Mexican student movement. California. The farm workers movement. And people said, you know what? Chicano is a term of pride, term of self respect. And he likened it to African American and the term black, how the term black or black wasn't very favored for a long time. And then in the civil rights movement, they said, no, black is beautiful. That's who we are, and that's what we are. Yes. I mean, like, what better way to deflate the power out of a word that's used against you than to take it on yourself and use it as a name of pride? Like we're podcasters, right? Which has always been a term of scoring for the outside world. But that's right. We've taken it on with pride when we were growing up. Chuck, hispanic was always the term, virtually until just a few years ago, Hispanic. But as time went on, it went from those are Hispanic people to those are Hispanic people. And you just kind of got this idea that the term Hispanic had fallen out of favor among Hispanic, the Hispanic community. I knew that I didn't understand why. And apparently it's because Hispanic has been the longstanding term for the US. Census Bureau to describe people who claim origin or an identity that's associated typically with either Spain or Latin America, spanish speaking countries or the Caribbean, something along those lines. And when you really start to dig into it and you're like, wait a minute, this is the Census Bureau's kind of jumbled definition. Yes, it is. Which, again, reinforces the idea that racial groups are not homogeneous groups. They're made of a bunch of different people. It just so happens that there's a bunch of different people from a bunch of different backgrounds who claim this kind of the same cultural identity. Yeah. And Professor Ortiz points out with Hispanic, he said, where he lived, he was raised in California and Washington State. He said Hispanic wasn't a popular term because of that, because he said the elders in his community would say, no, this is the government putting this name on us. But he said in Florida, he said Hispanic as a term was embraced by Floridians. Right. So like I said earlier, at the very beginning, it depends on kind of who you are and where you are as to kind of what you prefer. And that brings us to a break, and we'll reveal the new mystery name that really isn't a mystery because everyone already knows it by now, 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 in industry. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. 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 goldmine 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. Yeah. 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. Okay, Chuck, what's the mystery name? This is basically like an episode of The Mask. Singer oh, my gosh. Do you watch any of those? No, I'm just aware of it. Okay. They get really silly. They play those during football games. That's the only reason I know about them. The Ads. Oh, right, yeah. I know it's a short stuff, but quickly, there's a new one that I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically judging whether or not you think a person can sing just by looking at them and how they carry themselves. That's good. That's great. That's a good lesson to teach people that you can judge a book by its cover. Right. And then they hand them a microphone. It's like, do they sing crappy or not? Right. Then when they sing crappy, it suddenly turns into The Gong Show, I'm sure. Right. Great idea. All right, so that brings us to the mystery word, which is and there's a few ways you can pronounce it, depending on who you are. Latinx is what I've always said. You can also say Latinx or Latinx, it seems like. And I think Webster mary. And Webster says Latinx. Right. So you're either basically saying it as one word or two words. Paulo or T says it as two words, like Latin and then the letter X. Latin x. That's what I was saying. Yeah, that's what I've always said, too. And then somebody, I don't know who, pointed out that it was that other people pronounce it like Latinx or something like that, rather than Latino or Latina. Latinx. That's the explanation. Yeah. I mean, the whole point of all this is that it's meant to be a gender neutral, totally inclusive word for people who identify as Latino, Latina, Hispanic, chicano, even, however you identify that this is this big, encompassing word. There was a few survey that was done that said traditionally, or at least now, most people like you were saying, prefer to be identified as Guatemalan or as Brazilian or as Haitian. Wherever you're from, that your nation of origin is your that's how you identify with but there is a growing group, especially younger, American born, English speaking people who identify as what the Census Bureau would call Hispanic that are adopting this term Latinx or Latinx to make it more inclusive, which I think is cool. Yeah. And as Ortiz puts it, he said he kind of sees it as a bridge building term to kind of unite people, and it's up to the individual what they prefer to be called. If you ask me, I definitely see how referring to someone's country of origin can be a nice specificity, but I also see the value in people coming together as a whole and saying, we're a big worldwide community and we are Latinx. Right. And that's meant to apparently Latino was very widely used. Hispanic Latino, that was like a transition word, for sure, from Hispanic to Latinx or Latinx latino definitely made that kind of bridge those two together. But apparently Latino came to be widely associated specifically with people whose country of origin is Mexico. Right. And there's plenty of people from other parts of Central and South America who say, well, I'm not from Mexico, so that one doesn't really apply to me. Which is why Latinx is that bridge building term for a lot of people. For the time being, though, it's got a lot of ground to cover before it becomes widely used again, according to Pew. Right, yeah. I think they did a survey just this year, actually just this August, very recently. Is it still 2020? Actually, who knows? I think 2020 is now eternal damnation year, so it will be going on forever. All right, so yes. The answer is yes. Yeah, it's been 2020 for seven years now, and this survey said that about 23% of Hispanics have even heard the term. That surprised me, and only 3% use it. That kind of surprised me, too. Maybe it's the circles I run in, but I've heard it a lot more than that. Well, I think one of the reasons why it seems like there's more people who adopted is because the people who do use it tend to be the most vocal on social media, the most present. Yeah, they're younger, like, they're out there a lot more than, say, like, their parents or grandparents or even older siblings. Yes, they're out there for sure. So they have a much larger voice. They have a disproportionately large voice. How about that? What I've seen is some people are like, well, no, I prefer Latino, or I prefer Latina. Some people say, well, no, I'm totally down with the gender neutral thing, but Latinx X just kind of flies in the face of Spanish as a tongue. So why don't we go with Latina and e with the accent? What's the accent called? No, I don't know, but with an accent over it. You've seen it before. I have. So Latina is gender neutral, but it's also much more Spanish sounding. It's from the Spanish tongue, so maybe go with that. And I think everybody who's already on board Latinx is just be quiet, we're going with Latinx. X is cool. Yeah, it's totally cool, for sure. It's definitely got a cool term. But I remember also when we did our Keenson Year episode, we were exclusively saying Latinx, I believe, and some people wrote in and said, hey, you know, not everybody is down with that in the Latino community or Latino community, and it was good to be reminded of that, that, yes. When you're talking about entire groups of people, just remember, they don't all agree on everything. No matter whether they're white, black, Latinx, Hispanic, Asian, doesn't matter. They're all very different people and we're all different when it comes down to it, we're all individuals and maybe that means we can all get along a little better. Yes. And at the very least, we can defer to them, for goodness sake. Yes. When you meet somebody who you would say, oh, this person is of Latinx heritage, you could leave it to them by saying, it's really great to meet someone of and then let them fill in the box. Exactly. So there you go. Go forth and think about things a little more and stop pigeonholing everybody. Okay, short stuff then is out. Stuff you should know is the 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 shows." | |
What's the deal with duckbill platypuses? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-duckbill-platypuses | It is pretty much impossible to describe duckbill platypuses without using the word "hodgepodge" and for good reason. These mammals also share features with birds, reptiles and even sharks. Learn about the these weird and peculiar (and surprisingly tiny) | It is pretty much impossible to describe duckbill platypuses without using the word "hodgepodge" and for good reason. These mammals also share features with birds, reptiles and even sharks. Learn about the these weird and peculiar (and surprisingly tiny) | Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:22:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=15, tm_min=22, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=99, tm_isdst=0) | 22434888 | audio/mpeg | "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 this is stuff you should know. Right? Yeah, yeah. Zoological edition. Yeah, I like these. Yeah. We try to cover, like, interesting animals. Not that all interesting animals are fairly interesting, I think, but we try to hit up things like octopus and the platypus and other pussy. Butterflies is what you mean. And we did butterflies once, the narwhal. We got to do that at some point, too. It's like a dolphin with a tusk. They'll just be a short one. We just did the narrow one. Yeah. We're talking today about the platypus. We have not ever done it before, and despite Jerry's protests to the contrary, we haven't recorded one. If we have, Chuck and I have both gone totally insane and have no recollection of it. So if we did, let us know. Well, we covered weird animals in Australia or deadly animals in Australia, venomous animals in Australia, but we have not covered the platypus specifically. Did we mention the platypus in that? Because I don't recall knowing that the platypus had venom. We definitely didn't. That's the big twist of this episode. And unstrewed it for everybody. I'm sorry. Oh, man. There are so many twists with the platypus. You can't this is spoiler free. Did you know much of this stuff beforehand? No. And in fact, I did not know that they were so small. I didn't either. That took me by surprise. I thought they were maybe the size of my torso. Yeah. I thought it was like the size of a medium sized dog or something. Exactly. Or a large beaver. And it kind of looks like a beaver that stuck its face in something and got it stuck. It looks like a beaver that stuck his face in a fake duck bill and can't get it off. It's not a very cute animal. I want it to be very cute and it's just not. I like it. But they are tiny. It's like the size of a very small cat, even. Yeah. They run to about \u00a35. A little more. Is that right? I saw \u00a35 somewhere. Yeah. What's interesting is they're only found in eastern Australia, up and down the coast, down to the island of Tasmania. Right. And they live in woodlands and rivers. Yeah. And the ones in the south, though, are larger. Is that right? Yeah. They can get up to, like, \u00a36. And the ones in the north, up in the Queensland coast, some of those, like, two and a half, \u00a33. They're just teeny little cute guys. They're like teacup play to push. Yeah. So I always just seen pictures of them without a human around. A human? Did I say human? You did. And then when I saw I watched a bunch of videos today. When I saw the people holding them up, I was like, this is a little thing. Yeah. So, yeah, my answer the long winded way. I didn't know much about them. Well, you know, I didn't know much about them either, and it turns out that most people don't, because I've seen a lot of different stuff. Like, just that weight discrepancy is just one example. Sure. Like we said, platypuses, they spend most of their lives along river banks and freshwater river banks, we should say. Yeah. Are there saltwater rivers? Surely there's like tidal creeks and stuff like that. These guys are freshwater animals. Yeah. And they hold their breath when they go eat food because they're actually bottom feeders. But I saw a lot of different variations and estimates of how long they could hold their breath. 30 seconds, I saw all over the place. One person said eight minutes. Yeah. I think one source said, I don't know, five, I think is what one source said, so I've seen all over the place. But the point is, there's a lot of random facts floating around about platypuses and we're going to compile them all together here. That's right. I was instantly surprised by the fact that they were just on the east coast of Australia. Didn't know that. Right. I knew Australia. I didn't even know that. Oh, really? No. For some reason, I don't know. I just didn't know that. So apparently after Pangaea split, it evolved on one of the huge chunks of land called Gondwana, and that split formed Australia and South America and some other places, and they were in South America, in Australia at the time, and then the ones in South America died off and all seats were just like, it's ours. Right. What was that? What happened just now? That was Australian. Okay. Yeah. That was my best stab. And the duck bell platypus, as far as it's called the day, that's obviously a European term for it. Sure. And it wasn't until almost the 19th century, 1798, that the platypus was first encountered by Europeans. Before that, Aborigines obviously had run into them before they had names for them, like Malin, Gong, Bundabura, Tambreet. Those are all better names then duck build platypus. Sure. Yeah. Great. So the Aborigines knew about it, and the first white colonists that showed up in Australia, I guess, heard legends of these things and then started to see them themselves. And even though these were Europeans telling other Europeans, hey, there's this really weird animal down here, there's a bunch of weird animals. Like, you're not going to believe the kangaroo, but this thing has got it like all of them beat. And people in Europe are like, you're full of it. And they even sent them specimens, stuffed specimens. And the Texatermis and the naturalists and biologists back in Europe said, I still don't believe it, because at the time have you ever seen the mermaid mummies? Yeah. The Chinese, they were in the fabricating animals. Yeah. So everybody thought it was just a Chinese baby until somebody finally got their hands on one and dissected it. His name was Everard Jones and he proclaimed them real in two. Yeah. It's funny that for a while they're like, no, this went through I think they call it the Indian seas at the time. They're like, they went close to China and you know that they're just nuts over there with this stuff. Yeah, it's rogue taxidermy. Yeah, pretty much. It's kind of cool that they were doing that, though. I wonder if it was just like a creative thing or what were they doing? They were selling them to sailors as some sort of scam. Yeah. As a mermaid. They're like, these are real mermaids. Okay. From what I understand, like the sea monkeys that you defend, but even less real. Okay. So we finally established 18 two that platypuses are real and we start to just really dig in to figure out what is going on with these things. And the more we dig in, the stranger things become. So, for example, chuck platypus, it's a mammal. And the reason it's a mammal is because it nurses, it's young and it has fur. And it has fur, yet it doesn't have nipples. No. It secretes its milk through its abdomen like it's just leaking or something. Yeah. Through pores. And the little they're called puggles. They're young are, and the puggles just suckle on the abdomen. And it's a very odd thing in nature for that to happen. It is peculiar. Yeah, very peculiar, yeah. Okay, so they're mammals. Yes. But they're not just mammals. They also straddle the line. Like, basically the platypus exists to strain the taxonomic system of classification of animals. Right? Yeah. They have that duck bill, that pesky duck bill, yeah. In the web feet. So it's like all right, so they're birds, right? I guess. But I thought we just said they were mammals. Well, officially losing my mind. Officially they are mammals. That's not going to change. Yeah. Although you never know. But yeah, they do have the web feet and the duck bill. And then they also have certain they have eyes like a reptile. They lay eggs like a reptile. Right. Amphibians. They suckle their young through their abdomens with milk, but they give birth to eggs. So that's not supposed to happen either. No, the female, they have two ovaries, one of them functions, one of them doesn't. And they lay these one to three little leathery eggs. They're a little more round than the oval bird eggs, but they're eggs and they're born with teeth that fall out. Then they have these little horny plates that they match their food up with. Yes. They don't have teeth, they're just weird. They're born with teeth. Right. Which actually is funny because both creationists and evolutionists hold the platypus up as evidence of their beliefs. The creationists are like, if anything, it's reverse evolution. They lose their teeth. And this thing was obviously assembled right. Yeah. Like what evolves over hundreds of millions of years living by water, but can only hold its breath for 30 seconds or eight minutes, depending on who you ask. Right. Say, the creationist, evolutionists, say, well, no, I mean, this is probably the earliest example of a mammal to branch off from the mammalian line, so it fills in the gaps between us and our distant ancestry. It's a great example of evolution. The fact is we still don't quite know what the deal is with this thing, even after mapping its genome. Yeah. I bet you there's a great political cartoon out there with a Christian pulling on the duck bill and an evolutionist pulling on the tail and the platypus in the middle, like, wow, yeah, I just want to live. Right? I guess it just wrote a political cartoon. Don't put your hang ups on me. Yeah, exactly. All we need to do is be able to draw and we'd be set. So the strange parade of character traits not character traits that would be what? Like, whether it was good mother or something? Yeah. What is it called? Phenotypes. Just biological traits, I guess. Yeah. That strange parade of those has not ended yet. No. Platypuses are just one of two members of monotremes mammalian monotremes. Okay. Because birds are monotremes because they poop in hatch eggs out of the same hole called a clawaca. Yeah. But I guess as far as what you're saying mammals are concerned yeah. There's the spiny anteater and the platypus are the only ones who excrete and shoot eggs out of one hole. Is that what the echidna is? That is fine. Yeah. Okay. It looks like a porcupine with, like, kind of a longer nose. Yeah. So they have one hole to do their business with and one hole to lay their eggs with, which is also business. You're right. And that is very much bird like. But like I said, the eye structure is more reptilian. You said the eggs were leathery. That's pretty reptilian. Yeah, they're just all over the map. It gets even stranger than that. Okay, what else we got? Let's look a little deeper on that duck bill there's. Tiny little pores. Right. For a long time, scientists were like, we know that these things, when they dive, they're bottom feeders. They feed on shellfish, insects, things that live along the muck of the bottom of the river. We know that they close their eyes and they close their nostrils when they dive. So how are they locating food? And they figured out that there's tiny little holes on their duck bill that have electro receptors in them, just like a shark. Yeah, I think we've talked multiple times about the nose of a shark. That's why you punch the shark in the nose, and that's how they feed it's, because that will disrupt their brain if you give them a good stock in those electrical receptors, and it's very similar. They sense movement through these receptors, and they're blind to everything. And this is how they find the shellfish and all that stuff. Yeah. These receptors are so sensitive that even just the tiny movement of an insect's leg crazy. The change in the electrical current in the water that that produces their electro receptors pick up. That's how they go eat. And they get a scoop full of food, and they kind of pocket it in their cheek for a little while until they come back up. And then once they do, they use a bit of the grit on the river bottom to help with their teeth plates or whatever you call them to grind the food down. They call them horny plates. Well, their horny plates are aided with gravel. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Then they choose all right, we're starting to get kind of a handle on this thing. Right. So that's got to be the last weird thing, right? It is not. We've already mentioned it. But they produce venom. They're one of only three types of mammals that produce venom. So think about this. You've got the echidnas, the spiny anteater. It's the only other monitoring. But it doesn't have a duck bill. It doesn't lay eggs. It doesn't do all this other weird stuff. You've got a certain kind of shrew and salinidones dons they produce venom? Right, okay. But they also don't have duck bills. They also don't have electro receptors. Duckbill platypuses are the strangest, hands down animal around. Hodgepodge is the best way to describe them. They are a hodgepodge, and they straddle all these different classes. And in the end, I saw an interview with one lady who worked on the genome project, which we'll get to. She was like, when you're talking genetics like this, she was like, Weird is good. She's like, this is awesome for us, because it shows I think she called it informative variation. And so if you learn about all these weird things that a platypus has in its genetic code, it can help fill in, because we're mammals, too. Some of the stuff that we may not know about in ways that we are different and similar, it just helps inform everything, basically. Right. All there with a little genome of the platypus. Right. And actually, not only the differences are good, but also any similarities between us and them also shows. Well, this is a very ancient trait since they branched off of mammals 166,000,000 years ago. Right. Like, you have a thorny venomous stabber in your heel, right? Yeah. Right. Now, I try not to use it. Sometimes it's easier to just not use than other times, but, yes, I do. Well, and they actually do. They have venom. And I think it is it just the males have that spur on the hind foot. Yeah. And they mostly produce the venom during spring, which is why they think that it's probably used to fight with other males. They live solitary. That would make sense because the females are born with one and it falls off, so they wouldn't need one for that. Yes. And then so males will fight with one another, four females mate and then take off, and then that's that like everybody kind of lives on their own over, like, a set amount of territory as a platypus. Right, okay. But that venom doesn't kill other platypuses. But it could kill a dog. And it has before. Yeah. I'm surprised it doesn't kill another platypus. They may have some resistance. Right. That's what I think. Yeah. It's got to be because they're smaller than most dogs. Exactly. It hasn't ever killed a human, but humans have been known to get stung by these things. And brother, does it hurt. And the reason it hurts is because it is a mammalian venom, and we have no known cure or treatment for the pain caused by that. So if you are stung by one of them, you are totally on your own. As far as pain management goes, there's nothing that can be done. You're just sitting there in agony for like a week or two until it works itself out. Yeah. I think it's supposed to suck pretty bad, like swelling and just lots of pain. Right. And like you said, if there's nothing that can be done, you just ride around and curse the platypus, I guess. Yeah. And that's why you hold them by the tail, too, by the way, if you ever go to grab a platypus. Grab them by the tail? Sure. Because they don't mind it with possums. Yeah. And they can't well, yeah, but possum doesn't have a spur in the tail. No, but they'll bite you. Oh, man, they will. They're mean. I don't know if that's true, actually, but they hiss. Oh, no, they're real mean. Oh, are they? Yeah, they'll try to bite you. They'll try to curl up. If you hold the end of their tail, they'll curl themselves up trying to get to your wrist, which you really can't blame them. They're trying to get you to let them go. Sure. But yeah, they'll bite you. They'll kill you and your whole family if you'd let them. I remember it was actually one of my first dates with my high school girlfriend. Couldn't it possum? No, it may have been my first date, actually. I walked her back up to the front porch at the end of the night, and it was that it was like something on Norman Rockwell, like, all right, I'm going to get that first kiss. We walked up on the porch and it was probably like four by four small. There was a freaking possum up there that got stuck, like, trying to get out. And we were sharing this very small space with this possum, like hissing at us and screaming at us. And it made her very memorable into the evening, I'm sure. And I don't think I got the kiss on any, I thought you were going to say her dad came out to meet you and he turned out to be a giant opossum. No, that didn't happen. What else? We were talking about the Platypus genome project. You sound like you know more about that than me. Well, they did this 100 scientists got together in 2008 and said, you know what, if we can figure this thing out, maybe we can help inform our own human species. Right. And one thing they did find out is that we have two chromosomes. We have a pair. Your female gives me Xx, your male, you give me X Y. Birds have ZW for female and ZZ for male. Platypuses have is it platypuses? Yeah. Okay. They have ten chromosomes, sex chromosomes, and they don't know why it's that complicated. So females have ten exes and males have XY XY XY XY XY and the deal is they're similar to birds in that their X one chromosome has eleven genes that are found in alma million X chromosomes. But their X five gene carries something called DMRT one, and that's found on the Z chromosomes of birds. So they sort of share the sex chromosomes with regular mammals and birds. But they have ten sets of them. I'm not ten sets. Five sets. And they're superfluous. Like, there's no reason for them to have that. They haven't figured it out yet and they're still working on that, I guess. But that was definitely like, an interesting find. And they're 80% mammal or they share 80% of their DNA with mammals. Right. So that means if they also share some with birds and they branched off a mammoth 166,000,000 years ago and went off on their own, then that would mean that we possibly are descended from birds as well. Yeah, it definitely raised that question. My other question is this the venom, it's very similar in composition to reptile venom, even though it's mammalian produced. Right. But they figured out from the Platypus Genome Project that it came up independently. Oh, really? Yeah, they didn't get it from reptilian ancestor. So the platypus is almost like this idea that nature has a finite number of tools in its tool kit to handle things like reproduction, defense, whatever. And the platypus represents like all these things just kind of evolving independently on its own after it branched off 166,000,000 years ago. It's pretty neat. Maybe the platypus therein lies the key to it all. Who knows? I sincerely hope not. It's a very strange creature. Well, at the very least, it could help us locate and identify new genes and then sequences that could turn those genes on and off in us. Yes, supposedly ovarian cancer. Really? There's some DNA and ovarian cancer tumors that's found in platypus X chromosomes. Wow. Yeah. Cool. So who know? That was as far as they got. And what I read, they just discovered that. So they didn't know what to do with it yet. Yeah, I think this is a great, like, load up on this one, people, for your next cocktail party. Because everyone's like, yeah, I get it. They're furry and they got a duck bill that you can hit them with a bunch of more cool stuff like, oh, yeah, what about the spur in the hill? What about these chromosomes? How do you like them apples? How do you like them apples? Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Right? So that's it for platypuses for now, until they find some other weird thing about it, right? Yeah. You got anything else? No. If you want to learn more about PLAB pussies, just type duck bill into the search bar@housetepworks.com. It will bring up this amazing article. And actually, no, this article is written by Congo House of Work writer. It's on Animal Planet. So check out animalplanet.com and try searching for duckbill platypus. Very cool. And now it's time for Listening to Mail. Right? Great. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this from Penelope. Tell me, how simple is that? Hey, guys, big fan. I remember when how gender reassignment works came up. I was a little worried because I fall into the genderqueer transgender spectrum somewhere. That's all she says. Most people who try to talk about it in a non offensive way usually fail. You all did a really good job, and I've had faith ever since then. But I have one note in the CPR podcast. You're thinking, how can this relate? Right? I know because I've read this email. So you're not thinking that you all talked about giving blood and how everyone should give blood. I think in times like these, it's important to keep in mind there's a huge population of people in the world who cannot give blood because of the backwards and outdated thinking of the Red Cross for words. I'm, of course, talking about anyone who has had sex with a man. Who has had sex with a man, MSM. Men who have sex with men are indefinitely banned from giving blood. Women who have sex with MSM have a one year waiting window before they can get I didn't know this. This thinking obviously came from the media created aid scare that we are just now coming out of. However, the Red Cross continues this discriminatory policy, even though their testing abilities that we have are incredibly accurate. To quickly sum it up, guys, in the future, when we talk about getting blood in your general daily life on the podcast, wherever, it's a good idea to say something like, those who are allowed to give blood, I didn't know this. And it's always great to get this kind of message out, so thank you. She says love, which is very sweet. Penelope poppers. Thanks a lot, Penelope. That's awesome. Thank you for pointing out extraordinarily important, I would say yes. And if that's the case, when I say get with it and allow people to give blood, if it's safe. You just directed a message to the Red Cross. I'm calling them out. If you want to call somebody out through us, we would like to help any way possible. You can tweet to us at Syscape podcast, you can join us on Facebook.com Stuffyhnnow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the web stuffytheknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com." | ||
40083fb8-121b-11eb-ba6a-83f826747d8f | Short Stuff: Lake Erie's Rights | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-lake-eries-rights | The good people of Toledo, OH are leading the environmental pack by giving legal rights to Lake Erie to fight off polluters. | The good people of Toledo, OH are leading the environmental pack by giving legal rights to Lake Erie to fight off polluters. | Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=265, tm_isdst=0) | 11643971 | audio/mpeg | "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 and haloopets.com. Com. Ahoy. And welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And I am a born and raised Toledo in so I am in a very peculiar position to speak about this. Peculiar meaning special in every way. And I get to show off my slack. Yeah, you pink boy. I'm going to kick back and just listen. Did you ever get that key to the city? No, I have not. And it bothers me every night while I'm trying to sleep. Weren't you offered or no, there was a Toledo and I don't remember his name, but he was a dedicated stuff you should know listener some years back who said, I am going to get Josh the key to the city, and you too, I believe. He was working very hard to make it happen. Got in touch with some local politicians I think was brushed off and then called it today. So that moment happens where, like, you and I are standing at the hotel check in and they look at you and they go, are you going to need two keys? And you look at me and I'm like, I wouldn't mind a key. Sure, I guess, too, but this will be on a podium with the mayor. Well, maybe. I think that you should have the key and cut with the giant scissors. Okay. And I'll just be there and support you. Well, either way, I mean, I would be more than happy to share the key to the city with you. I mean, everything that we've done with stuff you should know, we've done together. Yeah, but I'm not familiar. But you could be an honorary citizen too. Let's move on from this petty dispute. Wait a minute, I'm not done yet. All right, we are talking about Toledo today because Toledo, my hometown, did something pretty amazing a few years back and as far as I can tell, they are still very much working on it. Right. I love this idea in spirit. The global alliance for the Rights of Nature, aka Garn, is a network of organizations and people from more than 100 different countries that are actually pushing for legal bodies and systems around the world to recognize nature and ecosystems as having rights. Yes, which you're like, what? That's stupid. Consider this corporations are considered artificial people under the law. They have a lot of the same rights. Yeah, they have a lot of the same rights as you and me. So if corporations can have personal rights, why shouldn't nature amen? It makes even more sense to me than a corporation having personal rights. And that's kind of the push and the angle that people are coming from is like, look, this thing is being harmed. And sometimes it can be really difficult to show you have standing, which means you are being directly harmed by, say, polluting into. It would be much easier to get something done through the courts if this thing that was actually suffering the harm, the body of water, say, like Lake Erie had those rights, because then you could see on its behalf in court. Yeah. I love this idea, like, where the ecosystem is the actual injured party when it clearly is. Yes, because it is. Ecuador has done this. They were the first country to recognize rights of nature in their actual constitution in 2008. And it means nature has, quote, the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles. This seems like a no brainer. No, it really does. Of course nature has the right to do that. Yeah. Bolivia as well, in 2010, with their universal declaration of the rights of mother Earth was adopted there. So this is actually happening at places in the world. Yeah. Ecuador, Bolivia, and Toledo, Ohio, basically are the leaders in this. And so the whole thing with Toledo started after, I think, in August of 2014. There was a terrible incident where there was a cyanobacteria algae bloom. And cyanobacteria is very much toxic to humans, and it got into the water intake crib in Lake Erie that supplies Toledo with its stock for the water that it sends through its taps to people's homes. And for three days, the people of Toledo could not bathe. They had no water to drink. They couldn't cook. They had no water. All of a sudden, for three days until the water company could figure out what to do about this, people are having to cross state lines to get bottled water. It was a nightmare. It was a mess. And that really prompted some people to get involved and be like, okay, enough is enough. Those algae blooms are not supposed to be happening. They're the result of irresponsible fertilizing practices by local industrialized agriculture groups that are polluting the lake through runoff. And we're all suffering from this. We need to figure out what to do. That's right. And we'll take a break right now and talk about a great Toledo in American named Marquis Miller 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. 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. 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 fast in your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the city advantageplatinum. Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more@city.com Adventure and travel on with cityadvantage. All right. Josh Clark. One great, Toledoin. Marky Miller. Another great Toledoin. Yeah, I think between me and Marky Miller, marky Miller should probably get the key to the city. Jamie Farr, great Toledo. Jamie Farr was really from Toledo, right? Yeah, he really was. It wasn't just part of Clinger's character. He really was. He always talked about Tony Packos, which is still around. I love it. So Marquee Miller is a long time Toledoin who, after this water fiasco, got fed up and started trying to get some answers. Went to the town hall meetings, said all the things as a citizen that you can do, and they like, how can we make sure this doesn't happen again? And they basically said, let's move forward about Mitigation, but we don't really want to talk about what caused this in the first place. Like, let's just kind of brush that under the rug. And Markie Miller said, no, not good enough yet. And so Marquee Miller, in her late twenties, started attending these meetings and getting kind of people kind of riled up on her side. And they named themselves the Toledo ones for safe water. And this eventually led to what's known as drawing up the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. A handful of people saying that they're fed up and this lake, this exquisite great lake, actually needs to be protected with its own Bill of Rights. Yes. And one of the sad things about Lake Erie is, like, it used to be really bad off. Like it was not a thing that you want to swim in, which coincidentally was the time when I was swimming in Lake Erie as a kid. But I remember catching fish and like some guy going past out to the lake on his boat. My dad and I fishing on this channel, and him being like, do not eat that, just throw it back. And I remember being like, what is this guy talking about? My dad's like, yeah, we really shouldn't eat the fish out of here. He had a mouthful of raw striper, right? It was still alive in my mouth. But Lake Erie got cleaned up. It was a success story. And then now it's getting repolluted again. So that makes it even more tragic and it makes that campaign for the Lake Erie Bill of Rights even more vital. And it wasn't just Marky Miller and the Toledo Ins for Safe Water who are all about protecting Lake Erie. They had to get a bunch of signatures to get it on a petition to have a bill introduced to be put up to a vote on how to protect Lake Erie's rights. And they got, I think, double the amount needed of signatures to get the petition on the ballot. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Everybody is on board. Everybody wants to support Lake Erie and get it cleaned up and give it its own. Let's get a lawsuit going on behalf of Lake Erie. Like, how cool is that? So they get doubled the signatures and they knew that was step one. And getting it actually to a vote would be tough. And I believe they were up against who you would think they would be up against. These big industrial companies that said, no, actually, that would be really bad for us. If we couldn't pollute the lake, that'd be bad for our business. There was a $300,000 anti libor campaign, even though it passed by 61% in 2020. They came out with a victory, a very sad and short lived victory because about 12 hours later, an agricultural company filed a lawsuit against the city and said, this law is detrimental to our business. We got to pollute that lake, you guys. Right? There was a guy, the judge in the case, Judge Jack Zuhari, basically said, like, this is terrible. This is a terrible law that Toledo passed. It makes sense in its spirit, and I respect it for that. But it was really poorly written. And basically what he said was, twofold one, it's way too vague to be constitutional. He said that you could conceivably under the law, be prosecuted for fishing in Lake Erie. The second one is that Toledo extended its protections across Lake Erie. Lake Erie is shared by a bunch of different cities from Toledo to Cleveland to Buffalo, New York to Erie, Pennsylvania. They're all on Lake Erie. And the law cross state boundaries and state jurisdictions. You could dump something in Buffalo, New York, and you could be sued in Toledo, Ohio for it because of this law. So it was an overreach, but it was a good first step. And I think it shows that the public is on board with this. It's just that we need to figure out how the law needs to be written to make it survive court challenges. Right. And I think Miller is right in her contention that, like, she said, quote, you have to redefine what it means to win. Like, I don't think they thought, well, this is it, we're done. They knew it would be short lived, they knew it would probably be overturned, but what it did was make the news, and it's one more step closer to change. Exactly. And so there are more rights of nature movements, I guess, that are kind of popping up around the country and around the world in places like Hawaii and Florida like you would expect in Washington state. And I think that's a good direction to be progressing. I think it's the future. Agreed. Well, cool. Well, there's not much more to say about it right now, but who knows? We'll be talking about it hopefully in a few years when it's the law of the land across the globe. And by the way, we found this article originally on how stuff works, and you can go read it there if you like and withdraw 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." | |
SYSK Selects: Can you die of a broken heart? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-can-you-die-of-a-broken-heart | In this week's SYSK Select episode, in the early 1990s, Japanese researchers found a strange anomaly in their study subjects, five people who had inexplicable heart attacks. From this first investigation has come a scientific mystery: Is it possible that | In this week's SYSK Select episode, in the early 1990s, Japanese researchers found a strange anomaly in their study subjects, five people who had inexplicable heart attacks. From this first investigation has come a scientific mystery: Is it possible that | Sat, 08 Apr 2017 20:39:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=20, tm_min=39, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=98, tm_isdst=0) | 24654824 | audio/mpeg | "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 and Haloopetscom. Com. What if you were a global energy company with customers in different places on different systems? So you call an IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform? Now data is available anywhere, securely. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. Hey, this is Josh, and I picked this episode of SYSK Select just because I thought it was a sweet one and maybe a lot of you haven't listened to it yet. It was based on an article written by our former colleague Kristen conger lately of stuff mom never told you, and it has it all. It has quaint Japanese medical terms, suicide pacts among long married couples, and the listener mail about Australian national hero Ned Kelly. Plus, the whole idea of dying from a broken heart is just lousy with sweetness. So I hope you enjoy it. If you've heard it before, I hope you enjoy it again. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W, chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. That's right. Throwback Wednesdays it is. It did the cheeks today. Oh, yeah. You did? The first time in a long time. Yeah, but that was for a take that was abandoned within 10 seconds. Yeah. So it doesn't count. Yeah, a rare aborted first take that just doesn't happen. No, but you want to tell them why? My brain had some sort of weird frizzle, I guess, is the only way to put it. I was trying to do the intro, and we're doing this episode can you dive a Broken heart? And I realized that Chuck had just been singing Where do Broken hearts go? And I put two and two together as I was trying to do the intro and screwed it up so bad. I sang it, like, five minutes ago, so it's a little weird it hit you that late. Why is Chuck singing in Whitney Houston? Is that Whitney? I think it is. Okay. If not, we'll find out soon enough. Chuck. Yes. I've got a sad story for you. Bittersweet. I knew it. Complete. What is that? The band? Billy Joel. Okay, piano man. Come on. Sadness. Sweet. I knew it complete. Oh, I never realized what he was saying was I knew it complete. Yeah. Okay. All right. I want to tell you about Dr. Daniel and Kitty Gut of Milwaukee. Either Goot or Guti. G-U-T-E. Okay. Back in 2010, their daughter, I believe, came over and found her parents, who were in their 80s, in their garage with a bunch of helium tanks around them with tubes coming from the helium tanks going to plastic bags. That the guts had over their head, and they were dead. Helium tanks. Helium instead of just a car. Yeah. Interesting. And they had taken their own lives. Dr. Goot was actually in really good health, but his wife had something called polymyalgia rheumatica PHR, and she was suffering from dementia, and the two had been together for 53 years. Wow. And they decided that they were going to end their lives together. They were spouses that they didn't want to be apart. One didn't want to live on without the other. They thought they were close enough to the end, I guess. Yeah. Well, she was. And he was in good health, but he didn't want to live without her, apparently. So they took their lives together. And apparently this article is from 2010, and I don't want to call it a trend, but it's something that's become more prevalent in recent years, especially among the elderly. The suicide aspect of it. Yeah. Basically what you would call a suicide pact among elderly people who have been together for a long time, where one is dying or one's health is taking a real turn, and they decided to go together rather than one try to live on without the other. Wow. That's an example of understanding exactly how a couple died together. There's another, more mysterious way that couples die virtually together, and it got a lot of press last year, and something called broken heart syndrome. There's this idea, this is a very romantic idea that if you really love somebody and they die, you're going to die of a broken heart eventually, afterwards. It's possible, biologically, medically speaking, it makes almost no sense whatsoever, but there actually has been some it's very new, this idea, but there is some medical evidence to back up the idea that that might be real. Yeah. And we say broken heart in a figurative sense because we know that the heart is the organ that pumps blood. So it has nothing to do with love, but your brain has a lot to do with love, and the brain is tied to the whole rest of the body. Yes. And the heart which the brain suffering from a broken heart in the figurative sense can injure the heart in a literal sense we'll find exactly. Okay, so hold on a minute there. I think it's time for a message break. Selfish. All right, so we are back. Where were we? There's a woman named Dorothy Lee in 2010, and the Wall Street Journal did a story on her that her husband of 40 years died in a car accident very suddenly, and she started getting chest pains. She thought she was having a heart attack. And it turns out that there is an actual condition. Very rarely does it actually lead to death, I think 1% to 3% of the time. But there is a condition discovered in Japan called broken heart syndrome, or you want to go ahead since you're virtually half Japanese, tacosubo cardiomyopathy. Yeah. And tacosubo is a type of pot used to catch octopi. Which are called taco in Japan. To fried octopi octopus balls are called taco yaki. Which are really delicious. And you will eat them all the time until you get your hands on ones from a vending machine that you shouldn't have eaten because you've had enough taco yaki the last year lifetime on this trip. Why did you have to eat the ones out of the vending machine? And now you can't even look at a taco yaki ball again. Yeah, well, Japan has those crazy vending machines, though, with, like, all kinds of stuff in there. Right. Including some bad taco yaki. Okay. Boy, that was a bonus pronunciation. Pronunciation plus tacosubocardiomyopathy. So that is broken heart syndrome. And that is actually a real thing that they identified among five patients in the 90s, early ninety s. And they were looking at a cluster of heart patients, 415 of them of heart attack victims, and only five of these stood out, and that they had basically no reason to have a heart attack. There were no blocked arteries. Right. There was nothing physical going on. They recovered pretty quickly, way more quickly than everybody else. Yeah. They looked around a little closer. They were like, why did these five people even have a heart attack? What happened? And what they found was possibly that it was brought on by grief or stress. That's right. They're left ventricles specifically in this condition, ballooned, and that's why it resembled the what? The tacosubo? Yes. The octopus pot. I can say that. It just like you saying that it exerted pressure on the heart, and that basically explained away why people thought they were having a heart attack, even though they wouldn't. It's not a heart attack at all. It's heart attack like, though. Well, yeah, it's a faux heart attack, and it can kill you like a heart attack, but in a totally different way than a blocked artery or something like that. Exactly. There's been evidence who wrote this? Was this conger from stuff mom never told you? She points out that there's long been both anecdotal evidence and empirical studies where the, quote, phenomenon, end quote, of people just dying within weeks of their spouse or loved one dying has taken place, and it holds water. There's a study in, I believe, either Finland or Sweden. I wish I knew, man. Where they found it was a 1009 nine six study, I think, where they studied, I think Finland, 158,000 Finnish couples were studied, and they wanted to find out what the mortality rate was after one couple died. And they found that in the case of sudden, unexpected death, say, like in a car accident or something like that. Right. Spouses of both sexes, widows and widowers, had a 50% chance of dying within the first week after that event. Wow, 50%. So then they went through and they found that after that, if you're a man, you have a 30% chance of dying, I think, within a year, and if you're a woman, within six months. And if you're a woman, you have a 20% chance. But they found a direct correlation between the death of a spouse, the sudden death of one spouse to the death of another, an unexpected mortality, which is an unpredictable mortality, like something you wouldn't expect. That's right. They did another study in Scotland and Israel, which I thought was kind of interesting, but I guess they wanted to well, they're two separate ones, I think. Oh, they were okay with the same design. I thought they just wanted to get a nice range. Right. So dart at a map. They study thousands of couples in that one, and they found that the risk of death was surges between 30 and 50% in the first six months after a loved one passes, not necessarily from unexpected, but this period. Right. And I guess after that six months, it drops down back to a normal range. So just make it through that six months, and you might be okay. Yeah. So they really looked at this like, okay, the Finns were trying to figure out what was behind this, and they found that there is a lot of physical explanation. Like, the second spouse, the surviving spouse, was in pretty bad health, himself or herself. They can chalk it up to economic conditions okay. Where they aren't equipped to keep going on. Sometimes it's chalked up to a lack of a support network. Like, they relied a lot on the other person, and now they don't have anyone, and they just die as a result. But there's still this one weird idea that just the loss, grief, shock, heartache, if you will, can and has, if not, killed a surviving spouse, at the very least, sent him to the hospital with this tacosubocardiomyopathy. Yeah. Well, everyone knows the brain is going to react to stress by sending rushes of catacombines for the fight or flight reaction. We've talked about it dozens of times. That's the one that starts with cascade. Exactly. But they've also done brain imaging studies, and they have found that the neuropathways during a heartache that are stimulated after you've been broken up with, have you been dumped? Are the same as when you pick up, like, something hot and burn yourself. Yeah. So, like, a physical pain and an emotional pain are lighting up the very same neurological pathways. Yeah. I looked into the study. They had some healthy men and women put them in the wonder machine, and all of the people in the study have been broken up within the last six months. Right. And so they applied some sort of heat to their arm. That was about the same as holding a hot cup of coffee without, like, a coffee clutch. Is that what those are called? Yeah. Okay. And then they showed them pictures of the person who had dumped them and asked them to go over some of their fond or memories with this person and just basically, like, poked them. Were they just regular pictures or, like, pictures of them making love to someone new? Who knows what they did? It's a pretty mean study design, but they needled these people with these memories of their lost loves and they found that the same neural pathway lights up, which I'd like to see that remember this guy? Yeah. And then they just what they do in the tears. Who's here with now? He's, like, at a playground, like, pushing his new girlfriend in his lane. They're on a teeter, daughter. The fact that the same neural pathways lit up doesn't mean that it doesn't prove anything, necessarily, but it certainly says something interesting. Sure. Back to the catacomines. Adrenaline and noradrenaline are released in such a flood that it actually disables the muscles of the heart, the muscular cells, and slows the heart down. Like, physically slows it down to the point where you think you're having a heart attack. Yes. And it doesn't just have to be like, heartbreak. I think that was it New York Times that you sent me one lady, they gave her a surprise party and she thought she was having a heart attack. Yes. She ended up in the Er from this concept of broken heart syndrome. Tucker subordinateopathy. And I'm not saying it just to show off here. The reason I'm saying is because there is a real lack of agreement in the medical community whether Taco sub cardiomyopathy is broken heart syndrome. Right. That it is the result of grief or a broken heart or something like that. And it does make sense. They have found that yes. Adrenaline, a huge flood of adrenaline brought on by stress, whether it is the sudden loss of a loved one or surprise party, a surprise party being robbed, like at gunpoint or something like that, any really stressful event could conceivably trigger this. But they don't know if a broken heart is doing it or if it really actually exists. It's still very new and there's a lack of consensus on it. And the media, obviously is going to play something like this up because, like us. Yeah. When you hear the story about an old couple in fact, I just read one last week, I just remembered this. I think that Emily sent it to me, this couple. It was that old story. One of them passed away and the other one died. That was pretty healthy about a week later. And they were married for just some ridiculous amount of time, like 60 something years. Yeah. Not that that's ridiculous bad. Nothing to it. Yeah. I've had animals that's happened too, when I was a kid. I had a kitten that died and the other one refused to eat, basically, and was just lethargic and died not too long after. I think he told me about that. And the grief one. The grief episode. Yeah. And we didn't like now we're super into taking our animals to the vet, like at the drop of a hat. But back then, growing up, it was like, I'm not going to disparage my parents, but it was more country style. Yes. Like you get a cat and you bring them and you throw them in the yard and treat mange with motor oil. Yeah, it's kind of like that. We didn't go to a lot of vets. We didn't have a lot of money for vets. Sure. So anyway, it could very well have been something treatable, looking back, maybe it's pretty bad. But you got a heck of a story out of it, right? Yeah, but I think at the very least, it sped it up. I think I might have told you about our two dogs. One of them died of heartworms. Yeah. And the other one died soon after. I remember dogs, not cats. But then I just assumed I was confused and happen twice. And I told you in that grief episode about the story of the guy who died in the back of the car on the way to his wife's funeral. Oh, yeah. And like we were saying, there is a demonstrable effect of adrenaline on the heart. And they found there was a John Hopkins study of broken heart syndrome, and they found that the patients in this study had two to three times the level of adrenaline in their system compared to people who are actually having heart attacks, like real heart attacks. That's substantial. And they had anywhere from seven to 34 times the normal levels of adrenaline in their system. Holy cow. With the ballooned left ventricle. Yeah. So there you have it. Yeah. Adrenaline definitely does affect the heart. Whether or not the sudden loss of a spouse can trigger that is what's up for debate. I think it can. I don't think they have to call it only broken heart syndrome. Why can't they call it sometimes broken heart syndrome? I don't know why not? That's what I think. So there's another part to this story, which is are women more susceptible to this than men? Supposedly. It's pretty rare. It affects between one and 2% of people who underwent diagnostic testing for their heart. I think this is the Johns Hopkins study, is it? Yes. But in 2007 they found that 89% of the more than 6000 reported cases were females. Yes. And in 2011, the, AHA, American Heart Association said women over the age of 55 are about three times more likely to develop it than younger women. Tacosubocardiomyopathy is what we're talking about, age and gender. This is a recognized, legitimate medical condition. Again, what's up for debate is whether or not I just want to make sure we're not saying the American Heart Association is saying, like, oh, yeah, there's all these cases of broken heart syndrome. Well, that's what Connor the point she makes is that while you might think, like, oh, women can't handle stress as much, it's not necessarily true. No, those numbers are true. And it is like, why do women tend to develop type of sugo cardiomyopathy but not necessarily more emotionally drained? Because of broken heart. Yeah. Because they found out that widowers are more likely to die than a widow after their spouse just recently died. 10% more likely, remember? Yeah. So it turns out on its head. Yes. So it could have something to do with because older women are more likely to develop it than younger women. So it could have to do with postmenopausal levels of hormones. Right. Women might handle stress differently than men or their hearts are more susceptible to interruption from adrenaline. Right. Who knows? But it doesn't mean that it's because a woman can't take a bereavement is, I think, what Congress is saying. Right. It's very sweet stories, though. It's like the Titanic couple that laid down together in the movie and just died in the bed together while yeah, apparently that's true. Were those the asters? I don't know. But apparently it happened on deck. There was a real couple who just like they were last seen just sitting in the deck chairs together holding hands like the Goots. Like The Goots. Very sweet stuff. It is very sweet. Sweet and sad. Bittersweet, I think they call that. Yeah. You knew it. Complete. If you want to learn more about broken heart syndrome, aka tacosubo cardiomyopathy, I defy you to type that word into the search bar@housetoforce.com if you can. It will bring up this great article. And since I said search bar, time for listener mail. Remember we did that podcast on Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, and we asked for people who have their version of that in their own country? Yeah, we heard from a lot of people. And we're going to highlight Australia, okay. Because we like those people and they even lead off with a good day. Josh and Chuckers. They give us what we want, proof that they're Australian. All right. Just wanted to share with you guys some information about Australia's national hero, Ned Kelly. Yeah. Following the Great Davy Crockett Podcast Perhaps this stems from our convict heritage, but our national hero was a notorious criminal. A bush ranger is what they call them. A bushranger is that another word for a bandit? You think she said it's a term for a runaway convict? Come. Horse thief. Highway man. That's a bandit. Exactly. I want to be a highway man. Do you like Willie Nelson? Yeah, that was a great group. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash. Chris Christopherson. Chris Christopherson and Randy Newman. Right? Now, who was the fourth? Randy Newman. No, come on. That was way funny. No, it's funny. I'm sorry, but I was so fixated on who the fourth highway man was. It just Kristoffersson? Johnny Cash. Don't look at it. I'm not going to look it up. Willie Nelson Orbison. No, he's in heaven. Will be ay yeah. And Jeff lynne is the forgotten Wilbury. He's a genius, man. ELO is great. Just now starting to realize how good. I saw a really good documentary on him. Yeah, you can't watch it and not go, oh, this guy is a genius. How did you get Chris Christopherson? If you remember Chris Christopherson, the fourth one has to be like, mindfulnessling genius. Oh, boom walkthrough. That's what they call him. Did you know that? No. Waktash waylon. Jennings. Really? Sure. His son is awesome, too, by the way. Shooter. All right. That was a nice little sidebar. He's married to did you watch The Sopranos? Yeah. Dre. De Matteo. The daughter. Christopher's christopher's girlfriend. No, I didn't watch it. Like that one. Yeah, she's married to Shooter. Jenny. Okay, where were we? Highway. Then Ned Kelly. After an incident back in the late 1870s, ned Kelly killed 13 I'm sorry, three policemen. He barricaded himself in his house and made a suit of armor. In fact, on a cardboard well, sort of. In fact, it was so shoddy that it looked more like a trash can turned upside down on his head. In the final standoff at Glenn Rowan, which is the town of Victoria, the police shot at him many times, leaving him very bruised inside of his tin can. However, he actually survived the siege, only to be caught and hanged in 1880. His final documented words being, such as life. While I'm sure we Australians have a few other notable honest heroes, ned Kelly remains the most identifiable symbol of the underclass rising up against an oppressive British governance despite his criminality. Perhaps one day you can do a Ned Kelly show and his tin can armor. Share the riveting, pun intended story with the rest of your listeners. With kindness. Regards, Michelle. Thanks. And there have been a bunch of movies on Ned Kelly, especially Ned Kelly movie with Heath Ledger, and then I was seeing that. Yeah? He was Ned Kelly. Really? And Orlando Bloom paid his little sidekick, I think. Oh, but that was pretty good. I didn't see it. There are a couple of top notch actors. Sure. And Mick Jagger played him in a 1973 movie. Did he really? Yeah. Weird. Not a top notch act. I can imagine. And apparently there's been eight or nine other Australian only movies about him. So he's right up there with Crocodile Dundee. I think that's their national hero, from what I understand. That's a nice right? Yeah, I think I knew what he was doing. He understood life. Paul Hogan. Paul Hogan. No crocodiles on D. Paul Hogan still around, right? Sure. Remember the one where he played an angel with Cuba Good and Junior Angels in the Outfields? No, that's Gary Coleman. Highway to Heaven. No, that's Michael Landon. I don't know. I don't remember what it was called either. But he played like Australian Angel. He played like a B and E guardian angel. Like just a thief who died and was sent back to be a guardian angel. Cuba in Junior. I believe it was him. Interesting. Show me the money. Let's end this show. We can keep going. I know I'll be on this all day. People are like, wow, a podcast 3 hours long on Broken heart. Yes. It all begins with Ned Kelly. If you want to tell us about anything you like yeah. How about a nice, sweet story about either pets or people passing together? That's a good one. Hand in hand. Or Paul and Paul. Yeah. If you want to do that, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us s YSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com and you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushaneo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.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, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. 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4347621e-53a3-11e8-bdec-db2efc04e450 | The Legends of Lost Nazi Gold | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-legends-of-lost-nazi-gold | As if being murdering SOBs weren’t enough, the Nazis were also thieving rats. During WWII, they stole billons in gold from countries they overran and moved it to Germany. But at the end of the war, only part of it was recovered. Where’s the rest? | As if being murdering SOBs weren’t enough, the Nazis were also thieving rats. During WWII, they stole billons in gold from countries they overran and moved it to Germany. But at the end of the war, only part of it was recovered. Where’s the rest? | Tue, 07 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=98, tm_isdst=0) | 44057994 | audio/mpeg | "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 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, 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. 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, brian over there, and Jerry somewhere. We lost her. I think she wandered off. Yes, but this is stuff you should know regardless. The Lost Nazi Gold edition. The Legend of Curly's Gold. If Curly was a white nationalist, well, who's to say he wasn't? I don't know. Jack Pallan seems like the kind who would have beat up white nationalists for fun as like a hobby. You know what I mean? Yeah, we can't get into the super ins and outs, but as you know, my brother worked on The Legend of Curly's Gold. And Jack Fallon was a tough Sob. Yes, I hear he used to do shots of nails. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't a jerk, I wouldn't say, but it just sounded like he was just sort of a very cantankerous old fella to work with. That's so funny, man. Because at the end of the day, he's an actor. I know. It's not like you weld machine guns or something like that. Give me a break. You're an actor. Yeah. Like Clint Eastwood is not really tough. Well, actually, that's not true, is he? Oh, sure. Probably. He's got to be. At the very least, he's been acting like it's so long, he's developed. Yeah, it's probably like a callous, you know what I mean, where it just kind of forms and stays the callous. It's the callousness of toughness that an actor will form. I don't think Clinic would winds about a hang nail. Let's just say that. No, like we do. That'd be pretty disappointing. I actually was whining about a hang nail to myself the other day. Of course. But I'm not an actor. I'm a podcaster? No, we have a TV show that proves that. And I'm speaking for both of us. Ouch. I thought I did some good work. I thought you did a better job than I did. Actually, I think we both did a much better job than you remember. Alright, so if you hate Nazis and you're like it's been a while since I was given a reason to hate Nazis, a new one rejoice because we're about to give you another one at least I didn't really realize this to this extent, did you? You know, I knew about Nazi gold and that they took things, but I didn't know that it was almost one big people killing and world robbing operation. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the new thing to hate them for. Not only were they murderers, they were also just common thieves as well. I mean, thieves on one of the greatest scales anyone's ever seen, but thieves nonetheless. I'm an exceptional thief. Who was that? Michael Caine? No, die Hard. They called him a common thief and he goes, an exceptional thief. Right. Can you imagine? I can't wait till technology gets advanced enough that you can just insert whoever into whatever character and they'll say the same lines and everything. That'd be great. That's the first one I'm doing is Rodney Daisierfield is Hans Gruber. He would have been wonderful. That scene where he's fooling him into thinking he was one of the partygoers and he goes, what's your name? It's, bill clay. That's what it is. Don't shoot me. Come on. Nobody shoots me. I got no respect. That's pretty good. Oh, boy. Okay, so the Nazis were thieves not just because they looted and plundered like the countries that they occupied, but that they did it because they were broke to start off with. That's. What truly makes them thieving Sobs is that their whole jam, this whole world war that they started, they didn't have the resources, financially or industrially to actually carry out this war. They had to go steel to fund their role in World War II. Which they started. That's right. You point out here, you put this together. Good stuff. Thanks. That in 1923 they had hyperinflation such that in November of that year it cost 80 billion marks to buy a loaf of bread. Is that right? Yeah. Which sounds like a lot on its own. But if you consider that earlier that year, in January, a loaf of bread cost 250 marks. Yeah. So the price of bread went from 250 marks to 80 billion marks in less than a year. But isn't that just a way of saying that nobody bought bread? No, it's a way of saying that their money was totally worthless. Remember. It happened in Zimbabwe. I can't remember what episode it was. Maybe how much money is there in the world. We talked about hyperinflation. I think so. That was staggering. It was staggering. And the same thing happened in 1923. In the Weimar Republic. And this is the state of the German economy that the Nazis rose to power in. Because that's one of the reasons they were able to rise to power and fascism was able to take over because the country and the economy was in such dire straits. That this idea of like. Hey. Everybody get in line behind this guy because he's going to lead us out of it. That's essentially one way that Hitler and the Nazis were able to rise to power. But that also means that he inherited a terrible economy and he had to figure out what to do. Not only a terrible economy took, but Germany lacks natural resources that you would need to start a war machine, too. Yeah, they have no oil. No. They don't have mineral deposits that you can make really fine metals out of. They've got sauerkraut. They have sauerkraut. They have a lot of beer, too, to their credit. But if that's all you got, you need more to fight a war with. Yeah. So what happened was they had what was called the Reich mark, which was the monetary unit of the Third Reich. And there were five neutral countries that declared during World War II, like, we're not going to trade in Reichmarks. So Hitler and Germany said, well, you know, what's always valuable anywhere is gold, and let's start taking it from anywhere and everywhere we can get it. Yeah. And gold in particular. It's what's called a very fungible commodity. You can trade just about anything for gold. Right. If you have gold, people will give you whatever you want. You can use it by oil, you can use it by guns. You can use it to fund terrorism. You can use it to back your own currency. There's a lot of stuff you can do with gold, but in particular, in World War II, if you were the Third Reich, the Nazi regime, you needed to use gold because these neutral countries couldn't accept Reich marks by agreement. But also the Reich marks were worthless anyway. So if you wanted to buy a bunch of guns, you needed some gold. And because Germany at the time only had about 25 tons of gold in its reserves, which sounds like a lot, but as you'll see, is a paltry amount of gold compared to what they looted and pillaged and took. They needed some gold. So yeah, they started looting it. And the first place they turned, Chuck, was Austria. Yeah. How much gold did you say they had? They had metric, from what I understand, 25 metric tons of gold in the reserve germany did at the outset of World War II. All right, well, this will drive home how much that is. They looted 15 tons, just ten tons less from the Jewish citizens of Vienna, Austria, from the capital city, only they looted 15 tons of gold from Jewish citizens? Just citizens, like you said. Oh, yeah. And those are just people. So the central bank of Austria, they got 100 tons of gold. So right. There four times what they had in reserve. And then they said, hey, you know that six tons of gold that you're trying to send away to England to keep safe from us? Bring that back here, too. We want that. Yes, they did. So just from Austria alone, they got 121 tons? Yes. To add to their existing 25 tons. It was a huge deal that kick started the Nazi war machine into high gear. It was a big coup. Austria wasn't expecting it. No one was expecting it. And so other countries in Europe suddenly, like, gulped, and they were like, we need to we need to take this as advance warning. Basically. We don't want to become like Austria. And they triggered Chuck, the largest physical transfer of wealth that the world, the planet has ever seen. Yeah, because I didn't know this, and it's kind of cool that countries that are friendly to one another will help each other out like this. You can say, hey, us, you've got Fort Knox there. I've heard that's a pretty safe place to keep gold. We're in England, so can we send you a bunch of that to keep for us? And just we'll make a receipt out so we know how much there is an IOU. And you promised not to spend any of it. Right. And the US. And Canada early on at least, did things like this. They accepted huge gold shipments. There was a operation in 1940 called project fish, where the UK was sending, or Britain was sending 1500 metric tons of gold to the US. To store in Fort Knox. Yeah. And in $2,019, the amount that they sent on slow boats through the Atlantic, which, by the way, were infested with Uboats by 1940, was worth $166,000,000,000 in today's dollars. And they got there somehow. Yeah. Not one of those ships was sunk. Astoundingly. Isn't that nuts? Well, they didn't know, clearly. So Britain sent that 1500 metric tons. Russia, they were like, we're just going to take care of ourselves. They evacuated a bunch of stuff from their stockpiles. They sent 2800 tons of gold from its banks to a location in the euro mountains for safekeeping. They also sent two other national treasures, too the embalmed corpse of Nikolay Lennon and artwork from the hermitage museum. Those are the three things they prize the most to transfer by train to the Ural mountains to Stash until the war was over. So all told, if you want to add it up, during the course of world war II, the Nazis stole, at least that we know of, 400 million American dollars in gold from countries they occupied and another $140,000,000 in gold from people, largely Jewish people, from their homes. People that were imprisoned in concentration camps, they stole. It was a very meticulous thing that they did. They would raid their homes they wouldn't just round people up. They would go to their safety deposit boxes. They would rip their dental fillings out of their teeth such that it even got the name tooth gold sangold. And that covered everything that they stole from people. Not just the gold from teeth that covered people's wedding rings and their jewelry and their parts of eyeglasses and other things like that. It's just unbelievable how much gold they looted from concentration camp victims. Yes. Especially when you step back and look at it like that. Germany really needed the money. The third reich needed the money. They were just robbing and murdering. That's what they were doing. It really kind of puts it into perspective more. Oh, yeah. I mean, the nazis were the worst, dude. Ants still are. Nazis are the worst. So most of that gold that was stolen from occupied countries, I didn't see how many tons it was, but what do you say? Generally, the figure I've seen is about $500 to $600 million in 19 $40 stolen. And most of it was put into the Reichsbank, which is germany's central bank, kind of like it's federal reserve. And there are different branches throughout the country. And the gold was kind of distributed here or there. But as the war kind of moved on, it was moved more and more into the central reich bank in berlin until 1945. And there was a bombing raid on berlin, on Germany. And they said, we need to get this gold out of here and into secret locations. And so the gold from the racks bank hundreds of millions today. Billions and billions worth of dollars worth of gold was moved to places where no one had any idea, secret locations that weren't banks in Germany. Yes. So this would set off people are still looking for nazi gold today and not just walking around with a metal detector, but some people are putting a lot of money into looking for nazi gold. And one of the big reasons is, a, like you just said, we know that they moved it at some point. Right. And b, in April of 1045, there were some military police patrolling around the town of mercury. They questioned a couple of french women who had been displaced. And they said in french, I would imagine that they saw gold being stored in a potassium mine near the town. And the MP said, sakura blue. I mean, holy cow. And the army investigates this, and they found the it's famous now, the mercury's mine treasure, which was a horde of gold. There was a room covered in 7000 marked bags of gold coins, gold bars, gold jewelry valued at about 238,000,019, $45. So this was a signal to everyone, like, wow, the legend of curly's gold is real. Yeah, because this is only about half the money. So let's get our metal detectors out. Yeah. I mean, this idea that the nazis hid gold in mine shafts and all sorts of different places was proven by that Merker's mind treasure that they did this. And there were substantial amounts to be found. That was $238,000,000 worth, but they stole $500 to $600 million worth, which means that there is a substantial amount of gold unaccounted for. And that is what has fueled treasure hunters to look for what today would be billions of dollars worth of gold that was lost and scattered and spread after World War II. And I say, Chuck, I have a proposal for you. I bet I know what it is. What's your favorite kind of pie? Oh, I really love a key lime. Yes. It's hard not to go with key lime. OK, but what about just like a standard traditional fruit pie? They're really tough to beat. Like a good cherry pie. If I'm going fruit pie, it's going to be an apple crumble for sure. Okay. I used to be in that same group with you. So you had the sweetest cherry pie? Yeah, Warren talked me into trying it and I loved it. Cherry pie is actually as good as the song makes it sound. Wow. Alright, we'll be right back. Okay. Want to learn about a terrorist? Organic Colorado how to take a perfect boop and all about fractal capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals. Backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at CapitalOne. comCOMMERCIAL 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 than 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, square Space 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. Comssk and start your free trial today. 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. Comssyskcheesmychairy pie. Yeah, I've tried it with cheese, as they say, but it's not very good. I think that's typically apple pie that's supposed to have cheese on it so I just like straight cherry pie. Cherry pie, cool drink of water. It's a sweet surprise. Yes, I've tried it with a cool drink of water too. It's good. It's better with just water than say like Coke. Because Coke's sweet taste competes with the sweetness of the cherry pie. So they're pretty much right on. Except for the cheese. They say it'll make a grown man cry. Yeah. I'm here to tell you that's the truth oh boy, that song and that video so dumb. But also very titillating for a very young Chuck. Have you seen the Rush documentary? Oh, sure. Did you know that? Sebastian Bach from Skid Row? It was Skid row, right? He was well, Warren sang cherry pie, but yeah, sebastian bowedro. Okay. It's just a huge leap from skid row to warrant. Give me a break. But Sebastian Bach was from Warren, right? No, he was Skid Row. That's what I meant. Yes. Warren was Jamie Lane, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, you're right, man, you got it. The poor man is Brett Michaels. Yeah, in a way. Sorry, Janie, I really didn't mean that, but I couldn't leave it. But Sebastian Bach from Skid Row is one of the greatest and longest standing Rush fans of all time. That's right. He was all over that. Yeah, I think he joined their fan club in like 7th or 8th grade, he said. And I loved it. Right now somewhere Brett Michael is walking around playing that on repeat to his family. Did you hear that? Did you hear what Josh said? He thinks I'm better than the skid row guy. No, you mean Warrant. It doesn't matter. Alright, so we're talking about Nazi gold. And we were saying before we started talking about warrant and everything, that there is gold that is unaccounted for, that was stolen by the Nazis, that just kind of vaporized after the war. Gold is not supposed to do that. It's one of the things that people love about gold is it doesn't just vaporize into thin air. It's really easy to keep track of if you want to. And so people started looking for gold or looking for clues. And one of the big clues that people started following was local rumors and legends. Like in Merkers, there were plenty of rumors and legends that there was gold hidden in a mine nearby in dim Dar Hills. Exactly. People hearing local legends has really kind of fueled hunts for Nazi treasures for almost a century now. Yeah. So we're going to go through a bunch of these. There's one called Lake Toplets. It's a very lovely place. I'm sure you looked up pictures, but people and treasure hunters have been looking for this gold and Lake Toplets ever since. And this is very much fact. A bunch of Nazis retreated there in the Austrian Alps in the final months of the war. US troops were closing in fast and Germany was about to collapse. And so they transported a bunch of boxes to this lake, military vehicles and then horse drawn wagons even, and they dumped them in the lake. So I think that part is definitely true, right? Yes. From what I could tell, it was reported on like that is fact. What was in the boxes? What's up for debate? Exactly? Some people say that's the Nazi gold about five and a half billion dollars worth. Other people said, no. I think some of this stuff are documents where they were basically confiscated from Jewish victims about where their assets were hidden and what Swiss bank accounts they could loot. Maybe. I saw also artwork. Sure. I think that was sealed artwork. Also, there's a rumor that there's \u00a3300 of morphine in those boxes. That was contributed by, I think, Albania's president because he didn't want it to fall into the hands of the Allies. Well, one thing they know was down there because they actually found some of these. Yeah. A lot of them in 1983 was Hitler had the idea at one point, hey, let's sabotage various countries by creating counterfeit money of those countries. Yeah, it's a pretty smart plan for dirty Nazi. I know. So they created just hundreds of million dollars worth of British pound notes. And in 1983, a German biologist by accident discovered a lot of these British towns in the lake. What did we talk about? That how counterfeiting works. Maybe. Maybe. It does sound familiar, though. For sure. We definitely talked about that plan. And remember there was like a Jewish printer who was a Holocaust prisoner, a prisoner of a concentration camp, I can't remember which one, who turned out to be like this master counterfeiter because the Nazis trained them to or forced them to, if I remember correctly, it was our counterfeiting episode. Yeah. And in I talked about the fine, but in 59, they recovered \u00a3700 million of these counterfeit notes from that lake. So some people say that's all that was down there. Other people say there may still be gold down there. And Austria actually still to this day has a problem. About ten divers a year illegally dive in that lake looking for that treasure. Yeah. And what's interesting about this lake, aside from the fact that there might be Nazi treasure in it, which is interesting enough to make the lake remarkable and noteworthy, but in addition to that, this lake has a kind of a strange hydrology and that the top half of it is fresh water, the bottom half is saltwater, and they're separated by density. And in the middle of these two layers is like a floating layer of ancient logs that have fallen lake and been preserved over time. And so you can only dive so far before you hit this layer of logs. And some divers, I think five divers at least, have died in this lake looking for Nazi gold. And at least one of them got tangled up in this layer of logs. It's a really dangerous place to dive, but the fact that you can't really see past this layer of logs is one of the things that keeps people coming back and keeps this legend alive, because they can't thoroughly search this lake and show conclusively, no, there's no gold here. Leave this place alone. Stay away. Amazing. It is pretty amazing. And then the other thing about it, too, is this is a really remote location that was used by Nazi officers, high ranking Nazi officers, and for missile testing. It seems like a really odd place just to dump counterfeit pound notes. Yeah. Like you could dump those just about anywhere. So, I don't know, maybe there is something to it. You're going to get your scuba gear ready? I got my flippers on already. You can't see, but I've got them on. All right, we're going to move now to an eastern German town along the Czech border called Deutsch Katherinenberg. Nice. It sort of looks like the alphabet when it's on a page. It's a lot of letters in a row. Yeah. But there are people there that think not only is there gold here, but possibly the Amber Room, which was this. You just look at pictures of the Amber Room. It's pretty amazing. This chamber of honey and linseed and cognac infused amber panels, goldframe mosaic, marble, precious stones. And it was a gift of Prussian king Frederick Wilhelm I to Russia's. Peter the Great once called the 8th wonder of the world. And it disappeared during World War II. Yeah, the Nazis plundered it from Russia, from the USSR, and they took it back to Germany, back to Kunicksburg, which was, I think, now part of Russia again. But at the time, during World War II was part of Germany or Prussia, and they had it on public exhibit for, like, four or five years. And then at the end of the war, it just vanished, and no one's seen it since. There's a lot of people who say, well, it was destroyed in air raids. Other people say it was sunk on a ship that was secretly carrying it. It's just lost. But there's a pair of treasure hunters at Deutsche Catherinenberg who searched in the area because they were sure that, among other things, the Amber room panels were buried there in that town. Yeah. And this is probably the worst ending to a potentially cool story ever. There was a pair of searchers searching for this stuff. One of them's. Father was a German air force officer in World War II. And in his personal notes, the son thought that he'd found the exact coordinates of this treasure. So he got together with another treasure hunter who was another German. He was a mayor, in fact, of a nearby town. And they thought that they had discovered through radar this big, rectangular underground space, about 60ft down. And when I was reading this, dude, it was so juicy, I was like, oh boy, what happened? They didn't ever tell anyone? No one knows if they found any treasure. They didn't say anything about it. Apparently they had an Acrimonious split in 2008 and that's just sort of the end of the story. Yeah, I guess the other treasure hunter was staying in the mayor's town and the mayor kicked him out of town. It was that Acrimonious. Wow. So that's it. Last I heard was that they didn't find anything in 2008 or they did never search for it. Right. Yeah, it was a little lame, but worth putting in there, I think. Oh, no, it's worth putting in there. It just has no good resolution. No, but you read a lot of fiction, so you can deal with that, right? That's right. Okay, so in south eastern southwestern Poland, in a little corner down there, there's a range of mountains called Owl Mountains. And there's a long standing and widespread rumor that's been there for a very long time. I would say roughly since around the end of the Second World War. That would be my guess. That there is a ghost train, a Nazi ghost train, loaded with jewels, gold, weapons, art, basically everything you can think of that the Nazis would have plundered or pillaged, loaded onto this train, driven into a tunnel in the mountain and left there hidden, and that it's still there. And people have been looking for it for a very long time, again since probably about the end of World War Two. But the thing that's kept this treasure hunt alive, Chuck, is there really is a vast unmapped network of tunnels in the Owl Mountains that the Nazis dug there in World War II. Yeah. So again, some of this is based in fact, so that's what will keep any sort of urban legend alive, if part of it is true. And they did. They dug these tunnels of mine shafts between 43 and 45. It was called the Rice Project, which means giant in German, and no one knows why. Some people say it might have been one of their weird secret weapons programs. Some people say it may have been potentially where Hitler was going to hold up for his last stand. Sure. But it was very secretive even among the SS, because if you worked on this tunnel, you had to sign a confidentiality agreement, which just sounds funny for some reason. I thought everything about the SS was so secretive, it would just be implicit, but right. What are they going to do? Like take you to court that you violated your NDA or something? It is odd, isn't it? You know what they would do? Yeah. They just shoot you. I wouldn't think that you would need a signed agreement for that. These are the Nazis we're talking about? Yeah. So they were not allowed to have their family members within 40 km radius of this area. And these tunnels were dug by forced. Labor from concentration camps nearby. And it might have been a place for gold. It may still be. But the Soviets ruined all that in 1945 when they came knocking at the door and the Nazis fled and basically blew up their own tunnels behind them. Yeah. And I want to say there's a really good New Yorker article about the hunt. I can think it's even called the Hunt for Nazi Gold about this particular legend. And people looking for it and they take a second I think it's really worth pointing out here. Too. Is people who start looking for treasure. No matter what the provenance of the treasure is. Just get so wrapped up in the treasure and the legends and the myths and everything that it's easy to forget things like. Well. You're running around a tunnel network that was dug by people who were literally worked to death over the course of weeks. They were worked that hard. They died digging these tunnels that hold maybe this legendary treasure. That is the only thing you can focus on when you're talking about that. And that's definitely like, a part of the problem that comes along with the job, is forgetting, like having blinders on, that you forget the reality of the situation. It's important to remember this, that some of this goal we're talking about was pulled from the teeth of dead Holocaust victims. Yes, I got to remember that, too. It's like Bill Paxton and Titanic. He needed that reminder from the old lady. Like, you're all pumped up looking for this jewel. People died here, man. Yeah. Let's get it together. Paxton our IP. Yes. That was so jarring. When you told me that that first time a few months back, did I break you that news? You did. You broke it hard. According to this legend, as far as the Al Mountains go, there was this ghost train, like you said, and it was a freight train loaded with all kinds of valuables artwork, jewels, gold, bullion, bars of gold, and that they drove that thing in this thing, and it never came out in those tunnels. And the other part of this story that is rooted in fact is there were Nazi trains that carried tons and tons of gold and valuables and jewelry and paintings. There was one in particular called the Hungarian Gold Train that was intercepted by Allied forces in 1945. So you got a real train that happened. You've got these real tunnels that were dug, and all of a sudden, this rumor of the ghost train takes root. Yeah. The idea that those two things have come together in the Owl Mountains, though, that's the thing that's never been shown to be true. That's right. And not from a lack of looking. No, not at all. There's a lot of people looking for that. There. This one's actually my favorite weirdly, probably because it's a shipwreck. I'm just so fascinated by shipwrecks. So the ship I'm talking about is called the SS Minden, and it was a German merchant vessel. And back in, I think, 1939, it was disabled by the British Royal Navy off of the coast of Iceland. Right. And what's so mysterious about this is that the Minden's ship register shows that it was just carrying resin from Brazil. I didn't see what kind of resin, but you can do all sorts of industrial stuff with resin, from making adhesives to plastics to whatever, and then that was it. Right. But the thing that makes the sinking of the Mind and so mysterious is that the ship's captain, rather than let it fall into British hands, sunk it himself, and he sunk it in 7700ft of water off the Icelandic coast. And that's where it lay undiscovered until, I believe, 2017, when a mysterious ship showed up and started looking around the Icelandic coast. And it believes that it found it. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a little odd to sink a ship full of resin only. Right. It raises a little bit of suspicion, like you said, even though you can do some things with it. It kind of stuck out to me as, like, what else is on that boat? But, yes, in 2017, the Coast Guard in Iceland bordered a vessel of the seabed constructor. It's like an unnervingly bland name. It's so boring. Yeah. It's not like the well, now I can't all boat names are kind of dumb. The Hercules of the sea. That's what I would need, my boat. Yeah, sure. So they intercepted it. They said, hey, what are you guys doing here? And they said, oh, well, this boat has been leased by a group of British folks who are searching for the wreck of the SS mendin. And they were like, what? They're like, haven't you heard that that was just full of resin? And they said, clearly not, because we're spending $100,000 a day to lease this boat, which, frankly, is not that great of a deal, but we couldn't talk him down any. If someone is spending $100,000 a day, that makes me think they know something that we don't know. Yeah. And so the Icelandic press actually reported that they think that they know something we don't know. So much so that they interviewed the crew, and the crew said the official story is that they're looking for a couple of hundred million dollars worth of gold that they believe was hidden in the safe on that ship. But that the real story. The real price for what they're looking for is only known to a handful of people, high ranking people on the boat left at that. Which man the Icelandic press knows how to spin a mystery, if you ask me. Yeah. I mean, that really added this extra air of mystery on top of everything else, which is, oh, sure, we think there's $100 million plus in gold, but we're really there for another secret reason. Yeah. If $100 million worth of gold is your decoy cover story, man. You're onto something impressive. I can't wait until they raise that thing, because from what I could tell, everything pointed to the fact that they did successfully find the mind. And that is the mind and they found. But as far as I know, they have not gone down and salvaged it at all. Get James Cameron on it. Who knows? Maybe. I mean, the Amber Room was sunk, and maybe it happened to be on the SS mending. So maybe we'll have the Amber Room back in the next ten years. Well, hey, man, you said today's magic second ad break word James Cameron. Which means we're now obligated to take our second message break. Do you want to take it now, or shall we have taken it three minutes ago? No, let's take it now. Okay, we'll be right back. Everybody want to learn about a terrorist organ? Collagen capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever. Your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals, backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank. A dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at CapitalOne. comCOMMERCIAL. 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, square space 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. Comssk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer codessysk and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace. Comsysk. Squarespace. All right, Chuck. So there's places where you can physically go to search for legendary gold. You can also just enter the international gold trade, and you can turn up alarmingly Nazi gold that was kind of lost. You could put it after the war. Yeah, this is really interesting. In 1946, as part of reconstruction and restoration all over Europe, there was a committee for them called the Tripartite Gold Commission, or the Tripartite Commission for the restitution of monetary gold. And this is formed by the US. By the French and by the Brits and basically the whole jam here was let's find all this gold, let's account for all this gold that we discovered as allies and then let's redistribute it back to where if we can trace it such to where it was looted, to the banks and central banks and even if we can find out human individuals, that would be even better. It was strictly, I believe strictly to the European central banks that had acclaimed to having been looted from after the war. And then in the late 90s there was a real push to try to compensate the survivors and the heirs of the Holocaust who also had been robbed too. So a lot of gold that some countries still had claim on as part of this London conference on Nazi gold that was held in 1997. Some of the countries that said. Well actually we're still owed a lot of this gold. They said. Okay. We'll take a portion of this gold and divert it to humanitarian groups who will use it for reparations to holocaust victims. Which is pretty cool. The big outlier in this was a little tiny country that remained neutral during World War II, at least on paper. Switzerland, who not only it turns out was secretly assisting the Nazis and laundering their gold in exchange for money that the Nazis could go used to fund its war machine. They hung onto this Nazi gold and from what I can tell still have all of the Nazi gold that they had after World War II, including gold that was made from that Zon gold melted down personal effects and gold teeth that Switzerland apparently still has in its gold reserves and is not willing to give up. Yeah, that was really surprising. This all came out because of a historical paper that was part of that conference. It showed that the US had a lot of this gold that they melted down after the war and did return to the central banks in Europe as part of an effort to stabilize their economy there. But finding out that Switzerland did this and that Switzerland was neutral and that the Geneva Convention which explicitly bars this kind of thing comes from Geneva, Switzerland is like the ultimate irony here. And I just want to know if there's more to this. There's got to be something else, right? They're good people, sure, but countries do bad things for sure. Even if there are good people that live there. I mean, from everything I could tell, it came out in the 90s that it was pretty clear switzerland had served as money launderers for the Nazis without anybody realizing it for decades. Wow. Yeah, it is pretty shocking for sure. I think the thing that gets me though is the idea that there is a lot of gold in the international gold trade today that can be traced back to missing Nazi gold. That is not necessarily buried in the side of a mountain in Poland or under a small town along the German Czech border that it's out and about. It's being used as currency, as a commodity today in the international gold trade. That, to me, is the most astounding part of all of this. Yeah. How do you trace gold? They have a very strict system for it, but it's only as strict as how it's observed. Okay. So, like, for example, in 2019, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which spent a lot of time hunting down Nazi war criminals. I think starting in the they accused Venezuela and specifically the administration of Nicolas Maduro of trafficking in Nazi gold that he sold over the course of his administration so far, something like 77 tons of gold. And they're like, you know what? We're pretty sure that that was Nazi gold that was transferred late in the war to Spain and then onto South America to help fund a Fourth Reich, a rebuilding of the Nazi regime among the war criminals living there. And they think that this was some of that gold and that Maduro has been selling it to kind of bankroll his country and his regime. Wow. Isn't that nuts? It is nuts. This whole thing is nuts. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. I can't remember how I came across this. I think it was a how stuff works article. There's a couple on them, and I just started digging further and further, and it's just one of those things where it just takes such a great left turn, great meaning, like, just surprising and unexpected where it's like you're going from treasure hunters arguing and kicking one another out of little towns and kicking around mountains in Poland to the international gold trade, trafficking in Nazi gold. Still, it's just a crazy story. Yeah, it's pretty mind blowing and disappointing in a lot of ways. Yeah, for sure. Because, again, remember a lot of that gold, those gold bars are melted down, gold teeth taken from Holocaust victims or gold wedding rings taken from Holocaust victims, and now they're used as part of an international form of currency. Well, that's it. You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about Nazi gold, there's a lot you can read. It's quite a rabbit hole. You can go down if you want to. So you could start by going to Howstepworks.com and checking out their articles on it. And since I said how stuff works, it's been a while. That means it's time for listener mail. That's right. I was thinking that would be a good movie about World War II era Nazi gold hunters, but it's sort of like Three Kings already did that. But that was the Gulf war. Yeah. And then also there was that one museum. Then I think they were brought in to kind of make sure that the paintings that were looted were not. Whatever. I didn't see that. What was it? Called it wasn't called museum in what was it? Almost positive it was museum then. Was it? Will you look that up while I read listener mail? All right. Because that's a terrible name. I agree. I'm going to call this we cited someone that we probably shouldn't have cited. And this is from Anonymous. Hey, guys, really enjoyed the show this week on Universal Basic Income. Just a heads up, you cited the conservative economist Charles Murray and his justifications for introducing UBI to the American economy. I'm sure you didn't realize this, but Murray is a particular favorite of white supremacist. Oh, boy. For his views on genetics and their contribution to social inequality between whites and people of color. He has a book called The Bell Curve that is often cited as data proven evidence for white supremacy. It's also largely been debunked as pseudoscience. Wow. He links to a Southern Poverty Law Center's write up for our own reference, and he says, I will no doubt keep on listening, guys. I'm sure it was unintentional. Please take more care, though, and curating your sources, especially if it might throw your narrative for a loop. And that is from Anonymous. And, boy, Anonymous, you are right. We had no idea. Should have done a little bit more digging there. So, please, everyone realize, and anyone that listens to the show probably realizes we certainly did not mean for that to be the case when we cited Mr. Murray. Now we kind of biffed that one big time. No offense intended. Hopefully you didn't take it. And thank you for a very measured and level and even handed correction. That's right. It was very kind. And by the way, Chuck, it's Monuments Men. Yeah, I knew there was something about it that didn't sound right, but there is a show called Museum Men that's been on since 2014, but they actually sexy doses, kind of. They make displays for museums. They're craftsmen craftspeople. Okay, so museums, Monuments Men, two different things. That's right. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can join us on the Internet. Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@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 shows. A 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 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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
How Labor Unions Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-labor-unions-work | Yes, it's true: Unions have a shady mob-related past and were originally championed by anarchists. Born from medieval trade guilds, these organizations also helped grow the American economy, and not only protected but established workers' rights. | Yes, it's true: Unions have a shady mob-related past and were originally championed by anarchists. Born from medieval trade guilds, these organizations also helped grow the American economy, and not only protected but established workers' rights. | Tue, 22 May 2012 17:34:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=17, tm_min=34, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=143, tm_isdst=0) | 46827383 | audio/mpeg | "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 me, as always. Always is Charles W. Chuck Bryan. Which makes this stuff you should know. Heck no, we won't go that's different. Heck no, we won't record that's more along the lines of what we're talking about. Better pay for podcasters. Yes. As a matter of fact, we could get together with Adam Curry and Joe Rogan and Mark Man, maybe even IRA and form, like some sort of local he would be our Jimmy Hoffa. Yes, IRA would be. Is that a threat? No. Are you threatening Iran? No. He would be our Jimmy Hoffa. He would make things happen. James P. Hoffa, the one that the current teamsters president. Either one. I'm not saying get rid of them, barring a giant stadium. I'm saying IRA would make it happen. He would break legs. Okay. If need be. Well, he will not do that thing. He's a leg breaking goon. So for those of you who've already seen the title of this, you understand the banter, I guess. Sure. If you have no idea what we're talking about, I'll bet you guessed by now that we're talking about labor unions today. It's a good one, man. We had this request a lot last year from Scotties when the whole Wisconsin Scott Walker things I know, and we're just not getting to it because the Scott Walker thing is like my intro. Well, let's hear it. So you remember last year in Wisconsin? Yes. There was this big hubbub that was going on and a lot of people were wondering if this is going to be like the beginning of the Arab Spring in the United States. This is going to be the flashpoint for it because Governor Scott Walker was accused of trying to dernise the public sector employees. State employees. Yeah. Through a little bit of legislation that he was trying to introduce. That is very true. And it caused quite a stir, like thousands of protesters. Yes. There was some serious protests going on. And at the heart of this whole thing with some legislation where he was trying to get the public sector employees unions to get their union members eg the public or Ie the public sector employees. Yeah. Ie means that Eg is, for example, I realize that to basically pay in half of their pensions to give up some other concessions, like if they were going to get a raise, it had to be through public referendum. Yes. Anything over rate of inflation, I think. Yeah. But probably the biggest one was that they were stripped of their ability to collectively bargain. Yeah, that was the big one. And it worked. It got pushed through. And now if you are a state employee union member in Wisconsin, you can't collectively bargain anymore, which means you are effectively neutered as a union member in a lot of ways true. That is one of the hallmarks of the unions, and depending on where you come from, what you believe, who raised you, whether or not your grandpa was still alive when you were old enough to understand what he was talking about. I think that largely depends on how you feel about unions. A lot of people think they're a good thing. A lot of people think they're bad. A lot of people think they're necessary. A lot of people think they're evil. A lot of people think they're a necessary evil. And in fact, they're kind of america, as it stands, is kind of split down the middle these days. A Pew poll that was taken during this whole hubbub in Wisconsin showed that 45% of Americans had a positive view of organized labor. Okay. Which I found surprising. You thought that was high? Yeah, I was surprised because the decline of union has also been attended by a change in perception toward them. They're kind of bad. Or that the hamstring business is another big one. But they also found that 51% still believe unions are needed to improve working people's lives. Right. So necessary evil. I nailed it. You did. And unsurprisingly. A lot of times your feelings on unions are drawn along political lines these days. Yeah. They're often especially being like an organizing backbone for the Democratic Party. Sure. But that's not always true. Like very frequently, unions throw their weight and their support behind Republicans as well. Sure. At any rate, let's get to the bottom of what all this is. Our union is good. We're probably going to avoid this kind of qualitative descriptor and instead just kind of stick to the facts and let the people decide. Power to the people. To decide whether unions are good or not. I think that's a good move, Josh. Thank you. So we got stats. We'll get to those later. Unions, Josh. Industrial Revolution is kind of where actually we go back further, which we will with what? Medieval times. Yeah. The trade guilds. Trade Guilds sort of were the beginning seeds of unions. And they originally sort of came about, though, just to swap techniques and recipes and then that sort of evolved a bit into, hey, why don't we get together and also share aside from our knowledge, get together and maybe share expertise on how to do things better and get better wages, maybe, or fixed prices. That's one. Yeah. Before they figured out that that was immoral. This is medieval Europe a long time ago. Yeah. And the trade guilds were definitely the origin of unions. It's just a bunch of workers getting together and figuring out because this is essentially what a union is, that they have more strength in numbers. Exactly. And it's also an indication of workers understanding their value in the production process. Sure. That what they're essentially doing in return for their salary is producing a profit for business. Yeah. You have labor and business. Right. And that gives them a certain sense of value, whereas in a lot of situations, workers feel like they're very grateful for their job and they don't want to make any waves or anything like that, and they're not fully aware of their value. And unions, one of the roles that unions play is to point out to a worker, hey, you're doing something in return. This isn't some sort of welfare situation that you're involved in. You're producing labor and that has value. Yeah. And certain rights as well. Exactly. All right, so flash forward a bit to the Industrial Revolution, 19th century. Things moved away a little bit from agricultural jobs moved into the factories, as we all know, and kind of right off the bat, factories weren't a good scene for fair wages and safe conditions and kids working in factories and women and children not being paid as much as men. Triangle Shirt Waste Fire. That was a big turning point. What was the Triangle Shirt Waste Company fire where the working conditions were really dangerous? It was a clothing company, clothing manufacturer, I think in Chicago or New York, I can't remember. And it caught fire, the factory did, because there was all this fabric in the air, right. And it just ignited, and the whole place went up, and all of these women had to jump to their deaths. And that kind of brought in brought working conditions into limelight and help the union sentiment, I guess. A flash point, if you will. Exactly. From your favorite Mr. Gladwell tipping point. Good Lord. Get it together, Chuck. Okay, I've got it together now. Tipping point. Yeah. I had to take a little break. In the 19th century, they would do things called striking, which they still do today. But back then, it was a more contentious and violent affair than it is today. Like, people died, bombs went off, guns were shot. Yeah, and it was on both sides, too. I mean, like, the workers were striking. The point was the same, where we're not working anymore, and you're not going to make any money because we're not producing the product that you need to go sell. Right. But during these times, like, the National Guard would show up, or the cops would show up, or maybe the Pinkerton Detective Agency would show up and just start beating the tar out of the striking workers in order to scare them back into working. Workers also would defend themselves. There was this one I can't remember what strike it was. I just read about it where the workers managed to chase the cops off. Really? Because they were shooting two pound hinges in these oversized slingshots, like at the cops. I can imagine getting hit by a two pound hinge. So it's a hinge factory. It had to have been. Yeah, sure. But yeah. So the strikes were very violent. People, like you said, would die, and the cops are like, why couldn't the cotton ball factory have been up? But not funny, though, because people did die not making a lot of it. Like the Haymarket riot for incidents. That was a big one. For instance, that was a turning point, a flash point, if you will. It was early May, 1886. There was a nationwide strike saying, we only want to work 8 hours a day. And in Chicago's Hay Market, there was a violent protest. Not a lot of people were there because of the weather, thank goodness, because someone threw a bomb into the crowd, went off, and shots were fired by the cops, maybe by the protesters. Apparently they were not just striking laborers, but they were anarchists there. And this anarchist, they're trouble. Well, this is one of the places where, in the public imagination at least, that anarchists and socialists became married to labor. Like pro labor. Yeah. And that's always kind of haunted labor unions, is that idea. But it was born out of this era, if not this riot, I'm sure. Yeah. In the end, eight people were charged and convicted. The labor leaders tried to get them out, saying, this is not fair. One of the people committed suicide by placing a stick of dynamite in his mouth in prison. Yes. And in the end, a few years later, the governor of Illinois granted a full pardon to the remaining three convicted, and that ended up leading to an observance of May Day or Labor Day in other countries. Right. May 1. It's supposed to be Labor Day. This whole affair, though, you left out that four of the guys who are convicted were hanged, and then one guy committed suicide, and then three were but they were charged with basically agitating violence. This was back when free speech wasn't protected quite as much as it is now. Right. And they were pardon. And as a result, this whole May Day thing, this Labor Day thing came up in May 1. But then within like, five years, grover Cleveland was like, well, this is kind of a sordid, like, scary association with labor. Let's just celebrate labor. I'm going to move it to the first Saturday. No, the first Monday. Monday in September. Saturday be no good. We wouldn't get off work. Exactly. Did he move it to disassociate from that interesting. Specifically. So that's why you can't wear white after September. Exactly. That's exactly the origin of that. All right, so maybe let's talk about some of the basics of a labor union. Josh, there's many different kinds, and like you said, it's all about strength and numbers to get together to form what's called a bargaining unit with an elected leader to deal with the employer. Right. Because, I mean, think about it. If you have somebody who's advocating for your success, for your rights, higher wages, better conditions, whatever it might be, you are removing yourself to a certain extent from that negotiation. So it's a little less sticky for you. Sure. Because you're not talking to your employer. You're not saying, I really want some more money. Somebody else is going, these guys are making a bunch of money for you and you need to share it a little better. Like an agent. Exactly. Right. In a way. And at the same time, you also have that element of that bargaining unit being a collective bargaining unit, meaning there's that strength in numbers. So it's a bunch of people becoming satisfied at the same time. And implied in there is if you don't do this, then you're going to lose a bunch of people all at once and you're going to have some trouble. Right. And they do this agreement in the form of the CBA or collective bargaining agreement. Any fan of any professional sports will understand what a CBA is and how tenuous they can be once you have negotiated this agreement. And everyone on the employer side says, we can live with these terms, and everyone on the employee side said, yeah, we can live with this. We both give a little bit, they sign it, and it is set for a certain period of time. And you cannot break the CBA on either side without there being legal action or grievances filed, which usually means an arbitrator will come in and say, let me get involved. Right. You, I feel like, just hit the nail on the head, though. For an ideal union presence in business, everyone give a little. Yeah, you can't have too much on one side or the other. But I think that's kind of the history of the presence of unions in business in America. If you look over time, it may be evened out, but if you look at in any specific decade, it's more on one side than the other as far as who's in the beneficial position right. Or who's asking more, who's extracting more like Samuel Gompers, who got together the American Federation of labor. I think when he was asked what the AFL wanted, his answer was more. Yeah. But at the same time, you have to say, well, business isn't going to just give it away. Very rarely do they the whole presence of unions is to extract that. At least that was the original idea of them. Yeah. Unions, like any organization, costs a little money to run, so you have to pay dues. It's a membership thing. Right. If I was in the Screen Actor Skilled, which I'm not, I would pay dues to the Screen Actors Guild every year to keep my membership current, and then they would go fight for me and they would have a staff that gets paid out of that money. Right. I love in here that it says dues vary, but many are around $50 a month. What a deal. Yeah. I think it completely varies depending on what union you're in. Sure. I don't know that you can put an average number or maybe you can if you average it. Well, if you counted them all up, I don't think that's what they did here. No. It was $50 a month. Yes. Act. Now they're also supposed to be democracies with elected officials, elected leaders who take action based on referendums and votes and basically just using voting to take the pulse of the union members to see what they want to do. Ideally, that's how it works. Yeah. I get the feeling it doesn't always work that way throughout history. Yeah. Especially once the Mob got involved. Yes. Which we'll get to a lot of times. You can be a local union member, which is sort of like being a fraternity member of a larger national charter. And if you're a local union, that means that you may be working that same business sector, but you're employed by a different company. But it's like, hey, and I keep going back to film business stuff because they were lousy with union, still are. Like, hey, I work in the art department. I'm a props guy, so I'm a member of the local I can't remember the number. Union here in Atlanta. But it's a national charter, probably out of La. If not mistaken. Yeah. It's like a chapter of a fraternity or a sorority. Yes. Which is what I said. Did you say fraternity? Sorority. Yeah. No, you didn't. I said fraternity. Well, you didn't add sorority. No. Good point. Sororities as well, Chuck, what's the point of all this? I think we've kind of touched on a little bit of it, especially in the strength and numbers thing. But there's other benefits to being in a union, correct? Yeah. Should we throw out some stats here? I think this is high time for stats. Your wages, for one. Your median weekly income is going to be, as a union member, about $940. It's going to be about $730 if you're non union. Let me see here. You've got something about health care, correct? Yeah. So 88% of union workers and this is from the Department of labor this isn't like from the AFLCIO or anything, right? 88% of union workers have health coverage. 69% of non union workers do. Yeah. Same with dental plans. The disparities even more. 44% of non union workers have dental plans where something like 66% have a dental plan if you're a member of a union. Half of union jobs have vision coverage, and only about a quarter of non union jobs have it. In reading this, also, I was kind of like, man, we have pretty good benefits here at Discovery. Yeah, we do. If you're a minority, if you're a woman, African American or Latino, you're going to make more money. Women earn about 9000 more a year if you're in a union. African American is 8000 more a year, and Latinos close to 12,000 more a year if you're a union member. So aside from safe working conditions and health insurance and things like that, which are great. Wages are really the big deal, right? Wages, benefits. Pensions are another huge area as well, and they're also there to protect workers from being unjustly fired. We're non union, and if somebody could come in here and say, you know what? I didn't like the way that you looked at your boss. I saw you scowling. You're fired, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired. And we'd be like, you can't do that. And they'd be like, oh, yes, we can. And that would be that, right? There was like a big hub in Florida about some workers that all wore orange, either depending on who you ask, because they were all going to happy hour together that night, or because they were simulating prisoner garb to protest the working conditions of this law firm, which is really what they were doing. And twelve of them were fired. They were just taken into a conference room, and the guy was like, you're all fired. And that's that. And they're like, you can't fire us for wearing an orange shirt. And actually, yes, very much so, since it's a work to work state or an at will work state. Yeah, right. To work. The employer very much can fire you for wearing something as seemingly arbitrary is wearing orange. If you're a union member, that is not the case. The union protects you from unjust dismissal. And basically, if you feel like you've been fired for wearing orange, you can go to your union rep and a big stink comes about. Right. That's another big one is protecting them. But I also feel like here is a good point to mention a lot of the criticisms of unions, okay. Because that same protection from unjust dismissal, unions are frequently criticized for that extending to workers who perform poorly. Sure. It's part of that gives, I think, with unions among labor to say, okay, yes, we're going to protect you, but you have to be productive or you have to be good at your job or whatever. Right. Don't hide under the shield of the union just to go phone in your job every day and collect your paycheck exactly. And flaunt that protection. That's not what it's there for. Another big criticism is that union, just the presence of unions in any country, harms economic progress on the whole by hamstringing business and making it less competitive among countries that don't have unions. Right. And so for states that have state employee unions, a big one is that state employee pensions can be a drain on tight state economies. Right. That's another big one, too. So there's criticisms of unions that are very legitimate, too. But again, I think it comes down to where your political affiliation is. Well, yeah, I mean, these days, Republicans are more likely to not be in favor of unions, and they have consistently been called the backbone of the Democratic Party. That wasn't always the case, though. The 1950s Republican president Dwight Eisenhower said that unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. And also throughout history, unions have kind of dabbled outside their own labor negotiations and protection to fight for things like Medicare, Social Security, civil rights. Civil rights is a big one. I think Missouri Congressman Richard Bowling said, quote, we would have never passed the Civil Rights Act without labor. They had the muscle. The other civil rights groups did not. So you don't want to see anyone strong arm, but there is certainly something to be said for strength in numbers, especially when it comes to something like the Civil Rights Act. Yeah. Who was it, Eisenhower, who had that quote about union rights? Eisenhower speaking at a time that was just after the peak of union membership in 1945, 35% of all non agricultural workers, which is like everybody but farmers, belong to unions now it's down to 11.8%. Yeah. And the public sector, 37%. But where they're really getting hurt is the private sector. Less than 7% of the private sector is unionized these days. Right. And there's a lot of people that say a lot of the problems that we have in Washington and a lot of the financial troubles we've had in this country have been, to a certain degree, because of the non unionizing of the Rust Belt in the private sector. So two sociologists, Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld, actually wrote a paper that said that the decline of organized labor unions from the 1970s on can account for as much as a third of the increase in income inequality in the US. Which has been significant. Sure. And they can attribute a third of that increase just to the decline of labor. Well, and I think it also coincided with the 1970s. Some say that big business really went hard at Washington, not for the first time, but in a way that they never had before, and that changed the landscape of the distribution of wealth in this country. Yeah. And that's a really interesting point, Chuck. We were raised after that period, so that's just kind of like The Secret of My Success or American Psycho, all those great movies about the set in the 80s. That's just the way it was. Like all these you just go after money and you spend that money on cocaine and pinstripe suits and maserati or whatever. And so we were kind of raised with that sentiment. But there was a time prior to the 1970s where it was labor who was running the charge. It was the unions, and they were fully in control, and business figured out how to regroup and reassert itself. And that's the age that we're in now. Back to Eisenhower, though, when he was talking, he was kind of carrying on a tradition where the US. Government figured out that, okay, there is a balance of power that has to be struck between labor and business because business is part of this economic engine. Labor helps fuel the economic engine. But they really kind of represent two different sectors of the US. Not just the economy, but the population. And we need to keep them happy. We need to strike this balance. So the federal government got involved starting in 1935 with the National Labor Relations Act and they basically said, okay, we can't have strikes where you guys are shooting two pound hinges at cops and we can't have strikes where cops are like, murdering striking workers. Let's get to the heart of this matter and figure out how to strike a happy balance between what labor wants and what business wants and progress from there. And it was a really smart thing to do, but they figured out that it was very much like Homer trying to keep pinching lobster alive with the goldfish in that freshwater tank, adding salt, adding water. And that was kind of the mark of the 20th century in American economic history was that adding the salt and adding the water over time through legislation. Yeah. Well, and the NLRA was, like you said, the first one. And prior to that, companies didn't even have to recognize a union or negotiate with a union leader. Right. So this actually required by law that they not necessarily give workers what they want, but they had to at least negotiate in good faith right. And sit down on the table with them. Yeah. Which effectively said brought unions out of the dark and legalized them and gave them a legal voice and legal recourse. That's right. And to enforce that, they soon pass the National Labor Relations Board to oversee what was going on with the NLRA. And the article points out here that accomplished three things. It allowed workers to have elections to elect their own union leaders, established laws protecting employees from discrimination based on union activity. So, like, are you union? Well, we don't want to hire you. That kind of thing. Or even worse, like in the case of Ford Motor Company, ford Security Wing, led by Harry Bennett, a 2000 man strong goon squad that used to beat up workers, beat up organizers, beat up union reps, and do it on camera. They really were kind of above the law in a lot of ways, but that was targeted at guys like that for the goons. Yeah. And this kind of sneaks by. But an important thing to note here is an L RA also protected collective bargaining even if you're not in a union, and the ability to bargain for better conditions for all workers. So the unions was one of the main things, but it protected everybody. But not everybody. There are a bunch of groups that were left out of this. Agricultural workers, domestic service workers, federal, state, and local government employees. Which obviously went a different way. Sure. Railroad and airline employees. That one kind of became important. Like, we talked about an air traffic control one under Reagan when he fired all the air traffic controllers who went on strike. Yeah. And that's important, I guess. Was that the Taft Hartley. That insured. Yeah, Taft Hartley Act came along in 1947. Or the Labor Management Relations Act. And one of the important things it did was said, you know what, if there's any strike that's going to put the public health in danger, then we can issue an 80 day injunction that basically says you cannot strike. Right. And in the case of the I guess, did that put the country in danger? Necessarily? It put the country's economy in danger. But at the same time, Reagan didn't have file an injunction through the Labor Relations Board. He fired. Fire. Get back to work. No, you're fired. Man, that guy. I know. And what else did that outlawed secondary boycotts the Taft Hartley Labor Act, which was a big deal because the example they use here in this article is really good. Like, let's say you're a brewery and you're striking against your employer. You might have a boycott against the glass company that makes the beer bottles just to put the strong arm on the company from another direction. And you can't do that. It's called the squeeze. You can't do the squeeze. It's not legal. You can't as a union, but consumers frequently do that kind of it's like trying to get like Rush Limbo off there boycotted. A lot of people boycotted his advertisers. Right. Until they said, you know what, okay, we'll stop advertising with them and then all of a sudden Rush Limbaugh has the double squeeze on them. Right. Same with the I can't remember there was some special interest group, some pack that was getting funding from McDonald's, Wendy's, a bunch of people. And because of their alleged unfair and very much pro business only practices, like all of these companies has kind of abandoned them recently. Really? Yeah. Alec, A-L-E-C-I don't remember what it stands for. Alec Baldwin. No. Okay. Are you sure? Yes. The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. Of what's that all about? Well, this was during a time when the winds had really shifted toward not only the unions having the labor or business under their thumb, they also had their union members under their thumb. Right. The mob was involved. The democracy or the democratic basis of unions had eroded and there was a lot of shady stuff going on. What I thought was cool was rather than the federal government going, oh, well, then we need to reinvigorate the power given to business under these union laws. Instead, they went and invested more power in union members. That's right. Yeah. Like you couldn't use union dues anymore to promote one candidate over another in a union for union reps. The elections were. Really pretty heavily monitored from that point on. Every single union member has to be notified by mail at least 15 days before the election. Like, you can't sneak an election by them, which probably used to happen in the old days. Yes. To increase transparency in the whole union thing, there was a lot of disclosure and reporting requirements that were added, and not just for the unions, but for also, like, employers, consultants. They want to know where the money was going, and basically they wanted to see how the mob was involved as a big one. Right. Well, and speaking of money, I don't think we pointed out that a lot of times unions will have a strike funds and some of the money that you pay into it will actually pay you when you go on strike to keep you from going hungry. Yeah, it's like Afflac. You know that Gilbert Godfrey doesn't do that anymore, I don't think. I know. And I wonder how ironic would it be if he had Afflac insurance and that it kicked in once Aflac fired him. Interesting. I think he got fired because he wanted too much money. No, he got fired for making Twitter jokes about the Japanese tsunami, like the day of I thought it was a money issue. Yeah. I'm worried about the sense of humor in this country in the direction it's going. Like, stand up comedians have always been allowed they're exempted from a lot of the standards that average Joe's are held to. Like, they're stand up comedians. That's their job. Sometimes they make tasteless jokes and all that stuff. Yeah. They'll go over the line and they'll just go people go and they'll go, what? Too soon. Right, exactly. And then people be like, yes, it is. But it seems to be open season on comedians. Well, because of platforms that they've never had before. Probably like Twitter, I guess, all of a sudden that's like your official statement instead of a joke you made. Yeah. And the audience is much, much wider and much more varied and diverse, too. Yeah, true. I bet you forgot to read So pissed off. I would imagine so, because you got tell me there's like, not 10,000 people lining up voice actors to go afraid for a huge paycheck. I think you just made a pretty good argument for yourself. That wasn't as good as GG. But I mean, the problem is, I realize what's at risk is cultural sensitivity, even individual sensitivity toward people who are going to be offended or hurt. But also, there has to be a balance between that and I mean, the other thing that's at risk is like our national sense of humor, which is really important. It's one of those things you could be like, well, that's just a stupid joke. No, our ability to take a joke is a very vital and important thing about keeping us from killing ourselves. And one of the roles that stand up comedians provide, or any kind of comedian provides is to keep that healthy and vital and going. Agreed. There's nothing more of a turn off to me than when you see a humorless celebrity, like when Ricky Gervais is doing a thing in the Golden Clubs and you see the people out there that just are offended by this. I'm like, Come on, man. Yeah, I don't know. I think laugh at yourself. I can see Ricky Gervais. Dean. We'll make him the sacrificial lamb leak over god for you alone. Man. That was a sidebar. Yes, it was. Are we talking about labor unions? I don't remember labor unions today. Josh, you mentioned the AFL CIO. A lot of people might not know that that is actually a collection to labor federation made up of 54 member unions, 10 million strong. That's a lot of people change to win as sort of a new in 2005, it was formed, but it is also a labor federation encompassing seven unions and 6 million workers. Big time. Yeah. The AFL was founded by Samuel Gompers, who I mentioned earlier, and he got some cigar makers and some other industrial laborers together to form that. And then that was in the late 19th century, and I can't remember exactly when, but maybe in the he got together with the CIO to form the AFL CIO because he loves cigars. UAW is a huge one. Auto workers. Yeah. They have something like one 4 million members. No, I'm sorry. The Teamsters has one, 4 million members, and they're the ones who are probably the most well known by the average job, thanks to one jimmy Hoffa. Yeah. Do you know his story? A little bit here? There the whole Mob involvement, I think, with any union was they realized that there's a bunch of guys who are sitting on enormous piles of money, and let's see how much of that we can steal or get our hands on or used to build ourselves casinos. Right. And Jimmy Hoffa was in with these guys, and he just went missing. Right. Yeah. I don't think it's any secret what happened to them, but they definitely don't know exactly what happened. I thought the whole point, it was a secret of what happened to him. Well, he was snuffed out. I don't think he just had a heart attack while hiking in the wilderness, and his body decomposed naturally. Well, he was supposedly going he was last seen waiting on two Mafia associates. It's kind of a dead giveaway, too. But his son, James P. Hoffa, has really kind of brought the family name back tremendously. Yeah. He's the head of the Teamsters today, right? Yes, he is. He's the president of the Teamsters Union and is doing a lot of work toward re legitimizing unions again in this country, which is pretty cool. Well, anyone who's ever been on a film set and has seen a 275 pound man eating a donut sitting in his truck. You can say, I've met a Teamster and they do great work. I can't remember the number, but if you're an industrial worker, you're basically eligible to be a Teamster. Yeah. In just about any kind of industry. I'm going to get hate mail for that? Oh, you'll be fine. There's, like, two guys that you described who listened to this podcast, so you get two pieces of hate mail. If I was a Teamster, I would do nothing but listen to this podcast because you're just sitting around. That's not true. Teamsters do great work, but on film sets, it's sort of the old joke is that they'll park the truck and then they sit in it until they leave in the truck. There was another simpsons reference. Just came up with the one where that film for Radioactive Man comes to town. Yeah. And Homer tries to see who can outlaze the Teamsters. Good stuff. That is just a stereotype, though. Yeah, but stereotypes are there for a reason, right? It's not funny. What else? I don't have anything else. You got anything else? No, I think we covered pretty much everything. Yeah, it's a nice broad overview. And like you said early on, man, you hit it on the head, my friend. Thank you. Whether or not you are pro union or anti union largely depends on your family's background. Yeah. It's a very tried and true thing through families, through generations that people feel very strongly about it that are involved in unions or like actually, my parents are in the teacher's union. Oh, yeah. You're a union kid? Yeah, but it wasn't like factory stuff. I never heard them besides complaining about not making of money, which every teacher should complain about. Sure. And if you don't have any kind of passionate feelings about it whatsoever, I would advise you to look into it. Yeah. And if you do have passionate feelings about it, I think a great exercise would be to explore how the other side sees it and see if it changes your mind one way or the other. Look at you. You can do that by reading this fascinating article that we just based this podcast on how unions work. You can type in the search barhousedefworks.com. You can also go into WaPo. There was a pretty cool editorial. That's the Washington Post, by the way. That's right. The Wisconsin Union Fight isn't about benefits, it's about labor's influence from March 6, 2011. That's good article. That was a good article, too. And I already said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. You know our buddy Joe Garden? He's a Scanny. He was really upset last year. You can tell. You can see right through his skin. He's so pale. He's translucent. Boat. Joe Garden? Yeah, the craft work guy. Did he get tickets? No, he promoted his own craft work. I believe it was a craft work covers show. Oh, cool. And he got different bands to come and play Craft Work, and it's a big deal for Joe. It was awesome. He wore white suit and introduced everyone. That is sweet. When was that? Very recently. Did you see footage of it or were you there? No, he wouldn't shut up about on Facebook and even admitted, like, guys, I know you're tired of hearing about craft work. That is significant for Joe. Yes. There's also, I guess, kind of in with the music sampling episode there's. I think a DJ food or DJ Shadow? I think. DJ food craft work cover mix. Yeah, there's like, maybe three volumes of it, and it's like just mixing together all these people who, like, sample craft work for the songs. Yeah. They just did a big thing at some museum at MoMA. Yeah. Oh, my God. You mean I tried very hard to get those tickets. Did you try? No, dude, I'm not into it. Cluster. I'm not into craft work. And this solidifies it when I saw the reviews of it and it said they did, like, a 20 1 minute of auto bond, and I was like, Somebody put a gun to my head. Yeah, well, you're just supposed to zone out and forget where you are for a little bit. I'm not a crap work guy, but I know people are. No, I'm not a craft work guy either, but I will say that that would have been just a momentous thing to see. Momantus pretty much. Okay. Like the tupac hologram. I'm sure seeing that at Coachella is just amazing. Yeah. And a bit way more amazing for some people than others, even. Sure. All right. Should I read a listener mail? I guess I'm going to call this a good cause. We like to promote these and attach it to our labor union episode. How appropriate. Big fan, guys. I was just down at south by Southwest where I caught your variety show and shook your surprisingly supple hands. I've never done a liquor work. I know. I also sat on a panel called Harnessing the Power of the Benevolent Internet, something you guys seem pretty skilled at yourselves, which is why I thought you might be game to help students across the country learn all sorts of stuff they should know. In many cases, it's stuff they need to know. I work for a nonprofit website called DonorsChoose.org where anyone with a dollar can give support to classrooms in need. Teachers from all 50 states post requests for resources they feel their students need, and kind folks from all over the world help bring those lessons to life. That's cool. Sounds almost like a kiva for teachers. I need 50 tickets to craft work and wales. Since our founding in 2000, we've delivered over $110,000,000 of resources directly to public school classrooms supporting more than 6 million students. And if you or my fellow listeners would like to help you or my fellow listeners you have listeners? Fellow listeners. Okay. We have listeners. That listener has fellow listeners. Okay, check out the page I set up. He set up a page with our name, and I was like, that's cool, you can do that. But we're not like we can't officially sign on because then it has to go through corporate and all that stuff. I already signed upon officially. I did. I made T shirts and everything. So you can go to DonorsChoose. Orgstuffkidschenknow and let me know if you have any questions. And this is from Zach, and he said, by the way, we recently hired a system admin a couple of months back. Drove me crazy for a few weeks, then I realized he sounds exactly like Josh. Weird. And he said, I've enjoyed working with you, Josh. Who is the other voice double for me? There's another person. There was some dude well, there's a writer that writes about running. He wrote one thing about running, Clark, and I've been asked 500 times if it was me. What's ironic now I actually run your own article. Yeah, I can't remember. There was some other voice person that did, like, videos or something. Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah, okay. Who is that? That was Zack. Thank you, DonorsChoose. Orgkidssepkidschildnow. That's great DonorsChoose.org stuffkidschildnow, indeed. Nice. If you have a great charitable organization you want us to let everybody know about, again, we're always happy to do that. And if I sound like somebody, let me know because it's driving me crazy who it is. I've heard from a bunch of people you sound just like this, or whatever. Yeah. Or I want to hear from people who have actively been on a worker strike, or if you have been a scab, as they called them. Oh, yeah, and been a strike buster. I want to hear about that too. If you've ever been beaten up by the cops, we want to hear about that too. Yes. And anarchists, any anarchists out there? We're always interested in hearing from anarchists. I guess I got shot down by the cops and happened one night. Do you get beat up? There's a difference. No, but they like, threw me against the wall and we're kicking my legs out from under me and yeah, it was weird. And then they just left. Are you sure there are cops and not just some eternity boys dressed up as cops? Athens'police in a car, me and my three friends. I don't know what they thought we were doing, but they got out of there really quick. I'll say that they must have thought you're somebody else, kevin Smith. Or the reality of their situation hit them and they realize that what they were doing was wrong. Maybe you can communicate with Chuck and I electronically via Twitter at syskpodcast. That's our handle, facebook. Comstuffynow. Or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready are you?" | ||
Juggling: What the Heck | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/juggling-what-the-heck | There is a lot - A LOT - to juggling and Chuck and Josh go over the lion's share of it. Delve into the deep history, physics, how-tos and different types of juggling in this surprisingly sweeping look at a putatively innocuous pastime. | There is a lot - A LOT - to juggling and Chuck and Josh go over the lion's share of it. Delve into the deep history, physics, how-tos and different types of juggling in this surprisingly sweeping look at a putatively innocuous pastime. | Thu, 15 Jan 2015 16:03:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=16, tm_min=3, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=15, tm_isdst=0) | 45568910 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Just doing little tandem jumps with my bra. That's what we're doing right now. Yeah, man. Wish you guys could see this because it was gotten pretty good cascade right now. Look at this. Half shower, half shower, half shower. Man, that was a good one, bro. 17 balls at once. Yeah. Jerry, come and light these torches on fire. Wow, man. Half shower of rain and fire. This is really dangerous. Can you juggle? No, but I want to after this. My brother learned of course, of course. I'm sure he was born knowing how to juggle. Yeah, he came out of the womb juggling. Yeah. Now he learned back when in high school and mastered it pretty quickly. Yeah. And now he can still juggle some. I think it's one of those things once you learn sort of the basics, you can always do it because apparently a lot of it comes down to muscle memory, which is to say motor memory. Yeah. And in true Chuck fashion, I tried to learn to juggle for about an hour and never finished. Did you see any progress over that hour? Yeah, I could do the little one hand juggling two balls with one hand thing. Okay. But I did a lot of chasing the ball. That's a problem, which apparently, if you're a beginning juggler, you're going to be throwing the ball further and further away from you, just naturally chasing the ball. They call it chasing it. So what do they suggest? They suggest that you learn to juggle close to and facing a wall, because that way you can't move forward or you'll just keep hitting your head, you'll scratch your face up on the brick and quit juggling. This is a Jonathan Strickland joint of tech stuff. It reeks of strickland. It does. Like, even if the byline had been on there, I would have been like, this is strickland. But I remember when this one was made, it was like, right when I got here. And there's a video embedded of Strickland teaching you how to juggle. Yeah. It reeks of bald head cream and bowling shirts. Yeah. And it also has an illustration by Marcus, who clearly always wanted to be a comic book illustrator because the guy who's in the graph on how to juggle is just totally ripped. Yeah, like a comic book. Here I remember, Marcus. It seems like a million years ago. It was juggling history. How long have people been juggling, Chuck? People have been juggling since at least 1994. Exactly. They found in Egyptian tombs, hieroglyphics, showing women toss juggling. And there are many kinds of juggling, by the way. And we're mainly going to talk about toss juggling, which is throwing something up in the air. Throwing more things up in the air. Then you have hands. Yes. That's tough juggling. And there are, like you said, a bunch of other kinds, but if you're a toss juggler, you probably don't consider the other kinds real juggling. You're like, those are cool and everything, but that's not real juggling. Yes. I asked our friend Brandon Ross from the Stuff you Should Know, our department clearly a juggler. Very good juggler. Yeah. And I sent a message to him and did not hear back in time. I was like, It says in here that modern jugglers poopoo things like taking a bite out of the apple and some of those old school tricks. That's pretty cool. Is that true or not? And I didn't hear back from him, so maybe I'll cricket. Well, he was on Facebook. Okay. So he'll get to it when he gets to it. So, anyway, we're in ancient Egypt, to be exact. That's right. There were jugglers in Greece and Rome and India and thieves and TBS in Europe. And I think 400 BCE was when it was actually written down that people were juggling. Yeah. Supposedly in the Talmud, a rabbi named Shaman Bengamal yeah, I think I probably nailed that. Probably. He could juggle eight torches at once. That's hard to believe because world records today are, like, seven, I think, for clubs. Is it seven? I think so, yeah. But I mean, if this rabbi was juggling eight torches, that sounds like it may be pumped up a little bit throughout the years. Got you. It was two, and then it was like, oh, it was eight. Although this was the time of miracles. Like enough oil to keep it going for eight days during a siege, why not a rabbi who could juggle eight torches? It seems kind of paltry by comparison. Good point. Through the Roman era, apparently that jugglers were actually held in high esteem, but then they kind of went down into pooper a little bit. This is hilarious because people associated with them, like magicians as con artists. So I don't know if it was like, hey, look at what this guy's doing while someone else is picking their pocket. Right. But that's kind of what it seems like it might have been going on. Yeah. Apparently you were a con artist, like you said. Sure. Everybody knows that you can't trust a juggler. A juggler? Well, at the time, that's how people thought of jugglers. This seems to be during the Holy Roman Empire in the west. Right. Then the medieval era hits, and suddenly jugglers start to become a little less threatening and actually a little more clown like. Initially, they seem to have been not revered, necessarily, but thought of in fairly high esteem. Then they went the opposite direction, and then they came back as clowns. Right. I wonder how many behind closed doors, how many emperors and kings tried it out after seeing it in the court or just, like, morons with it? Yeah. And then had someone's head chopped off. Out of frustration. They took the Chuck route. Although I didn't behead anybody during the medieval era. If you found a juggler, you probably also found something of a minstrel or performer all around entertainer who probably traveled from town to town may be asking people to bring out their dead for some side work, perhaps, and then juggling corpses. That's right. Which must have been a sight to see. And then in the 17 hundreds, they became more of a circus act. And in the late 18 hundreds and 19 hundreds, vaudeville came along. And of course, any sort of skill like that was big in vaudeville. And I did not know this, but WC. Fields was a juggler in the vaudeville days. I didn't know that either. Before he became just a drunk actor. And he's not the one who raped anybody. Right. Who was it? I think that was Fatty R. Buckle. Fatty R. Buckle? That's who it was. Yeah. Same era, same guy. I looked it up and I ran across the Hollywood Hell Club. So apparently before the Brat Pack, before the Rat Pack, there was a group of early Hollywood guys, harold Flynn, who was a rapist, WC. Field, John Barrymore, that just raised hell in Hollywood in like, the 20s. Harold Flynn was a rapist. Really? Accused rapist. I didn't know that. So then vaudeville declined. Circuses sort of decline a little bit for a while, and then jugglers started hitting the streets. Or as Jonathan Strickland said, or become mathematicians. We'll get to the math connection, which is legit. It's foreshadowing. But I don't know that they formed their own stage shows, performed on street corners or became mathematicians. Right. Those were the three options if you were a juggler. And then, of course, in the 1940s, I say of course, because it's common knowledge that these are when the juggling groups and conventions were formed and held. The International Brotherhood of Magicians decided at a meeting, hey, guys like the jugglers got together and had a few drinks and said, I don't like being known as magicians. Yeah, that's how the jugglers tell it. The magicians were like, get the out jugglers. Is that what it was? Yeah. And then they went through down the smoke bomb when they were gone. Yeah. So they formed and splintered off and formed the International Juggling Association. And in 1969 they started holding championships and competitions. Summer of juggling. And in 2000, Jason Garfield, a very famous juggler, formed the World Juggling Federation and said, ESPN, you need to put this stuff on TV. So once a year they put it on TV. Progress. Along with the spelling b and the dart competition. What else? Which I watched the other day. Log rolling? Yeah. Lumberjacking? Sure. Lawn darting? No, it's illegal. No more. It's like cock fighting. All right, let's get into it then. So we're actually going to teach everybody how to juggle, like no kidding? Yeah. And if you're really into this, we're going to describe a lot of things visually, which is always a train wreck for us. So I would recommend you do like I did and just get on the old YouTube and look up what Cascade juggling looks like. And there are four or five guys who have tons and tons of videos. There's one guy that I believe is kind of the gold standard for YouTube instructional juggling videos. His name is Adam Schomsky. S-H-O-M-S-K-Y. I'm sure I watched them. That guy pops it into slow motion for you. There's, like, graphics where he throws something straight up. You might not have caught it. So it says throwing straight up. He's good. Okay. And he's just doing it for the love of juggling. You can tell. I think they all do. I would hope so. I don't know if you make a ton of money as a juggler these days, or fame. Although there is I should recommend going to wait until the end. There's a great article on Grantland.com called Dropped by Jason Figone, and he details a big, long story on Anthony Gatto, who may be the best juggler on the planet. He juggled for Cirque du Soleil. Oh, he had a bunch of the records until recently. Yeah. Twelve world records. And he's amazing dude. But he quit last year to run a concrete resurfacing business after becoming disenchanted with the juggling scene. Basically calling out all these kids these days saying, like, you filmed something 100 times and only nail it once, and then you upload it to YouTube. That's not the same. Basically, his quote is, if you can't do a trick in three tries, you can't do it. He said, you may have done it, but it doesn't mean you can do it. It's essentially what you're talking about. This guy's story is the premise for Office Space. Yeah, but he's amazing. If you watch Anthony Gatto juggling, like, he will break the record for, let's say, the number of balls in a rain shower. And for the amount of time, though, he won't do it for 10 seconds. He'll do it for, like ten minutes. Right. And other jugglers are like, this dude is insane. How long he can keep all these clubs and balls and torches or whatever in the air. That's really funny that you mentioned him and what happened to him, because I noticed his records were like, all mid two thousand s the most recent ones were. And I wondered what happened to Anthony Gaddo. Now I know he kicked the finger. It's a really good article, actually. Dropped on Grantland.com. All right, so how do you juggle? So, Chuck, here's how you juggle. Basically, you want to start with three balls, and if you have even half of a brain, half, you will make sure that those balls are beanbags, because bean bags are dead drops or they drop dead. You're not going to chase them all over the room. No. When they fall they just stay put. Yeah. Hacky sacks are good, too. Or you can buy, like my brother did, the Little, which are basically hacky sacks. A little juggling kit. Yeah. The Complete Klutz's Guide to Juggling isn't that many? I think it was before The Complete Idiots Guides, there was something called, like, something for Klutz, and it would teach you things how to juggle. It required dexterity. Yeah. Interesting. So anyway, you start with three beanbags, which in the juggling world what? These are anything you juggler called props. Specifically, beanbag falls under the category of balls. Even though they're not necessarily balls, they are still under the prop category of balls because it's not a chainsaw or a torch. Exactly. Club, which would fall under the category of clubs. Right. So for most of the time, we're going to say balls. But just imagine as you're starting out, we're talking about bean bags. Okay. Okay. So you get three of them. Chuck yes. You take two, and you put them in a drawer to start there's. The first step to learn juggling, take two of your three balls and put them away. Yeah. And strickland. And experts say you should literally start with tossing one back and forth to get your arc down, because the key is consistency. And once you get good, you can do all sorts of things, but you don't want to toss one bean bag up 4ft and one 3ft. When you first starting out, you want to kind of toss them all about the same. Yeah. And you need to learn your hand movements, which are very important once you get hand movements down. You can do variations on the hand movements, but ultimately there's a basic hand movement that's a scooping motion. And the easiest one to start with, to start practicing is the cascade pattern. Yeah. There's two main patterns, the shower and the cascade, which we've joked about so far about ten times. The shower is the one that you see on cartoons when someone's basically just throwing balls in a big circle. In a big loop. Beautiful. Very cool looking. The cascade looks kind of like fireworks if you squint your eyes and use your imagination. Never thought about that. Yeah. Like as the balls go up and they arc out, they're basically arcing outward across your body. Yes. And it looks just kind of like one of those big fireworks where it blows up and then just kind of trails downward slowly. That's ultimately what it looks like to me. Yes, I get that. So the Cascade, you move your hands in a figure eight, and for the regular cascade, your right hand goes clockwise, your left hand is counterclockwise, alternating these tosses, if you reverse that, it's called a reverse cascade. Right. So the key here, just remember, you're using one ball still, but you're making a scooping motion in toward your torso, not away from your body, but in toward your body right in front of your chest. Your feet are shoulder width apart, because they always should be when you do anything. And you're tossing the thing up into an arc about just above eye level. That's the one that you start with. And you usually start with your dominant hand. Yeah. Because that'll just probably be easier because you're more used to throwing things with that hand, right? Yeah. And I didn't see it anywhere, but I put two and two together in this article and it looks like so it could be wrong, everybody, but it looks like if you are doing a cascade of any kind, reverse cascade or anything like that, whatever hand is going clockwise is the hand that you throw in the highest arc above your eye level. Okay. Okay. So you've got your one bag and you make a scooping motion with your right hand in a clockwise motion. And you toss the ball in an arc just above eye level. And then it drops and you catch it in your left hand. And then now in your left hand, you toss it again. But this one should be slightly under the arc of the first one. It's moving in a counterclockwise motion. So that eventually when you add more balls and you have them all in the air, they're not just bumping into each other at the same place. The one from your clockwise motion hand is going higher and the one from your counterclockwise motion hand is following just beneath the arc of the first ball. That's right. It's inside that balls path. Yes. And you're going to, at first, be very frustrated because you're going to want to throw both of the balls at the same time when you're just starting out with the two, just to get used to the motion. Yeah. Because it's just that sort of like if you've never played drums, it's hard to make your right arm, your left arm, your right foot and your left foot do different things. Yeah. It's a bit of a brain trick, I think. Some people catch on quicker than others, obviously. But you want the two tosses to be distinct and separate. And one way to do this, Strickland says, is to count your toss. Like toss one, toss two. Yeah. Toss one, toss two. And then your little brother is going to say, what are you doing in there? Shut up. Nothing. Toss one. So we might as well add the second ball now. Are you ready? We just been with one ball. Yeah. Oh, wow. Because that one toss one is with your clockwise hand. Yeah. Toss two is with your counterclockwise hand. You catch the second one, your toss two with your clockwise hand. Toss one. Toss two. You're still just with one ball here. Now we're going to add two. Okay? So you have one in your left hand, you have one in your right. We're doing a cascade. So with your right hand, you're making a clockwise scooping motion. Right? Yeah, I got it. Right. I wish people could see this one. This is delightful. So we're going to throw the first ball, and as it reaches its zenith just above our eyes, we're going to throw the second one just underneath the arc of the first one. Yes. It's funny is that people that were walking by my desk all day saw me doing the same thing because you kind of do it to yourself to be like, okay, I get the motion. Yeah. What is trickling saying here? We were using no bean bags. No, just imaginary ones. Exactly. I didn't drop a single one. I'm a great imaginary chuckler. So, Chuck, with this toss two, ultimately what you're doing is let's say it takes a second for you to throw one ball to your other hand. Yes. You throw the second ball at about the halfway mark of that first throw. So every half second you're throwing a ball. Is that the deal? If you're fast, you are. Ultimately you're doing that, but it doesn't even necessarily have to be a second. Let's say it takes 2 seconds for it to go up and then down. So every second, you're throwing every half of whatever beat it takes for the ball to be tossed and then come down, you're throwing a ball. Right. Okay. Which means that when you finally add the third ball in there whoa. Let's go ahead and do that now. Yeah. You want to hold two balls in one hand, obviously, and they suggest to hold the two in the dominant hand. Although if you're having a problem making that third toss, they say sometimes switch it up, and it may help to hold the two in the nondominant hand to begin with. Some people just want to hold one and you're really just throwing two with another one in your hand. Or else you're throwing one and then two at once, which you don't want to do either. Yeah. You're going to be frustrated. It takes a lot of time and practice. Don't give up like I did when you didn't master it in 1 hour. Right. If you think that you're supposed to be mastering this as we're speaking no, we just covered, like, six months of work. What you can master in a minute, though, is just clicking on YouTube and watching videos of jugglers again. I'm almost done. Yeah. Okay. So with this cascade, you've got the third ball. And just remember that every half of a beat that it takes, you're throwing a ball. You're constantly throwing a ball. The cool thing about the third one is when you start with two balls in one hand, you obviously start with that hand for tossing. Sure. You toss it up in the air. As that one arched, you toss your left one. As that one arched, you toss your third one. And about the time you're tossing your third one, your first one is landing that's right. And you've just done what's called a flash of juggling. That's right. And if you have trouble catching at first, don't worry about it. Yeah. They recommend just work on the tossing. And if you drop the ball and it's not a big deal at first, you just want to get that hand motion down and learn basically the motion of the cascade. And again, stand in front of a wall because you're going to find yourself chasing the beanbag forward because you're tossing it further away from you. Yeah, but be careful. Don't start with chainsaws. Don't start with chainsaws, which, by the way, are modified. They're props. They're not using real chainsaws unless you're crazy. Well, they probably don't have the thing. Bam. They're like the haunted house chainsaws. Right. Alright. Well, after this break, we are going to get into variations on the cascade. All right, Josh, you've got the cascade down. Try the reverse cascade. Okay. Which is, like I said, just the opposite direction. I'm sorry. Counterclockwise for your right hand, clockwise for your left. You're scooping your hands inward instead of outward right. Oh, I'm sorry. You're scooping outward instead of inward right. Which sounds weird, but if you just do without balls, if you just do your hands like that, it makes sense. Yeah. You can just kind of do it in your imagination and then just change directions. Yeah. And you're like, wait a minute, I've seen guys do that. It'll feel like natural. Yeah. The only big differences here is with the hand that you throw in, a higher arc has changed. So your first throw is going to be at a lower arc than the second throw. That's all. Okay. And your hands are moving in different directions. So remember, the hand that's going in counterclockwise motion throws in the higher arc, and that's called Josh's Law. Okay. So after you've mastered this, which will take a while, as we've said 150 times, you can start doing little tricks thrown in there, because just a regular juggler isn't going to get very far in life. Where you really make your dough is when you start throwing in things like the half shower or the tennis move. And if you look all these up, basically when you see jugglers, just juggling regular and then the arm does something crazy looking. That's what these moves are. Right. We could describe them in detail, but it's really a lot cooler if you just go look. But when you're watching juggling, you go, oh man, what was that? Look what that girl just did with her arm. That was maybe a tennis move. Or Mills mess invented by juggler. Steve Mills. Yeah. Not my uncle. Steve Mills. I don't think he can juggle. Or Burke's Barrage or Rubenstein's Revenge. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah. These are all just complex arm crossing patterns as you're juggling different variations on. That another variation that I like, have you seen this before? Bounce juggling. It's my favorite thing rather than throwing the ball. My favorite juggling. Okay, got you. Rather than throwing the balls up in the air to toss juggle, you throw the balls down on the ground and bounce them. There's this kid I saw on YouTube, if you just search bounce juggling, it's the first video. It's the thing the first thing that comes up on YouTube. That guy is good. He starts out in profile. Yeah. And you're like, what's the big one? Like his basement or whatever? Yeah. But then once I don't know how many balls he had going, he had quite a few. Yeah. And there's different ways of doing this. You can either lift bounce it by just sort of tossing it in the air and letting it bounce, or you can actually throw it at the ground, which is called a force bounce. Right. And I even wrote coolest exclamation .2 of them. Bounce juggling is really cool looking. There's clawing, which is basically palms down juggling. So it's just a regular cascade, but yeah, you're like, snatching them out of the air. Yeah, that's cool looking. You can do that solely or you can just throw in a claw every now and then. Just delight your nieces and nephews. Yeah. At Christmas, there is the chop. Yes. Which I think this one is where you grab a ball and then throw it underneath your other arm. You throw it upwards underneath your other arm? Yeah. It's like a quick diagonal move. Yeah. And like I said, you'll just notice if you're not a real juggler, if you're just watching in the park one day, they'll do some crazy arm thing. Sure. I call it flare. Well, there is actually something called flare. That's a type of juggling. Really? Bartenders flare. Oh, you know the movie Cocktail? Yeah. Bartenders flare. That was a type of juggling. Supposedly not a fan. Oh, I thought it was great. I haven't seen the movie. Yeah, I haven't seen it. Are you a fan of Bartending Flair, though? Hey, I'm a Jerry Thomas fan, so yes. The answer is yes. All right. I like a bartender to grump at me and slide my whiskey down the bar. That's the best trick I want to say. That's fine. I pretty much like all bartenders. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. They're doing God's work. So Jonathan Strickland says, generally speaking, if you have an odd number of props, you're going to require a crisscross pattern. If you have an even number of props, it's going to be two separate groups, juggled in each hand. Yeah. Remember you said you could juggle with one hand? Kind of. Yeah. So remember, toss juggling is any kind of juggling where the number of objects you're juggling exceeds the number of hands you're using. That's right. So if you use two balls in one hand, that's toss juggling, it still counts. So if you're juggling four things, you're basically toss juggling separately with two hands, two different things. So two bowling pins in each hand is toss juggling. I don't know if you could do clubs with one hand. Can you? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, you do it in columns. Yeah. That's some talent right there. That's how most people do clubs, is like one hand. Oh, really? I've just seen like the Cascade mainly. No, no. Every time I've ever seen clubs, it's like two one handed juggling. You need to get out more, I guess so I need to go to the park. Yeah, they hang out there along with the hackysackers. Yeah. Well, like you'd mentioned then, I guess if you're going to be juggling with one hand, you've got the fountain, which is the circular pattern. Like if I had two balls and I was just throwing them in a circle, or the straight up and down, which is the column. Right. And that can be either synchronous or asynchronous. If you look up synchronous column juggler on YouTube, you're going to be doing the exact same thing at the same time with both hands. Right. Which is pretty neat. I think asynchronous may be a little tougher, though, just judging by the looks of it. Well, Strickland makes the point that since most people start out learning to juggle asynchronously, which is like that cascade is asynchronous. The hands aren't moving at the same time, they're moving at opposite beats. It's actually easier for people to do that to do asynchronous. Makes sense, I guess. Yeah. What do I know? Even handed juggling, what is that called? It's the one thing in juggling that doesn't have a name, where you're just juggling four things at once, or like an even number of things, and you're using both your hands, but you're juggling two clubs. There's no name for it. It's driving me crazy. I'm sure there's a name for it. Well, I don't know what it is. You should name it after you at any term. Oh, no, here it is. Numbers juggling. Okay, so when you're doing numbers juggling, an even number of numbers juggling, you're just doing it asynchronously probably to start. Okay, that was my point. Where my little tie raise? I wonder how many angry jugglers we have right now. Oh, probably a lot. Couple of hundred. There's a couple of other kinds of juggling that are fun to watch. Cigar box, Juggling and Shaker cup. You've probably tried the cigar box thing with chew boxes or whatever. And that's when you have any number of boxes, you're holding one in each hand, but then you have quite a few in the middle and you'll toss them up and flip them and then catch them between the other two boxes. Yeah, it's pretty neat. And the same sort of thing goes with the Shaker cup. Your cups are nesting inside one another, though, like cocktail cups, and you're tossing those up and catching them. They probably was born out of bartender flare. Yeah, probably so. All right. We mentioned clubs as an. Alternative. The Standard club looks sort of like a modified bowling pin. Yeah, like a slim, svelt bowling pin. Yeah, a sexy bowling pin. They are European and American versions, and I think the European version is slimmer and sexier than the American. Go figure. And I think they're a little more popular as well. Right. The larger end is meant to fit into a Champagne coupe. That's it. So the European one, that's pretty neat. And I think you said that clubs also, if you want to do, like, knives and torches, they call that a club as well. Yeah, I think there's, like, a few broad categories of props and then falls clubs, that kind of thing. And then they fall under those subcategories, like axes and torches and categories out the YinYang. And then there's ring juggling. Of course, they're very stable because of their gyroscopic properties. Don't even mention gyroscopic properties. Well, the point is that you can juggle a lot more rings at once. Maybe then you might be able to juggle a ball. Yeah. That's pretty impressive to see as well. Yeah. And then there's this thing I found today called contact ring juggling. It's when you're not throwing rings. Oh, you're rolling them along. Well, no, that's contact juggling with, like, a ball is when you're, like, doing the Harlem Globetrotter thing and rolling it down your arm and over your body and stuff. It's pretty cool. But the contact ring juggling, just look it up. It's really cool. I mean, there's all different shapes, but the ones I've seen are mainly a figure eight, and you're just manipulating them such that they look like it looks like an illusion, almost like one will be stationary and it looks like the other ring is circling around it. Well, it is, but just take my word for it. Okay. Contact ring juggling. Everyone go check it out. Very popular in Asia, it looks like. Okay. They've mastered it. Okay. Very cool. So let's say you got a buddy and you both like to go to the park. Well, this is a big one in juggling. It's pretty cool. It's a thing. You've seen it. Yeah. Strickland makes the point that juggling is kind of a social thing populated by social creatures. Like, there's lots of juggling clubs and that kind of stuff. And that where you and I think of juggling as like a solitary activity. No way, man. If you get two good jugglers together, it becomes a feast for the mind and the eyes. We could add this to our live show, Juggling. US juggling. Yeah. All right. In tandem. We have a lot of practice to do, because what we could do, Josh, on stage, if we put a lot of work into it, is something called stealing and replacing. And that is when you basically will go up. If you're juggling four clubs, I will go and steal one, or maybe steal two, and then three, and then four and then I'm the one juggling. But the juggling never stops. Right. It looks as a seamless synchronous pattern, uninterrupted. If you just like, stop another person from juggling, it's just being a jerk. Yeah. The point of it is juggling. Yes, I guess so. But you're still juggling the whole time you're doing that. That's right. The whole point of juggling with two people and like stealing and replacing is that the balls if you were able to ask these juggled balls what they think is going on, they would say, Nothing. It's the same thing we're doing the same pattern. They say Chuck's hands were a little sweatier. Right. But what really happened was I replaced you. Yeah, that's one way to do it. Or we could stand in front of each other like 4ft apart and we're juggling the clubs and then tossing each other the clubs and we've got our little post stuff. You should now act all worked out. Yeah. What's? Cool. So with stealing and replacing with juggling balls, I would stand facing opposite you and just kind of grab yours, like you said and just ultimately take over your catches. And then I would be juggling and then you could steal it back and we could go back and forth indefinitely with clubs. I would be standing next to you and just basically kind of push you out of the way. Well, that's if you're stealing and replacing. If we're passing, then we're standing in front of each other and just throwing them back and forth to each other. And there's actually a pretty established way of passing where it's called the 3310, where we do three passes where every third toss I pass to you, you catch it. So you know we're in tandem and everything is going right. And then after three of those, you do every second toss. Then after three of those, you do every toss, you toss another one. And then by that last one we are just like on fire, just throwing ones back and forth between ourselves. Yeah. And we did mention combat juggling. That was not a joke. It is a thing. And I've seen I looked up these little competitions when it's sort of like dodgeball. You get ten jugglers on a stage and they all start juggling and they all start to try and thwart the other jugglers juggle while maintaining theirs. So I would go up and throw mine in the air and try and knock yours out of your hand. But you can't get too crazy because you've got to still juggle or else you're out. The way we've been describing this one, it feels like we've been replaced by imposters who listen to the show a lot and didn't know what topic to pick. Right. Isn't that weird? It is weird. I'm myself are you yourself? No, I'm you. Oh, God. Weird. Well, we'll get to the bottom of this right after these messages. Now, Chuck comes the darkest time is this, Josh? Actual? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm replaced I replaced the replacement. OK. Nope, still here saying bizarre stuff like I replaced the replacement. All right. We're talking about the physics of juggling fun, which is actually kind of straight forward. It's stuff you would think of, but it's nice to put it in the terms where we can say that we covered the physics of juggling. That's right. The main factor acting on juggling, probably the most important part in the whole thing is our good friend gravity. That's right. An acceleration due to gravity specifically is 9.8 m s to the second power, meaning 9.8 meters/second every second. Right. So when you drop something, speed is going to increase by 9.8 meters/second and don't bother us. We're not including any kind of air resistance. We're in a vacuum. Yeah. To demonstrate all of our physics, we're always in a vacuum. Right. Our little stuff, you should know vacuum part next to the wayback machine. Yes. So it's a constant acceleration. And because of that, the only way to slow down your pattern is by throwing something higher. Yeah. And so the more things that you add into your pattern, the higher you're going to have to throw, because you have a constant acceleration, downward acceleration after your toss. So that means you have to open up your pattern by throwing it higher up, the more stuff you have, because you simply would not have enough time to throw X amount of balls in the air. You can increase your hand speed somewhat, but at a certain point, you just can't do it. Exactly. They're going to be bean bags everywhere. Yeah. Another factor is that it's not really a factor, it's more of a fact. When you're throwing your balls, you're throwing them in a parabola, which means that the only velocity that counts is the vertical velocity, the vertical acceleration. When you throw something up, you're exerting your own force upward, and once it peaks, its gravity is pushing it back downward. That's right. It's going to have a horizontal velocity, but that's going to be constant. So there's no force acting on it. Exactly. Unless there's no change in velocity. I guess with the column, it's pretty much straight up and down, but generally speaking, you're going to be have both, right? Yeah. It's moving horizontally, but there's no force pushing it. There's no change in acceleration. It's constant. Exactly. Okay. And then, of course, the mass of your props also counts. Yeah. Which is why, if you've ever seen the old trick where someone's doing a bowling ball with a tennis ball with a club, it's super impressive because it's much easier to juggle things with the same mass. Yeah. Because you're just making the same motion over and over again. When you are juggling things with three different maths, meaning they have three different amounts of inertia, or they require more different amounts of force to overcome inertia, then yes. Like you said, that's kind of impressive. It just requires that much more mental acuity. That's right. Is that all the physics? Yeah, that's all the physics. Now we get into the math. I know. This actually kind of interested me a little bit, despite the fact that it is math, and I'm well known to not love it, but there was a mathematician named Claude Shannon who proposed a juggling theorem that basically describes the relationship of a cask or well, just of a juggle. Right. I keep saying juggle. Is that a thing? Did I make it up? No, I think it's a thing. I think it's called something else, though. A juggle? Yeah, a flash. A flash. There you go. That's a round of juggling, one single round, where all three or all five or all seven of your balls have been tossed once at least. But to the layman, it's called a juggle. Right. So everyone knows what I mean. And this is in parentheses, f plus D. And then that would be times h, right? Yeah. Outside the parentheses equals V plus D in parentheses times N. When F is the time the ball is in the air, v is the time of the ball in the hand, h is the number of hands, v is time that the hand is empty, and N is the number of balls being juggled. So basically what he's saying is if you add together the amount of time the ball spends in the air plus the amount of time it spends in the hand right? Yes. Which is the full amount of time that that ball exists during a flash. Multiply that times your hands, the number of hands that's going to equal the time your hand is empty, plus the time the ball spins in a hand times the number of balls being juggled. I saw no reason for this equation whatsoever. At first, I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then I spelled it out to myself, and it's like the amount of time the ball is out of the hand plus the amount of time the ball's in the hand times the number of balls. What? Yeah. I didn't understand what the point of it was. So call Shannon, please get in touch with us. Well, that's why he did it, so people would write stuff about it. Well, the thing is, I guess the problem is it says Shannon built a juggling robot. So I guess this formula allows robotics to happen. Yeah. And I saw the juggling robots, different robots that toss things and catch things. Right. It's kind of cool. Okay. Yeah. So if that's the point of the Shannon Theorem is that what that's called? Sure, the Claude's Law. Then I understand it and I take it back. What if there's some Claude's Law that's something awful that we don't know about? I hope that's the case. And then there is site swapping, which is another math application. It's sort of like akin to a musical score to a musician as a form of notation describing the juggling pattern, and it's what jugglers use to basically, if you were going to write out your juggling pattern and send it to your buddy right. You wouldn't say, take your right hand and blah, blah, blah. You'd use numbers to represent it, which this actually does make sense. Yeah. This made a little more sense to me, for sure. Yeah. And so, like, a normal three ball cascade is three three three. Each throw takes three beats. A zero is a rest on an empty hand, and a one is hand off from one to the other. And you can actually, if you add them all together and take the average, you can tell how many balls are in that pattern. Right. So in a three three three, you add those together, that's nine divided by three, because there's three different numerals, and you've got three. Or 45141 is also three. Right. Math. That sounds pretty difficult. The 45141. Yeah, the three three three makes intuitive sense to me. But 45141, that's tough. Oh, man. Is anyone still listening? No. Can you hear the echo? I can. If you look at a juggler, you might notice that they're probably not looking at their hands, like at the catching. The catching is sort of automatic. They're kind of looking sort of up at the arc. And they have done experiments to see where your eyes go. Aam van Santa Peter. J. Beck did some experiments. They actually found that while the peak is important, if you see the first 100 milliseconds of the flight path, then you can juggle successfully. Yes. Which is pretty impressive. They found that jugglers are relying more on feel sure. Than vision. That's why you can juggle blindfolded. If you're really good, supposedly, some people can. I've seen it. Oh, yeah. I bet Brandon Ross can. I could see that. Dude is talented. So, Chuck, we could probably keep talking about juggling for the next five years because there's a lot to it. Yeah, man. This is just a primer. Hopefully you guys are inspired, or at least we're inspired in the first, maybe 20 minutes, the good part of this episode, to go out and learn to juggle. I know I was. Yeah. And while we hate ourselves, we don't hate ourselves that much. We're going to end this one. Yeah. So we think that you should learn about juggling, and you can start by typing that word in the search bar@housekeepworks.com. And so I said search bar. It's time for listener mail. This is a really touching story, oddly enough, from Jennifer Grace. She's an actor in New York City who played a very long run of Our Town on stage and had to go there without her husband at first because they were in Chicago and stuff you Should Know turned out to be the thing that linked them together before he finally moved to New York to join her. They've been together for 13 years now and they had their son Emmett last fall. And a month before Emmett turned one, tom, her husband, was admitted to the hospital and has been there ever since. He has a very rare issue with his bone marrow that they finally diagnosed as aplastic anemia. So basically, he has no immune system, which means he can't risk getting sick, which means their son can't even visit him, which is just unbelievably sad. She can visit wearing a mask and gloves and gown, but they can't even touch each other, the husband and wife. And this came on suddenly, too, right? Yeah. She said it's pretty much the worst thing ever. They spend a lot of time even diagnosing this thing before they can I know. It's just so terrible. And they're just really great people, she said. It looks like we will be going forward, though, with a bone marrow transplant because he has a brother who is a match and he does have a good chance of recovering with a good brother with this bone marrow transplant and a round of chemo followed by this transplant in the new year. She says there's not a lot that I can give him by way of a Christmas present this year, given the circumstances, but I'm hoping that perhaps he would give him a shout out on an episode. It's been a very special shared experience for us. It really brighten his day. So Tom, dude, he also sent me a video of them playing song together in the kitchen doing Springsteen song, and it was just like, they're the cutest couple ever and they're really great. I'm going to plug their GoFundMe site because they didn't even ask me to. That's why I'm plugging it. It is gofundme.com f seven, five, nine, ZG. And that will help out, offset their hospital bills a little bit. And they're just really nice folks. And so Tom gets better soon, and I hope that operation goes great. Yeah. Tom, here's to you, buddy. And keep us posted, you guys. Yeah, please do, Jennifer. That would be great. And we should totally post that GoFundMe stuff, too, on social. Yes, we'll do that. Well, if you have a great story about how Chuck and I brought you together with your so or helped you through a rough time or did anything good, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at syscast. You can join us on facebook. Comstepychnow and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast athousefirst.com. As always, join us at our home, on the web, stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com." | ||
How The Hum Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-hum-works | There is a mysterious droning sound often described as like a diesel engine idling that is severely impacting the quality of life of 2 percent of people in places around the world. The thing is, no one knows what's causing it - or if it actually exists. | There is a mysterious droning sound often described as like a diesel engine idling that is severely impacting the quality of life of 2 percent of people in places around the world. The thing is, no one knows what's causing it - or if it actually exists. | Tue, 09 Dec 2014 14:59:23 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=14, tm_min=59, tm_sec=23, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=343, tm_isdst=0) | 35997639 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W chuck Bryant. And I would say it's stuff you should know. But it's not because I haven't said to Jerry. And now I did. Because this is the first one. Yeah. Are people going crazy yet? I don't know. There's probably some people who started going crazy the moment they hit play. Yeah. That's juxt version of the capital T. Capital H? Yeah. So the hum you just did, it makes sense. It's a but apparently, if you'd listen, I wonder if you can hear the same thing I'm hearing, because you're hearing it in your head, but there's, like, a gravely quality to it. A vocal fry. Okay. If you want to call it that. Yeah, I say gravelly, but it wasn't constant. The gravely thing gave it texture, and it was kind of broken up a little bit. That is more akin to the than the unbroken part that was going throughout. Yeah. So apparently, while this is called the and we should eventually explain what we're talking about, it's not the classical definition of a that people hear. Right. It's like a diesel truck idling engine idling with a classic description of it. Yeah. That term vocal fry is one of those you ever hear or learn of a new expression or a thing that you've never heard of, and then you see it everywhere. That is called the botter minehoff phenomenon, and it's happening to me with vocal fry. Where did you hear that? I can't remember where I initially heard it, but it's a thing now that they say, like, Kim Kardashian is who they always blame. It's a vocal affectation that supposedly young women are using now, where they go into that lower tone, that gravely tone on certain, like, the ends of sentences. I know what you're talking about. I heard that, too. And it supposedly keeps them from being promoted at work or something. Yeah. But it's the female equivalent of the guys who speak up. Yeah. Or the valley girl thing, which is upspeak. Yeah. Like valley girls talking like that. But now he was a nice guy, but I really wasn't sure what his motivation was. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's great impression. That's because it was dead on. Yeah, I totally got that. You have pigtails just now. Yeah. I was talking to Emily about it the other day. She's like, Do I do that? It's like, no, you don't do that. No, you don't. I just did that, didn't I? A little bit, but you were doing a different voice, so it makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, I can't escape it now. Every other day since I've heard it, I've seen something about vocal fry. And have you noticed people with vocal fry more? All the time. Okay. Yeah, it's annoying. Like, what you're describing now has really nothing to do with the home, but it actually does have a lot in common with the home in that it's driving me to suicide. The home kind of people who hear the tend to be able to focus in on it more and more easily the more that they're exposed to it, which is the opposite of what should happen to a noise that really is inconsequential in the environment. That's right. So what we're talking about here, Chuck, is the with a capital H. That's right. What is it? Well, it is a sound, a mysterious sound that is heard in places around the world by about 2% of the local population. And we're going to get into the frequencies and all that, but let's just call it a low frequency rumbling right now. It's a drone. It's a vibration described sometimes as it sounds like it's coming from nowhere or inside my own head. And there are places all around the world where, like I said, a very small population of people experience this, and depending on where you are, they will name it that. Hum. Like the Auckland home, the Windsor home, the Bristol home. Yeah. The Tower home. And it's been described going back to the 1800s. People have talked about it in literature, but really in the in the modern world is when people have started describing hearing this thing that drives them baddie, basically. Right. And one of the ways that it drives them, Betty, is they'll say, do you hear that? And everyone else in the room will say, no. The other 98% of people said, yes, and they'll be like, what do you mean you don't hear that? And everybody else in the room goes, okay. Right. Maybe you're a little wacky. This is generally at night. It's worse at night, for sure. And generally in more rural areas. Yes. Which makes sense, because it's not as much noise pollution, I think. Exactly. Yeah. It also tends to be worse indoors. So at night, which is a little weird indoors means that you don't get much sleep, because this is something that you can't not focus on. People who suffer from the home tend to say that it dominates the soundscape. Yeah. It's not something they can just tune out. Right. It's not something that they're getting used to. And again, the more they're exposed to it, the easier they say it is to tune into it and, I guess become cognizant of it yet again. Yeah. And imagine being plagued by a sound that does this to you and that everyone else says it's not real because they don't hear it. Yeah. We'll get into the reasons that it may not be happening, but it's been passed off as mass hysteria or mass delusion, from everything from that to government conspiracy to legitimate noise, whether or not it's acoustic or electromagnetic. And that's part of the problem. Is there one? Are there lots of is there no your skeptics will say there is no hom. It's tennis, or it's something like that. Right. Or some other inner ear noise, like Odoacoustic noise. Yes. So who knows? There are two ways that the okay, so again, let's restate this and let's put ourselves in the position of the outsider. Okay. Because I don't experience the home, so I am out. I don't either. Knock on wood. Because the more I research this, the more I'm like, oh, God, I hope I never do. Well, we left out one quality of it that is common around the world. And when we say around the world, it tends to be curiously concentrated in the west and in the Euro. I didn't notice that. Euro ancestry west. Yes. I didn't really see anything about any countries in the east. If you look at there is a guy who runs a Glen McPherson. Yes. Glen McPherson runs something called the World Map and Database. And we ran into Glen McPherson. Before we get too far, we should give a huge shout out to Jared Keller over at Mike, who wrote this amazing article called a Mysterious Sound is Driving People Insane and Nobody Knows What's Causing It. Totally worth reading. And he talks about a guy named Glen McPherson who's a professor in British Columbia. And he set up a website called the World Map and Database. And so anybody who hears the can go and fill out a questionnaire. And then it takes that data and puts a dot on the map and you can hover over the dot and get the data right. If you look at it, it's just the United States, Great Britain, western Europe, Canada, south Africa. It's unusual that there's nothing in Africa except South Africa and it's just in these European ancestry Western countries. Right. On the one hand, you could say, well, that's because this is an English language database. Makes sense. And so, of course, somebody whose native language is like Swahili isn't going to go on to this. I have no idea what I'm typing here. But yeah, exactly. So that's one explanation. There are other explanations, too. And now we arrive at one of them. We're going back on the outside because you don't hear the hump. I don't hear the hump. And let's say that we're ear, nose and throat guys and somebody comes to us and says, I'm going crazy. Like I'm seriously contemplating suicide because this hump is keeping me up at night. I haven't slept at weeks. I'm irritable. I have headaches, nosebleeds, I'm nauseated all the time. These are all common symptoms of home sufferers. You're going to think one of two things as a doctor, a physician. One is tinnitus. Yeah. And then the other one is, you're crazy. You're driving yourself crazy. Yeah. Both of them can kind of be explained away and they are explained away by this guy named David Deming. And he is a geoscientist from the University of Oklahoma. And he wrote what is probably the definitive study on the so far. Back in 2004, that's right. So Dimming, apparently, if you look at his research, there is another theory, and this is where the US. Government comes into play, because there are a couple of theories revolving around the US. Military and whether or not they are causing this. One is with their High Frequency active aurora research program Harp in Alaska, and they transmit RF signals into the atmosphere. Should we go ahead and start talking about the frequency ranges? Yes. VLF is very low frequency, and those are waves at .1. Other one is Elf. Right. They're extremely low frequencies, and they're in the range of the same amount of hertz, but their wavelength is up to like 100,000 meters. Right. That's an extremely long wavelength. That's right. And people who think they call them investigators, they believe pretty much that it is VLF and Elf tones that are driving these people crazy. And those tones can drive you crazy. They do have adverse effects on the body. You probably heard it about a lot when it comes to cell phone radiation, that kind of thing. Yeah. But whether or not Elf and VLF or are the is what's a matter of much debate? It is a matter of debate, and it's also kind of a matter of faith, because what you're talking about there with Elf and VLF frequencies, tones, those are radio waves. And radio is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Right? Yeah. So it has been shown at very high frequencies, humans can detect electromagnetic sound. We take it as sound, which is weird because it's not supposed to happen like that. But that's how we experience it. It's not like at a high frequency. We suddenly see it, we hear it. And if you are familiar with the comet 67 P that the European Space Agency recently landed on yeah, which is crazy. That comet was found to emit an electromagnetic clicking sound, which is how we experience electromagnets or electromagnetic sound at a certain frequency. And so because it's a clicking sound, it's not a at all. Some people are saying, well, that doesn't make any sense. This is a if we can hear it, it doesn't sound like an idling diesel engine. It sounds like a clicking sound or something like that. And then, what's more, what this guy is saying is that if it's a very low frequency or extremely low frequency, that's the opposite of how we hear electromagnetic radiation. We hear at a very high frequency, not a very low frequency. So which one is it? So, yes, it's still a huge matter of debate even as to whether the first of all, if it does exist yes. If it's a single source. Single source. And then if it is a single source or any kind of source, is it electromagnetic or is it acoustic? Right. And we'll unpack the difference between those things right after this. So as whether or not the exist. The Canadian government actually part of the problem is it's hard to get research done on this because very small number of people experience it, and a lot of them are called crackpots. Yeah. So it's tough to get funding for research, but luckily, there's a country called Canada that will fund things like this. And Dr. Colin Novak spent a year listening to the Windsor home in Ontario, and what they found was the is real. And they traced the source in that case on the Michigan side of the Detroit River and basically a steel plant on Zug Island. Doesn't it sound like an industrial plant island? It does. And it supposedly generates a lot of VL waves when they're operating. So in this instance, at least, the home was a real thing, and they found out it was a tone created from basically an industrial plant. Right. So they apparently took steps to cut down on whatever energy it was emitting. Yeah. They turned off the machine. Right, exactly. And all of a sudden, some people said, hey, that worked. A lot of people said, that did absolutely nothing. The home is still out there. And then the most people said, I still don't know what you're talking about. And that wasn't actually the first time government has looked into the home in Taos, New Mexico. There is something called the Tau Home, and apparently somebody wrote in to complain about it to a local newspaper. And all of a sudden, like, hundreds more people said, yes, I hear the same thing. I've been hearing the same thing for years. What is going on? And enough people said something in New Mexico that it prompted an investigation by the University of New Mexico in Sandia Labs, which I think is like a government affiliated kind of well, it's a neat research lab. They do all sorts of cool, clandestine stuff. Nice, right? X Files. Very much so, yeah. And actually, the X Files mentioned the episode called Drive. Yeah. Interesting. They talk about it. There was a couple of characters had to constantly move westward or else they would suffer from the pressure of this home that no one else could hear. Let me guess. Moulder believes Scully did not exactly. How did you saw that one? No, I didn't. But, you know, so they looked into the Tower home, and they could never figure out what it was. So I think they kind of wrote it off as either mass delusion or a bunch of people had tinnitus or what have you, which is again, that's the easy answer. Like you have tinnitus. The problem is, if a person has tinnitus, the sound is internal. Remember, there's, like, the idea that the and isn't it a high pitch ringing? Yes. Usually it can vary in pitch. Right. But for the most part, you can tell it's internal with the everyone who experiences the home says, no, this is external. And they're so convinced it's external that they'll go out at night when it's worse. And try to find the source of it. They'll drive around their city or their neighborhood, or walk around and look for what it is that's driving them crazy and they'll never find it. Yeah. Or they'll turn off the power of their house. There's all sorts of extreme and of course, it's all like anecdotal, but people that are driven to suicide. Or this one guy who intentionally deafened himself with a chainsaw. Yes. Which I'm not sure how you do, I guess I think you hold the chainsaw, terrier for you. Yeah, exactly. And possibly even murder, which we'll get to in a bit. Which is pretty interesting. But the point is that it's not just something that's just bugging people. Like it is having the there are people all over the world that don't know each other, that have never met, that are suffering from something that they hear, that other people can't hear in concentrated areas. Yeah. And that's affecting their quality of life. I don't know if I ever finished the sentence, which is weird. That means I'm really interested in something. Okay, but did I say that people who suffer from the tend to be in their fifty s and older? Yeah. That's one of the markers between like 50 and 70. Okay. So this is something in the favor of acoustic sound. Right. So acoustic sound is a compression wave, and it's something that's carried through and propagates through media. So it's a vibration in the air, whereas an electromagnetic wave comes from an electrical or a magnetic or both source. This is like the vibration. It's a sound wave. That's an acoustic wave. Right. Right. So as we age so you get to around 50 years of age, your ability to hear high frequency and mid frequency acoustic sound diminishes. Your low frequency capabilities go undiminished. So it's not like they increase. But comparatively speaking, you get better at hearing low frequencies around age 50. Interesting. So what some people think is that if it is electromagnetic, then there are some people out there who are capable of hearing electromagnetic waves while the rest of us can't, and they're being driven crazy by some source that we have yet to identify. Right. Or if it's acoustic, that there are some people out there who are superheroes of low frequency sound, which would also kind of do away with another diagnosis that a lot of doctors give people, which is hyperacusis, which to me is worth a whole other podcast. It's another people kill themselves over yeah. This heightened hyper hearing oh, yeah. To where, like, just the rustle of clothes is unbearable. Right. Oh, man. The thing is, if you have hyperacuses, it's not just going to be some that you hear and everything else is normal, which is what home suffers experience. You would hear everything on this grand scale. Right. You'd be like Spiderman. Exactly. So what they think is that there are people who are predisposed to hearing low frequency sounds way better than other people, and that it comes as their higher and mid frequency capabilities diminish with age. Right. But again, what are they hearing? Well, that's right. I mentioned earlier, the Haaaa RP program, that the US. Government military is doing in Alaska. The other one that I teased is the Takamo, the take charge and move out system. In the 19th, Navy basically adopted this program to be able to communicate with submarines, long range bombers, ballistic missiles during nuclear war, and they use very low frequency radio waves to do so. And it's a real thing. But is it? The other conspiracy theorists will say that the US. Government is also using these things to target individuals. And of course you want to say that's probably bunk, but you never know. Well, you know what the cool irony is that Jared Keller points out is that if the is electromagnetic in nature, a tin foil hat and aluminum foil hat would actually work because it blocks out about humor about it, at least. Right. But just a thin layer of aluminum can block out like, 98% of electromagnetic waves. So that's pretty ironic that it might actually work. Although I haven't heard whether that helps people with the home if they put on a tinfoil hat, if that would help or not, or if it has. But speaking of Tacomo, if you read David Deming's journal article, it's called the anomalous sound heard around the world. And there is a journal called the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is a peer reviewed scientific journal that accepts articles on things on the fringe of science. Sure. Which the home most decidedly is. Yeah. David Demmon gets into Taco, and he basically says, this is a secret government program, so obviously we can't get any real answers. We don't know how often it works or how often they're transmitting or anything, but we do know it is a real thing, and it correlates some dates when there's, like, upgrades to the system. And then all of a sudden, in this one area, around the same time, there's the Cocomo, Indiana starts. Right. So he does a good job of correlating it, and I think that's kind of what he settles on. He believes that it's probably the Takamo program that this very low frequency transmission to submarines underwater from airplanes above is being propagated around the world. And that would suggest that it's a global source. Right. That it's just some people can hear these radio waves that you're not supposed to be able to hear. Yeah, or it's multiple sources combined, like a combined effect. Like if you live near an industrial plant that has a machine that's making the sound that maybe certain people are attuned to or not. I don't know. Well, that's another characteristic, is that it's mostly experienced in the country. I just chalk that up to noise pollution being replaced. Yeah. Like when I worked at a convenience store in the midnight shift. When I work during the day, I would not notice anything. But when I worked up there at night at 03:00 A.m., I would hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, and it would drive me crazy. I would turn them off, and people would think we were closed. So the thing is, you eventually stopped hearing that, right? Well, yeah, when I left work. That's called habituation. So habituation means that you are capable of so, like, you'd focus on these things the whole time you were there? Well, yeah, in the middle, I wouldn't focus on it, but I would notice I'd be reading a book, and I would just hear that sound, but I never noticed it during the day when the lights were on, when you didn't hear it. That's habituation where you're exposed to something, your brain says, this is totally it's not a threat. I don't have to pay attention to it anymore. So anytime in this context that I hear that sound, I don't have to become cognizant of it. Now, apparently, you did. You kind of, like, fell into cognizance, like, here or there, and you'd notice it again. But for a normal human being, when you're exposed to something like that over and over again, the less you notice it. Right, but like we've said with the more you're exposed to it, the easier it is to tune in. And what that's called? Can't escape it. No. And not only can you not escape it, you can catch it easier and easier. Like, you can become cognizant of it easier and easier the more you're exposed to it. That's called sensitization, where, I guess, another explanation for the sufferers of the home, if they are hearing something, one of the reasons that it drives them so badly is because their habituation levels are low, but their sensitization levels are high. Right. So they're not able to ignore it, and some part of their brain is focusing in on it, and this creates this, I guess, a perfect storm of hellaciousness. All right, well, right after this break, I did mention murder, so we're going to talk about one of the more interesting parts of the effects of the home right after this. All right, so I mentioned murder, like I said, and one of the things that what is the guy's name? Steve Colhaz. He's a mechanical engineer and investigator in Connecticut, and I believe he was the one that traced the Windsor home to Zug Island. And he has done some research that he believes the Ham and others believe the Ham could be responsible for, well, for killing other people. Specifically. In his case, he actually approached Connecticut State Police investigators after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. And he said the from a nearby gas pipeline might have driven Adam Lanza to well, have contributed to driving him to do something like this. And I don't think he's saying this made him crazy. So he did this. I think he's saying fragile minded people could be pushed over the edge. It could be the last straw for somebody. And I don't know how much credence it has, but investigators did at least include that in the documents they released to the public. So they thought it was worthy enough to put in among the 7000 other documents to release to the public. Yes, and he's not the only one. Remember the Navy Yard shooting? Yeah. In 2013, Aaron Alexis, he fully came out and said, quote, ultralow frequency attack is what I've been subject to for the last three months. And to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven me to this, end quote. And he scrawled and scratched Elf on the shotgun barrel that he used to kill twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard. Yeah. He scratched my Elf weapon on the stock, I think. Yeah. And basically, conspiracy theorists would say, well, this is clearly driving people to do things like this. Skeptics are going to say, no, these people are delusional, and they're the ones who believe the government is shooting them with these Elf tones and driving them crazy. But either way, it's a little startling that someone would scratch that in their shotgun before they did something like that and blame it on that outright. But that raises another point, like, how exposed was he to those conspiracy theories? A lot of people would say, well, there's a Yahoo group dedicated to the home. There's that one world map and database. And people who go see these things are they just suggestible, and they're like, oh yeah, I can hear it too. David Deming points out, like, that's crazy. The idea that people are tuning into this thing that's having a really diminishing effect on their well being as part of just a mass delusion or something like that, kind of goes against the typical psychology of mass delusion, where people join crowds to get some sort of positive benefit or effect from it. Right. And you can argue they're feeling a sense of inclusion or whatever by saying, I hear the hum too, even in a very small minority. But apparently if you are a home sufferer, like your life is screwed up and you're not a happy person. Yeah. I will say this. One thing I've noticed about conspiracy theorists is none of them ever believe one. It seems like they believe a lot of them. So that's all I have to say about that. Well, there's one other thing. So not only is this driving people crazy, there is evidence that if this does exist, if there is something that if there's some sort of what's called low frequency noise that's in the environment, and it is, it's everywhere, but if people are being exposed to it, there's evidence that biologically speaking, it can have an impact. Sure. And there just happened to be this incredible real world laboratory that sprung up in portugal in the late 70s because a guy named Castillo Bronco was put in charge of the Portuguese Air Force's maintenance, repair, and manufacturing plant. It's called OGMA. I don't know portuguese Accent or else I do it. We'll just call it OGMA? And he happened to just be sitting there, and he watched an aircraft technician wander around aimlessly in what apparently looked a lot like an epileptic seizure to this doctor. And it was during what's called an aircraft run up procedure, where they're, like, going through all the systems, and this guy was just standing there, and all of a sudden he's wandering around. Yeah. So he looked into it and found that 10% of the workers at this aircraft repair shop were diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. And if you looked at this population and compared it to the population of Portugal at large, you wouldn't expect 10% to have it. You'd expect 0.2% to have it. So the fact that there are a lot of people who are being diagnosed with this really led them to believe that they were exposed to this low frequency noise or that it was having a dangerous effect on them. And this one guy who was a worker there got really interested in all this, and he created a living will. His name was Philippe Pedro. And Philippe Pedro was like, you cut me open the moment I die and do an autopsy. And they found this guy was messed up. Like how? His aorta his heart was thicken, the walls were thickened inexplicably fried chicken, pretty much. But no, that would be explicable. Oh, so he was a very healthy person then, is what you're saying. Apparently, what they found doesn't jibe with his lifestyle. He was diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. He died at age 58. He had thickened heart tissue. He had a tumor in his kidney. He had a tumor in his liver. And apparently, now, thanks to this guy in his autopsy, he kind of, like, laid the groundwork for this investigation into low frequency noise being dangerous for humans, even though we don't feel anything. But on a cellular level, being exposed to this stuff has these effects. So apparently, if you have thickening of your heart tissue without any kind of inflammation response, that is a classic sign of low frequency noise damage. It's what's called Fibroacoustic disease, which certain people may be susceptible to and others are not. In theory, supposedly, anyone exposed to it would be susceptible to it. Oh, really? The way that it ties into the home is some people might actually be able to hear what they're being exposed to, while most people might not. So we're all exposed to it, then? Yeah. In this article, I can't remember the name of it, but it was basically an overview of this aircraft place by some Portuguese scientists. They said it's almost impossible to get a control group to compare because everybody is exposed to low frequency noise. Just most of us aren't aware of it. Yeah, it's just everywhere. But it's not considered a nuisance except for that 2% to 11% of poor people who suffer from hearing the home. Right. And their accounts differ wildly as well, so that's tough to study. And you can't get funding to study because it's fringe science. Unless you're in Canada. So they say turn a fan on at night. Oh, really? That's what one guy does. Make sense. Yeah, turn on a fan or some sort of like they need white noise to john it out. And that helps. But yeah, get that app. Get the white noise app. There you go. That's what I sleep too again. Go read the awesome article by Jared Keller. Yes. Live Science had a couple of good articles. Yeah. And then David Deming has the anomalous soundheard around the world. And then if this kind of stuff floats your boat, you might want to check out some of our friends sites, too. There's a great podcast by our friend Roman Mars named 99% Invisible who would be able to explain a lot of the science behind this kind of thing. Does he do on the home? No, but it's kind of up his alley, like the vibro acoustic idea. I can totally see him getting into that. And I just think if somebody dug that, they dig 99% Invisible. Agreed. And then damn interesting. Another great site that would definitely have probably has something about the home on it. Yeah. And watch The X Files. Yeah, right? Yeah, our Palmolder. And of course, you can hang out at how stuff works. You can just type the home in. I don't think it'll bring up an article, but see what happens. Yeah, we don't have one yet. No, but yeah, type home into the search bar and see what comes up. It's just a fun game. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this limousine Ranch. Hey, guys, I finally have a story for you after listening for over five years. I live in super rural South Dakota. Not just the regular rural South Dakota. Right. My town is only about 3200 people and it is the largest town within 100 miles radius. The main business here is agriculture and ranching. Not a big surprise. After I married my plumber husband from St. Louis. We moved back to my little hometown six years ago where we started a plumbing business. He started a plumbing business. Shortly after moving here, we got a call to go to Anderson's Limison Ranch limousine Ranch with no e on the end. After driving out to the country and lots of gravel roads later, he came upon the ranch and failed to see any limos. He said he couldn't figure out where all the limousines were and why there would be a limousine company dealership in the middle of nowhere on an Indian reservation. I guess he asked the owners and they explained that they run limousine cattle on their ranch, which I looked up. It's a type of cattle from the limousine region of France. Okay. They don't look like they're wearing cloaks or anything. No. My brother and I teased them for quite some time on this to get a mental image of the absurdity. Imagine the vast prairie dances with wolves or fargo, and then expect to see a limousine dealership out there. Or just a bunch of limousines is kind of meandering around the fields. That sounds like something that would happen in fargo. Sure. That's very coen brothers esque. But not Kevin Costner esque. No, that's all he's pretty self serious. Yes. He doesn't look like he has much of a sense of humor, does he? I don't know. He was in Bull Durham. It's funny. Well, yes. Back in the day when he was bible, I watched the preview only for that movie draft day that he did recently. Yeah. I can barely make it through the preview. Dude, the preview built it up. And you're like, I can't believe he's doing it. Is he really going to do this? And it's about the NFL draft and he's like a GM. Yeah. And they built it up to this thing. And finally, when it was in the movie theater, the preview, I leaned over to my buddy Scotty, who, you know, and I was like, what does he do? Does he open fire on the room and shoot people or is it just some sort of trade it's a trade team. Yes. But they were building up like, I can't believe this is happening. Yes. Did you ever see the movie? No. What was Scott's take on it? He just laughed and said, yeah, exactly. That sounds like our Scott. That's he's the guy that laughs at things like that. That is from Jennifer Coleman. Oh, I forgot we were even doing listen to mail. That's right, Jennifer. And you should tease your husband for that. That's pretty funny stuff. And he should stick to the plumbing business. Yeah, for real. Not the limousine company finding business. If you want to mock someone you love on our show, you can tweet to us at sciskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuff you shouldn't do. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com. You also can do the most important thing you'll do today or any day go to stuffysheneo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetop workshop." | ||
Halitosis: Worst Smell Ever? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/halitosis-worst-smell-ever | Occasional bad breath is one thing, halitosis is another. Or is it? From its odd origins as a marketing ploy to modern weight loss diets that can induce this embarrassing condition, you can learn all about bad breath here. | Occasional bad breath is one thing, halitosis is another. Or is it? From its odd origins as a marketing ploy to modern weight loss diets that can induce this embarrassing condition, you can learn all about bad breath here. | Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:06:26 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=15, tm_min=6, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=114, tm_isdst=0) | 32600896 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Shark. Do you realize some people might this might be the first episode they listen to, and they've already turned it off and they're writing an itunes review? Yeah, something's wrong with that guy. Yeah, what's up with the main guy? I can't believe they're so popular. How does anyone listen to him? Yeah, what's up with the and how are they in the top ten? It must be, like, the AMSR thing. What is that? People make videos where they're, like, stroking your hair, but it's really they're just moving their hand by the camera. They're talking like this. What? Really wet and calming. But there's a subset of humans who have a central nervous reaction. I just had one, but it's pleasurable. They call them, like, a brain orgasm. I think it's AMSR. I don't remember what it stands for. And it's like a meditative video type of thing, I guess, to some people, apparently you have, like, a reaction to it, and it's very pleasurable, but it's non sexual. Well, when you just whisper neurological to me, I had a bad reaction. Right. I can imagine. So I don't claim to be one of those people. Man, oh, man, this is getting off to a good start. But we should do an episode on that sometime. People have requested it a few times. Yeah. I'm going to go find out what it is. We have to go to the trouble of writing an article for it because there's not one that's okay. I got a few of those in the hopper that I'd like to do. I do too. I just haven't been able to get around to them. You've been lazy. No, I've been busy. I said we are you ready? Yeah. Are you familiar with Halitosis? Hold on. I've got a little intro for this. Okay. You've heard the word halitosis, obviously. Yes. We're about to do an episode on Halitosis, so I hope so. Yes. But even before this, you've heard the word Halitosis? Yes. Bad breath. It's like a clinical term for bad breath. And that is true, and it always was a clinical term for bad breath. But the reason, Chuck, that you and I know that the word Halitosis means bad breath is thanks to a nice little marketing scheme by the three guys who ran the company that made Listerine back in the 1920s. Yeah. We've talked about Dr. Joseph Lister before, and that Listerine was an surgical antiseptic. Yes. And it was marketed as a surgical antiseptic and then a household antiseptic. And then they said, you know what? We need to expand our market share, so let's get into other markets. And so they said, mouthwash. We'll start telling people to use it as mouthwash. And they made, like, their office in turn put some in his mouth. Right. Switch it around. He died. So they went and reformulated it a little bit, added a little water, right? And then bang, boom, they had lister in the mouthwash. The problem was they said, well, nobody's going to just start using a mouthwash for no good reason. We have to appeal to their low self esteem. And that's what they did by looking through a medical dictionary, finding the word halitosis and saying that's it. Yeah, it's an age old trick in ads. It's to prey upon how bad you feel about yourself on a daily basis. Yeah. Especially using medical jargon. Michelle Foucault called it the medical gaze, whereas basically, like if you add something that sounds medically to a problem that your product can take care of, you've got gangbusters right there. Yeah. And it was an archaic term, latin term that had gone away completely. Yeah. It comes from the Latin halideus for breath and the Greek suffix osis, which is used to indicate abnormality or a disease state. Yeah, but prelisterine people weren't walking around saying the word halitosis. It had gone the way of the dodo as a word. No. And even still, it was kind of like people weren't really doing a lot to take care of their breath anyway. It wasn't a thing until this group from the listing company said, we're going to make it a thing and we're going to make using mouthwash to combat this thing a thing. And they did within a decade. It was just basically like that's what you did? You use mouthwash every morning? Yeah, and I thought it was pretty funny. Where did you get that? Cracked. Yeah, cracked. Yeah, it was a great article. And they said they went on to use other words in advertising later on, like homotosis, which is if you didn't have attractive furniture and bromodosis if you had smelly feet. Yes, and I don't think they didn't catch on as well. Not like halitosis. For some reason, halotosis did catch on and as a result there are people out there who have haloidophobia. Yeah, I'm one of them. Oh, yeah. I don't need to see a shrink, but my first girlfriend had halitosis and I think I can say that because I don't think she listens and I don't think she knows she's my first girlfriend. Okay. Like I never said you're my first girlfriend. Right. But yeah, she had bad and I say halitosis. To me, there's a difference between everyone gets bad breath occasionally. Right. But there's a certain tang that's very identifiable that I call halitosis. She had it and I felt like I had to kiss her and stuff. This is my first girlfriend. I had to learn how to do that junk. Yeah, man. And I have dreams to this day, halitosis kissing dreams. Do you really? That I will see some gorgeous girl in my dream and I go to kiss her and she has this awful rotten breath. It's a recurring dream. So I guess I have halotophobia. I'm very aware of it in it. That's why I have a tongue scraper and all that junk. Well, apparently that's one way to treat it. Yeah. We're getting ahead of ourselves. So spoiler. And I should say I have had a mild case of halitophobia. It may or may not have been warranted. I don't know. I have my own microphone cover for that reason. I know, but it's not because you're protecting other people from your halitosis. Right. You don't want your nose and other people's stuff. Right? Yes. Okay. Because the microphone cover at one point smells really bad, and I got revolted, and I ordered one the next day. Right. So halitophobia refers to your fear of your bad breath. You fearing other people's bad breath. Yeah. That's a different thing then. Okay. Yeah. No, I was worried I had bad breath. I guess part of me, like, I have that concern because of other people's bad breath about myself, too, though. I think that's why I'm, like, manic about brushing my tongue. Oh, yeah. That's where I really got it. I sat next to a movie I sat next to some dude in a movie theater once, and he was facing forward. I was facing forward, and I almost couldn't sit next to him the whole time because it was that bad. He should have moved. I don't know why I didn't. Yeah, that's become my go to self punishing, I guess. No, I used to do that. Like, at concerts, I always said that I would just always, 100% of the time be next to the most obnoxious drunk place. Right. And it used to just bother me and get under my skin. But then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to start moving. Yeah. This didn't make me like I wasn't mad at the guy. I felt horrible for him almost to the point where I was going to get in my car and follow him home. And then after he got into his house, I was going to come in after him and then sit them down, and then maybe we have some milk or something, get them all calm down, let him sleep. And then when he woke up the next morning, I'd still be sitting at his kitchen table. And then I would say to him, I have something to tell you. I would say, you have really bad breath, man. And he'd say, no, crap, dude. I have a condition. Well, that's why you don't necessarily want to say anything to anybody, because they may. Yeah. So let's get down to this. Garlic, onions. These are the things that people frequently associate Hallett's houses with. Yes. Which is a bunch of BS. Well, no, I mean, like, it can give you bad breath. Yeah, but to me, that's the temporary bad breath that one gets just from food. Yes. And the reason why you do get bad breath from, say, like, onions in particular is because garlic contains something called allison, which in the stomach is converted to alonethyl sulfide, which is not metabolized, and which comes back up as gas from your gut. So when you have bad breath from onions, it's not onion particles in your mouth still, that's gas leaking out of your gut into your mouth and just kind of stick in there for a couple of hours. You ever take garlic pills? Yeah, it's weird. I'd just rather eat garlic any day of the week. Yeah, I mean, I eat tons of garlic. I love it. But I have taken garlic pills in the past here and there, and I will forget that I've taken one. And then you burp up like, I have lasagna for breakfast, but it doesn't taste like good garlic. It tastes awful. It's medicinal garlic. I mean, the pill didn't taste like anything, but my burp is definitely tasty garlicky for me, I just thought it was different. Taste different? Yes. I'd just rather, like, cut the top off of a whole bulb of garlic, put some olive oil on it, wrap it in foil, or put it in your clay garlic baker and put it in the oven for a little while and chow down, baby. Yeah. Just squeeze those things right into your mouth. Yeah. It's so good for you. We are in sync today. So you say your bet is that your garlic and onions don't count to you. No, I think there is bad breath you can just have because maybe forgot to brush or obviously morning breath, which we'll get to. And then I think some people, unfortunately, have a constant state of this very specific bad breath. Yeah. So I think one in four people have actual halitosis. Right. That seems a little high, but maybe people are just doing a good job of masking it. Maybe so, but some people aren't. So what it comes down to, ultimately, Chuck, halitosis is as simple as the bacteria in our mouth. The fact that we have bacteria, it's the same thing as our armpits. Why? They smell bacteria breaking down stuff from our bodies beneficially into stinky little gases. Yeah. And giving off little bacteria, toots. Yeah. The average person has 800 types of bacteria in the mouth, and they don't need, like it's good thing they don't tell kids stuff like this growing up in school, because French kissing probably wouldn't happen. Well, then maybe they should tell kids in school. But it's really kind of a disgusting thing. Like, you don't see people licking armpits. Some people might. Ben Stiller. What was that in? Was it Ben Stiller who was into it? No, I saw it. Or was it a movie? Right. Yeah, I've seen that. Flirting with Disaster. Ben stiller flirting with disaster? But I can't remember if it was Ben Stiller who was into it, or if it was Josh Brolin was into Patricia Arquette's armpits. That's right. Okay. Yeah. And Patricia Arquette was married to Ben Stiller. Yeah. And she let him look, her armpit. What a weird movie that was. I love that movie. You can't catch the wind. You remember that part? Yeah. All right, back to the mouth and how disgusting it is. They say if you magnify just a single cell on the surface of that tongue, you would see about 100 types of bacteria right. Just on that cell. So this bacteria, when you eat and you swallow food after masticating, it which isn't dirty, it means chew. You leave little particles in your mouth, it gets stuck in your teeth. Or maybe if you have beginning periodontal disease, it might get stuck in your gums, along your teeth a little bit. The very least, it's going to get stuck to the back of your tongue, and it just kind of sits there. And the bacteria in your mouth love this stuff. It's food to them. They break it down into particles and particles, and they're like, this is pretty good, but I can't get the energy from it fully, so I'm going to break down the amino acids even further. And then, bam. When I do, I'm going to basically emit sulfuric gases. Yeah. And that's where bad breath comes from. There's sulfuric gasses that are, again, a byproduct of the bacteria eating the food particles in your mouth. Yeah. Leftover proteins. Yeah. And the mouth is a great breeding ground for it because it's clammy and warm, and it's just got everything that the bacteria loves to produce those stinky, stinky smells. But dry mouth can also cause halitosis, because that's what you get overnight and why you have stinky morning breath. Right. Because your saliva production decreases when you sleep. Otherwise you'd just be a drooling mess. I wonder why that doesn't work during naps on your school desk. I don't know. I guess because you don't go to sleep enough, maybe. Or if, like, your face is pressed against wood, it's a signal of your body to increase saliva production. Yeah. Wake up, the teacher is coming. But chronic dry mouth is something that can affect people during the daytime as well. It's called zero stomia. And if you have zero stomia, you're going to have a harder time fighting your bad breath because your mouth is always dry. Like the mouth. The saliva just acts as a natural mouthwash, right? Exactly. It not only rinses away, like, food particles, it rinses away bacteria. It rinses away the dead skin cells and dead mouth cells that the bacteria also eat. And yeah, the drier it is, the less that action takes place. And you got sticky breath. Yeah. So if you're on antihistamines or antidepressants or painkillers, dry mouth is a side effect of some of those drugs. So you might have a harder time. And if you're sick anyway, you're going to stink your breath, too. Like if you're fighting a sinus infection, let's say it's gross. Yes. Stinky breath. Because that mucus trickles back from your sinuses down to your tongue. And sits there and gets eaten up, too. Nasty stuff. It isn't this whole thing. I'm just cringing. I'm going to have one of those dreams tonight. You could? A sneaky halotosis breath dream? Yes. The hot girl bad breath. It's always the same. Does Emily know you're having dreams about kissing hot girls with bad breath? Yeah, she thinks it's funny. She thinks it's because of my repressed religious upbringing, repressed sexuality. Like, I won't even in my dreams, allow myself to kiss the model. That's hilarious. I call it vomit tongue. It's so gross. Oh, yeah, that is pretty bad. Yeah, they're the worst dreams I can't explain to you because they're really headed in the right direction at first, and it's terrible. And when you're an old married man, that's all you got. I got you vomit tongue? No, just your dreams. I know what you mean. You can't be assaulted for having a dream. I guess you could, but that's not a very nice wife. Give me my dream time. Right. I'm going to sleep. I'm down a slippery slope right now. Let's pull out with the ketoacidosis man. Okay, so, Chuck, when you eat onions, when you have garlic, when you have food particles, all the stuff that's normal bad breath stuff. There's also other things, metabolic things often that can give you a different type of breath that may or may not be bad. One. Bad one is if you have liver problems, your liver is shutting down. You're going to have what's called mousey breath. Can you imagine what mousy breath smells like? No. Like, apparently your breath smells like live, writhing mice. Interesting. Mousey breath. I can't think of what else it would denote. I don't know what a mouth smells like. Sure. I mean, have you ever smelled like a rodent cage? Yeah, but they smell like cedar and poop. Is that what it smells like? That's what they mean, is cedar. So is ketoacidosis the no carb effect? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That is something that will warn you about if you are trying to attain what's known as ketosis with, like, an Atkins type diet. Some people, when they reach that blissful level of fat burning, it also takes its toll on their mouth and their breath. Yeah, it's like a fruity acetony smell. Okay, that sounds better than mousy. Yes. When you're in ketosis, when you deprive your body of carbohydrates, it doesn't have that energy to burn right there, so it starts turning inward and going after your fat stores. And when the body burns, stored fat ketones are what is released as energy or burned as energy. Stinky ketones. Yeah. The smell from burning ketones is what gives you that fruity breath. Yeah, I've seen websites. They now have the articles. Of course, if this is the diet you want, this is how you can help yourself. Right. And one of the things that's always eat bread, it's like yeah, but all of a sudden you're not on that diet, so that's no solution. Yeah. You can get knocked out of ketosis pretty easy, I'm sure. Yeah, I think eating bread would do it. Well, I guess we should talk about after a message break, maybe how you can help yourself out if you have halitosis. All right, so let's say you are, sadly just one of those people that just has that funky breath. One in four, right? Yeah. If you're among that 25%, that does seem high. Yeah, doesn't it? That's like chronic calatosis, right? Yeah. Where it's not just like brushing your teeth isn't going to do the trick. 25%. Yeah. That sounds like a fact brought to us by the listering Company. It might be, but like I said, maybe 15% of those people are really trying their hardest. So you don't notice it. Got you. And other people are just smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day, which is a bad combination. Yeah, it's a pretty bad combination. So somehow they become greater than the sum of their parts. Yeah, yeah. But that's breakfast for college students. Sure. Coffee and cigarettes. So what do you do if you're going to battle this stuff, if it's more than just something like a breath mint? Can handle? What's going to happen here? Well, the breath mint, it's a good thing to mention that that can provide a little temporary relief, but it's just masking the funk underneath. Right. So you're really not going to get very far as a solution? No, because all it's doing is creating the sensation of freshness in your mouth. Because I don't know what breath mints do. I frequently wondered, what does menthol do? Does it open up your pores so, like, the air feels colder and fresher? I don't know what creates that sensation. You know how to don't be dumb episode to me, but I think it might be what you want to do is get to the root of the problem, which is that bacteria and like we said, food particles in your teeth is a big cause. So brushing and flossing and the old tongue scraper and brushing the back of the tongue. You scrape the tongue? Doesn't that make you gag? No, it doesn't bother me. I've gotten used to it. I mean, occasionally, if I overreach, that might be a little, but I'm not like, wretching in the bathroom every morning. I think we should keep a webcam in your bathroom when you're getting ready, just to catch those times that you do. Yeah, just make a vine compilation. That'd be hilarious. So attacking the source of the food particles. And I have the fake tooth now, so I have to be extra careful to really brush along there, because why? I think it would be like they made it out of some new super polymer that reflects bacteria. No, the tooth itself is not the source, but where it meets the gum is not a natural tooth. So I just have to really brush the crap out of that area of my gum. Get the crap out. I don't use mouthwash, though, which is interesting. No, I just do toothpaste. Well, apparently it's not necessarily and plenty of mouthwash is a suggestion for this. Specifically types that contain, according to the British Medical journal, chlorohexadrene gluconate, chlorohexidine gluconate, or what you want, because they kill bacteria. I take issue with this. One of the main functions of mouthwash isn't to just go in and kill bacteria, although most mouthwashes do that. It's the swishing action, loosens food particles and gets them out from in between your teeth. So you should wash before you brush. What I'm saying is you don't necessarily need to use a mouthwash that kills bacteria because you kind of want healthy bacteria. You want what's called an oral ecosystem in your healthy oral ecosystem or ecology in your mouth. Remember the poop shake episode? The poop transplant fecal transplant episode? Yeah. We ended up talking about the microbiome and how important it is to humanity. Sure. Same thing with our mouth. Yeah. You don't want to kill all that bacteria. No. And there's plenty of bacteria that causes problems, like streptococcus mutants is what gives us cavities. But there's also plenty of beneficial bacteria where you would have a mouthful of dead skin cells all over your tongue if it weren't for this helpful bacteria breaking the stuff down. Your problem. Everybody wants to kill bacteria. That's not necessarily a good thing. As a matter of fact, I think we're learning more and more that it's not a good thing. So I say avoid the mouthwash that kills bacteria and just use some sort of mouthwash that maybe has a minty flavor, but it's just really just swishing the food particles out and getting rid of the bacteria's food that's creating their stinky sulfur ducts. Yes, exactly. And because getting rid of the food is a big part of it, I would suggest brushing your teeth after lunch, too. Don't make it just when you get up and before you go to bed. I say go for three times a day. Whoa, man. Who has time for that? Everybody. Another good trick is to drink a lot of water. Just keeping your mouth hydrated on a daily basis is going to help. You said that saliva is like a natural mouthwash. Water helps. It does the same thing, loosens food particles, gets rid of dead skin cells in the back of your tongue, apparently is like ground zero for it. Yeah, I think there's like 20 times more bacteria there than elsewhere because it's like this bumpy surface that's out of the way of all this other stuff. So things really stick and accumulate back there. So that's an area you want to target, apparently, with the tongue scraper. Yeah, and you could just brush it as well. I do both. But if you are a grown adult and you are not either brushing your tongue or using a tongue scraper, then you're not doing it right. Is that right? Yes. Somebody needs to teach you. I give a quick part of it, a quick brush with my toothbrush over my tongue, but I worry about killing taste buds. Like, I love tasting things. You're not going to kill any taste buds. Sure. You can kill taste buds with that. Well, I haven't killed any. Are you sure? Think about what kind of a super taster you could be without your taste. Yeah, I do worry about that. I'm kind of like I'd rather have low level bad breath and be able to taste great stuff than have no bad breath whatsoever and not be able to taste. I would rather have no bad breath and still taste everything. Well, yeah. That's the Holy Grail. What kind of Flynn plan world are you living in? It's called Chuck's life. It's nice. It is nice. If none of this stuff works for you, you may have a problem. Like, you might want to go see a dentist and maybe even a doctor. Well, yeah, the dentist might say, go to the doctor. Yes, go to the doctor because you have mousy breath, which means your liver is shutting down. And find a new dentist. You know, there's a smell test that they do, that dentists do. Oh, really? Yes. What they'll do is they'll say, okay, this is going to be gross, but I want you to breathe through your mouth, and I'm going to sniff close to your mouth. Wow. And then they say, okay, now I want you to breathe through your nose, and I'm going to sniff close to your nose. And they can determine whether it's a nasal like, a problem in your nasal cavity that can give you bad breath. You can have stinky sinuses so gross. Or if it's in your mouth, and then they can further deduct the dentist doing this? Yeah. And if it's coming through your nose, it suggests possibly not just your sinuses, but it could be pulmonary, too. Like you could have some sort of lung problem that's creating gasses that stink and are coming out of your nose rather than your mouth. So I guess they train you to do that in dental school, huh? You have to. That's not a very popular day. Everybody pair up. There's the one guy in the corner, like, eating a sandwich. Yeah. Can I give two more tips? Yeah, please. Get ten more if you eat a crunchy breakfast, like granola cereal or something like that. Okay. It's going to clear out a lot of the gunk from the night before. You just want to make sure you get rid of all those food particles afterwards. Okay. And then if you're interested in a mouthwash that is not antibacterial really? Sure. You take a half a cup of warm water and a t of a teaspoon of cinnamon and one teaspoon of honey, swirl it all together and swish it around and gargle it. That's like old timey mouthwash, apparently. Yeah. And we could probably recommend apple cider vinegar just for anything that's like the wonder liquid, it seems like. Dude, I was once on my way to a full blown kidney, or maybe urinary infection, bladder infected. Something was going on and it was starting to go downhill fast. And Yummy was like, drink this, and drink a lot of it. And I started drinking apple cider vinegar and raw cranberry juice. Like the real cranberry juice over like about an eight to twelve hour period, like, really hit it and gone. And it was happening. That happened, was going on. And I thwarted it. He stopped the heaven. Yes. I do a shot every morning now of apple cider vinegar. Oh, vinegar. Yeah. And don't get just the stuff in the store that you should be cooking and cleaning with. I can't remember the brand, but there's the super potable one, the one that you'll find at a health food store. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but there's like one brand that everyone goes to. Right. And it's tough, man. If you ever just do a straight shot of it without diluting it, it's hardcore. Yeah. Everything I was doing was taking maybe a shot and then diluting it in like, 8oz of water. It's still very difficult. Yeah. You can do it, though, especially when you're fighting off some sort of infection. Yes. And you want to brush your teeth after that because vendors gross just brush your teeth all the time. Yeah. If you want to learn more about Halitosis, I don't know what more you could possibly learn, but you can try. You can type that word into the search bar, how Stuff Works.com, and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. We're going to address our April Fools prank officially here with this one. I want to say first of all, Josh, you and Ben was blown away by the performance. Thank you. You guys sold it so hard, and we just threw it together. We were like, hey, let's just try. It wasn't some big plot. There's no practice planned for weeks and weeks. Like, hey, maybe we should do an April Fool's joke this year. And I said, hey, maybe I quit the show. And Ben took my place. And you guys just winged it and like, nailed it, man. I was sitting here beside you and I felt like I was watching my own funeral. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, you kept going, like, cut, stop. We're like, no, we have to press on. So we're not jokesters, typically, but I think it was the only one to be released on April Fool's Day. It was the first time we had the opportunity to release one on April Fools and look out two years from now, because that will be a Thursday. Yes, but if we do, like Josh. Left the show, everyone be like, no, or they'll be expecting that and we'll do it. And they'll be like, well, wait a minute. They thought that I would think that maybe we could go from there. I don't know. You could have a heart attack on the show or something, right? But anyway, we got an outpouring of people because I was dead or missing. I know people really reacted to that. A lot of people said they didn't realize how much they needed you until you were gone. And, yeah, there were plenty of people who said, like, Josh, if it had been you, I would have felt the same way. Well, I got to play the martyr. I got the plum roll. It was nice. I had to do nothing and just get showered with Adulation. But it was very neat to see. People were like, never leave. Don't ever do that again. It was pretty cool, actually. And also, I want to say on behalf of Ben, he asked us to let everybody know whenever we could that he actually was purposely sounding terrible. Is that what he was doing? That was playacting. Yeah. The whole point was like, we wanted it to be super awkward. I think you guys achieved that. Okay, so go ahead back on the dead Chuck. So this is for Matt from Athens, Georgia. Go, Dogs. Hey, guys. My girlfriend and I have been listening for years. I didn't realize just how important the show was to us, though, until your April Fool's Day show. I listened to the episode before she did and he didn't even tell her. That's kind of mean. He did. And I was keen on setting her up for the gag, so I sat her down at the kitchen table and told her that stuff you should know. It's some big news. I knew she'd be sucked into the prank but was not prepared for what happened next. She started to cry and denounced the show with one of you gone saying she would stop listening. She was worried about Chuck. I even had people worried about Emily. They thought Emily was in the hospital. That's awesome. Chuck started she said she would stop listening and was worried about Chuck and started tossing out possible explanations like the best of conspiracy theorists. She was so sad that I had to fast forward to the reveal after her surprising yet pretty cute reaction, I was hoping to swap out her emotional connection for a birthday shout out. She's a contemporary dancer and uses the ideas in your podcast and her classes and choreography. Think dances about Alan Turing. I got to see this. Yeah, it's crazy. I admit this pretty crass way of getting a happy birthday, but I think it's worth a shot. So, Matt, you didn't tell us your girlfriend's name, so we're just going to say happy birthday to Matt's girlfriend from Athens. Happy birthday, Matt's girlfriend. I'm going to guess Jennifer. Matt, enjoy sleeping on the couch this evening. You know, we fooled some of our friends. Even Joe Randazzo texted me and said, you guys actually fooled me for about 8 seconds. Is that right? Yes. We got a lot of people who said, like, I didn't fall for anything all day, and the only people who got me the stuff you should know is because you guys just destroyed it. And then the one pulled me for a minute, I thought I was on the show for you, so I have to leave. The ones that I felt bad about, though, were the ones who listened to it after April 1. Yeah. And we're like, Australian. Yeah. They didn't realize it was the it was exactly. Yeah. So, everyone, thank you very much for the outpouring of emotion. We both feel very loved. Yeah, sure. I mean, we know people like the show, but when you hear stuff like that, it's like, wow, people kind of depend on this. And we know now that we're not allowed to ever leave. No, it's go out and murder suicide if anything. Okay, cool. Agreed. So if you guys love us so much, you can hang out with us outside of the podcast, too. On social media. We're on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, just search stuff you should know Xyzk, Josh and Chuck in any of those, and it will bring us up and you will love it. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and just go to the hub of all things Josh and Chuck that's stuffyou.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.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. 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 podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. The app today." | ||
425e30ee-53a3-11e8-bdec-6feae6645c2e | Guardian Angels: Behind the Red Beret | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/guardian-angels-behind-the-red-beret | If you grew up in the 1980s, then you know who the Guardian Angels are. If you don't then you're in for quite a story. Listen in! | If you grew up in the 1980s, then you know who the Guardian Angels are. If you don't then you're in for quite a story. Listen in! | Tue, 01 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=274, tm_isdst=0) | 96223488 | audio/mpeg | "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, time, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One NA member FDIC 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 s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles WTOK. Brian over there. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuffy. Snow all got our red berets on. We're trained up, ready to kick some New York City subway, but I got my nun checked. You probably had those when you were a kid. No, I never did. Just throwing stars. I had a mom who cared about me. Okay, who allowed you to have throwing stars? No throwing stars. No throwing trucks you can sneak. I thought you had throwing stars now. Tommy Roper had the throwing star. He just trained me on them. I didn't actually ever on my own. I got you. I didn't either. But you could hide a throwing star in your bedroom. It's hard to hide those nunchucks unless you do it on the mattress and you know it's there. That's right. Already. Yeah. You're pretty proud of yourself for that one. I was. I got no laughs, but you might like it. It was good. So, obviously, since we're talking nunchucks and Tommy Roper, we're doing an episode check on the guardian angels. And let me tell you from experience, you probably ran into this as well, but researching guardian angels on the Internet brings up a lot of crackpot stuff. Yeah, it's very tough to find the stuff I was looking for, but I finally did. I hacked through it, and I got to the actual guardian angel stuff. Yeah. And we have a special guest at the end of this episode. Right? We were going to announce that. Right? Well, you put in the title, didn't you? Yeah, but if people don't read the full title, if it doesn't display on your pod player of choice okay, our old friend John Hodgman is here in the office today? Yeah. Like right now. He's waiting. He's in Jerry's office right now. Is that where you put him? Yeah, we put him in Jerry's office so he could have some alone time. His suitcase is right there. I think it'd be kind of hilarious for us to go through it on the air. It is. I have that exact suitcase. Nice. Former sponsor of the show. Oh, yeah. We didn't get suitcases. I got one. Not from the show. Did you? I got one for end of the world sponsorship. You did? Oh, I'm so mad. I had to pay real cash money. Did you? I got one for free. It's pink. You got the pink one? Yeah. All right. We won't mention the name brand. Okay. You have to go listen to the End of the World to hear that or they have to advertise again. Yeah, I'm so mad because I even asked. I was like, hey, can't believe can I get one of these bags? And they're like, no, they're not going to send them to everyone because it's too expensive. Peloton. Send us a peloton. A peloton. We have peloton. These are thousands of dollars. I know, and they advertise for, like, two minutes. Thanks. Peloton. Oh, man. So anyway, John Hodgman is here in Jerry's office waiting on us to finish recording about the Guardian Angels, right. Because he has a new book coming out called Medallion Status. Yeah, I just put that together. That's really coincidental that Hodgman showed up to be on the show right before his new book comes out. Medallion status. True stories from secret rooms that you can pre order now. Have you read it? I didn't get a chance to. Did you really read it? I really read it because we just got them, like a few days ago. It's a good read. It's fun to read. It kind of sucks you in. It's great. Can't wait. It's a good read. So anyway, John will be here and he will talk incessantly about Medallion Status. So we'll just save that. Yeah, we'll let it just kind of peter out at the end. Jerry will fade, and that's how the episode will end. I bet he'll have something to say about the Guardian Angels, too, because John lives in New York City. Yeah, and I noticed in this article, I guess, assumed that everyone knew what it was because it was never even really described what the Guardian angels is until, like, the fourth page. Right. That's what I want to say. There are probably a significant number of people who think we're going to talk about angels looking over your shoulder. No, we are talking about in New York City and now 130 other cities in about 13 countries. Yes. Okay. Yeah, sure. They are a group of citizen anti crime activists, some would call them vigilantes, that formed a nonprofit under the leadership of Curtis. How do you pronounce that? In February 1979. And if you grew up in the 80s in the saw a lot of Guardian Angels, and this dude in particular, on every TV show you could imagine, every nonfictional, scripted TV show, they were maybe, like, 910 as famous as Mr. T at his peak. They were that famous. And you get the feeling that he loved it, being famous. Well, let me tell you about this guy, because this is one really big accusation that's leveled against the Guardian Angels, that they were just in it for the PR. Right. And they definitely did know how to get PR. Sure. And Curtis Leeway was a PR magnet from his birth, basically. It sounds like it. Age six, he makes his first public appearance on Romper Room member Romper Room. Sure. So he's a guest on Romper Room. Years later, he was a news boy who got NEWSBOY of the Year, because on his route, he saved six people from a burning building and ended up getting to shake Richard Nixon's hand as a result. This guy Forrest Gump. Okay. It keeps going. All right, what else? As a younger kid than that, I think he collected, single handedly, five and a half tons of recyclable paper to be recycled years before anyone even knew what the word recycling meant. That's awesome. He organized trash pickups around the place. Cool. Around New York, I should say. He was a legit, real deal PR machine who would then also follow through and make, like, an actual impact on the world. Like a real self starter, even as a kid. Yes, self starter. Also big time self promoter. And that is a real big part of the Guardian Angels. So much so that, yes, it is a very widespread accusation that level against them. But most people who lived in New York, in the would say, so what? These guys, what they're doing, actually is worth all that publicity. So leave them alone. So let's talk about crime. Okay. Because I have a lot of feelings about this whole organization, too. I was flip flopping all over the place. Really? Yeah, because when you grow up as a kid and you don't know much about them, you're like, oh, yeah, man, put on those Berets, get on the subway and take it into your own hands. You get to be a little older person. You're like, no, don't do that at all. Let's stay out of the cops way. Sure. Yeah. So here's the deal. In the 70s, crime, we talked about this, I feel like, on something else. I don't know. That was on a different podcast. No, we talked about it. We talked about Julian in Cleaning Up New York. Yeah, but I was thinking about a movie crush episode on Escape from New York. No, you weren't. Which sort of that movie fed into this hysteria about crime. So did Death Wish? Death Wish Two? Yes, death Wish Three. Death Wish Four. Definitely Death Wish Five. Have you ever seen Death Wish three. I think oh, I think I only saw the first one. I went on a little kick not too long ago where I watched all of them. Really? And not the remake, obviously. The real Troubles. I saw the remake, too. I was on that big of a kid. You saw the Bruce Willis one. Yeah. Was it terrible? It was really bad. It was like Eli Roth, of course he's going to make this astoundingly nuts. And he didn't he made a real straightforward, like I think he was saying, like, well, this is going to be my entree into mainstream. Why is it so bad? Like, how do you mess up? It wasn't bad. Bad is not the right word for it. It was thin is a good word. It really could have been much bulkier and bigger and just better. It wasn't enough to it okay. And Bronson, he was like a walking cardboard stand up in a lot of ways, especially with his acting and his hey, back up, buddy. His stuff was more there was more to it. I think it was because they went so far beyond the line in those movies, like attacks on women and incredible violence. And just like the Death Wish movies are really violent. These were mainstream films that came out. But Death Wish Three, I think it just is totally off the rails. The first two are at least trying to maintain some sort of sense, like a story about a man and his family being attacked. Right. And he fights back, exploring real topics. That definitely ties into this mentality of the Guardian Angels. Death Wish Three also does in the way that it describes this New York where it's just chaos, right? There's no law, there's no order, no one is in control. People are shooting rocket launches at each other. Like gangs are just doing whatever they want. And if you're an honest citizen, you have to go murder other people or else you're going to be murdered yourself. Well, that was how they got you to buy into Escape from New York was that in the year 1997, which is hysterical to think about now, crime got so bad that they shut New York down and just made it into a prison. They built a wall around Manhattan Island. Kind of a fun idea. Yes. Really great premise. Yes. I thought that was a good movie, too. So anyway, let's talk about real crime and how bad really was it in major metropolitan areas in the United States. And here are some stats for you. The grabster. Put this together for us. And I think some of the stuff is funny that Ed said more than 1600 homicides in New York and 76 more than 1881. And he said homicide rates vary between 19 and 25 murders per 100,000 residents in the but I can't make heads or tails of that. It's real numbers I need. Well, those are murders. Then you've got muggings, obviously. Rape, burglary, vandalism, stuff like that. But I did some figuring. They're on pace in New York City this year for 272 murders. Okay. That's actually kind of high. There were 1819 81. Yes. Which is really high. Five murders a day. But then you think about, like, yeah, but New York is a huge city. There's five boroughs. That's, like, one murder per borough per day. That's to be expected. The idea that you can't walk around without being killed is preposterous. The likelihood is that you're never going to be even in the vicinity of a murder, much less the victim of one. Okay. With that kind of population. But there were nine murders on the subway in 1978, period, on the subway alone. And in 1979, there were 250 felonies a week on the New York City subway. Right. So it's a real concern to ride the subway in the 1970s in New York. Like a legit fear. It really was. Right. So there was a lot of violence in addition to violence, in addition to violent crime and robbery, muggings and rapes and just violence. Right. There was also the sense of lawlessness on the subways in particular, where there's graffiti everywhere and you could get beat up. You could have somebody shake you down just riding on the subway. They just seemed dangerous, too. In addition to actually being kind of dangerous, especially compared to today, they seemed dangerous. So people were freaked out right away. 250 felonies a week on the subway is a lot. Okay. And then on top of that in the 70s. So in 1975, New York apparently came just within a few hours of going bankrupt, and they faced some real severe budget cuts, one of which was the transit police. They laid off 1400 of their 3600 cops, and they cut off patrols from 07:00 P.m. To, I think, 05:00 A.m.. Yeah. So the criminals were like, oh, it's just lawless down there. And it really was. Yeah. And so it was in this context that Curtis Leeway basically said, hey, you know what? Somebody should do something about this. The cops aren't doing anything. The city's not doing anything. Somebody needs to do something because people are getting robbed and mugged, and at the very least, people are afraid to ride the subway and we should do something. Yes. He said, I'm a world champion recycler. Yes, I've met Richard Nixon. Listen to me. Should we take a break already? I think we just worked ourselves uprothy. Break. I got to calm down. Let's take a break, and we'll talk a little bit about Sliwa's background 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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So come on, let's work hard, play hard, and drink. Martha's Shard, available at a wine aisle near you. And on 19 Crimes.com, that's one nine Crimes.com. Please drink responsibly. That's why. All right. Curtis Leeway, founder of the Guardian Angels, was born in 1954 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up there. Webster's defines Curtis Lewis, depending on who you ask, and there are a lot of different stories about Sliwa. Even within his own story, he has sort of varied things over time. He either dropped out of high school or was expelled for student activism. And he has a long life of activism. Well, that's what I was talking about, for sure. Yeah. So he never still is today. Sure. He never lost that, which is great. And his dad said, Go get a job, you punk. He went to McDonald's in the Bronx, got a job there, and he basically said this McDonald's was nuts. And I don't know if you've ever been to McDonald's late night in New York City. Like, now I have. It's nuts. Now you're not getting murdered. But it is crazy town. And a McDonald's at two in the morning in the safest parts of New York City. Sure. Yeah. Like midtown Manhattan. Yes. It is kind of fun to go and witness, actually. Yeah. Because it's never normal. No, it's definitely not. But it's also it's not really dangerous these days. No, it's not. But it's never normal. I've only been done this a few times, but there's always been an incident or something going on. All right. I think he just came up with New York's new tourist campaign. Never normally, never normal. So he describes basically this working there as a nightly battle against gangs. And he said that the people that work there kept, like, nunchucks back in the back in the kitchen, like, stash next to the fryer, like Tommy Roper. Yeah. And if something happened, which things always did, we were ready. Right. So apparently one night that actually came in handy when some gang came in and they were hassling the customers. Sleew is the night manager, so it's up to him to do something and he's the kind of guy who feels like you should do something about that, especially if you feel like the cops aren't going to do anything, which is an ongoing theme of sleeve kind of rhetoric. Yes. Perfect. So he jumps over the counter and proceeds to get beaten up by this gang. Well, for a while, sure. His coworkers, who had these weapons stashed around the fryer, grabbed their weapons and jumped in and beat the gang off. And apparently this experience, according to Sliwa, inspired him to say, let's make this particular McDonald's a safe place haven from crime by defending it ourselves and putting the word out that if you come here and try to make trouble, we're going to beat you up with our Friar weapon. Yeah. And it's here that we should really emphasize that a lot of this is from his own words, and I'm certainly not calling the man a liar, but he is definitely a PR guy and has a bit of PT. Barnum to him. So these stories should be taken a little bit with a grain of salt, I think. Yeah. One big thing that differentiates him in my mind from PT. Barnum is, number one, no singing. Number two, he did not view people as suckers or jumps to be taken advantage of. Sure. As a matter of fact, from everything that I've seen about this guy, say what you want about his kind of bravado and grandiosity and potential lawlessness, he seems to have been very much focused on inspiring people to better themselves in their community. Absolutely. That does seem to be like one of his legitimate goals. Yes. Not only making his community safer, but the guardian angels themselves. As we'll see, some of these might have been petty criminals that he's trying to reform. So he's done a lot of great things. All right, so he said, all right, we got this McDonald's lockdown. Everyone is coming in here, and they can eat their Happy Meals. This might have been pre Happy Meal, even. Yeah, it was right around that time. It would have been during the time when they were in those awesome foam containers. Remember those? Oh, my God, they just make my brain fall in my ear with nostalgia. Yeah. Remember the McDLT? Sure. Hot side. Hot. Cool side cool. Yeah, sure. Extra waste of foam. The foam containers were an atrocity, but they were beautiful. I know what you mean. They had a shimmery quality to them, and the colors that they chose, everything. Right. So wonderfully toxic. So he said, let's extend this out because it's working so well in McDonald's. Right. Let's take it to the streets. Let's take it to the Muggers Express. The fortrain that he had to ride to work with. That was particularly dangerous. Right. Because, again, remember, there's no cops at night on the subway line. No cops. And so the McDonald's night shift became known as the Magnificent 13. And he said, let's take it to the streets and let's start recruiting people to do this for real. But you know what we need, because he's a PR guy, very smart to do this. He's like, we need a uniform like the Magnus of 13. We're all in our McDonald's uniforms, which makes that work. Can you guys not do that? Can you use the proper uniform? Can you not bring Nunchucks to work? Sort of in the brochure. And so he developed the iconic red beret, shiny red jacket. What's it called? Satin. Like a satin jacket? Yeah. And a white Tshirt with their logo, which is the eye peering out from the winged pyramid. I could not find why he came up with that design. I bet he hand drew it. Sure. Oh, yeah. Definitely more type, for sure. Yeah. So they went from this magnificent 13 to the Guardian Angels around that time, and they started patrolling the subways. And we'll talk about some of their tactics and methods in a little bit. But one of the things that first struck Sliwa was that he found that they were not welcomed by the police. The police in the city didn't say, this is great, we need a little help, and these people are stepping up to help keep their community safer and fight crime. The city did quite the opposite. They said, These guys are nuts. Don't listen to them. They need to stop what they're doing and we're going to harass them. Even though, legally speaking, everything they were doing was within their rights. That's right. And one of the reasons the city wasn't down to begin with was there was a bit of a history here. There was a group in 1968 in the Bronx called the Black Spades, and they had the goal of fighting racism and keeping the neighborhood safe, sort of like Sliwa. And they eventually morphed into a criminal gang. And the cops in the city saw this happen. They're like, look, the Black Spades were great until they weren't. You guys are essentially a gang, too, right? That's what they said. This is the same thing. The same thing is going to happen. This is going to be some vigilante gang that turns into an extortion gang, and they're going to be violent, they're going to start selling drugs, and it's going to be a problem. I also read, as far as the Black Spades are concerned, africa Mumbada was a black member, and they credit the Black Spades and some other groups for creating hiphop culture. Like those block parties. Yeah. They all came out of these groups getting together and hanging out. Isn't that cool? Can you dig it? Yes, I can. Did you not know my reference? That was from the warriors. Right? Okay. Got you. But wasn't that the response? Did you not see the extended direct response? So here's some of the rules that he developed early on. And this is all Curtisleywise jam. He set this thing up. He developed all the rules, ran it with a tight fist, brought all the members on, brought them on. And they were, besides their uniforms, that he would hand you upon joining up. I guess I guess that was a fun conversation. What size are you? Right. What size satin jacket do you wear exactly? Do you like to button it all the way up? So you have to be at least 16. Not a serious criminal record, because, like we said, right. He kind of liked taking some of these kids that like maybe a shoplifter or a pocket picker and reforming them, giving them a second chance to prove themselves. And that was a big thing that he did, that the guardian Angels did. This organization was it said, hey, you live in an area where you can go sell drugs, you can go rob people. All your friends are doing it, or you can come over here and actually combat that, make your community a safer place to live. Get rid of that stuff. Look at this thing. Yeah. And you get the free satin jacket. But some people were given an option in this neighborhood, and some people are in these neighborhoods, and some people took that and became guardian angels and actually took a different path in life because of this guy, this kid, a night manager from Bronx. McDonald's gave these people who joined this option to change their lives. That's really respectable and commendable. It is. You could be anyone. You could be male or female. You could be any religion. You could be any race, any sexual orientation. Yeah. But we should touch on a little bit the racial stuff. It's complicated, because if you see some interviews, it seems like he's using sort of blatantly racist language. He would probably say that he's just a realist and he's just talking real, like, from Brooklyn. Yeah, from the streets. From old Brooklyn. Oh, yeah. Not new Brooklyn. Old Brooklyn. Yeah. He's like, yeah, I go to warby. Parker all those places you go to restoration Hardware. Check it out. It's pretty good. So it's a complicated thing, the way he talks in some of these older interviews. Right. But if you go to where the rubber meets the road, he was not only recruiting, like, black, Latino, or I should say Latinx men, women. Sure. Whoever wanted to be a guardian angel and follow the rules and did guardian angel stuff could join. And these are the people he hung out with, spend his time with. It wasn't like he was in some ivory tower telling everybody what to do and enjoying bossing around these other people. These are people he hung out with. He made lieutenants out of and chapter heads out of it, leaders out of. So like you said, it's complicated. But he proved himself to be fairly above racial politics as far as his actual practices go. That's right. If you hit the streets on patrol, they would go out together, usually ten people. But you were never out there alone? No. Well, that was the thing, because they weren't allowed to carry weapons. Oh, no. So had it just been one of them patrolling, they would have routinely been beaten and put in the hospital. Yeah. So not only are they not allowed to wear weapons, but they pat each other down before they go out on patrol to make sure none of them have weapons themselves. And Sliwa would basically act as the dispatcher. He would sit around and listen to the scanner, the police scanner. Or he would get telephone calls from a payphone, I guess, from another angel saying something's going down. And he would send people out on these patrols to specifically go to a crime that had been committed to try and help. Or just go on patrol. Like the subway line super. Get on the four train and walk up and down those cars. Or go to this neighborhood and patrol this block. So this is how their patrols would work, on the subway in particular, it'd be 810. Twelve of them. And they would all show up together. Each one would get into a car. So there'd be a guardian angel standing at attention, quiet, silent, looking very stern and serious, not messing around and just projecting that thing. And that's what Flex said, is the basis. Like, the guardian angels show up and they're in control of the situation. So they're reassuring the people who are worried and they're showing the criminals, like, don't try anything because there's ten of us in one of you or even two of you. Right. Right. And then at every stop, all the guardian agent would lean out and give some sort of hand signal that the coast is clear. If somebody didn't lean out of their car, all the other angels would converge on that car and help out whoever was in trouble. That's how they patrolled the subways, and that's how they still do, actually. So imagine this, my friend. I had this thought while I was researching this stuff. Imagine this exact same scenario. But they're wearing tights and capes and masks, right? And, like, imagine how quickly they would be laughed at and ridiculed and just laughed off the streets. Isn't there a guy in Mexico City who is doing that? Oh, no. There's a documentary. There are quite a few people that do this. And there's a documentary that follows these real life, quote unquote, superheroes that are trained up and can do martial arts, but they, like, wear a cape and a mask. And it's funny to think about the perception they can do the exact same thing. Right. And if they're wearing a Batman mask, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I wonder if anyone who used to be a caped crusader is now just a regular crusader because it's more legitimate, maybe. So here's the thing. They're not just standing there at. Attention to intimidate criminals to make sure things are safe. They don't just call in to the police when something happens. Right. They get involved. We talked about martial arts. They are trained up to engage people physically encouraged to do so. If you listen to our July episode 2015 on a Citizens Arrest to make and Perform a citizen's arrest, which I was trying to think back. I didn't go back and listen to it, but I was trying to think back of what our overall message was. Correct me if I'm wrong. Do not do it. You're going to get yourself in trouble. These guys routinely do that. Yeah, but I would think we were just saying, like, hey, if you're just an average Joe or Jane on the street, don't do that. But if you're trained to do so, like a guardian angel, sure. Still don't do it. But even still, they say, like, they're not afforded any special rights or privileges. They're just citizens following the letter of the law. But they don't just call the cops and say, somebody's getting jacked right now. Or like you said, just stand there. Sternly they go beat somebody up. Well, no, they're trained to use minimal force, okay? That can still include beating somebody out. They're trained to restrain somebody and use force. But that's the difference, is they're not out there just, like, delivering a beat down for retribution. Okay? So originally, from what I read, that is actually how this whole thing started. They would beat people down. Curtis Lewis and his friend Don Chin, who was a big dude who also worked at the McDonald's with them, they started out with sliwa riding the subway, all dressed up with jewelry and everything. Yeah, he was a plant. Right. And then somebody would come over and try to rob him, and Chin would come out of nowhere and just beat them up. That's entrapment. It is. As a matter of fact, there was a quote from the police commissioner at the time. I read this really awesome New Yorker article from 1980 that was written by Nicholas Pelegy, who wrote Wise Guy, which was the foundation of goodfellas. One of the greatest movies of all time. He's definitely the greatest gangster movie of all time. Get out of here with that Godfather crap, okay? Give me Good, fellas. Every day. How many people's heads just popped right off of their body? They're both great. My head's not popped. I know yours isn't, but somebody out there just, like, just broke through their desk. Anyway, he wrote this article, and in it, one of the police commissioners is like, this is awfully close to entrapment. Sure. Dangerously close, as a matter of fact, what they were describing. So they stopped doing that and I guess started doing what you were saying, which was following the letter of law and using minimal force and not entrapping people. Yeah, that's the idea. And to his credit, he has changed his methods and what he's trained people to do over the years, he has tried to do the right thing, it seems like. Sure. So a lot of people say, too, like, oh, this guy got rich off this thing. I don't think that's the case. I think he leaves a pretty modest existence on the Upper West Side. Still. He's a little bit rough neighbors in that respect. Yes. And they're a nonprofit. The members are volunteers. I don't see how he would make money unless he's just, like, selling merch or something. Yeah, somebody gave him some money to do basically for his life story to make a movie about it. So he got like, ten grand or something back in the seven. More power to him for that. Apparently he used some of that money to try to sue the people because the movie was so bad. Oh, really? Yeah. What movie is that? I don't remember. I saw it somewhere, but it would be pretty easy to find. Was it airwolf? It was airwolf. There's this guy making sweet love to the airwolf helicopter in the background. Oh, goodness. It's like the Hanged Man of Oz. You have to really look for it. Once you see it, you can unsee it anyway. But yeah, from what I understand, he made no money off of it whatsoever. But some people say he didn't care about money. He cares about prestige. Yeah. And a lot of people say it's just a blowhard, blah, blah, blah. But when you talk to these and read interviews with these because I've talked to him, these old former angels sure, yeah, I know you're with them. They all talk about this family and the fact that he did pull them off the streets. Not all. There are some old former angels that are big time critics of him and his yeah, I didn't mean that. But a lot of people have said that I was going nowhere. He saved me, gave me a sense of purpose, taught me how to do the right thing in life. And also, a lot of New Yorkers, just everyday New Yorkers were very supportive of the Guardian Angels and what they were doing. I would have felt better on that number four subway train. Yeah, a lot of them did. So that 1980 New Yorker article by Nicholas Pledges was a hit job. It was just meant to kind of make them look bad. To make Ed Cotch, who, as we'll see, was not very happy with the angels right. Because he was married at the time. Make Ed Koch's Point looks more reasonable. But if you read the following edition, every single one of the letters written in response to that article supported the Guardian Angels and basically called out The New Yorker for just kind of convoluted things. For being The New Yorker. For basically being The New Yorker. Being pro cotch. Well, since you brought them up, he very much dismissed them. I called them vigilantes. The police union, the Patrolman's Benevolent Association and Cotch did. Yeah. Well, you said him. Some people get lost sometimes. I started talking like a New Yorker for all of a sudden I got you the Transit Police Union. They all came out against the Guardian Angel saying, don't do this. Phil Caruso of the Policeman's Benevolent Association said, mr. Sliwa is a publicity seeker and he does a good job of it. When you start putting authority in an undisciplined group, it's not only vigilantium vigilanteism. It reeks of Gestapoism. He not coach. Okay, so not Cot dictates who will be an angel and where they will work. It's preposterous. He said that last part. Ed Cotch? No, that was Phil caruso. Was he talking about? Ed Cotch. He's talking about sweetheart. But it just hit me today. No one says preposterous anywhere. I want to bring that back. Okay, that's a great word. You may just ask. I hope so. Preposterous. But a lot of people loved him. Governor Cuomo, whether or not it was a political thing or not, kind of came out in support of them here and there. So he had a good quote in The New Yorker article which just go read it. What did he say? He basically said, you know, if these were the children, the sons and daughters of white doctors from Long Neck right. We'd be giving them medals. Yeah. Instead we're just leveling all these accusations of vigilanteism against them and totally missing the point that these guys are taking care of their community and taking up the slack where the cops are leaving off and frankly, the city's leaving off because they fired so many cops. It seems a little racist to me. He didn't put it that last part in that words, but it was definitely in there. And this is 1980 that this guy saying that it seems a legitimate quote. If he was taking a shot at Ed Cotch, he disguised it well. So they're also supposedly the rank and file cops like the Guardian Angels. I'm sure it just all depends. It's hard to make a sweeping statement like that. Right. But from what I read, the rank and file were a little more like, yeah, these guys are, like, trying to restore some sanity to New York. And it was the brass that couldn't really come out or didn't come out and say that they supported them, because this is why the very presence of the Guardian Angels, they weren't doing their job. Underlying the problem that New York had. Yeah, New York couldn't whitewash it over because the Angels were there, which is another big role that they played, kind of this meta role to kind of agitate the city to do more, agitate the police force to do more, in addition to providing a feeling of comfort to people who are riding the subway. And it didn't help that Slew would go on TV shows and champion death wish and Taxi Driver as inspiration for starting this out. Taxi Driver more so, at least. In Death Wish, this guy was, like, getting back at people that assaulted his wife and daughter. And taxi driver. He's just a sociopath. Sure. Yeah, buddy. It all worked out for the best in the end. That's right. So as a result of all of this, lewis has long accused the cops of harassing him in multiple ways. He said he was arrested 76 times while carrying out guardian angel stuff. He said that he was kidnapped not once, but twice by two different police forces. One in New York, one in DC. Yeah. In the New York one. I don't think he alleged that he was beaten, but in the DC. When he was beaten, burned with a cattle prod arm in a sling, tied up, thrown into a muddy, shallow part of the Potomac. They didn't realize it was shallow until he landed. Like, he thought he was about to be drowned. They heard Thud owl, and they're like, Oops. No. He didn't realize it was shallow. The cops did. They were messing with him to Ed Cotch. Right. Edcotch ordered the DC cops to throw them in the Potomac, but he said, Keep it shallow, keep it muddy. Yeah. And he's been attacked by private citizens. There's that guardian angel guy. Sure. Let me see if I can get one in on him. As recently as last year in Penn Station, there were these four kids that looked like they were getting in a fight, and one of them dropped drugs and then picked them up. And he kind of went over and like, hey, what's going on here? They were like, hey, look who it is. They literally said the words Newark in the house. Yeah, I guess they were from Newark. And one of them sucker punches him in the face and knocks out his front tooth. Front tooth? Man, that's expensive to get back. Well, he said he couldn't afford to get it repaired. That's how little money he has. Very Ralph Nader. He said, Insurance won't cover it. They're calling it cosmetic. It's so funny. This is in the article even he said they're calling it cosmetic. But he said, my nerve is exposed. It's very painful. I could totally that's a Curtis Leeway quote if I've ever heard one. It's pretty funny. Followed up by, well, for now, I've just kind of pulled it up some paper towel to stand in with the pictures of him, like, smiling big, missing that front tooth. So I think he took, as always, the opportunity to be like, hey, I'm still out there. I'm still getting punched. Look at me. Yeah. And also, my insurance company is really a bunch of deadbeats. So there was another incident where there was a guardian named Frank Melvin. Oh, this is a big one. Heard about this incident going on on the police scanner. Yeah. From Edcott. Rushed to the scene and as he's rushing to the scene this is a cops version. There's someone on the roof. A cop on the roof, right. Cop on the ground. And they say this guy comes rushing up. I guess they didn't see his red beret and red satin jacket, allegedly, and ordered him to halt. He didn't halt. The cop on the roof shot and killed him. A 26 year old father of three sliwa says this is a big cover up. That's not what happened at all. He said a sergeant on the street stopped him dead in his tracks. He opened his jacket and said, I've got no weapon. There's no reason to shoot. And they shot him anyway. And as he was dying on the ground, they prevented other angels from giving him CPR, which is a very specific claim. It is pretty specific, yeah. To make. So we held a press conference alleging all this stuff immediately afterwards, very agitated, very upset. And I guess you could say this is the low point of police guardian angels relations. Yeah, I would say so. A guardian angel has been shot and killed by the police. But from that point on, I think that was the end of that point on. It just started to change and improve, and all of a sudden, the cops kind of got on the guardian angel side. Should we take a final break? Yes. All right. Final break. That sounds so cryptic. We're going to come back and talk about the great 80s right after this. 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And that's the best way to describe that, I think. Right. I was like, okay. He described them as chicken soup. Have they hurt? No. Who said that? Edcott mayor of New York City. Got you at this time. So he did. So this is a huge turnaround from these guys are vigilantes and they need to stop what they're doing. So this is a big deal. And actually, I don't know how much it had to do with the real rise of the Guardian Angels, but they definitely saw their membership swell. Like you said, their patrols there was the height of the Guardian Angels were the early right. In the mid eighty s. Yeah. When we were kids. And it was just all over the place. Yeah. I'm trying to think that they have a Saturday morning cartoon or something because some part of my brain is like, dude, they may have been on like, Scooby Doo or something when they did those years where they had all those weird guests. Yeah. Jerry Lewis. The Three Stooges. Jerry Lewis and Jerry Reed. Oh, is he on? Oh, he was on a bunch of times. Really smoky. Yeah, he would sing pretty merry Sunlight or Sunshine. Oh, man. So they could find him through the ductwork or something. It was bizarre. But he was on a few times. Remember Batman and Robin? The campy version were on Harlem Globetrotter. Yeah. Don Knotts. Don Knotts, of course. I could do this all day. The Three Stooges, right? Oh, yeah. With Curly Joe. Okay. They had their own cartoon for a little while and I suspect that that's why they were on Ski Doo, is to kind of launch the cartoon version of themselves. I definitely have a memory of seeing a cartoon guardian angel. I do too. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I know. I'm agreeing. Okay. Just me. Mayor Ed Cotch agreeing with you. Podcaster Josh Clark. Thank you. So they developed a system. They were like, all right, if we're all going to work together, let's get these guys an ID card. At least. Not a badge. He called it a badge. Leeway did. Sure. But it wasn't a badge, okay? It was an ID card that was official and sort of a day taunt and said, hey, let's all quit giving each other a hard time. We're all after the same thing here. And he said, this will allow me to open up franchises. Did you say the badge was issued by the cops, though. I don't think it was issued by the cops, but I think it was agreed upon that we'll have an official designation and an official ID card that you recognize. But part of getting that ID card was submitting as a Guardian Angel applicant to a police background check. That's right. So there was this I think that was part of legitimacy that came from the police force. But whether the police force wanted to be friends with the Guardian Angels or not, leeway made a very purposeful decision that the Guardian Angels would have nothing to do with the cops. Right. And he said later on in an interview, the reason why is because it would delegitimize the Guardian Angels in these neighborhoods that these people would be seen as basically narcs or snitches or cops in neighborhoods where they didn't like cops very much. But since the Guardian Angels were separate and had nothing to do with the cops, they had their own legitimacy that would have just been completely ripped away had they been associated with the cops. I get that. So they started popping up all over the country. Sacramento, La, buffalo, Cleveland. He's like Tyler Durden at this point. He sort of was. But he would come in and maybe he would bring some people to train them up momentarily, but then they would go back home. And the idea was that they would run it themselves under his direction. Yeah. And so, like, city officials who heard the Guardian Angels were coming down were worried that a bunch of New Yorkers were moving here to basically patrol this other city streets. And it was never that. It was like you were saying, they trained local leadership. Just like a Dunkin Donuts. Yes, exactly like that. Run by Mary Cotch. Right. So I saw somewhere, Chuck, that Cleveland actually invited the Guardian Angels to open a chapter there in 1981. Oh, really? Yeah. So it wasn't all like, Get out of here. We're going to kidnap you and throw you in the Potomac. Some cities were like, we need this, actually. Come breathe some life back into our downtown, or whatever. Well, I remember in 1981, when the Atlanta Child Murders were happening, they came to Atlanta to help out here. And I remember very much that being on TV. Yeah. You know that whole investigation by the FBI or the GBI into the KKK as the suspects in the Atlanta child murders? Yeah. The media found out about that because Spin magazine reported on it. Spin magazine heard about it from the Guardian Angels who have come to Atlanta. Wow. So they technically broke that story. Are you watching Mind Hunter? No. Yeah. That's part of the new season. Is it? Yeah. Cool. It's just medium good. That's my review. Yeah. I don't want medium good. Yeah, I get you. When is the last time you want to watch Death Wish? One through five within the remake. I'm just punishing myself until something really great comes along. Sure, I hear you. That and rift tracks. I just watch Death Wish and rift tracks. So let's talk about vigilantism for a SEC. And Bernie Gets. I think we should do a whole episode on the Bernie Gets incident. I was thinking the same thing. So should we not talk about it at all? No. Really? No, we can. All right. So the brief version is Bernard Gets, the subway shooter, was on a subway one night. These four African Americans approached him, and one of them said, hey, give me $5. That was the extent of it, right? Yeah. No weapons. I mean, there's a lot of different versions of the story that came out in court, but apparently did not brandish any weapons. Later on, he said, one of them opened their coat, and I thought he had a weapon, but he very quickly and he even described it as a quick draw. And he had it all planned out. He said he had a sequence of shots in his mind ready to go left or right, one shot each. And he shot these four kids. And it was a very complex case. We shot them without warning. Yes, it was a quick draw, but he didn't say, like, stand back or don't come near. He just quick draw and started shooting. Yes, quick drew quickdrew and shot. He said that he was in physical danger and that one of them might have had a weapon or not. Everyone else was for the courts to decide, but that he was not in immediate physical danger. And then there's this whole disputed fact about whether or not he went up to one of them that was slumped down, kind of on a seat, walked up to him and said, you seem okay. Here's another bam. Oh, yeah. Later on he said, I know. I probably just thought that I didn't say it out loud. And then there's dispute about whether or not that shot even landed if he was actually shot a second time. So I really need to dig into this if we're going to do it for real. Well, yeah, but the long and short of it is there was a vigilante shooting on the subway. Half of New Yorkers were like, good for you. Bernie gets and half of New York said, no, pull out a gun and start shooting people. Right. And the guardian angel said, we're in the Bernie Gats camp. That's right. So much so that in 1985, on the one year anniversary of that shooting, they held a ceremony celebrating Bernie Gets in the subway where the shooting took place. That's right. In that station. Which just don't celebrate people being shot, but they really kept their lot behind Bernie Gets, and it really damaged their credibility as upholders of law and order in the minds of a lot of everyday New Yorkers. Yes. Another thing that damaged the reputation of the guardians is when Sliwa was kind of forced to admit later that early on, we faked some of these things entirely. Talk about damaging your credibility. Yeah. There was one of the first promotions that they may have even still been the Magnificent 13 was them returning a wallet that had $300 in it to, like, a parish priest or something like that. Oh, wow. And they drummed it up. They cooked the whole thing up. They told the media about it and got a lot of press, a lot of early press. And Sleeves says he regrets doing it, but also it really helped. And that either he said it or one of the early founders, co founders said, have we not done this? The organization probably never would have taken off. Yes. Some of the other things supposedly faked. One of them doused themselves in gasoline and said that a criminal had done this. Yeah. Because there had been another crime where somebody had doused or set a ticket booth operator on fire in their ticket booth at the subway. And so they were basically capitalizing on that like it was going to happen again and they stopped it. Another one where you see these angels, they're all bruised up and bleeding. Turns out that one of them had fallen down the steps and gotten bruised. The other one picked off a scab and made it bleed again. Yeah. So gross. Yeah. So this did not help their reputation, but he's acknowledged being a big PR guy. Yeah. And that's the thing. If you read those replies to that New Yorker article, they're like, basically all you've done is demonstrate that they're PR hounds, but also that they're actually good at what they're doing. So that's fine. That is a real dent in their legitimacy, for sure that they faked it. Because then you're like, how many did they fake? Which is in dispute, too. Yeah. What is not in dispute that we should cover quickly is on June 19, 1992, sliwa was kidnapped and shot after entering a fake taxi, or I guess a stolen taxi, and it was supposedly at the hands of John Gotti Jr. Because Flehaw went on the radio show. I think he still has a show. Yeah. And 77 WBC. Yeah. Talking about, Goddy is just a drug dealer, he's a serial killer. And John Gotty Jr. Didn't like that and was charged with this crime, but got off three different times, three different trials. Yeah. Including one in one of the most recent in 2005. And all the juries said, I'm not going to know. All three juries were unable to agree to convict him of these charges for that reason. No, you never know. Remember they used to call John Gotty senior? The teflon dawn? Yeah. She do one on him, too. Nothing sticks. The 80s are a gold mine for everything, for episodes. Okay. What a decade. So the guardian angel is still around. They came back again in 2018. Although Curtis Leeward, during publicity, said, we didn't go anywhere. We've been doing patrols every night, which may or may not be true, but you could still find them if you look hard enough. Or if you go watch videos from 2018. That's right. If you want to know more about the Guardian Angels, well, go meet one. They'll tell you all about it. But in the meantime, it's time for our friend John Hodgman did you see that? Signed on the back of the Imac. You'd appreciate that. Mike from BoJack Horseman. I was wondering if that was a BoJack. I have not watched that show. Don't tell Paul. I've done. I've not seen an episode. You should totally sign the Mac, though. Yeah, I'd love to. That would be ironic. Get it for the elderly. Sure. The Nordiques that you're wearing, this is not a Nordique. Is that New Hampshire? I have yet to look it up online, but I wondered. I was like, that's not so bad. You're referring, of course, to the chapter of my new book medallion status entitled Extinguished Hockey. About the only sport that I like being. I was following the logos of extinct hockey teams. Northampton. No, you'll never get it. Northeamish is it an N and an H? It is. Okay. Yeah, I don't have any other guesses. Let's try all the H towns with north and then go through and start over with it's not a town. Okay. Is it a ville? Something hockey and it's not hockey. That's the trick of it. I'm leaving. Is that a Cubs hat? There is a guy who would come to my events once I started talking about my fascination with the Hartford Whalers logo. Best logo in sports. It's pretty great. And the Quebec Nordiks logo, worst logo in sports. An actively, aggressively bad design choice. Right? Like, it slams the door in your face and you're like, I wasn't even going to knock. Fire is why are you doing this to me? Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm listening. I just have to find you need to look it up. I know it the Quebec Nordiques. Oh, sure. Well, what would you say that is? Well, I mean, I get the hockey stick and puck part, but I don't know what the other party stick? It is supposed to be a blood red igloo bisected by a hockey stick that does not come through with a very large puck. And the angle at which the hockey stick bisects the Igloo is supposed to sort of suggest an end for Nordiques. I always consider it to be a deformed elephant. Sure. I was going to say I'd always taken it as like, I've seen this before. I just didn't realize what it was. I thought it was some sort of Republican logo. Yeah, because it is red, white and blue. The only thing that you can't really account for is the puck, which really is just a circle. It's a confusing piece of. Design. Yeah. And there was a guy who had come to my shows in New York and still does, named Jean Montericelli. For a long time, I didn't know his last name, so I just referred to him as Mysterious Gene, because at the end of every show yeah. You're looking at the Hartford Whalers logo. So good, so smooth. The beauty of the Hartford Whalers logo, of course, is not only does it have that beautiful whales tail and the w, but the two together form a negative space h for Hartford. All of this has gone on ad nauseam in the book, by the way. This is what you can read in medallion status. What? No, he'd never noticed. I got to keep things going here. So right now, John is gone. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? There's this trick that John it's a really great design that you describe in the book where you show people that, right. And you claim that some people have gasps when you've pointed everybody see what happens. The W. I don't know if I picked up on a gas, but yeah, Chuck was impressed. That's like the arrow in FedEx. In FedEx. The negative space. Arrow and FedEx. You know that one, of course. Sure. Right. And you also had a New Way abandoned the negative space. I did. In the early 80s, I'm not mistaken. Right. Well, I did as a child. I thought you did. With the Thompson Twins. I was in Boston recently with another monster of podcaster, Nick Weger. Who's one half of the Dough boys. If you don't know those guys, feel their hot breath on your necks. They're coming for you. Sure. Boys are coming. Everybody knows. Nick. Weger and I were walking through Boston. My hometown ish. I'm from Brookline. And I was like, There is the Boston Common. They used to concerts on the Common. And I said, that's where I saw my first concert. I said, oh, wow. What was it? I said, well, it was the Thompson twins. And he goes, who are they? I just silently walked into traffic. It was fine. My first is Holland. Oates. Hall and Oates. Right till Tuesday opening. That's amazing. Amy Mann friend Amy. Our friend Amy Mann. I would say friends of all friends of all people. My experience was cheap trick for show. Yeah. And my experience with Amy Mann is I've met her a couple of times briefly as she's fleeing the room, because more than five people have showed up at the party. Amy man is very social, and she goes on the Jonathan Colton Cruise, which really been invited. Really? No, we haven't. We can buy tickets, I think, is what John's saying. No, I think we well, I'm selling tickets. That's why I'm here. In the form of boxes of peanut. Let me get my cigar box. I'll write out some tickets for you. Anyway, Mysterious Gene would show up to my shows, and at the foot of the stage after every show, he would be standing there, and I considered Mysterious Gene because, A, I hadn't bob had to learn his last name, and B, he was acting mysteriously. He would just lurk at the foot of the stage and bestow upon me a new extinct hockey hat that he had found somewhere. Each time? Yeah, like, multiple times. So, like the Vancouver millionaires who became the Vancouver Canucks. Okay. The Montreal Wanderers, who were the English language community team hockey team in Montreal, because the Canadians and are the French the only hockey team. Why am I talking about sports? You've trapezed out of extinct hockey and into, like, real hockey. Yeah, I know. I've accidentally become infected with a certain amount of actual sports knowledge. Right. You're done with big hockey. Well, that's the beauty. I never got into sports because sports, as I discussed in the book, sports tends to be about winning. It seems like winning is the point of the sports. I've only ever been a fan of an underdog, and so I could get with growing up in Boston, I would be fine with the Red Sox because they were losing. It was terrible. They were losers for so long, and they were in this constant battle against the quintessential bullies of sports, the Yankees. And then they would fail. When are you talking about because when I was growing up, the Red Sox were like Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens. And they were not losers. No, they weren't losers. But they wouldn't make yeah, they would always lose to New York, but they beat everybody else. They wouldn't always lose to New York, either. There was always the curse. Right. Bill Buckner. Right. Yeah. That was probably the 1988 World Series between the New York between the Mets and right. Yes. The Miracle Metz. But you're talking why are we talking about this? I thought the Miracle Mets was 86. Yeah, I think it's 86, but you're talking about the curse, which is the fact that the Boston Red Sox traded away Bay bruth. Yeah, that's a way older curse. Forever cursed. Yeah. And they were buckingham right. And they were cursed, and they couldn't win the World Series, and they didn't go to the World Series for a long time. And when they did, the ball went right through Bill Buckner's legs. That's right. And I could get behind that because there were these consistent underdogs. When they won the World Series, I was like, you guys are dead to me. I can't handle that. I can't handle that. The hockey is always underdog no matter what, even at the highest level. Right. Because it's the minor est of the major league sports. And everyone who is a hockey fan in the United States is to some degree, a man or woman without a country, and that country is Canada. Their teams are constantly failing and moving and renaming. They have hockey in Phoenix. In Las Vegas. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Well, you make the point in the book that even in a big city, it's still like the little brother to the baseball, basketball or football or something. Right. I mean, they're true fans, but I don't want to give away too much. But after my fascination with the extinct hockey takes root, I talk in the book about I wonder whether I would like actual hockey, and I go to an actual hockey game, and for the most part, I found it be awesome and charming. It's nice, that cool air. It's just so bizarre to be in a building and cold. Like, cold, and it's a certain kind of cold. It feels good. Yes. It's a lot of fun lives, though. It's the one sport that seeing it live, really. Like, even if you're not a fan, you could probably enjoy a three hour experience. Yeah, well, hockey is amazing. Ice skating alone is impossible enough just to prevent yourself from falling down all that time, never mind doing it backwards. And then someone hands you a stick and says, now hit that piece of hard rubber into that tiny for a little while. It's hard. Yeah, I can't imagine. It's so challenging that the tension of the hockey game is you're waiting for this almost impossible event of getting a goal. It's like waiting to see a quantum event. Right. So there's all this built up tension and there's massive relief when it happened, but it happened so quickly. Usually you look away for a second, right? And then you miss it. But I enjoyed the hockey itself was very charming because it was a Pittsburgh Penguins game, for whatever reason, against the Tampa Lightning. Bad guys. Yeah, Lightning. Right. Bad guys. I was a Penguins person because Ron Francis went from the Whalers to play for the Penguins, so there was a Whaler's legacy there. Yeah. And I wear whaler stuff at the Penguins. No, not necessarily. You just made that up. No, people are really into Whalers merchandise now, I think largely because of my personal lobbying for the amazing sports design logo by Peter Goode in West Hartford, Connecticut. But before I went to this game, I called a hockey blogger that I know, greg Wish Ninski, and of course he's a hockey blogger. And I was like, I'm thinking of wearing my whaler's hat to this hockey game, but I don't want anyone to hit me. Right. I figure it's fine, but I just want to double check that there are no deep rivalries or something that I'm going to be triggering among the very wise. And he said, people have a lot of fondness for the Whalers, and that was fine, but I decided not to. I bought a Penguins hat and I wore the Penguins hat. Right. And the thing about extinct hockey, the thing about real hockey, actual hockey that's different from extinct hockey is extinct talkie. The outcome is known. They lost. You just feel sad, you think about it and actual hockey, it's unfolding in front of you don't know the outcome. And as you know, I cannot tolerate ambiguity. I dislike it very much. And I came down to sudden death and I got really nervous. And Greg had told me that when he would get nervous growing up watching hockey, he would drink pink lemonade as a young person and that would help the team win. And I was offended by that because I don't love sports, but I have appreciation for athletes that what they're doing is the product of hard work and training and physics and physical space. Right. You probably don't believe in superstition either. Yeah. I believe in science. And I think it's an insult to athletes for Greg to think he can control their bodies with his mind and beverage. Is he a kid? He was a kid at the time. Okay. But there's plenty of adults, plenty of conditions. And of course, in that moment in sudden death, after three periods and a couple of overtime or whatever, however it was, there's been a lot of hockey. I was like tired and cold and I loved the hockey, but I was ready for hockey to be over here. But I wanted my team to win. The Penguins. Let's go, Pence. And in that moment of sudden death, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to put on my heart for a Wheeler's hat because it's going to help them win. Science was abandoned and all of a sudden, I was not merely superstitious. I was convinced that my putting on a different hat was going to affect the outcome of what was happening on the ice. And when you think about it, it makes sense. Whalers, Penguins, they're both marine animals. They're going to work for each other. You know what I mean? Of course I put on the Whaler's hat within 7 seconds. Penguins lose. Really? Penguins lose. And just like, the whole arena went dark, it felt like. And only I knew that I had caused it to happen. Did you keep it to yourself? Of course. I did not tell anyone. I'm sorry, everybody. I forced the outcome. The Penguins did not win. Was it a playoff game or anything? It was a playoff game. Oh, wow. But I think that that year, I don't think they were eliminated. It was fine. They went on to do some more good hockey. So what's the NH on your hat? Right. Mysterious gene would mysteriously appear. He would apparate Harry Potter style to the stage with new hat and the right. And then there was one, the Brooklyn Americans, which is a wait, no, just keep staying with Mysterious chain. No, that was another athlete. There was a hockey team that played for one season and then he started running out of hockey teams and he gave me this hat, which is a really cool hat. It is not a hockey hat, however, and it is an existing sports team, but it is a sports team in Japan. Okay. Is it a baseball team? It is a baseball team. I have no idea. I've never seen it before. Baseball teams in Japan are often organized around corporations. Okay. I don't know whether the corporations form the teams or sponsor the teams, but this is a long standing Japanese baseball team. Like the Xerox Tigers or something. The equivalent, yeah. The company, the NHS Nippon Ham. Okay. Ham. I've heard of that. Wow. Yeah. And these are the Nippon Ham Fighters. The Nippon Ham Fighters. That's a great hat. The logo doesn't really get that across, that they're ham or fighters. No. Even Japanese. But the story behind it's pretty great. It's a pretty good looking logo, and anyone can look it up. It's the old fashioned one, if you're listening. It's? No Hartford Whaler's logo. No. But I'll tell you something, that I was in Boston doing another podcast, the Dough Boys podcast sorry. Who are breathing down our necks. Yes. They're coming for you. Doe boys are coming for you in no small part because you're aiding them, apparently. No. What is it? When you are on the highway and you drive real close to the back of a truck, back drafting. Right? Yeah. That's how you get mileage. Right. Because supposedly yeah. You're reducing windshield against you. You're riding in their wake. That's what I'm saying. The NASCAR, they do that I'm doing with you guys. It's what I'm doing. The doughboys. It's the way to go. You're drafting. I'm just grabbing on and hanging on. I hope you guys will bring me. But you don't need any help. You have your own podcast. Judge John podcast. Podcast. Colt Classic. I think it's bigger than ever, too. It's doing very well. Yeah. I'm amazed. We've been doing it not quite as long as you guys have been doing, but it's been on for a long time. Yeah. And I know people who point to judgments that you've made to settle other disputes. Like no. Hodgman ruled that hot dog is not a sandwich. Hot dog is not a sandwich. And people like it's. Okay, I'm not going to get in. Yes. I mean, it is not a sandwich at all. Thank you. I don't understand how that's true. Oh, you think it's a sandwich? It's not that I think it's a sandwich. I realize I'm inviting husband to explain and I'm refusing, but I don't see how it has. I just think I have to go listen to that episode because I'm more aware of the cultural aspect of your ruling than I am with the actual episode. It wasn't an episode. I also write a little column net in the New York Times Magazine called Judge John Hodgman. No one who reads the magazine knows that there is a podcast called Judge John Hodgman. I do. Thank you, Josh. You are, of course, the exception. It proves every rule, and no one who listens to the podcast ever reads the New York Times Magazine, and I do. Once again, exception rule. Correct. But someone had written in that he and his buddy were having a fun. Hot dog was a sandwich. I had to think about it for a long time because I appreciate why you would sort of say, well, of course it is, but there is something weird and different about it that makes the question sticky. Right. And I was trying to think, what would be the disqualifying factor? What would be the trait? Because there are many traits of hot dogs and a typical sandwich. Your classic ham sandwich, Nippon Ham Go Fighters have in common in terms of bread and filling, proportion and style, whatever. Condiments. Condiments. Yeah. Especially like, Chicago style. It's a sandwich. He's a hot dog. Yeah. And it's obviously shaped different than a classic Nippon Ham sandwich. Like, straight up, square cutting triangle with bread that's not connected. Right. I think that's a big one. Yeah. And so is that the disqualifying thing that it's shaped and it has connected bread? Well, I would say it would never strike me to say that a sub or a hokey or a hero is not a sandwich. Oh, that's a great point. A hero ain't nothing but a sandwich. Sure. According to young adult literature. I don't know that that's an old I don't know that that reference is a goosebumps reference. Or even before then. Remember Hardy Boy? It's like a Thompson Twins era thing, man. I'm older. I'm older. I'm not young like you guys. You're my same exact age. I'm two months older than you. Finally, the thing is that true? March or June, right? I'm June, yeah. Happy birthday, old man. Sure, you're uniheart. Happy birthday to you both. Thanks, John. Wait a minute. Hot dogs. Wait a minute. You didn't want to explain this again, but now it happens. What is the other trait, that hot dog? Is there any disqualifying trait that a hot dog would have that a sandwich wouldn't, or vice versa? And then I realized, like, well, yeah. A Hoagie hero sub grinder wedge sandwich. They call this wedges in buffalo, I believe you would cut those in half and share them. Anything that I consider a sandwich, you cut it in half and share soup and a half sandwich. That's a thing. You never get soup and a half hot dog. That'd be weird. Would you cut a foot long in half? No, I'm not saying you physically can't. That's a great point. No, I would never, ever cut a hot dog unless it's like to appease an extremely, extremely picky job, but a child. Do you know what I mean? Right. You just made me physically high. You did something in my brain with that. That disqualifier. Plus, the hot dog bun has that metal door hinge on the bottom. Hoagie can, too. Yeah, they don't have a metal door hinge. Sure. Yeah. All right. You get the metal door hinge? Yeah, that's what the hot dog bun. That's how it fits together, right? Metal yeah, that metal door hinge on the back. That's what happened to your teeth, huh? That's what happened. Jeez, I was doing a bit, guys. Sorry. So I've read this book of yours. This is what, your fifth book? This is my fifth book called Medallion Status, due out October 15. And hardcover, I believe in hardcover, also electronic printing. I have preordered it's available for pre order. Yeah. And audiobook also all available on October 15. And depending on when you hear this, you may either order or preorder it at Bit lee Medallionstatus. All one word, all capital letters, and I'll take you to your anywhere you buy books, including Indie Bound, if you want to connect with your local shop. And two LS in medallion these days. Two LS in Medallion. Did I spell it wrong in my mind? No. Wrong. My book. Is that one of the typos you found in Van Reed copy in this book? It is dripping with nostalgia. And one of the things you're kind of famous for on our podcast these days is for considering nostalgia to be utterly toxic. I don't know if you remember coming on a show last year, a couple of years ago. I remember very much. And nostalgia is a toxic impulse is also so how do you become a meaningful point of settled law and Judge John Hodge where people are trying to erase progress and believe it can be done? And I think that that's a terrible social movement. And culturally, when we get too overfond of the past and just want to live in it and live in it and live in it, you get a culture where they're making Baluster Galactica again right now. Today they're rebooting. Baluster, galactica. I hadn't heard that. Is that right? Are you going to be on this one? I don't know. Were you on the phone? Just because I believe that it's a piece of toxic nostalgia doesn't mean I don't need a job. I had a bit role on the 2003 to 2009 Ronald D. Moore David Ike showrun, Battlestar Galactic and Scifi was in the fourth season and I did not do a good job and it's not worth watching. What was your big line? These pretzels are making me thirsty. I think I was referring to a guy's brain scan and I was a brain doctor, a space brain doctor. Okay, sure. And I was like, it really is a very lovely image. All I care about is how perfectly this bullet got lodged in his main character's brain. Right. And his wife Starbuck is like freaking out because he can't speak anymore because he's gotten what? He's shot in the brain. He's been shot in the brain syndrome? No, but we call it word salad. But it has a term, a brain injury that causes you to be able to aphasia. Yeah. So he's going into aphasia fugue states. And I'm like, yeah, this call works out. It happens. But anyway, it's really amazing. I thought Starbuck was the name of the robot and Buck Rogers. No, you're talking about Tweaky. Tweaky. Maybe you need a little more nostalgia. Maybe I'll prescribe a little bit for you. I've been avoiding it ever since you came on last time, so I'm like, wow. I feel bad if you interpreted that as never think about it. Didn't really, John. I was just going through here looking for something something to hammer you exactly the Joshy Sandbag is known for. So this book actually made me laugh out loud multiple times. Thank you very much. Like, I can't remember last time I read something that made me laugh out loud. Did you not read Vacation Lance, my previous book? I actually did not. You didn't? No, I haven't read it yet. Well, that's interesting because this is my fifth book. But the first three, obviously, or perhaps not so obviously, were compendiums were compendiums of fake trivia of fake facts. I loved making them, although by the third one, I was like, I cannot come up with a zeppelin joke anymore. This is not what I want to be doing anymore. And by that time, a lot of people were venturing into fake facts as a cultural and political tool, and I wanted to get away from that. You took a long break, though, between writing. Yeah, I did. Well, it was a couple of years when I was just going up on stage in Brooklyn just telling whatever stories I could tell to make people engaged and laugh, ideally, and then collecting extinct hockey caps from Mysterious Gene at the end of the night. And then I finally compiled those. But I was trying to figure out what I still had to say. And what I realized about those stories were they were all true. They weren't dissembling, they weren't arch, they weren't absurdist humor. They were just sort of first person stories from my life in vacation land as I was transitioning from one geographical place to another, from Brooklyn, New York, to rural Maine, where we spend a lot of time now and traveling through a different wilderness of middle age and sort of adjusting to the fact that the time does move forward and I'm not staying the same age. Well, the book makes it sound like you're adjusting rather well. Thank you very much. So Medallion Status is stories from the same period of time. But rather than talking about the time that I spent in the cold, painful water of Maine back on the road, working on various television shows and all the various weird jobs because you talk about the Coolidge Corner Movie house, I talk about all of the weird jobs that I've always had, including the weirdest job. It was the most recent one, which was this unexpected experience of being on television and being somewhat famous and then the experience of sort of losing that job to a degree not completely. Just did a two episode arc on the unnamed television program. Yeah. It's really maddening just how little you actually name in here. You don't name drop almost at all. Oh, well, that's true, I guess. I don't know why I did that because you could probably figure out all the different shows and people that I'm referring to, but it's just if you don't do that, it becomes this kind of ongoing saga. What show is he talking to? Tell me now. I'm here to unload. You were killed a couple of times. Yeah. What shows are you killed on? I just remembered another one. That's why I paused. Because the two that I always remember are the Nick and Blind spot. But I was also killed on John Glaser's. Delocated, but that's a different story. My main deaths were on the NBC thriller Blind spot. Did not see that. Well, you're one of few people in the world. Yeah. Is it huge? Internationally? It's huge. Oh, that's great, man. Well, not so great because I got killed. Is that the one where you were a bad FBI agent? I was an evil FBI. Okay. Evil FBI agent who was a meanie to all the nice people. I also was killed off screen in The Nick, which did see the soderberg thing. But the Blind Spot death was particularly frustrating because the show was created by a friend of mine who had been a producer and writer on board to Death, which is HBO show that I was on. One of my favorites. Me too. And I really missed that Martin created this new show, which is this thriller that is very smart and fun and it's like a bunch of puzzles and visually very distinctive. And I was very proud to be asked to be a small part of it. But all those things are great. But the really great thing about Blind Spot is, and I'm not sure everyone who watches it around the world appreciates this particularly great thing about Blind Spot is that it shoots at Steiner Studios, which is a 20 minutes drive from my house. It was the greatest. I was like going like as a person who has held tons and tons of different weird oddball jobs from literary agent to cheese monger to traffic counter, to famous minor television personality to podcast or to whatever, it's a wonderful Itinerant experience where you learn a lot and you get to meet a lot of people, but you're hustling all the time. Hustle, hustle to just drive to my job and park at the studio and then go in and then have a little breakfast. How great was that? And then say my words and make my faces, which is what acting is. And then drive home like a straight up dad. The greatest border to Death was in your neighborhood too, right? Border to Death shot. There a lot bored to death, shot all over Brooklyn, but blind Spot, a lot of it shoots just right in that studio. And it was just this controlled, comfortable environment. And they have snacks for you. I was like, this is I'm ready. I'll do this for the rest of my life. I'll cancel everything else. I'm going to Blind spot it till the end. And then Martin goes, did you read the next script? I'm like, no. He's like, oh, you don't like it? And I do like it because it turned out my character was a monster. But then that monster got put down rather than being a monster for years on the show. Sure, I was a monster for a second on the show. The evil FBI agent got shot dead by the nicees. And I was like, I don't want that to happen. And I said to Martin many times, I noticed a lot of people who die on the show come back as, like, a flashback or a hallucination. He goes. Yeah, that happens. What if I come back as a hallucination or a flashback? I don't think that's really going to I have an idea. How about I come back as my own twin, except instead of as an evil twin plotline. This is a good twin. I'm a good twin, and I'm not mean to everybody, and they make me part of the good guy club. He's like, that will never, ever happen. But it was the show that sort of started the maximum in my career. And I would say to show runners, whenever I would be hired in a guest role or whatever, I'd be like, you got to kill me. You got to kill me in the show because every show that I am killed in becomes a huge commercial and critical success, and every show that I live in gets canceled. Yeah, this is a part that you would have gotten killed in but did not. Was Breaking Bad. You almost played Gabe. Was it Gabe? Which one was Gabe? It was a major character in the second or third season. I remember the actor who was cast David Costabile, or David Costabel is how he pronounced his name. I always thought it was Costa Belich, but I ran it. He's an incredible actor, david Costaw. And you've seen him in everything from The Wire to Flight of the Concords. Sure. I think he's on Billions or something now. He's a constantly working actor and entirely appropriately and frankly, did a much better job than I could have done in that role, but I had been offered that role. This is a role of Waltz assistant after he and Jesse part. Right. Who does get killed. Spoiler for those of you who watched all the Breaking Bad. And I was afraid to take the job because it meant going and spending a lot of time in Albuquerque, and it made me scared, like leaving my family behind and being in Albuquerque. And it was a terrible mistake for me. Yes. I should have left my family behind. Right. They would have handled it. It would have been incredible learning opportunity for me. Yeah. And incredible experience. And so it was a terrible mistake for me and a great outcome for Breaking Bad. But youth, because they got David Costable to do it. And I'm sure what he brought to that, and I'm sure his role got much bigger because of what he was doing. I'm sure if I had gotten that role, there would be like, can we kill him sooner? Let's not draw this out. Let's just have this happen right away. And I saw him at a coffee shop in New York. Eisenberg is my favorite old timey coffee shop. Really? And he was there, and I just said, I'm really glad you got that role. He's like. It's actually pronounced Costable. I always thought it was Costa Ble. How is it pronounced on the audio version of Medallion status? I did not mention his name. I only told that story in reflection in Medallions. Yeah. Because in the book, you say, like, Gov to say yes, which I thought was really good advice. Yeah. The subtitle of the book is True Stories from Secret Rooms. Because I've always been adept, even before I was whatever I am famous of sort of getting into rooms that I wasn't necessarily invited into. And I loved peering into secret societies of different kinds. And when you're on TV a little bit, you get invited into gifting lounges at the Emmys and into private parties or whatever. But on my own, I guess, because I had a little bit of fame, I also was able to weasel my way into a dinner at Yale University at a secret society there called Book and Snake. And the secret society is at Yale University. I went to Yale. And Yale is a very old college. It predates frats. So they had to come up with other systems for young men to hang around each other and live together. So they were still figuring it out. So they had two experiments. One was secret societies, which are these senior societies, about 15 to 20 seniors, originally all men at the time. But Skull and Bones is the most famous one. Snake scroll and Key, or some of the other ones. And they inhabit these windowless, these beautiful, but look like beautiful old municipal buildings. Architecturally very significant, built in the so and often designated landmarks. And they have no windows, and they're just clubhouses for seniors. They're called tombs. And they're sort of museums of white privilege that you wander on. And then the other thing, the other idea they came up with was like, how many a capella singing groups can we have? 35. There's more a capella per capita in New Haven than anywhere else on the Earth. And no one's doing anything about it, shutting it down. So I had wanted to go into Book and Snake. This is part of the reason, maybe the reason I applied to Yale because I was fascinated by these clubs. And I had gotten invited to go to one as a freshman, a party at Book and Snake. And I was so excited that I got ruinously drunk. As soon as I was in there, I fell down the stairs, hit my head, woke up in the hospital. I was very lucky that nothing worse happened. Yeah, that's pretty lucky. You could have been an offering that evening. Maybe that was what was supposed to have happened. But I escaped somehow. They found me screaming in New Haven, bloody, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a goat mask. I don't know what happened. It was wild, but like all of and I tried to remember, all I wanted to do was see inside this building. And I had been in there, but all of my memory of the inside had been erased. I could not remember what had happened. I remember the last thing I remember was walking up to the door. I'm like, Boy, these secret societies know they're stuck. Really erased a mind. Just get somebody liquid up and push them down the road. I think I did it myself, but when I got a little bit of renown and would tell this story on stage, and it was getting around, I was contacted by a couple of book and snakes. Yeah, snakes. I won't say their names. It was a man and a woman. We'll call them Booker and Snake. You. And I said, Why don't you come to dinner? And I'm like, yeah, I want to come to dinner in the clubhouse. And I went, and it was so weird and exciting, too. Life doesn't offer perfect circles very often. And the image, as on the cover of the book by Erin Draplin, the logo of Book and Snake is a book and a snake an oraboros a snake eating its own tail. So it's like this perfect. That's a symbol of eternity. Right. And also a symbol of the dumbest snake in the world. Yeah, maybe. I like that. Snake was about to eat my own butt by going back in them. But we had a wonderful time, and they were really nice young people. There were some older alumni who had come in. Like, there was one guy, James, who's in his early thirty s, and he just told me he had just been appointed. Public transportations are for New Haven. I'm like, if there are any Alex Jones people out there who are wondering is the public transportation of some small southern Connecticut cities run by secret societies, the answer is yes. The Illuminati is real. They're running your public buses in New Haven. And we had a fun time. We're hanging out. And at some point the young people, out of politeness, said, what would you say is a secret to your success? Such as it is? We can keep secrets. Yeah, that's right. The answer was go on television. The advice that I gave them was, first of all, don't get drunk and fall down the stairs. That's good. Please don't get drunk and fall down the stairs. Don't think that you're immortal, especially white guys truly don't understand that they're breakable until they get older. They don't grow up with the sense of my body can be harmed or taken at any moment by another figure of authority or another person in the way nonwhite guys feel every day. You know what I mean? So they do things like jump off cliffs in Hawaii, right? Climb up mountains and fall downstairs because they think they're immortal. But you're not. You can fall down, you can break your neck and die. So don't do drunk and stay on the stairs. And the other thing is, the secret of my success is the same secret for what brought me to the secret society, which is someone invited me to do something and I said yes. Right? If you're invited to do something interesting and it's not going to hurt you or somebody else, right. You should say yes. You should see what happens. That's so much harder to do sometimes than is said, but it is just, at its core, good advice. Well, I'm an incredibly smart person. These kids, I'm sure, have thrived in my wake. But it's like, I didn't say yes to that job in Albuquerque and I regret it. I could have easily said yes. But people asking you to do interesting things is also it means sometimes having to leave a job. It means sometimes having to tell someone you care about you're going to be away for a while. It means getting out of your comfort zone, what time you wake up, you know what I mean? And it's really easy to come up with a lot of reasons why you would say no, but it's better to just say yes and see what happens. And I've certainly failed in that a lot. But take that, Nancy Reagan. Yeah. Just say yes. Just say yes. Gold Chuck. Just say yes. Do you have any tour dates that you want to plug? Yeah. So I'll just preface this by saying all of my tour dates are available@johnhodgman.com. Tour. Beautiful. The Medallion status tour is going to be taking me to famous John Hodgman stomping grounds like Brookline, Massachusetts. Sure. Symphony space where I'll be talking with our friend Elizabeth Gilbert. Los Angeles, where I'll be talking with our friend Amy Mann. Cool. San Francisco, where I'll be talking with my friends Linus the Corgi and Chompers the Corgi, two famous corgis of instagram who figure prominently in this book. They are two famous corgis. They're even on cover. Yeah, they're on the cover. Look, I want the book to sell, you know what I mean? And I put drugs two Corgis on the cover. I'm guaranteed a 10% bump in sales. Yeah, but one of the stories I told, one of the secret rooms that I got into was a party during San Francisco sketchfest at Adam Savage's workshop. The Mythbusters. Adam Savage plows all of his mythbusters money into this deep and rewarding hobby of prop replication. Have you been to his workshop? I have not. We should go there sometime. I would love to. It sounds amazing. Like he makes things from the movies. So he'll make a perfect replica of Tom Scarlett's space suit from Alien. Or that Blade Runner gun. Yeah. Making Harrison Ford's blaster from Blade Runner has been this lifelong pursuit that he's perfected and perfected. He's made, I think, six for other people and six more for himself or something like that, just in case it goes down. Do they actually function? No, they don't. He's got like a Han Solo in Carbonite hanging up in there. And he's got a full size Admiral Ackbar. But Admiral Akbar is dressed up in Napoleonic War era naval uniform. That is a perfect replica of Russell Crowd and master and commander. Nice touch. And there I was in this party, enjoying this exclusive invitation only party with all these other comedians watching and enjoying nerd minds exploding. And I see these two dogs in there and I turned to Kevin Murphy and like, who invited the people with the dogs? And he said, oh, the people weren't invited, the dogs were invited. Like what? He said, yeah, that's Linus the Corgi and chompers of the corgi. Two famous corgis of instagram. My friend Connor Lestoca is a huge fan of theirs. He invited a party and I'm like, wait a minute, I just performed comedy on stage in English that I speak on two legs, not four. And I can sweat all over my body. I don't just have to pant. And these guys were getting invited to my exclusive party cause they're dogs. They probably don't even know what planet Admiral Akbar is from. The answer is Mont Calamari. There you go. Dogs. Is it really Moncalamari? Mon Calamari. It's terrible. Dumb Star Wars joke. It's terrible. So anyway, yeah, Linus and Chompers are going to be there in San Francisco. We've become friends now. Good. And basically I'm back drafting them. You don't want to backdraft a dog too closely, especially. You can get pretty close. And then I'll be in Minnesota and Chicago, and then in November we're going to hit a bunch of other cities. Jesse Thorne and I as a judge John Hodgeman Tours. Fantastic. You're coming here to Atlanta? Coming here to Atlanta, the variety. Looking forward to that. Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. Washington DC. Toronto, portland, Maine and Durham, North Carolina. And all of those. Those will be Judge John Hodgman shows. But Medallion status will be available for purchase. And whether it's a Judge Sean Hodron show or a medallion status event, I'll be hanging around, signing everything, hanging out or whatever. And you're big at that I will say this again, bit Leemedallionstatus. Sorry. In this crowded culture, you got a hashtag always be plugging. Sure. That link is the pre order link, and I ask people to consider buying it that way because getting a Russia preorders right at the top is really helpful to the launch of the I bet. But I don't want to punish people who have preordered and then come to the book and then come to the book tour. Right. Because some of these events, not all of them, you have to buy a book to get in. So what if you already bought one? Right? Sure. And then you got to buy another one to come in and see me. You're going to blow me off or feel like a jerk? Is there like, a coupon they can print out? We give them a little treat, aren't you? I give them a little treat. Okay. Everyone who comes and gets a book on the book tour, or the Judge Sean Hodgeman tour, gets an Aaron Draplin designed enamel lapel pin that has a picture of a corgi on it, and it says Famous Corgi. Nice. Hang on a second. Okay. Keeps going. Pretty nice, right? Right. What if you preordered the book as a hardcover, as an ebook, as an audiobook, and then you get a copy of the book at the event, you get an upgrade, you get a new pin. Does it have a $20 bill that it's stuck into? No, but this is only for people who buy two copies of the book and can show me in the signing line that they've got two copies of the book in any format for whatever reason. Double Corgi. Oh, jeez. Double Corgi all about medallion status. This is all about upgrade loyalty system. I've got two of all your books because I always buy one and then you always give me one. Yeah. There are even higher levels of status that you can achieve. Awesome. And you both have earned, for your long term kindness to me and excellence to everyone, you both get a Triple Corgi Elite badge. Oh, my God. Oh, man. And there are Triple Corgi Elite badges. And when I was suggesting the scheme to the publisher, I had a criteria or a criterion for Triple Corgi Elite that I have now forgotten. So I think it's just going to be a little bit fuzzy. Discretionary. Discretionary. I think that's good, though. You should be able to be discretionary. And the Triple Core Elite badges, they're all beautiful enamel pins designed by Aaron Drape on you. I can't wait to get mine. And I think I have one for you in my bag. Okay, great. Well, John, thank you for coming. Thank you very much for being here. Johnhodgman. Comtorbit Leebeallionstatus. You want my newsletter? It's Bit Lee Hodgemill. H-O-D-G-M-A-I-L. It's a very fun newsletter. Yeah. Really? Hey, thanks. Medallionstatus is all capital letters. All one word when medallion statushodgmail is all small letters. All one word because why be consistent. Also, check out my new every now and then midday Instagram live show, get Your Pets, where I interviewed dogs and cats on Instagram. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, John, anytime. We can do this every week if you want. Okay. Okay. I would love to. You come down, we'll put you on. Why'd you come on? The Judge John Hodgeman podcast, too. I've been on before. I know. Let's do it again and cross the streams. All right. Got to do something to fight against these doughboys. Okay. Got it. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can get in touch with Hodgeman. What's your website one more time. The home of Johnhodgman Johnhodgmancom. Okay. At Hodgman on Twitter, at Johnhodgman on Instagram. Okay. Their Facebook Group pages for Judge John Hodgman and stuff like that. Yeah, we don't care about that. And Mapmedallionstatus. Okay. And then for us, you can just go to Stuff You Should Know.com and find all of our social links on there. It's simple. Or you can email us. 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 Iheartradios 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 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 Karen Kilgueref 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. 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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
3f50a38c-5461-11e8-b6d0-3b7f5e5afd49 | SYSK Selects: The Star Wars Holiday Special of 1978 | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-the-star-wars-holiday-special-of-1978 | Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in our annual special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all. | Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in our annual special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all. | Sat, 19 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=354, tm_isdst=0) | 52448547 | audio/mpeg | "Ahoy, a solemn Life Day to you all. This is Josh, and for this week's SYSK select, it's our annual Christmas edition of the Star Wars Holiday Special here to kick off your holiday season and grand style. I know Life Day actually took place this year on November 17, but we wanted to wait to save it until a little closer to Christmas to really put everybody in the Christmas spirit. So here everyone is the stuff you should know annual holiday tradition of the listening of the Star Wars holiday special episode Enjoy. Happy holidays. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Truckers Bryant and Jerry jerome Rowland. Who's the wiki mother? Yeah. Mala. That was the wicked wife. Oh, and mother. Yeah, sure. Chewbacca's mom is not with them any longer. She left. She was not about to appear in that. She went out the window. I'm excited about this, I have to say. We should say happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is December 17. I have my opening night tickets. Do you really? Sure. Wow. You into it? Oh, yeah. I will definitely go see it in the theater, but I won't be there opening night. Sure. I've gotten really adept at ignoring spoilers people, talking about stuff. I could conceivably see this movie a month after it comes out and still going fresh. I'm in Ostrich. Yeah. You black yourself out. Yeah. You go dark. I do. I make myself go to sleep. You go to the dark side. I've been there a while now. Well, happy Star Wars Day, though. I'm sure that I think this pairs nicely with Christmas. Star Wars Day. It's all come together. Yes. We already missed Life Day though, so happy belated life Day. Are they celebrating it this year, November 17? Yeah. But it's every three years. Arcane. Yeah, man. Weird job. Okay, so it's every three years started in 1978. Let's do the math, shall we? Quick math break. I believe that 2014 was the last Life Day. We just missed it. And then again in 2017. Okay, so 2017 will celebrate Life Day. We'll put on our red robes, our ultra long straight iron wigs sure. And we'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to. Yes. And if you have no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration that rookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yeah. It's like their Christmas. Yeah. Or Veronica or their Quanta or their tet, supposedly. It's sort of like Earth Day, too. They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead. And they also give gifts. They like the fins, basically. Yeah. It's a very interesting part of the Star Wars cannon. It is. And it's almost entirely made up, dashed off, you could possibly say, by George Lucas in the it's the basis of what has become derided as one of the worst things that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television in this galaxy. Yeah. At first, that sounds like hyperbole. Like, come on, it's because it was Star Wars. We had high expectations, but it's really that bad. Yeah. The people who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. However, I watched it when I was a kid. Then again this week. Yeah. And you watched it twice this week? Yes, I watched it last night and this morning. There's something about it. It's mesmerizing. It really is. It's one of those things that you start watching it and you want to turn it off, but you want to see just how absurd it can get. Almost. Yeah. And it starts absurd. It stays absurd in the middle. Yeah. Increasingly more absurd. It gets a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah. It's just a train wreck in every single sense of the word, top to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is. And some people, in researching this, you read about it, you read descriptions of these things, and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you see it. So luckily, as we will see, you can go on to YouTube and watch it, and you may even enjoy this episode more if you pause, go spend 2 hours watching this thing and then come back and laugh along with us. Yeah. There's a great over the years, there have been many segments of it on YouTube from badly dubbed VHS tapes, but there is one really pretty good version of it in full. Brought to you by Whio dayton, Ohio. Channel Seven, Ohio. Because that flashes up on the screen periodically. Yeah. Man, it is high quality. Yeah, it looks good. It has to basically be the copy that the actual affiliate broadcast. It's like that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube. It's clearly recorded on a 1978 VCR, which is really expensive. Very expensive. I did some calculating on West Egg. Okay. So the average VCR went for about $1,000. They were brand new. It's amazing. $1,000 in 1978 money, so they're about $3,800 in 2014 money. Crazy. Luckily, there were some rich people out there recording this stuff. And the wealthy has saved us all again. Yet again, as they always do. Yes. We need to shout out some articles that we use for this. There's a great article in Vanity Fair called The Han Solo Comedy Hour. Exclamation point. Yes. By Frank Dejacomo. And then the Star Wars holiday special was the worst thing on television ever by someone we kind of know, alex Pasternick knows from Motherboard. Yeah. Which is not wired. Vice. Yeah. We wrote a little bit for Motherboard back then, and we had a call with that one. We're like, old motherboard vets. Yeah. Basically. Wasn't there one more. There was another one, and I don't know who wrote this one. Chuck. Yeah. The title is the star wars holiday special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer, which is a famous quote, supposedly at a convention by Lucas. Yes. Which is not correct. He didn't ever say that. No. Okay. That sounded like something that people made up. Yes. But if you go on the internet, you will quickly believe that he did, but apparently he didn't. So I'm sure he felt that way, though, clearly, because he did appear on robot chicken in, I think, 2005 on the therapist couch talking about how much he hated the special. All right, so let's set the background, shall we? Shall we go back to 1977? Yes. Summer getting the old way back machine. All right, let's do it. All right. Here we are. There's Wooderson. Yeah. I'm just a little six year old excited about star wars. I've just turned one. Yes. You don't know what's up yet. Please forgive me if I urinate myself. No problem. Okay, so what has happened is star wars has become a huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere. Establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking. Even though it wasn't his first movie, it was his first huge breakout hit. Oh, yeah, for sure. Talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever seen anything like it before. No. 2001 had come out in the late 60s, but it still isn't accessible to all audiences. Yeah, it's not a cerebral film. Yeah. It's not an adventure movie. Star wars, this is like basically swashbuckling on the screen, but in a galaxy far, far away. Star wars just changed everything. And it came on just like a hammer. A new hope, by the way. Yeah. And I know we're going to get stuff wrong. Nerds. Yes. Just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us if it wasn't driven home that I'm not nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet. Give me a break. And by proxy chuck, too. Okay. Thank you. It's hard to state how great star wars was in everyone's mind. Right. Bill Murray came out with that lounge singer star wars thing. Yeah. It was everywhere. And if you just listen to the lyrics of it, really, it's just bill Murray singing about how much star wars is awesome. Yeah. Right. So by the following year, George Lucas, he wanted to figure out a way to keep audiences just engaged with the whole star wars franchise that he was just starting to build. But he knew the empire strikes back was a couple more years out. Sure. So I think he was approached by some TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We have a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just for TV specials. Here at CBS. Why don't you let us? Let's get together and do a Star Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Himion were working over at CBS and they said, this is a great way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your other movie. Maybe move some more toys. Yes. George Lucas got a cut of all the toys. Sure. It was right before Thanksgiving and he said there would be a lot of people watching TV pre holiday season or I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around, family, like, waiting to actually do stuff. That's right. Perfect time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's do this. I don't have a ton of time, but how about this? I'll get a story together and then you can go hire a whiz bang team of veteran writers and producers and directors, whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the words that will haunt George Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea. I want it to be based on Wookies and I want it to take place on their home planet of Kazuk, or rookie planet C. Is that how you say Kazuk? That's how it's pronounced in the holiday special. But it's also pronounced different ways. Other times I would have pronounced it kesey. Got to spell it. I guess that sounds like Chewbacca's planet. Sure. Also called G 5623. Wikipedia or.edu is a mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies was it is what we in show business call low hanging fruit. The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because they had just established the different scenes that would make the cut for Empire Strikes Back. How did you pronounce it again? Kazuk. Kazuk had not made the cut even prior to this. Apparently for a New Hope, george Lucas had whipped up a 40 page what's known as the Wookie bible. It's like a 40 page supplement that's all about Kazuk and Wookies and Chewbacca and his family and everything about rookie dumb. Right? That's right. So he's like, I've got this thing already established. I love Wookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm a little sad about that. Kazakh is not going to show up in Empire Strikes Back. Let's build the entire special around Wookies. It's basically the one demand me George Lucas has. That's it. I'll be totally hands off from this point on. Which he kind of was. He totally was. And it was actually this experience that apparently taught him to be a very hands on person that he is famous for being. It came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely. He was burned and had an iron grip after that on everything. So here's some of the folks behind it. Bruce valanche. Famous TV writer. You probably seen him on Hollywood Squares. Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pinchon for a while? I don't know. Or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares? I have no idea. Maybe confabulating some stuff. Confounding? Yeah. There's some kind of some sort going on. Sounds like it. Yeah. So Valanci was hired as a writer. A guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article. He does. His first quote was, we were really excited because this is Star Wars. How could it lose? Famous last words. Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team, the Welches, who are the parents of folk singer Gillian Welch, who I'm a big fan of, and I had no idea that her parents were producerssongwriters of the day. They were big on the variety show scene, which would turn out to be a really key cog in this whole experience. So I feel like right about here, jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record on the back. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Jerry. So, Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah. What would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah, well, actually, in the Star Wars holiday special, for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the reason that they decided that there should be musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas and at the time it was the Star Wars corporation was what it was called on the idea of doing this TV special was that everyone would love a variety show. Yeah, it was the 70s. Great idea. Let's do a variety show. The problem was this apparently George Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly trusted people who talked to him. Sure. Because by 1978, yes, variety shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah. We're talking Carol Burnett show. One of my favorite had just been canceled after eleven season. Big red Flag, sunny and Cher had just had its last season. Yeah. I mean, what else? Like he hall was still going on. Probably they didn't know. He haw still on solid gold. Yet to come on and take up the mantle. That was a variety show. That was a little bit there's, talking in between the songs. Yeah. Remember the mandrel sister show? I never watched that one. What is with that country chic thing that happened? Yes. It was a big deal in this. It's kind of happening again, I think. Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won all the CMA awards. I don't know, he came along and he's like, actually country. His dad's like a coal miner. For real. From Kentucky. I think I know what you mean, Chris. Yeah, he is good. He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in good country music again, that's great. Like, in the tradition of Merle Haggard and Cash and I guess it's probably where the country she came from because there was actually good country going on. Yeah, johnny Cash had a variety show. Did he really? Oh, yeah. I knew they did, like, a Sunday singing thing out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his own variety show. It was actually pretty good. There's some really great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like, Get back to Star Wars? I know. I'm so sorry. All right, so the variety show is dying, sort of. And so they figure, what a great time to take the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into the variety show milieu. I don't know if wedge is the right word. I think maybe nestle it in there and then start hitting it with the blunt edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice. That's right, because this is the time when Fantasy Island had just started. Morgan mindy was about to change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. Basically, television as we knew it from 1980 to whenever the real world came along, just escapist television is what they call it, was starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker into maybe sexy detectives, it might have gone over even better. But they went the other way. They decided to latch on to this extraordinarily stale genre of television and they hired the best in the business. There was a quote from, I think, Lenny Rips who was saying, like, we had literally a dream team, a variety show dream team. And everybody was good. But there were probably no bad welders on the Titanic either. That's a great quote. Yeah. The guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude named David Akumba and he had made his name for welcome to the Filmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van Morrison and the Birds in 1971. And he actually was at USC Film School at the same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other. And he only ended up directing about three segments of the thing. Before he quit. Yes, before he walked off. Some say he was actually let go, but we'll get to him in a minute. And who replaced him. Okay. As we get along down this gross road. Well, let's take a little break because I'm overly excited. Okay. All right. So we've established most of the main players. We'll get to a few more. We should point out that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. Sure. Peter Mayhew, they had no grounds to refuse to be on this, basically. Yeah, pretty much. They were not huge stars, yet they could throw their weight around and say, this is terrible, and I'm not doing it. They were big overnight because of Star Wars for sure. But they weren't to the adoring public. Sure. Back in studio, they could still be bossed around. And this is the result of it. And you can tell also, just from watching the actual special, harrison Ford is not happy to be there at any point. Oh, no. Princess Leia is clearly on drugs. Was she on drugs at this point? If you watch it, she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene, mark Hamill. It looks like he's happy to be there, actually. He was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm not doing a musical number. Yeah. And if you watch his part wedging a musical number in there would have been even more painful. Sure. But everybody who was part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing, like, a full body costume was like, I really wish I wasn't here. And you can tell? Oh, yeah. In fact, in the opening credit sequence, they're showing the picture, the faces of the people. And you see Harrison for it as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon. And you can just hear the guy off screen going, now look at the camera and just give a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod. And he finally you can tell he's pissed off. And he looks up at the camera and just sort of smirks yeah. And points at the camera like, okay, I'm looking at the camera. And then goes back to what he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early on, volanche and others. Did you feel bad for him, though? Really? Come on. It's harrison Ford. Han Solo. He has to go do this for five days. Yeah, I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on, valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue. Right. And they literally started after a brief opening scene. Setting it up. Here's the basic plot. Han Solo is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazuk in Time for Life Day so he can celebrate with his family. That's the basis of the entire two basis. The entire 2 hours. They encounter a space battle and they are delayed. And the next 2 hours are kind of what's going on while the delay is happening. Back on Kazoo. Back on Kazoop. Because you hear like, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for 2 hours. I would watch that. Sure. I would too. That's not what they show. Killing time at the Wookie household. That is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do. It's people hanging out, waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him and then killing time while they wait for him to come back. Yeah. Literally. Hold on. So you say there's a set up, right? Yeah, that's the initial setup. And then Chuck, that's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes. Ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak. So let's join it for a second, shall we? Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes. And you're not exaggerating. You're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. It's ten minutes of Wookies talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first. I didn't even know who it was. I thought it was might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh, yeah, that's little brother. And I don't find out until later when Mark Hamill shows up via Skype Call and says he really explains everything that had just happened. Like you're Chewbacca's father itchy you're chubbaka's son. Lumpy. Yeah. And you are Chewbacca's wife. Oh, Mala. Yeah. Thank you. So before everybody starts, like, freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are his father is Atichikok attach Cook. It's really hard to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is Lumpo, or Lump as named by Lucas. Yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy, Itchy, and Mala. So they're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made it to what is it? Ketchup Kazuk. Did you say Ketchup? Ketchup. Or Ketchup, if you're fancy. Yeah, but Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Khachuk because there's Kazakh, because there's a blockade by the empire, and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca, who I didn't realize is he's the most famous Wookie of all. Did you know that? Yeah, of course I didn't know that. Well, I mean, he's the only one that really appears in the movies, seeing, like, these people's view of the universe. What about back on Kazakh? Yeah, he might have just been a fly by night Wookie, right? Yeah, but not the case. Very famous Wookie. Yeah. And he really loved to soak in his fame. All right, so he realizes there's a problem. valanche, he goes to Lucas and is like, I don't know, man, this is your world, but it may not be the strongest thing to do to set this in Wookie land and have all this comprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met with a glacial stare. Well, he put it a little differently than that. Well, he said glacial stair. He did. The glacial stair that he got was for this quote. He said, these people just talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm. He goes, if you want, you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom, and I'll do all of the foliating for it. Yeah, he's a large guy. He is. So that's what got the glacial stair. But Valanci later said that there was one development meeting that Lucas attended, and it was here's the Wookie Bible. Tell me what you got. And Villanch said he and the other writers and producers and director were just kind of throwing ideas. And George Lucas would either say, like, no, that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes, that's exactly it. Yes. Let's make this a variety show. Yeah. And there was a little bit of background there. The Cantina players in the band had appeared on other variety shows at that point, and I think it went over fairly well just as a short segment on like, the Richard Pryor variety show or Donnie Marie. Yeah, man, there were a lot of variety shows. But that's what I'm saying. That was television. That's what you did. Like the Brandy's. The show had its course, and then it became a variety show. Everybody loved variety shows. Bibled, too. By this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows. And so it really was a terrible choice. In fact, they even hired a couple of writers from Shields and Yarnell, which I hadn't heard of. Had you? Oh, yeah, I watched it. It was creepy. This Mime couple who had their own variety show, and they figured, these two will be great because they are used to working without words. Right. So there is a certain logic to the variety shows all over the place. It's not just that variety shows were popular at the time. Somebody was like, Wellkies, you don't understand what they're saying, so this is all going to be very physical. So these people who did what is it? Shields and Yarnell. Yeah, that's a perfect choice. That makes complete sense. You can see this whole process of leading up to the point where it was produced and shot and everything, a series of like, oh, we have this problem. Well, here's a fix. Yeah, but that leads to another problem. Well, we'll fix it with this. And no one's stepping back and being like, all we've done is create a series of problems that are going to come together and make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary. No one did that. And so the whole thing was made. That's right. And that eventually airs on November 17, 1978, friday at 08:00 P.m. Eastern time. That's right. And according to the Nielsen ratings, it attracted 13 million viewers, lost the second hour just in the US. It aired in seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that. I guess not, because none of those are on the Internet. It finished second to The Love Boat I'm sorry, from eight to nine. And then the next hour actually finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their respective hours. No, 13 million. That's not bad. The thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour yeah, we know about that graph. It's okay. Yeah, we do. And then after a very important part, which we'll talk about soon, it just drops off at the end of the first hour. And that actually probably made the executives at CBS Cringe for a number of reasons. Number one is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on that they extended it to 2 hours, and it shines through. You can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to be I think an hour might have been stretching it, to tell you the truth. Yeah. It's 30 minutes of content. 40 if you're generous an hour, and then 2 hours, it becomes one of the worst things that was ever put on television. All right, well, let's take a break, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the actual even don't want to call it content, but it is content in the strictest definition. Sure. Right after this. All right, so the show itself, we've given you the main plotline, which, again, is that Chewy is trying to get back to his home planet to celebrate life there with his family. Right. That's it. And again, we almost barely see Chewy. The rest is his family on Kazakh waiting for him to come back for Life Day. Yeah. So some of the various things they did, there were guest stars. There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show. Okay. One of my all time favorites. Him or Carol Burnett show. Both. He's great. Yeah. He actually, if you watch what he's doing, this is a comedy genius. Well, apparently he, too was, like, the only one on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him. That's what I say. He had three different parts. Yeah, he played well. I don't even know the names, actually. We could look them up, but he played a Julia Child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment, a long one. A very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's wife makes bantha stew to kill some time. To kill some time on her planet and in our living room. Yeah. So Harvey Corman is in drag as a four armed Julia Childlike TV chef. Right. I think it's Gormanda. Is her name. Gormanda? That makes total sense. Yeah. He also plays there's this one weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers. The empire had come because the blockade raided the house and other properties. So he tries to trick them by, I think, rigging a ComLink to speak in a different voice. So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches an instruction video, which was Harvey kitel as a robot. Oh, it would have been wonderful. Harvey kitel murdered someone in the middle of the instruction. Great. Harvey Corman. And then the final role he had was a bar patron in the cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top of his head like a volcano where he pours his drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he loves B. Arthur. Did we mention B Arthur was in? It. B Arthur is not only in it Chuck, she sings a song. She does? She is the pronounced to everyone. She manages or maybe owns the Cantina. She's the owner. What's, the Maz what? Mazda Cantina? No. Mozdef is a rapper. Oh yeah. You mean Maas Eyesley? Yes, that Can Tina. She's the owner. B. Arthur is the owner. The Arthur of the Golden Girls. But in this case be Arthur of Maud. Because as one of the people who wrote one of the articles we base this on points out she's just basically playing Maud as the owner of the Cantina. Yeah. And her song comes because they basically say there's a lockdown, so you got to call last call at your bar. So she calls last call by singing a song to everyone. Right. And again, we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all this takes place as part of a public service announcement basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on Tatooine is. So let's go see what's going on in the Maze Isley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Yeah. Alright. This is incomprehensible, but it goes on. So there in it there's also Art Carney. Yes. He's the honeymoon or something. Probably the star of the whole thing. Really. He has the most lines, I would say the most comprehensible line. Right. So he plays a human trader that has recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually gets to Kazuk and says they're on the way, it's all good. Yeah. A trader. Not Trey Tour? Yeah. Traders and trades humans for money. No, he sells goods. Yes, a trader. He's in trade. Humans. Yeah. He's in the human trade. No, he isn't. Really? Yeah, he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it up in Star Wars encyclopedia. It said that he was in the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently they sanitized his background because he's basically just selling like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to the rookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes. He comes bearing gifts. Yes. Because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah. So he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he gives is sort of like a little digital insert to a I guess you would call it a virtual reality hair dryer. Hairdryer? Like a beauty shop hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa. Itchy grandpa. Itchy sits under his hairdryer, pops in this digital cassette and it can only be described as soft core porn. Apparently the writers who were interviewed for this said that was totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass the sensors. That's right. You can't even say it's innuendo. It's too obvious and overt for innuendo. Instead it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, great singer. Yes, she is. A Vegas staple. Shows up and starts basically tantalizing grandpa Itchy who again, this is Chewbacca's elderly father, who now engages in some sort of well, he's watching virtual reality pornography now. And this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself. Well, yeah. And she literally says to him, now I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah. So then you've got another musical number, because also, again, he shutters. Yeah, it's really strange. All right, I know it seems like we're jumping around, but it's mind blowing. This is pretty much like blow for blow. Actually, I forgot earlier on in the special there's, one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the Hologram chess board that they played in A New Hope? Yeah. Basically kind of sets that up and says, Here, just play this. He pushes the button, which is clearly a 1970s cassette recorder. And another, it's like a Cirque du Soleil acid trip gymnast routine. Happens in front of the kids eyes. And again, it's not like it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like, 5610 minutes long of all of these things. So you would think, okay, they've gone to this Hologram well, a couple of times. Why not go do it again? Well, they do. To kill more time while the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house, art Carney, apparently, I guess, is trying to get one of the Imperial Guard the leader, I think, or one of the leaders who looks like somebody from spaceballs, by the way. Very much so. Yeah. And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way, said, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist, George Lucas, didn't even have the Schwartz with them at the time. Anyway, Ark Carney's distracting this Imperial leader while they're ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram. And this Hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that, is Jefferson Starship. And they decide that they're going to play Light the sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs. It's a little music video, basically. Yeah. It's the predecessor to video Kill the Radio Star, you can tell. And again, it is the whole lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like, we need to escape mentally from what's going on here in our house. Let's go into this video world, and they don't cut back and forth. No, it's okay. Here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing the song. Yeah. And even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, it's sort of a weird trip. We didn't get it, but we did it right. They gave us some money and some cocaine. Well, probably. So we said yes. Chuck, I think, though, yet another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the high point of the whole thing. Oh, sure. Great. There is a cartoon, actually. Yeah. That Lumpy watches. Yeah. Lumpy the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my little I guess it was an iPad. And he watches this cartoon and it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special. Yeah. Generally agreed upon as such. It's not just us. And it introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever makes an appearance in the Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually not a bad and you can't find it in the one version I told you to watch. They removed it for copyright, but you can watch a separate version. Right. You can find it on its own. Yeah. And it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of the day, like a heman or something. For sure. It's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah. But it does have a plot that you can follow that makes sense as a Star Wars thing. And it introduces Boba Fett, like you said, and it's actually not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C three pores on a planet or something. Yeah. And Han and chewy in it. And it's the first time we see in Darth Vader, it's the first time we see Boba Fett and that he is just doing whatever he can do for money. Right. Like, Luke trusts him at first. C three PO is like, you sure you should trust him this quick? And he's like, oh, three PO. You and your non trusting ways. And then it turns out he's selling them out to the dark side. So it's basically boa. Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes. And that was the thing that came at about the end of the first hour mark. And after that everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah. I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came up? Yes, I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it. Like, if I made it through it all. I mean, I was seven and it was until ten, so I probably didn't make it through at all. Yeah, but you're probably disturbed. Who knows? I just remember that I have to ask my brother. He might have a memory of this. I'll bet he does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward or something like that. It has a picture. Well, he was ten at that point, so cynicism had become a thing in his life probably by then. Sure. When cynicism kicks in, I see Scott holding on to 1415. Yeah, maybe. So, Chuck, the whole thing finally does end. And actually there's a guy, his name is Nathan Rabin. He writes over at the AV club. He had a great quote. He basically said that one of the great redeeming values of this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah. You know what the first part of the quote is? I'm not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine. Go read his review of the Star Wars Holiday Special because he goes on to describe exactly what that must have been like. Development meeting, where the bag of cocaine is pacing back and forth, talking about what should happen. That's what it feels like, but it doesn't, and it ends even more. It takes this bizarre 2 hours and wraps it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah. So what happens is eventually, Han Solo should we say spoiler alert? Eventually Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They park on the far side of the planet because they know the imperial forces are there and the exercise will do Chewy good. Yeah. So they have to hike over there. They eventually make it back home. They find the stormtroopers at their house right. Their tree hut. Yeah. Which the paintings that set this up, I don't think we mentioned. I don't even call them matte paintings. It looks like someone painted something on the wall and they just, like, put a camera in front of it. Pretty much, yeah. So they get back, and Han Solo hides around the corner. Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect him. Sure. Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony and dies in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot first with greedo, but they couldn't even have him wrestled the stormtrooper and throw them off. He trips over a log. Right. And Han Solo has his hands thrown up like, Wasn't me. It might as well have been a banana peel. But again, this is basically produced by Vaudevillians, starring Vaudevillians. Why not have the One Death take place from basically what amounts to somebody slipping on a banana? Exactly. It's a perfect way to end it. So that guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for the rest of Life Day. And we then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olive Mills portrait. And all of them are wearing red robes. Sure. And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still having trouble wrapping around them. And then Princess Leia comes out with C. Three PO. Is Mark Hamill there? The whole gang is there. Okay. The whole gang is there. And then they all gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leia, which we will read verbatim. This holiday is yours, but we all share with you the hope that this day brings us closer to freedom and to harmony and to peace. No matter how different we appear, we're all the same in our struggle against the powers of evil and darkness. I hope that this day will always be a day of joy in which we can reconfirm our dedication and our courage and more than anything else, our love for one another. This is the promise of the Tree of Life. Right. And we should also point out the Tree of Life has never been mentioned up to this point. I have no idea what that was. It makes a sudden appearance at the end. And when you say QSong, by Q song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yeah. And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved. She's going through a phase where she's like I kind of like singing. Bruce valanche calls it a Joni Mitchell period. Yeah. And she somehow convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leah. And she does. And again, I've said that she looks like she's on drugs. This is the point where she really does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just me. Other writers who have written reviews of this it's really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot before she shot this scene. But she sings. Okay. It's fine. It's just the fact that Princess Leia's singing. And actually, Bruce valanche had a really great quote, too. He says that she very much wanted to show this side of her talent. And there was general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. She did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with her singing this song about Life Day which is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. Yeah. So along the way, the director, original director quit. A new director, steve Binder was hired to finish the job and bring it in. And he did over the original $1 million budget, of course. Always. He did bring it in. And at this point, George Lucas said he was working on Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know what was going on. He wasn't around for the shoot. No, it wasn't until the air, I think, that he actually saw it. Yes. And it was a travesty, obviously, if you haven't noticed that by now. Critics hated it. Star wars fans really hated it. Everybody hates the people who are in it. Hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it. Yeah. Even Harvey. Kaisell hated it. Actually, he loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years about it a lot. And he doesn't talk about it much. But in 2005 and I don't buy this for a second he says it was an interview. He said Special from 1978 really didn't have much to do with us. That part is true. I can't remember what network it was going on, but it was a thing that they did. That's a lie. There's no way he doesn't know that was CVS. Yeah. We kind of just let them do it. I believe that it was done by I can't even remember who the group was. But there were a variety of TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff. And that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but you learn from those experiences. Yeah. I think they even use some of the footage from the movie at the end. It looks like some of the space stuff, like a highlight reel of the gang. Well, it looked like they had some insert shots of Imperial Cruisers and tie Fighters and stuff. Remember when Chewbacca leans back and puts his hands behind it? Yeah, that's in there. It's like just a highlight reel from the movie thing. Feel like this. Go see the movie. Well, and also, that means it doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's just sort of inserted. They tried. They definitely tried. And George Lucas is totally full of it because in 1987, he told Starlog magazine that the Christmas special would be out on video cassette very soon. Yes. And in 2007, two years after that quote you just read, where he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Basically, he apparently considered releasing the Christmas special as a bonus on the DVDs of the first three. Right. But did not. And apparently Kerry Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras commentary. Yeah, commentary. Then I want a clean, original copy of the holiday special. Yes. So why go ahead. So I can play at parties when I want people to leave. It's pretty great. It is. And there is one of those clean copies is floating around out there, so you can watch this in its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed due to copyright infringement and that kind of stuff. But as the case with the rest of the Internet, you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that are just fascinating. Yeah, those are always fun GM ads where one of the guys who's in quality control, he says, did you watch it? I don't think I saw that one. He goes, we really care about these cars. That's no jive man on a GM. Serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah, it's pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it. I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars experience or my love for the franchise. Okay. And I'm glad it is out there because it's a fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think it adds to it, actually, because it's campy and awful and I don't know, somehow that enriches the rest of it. I'm with you. You like it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I watched it twice. I wouldn't have watched it a second I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let me take that back. I'm a pro. Yeah. So I would have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have watched it the second time if I wasn't there wasn't something about it. And I figured out I think the thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who, frankly, is hands down the best actor in the entire thing. Her responses and everything is just awesome. I think my favorite parts are well, there's a great Wilhelm scream. Yes. I noticed Trooper trips over the lodge. Jerry would not have noticed it. And then there's a part where all the wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one part where itchy and Lumpy are having exchange, where Lumpy, you can make it out, goes, I love you. Yeah, I noticed that, but it's covered up. But someone was like, we have to have at least one exchange where you sort of know what they're saying. Sure. Or they were like, I think she said, I love you. Should we have them redo it? And the director is like, no, I want to go. And, Chuck, there's one other thing that I figured out from watching this. What's that? It's not readily apparent the whole thing is made all the more odd, and that there's situation after situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained to expect laugh track, but there's not a laugh track. Had there been a laugh track yeah. It might have been less bizarre, but the fact that it's missing, it agitates the mind. So it's this whole additional element that it is weird. I never thought about it. There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it. Yeah. Like when Art Carney's doing his thing. Yeah. Telling jokes. Yeah. Okay. I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson in this. Yeah, it's the Lesson of Life Day. It is. And in 2007, Rift tracks the Great Mystery Science Theater 3000. Guys, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the full version of the special. So try and go grab that if you can, as well. Oh, you can. It's on their site because it's great. I think it's, like, $8. And those guys are awesome. I think Corbett listens to us. So hey, Corbett, you got anything else? No, I think we did this. There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article. Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that George Lucas never said that he would match this thing with a sledgehammer. Right. And there's also an entire website dedicated to it. Star Warsholidayspecial.com. Yeah. And if you want to know more about the Star Wars Holiday special, we have a ton of Star Wars stuff on how stuff works, by the way. Yeah. We have cool, sort of fun articles about the Death Star and Lightsabers videos with Holly Fry from stuff you missed in history class. Yeah. She knows her stuff she does. So you can just type Star Wars in the search bar@housethefworks.com and it'll bring up some cool stuff for you. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. Just finished listening to the Voyage Manuscript podcast. Found it super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin. I know Josh mentioned Chuck theory of it being drug induced is somewhat surprising, or even unlikely, given the language in the manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past 100 years. But if you think about it, it's tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I think back to when I was younger and friends invented their own languages, or even in writing a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know, so just thought I'd contribute that to the conversation. Big thanks for all you guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San Diego in the last few years for some noise around my apartment. So basically, we were blocking out noise. We do that, which I love, and then as a way to get through traffic on my commute home from work, you guys are far more interesting and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I've listened to hundreds and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That is from Amy J Muffet. Thanks a lot, Amy. In San Diego doesn't mean like Place of the Whales in German or something like that. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S Kpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyoushaneo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at household workshops.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshero.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 show." | |
4030166e-121b-11eb-ba6a-bf676f05725c | Short Stuff: The Paper Dress Fad | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-paper-dress-fad | There was a brief period when it was highly on trend to wear a super short dress made out of paper. Learn why right now! | There was a brief period when it was highly on trend to wear a super short dress made out of paper. Learn why right now! | Wed, 17 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=321, tm_isdst=0) | 11583368 | audio/mpeg | "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. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and this is Short Stuff about a really amazing fad that I hadn't heard of until fairly recently. Chuck, I somehow knew about this, and I'm not sure how. You think your mom might have worn a paper dress and told you about it or something? I don't think so, but we're talking about paper dresses. In the mid 1960s, the Scott Paper Company had a new product to promote called Duraweave. It's basically mostly paper and then about 70% rayon. And it was sort of just like a little more durable napkin that they were super stoked about. Plastic was all the rage. I don't know what that has to do with rayon. Rayon is a kind of plastic it's like a plastic fiber. Okay, great. Plastic was all the rage, like I said. And they said, all right, here's what we're going to do to try and market this thing. We're going to show how durable it is by making clothing, making some dresses out of paper. And it was literally just a marketing thing. And you clip something off and mail it in like a dollar and a quarter to get your paper dress mailed back. And then a few weeks later, you might have, like, a little red bandana print paper dress to wear around. And it went off like gangbusters. It just blew up. They had two dresses to choose from. Scott called the dresses paper capers. They both wear the same cut. They were like an aframe, like, mod mini dress. And like you said, one was red bandana, the other is black and white op art. And for some reason, they just happened to touch a nerve. And like you said, it took off like gangbusters. So much so that Scott suddenly pivoted and started advertising in magazines, like, mademoiselle for their paper dresses and got just a huge response from it. I think they sold half a million of them in the less than a year that they were producing these things. Yeah. And you may think, oh, man, what a funny boon for the Scott Paper Company making all this money on these dresses. It was a marketing thing. So they sold them for so cheap, they weren't really even making any money. They're kind of covering their costs because it was only meant to be an advertisement anyway, right? So they basically couldn't say, all right, well, now we're going to charge $8 a pop for them. Oh, you like those? Okay. But other companies did catch on and think they could make more than one dollars a piece. Yeah. So when I said Scott touched something off, which is a really weird way to put it, now that I say it out loud, that's kind of an understatement. They somehow managed to say, let's try this marketing thing. It'll be cute, it'll be fun, or whatever. But really what we're doing is showing off how durable our Dura weave paper line is. It's so durable, you can wear it as a dress. But they managed to stumble backwards into this exactly where the fashion industry was at that moment, and then this burgeoning like kind of ethos or zeitgeist of popular culture, just wanting everything plastic and disposable and just handy, and they put them together accidentally in these paper dresses. And I think that's from everything I saw, that's why historians think it took off and became a fad like it did. That's right. And I think there was about three and a half million dollars worth of these paper garments, and we'll get to, after the break, all the different kinds they had at the close of 1996. That's a lot of money in 66, right? It's a lot of money in 66. And I think the Waste Best Get Boutique, which is one of the paper design houses. We're making 100,000 of these a week at one point. Yeah. Not nuts. It is good nuts. We're going to take a good break and be right to back. 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. 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 builtin 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 fast in 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 City Advantage. Okay, silly. So we're back. You were talking about Waste Basket Boutique making 100,000 dresses a week. One of the great things about these things, these paper dresses that were sudden sad in the mid 60s, is that they were easy to produce, which is how you could create, like, a new business to make them and make 100,000 a week. But that also meant that you could come up with all sorts of different designs for these things. They were really easy to print on because they were paper, and it really tied in nicely, I think. Another reason why they took off as a fad, because they came along at a time when commercialism was big in art, when pop art was becoming a thing, when Opart was really established, like those big, bold, chunky, colorful, weird prints. All of these things were just ready made to be printed onto a paper dress. That's right. If you think of Andy Warhol, then you're on the right track, because they had Campbell Soup dresses. They had Jolly Green Giant can vegetable dresses. Just literally look up image search paper dresses and you'll see candy bars, you'll see the Yellow Pages, like, you name it. Kind of any graphic print that you could print on a poster. They were putting on dresses. Yeah, there was one, a big giant Bob Dylan face, which is pretty cool. I want to get that one. Richard Nixon had one, which is like the opposite of what the paper dresses were all about. Bobby Kennedy had one, which is much more in line with it. That Green Giant one I thought was pretty cute, that the Jolly Green Giant wore that leafy tunic. That's what the dress looked like. What else was there? Chuck? I could see these coming back now. Yeah, if they were recycled right? If they were recyclable, biodegradable, all that stuff, I could totally see it. But that was one of the things, like, nobody cared about that stuff in 1966. It was, you can put these things on, you can buy them for cheap, you can wear them a few times and throw them away. And they were like, really? It was such a big fad that people were starting to rethink how we do things like travel. Like, apparently hotel chains were having meetings about how they were going to start selling entire lines of paper clothing. So that when you went to a hotel or like a resort or something for a week, you didn't pack a suitcase, you just showed up, bought whatever clothes you needed out of their gift shop, and that's what you wore, and you threw it away. And then you put the clothes that you arrived and back on to go home. And that was it. Easy peasy. Beautiful covered girl. Yeah. It's kind of funny to look like every great idea in history has so many bad ideas attached to it. I feel like people won't want to wear their own clothes that they shop for and like, just for the benefit of leaving their suitcase at home, that one didn't take off. They did make other clothes, though. They made men's suits. They are kind of hard to find images of these, but I finally dug one up. It looks like a wrinkled napkin, basically. Yeah. This Dura weed stuff, you've almost certainly experienced it anytime they put a bib on you at the dentist for like, a cleaning that is basically Dura eve, if not actual Dura weave. It's like a competitor to Dura weed. That's what these dresses were made out of. Yeah, they get very wrinkly. But again, in terms of these young women who are sort of out on the town in these things, there were a bunch of benefits. They always had something new that they could put on, which was a big deal. They could tell mom to go stick that sewing machine where the sun don't shine because I've got tape and a pair of scissors. I can alter this thing however I want. I can be a little risque and cut the belly out of one of them or cut a really low back if I want to. It was sort of the time of the sexual revolution. So all of these different things came together to make these super popular. Yes. And like any good fad, it ran its course and just went away almost as fast as it came on. And people saying, what just happened? But this is one of those fads where a lot of people have some ideas about why it went away so quickly. And there's some pretty good theories. One of the first ones is that they were almost exclusively super mod minidresses, and those were no longer in by the end of the super in 1966. But they were not so in and say, 68 or 69. Right. That was a big one. Yeah. There's not a lot you can do style wise, but that is one shape that you could definitely make a paper dress out of. And it just happened to be popular for a few years. There's a guy named Jonathan Wolford who I saw interviewed in, I believe oh, I don't remember. But also, by the way, shout out to histories, dumpster textiles and context groovy history and timeline for giving me these ideas. But in one of those, Jonathan Walford, who's a curator of the Fashion History Museum in Ontario, he's like, probably the biggest reason they went away, because they were not particularly comfortable to wear. No, they don't look super comfortable. And like I said, they get really wrinkly. So it's sort of a one night affair, I would imagine. The other kind of downside, there's always been terrible men and men got into a habit of parties of like, oops, I spilled my drink all over your dress. That's now, like, dissolving in front of my eyes. Sorry. A boomer would do that. Yeah. No way. So that was another one, too. But one of the ones that, like, in almost any article you'll ever find about paper dresses that explain why they went away is that people became much more environmentally conscious a little bit. That's entirely possible. That that was a big driver of it. The first Earth Day was in 1970, so that was around the time these things faded out. So it probably would have seemed pretty ghost to wear, like a disposable plastic paper dress that you were going to throw away after a couple of wears. But I saw some article somewhere that said, that may be true, but the stuff that we replaced it with is not much better because it's almost as disposable. It's much more durable than a paper dress. But we throw our clothes away way more than they probably should. And I thought that was a pretty good ending for this short stuff, don't you think? Yeah. And when we were talking about if they could do this today to make them out of recycled materials and recyclable, they would also have to do a comparison that said, by the way, the thing you're wearing have this sort of impact on the environment, by the way. Yeah. Well, look for Chuck and I in matching Canadian tuxedoes made out of paper in the near future someday. Don't spill your drinks on me. That's it, everybody. Of course, for short stuff, which means 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 show." | |
c54d18f4-5460-11e8-b38c-7b94ab55958e | Selects: How Limousines Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-limousines-work | The first limousines weren’t even cars! Learn all about the history of limousines, how they’re made and some of the most creative and expensive amenities you can find inside them in this classic episode with Josh and Chuck. | The first limousines weren’t even cars! Learn all about the history of limousines, how they’re made and some of the most creative and expensive amenities you can find inside them in this classic episode with Josh and Chuck. | Sat, 15 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=135, tm_isdst=0) | 35262042 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, friends. This is your friendly neighborhood podcaster, Chuck Bryan. Here how limousines work from November 6, 2014. There's more to it than you think. It's not just a big, long car. It kind of is, but there's more to it than that. Check it out how limousines work. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerome Jerry. Do we say your last name these days, Jerry? No, we've never said it. Okay. She's like, keep it that way. Yeah. Jerome Jerry Blank. Gerry Blank. That's a real person, right? No, she was on Strangers with Candy. Yeah. Okay. I was like, man, I know that name. Yeah, they named something that was the character, right? Yeah. She really cleaned herself up and went on to become a spokesperson for Donny amy suddenly Jerry Blank. Oh, yeah. They're one and the same. Yes. I love Amy. Suddenly I like the Sidaros. Yeah, some people don't. Aren't they fighting? Oh, Amy and David, like a lot of David and everybody else. I think he wrote, like, some New Yorker article about his dead sister, their sister, who I think I can't remember what happened, but he wrote, like, a memoir about her. And I think The New Yorker I got mad and had the rest of the family called them out on the inconsistencies and errors and facts. Maybe they were tired of it because all he's done is right about his family. Yeah, I guess they're like that's. It David. Yes. No more. We're done. Cut us in or we're going to cause big trouble for you. I was about to do my David Sudarson. I thought about it. Then I realized I don't do a David Sudarison person. I could, but yeah, not going to go there. So limos. Yeah. At least some of the celebrities is right around in limousines. I bet they have. And I can guarantee they have, because, Chuck, it turns out the definition of a limousine is way broader than you would think. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean some super stretch. No, but it can. Sure. Basically, a limousine technically is any car with a roomier back seat than the average car. And if you throw in a driver, there's nobody who's going to say it's not a limo. You can be like, yes, it is, and be right. Yeah. Technically, if you want to hire a town car to take you to the airport, technically, that's a limousine. Yeah. You know the car services in New York? Sure. Those are limos. That's right. They have me here in Atlanta, too. Do they have a car service here in Atlanta? Yeah. Are you kidding me? All I see are just the worst. Oh, yes. Because there's a special tag. Did you know that Atlanta taxi drivers are the worst taxi drivers on the planet? Have you noticed from experience? It's pretty bad, but I just Uber it. Now, that's different. Yes. That's different than the taxis. Oh, no, that's what I'm saying. That's why I Uber it, because they're different than the taxis so bad. Yes. Seriously, anybody who comes to Atlanta, if you make it out of Hartsfield, look around at the taxis and how they drive, your mind will be scrambled. Yeah, it's crazy. I think cabbies are kind of like that everywhere. No, very frequently, they are the best drivers in the entire city. They know where they're going. They don't just meander they don't, like, drift into lanes. They don't drive super slow. I've had the opposite experience. Most cabs that I've been in, the driver was pretty great. Usually when I'm in a cab in New York City, I wonder, is this the ride where we hit somebody or some other car? Yes, but you don't and they're going really fast. In Atlanta, they drive 10 miles an hour and hit everything. They just side swipe everything slow and lousy. Come to Atlanta. So anyway, we're talking limousines, man. Let's get back on track. Yeah, I should say, too. I hate limousines. I love a good Town Car ride or from an airport. But as far as a stretch limousine, I just hate that whole thing. Just a little, kind of, hey, look at me. Oh, it's just dumb. It's longer and it's got a bar. I don't know. I think the whole thing is stupid and just part of that whole narcissistic culture that I despise. I got you. I've got money. So I want it to be in a longer car with a TV in it. Well, for a very long time, if you wanted a TV in your car or a phone, your car better be double the size of the normal version of it. All right. I just had to get on my soapbox. Like, if it's for prom and you're all going in, like, I get, like, a fun thing like that. Or a fur buzz. Rent a fur bus for your niece's birthday like we did. That was fun. What? You never done that? No. I thought you were saying, we rented it for my niece's birthday. No, my niece's birthday. You weren't a part of it. This is my family. Yeah. I wasn't invited. God invited me. This is before I knew you, my friend. Anyway, I can see the fun of it occasionally, but just as a means of transportation, I think it's pretty obnoxious. I got you. Especially those huge, huge, like, hammer stretches. I just want to dematerialize those with my eyes. I wish I could shoot a laser beam and expose the people within. Just all of a sudden, they're on the street with their bourbon and Coke. I wonder what happened to my super stretch summer. I wonder how you'd have to do that. So, like, your laser beam, I would have to just get people fiberglass. Like, destroy fiberglass and steel and upholstery and rubber. Yeah. There you go. So I think, as we stated, the limousine doesn't necessarily have to be what you hate. Yeah. It can also be just a car that's driven by somebody where you got a roomy back seat for the passenger, nice big truck. But even before that, even if you want to say, wow, that's a broad definition of limousine, man let's go even further back. And include clothing as a limousine in the definition of limousines. That's right, because I learned, as I imagine you did, the word limousine comes from a town in france called limousineousine. We'd like to introduce our new principal skinner. Principal seymour skinner. Yeah, that's a great one. That is one of the all time greats. Yes, it was limousine without the e on the end. And like you said, the original limousine wasn't a car. It was kind of like a little hooded raincoat that protected you. Yeah, like little red riding hood wore a limousine. It was a hooded cloak, and it was invented in limousine france. And it became synonymous with limousine france. Because they called it a limousine. That's right. So as people started building coaches that protected the rider, the passenger from the elements, they're like, wow, this is kind of like a hooded cloak in a really weird way. Yeah. Little bit of a stretch. Let's start calling these limousines. Yeah. Even if it was a horse carriage, the idea that you were not driving this carriage and you had a nice little comfy seat that's covered in the back, they called it a limousine. And very frequently, probably all the time is a better way to put it. The driver himself wasn't covered. Like, there was just the passengers that were covered. No, you'll get rained on and, like it exactly. If you complain, we'll put you on the rack. That's right. And this continued until they started building regular, as I think jonathan strickland wrote this, what he calls horseless carriages. Very cheekily, aka the automobile. And they called those limousines. And they started, like, very early on in new york city. Someone started a limousine service, I think in the 20s. Yeah, 1920s. It's not too bad. And these cars, the earliest limousines were basically built from the ground up. You built a couple car with the intention of building, like, a stretch, longer car, a limousine, as we understand it today. That's right. And it might not be like a stretch sedan. Some of the early limousines looked a lot like station wagons or like an old model t station wagon, you know what I'm saying? Sure. But very quickly, these companies figured out that it would be vastly easier to take an already manufactured car and stretch it, basically do a conversion. And that became the tradition for a very long time, I think, starting in the 20s. Yeah. And luxury cars, obviously, from the beginning, were prime targets, because this is what rich people were used to having their fannies sit upon while they were being driven around. So Mercedes Benz and Cadillacs and Fleetwoods and Labarans were all prime candidates. Even the famed Bentley had a limousine, the Arnage, that they made only 20 of. Did you look at that? It's pretty sweet. Yes. I got to admit. Yeah. For a non limousine guy, I was like, oh, that's kind of nice. That's a very nice car. You ever ridden in a Bentley for any reason? No. I haven't either. Now you can get a Chrysler that looks like a Bentley. Was that the 300? I don't know. I think it is the 300. I call him Fentley's for some reason. John Varvatos had a 300 addition. He's a clothing designer. Oh, yeah. And in the ad for his edition of the Chrysler 300, it's him and Iggy pop. Just randomly, iggy pop is in the ad with them. I guess they were getting wasted together that day that he had to film. Did he have a shirt off? Probably. I can't remember. Yeah, you don't see him the shirt that much. No, he's very proud of his wiry, muscular body, and I don't blame him. All right, I think we've wasted enough time. So let's, right after this break, talk about that limo conversion, because to me, that's about the most interesting part of limousines. All right, we're back. And we were talking about limo conversion. Like you said, early on, they used to build a limo to beat a limo. Yeah, like, just some guy would build a car from the ground up, and he would build an extra long. And that's where the early limousines came from. Yeah. It was a company called Arm Brewster in 1928. Were they Arkansas? I think they're American. They are American. I don't remember if it's in Arkansas or not, but it was actually, I found in a write up on the company from 1987. It says 1923 is when they built their first limousine, and that by at least 1926, they were doing conversions, because there's a picture of an early stretch Buick that they made, and they realized that conversions was where it was at. Right. Let's stick an existing car, cut it in half, and stick something in the middle of those two pieces. Right. Because somebody else has gone to the trouble of building the engine, of designing, like, the dynamics of figuring out how to put the tires wear and all that stuff. Why do all that? Yeah. When you can just cut a car in half? Add more car. Yeah. Add more car, and then, bam, you have a stretch limousine. I had no idea they did it this way. No. When I read it the first time, I was like, surely he made a horseless carriage joke. I know this must be a joke as well. No, that's how a lot of limousines are made. And it's funny. You bring up the 300, Chrysler 300, the one that looks like a Bentley, because I saw I guess, a test of one of them that was like Chrysler builds these 300 stretch limousines. Oh, they do? Yeah. So if you see a Chrysler 300 M limousine, it was built by Chrysler, most likely. Which is very unique these days, right? Yes. Because for the most part, like you're saying, the industry standard is some company will get a hold of a Cadillac or a Lincoln Town Car, cut it in half, like you say, and then add to it. And there's your stretch limousine. Yeah. The process goes a little something like this. They strip that sound like I was going to sing it. They strip all the interior out. They protect everything that's in there, obviously. Strickland says they use fire resistant paper on everything. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Why not? I guess you don't want it to catch on fire while you're doing it. You're going to mount it on a set of rails that can be adjusted to get your car off the ground, keep it all aligned properly. Because when you're adding more car, you have to have it super aligned. And then they cut the thing in two pieces. Yeah. And not lengthwise. No, that'd be weird. I guess you could make it a lot wider. But you're looking for length. And maybe that's the new limousine. Apparently the industry agrees that you typically can't go more than double the size, the original size of the car. After that, it's just probably not going to pass any safety tests, which we'll talk about in a minute. But once the car is cut in half, hopefully you remember to put the car on these rails that elevate it and that some of the rails are attached to a dolly. So you can separate the car to the length you want. If not, you have to basically throw it away and start over. But so if you pull one, usually the rear back from the front, and then you go and add rails, basically the extenders that are going to lengthen the car. That's right. And like I said, your car is temporarily braced to keep it from twisting or moving around. Because you want it to be super exact, obviously. Because if the front of your car is half inch to the right from the rear of your car, that's bad. You're in big trouble. Then you're going to add what's called the floor plan, or floor pan. Sorry. And it's basically the floor of the limo, which will later on become carpeted and upholstered and everything. But for the time being, it's just a piece of metal. That is the floor of your new addition. Yeah. And that is after you have done all the other boring stuff, like extending the drive line, making sure you have because your wiring is not long enough. Nothing is long enough. And you just have to know because you just cut in half. Yeah. Like there's a huge gap. You literally just have to extend all those parts. Right. The brake line, all that boring stuff. You have to just extend all that stuff. Yeah, I got excited about the floor pan. That's what I'm trying to stick in your floor pan. Well, hold on, I want to say something about the floor pan in the drive line. So you've extended the powertrain, the big thing that powers the back wheel, that no one knows what it is. Right. Yeah. But you've extended that thing. Yeah. You just hear like powertrain warranty. And people are always like, what in the world that's like the steering and the axles and the thing that spins around and spins your rear axle and all that. That's your power train. It's true. So you have to add to that because you just cut through it again. Sure. And then you add the floor pan, which is the floor of the limousine. And do you remember that limousine fire from, I think, last year? A couple of years ago, they were stuck, killed the bride to be on the San Mateo Bridge. Awful. Apparently the California Highway Patrol investigated and ruled in an accident. But it was because the floor plan of the limousine that had been added later was up against the drive train. And the friction no way. Created enough heat and spark that apparently there was a crack in the floor pan and that heat came up and caught the upholstery on fire. And that's where the fire came from. Wow. Was from this modification that had taken place years before. Well, which is one reason why Cadillac doesn't want their name on that limo, let's say because it has been modified by someone other than Cadillac. Right. But Cadillac's name is still on the limo. As far as the US. Government is concerned, once you cut a car in half and extend it, you're the new manufacturer. Yeah, totally. Cadillac says, well, that's great. We've got a bunch of yahoo running around cutting our cars in half, making them longer. But if somebody sees it on the road, or somebody sees a photo of it with the trunk burned out, they see the Cadillac. So Cadillac and other companies like Ford have programs to basically certify train and go back and investigate the people who are doing this conversion. Yeah, because we didn't mention but when you make a car substantially longer and heavier, you might have to modify the brakes some. You might have to modify how it turns. You might have to reinforce the suspension or the frame itself. Because you can't just make a car 12ft longer and expect it to behave the same way. Right. Exactly like the original stopping power was for the twelve foot car, not the 24 foot car. So you do have to do some modifications. Yes, but those companies are super smart to have official programs, I think, because every car, even if it is modified later, has to be roadworthy, has to pass the Federal Motor Vehicle safety standards. That's right. Cadillac program is called the Cadillac Master Coach Builder program. It's pretty awesome. Ford has something called the Qualified Vehicle Modifier Program. And so basically they're saying, hey, if you're going to be doing this and you can legally do this, we're going to make sure you do it, right. That's right. All right. So we mentioned that the limo, generally speaking, even though they've gotten ridiculous these days, shouldn't be more than twice as long as it originally was. Yeah. And since you can't get that much longer, what you can do is if you want to impress people and get their business, is trick it out on the interior as much as possible. Yes. You name it, man. And they've got it. Yeah. Plasma TVs and hot tubs and bars and sound systems and anything you can think of. It's littered with neon and tacky things. In my opinion. Tacky is the right word, I think. Yeah. Not for me. Did you see if you go to the Ripley's Believe It or not museum in Branson? Have they been there? No. I saw a picture. I want to go to Branson someday before I die. Jack Smirnoff has his own place. Yeah, I'm going. Sure. Yummy is going to take me. I'm surprised that hasn't happened already. We've been going other places, but in Branson, there's a 30 foot 1982 pink Cadillac stretch limousine that has a heart shaped hot tub in the trunk area that also has Josh's 40th birthday written all over the go. Maybe 40th birthday present would be the limo itself. To own it. Yeah. Just drive around Atlanta. That'd be awesome. Drive around anywhere. You could drive around Branson. It would be fine. You've got, like, a hot tub in your car. I love how Strickland also points out I don't know when this was written. Most of them also have telephones installed in case all 14 of your cell phones are broken. I made note of that as well. Right. There are some other considerations if you want to drive a limo, because you can be a private person and drive a limo just like, hire yourself out or go work for some rich person. I thought you meant like the kind of person who keeps to himself or herself. No, I mean, you don't have to necessarily work for a limousine company. I got you. You can just buy your limo and say, I'm Chuck the limo driver. Right. Or I want to work. As long as you have the proper hat. That's right. You're fine. And call yourself bitterman. Yeah. Licensing? It depends on what state you're in. It depends wildly. Some states, you don't need any kind of special license. Some states just say, fill out this form. Sure. Probably give us $50. Some say, bring your limo. And although, how would you do that if you're not licensed? I guess tow truck. Yeah. Get your limo here and take this test in your limo. To make sure you can drive that behemoth blindfolded blindfolded part of the test. So it all depends on what state you live in. Safety standards are the same for any other car, like we said. Yeah. And the car that you bought to convert already before you ever bought it went through the safety tests. Sure. But now that you've converted it, it has to go through safety tests again. Right. So they include things like crash tests. And if you're interested in that, there's limo crash tests on YouTube. Oh, really? Yeah. Does it show rich people inside, like, with their drinks flying around? Man, you're not down with the 1%, are you? No, I just think a crash test on me in an evening gown might look funny. That's so funny you say that, because one of the ones, I guess is it Australian, fifth gear, maybe it seemed like no, it was pretty cheeky. They were clearly drunk on the show, but it was a limo crash test and they put their clothes, their evening gown and tucks on crash test dummies. Wow. Yeah, you have to look up fifth gear. I guess limo crash test is what would bring it up. And yeah, they're clearly drunk because they spend the first, like, three minutes drinking and then mooning people out of the limo. And I'm like, where is this thing from when I saw it as Australian? Oh, those wacky Aussies. But it's pretty cool crash test, because they have some great cameras set up and they don't put seatbelts on the dummies, they're just flying around. Yes, it's pretty neat crash test. I do need to see that because that's exactly what I was describing. And there's another crash test, too. It's way more boring. It's just basically a series of still photos, which I guess you can make the case. Like that's what all videos are, but sure, this is like really slow still photo. And hey, listen, we always say, do what you want to do. I'm not going to poopoo. If you want to go out and hire limo with your friends and drive around, get drunk and go to a bunch of bars, it's fine. Don't expect me to get in the car. Although I would say the wine country limo is not a bad idea. Oh, sure, yeah. In fact, I think people in wine country aren't too happy about them because it's like a party bus kind of thing. Yeah, basically. Well, hey, man, if you have wine tastings every 5ft I know, what do you expect? Yes, everybody there seems very cool because you don't want to drink and drive. We went when it was the off season, so I'll bet everybody was a little, like more mellow because there weren't a bunch of tourists around. Yeah, but you're right. The people that live in wine country, Northern California, they're a nice laid back lot. They are fairly laid back. I think it's a good way to put it, because they have the best job in the world. We have the best job in the world. That's right. If we only made wine, we've got something going in the toilet. Some pruno. Gas mileage is a big consideration because you're not going to get good gas mileage at all. And you may, as a company or an individual, have to pay an extra gas guzzler tax on each vehicle in your fleet. On top of that, it's basically like, you know how you pay a lot of money for gas? Well, now you have to pay even more money because your thing uses up so much gas. Although Strickland mentions a 32 foot stretch Hummer limo that a guy named Sean Murphy. He misspelled his own name on the cool fuel road trip. He drove Hummer limousine that ran on a bunch of different alternative fuels like biodiesel, methane, ethanol, vegetable oil, sugar. Wow. It could also use geothermal, solar, and wind energy. And it got the limo up to 75 miles an hour, which sounds illegal to me. Yeah. He should not be driving a 32 foot anything 75 miles an hour. I agree. If you are interested in owning your own limousine to be your own private little driver, it depends on what kind you get. Of course, you may can get one like a Lincoln Stretch for 30 to 40 grand. Sure. Or you may pay 300,000 if you want that super stretch timer with the hot tub. I have the impression that 30 grand Lincoln Stretch, like the hub caps come off when you take corners and stuff like that. You think so? Yeah. And I also bet that the one of 20 Bentleys go for way more than 300K each. Do you ever see someone driving around in an old limo? It's clear. It's just their car. Right. And it's like a limo. It's pretty sweet. It is sweet, but at the same time, it's like that's a really poor choice, especially if you're on a tight budget. Right. You live in a city with how many streets, how much money do you spend on gas? Yeah, that's true. But I shout to them out the window if I pass someone like that. Should we talk about presidential limousines a little bit? Yeah, because I think those are kind of interesting. They call it the Secret Seven in this great was it Popular Mechanics article? Yeah, in the Sunshine Special. And up until this point, I think standard automobiles had been used to drive presents around and shuttle them. But in 1939, this is we need something for the Secret Service, and we have a president in a wheelchair. His name is Roosevelt, and he has certain considerations. Right. Plus, at least one attempt has been made on his life already, so we might want to think about adding a little more security to these cars. Yeah, and that's exactly what they did. It was armored. The body was armored, was built by coach builders in Buffalo, New York, had oversized hinged doors, I guess, to account for that enormous wheelchair that they had back then and lots of armor plating and even bulletproof glass in 1939, which is kind of impressive. Yeah, it looks like Capone's car, if you ask me. It's pretty sweet. Then there's the Lincoln cosmopolitan. Yeah. This is awesome. It was a Truman presidential limousine. Yeah. With every new limousine that came along, there were new innovations. It became heavier and more armor plated and just safer. This one came with a bubble top because it was a convertible, but Truman realized that if he had the top up when it was super safe, no one could see him. Right. So he had the bubble top installed. Kind of like the Pope mobile. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Is that what it's like? I think so. All right. And that one was retired to the Henry Ford Museum, as was the Sunshine Special in Dearborn, Michigan. So if you've ever been there, you've probably seen a few of these on display. Kennedy's famous car that he was in November 2263, when he was assassinated, was a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible, obviously, but it was still safe. Not with the top down, obviously, but they had certain safety features built in. They had a rear seat that was well, this wasn't a safety feature, but they had a rear seat that could be raised and lowered to give people a better view. They had a metal hoop behind the driver's seat, so when the President's standing up, they can hold on to something. Yeah, but it was armored after his assassination with a permanent bulletproof hard top and then left in the fleet, which really surprised me. I would have thought they would have completely retired that car or just giving it to a museum or destroyed it or something. But yeah, leaving in the fleet that's penny pinching. Yeah. And that is in the Henry Ford museum now, as well, I'll bet. The Lincoln Continental. That President Ford and Reagan, the same car that they were both shuttled into after assassination attempts. Famously. Yeah. This is a limousine that reminds me of old Time Square in New York where Basket Case was set. I never saw that. It's worth seeing at least once just to say you saw Basket Case, right? Old CD, Times Square. I got adjusted taste of that. When I first started going to New York in the 90s, there were still some peep shows and stuff around, and it was just starting to be like Disneyfied, as they said. I missed it entirely. Yeah, you didn't miss much. But man alive, you can go to Red Lobster there now. I know. It's funny how people pine, like, remember when it was crappy and those crime and drugs and constitution everywhere? I can understand being like, yes, this corporate stuff is just dumb or whatever, but people are very nostalgic for. Old crappy Times Square. Yeah. The 1983 Cadillac Fleetwood was used in the early 1980s. And that one of those there was a pair of them was used in the movie in the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood. Yes. Pretty neat. Remember he played the guy who didn't get to Kennedy in time when he was assassinated at haunted him. Oh, is that his backstory? Yes. And John Malkovich was, like, a total weirdo. Sure. He was trying to kill the president. Right. Who used a wooden gun. I don't remember a lot about that movie for some reason. It's in a lot of detail, Josh. Then there's the Bush era Cadillac de Ville, which is I associate that with Bush now that I'm looking at it. Yeah. It was a GM. Oh, I'm sorry. It was a Cadillac Deville, of course, but it was built on the frame of a GM SUV, supposedly. Smart. Yeah. Five inch thick armored doors, bulletproof glass. So thick it blocks out parts of the light spectrum, apparently. So everything looks blue. Yeah. Maybe from the inside. And you go insane. And it was rumored to feature what they call a self contained passenger compartment with its own secure air supply. Cool. So I guess just like a chamber to hide someone in, inside there. Crazy. And then lastly, check. The most recent one came out in 2009, and it's a Cadillac, too. And it came out, I guess, just in time for Obama's inauguration. Yes. And this one, they started to be a lot more secretive about, like, how they're made yeah, exactly. Makes sense. But they have pretty good speculation that it's armor plated underneath all around. They think it's diesel powered, but they don't know for sure. And good luck. Like, this thing is like a tank on wheels. Good luck penetrating that Cadillac. Yes. So there's one other thing I want to point out. If you are into limos, especially extreme limos, there's another Popular Mechanics article called Stretch It Out ten Extreme Limos that you sent. Yeah. Like Lamborghinis and stuff. Yes, Lamborghinis monster trucks. And I looked it up. Apparently, there's a lot of monster truck limos. I also found online. DeLorean limo. Oh, wow. Yeah. I'd like to see that. Yeah, it's worth looking at. There's a semi limo. Yeah. That one is basically like a large apartment on wheels. Like, you can have a party for 50 people. There's multiple bars. Did you see inside? It looks like an applebee's on wheels. Is it a fern bar? Yeah, there's a lot of, like, polished brass railings and the carpeting and the poultry and applebee's. It's very strange. Well, you can't account for good taste. It looks pretty sweet, though. I'm sure that anybody who there are three different lounges in there. Wow. Three lounges. A Mexican company converted, I think, a 747 or 727 into a limo that took the wings off. There are TV shows out there that you can view. All these things extreme, everything else. Oh, I'm sure there are also TV shows about the people who repo them. Yeah, too. All right. So if you want to know more about limos, you can start by typing that word in the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this funny homeless story, if there is such a thing. This. April has been working in New York City, but I gather that she is in Atlanta. She's just there for work for a period of time. Dear Josh and Chuck I miss the old Times Square she did say that. No, I'm kidding. She talks about how she listens to us on the train there in her commute in New York City and she feels really bad for homeless people, but especially when she sees a homeless person with a dog. She says after passing several homeless people in New York People Dog Combos this weekend, my grand plan is to stop at a pet store, get some dog food and treats and have cash available for the next homeless pair so I could help out and hopefully have a conversation with them to make them feel human for a little bit. This is April. You're awesome, by the way. Yeah. I bought my supplies in two blocks from the store, I see a homeless man with a husky and I think, perfect. One of my dogs is a husky, so I'm partial to them. After having a five minute conversation with Michael, petting his dog, giving him dog food and some money for a nice meal, I get ready to leave and I was about to walk away. He said, thanks for the dog food, but it's not my dog. I'm just watching it for someone in the building. Awkward. I ultimately asked if the dog had a home and food. He said yes. So I asked if I could take the dog food back so I could give it to a dog in need. He agreed and hopefully he was able to get a nice meal himself and appreciated my conversation and didn't think I was too crazy. I then went on to walk 30 blocks to my hotel with a relatively heavy bag of dog food without seeing another homeless pet. Good thing, because it didn't have any more cash with a person and it probably would have been weird to give a person dog food but nothing to help him or her. Me and my bag of food will be walking around various New York City neighborhoods this weekend, though, because now it is my mission to help someone out. It's been a good little reminder for me to be thankful for what I have, especially as we approach winter up here. And that is from April Cummings. That is very nice of you, April. Very cool. I hope you find a homeless dog in person that you can help out. Yeah. If you want to share a story about how you're making the world a better place, we want to hear about it. You can tweet it to us at Syscap. You can join us on Facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.com stuffysheno 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." | |
3f362160-5461-11e8-b6d0-1701061cbf0b | SYSK Selects: Geysers: Nature's Innuendo | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-geysers-natures-innuendo | The spectacular eruptions of steam and water we call geysers are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, the result of thousands of years of specific natural conditions and physical processes. Learn the Stuff You Should Know about geysers in this classic episode. | The spectacular eruptions of steam and water we call geysers are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, the result of thousands of years of specific natural conditions and physical processes. Learn the Stuff You Should Know about geysers in this classic episode. | Sun, 08 Nov 2020 00:43:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=0, tm_min=43, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=6, tm_yday=313, tm_isdst=0) | 26164336 | audio/mpeg | "Hello there. Hello. Hello. It's me, Josh. And this week's SYSK select is a little episode from 2012 called Geyser's Nature's Innuendo. I thought of that title myself, and I still love it to this day, so I hope you enjoy it. It's one of those really cool Earth sciences biogeochemical ones that really get me jazzed, and I hope it gets you jazzed, too. Let's all get jazzed. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Kabloom. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah. Just a couple of regular guys are sitting around chatting. It was good. I know. I genuinely didn't think you were going to say geysers. Really? Yeah. A little slow today. This was a pretty cool article. I thought I knew a lot about geysers, but I did not know exactly what was going on there. Yes. In fact, I was wrong on a couple of key points. Really? Yes. Which I will not point out. Oh, come on. Well, I thought they spit out lemonade, first of all, and I thought there was a little guy down there doing it. I got you, Leprechauns. Yeah, that's what everybody thinks. I was wrong on both of those points. Do we have a Geyser myth sound effect? I don't think so. Does this count as weather now? This is Earth science biogeochemical processes. Okay. I just know you're trying to beef up our weather. This is not weather. It's not weather. Although it does begin with weather. Yeah. I mean, sure. When something precipitates that's weather sure. And precipitation precipitates the explosion of a geyser. That's right, Chuck. Yes. I have no geyser introduction, man. You can't blame me, though. Like, I looked and there is really not a lot going on on geyser. I thought you might tell the story about the people in Going To, but I didn't want to just usurp it. Okay. Let's do that, though, since you brought it up, because I thought about that, too. I was like, Whoa, hang back, Josh, hang back. Well, apparently, geysers can kill you. And when you see something like Old Faithful go off, that's why you're 300ft away watching it. Yes. You're not going to be on top of the thing. Right. But apparently in New Zealand, which is lousy with geysers, some tourists visiting there got caught in a jet at Wymangu Y Mango Valley. Nice. That's good. And it killed all four people and carried them more than a mile away. Yes. That is sad. And after we explain how geysers work, we should mention that again, because once I understood how geysers worked and I read that, I was like, those people met a terrible demise. Sure. That was a terrible way to go. Yeah. I mean, it's tantamount to getting thrown into a volcano or caught in dropping into the cracks of an earthquake, and they're all kind of related as it turns out. Yeah. Or being bludgeoned to death, which is not related. No, but it's a pretty bad way to go to geothermal Earth properties. So Chuck Geysers, as I learned from reading this article on how stuff works.com, our beloved site are actually kind of fragile and there's not that many this article, there's 1000 geysers roughly in the world. And I read elsewhere that there's only about 50 geyser fields on the planet and about two thirds of those have five or fewer geysers. Wow. Which makes Yellowstone a pretty substantial repository of geyser and geyser related activity. Yeah, totally. When you're talking geyser, you don't ever just talk geyser. You're also talking funerals, you're talking hot springs. Sure. Mud pots, steam vents, and all of them are based around the same thing, which is there's some sort of geothermal activity that's relatively close to the Earth's surface. Right, right, yeah. And there's three components to a geyser and they are water supply, plumbing system and heat source. Yeah. And I'm going to argue a fourth later on. Okay. Later though, I have to wait. I'm going to call it. We'll just go ahead and say what it is, which is remoteness, and then we'll circle back because it's attached to them. It's family. That's right. It comes very remote. So a water supply, let's start there because if you ain't got water, you ain't got no geyser. Yeah. And I saw in this article that rivers can often form the water supply. I didn't see that elsewhere. For the most part, from what I can gather, is that the water supply is precipitation, rain and snow melt percolating through the Earth's crust over 500 or 1000 or so years. And then it trickles down to the point where it comes in contact with, like we said, relatively shallow geothermal activity, usually very young volcano or volcanic activity, or very old, like in the throes of death volcanic activity. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And it can be anything from magma to cooled magma. But it's very hot rock and it's close enough to the surface that this water doesn't evaporate. It starts to trickle back up. Yeah. And when you say close, 3 miles down seems like a long way down. But if you're talking the planet Earth, nothing, it's pretty close. Yeah. If you're talking magma, it's pretty close. If you're talking tectonic plates, it's pretty close. It's closer than you want it to be, pal. Yeah, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Okay. Number two, the plumbing system. Right. Very important. The plumbing system is a series of fissures that run miles beneath the surface. And one important aspect of these fissures is they are basically sealed shut with silica from Ryoelite. It's volcanic rock and these minerals have sealed this rock shut. Right. So like really important part of it, that water that's percolating down, when it heats up and starts to travel back up, it takes that silica, that Ryley with it, and then it just kind of acts as a sealant along these pipes over 500,000 years. However long it takes for it to go back up, it's sealing it and it's making it watertight. Well, yeah. And I imagine I didn't read this, but I imagine that this kind of activity happens elsewhere on the planet, but it's not sealed up, so it just disperses. Right. Yeah. Because one of the key ingredients of a geyser is pressure. High pressure. That's right. And to get that pressure in these pipes, you have to have Rylie coated sealed pipes. That's right. Okay. So there's the plumbing system. And the plumbing system varies. All guys are different. Sometimes it's just like a huge, long vertical shaft. Sometimes it bends and turns and winds around. Okay. So this is something that actually differentiates geysers from a hot spring. So a hot spring is just like a long vertical shaft coming from hot water up to the top, but there's no obstruction. What makes a geyser a geyser is the fact that there's an obstruction in the plumbing, right? That's right. The hot spring water can just move freely up and down. There's just free exchange. Yeah. And you soak around in it like a big, lazy wall rifle. Yeah. But there's no pressure with a geyser. There's some sort of obstruction where either, say, the water on its way back up and there's this wide pool, that bottlenecks at the top. So now you have pressure. There's a bunch of different pipes feeding into one pipe, and they all connect to the same place. Another bottleneck, or this pipe of water is so wide and so deep that the pressure, the water above the water at the bottom is so tremendous that for all intents and purposes, it creates a bottleneck just strictly out of pressure without an actual obstruction. Yeah. Just the weight of the water itself is so great. So we have a water supply and a plumbing system that is sealed with riot, which makes it water tight and pressurized and then some sort of means for pressure to build. Yeah. And I guess we can go ahead and liken it to a pressure cooker now. So you understand what we're talking about if you've ever cooked with a pressure cooker at home or if you've ever eaten at Chickfila and eating their delicious pressure fried chicken. Is that how they do it? That's why they're so juicy, man. So water is just going to boil. It like 100 degrees Celsius. Fancy French water. If you're cooking with a pressure cooker, which means the lid is sealed shut, it lets out some steam or else it would explode. Obviously, it will actually take a lot more energy to boil and bubble up, which means more heat. And so you can actually cook in a pressure cooker at like 125 degrees. Right. Which is substantial under that pressure. It takes a lot more for what it was boiling water. But it's like air bubbles forming and rising to the top. When the pressure is too great, it can't boil. So the boiling point rises, right? Well, it boils but it can't evaporate. Well, no, it can't form the bubbles that carry to the top. Right. So it can't actually boil. So it's just sitting there in this high pressure environment at higher than boiling point temperatures. And the same thing is going on in the geyser, right? That's right. You've got the obstruction, you've got this heated water and you have a tremendous amount of pressure because again, we're talking about miles deep. And that's quite a bit of pressure at the bottom. The water at the bottom, it's just getting hotter and hotter and hotter time. Yeah, I guess it depends. But for geyser to form and start, they think the oldest one is between 5040 thousand years old. Oh, really? Yeah, so it takes a little while because the plumbing has to seal up and everything. But as that pressure builds and the heat increases, you can reach temperatures of like 4500 deg Fahrenheit of this water. And it's still not boiling. Right? That's right. And then eventually it does boil, it over comes that pressure threshold. Well, it finds its way through to the escape route, which is the top of the surface. And that's not the eruption. It'll just squirt a little bit of water out, it'll go glow and think, wow, that was a big relief. And such a big relief that the steam all of a sudden expands to 1500 times the volume of the water. It's like if you're ever boiling, you ever steam vegetables in your house? The best way to steam vegetables is you don't just set it on a massive boil and cover it up. You get it to that massive boil and then you turn that heat down low and all of a sudden that pressure drop creates massive amounts of steam. Right. And the reason why is because when you increase pressure, you increase the temperature. That's the boiling point of water. If suddenly you have that temperature still, but the pressure decreases, that water in the skyscraper just flash vaporizes. And because there's a lot more volume to an equal amount of water and steam, that steam, like you said, expands to what, 1500 times the volume. And there's your geyser pal. Yeah. All of a sudden all the steam in the water just gets shot out. Depending on what kind of guys are it is, it's going to take different formations and be different heights and last different amounts of time, but it'll keep going until it either runs out of water or it cools down enough for it to start all over again. Yeah. And then it just starts all over again. Which is how you get something like Old Faithful, right? That's right. Once it releases that pressure and it shoots out, the whole process just begins again. And you have geysers like Old faithful that erupt on a pretty regular schedule. I think it's between like 60 and 85 minutes or something like that. Well, I've got the new schedule. They have a schedule because it's been happening with less frequency and greater power in recent years. I think it said since 2000. Okay. And it's bimodal. They call it Bimodal. And if you're going to Old Faithful in Wyoming, there are generally two eruption durations now, either a long one, which is over four minutes, or a short one, which is about two and a half minutes. And if you have just missed the short one, there'll be about an hour before your next eruption. Okay. If you have just missed the long one, then there's going to be about an hour and a half until the next one. But either way, it's worth sticking around for, right? Yeah. And it's funny, if you go to the page and there's obviously a webcam up where you can see it and stuff, but that's not as fun. But if you go to the web page and they ask for tips on seeing it, they say, well, if there's a lot of people sitting around on the benches, that means there's one upcoming. If there's a bunch of people getting up and leaving, that means it just happened. It's like, wow, really? Yeah. That's the best you can do? That sounds like hippie park ranger logic. Exactly. Okay, so, well, I guess we're on to like famous geysers, right? Yeah. Actually, quickly, I mentioned I teased about the fourth thing, remoteness. Apparently in the last 50 years, producing energy with geothermal energy, production has increased so much that it's affecting geysers. And so being remote is now believed to be one of the requirements to be a geyser because geysers are vanishing because of man. So I was trying to figure out this out, maybe you can help me that's because we dig down to these geysers of this geothermal activity and in doing so, are we creating like a release valve so the pressure can't build as much? I think so. I mean, they're using it to spin turbines to create energy. But I know you can also have a geothermal system in your backyard right. Which I don't think uses I don't think it creates steam. So I feel like what we're doing then is creating artificial geysers, like creating an artificial pipe to let steam out, which would impact any natural geyser activity. It might be what's going on, because like we said, they're very fragile. Earthquakes frequently cut them off. Right. They also bring them back to life too. Yeah, that's true. Like there was one called the stroker geyser. That would be S-T-R-O-K-K-U-R? Yeah. And not stroker, like stroke or ace. Right. So stroker geyser, well, stroker is after the Icelandic verb to churn, and actually geyser is after the Icelandic verb to gush. Yeah. So this is all very Icelandic in origin. But that would be geysir. Yes, geyser. That's how I pronounce it in Icelandic. Sure. I wonder how bureauc pronounces geyser. Have you seen Kristen Wiggs impression of her? That's really great. Okay, so the stroker geyser was actually enacted in 1789 because of an earthquake. And then another earthquake hit in 1896 and it became inactive, it went dormant and the locals said, we got to get our guys are back, man. It's all blocked up. So they cleared it off and now it's running again. I bet that was probably dangerous work. Very dangerous work, yeah. Another way, too, that humans are impacting is mineral extraction. Apparently in 2003, they were extracting minerals in Chile, the second largest geyser field in South America, and it killed it basically from extracting gold and stuff. Jeez yeah. Because basically they mess with the plumbing and then you're finished. Because it's like you said, in a pressure cooker, it has that little steam valve so it doesn't explode. Right. Guys aren't supposed to have that. If they have that, they just don't go off. They're like, well, fine, I'll just let some steam off. Some steam off. And that does happen naturally. There are steam vents located near geysers. Oh, really? Like, Yellowstone is like we have 10,000 geothermal. What is the word they use? Basically different things. We have 10,000 geothermal. Different things. Right. But the vast majority of those are like steam vents. Oh, they're man made. No, they're natural. They're like little steam releases that come up through fissures in the Earth. I thought you meant we put those in to make Old Faithful, like, safers. No, they happen naturally. Oh, that's good. But I think it's the same thing as drilling a hole down to a geothermal different thing and tapping it to run a turbine. Okay, got you. At least you didn't say interesting. Interesting. Man, this stuff is very interesting. Old Faithful is a cone geyser. I'm not sure I understand the difference. It's a good difference. Is it the outlet, like the shape of the thing above the Earth? Yeah. So with the cone geyser, the Rio light bubbles up enough over time okay. That it builds up and it forms a little cone, and that's what the geyser shoots out of. And normally with the cone geyser, you have a big stream, a jet going into the air, like hundreds of feet. That one in New Zealand, the Yman Gaysor, that one streamed 1475ft into the air. And for those of you in New Zealand, that's 450 meters. That's a world record, right? Yeah. A year before it killed people. Right. And then it went dormant in 19 four because of a landslide. Which makes me think, like, this thing's coming back. It's got to bubble back up, kill people and then shut down right afterward. Yeah, it had a really chaotic two year career. It's like a rock star that overdosed on heroin or something. But anyway, as I was saying, the cone shoots a jet into the air. The fountain shoots in much more like chaotic stream, whatever. But it doesn't come up from a cone, it comes up from a pool. Okay. So at the surface, the geyser goes into a pool of water and then that will erupt out of the water. And that would be the grand geyser. That's the tallest regularly erupting geyser on the planet. And that is also in Yellowstone. Yeah. Tallest in that it shoots up in the air. Yeah. 200ft in crazy fountainy, hard to predict fashion. Yes. Which is pretty surprising too, because a cone geyser shoots a jet straight up in the air. And this fountain geyser is still beating the average one. Yeah. Could you imagine if it was a cone geyser? It'd be mind blowing to the moon. Yeah. You mentioned the stroker ace geyser, the steamboat geyser. I like this guy. Yes. Apparently can shoot water up to 300ft but don't bother stopping by because it hasn't happened for 50 years. Or it can go 50 years. Yeah, it's finicky. Yeah. There's also the geisser, which is the OG geyser because that's where the word came from. It's guys are in Iceland. It was discovered in 1294. So it's the oldest known guys around the planet. But they took some samples of the silica that forms the cone of the castle geyser in Yellowstone. That's the one they think is 5000 to 40,000 years old. Apparently silica dating can use some work. I did see one interesting little and it wasn't a joke. It was almost like you could hear science guys laughing about it, though geysers are always called geysers, even if they quit. Erupting. Oh, got you. But that cease to be a geyser at that point. But once you have erupted, you're always called a geyser the cone formerly known as geyser. Yeah, that's what I would call it. Shameful. Do you know the whole story about Prince doing that? About changing his name? Yeah. No, I never knew the story behind it. So he was locked in a contract with Sony that he didn't like and Sony basically said you can't release an album as Prince. Yes. But also that had something to do with him acting basically crazy. Like he acted crazy on purpose to get out of his contract because there was some sort of clause where like if he went nuts or whatever, it would void his contract. So he did that and he had that font released and I remember he released it to the media. His little symbol. Yes. As like a font add on so you could just print the symbol when you were writing about them. Oh, really? And his contract with Sony was either voided or they gave it up or whatever. But he was basically like, I'll show you crazy if I need to get out of this contract. Boy, one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Oh, yeah, I'll bet. And I don't even think I put it in my top five when we had that listener mail that time, but I probably forgot it's. Probably in my top five. I would like to see print. Sometimes he brings it. He bought Yuumi bottled water at a Miles Davis show at the Cotton Club. Really? Wow. Her friends came up to see the lemon heads and she's like, yeah, I'll go with you. And then found out that Miles Davis was playing like, I'm going to go over here. Great bottle of water, evendo Miles. David, let me think about that. Sorry, Ed. That's print. Yes. Some guy. Geysers. Yeah, geysers, too. If you want to learn more about geysers, you can type that word. G-E-Y-S-E-R-S. That's the English spelling. We didn't do. It Icelandically. But you type that in the search bar athoustofworks.com and it will bring up this fine, fine article. And I said search barhouseofworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this giving a local Brooklynite a plug for his election, but that's not how it started. Oh, okay. So it's kind of a complicated title. Guys, I just listened to your podcast, How Labor Unions Work, and I want to thank you for trying to give a very balanced story to what is a very complicated and contentious subject. As a former New York City union organizer said, this guy is a real deal. I am very familiar with the arguments against unions, but I truly believe American workers and the American economy are better off with unions and without when unions are strong. Typical union organized when unions are strong. There is some counterpoint to this total acceptance of rampant greed that was essentially the cause of the financial meltdown in 2008. At this point, with unions at their weakest and a half century, we average Americans are being held hostage by corporations. That's what he says, right? I have to say, in my line of work, violence was not the norm, but intimidation by the employer was constant. They did everything from threatening workers with being fired, lying to them, and telling them they did not have collective bargaining rights, to telling them the union would only steal their dues and not get them a good contract. That's a deceptive HR person right there. Yeah. Or they would tell workers they would work out individual deals with them if they would vote against the union. That's pretty hairy. Even once when we were organizing at a Catholic hospital, they told the workers they were going against God if they tried to organize. Yeah. Can you see, like, those preach, like, union breaking cracking heads with metal baton. The only problem I had with your podcast was the lack of coverage you gave to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. We mentioned that. He said it could have been more. It could deserve its own podcast. Well, that's true. We mentioned it. He said it was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the United States history. Last year, hundreds of people came out to commemorate the 100 year anniversary. Ya remember the lives lost due to lots of stairwells and exits. That fire was a major turning point in labor conditions in New York City and around the world, as well as bringing light to women's terrible working conditions. And I wrote them back and it turns out ade is his name. Fox is running for Brooklyn city council. Great. I said, you know what, dude? We'll plug your campaign www.edox.com eightfox.com and good luck in your bid for city council in Brooklyn. Yes, if you wear sunglasses with neon arms on them and like your pro union, I would say go vote for this. I think we can help garner you a little bit of the hipster boat maybe, since we are both aging hipsters. I am not a hipster, dude. I am not a hipster. And I may be aging, but I'm not a hipster. Well, you look a lot more like a hipster than you used to. Well, I guess if you have a political campaign you're running, we want to hear about it. We heard from another guy in Maryland, a state legislator. He's a legislator for Maryland who is writing about human trafficking. That's a shout out to that guy as well. But if you are a politician that listens to stuff, you should know we want to hear your viewpoints. Let us know what you got to say, how we're helping you, how we can help more, that kind of thing. You can tweet to us. Just please don't send us a picture of your junk like other politicians to syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshenko and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is 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." | |
3fda68b8-121b-11eb-ba6a-e7cdcd2ab8b5 | Short Stuff: RICO Act | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-rico-act | If you’re even passingly interested in mobsters you’ve heard of the RICO Act, but most people don’t know how it actually works. Make your Goodfellas fandom more well-rounded with this explainer episode. | If you’re even passingly interested in mobsters you’ve heard of the RICO Act, but most people don’t know how it actually works. Make your Goodfellas fandom more well-rounded with this explainer episode. | Wed, 21 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=202, tm_isdst=0) | 12021796 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's lurking in the background, sitting in for guest producer, but real producer, Dave. And this is short stuff. Guest but real. Yeah. Not like the blow up dog guest producers. Well, they're real in, I guess, a material way. Sure, that's it. Yes. Sometimes emotional, I guess you could get wrapped up in that kind of thing, I suppose. I've seen Lars and the real girl. You dressed up as that for Halloween? Yes. That was pretty good. That was all you. Me? She came up with that one. That was good. Very nice. I love a good obscure Halloween costume. Yeah. So speaking of obscure Halloween costumes, Chuck, you could do worse than dressing up as John Gotti the Teflon don, couldn't you? Not bad. You got the hair for it. Yeah, that's the main thing. You got to have the hair, but you also have to have the attitude, you know? Yeah. Like, I can do whatever I want and nothing sticks. Yeah, that's close. That's pretty close. I was thinking more just like almost unprovoked violence. Sure. As a means to the end of gaining money and power. Yeah. That's our generations, like real life Vito Corleone type stuff. Yeah. He was like, kind of, as far as I can tell, like the last of the real mob bosses, the real Baboons. Exactly. He went down and we're going to get, like, a letter from the Italian American Anti Defamation League. Yeah. They're going to say, Dear Chuck, gabagun isn't a thing. Right. He went down in, like, 1991, and I would say that golden age. The heyday of mafioso in the United States was in the 60s. But the way he went down was thanks to a law that got passed about 20 years prior to him going down called the Rico Act, which is one of those things that everybody has heard of, but it doesn't necessarily know exactly how it works. You know what I mean? And that's what we're here to explain, Chuck, how the Rico Act works. Yeah, the Rico Act is something that if you are in our generation, or even a little younger and you've watched any Sopranos or any sort of modern day Mafia movie, you're going to hear Rico thrown around a lot because that is kind of the only thing that they found that has teeth with these cases. It stands for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. And a racket is like you hear in those movies on the street, like you got a numbers racket or a protection racket. And I just think it's kind of funny that racketeering became the official word. I know. And it made the whole thing way more muddy than it has to be, I think. You know what I mean? Do you hear that word? Yeah. Racket. And racketeering, if they just call it, like, the Organized Crime Act, it would be a perfect umbrella. That would be far more understandable, because a lot of people do think of rackets as like a numbers racket or a prostitution ring or something like underworld, you know what I mean? Yeah. And Rico has been extended successfully to boardrooms to white collar crime as well. And all of that would be considered organized crime. That's the point. It's some people working, carrying out business, and the business is illegal. It's using illegal activities to gain revenue, to gain income. That's a racket. And it doesn't just have to be something like shady and underworld, like a numbers racket. Right. And racketeering specifically is anytime a person is managing a situation or an enterprise or a company or corporation or a crime family where there is a pattern of activities like this going on, and people like John Gotty and so many before him, they called him Teflon Don for a reason, because nothing would stick. They weren't the trigger people. They weren't the person stabbing someone in a trunk in a hayfield, Joe Pesci style, man, that was violent. Or carrying out the numbers game or having the meeting about the protection. Sometimes they were so high level that they didn't actually commit, technically any of these crimes personally. No. So they could get the guy who was stabbing the guy in the trunk in the hay field. They could get him for murder, no problem. You know what I mean? Right. But they couldn't get the person who is genuinely, at its core, responsible for that murder, the person who was organizing this enterprise or managing the enterprise. And that's what the Rico Act is all about, is creating a law that the Feds use to go after the C suite level people in organized crime. Whether it's a legitimate business where, like, it's white collar crime, or whether it's organized crime family, like a cartel or syndicate or a mafia boy, that stuff was just rolling off your tongue until the very end. Till the end. I clarked it up. That's the rarely used second definition of Clark, where you just completely screw something beautiful up at the end. Yes. It's not like a great thing where you give someone a candy bar right. Or a Clark bar. If you clerk someone at Clark bar, the universe would fold in on it. All right, I think we should take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about what the Rico Act and what it isn't right after this. S-Y-F-K. All right, so we're back. The first thing about the Rico Rico Act that we should say is that I think a lot of people are under the impression that they built out the Rico Act to make it super easy just to go after, like, a crime boss. And all you have to do is basically say, it's the Rico Act and you're racketeering. It is broad language wise, but the Supreme Court and appeals courts have all come together to sort of name. Yeah, they did. They sort of narrowed down that language to make it not tougher, but just a little more specific. Yeah, but I think in doing so, they definitely did make it tougher. And the feds apparently use a racketeering charge. They use the Rico Act when there's nothing else. Like if they have somebody caught red handed directly ordering a murder or committing the murder or delivering 50 keys of cocaine or something, it's a lot. That's a lot of keys. They got that person on that broken law, like that crime. They don't need anything else. The Rico they go to when there's nothing else, but they have some sort of evidence that that person is directing, calling the shots of this business where those kind of activities are being carried out. Right. And it's really sort of a two part proving process. You have to prove that there is a pattern of this stuff going on. And it wasn't just like I think if it's just, like, one murder and it's not a racketeering thing that's just hiring somebody, you're directing someone to carry out a murder, but you have to prove that it's a pattern of criminal activity within an organization. And then you need to really prove that Gotty or whoever it is, is the person who is managing that stuff, who is making those calls and directing that operation. Yeah, you have to really prove you can't just be in corporate, like, come on, everybody's suit. It's junk. Come on. Right? That shoot couldn't be more shiny. Right? So, yeah, you got to prove that. But if you got those two parts and that's how they got Got it. They had one of his underbosses, Samy the Bulgravano, turned states on him. What a rat. He informed on him. He said, yeah, I killed a lot of people under John Gotti's direction. And they also had a wiretap. I don't know if it was from Gravano or not, but they had wiretaps of Goddy issuing orders to other people. They're like, this guy's testimony, plus this recording of Goddy shows that he is the boss of this criminal enterprise. Hence they got him on a racketeering charge and he died in prison. And I saw also, Chuck, that the other families in New York didn't send any representatives to his funeral, which was surprising to me. Oh, like out of respect or whatever? Yes. I guess out of disrespect. They didn't send anybody. Yeah. This is the part that's kind of funny to me, because it's kind of a catch 22, because I feel like if you're at least in the movies, it seems like these people want is for everyone to know who's in charge, and then what they get them on is the fact that they're in charge, which is what they deny in court. I'm not in charge of anything. Wait a minute, I thought you were in charge of everything. Right, yeah, well, some of them have very famously played kind of like daughtering out of their minds, elderly men who couldn't possibly tie their own shoe, let alone run a crime family. And they'll play this in court, even. It's really something to see. So Rico cases for a little while, and you can still have a civil lawsuit, but for a while, they were ordering triple damages if you were injured by a Rico violation. And so in the 80s, obviously, this is going to lead to just a groundswell of attorneys coming after people trying to get that triple money. And so they had to tighten that down a little bit. I think they put in a four year statute of limitations. And even the Catholic Church, they came after the Catholic Church with a recoil civil suit. Yeah, they did. They said that all the way up to the Pope. I think the Pope was implicated in the civil suit, that there was an organized criminal enterprise to obstruct justice and to avoid prosecution, basically, of priests and others who had, like, sexually abused parishioners. I don't know how that one ever ended up. I don't know if it's still ongoing. Do you? I am not sure about that, actually. We'll have to look that one up. But if it's not ongoing, it was fairly recent. There's some other recent ones, too, that are far more recent than Gotty that have nothing to do with the mob here in Atlanta. The Atlanta schools cheating scandal of 2015. The people who organized that were indicted on racketeering charges, and some of them got like 20 years in prison for sentences. Yeah, that was basically when they were saying, hey, we can get more federal government juice if we have better standardized test scores. So why don't you go in there and fudge these numbers a little bit? Yeah. And even worse than that, when people said no, they would get fired, they would get bad write ups and reviews, and they would miss out on promotions and raises because it was the people at the very top were organizing this cheating scandal. And so it was a criminal enterprise, basically. They were trying to build a federal government out of money, I guess is what they went after. But they got a bunch of people, and apparently it's one of the biggest criminal enterprises ever prosecuted. Wow. Right here. And it just gets across, like, it doesn't have to be a mob boss, white collar public school teachers, obviously not to be trusted. No, that's what the Rico Act has taught us. No, we're not saying that, people. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. My hands are clean. I didn't do anything. You can't prove nothing, copper. Since we said that everybody 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." | |
Crossbows: They Look Cool | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/crossbows-they-look-cool | Sure, they look cool. It's as if someone put a bow and a rifle together, but in fact crossbows predate firearms by a few thousand years. Learn all about the advantages crossbows bestow, the physics behind them and how to use one with Josh and Chuck. | Sure, they look cool. It's as if someone put a bow and a rifle together, but in fact crossbows predate firearms by a few thousand years. Learn all about the advantages crossbows bestow, the physics behind them and how to use one with Josh and Chuck. | Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:47:21 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=16, tm_min=47, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=326, tm_isdst=0) | 23316347 | audio/mpeg | "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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housethepworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this stuff you should know as if you didn't know. Yeah, we trust you. We work for a website called HowStuffWorks.com, and we are going to take an article at random from the site right now. Never seen it before and we're just going to start talking about it. You're ready, Chuck? Sure. I'm spinning the wheel. And stop. Oh, shoot. It almost landed on the batmobile. Oh. What is it? Instead? I can't be bothered to look to the right. Crossbows. Okay. How crossbows work? Yeah. All right, let's start talking. Just off the top of my head, Chuck, have you ever seen the TV show Walking Dead? Yeah. Awesome show. A nice choice of weapon. I know you saw it. I just got into it. You mean I watched the first six episodes? First season? Yeah. It's so good. Have you started season two yet? Not yet. So don't tell me anything, okay? I don't want to know. If Nick Fisher dies, they're still zombies out there. Okay, good. That's a spoiler. I'll give you good. Although I have to say I'm not very happy with that one subplot of like, the sexual tension subplot that conflict that's brewing and hasn't really that's the Beline. But overall, I think it's an awesome show. And I think, like you said, daryl Dixon's choice of weapon is pretty awesome, if not very practical. It's pretty awesome. And that is quiet because you don't want to alert the zombies, the geeks, but he has a finite amount of arrows or bolts that he has to go retrieve from the heads of zombies that he's just shot between the eyes after they fall. If I was him, I'd hit up a hardware store or a sporting store and get a bunch of those, like in Red Dawn. Yeah, load up. Yeah. Every time I watch that show, I keep telling Emily, I'm like, they have everything they want. It's like a struggle to get gas. There's cars everywhere and it hasn't been that long. It's not like 100 years after where everything has been rated. There's still stuff everywhere. Yeah, there's very few people to raid. Yeah, it's fine. Alright, go get some errors. They're reusable. In fact, a shot in Atlanta will tell them where you can pick something up. I'll send Norman. Read us an email. Where would you send them? Go over to Thick Sporting Goods. Okay. For a dollar. Nothing. Mom and pop. Army Navy stores. Yeah, I would go to one of those. Okay. Support small business. Exactly. Go to Bob's Bolt house. I love Bob in the Bolt district. So, Chuck, you've seen a crossbow before, then? Yeah, I want to buy one after this. Yeah, I kind of like one too. I don't know that either of us should be trusted with one. No, obviously somebody took a bow and arrow, slapped it on top of a rifle and said, I just made me a crossbow. That's what happened. And it's probably a very recent origin. The end. Good night. Not true, Josh. Liar. Archeologists like Indiana Jones have found crossbows as far back as 2500 year old Chinese graves. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. And I think that it may be as much as 4000 years old. That technology in China. Yeah, 2000 BC. Perhaps. They appear in the Mediterranean by the fourth century Ad. Roman military used them. It's written down in the text. I love this guy's name. Flavius Vegeta. Vegeta Renatus. Yeah. His family invented broccoli. They called them flaves, though. They did. They were all over Europe during the Middle Ages. The crossbow was basically, like you said, rifle meets bow. Right. But this is long before anybody thought of a rifle. Well, yeah, that's true. But I mean, think about it. That's what you think it is. It's got like a trigger and there's a stock and all that stuff. But it predates the rifle by many thousands of years. Didn't DA Vinci draw one of these up too? Yeah. See? Oh, that was in there. Yeah, it's page zero, art. Chuck, there's common among the Mediterranean and the Chinese crossbow were the bow, obviously the stock, which is also called the tiller. And a groove in the stock, or the tiller that the arrow or bolt flew down a trigger. But the trigger mechanisms were different. Apparently, if you were in the Mediterranean your trigger triggered the firing mechanism by twisted nut. Right. Okay. If you were in China, it used some bolts and levers system of levers that fired the release the string and fired the bolt. And these firing mechanisms are different enough that archeologists believe that they were independently conceived of in China and in the Mediterranean. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Another common device you'd see most often as a stirrup. And if you ever look at a crossbow, you'll notice that it has a little steel stirrup on the front of it where you can put your foot better. Where I was trying to think of one. But it's a stirrup. So what you do is you put it on the ground, put your little foot in that stirrup so you can hold it down real tight. And you pull it back, pull the drawstring back with both hands, apparently equally on both sides. That's important because you don't want it out of whack. No, it's off balance. The air is not going to fly straight or be true meat. And so you pull it back and you hook it on. They're all different, but you hook it on a little peg device that will be released by pulling the trigger. And it's the basic fundamentals. So the crossbow doesn't just look cool, it does look very cool. It poses some actual advantages over the bow. And the bow has been around since before people even knew how to write or knew that there was such a thing as writing, because there wasn't yet. Right. What the crossbow does is it takes the bow and all of its disadvantages and says, well, here, let me add this and let me add that. Let me change this a little bit. And all of a sudden now, any fat slob can shoot a bow and arrow. Yeah, if you got a bow. If you're traditional bowman or an archer. Is Bowen even a word? I think it is now. All right. If you're a traditional archer, you are probably pretty strong, and you might be sort of tall, and you are pretty quick, because it's a pretty quick process to drop the bow, aim it and shoot it. You've seen Lord of the Rings? I've seen Lord of the Rings. But the longer it takes you to aim, the more tired your arms are going to be, the less accurate you're going to be. With a crossbow, you can cock that thing and you're done. Right. It just sits there cocked indefinitely until you pull the trigger. Yeah. I wouldn't walk around like that unless you're like a hunter, maybe, or some jerk. Yeah, but don't do it in your backyard. So it takes that need for endurance in holding it, waiting for somebody to come around the bend and swap. Yeah. And like you said, it also introduced a whole new subpar breed of warrior, because if you were a great archer, that means, like I said, you're probably strong, probably a little bit taller for the age, because people are shorter. Back then, longbow was stronger, shot straighter and further. So you want to use a longbow. But if you got a crossbow, if you can pull that thing back, that's all you need to do. But sometimes you didn't even need to pull that thing back. Well, you can pull that thing back generally because you're using a stirrup, right? Which means you're using your foot. And if you have a little hook attached to your belt, then you're doing a squat, and that's how you're cocking the crossbow. That was a really lazy night. Well, I imagine it's probably like a dwarf or maybe an elf. Like, you know, elves are kind of undeveloped, but you're standing up, basically to cock the crossbow and you're using your buttox and your thigh muscles, which are the strongest muscles in your body. So you could just be like a total upper body wood, but ripped from the waist down. You're a crossbowman. We're a cross archer. That's true, but what I was saying was the crank, and sometimes you didn't have to pull it back at all, because in 14th century Europe, they began making this thing, this device called a craniken that you could put on your crossbow. Had a little tooth wheel and a crank, and it would basically pull the string back for you. Yeah, you're just cranking it like you're opening your grandmother's windows at her house, like the little crank thing. But as you're doing that, it's cocking the bow. But it's cocking a bow that you couldn't possibly cock yourself, which means that you're about to shoot a bolt that can go right through a tree or pretty significantly deep into a tree, or better yet, into a warhorse or a human being. That's right. The problem is it takes forever to crank the cranikin. And in some cases, some models, you had to crank the crankcan, get it cocked, then remove the crannekin, put the bolt in, and then shoot. So it was very powerful, but it was very slow, which is one disadvantage of the crossbow. I wouldn't want it back in the day. No, but if you were in China and you wanted to get some shots off pretty quick, they had a crossbow for you. They had an automatic crossbow that shot several bolts a second. That's crazy. They had a magazine that would just feed bolts into the crossbow, which would cock through levers. The moment it was cocked, it would shoot the bolt, and then another bolt would come down. And the moment it was cocked another bolt, it would shoot it and so on. And so if you were going really fast, you could just rain bolts down on somebody. The problem is it was fast, but it wasn't very accurate and it wasn't very deadly, but it probably scared the tar out of people who saw it. And the vault didn't travel that fast. It was fast to shoot, but not fast in flight. 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. But I tried to find a picture of that thing because I could not fathom it in my brain, and I couldn't find any, obviously, because it was a long time ago. Yeah, it was pre pictures. Let's talk about physics, Josh, because this is my favorite thing to do. Well, this is a Tracey Wilson article, so of course there's going to be a section on the physics of crossbows. Yes, there is. So a bow is basically a spring. Did you know that? I did. I used to shoot. You knew that a bow is basically a spring? Well, sure. I read that, like, four times. Really? Yeah. I think that's very neat. Take a bed, spring. All right. And I heard you I heard that you used to shoot. I want to know about it. We'll get into that, but I'm just, like, knee deep in the physics now. I know. You take a spring, you stretch it out. What you've just done is generate well, you haven't generated it, but you've just somehow amassed elastic energy. Potential energy. Potential energy through the elasticity of the spring. Yeah. Okay. As you're holding it, all of that energy is potential. It's like, Just let me go, and I'll do some crazy stuff. That's so much potential. The moment you let go, the potential energy becomes kinetic energy. I believe we talked a lot about this in roller coasters. The same thing with the bow. When you pull a string that's connected to either end of the bow, you're pulling the bow back. You're changing its shape, like a spring being stretched out. But in this case, the bow is just being brought together, the limbs. And then when you let go, the bow springs back to its original shape drawing. Suddenly the string highly taught. You have an arrow attached to that string, and it sends that arrow shooting forward at incredible speeds. The physics of a bow also applies to the physics of a crossbow. Yeah. And if you never thought about it, it is interesting because it's not a little toy string. That's elastic string stays the same length. You know, you're pulling the pulling the limbs together. Yeah. And then when you let go of the limbs go away from you very suddenly, the amount of energy a broken hole, Josh. You can figure that out? Actually, it's draw weight is the amount of force required to draw it back. And draw length is the distance between the bow strings position at rest and when drawn. And the total amount of energy that a boat can hold is approximately equal to the draw weight times draw length divided by two. Yeah. And then usually that's expressed in jewels, foot pounds or joules. Oh, is it jewels? Yeah. I was kidding around. No, that's the Bose energy. You can also impress a cross bowman by talking about the era's velocity, which is measured in feet or meters per second. That's right. And a lot of things can affect this. Obviously, if you have a long bow, it's going to be more powerful than a short bow because it just makes sense. So the size affects it, the shape affects it. A recurve bow, which is one of the ones I had growing up, is it doesn't just come back in a U, it comes back in the U and flares back out away from in the other direction. Yes. At the top and bottom. Right. And what this does is it shortens the bracing height, which is the distance between the string and the bow when it's at rest, which means that since that's shorter, when you pull the string back and release it, it has a longer distance to travel before it comes to a stop, which means it gives that arrow or bolt a little extra push. That's right. And also the recurve bow makes the bow even springier. Spring year adds a little spring to it. Step composition is another thing. Josh yes. Density and tensile strength determine how much energy it holds. And obviously, back in the day, they made them from things like U-Y-E-W. Very strong and very elastic. Not you. Not you, but you. Modern bows, a lot of times are composite bows, which means when they need it to be rigid, don't make it out of one material. When they need it to be flexible, they'll make it out of something else. Right. And then they put it all together. To make a killing machine. Exactly. To make a zombie killing machine. And then there are compound bows, which I had one of those, too. A compound bow uses pulleys, little wheels and pulleys to make it easier to pull back and hold once you get it there. And that's called the let off once it reaches a certain point. Do you ever shot a compound? I have. And that sensation of pulling and then all of a sudden there's no resistance. Basically, this very low is cocked. It's a very cool feeling. I could hold this all day. Yeah, not all day, but it is very cool. And I had one of those, and I had a regular little recoil. All right. My dad gets into phases. He got into a bow and arrow phase. He got into an archery phase and built a thing on our property. And as my dad does, he went out and bought like, a $700 compound bow. Is that right? Yeah, but he bought me like, a little miniature versions of everything he got. And he was a principal at my school, I've mentioned. So he had like, all of a sudden there was an archery program at school and it was fun, man. I shot a lot of arrows growing up. Did you hunt anything? No, not a hunter. Hunter targets. Did you have a crossbow? No, never even shot a crossbow, but I had a little compound and a little recurve. That's very cool. But after this article, I'm dying to shoot a crossbow. Yeah, I don't know anybody who has one. I bet you do. Is there like, a whole group of people that have crossbows? Yeah, I'm not familiar. I bet Matt Frederick has a crossbow. Matt, do you have a crossbow? No, he doesn't have a crossbow. He has a laser gun, though. A functioning laser gun that will just disintegrate you. Let's talk safety Chuck. In this article, Tracy turns into Tommy Lee Jones and no country for Old Men when she says, do not .1 at anything you do not plan to shoot. Yes. I don't like that rule. I think it should be that and don't point it at any one period. Oh, okay. I was going to say it doesn't account for just goofing around. Yeah, that's what they say with every gun, is don't point it at someone unless you plan to shoot them. But my rule of thumb is don't point it at anyone. Right. Because the crossbow, I looked it up to see if it was a good home security feature. It's not. Your insurance company would be like, what, do you want us to reduce it because you have a crossbow? They make little pistol ones, too, with little shorts. I had a pistol one. No, he had a bowcaster. It's like a pistol crossbow. Right? Then it shoots energy. Okay, but it's the shape of a crossbow. That's a pistol. I thought it didn't have a stock. I thought it was a pistol. Maybe it's just so big it looks like a pistol on him. We'll hear about this one for sure. Oh, man. Safety Josh. You want to place the stirrup at the ground. Don't want to point it at you at all. Or have a friend hold the stirrup while you cock. No, it's terrible. No, I'm saying do not do that. Yeah, do not do that. Right. You want to point into the ground, put the stirrup on the ground. Put your foot in the stirrup. You want to brace it very firmly. Make sure your foot is all the way in there, because this is a lot of potential energy you're building up here. Like I said earlier, you want to grab it, pull it equally on both sides, lock it into place. And the modern crossbow will automatically have a little safety that happens there. And there may be an additional safety that you can set after that. Yeah. Which is good. You also want to stand out of the way of the front of the bow. And I'm not just saying in the path of the arrow, but that bow remember it's stretched toward you when the string is cocked or when the string is pulled back. And when you release it, the bow flies forward and outward. And if your hands there, it's going to smack it and probably break every bone in it. Yeah. And also if you're hunting or you're shooting a target from behind a tree, you don't want the crossbows bow to smack into the tree or else it's probably going to break the bow. That's right. It's pricey. And never dry fire. Yeah, I knew that just from common sense. Most types of things that you shoot, you shouldn't dry fire. But that means shooting it without a bolt. But it's made to shoot a bolt. It's configured to shoot the weight of a bolt. So when you shoot it dry, that weight is not there. So you could potentially break your bolt. And Tracy points out that dry firing voids nearly all manufacturer's warranties. Yeah. So don't dry fire. And again, never go for the extended warranty. And if you haven't listened to the extended warranty podcast yet, you should go back and listen to it's. Pretty good. Really? Yes. I didn't know they were good back then. Yeah, they're good, all right. Yeah, because we just took this completely boring topic and really went to town on it. It was a good one. Chuck 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. Our last piece of safety advice is get a bolt that is rated for your crossbow. Well, yeah, because you can't just put any size and weight in there. It's figured very specifically. Exactly. You can't just say, man, look at that big bolt. Let me put that thing in here. Yeah. So when the zombie apocalypse comes, you better know what your crossbow is rated for. That's right. And don't drive on the auto bond in tires that are rated for a lower speed than what your car can drive things you should Know. If you want to know more about the Auto Bond. I just changed the name of the show, by the way. You did? Do you want to tell them the real stuff? You Should Know okay. If you want to know more about the Auto bond, extended warranties and crossbows, you can type any one of those three or all three together and see what comes up in the handysarchbar. Athousepports.com. And that means now, friends, it's time for listener mail. Josh, this is another soldier shout out. We're suckers for those. And the one Norman tourist the other day that we mentioned, I forgot to mention that's the dude that I sent the jump drive to with every single one of our podcasts on it, man, that must have been a huge jump drive. It was about as big as my pinky. And, you know I did it because he has you are going to be doing that a lot more often now, I have a feeling. Yeah. You have to prove that you're saving lives in Afghanistan in order to get that. So this is from another dude. This is from Sergeant Gabriel Everhardt. Greetings from Iraq. I'm writing you today from the center of civilization, aka the Fertile Crescent. Iraq. Mesopotamia. I am a combat engineer in the US. Army. On my second combat tour, I've had the opportunity to have wireless Internet and have been downloading many of your podcasts. And I listen each evening during the day while on patrol in Mr. AP mine Resistant Armored Patrol imran. I've heard that these are like Hurt Lockers. They make positive. I relay the podcast I listen to the night before over the headset to the guys. It is great for breaking up monotony of looking for IEDs. Oh, yeah. I guess they are her lucky guys. And talking about the usual army related stories, my soldiers have learned about many interesting things like human cannonballers, schizophrenia, parkour, and con artists. They especially like the play by play on shrinking human heads. I bet they did. In summary, on behalf of myself and my soldiers, just wanted to extend our thanks to both you guys sitting in a convoy of vehicles with the same dudes for up to 12 hours a day. It's kind of like taking a year long road trip, but on the same roads. Sort of like a Twilight Zone episode. And guys, in your own way, you're both doing great things for your country. I don't know about that, but I'll take it. So I told Gabriel Everhardt Sarge that we would give those guys a shout out in the Maison province of Iraq. So, dudes, if you're listening, we love you. Be safe. Come home in one piece. Seriously. And thanks for everything you do. Yeah, for schlubs like us who just run off at the mouth. And we're sorry about the parkour podcast. And if you have a special request, we will strongly consider it. He did, actually. I didn't leave that part in, but it was about Mesopotamia. We did that one was Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. Well, there you go. Yes. If you have another one that we haven't done before, send it in email, check back and we'll see what we can do. And if you have a request, special request, let us know why we should entertain it, what it is, and we'll see what we can do. And there's three ways you can contact us, aside from saying hi through our system of Campbell soup cans and string. Sure, you can tweet to us at syskodcast. You can visit us on Facebook, facebook. Comstepyte. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstoughorks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join housetophos 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." | ||
c3d42c6a-5460-11e8-b38c-67be87cac8cb | SYSK Selects: How Currency Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-currency-works | Even if you entirely eschew the concept of money, we'll bet you'd be hard pressed not to trade in some form of currency. Learn how everything from cows to cacao beans to tiny shells from Maldives have served as currency at some time or another. | Even if you entirely eschew the concept of money, we'll bet you'd be hard pressed not to trade in some form of currency. Learn how everything from cows to cacao beans to tiny shells from Maldives have served as currency at some time or another. | Sat, 14 Dec 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=348, tm_isdst=0) | 44877615 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. This is Charles W, Chuck Bryant, here to talk about currency, specifically the September 18, 2014 stuff. You should episode how currency works. I think this one was really cool because it's not just money. All kinds of currency are everybody. So that's why this is my pick. I hope you check it out and hope you enjoy it all over again. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles WTOK. Bryant and Jerry. All right. Yeah. That makes the stuff you should know you ever had one of those? I don't know why I wanted one, but when I was a kid, I wanted one of those coin things you want your hip to make change. I wanted one of those worse than anything. Really? Yes. Like a peanut vendor. I don't know, six Flags or whatever. And I saw those things. I just thought it was boss. That's really funny. And I don't think I knew that you could buy them for like, $3. I would have bought a bunch of them. Yeah, because there's not much to them. It's just like the thing is not counting anything when you press it with your thumb. Yeah. Releases. But each one your quarters, they have different sizes. So without even looking, you could go here's three quarters. Buddy. I know what somebody's getting for Christmas this year. I just thought of that out of nowhere. I haven't remember that since I was a kid. I was obsessed with those things for a little while. Well, you know what? You're technically obsessed with a dispenser of currency. How's that? Teed that one up? Yeah. Knocked it out of the park. I collected banks, too, which is a weird thing for a kid to do. Banks? Like piggy banks? Yes. Even though none of them were piggy banks. What was your favorite one? Oh, man. I still have the collection. My mom's got them. I wonder if they're worth any money. No, I doubt it. I mean, that was like a Garfield bank. And Opus the Penguin. Eric Davis. No. Was it? Opus from Bloom County? Why am I blanking out on that? That was my favorite comic. I don't know. That sounds right. Man. I'm losing it, buddy. So the Penguin from Bloom County. We're going with that. I was obsessed with Bloom County and then change counters. Nice. And piggy banks. Cool. That was my childhood. And Dale Murphy. Not Eric Davis? No. Who's that? Who's for? The Reds. Oh, the Reds player. Yeah, number 44. He was great, though. I love Eric. He was as a non Reds fan, I was an Eric Davis fan. I'm with you. Where are you obsessed with? I liked baseball. Baseball cards? Yeah. Did you collect anything? Mad magazines. Yeah, me, too. Those are still, I think, at my dad's house. They better be. You still got them. What else did I collect? I saved up my Sports Illustrated for years, too. I remember the first one I ever got had Mohammed Ali on the cover. That's how old I am. Wow. It was during his comeback, when he was, like, fat and mustachioed. Don't call it a comeback. It was not not much of one. That's not how that goes. How's that for a sidetrack to get us going? I haven't even done the intro. Let's hear it. So the intro is as follows. Chuck in 2013, New York Magazine. Not the New York Times, not New Yorker. New York Magazine, which is an equally good publication. Not time out in New York. Not The Village Voice. All right? Just New York magazine, which is actually where the movie Saturday Night Fever came from. It came from an article that was later admitted to be completely fabricated by the author. Oh, really? Yeah, in that magazine. Awesome. Anyway, New York Magazine ran a really interesting article in January 2013 called Suds for Drugs, and it talked about how there's a huge black market for tied laundry detergent, specifically liquid tied in the United States. Yeah. What, they don't make anymore? No, they make plenty of it, but tons of it gets stolen. And the reason why is Tide is such an agreed upon great laundry detergent. Not bad. Tide and only tied. Like, if you tried to use Gain or all or anything like that, you would get turned away. But if you have a jug of tied liquid laundry detergent, you can buy drugs in the United States with it. Really? It is agreed upon as a currency. I had no idea. Yeah. Even though you can just buy it in the store. Yeah, that's the part I don't get. Because if you're a crackhead and you steal a carton of them, then all of a sudden you didn't have to pay for this Tide. Right. And you can use it to buy drugs. Interesting. I don't use any of that stuff, and I don't mean to pick on just crack heads. If you're a junkie, same thing. Sure. If you have a gambling habit. Yeah, man, we got a lot of crap from a couple of people about using the word junkie. Yeah. It's pretty derogatory if you think about it. I guess. Well, but it's a word with a definition, which means something, and that's what it means. I mean, it's not like we were just, like, slagging people. Yeah, no, I get what they're saying, though. You're saying, like, it's just such a dismissive term of anyone who's addicted. Right. It really kind of flies in the face of the disease model of addiction. Yeah. So I had talked to the people who call us out on that. I get it. But the point is, tied is now a currency. As, like, remember our prison episode where we talked about how honey buns are currency? Same thing, right? Cigarettes, currency earskins. Those were currency once. That's where we get the word bucks from. I think what you're getting at. I can't wait to get to that stuff later. Okay. Etymology. I love that stuff. I do too. I think what you're trying to say is that or what you are saying is that currency is nothing more than a medium of exchange and a substitute for something a good or a service. Yeah. It is an agreed upon. That's the key. Yeah. It's got to be agreed upon. Yeah. You can't be like, I'll give you five Lincoln Logs for that car. Well, that's what you do when you're a kid, right? And you go, I don't think I want Lincoln Logs. And your buddy goes, oh, you do? Right. But if the other person says, I don't want link and logs, then what you have are linking logs, not a currency, because it has to be mutually agreed upon, like you say, like dollar bills. Yeah. I have gone off on this on our show about the amazing fact that this paper we have all agreed is worth something. And that is the only reason it's worth something that people dedicate their lives to pursuing paper is as ephemeral as a cloud, almost. Yeah. Not the greatest analogy I've made, but it still kind of works. All right, so let's talk olden days and currency as a substitute for things. What currency did was solve the problem. It allowed you to give change and make change. Yeah, that's a big one, because back in the day, if you had a bushel of corn and you wanted a chicken, you would go to your neighbor. Well, you had to find somebody that had a chicken that wanted corn. So that's the first problem. That's a problem. But what if you do find someone? You're like, great, my neighbor's got a chicken, and I've got this corn. He wants this corn. He wants the corn. But he says, you know what? This chicken is worth a lot more than that corn. Somebody's getting a bad deal until you can make change. Yeah. Because what if I get corn? That's not the best example because you could take out some of the corn, right? Let's say. But you can't chop a chicken. Cows. Yeah. Well, you got a cow. Your neighbor has a chicken, and that's not an even trade. But you just need one chicken, and your neighbor just needs one cow. You can't make change. Like that can't make change. So that's one of the first roles that currency fulfilled was a way to make change, to make trade more equal. Yeah. Before that, I think there were a lot of bad deals going down out of desperation. Like, if your family really needed that chicken for a reason, you might end up taking a bad deal just because you need that chicken. You give your cow away for that chicken. Yeah. And then your family would berate you. That's right. Where's the milk, honey? Yeah. This is like the magic beans incident all over again. Can't milk a chicken, honey. Get berated by your wife. Another reason that currency became popular is because it allows you, for the first time, to really amass wealth, because you can harvest all the corn you want, but that corn is going to go bad unless you can find a way to trade it. And a barn full of rotten corn does no one any good, and it doesn't make you any richer in practice, practically speaking, you would be an extraordinarily wealthy person if you had tons of corn. In theory, yeah. But like you said, it's going to go bad, so you could lose all your wealth would literally rot away. That's not the case with, say, a gold coin. Gold coins aren't going to go bad and deteriorate, so they're that stand in for those enormous stocks of corn because you had all that corn and then you traded it for gold coins. Yeah. So what you did was you took your wealth of corn and stored it into something of equal value. In this case, gold coins. Yeah. And that had a huge impact on civilization, because the most powerful people were not just the ones who held the political and military influence. All of a sudden, if you could accumulate wealth, then you could buy that junk. Yeah. It gave rise to the merchant class and it democratized. Is that the word? Yeah, it democratized the world. It did. Because before, it was like you were born into a wealthy, noble family and that you gained power. And if you weren't yes. That meant that you work the land for this wealthy family, but if you can sell something and get money in exchange for it, instead of a cow for a chicken yeah. You save that junk up and you buy someone to go kill that landowner, then that's your land. Right. Democracy at work, they're generally considered to be four categories of currency. You have commodity currency, coins, paper money, and electronic currency these days. And in the commodity system, it is a placeholder, like we said, for purchasing power. But it also has value as a thing because corn is valuable. It's not just a piece of paper. Right. Or in the case of the Aztecs or little cacao beans were valuable, and so they use those as money. But one of the problems with that is if the person you're trading with doesn't find that valuable, then it's worthless. Yeah. Usually within a society, everyone will find that commodity currency valuable. Like the Aztecs with cacao. Yeah. They love the stuff. They made chocolate out of it. It was the elixir of the gods kind of stuff. They drank it, right? Yeah. Montezuma drank like 20 or 40 cups of it a day until he died from drinking too much chocolate. But the conquistadors who came didn't value cacao beans at all. So rather than trade, they just took everything yeah. And dumped the cacao beans because it was worthless to them. Yeah, but that is a good example of a commodity based currency. Like, even if everything else falls apart, that cacao bean still has value in that you can make chocolate out of it. Right. In the society, chocolate is valued. Ergo, they value the cacao beans so you can use it as currency. Plus, in this case, cacao beans are easy to carry, so they're portable and they're plentiful and small, so you can make change with them. Yeah, but not everything was the cacao being in commodity currency. A lot of stuff is perishable, more perishable. A lot of cattle is super bulky. You can't carry on a bunch of cows, goats. Goats. But nevertheless, that is a form of commodity currency. It just had its downside. Yeah. Like, the goat has value in and of itself. Yeah. Cute. Cute. Milk, meat, and cute hair and cute and very cute. I'm going to get one of those pigmy goats one of these days. Yes, it's going to happen. You're going to come over to my house, and the little goat is going to bounce in the room, clip clop. You're going to go, what the have you ever seen B the lamb? I showed you that, right? Dude, that's probably my top five all time favorite horrible things ever. If you don't know, be the lamb. Go type that into YouTube right now. Oh, is it a lamb? I think so. I thought it was a pigmy goat. I think it's a lamb. Jerry says lamb. All right. I went, all right, here's some cacao beans. Nice, Chuck. Okay, we're back. Let's see if we can get the mojo back again. All right. The mojo is still flowing because our message break in reality was only 2 seconds long. That's our dirty secret. Coins is our next form of currency. And they were first minute in Lydia, which is modern turkey, and their king, Croasis, or crosis, said, you know, I'm going to make these little small metal ingots. I'm going to stamp them with our emblem, and it's 640 BC. And this is called coins, and it's worth something. And the Greek said, this is great, and the Romans said, this is great, and we're going to make ours out of silver and gold. So it's actually worth something. Although when you think about it, that's just worth something because someone says it's worth something. Gold. Sure. All of it. Yes. I read this Forbes article that basically said all currency is a fiat currency. What does that mean? Fiat currency means that it has value by fiat. Like the fiat of the king. A decree. Right. And it says the government or the king says, this has value. It's 97% gold. It's valuable. So go trade it as such by fiat, right? Yeah. If you think about it, the only things that really have real value are, like food and water. Pretty much. You can make the case that a commodity based currency like cacao beans isn't necessarily a Fiat currency because it does have inherent value that anybody can use. But gold is it's not really that valuable. It's not really that useful, especially in, like, a preindustrial society. I wonder if gold first became valuable because it was shiny and literally yes. They could make pretty things with it, honestly. Yes. Interesting. I think that's exactly why. Because it's so malleable, you can't make tools out of it. Yeah. Even today, it's not that useful. I mean, they use it in some solid state electronics and things, but it's more valuable simply because it's gold. Crazy. Yeah. So even if it's backed with gold, it's technically still a Fiat currency. I've never heard that term. F-I-A-T. So what is the Fiat car all about? Does that mean it's just special because they say it is? I guess. All right. In China, I thought the Chinese made the first coins, but Grabster says no. Yes. Grabster says that it happened at about the same time it did in the west, fifth century BC. They started out, oddly, with tools like knife shapes as currency, with little holes drilled in them, so they could keep it on a string. And they just shrank over the years until it was about the size of a coin. Right. Which I thought was odd. But they kept the hole in there. Yeah. So even until, like, the mid 19th century, the Chinese coins still were just little round coins with a hole in the middle, so you could string them on a string. Yeah. That's because they didn't have the little coin dispenser on the hip. They would have thought of that, which is surprising because the Chinese invented practically everything. Yeah, that's true. Except the coin dispenser. The hip mounted coin dispenser. Do they even still make those? Sure they do. I'll bet. All right, I'm going to buy one. If not, Archie MacPhee probably makes it in an ironic version. Who's that? You've seen all their stuff. They make, like, funny. They were the original. Probably like, bacon air freshener, car air freshener. They make stuff like that. The horse head got you. They outfit all their stuffs in Urban Outfitters, probably in the chocolatey section. Yeah. All right. I hate them, then. So one of the big impacts of coins was now the government actually controlled the money supply and could manipulate it and say what it's worth. And Roman emperors were dumb and said, you know what? We're just going to reduce the amount of precious metal in some of these because that makes us richer. But that devalued things such that it ended up being one of the factors in their downfall. Yeah. They didn't quite understand how it worked, and it took thousands of years for anybody to figure out really how it worked. But basically, if you still know how it works, kind of, I think we have a better grasp than the early Roman emperors. Yeah, that's true, because they would say, hey, man, I've got a ton of gold, and my predecessors would make 10,000 gold coins out of a ton. But I being as clever as I am, I'm going to make 20,000 gold coins out of this ton and double my money. But rather than double the money, it devalued the currency and led to the decline of the Roman Empire. That's right, like you said. But that's how yes. And after that, it took a while for coins to come back in fashion all the way to the Renaissance, because in the Dark Ages, because of a lot of that stuff, people didn't trust coins. Right. And for good reason, because there was someone behind it who could decrease the percentage of gold in that coin. The thing is, and we'll get to this later, the powers that b can decree value, but ultimately it's up to the general public, the people who are trading in these things, to determine really how valuable they are. There's something called perception of value that has to do with just how valuable a currency is or not. We'll talk about it in a minute. But that's what happened in Rome. Yeah. Next up, we have paper money, or as they call it, folding money here in the south. And paper money was first developed by the Chinese as well. And they used, like you said, buckskin, sometimes bark, parchment, and it was a bill of payment. And leather was also used in Europe around 1100, which didn't really catch on then. No, I think leather money would be kind of cool, though. Leather money. Sure. If you hate animals, what better way to kill more of them? I wonder how much a cow would have been worth then. Yeah, well, they were using the skin for other stuff anyway. Yeah, good point, though. In Sweden and 1661, they issued paper money, but they didn't quite understand it either, and flooded the market with it, which made it almost worthless as well. Still figured it out. I get the desire, though, like, oh, everyone says this stuff's worth something, let's just print a ton of it. Exactly. Yeah. So it didn't catch on after the Swedish experiment in the 17th century, but it didn't take too much longer. It was the 18th century when paper money finally did catch on, and it was based on the practice of goldsmiths at the time, where if you gave them some gold, they give you basically an IOU, say they were making something out of the gold, or they were hanging on to the gold for you. You had what amounts to a promissory note saying, you bring this IOU back to me and I'll give you this amount of gold in return. It was basically the first, what's called gold backed paper currency. And once banks figured out just how that could work, in theory and in practice, anybody could start issuing currency. Yeah. And money was backed by gold. Even right here in the US. All the way up until 1971, every dollar had no, not in theory. Every dollar had gold somewhere. Not just dollars. Pretty much any paper currency in the world at the time was backed by gold, silver, some sort of precious metal that we all agreed was valuable because it's shiny. Yeah. But there was a stock somewhere in the world that you could trade your paper money for that value in gold. Yeah. You could go somewhere to the gold trader and say, here, I want all this money in gold. Did you know that's what the wizard of Oz is about? It's an allegory for the gold standard. Oh, man. Depending on who you ask, it's about ten different things. It's a populist allegory for the gold standard. I just posted an article about ten different theories on what wizard of Odds means on our Facebook page. Mine is right and yours is right, and then everyone else is wrong. Thank you. That's all I ever want to hear from you. I know. So now we're on to e money, which is seems like something super new, but it actually came about after World War II when banks started recording the information of the day onto magnetic reels and taking it to the Federal Reserve Bank. And all of a sudden, they said, we don't need these silly $10,000 bills. Yeah. Because we can just record this all electronically. And all it took then was a wire connection and trust for people to trust that this really is money, even though I'm not seeing any money. Right. And that is the real distinction of it, because with the electronic transfer, originally, you're transferring information about money. Like, I have $100,000 over here that I officially give to you, and so that electronic transfer becomes a promise or note in and of itself. And they figured out that they can do this after they realize that money in and of itself isn't valuable, so we can just do this whole thing electronically. And like you said, they did have $100,000 notes, and apparently there's some in circulation still. There's a couple of hundred of them in circulation. They had 501,000, 10,000 and $100,000 bills. There's a really neat mental floss article that you can read called $100,000 Bill the Story Behind Large Denomination Currency. And it talks all about that. But it was prior to the magnetic tapes that were passed from bank to bank or that recorded this information. This is how banks would settle up transfers through 10,000 $100,000 bills. Yeah. And $100,000 has Woodrow Wilson on it, and they only made those for about three weeks. But that was never, like, in the public. That was just between banks. Right. It was never in circulation. There's still around, from what I understand, though. Yeah. There was in 19 I'm sorry. In 2009, there were less than 400 $500 bills. $1,000 bills. $5,000 bills and $10,000 bills, all between like 300, 400 still in circulation, which I thought was pretty interesting. Yeah. And they're usually worth frame now, but they're worth way more than their face value. This Mental Floss article points out that if you have a pristine $10,000 bill, it's worth at least ten times that. Well, and they all had different presidents throughout the years. It wasn't like a single version of it. There was a bunch of different versions of all those, except for the 100,000. Yeah. It was always Wilson. Right? Yeah, because they just printed it for three weeks. Woody, I wonder why he got that honor. Yeah. I don't know. Because he was money. He didn't even know it. So with electronic money, another few things really helps cement that as a viable thing. One was the first credit card in 1050. Diners Club said, you know what, rich businessman? Here's a piece of plastic. So you can impress your friends by not even carrying cash and pay for whatever you want with this thing, and then we'll charge you some interest and then you'll pay us back. Yeah. And we got even further from the commodity by saying, now you're not even using cash. We're using electronic promissory notes by charging this, that's the promissory note. And then they realize, hey, this shouldn't be just for rich dudes because we can financially cripple everybody. Exactly. This interesting is really neat. So everyone should have a credit card. And today there's over 200 million visas, which started in 1000, 958. Then the Social Security Administration started doing e deposits all the way back in 1975. Then people kind of got used to the idea that all right, I see it's in my bank account now, so I trust it. Yeah, which is a big step forward. Yes. It took a little while to catch on, but then now it's like the Grabster points out. People started paying bills, transferring money between accounts and sending money electronically without ever even touching it. Yeah, which is true. I hadn't thought about that. But there's plenty of money that I earn and spend that it's never physical ever. That's all my money. Yeah. I almost never have or use cash. I get paid electronically. It goes to a bank number, and then I have American Express that I pay for things with, and then I pay for that electronically. Right. And I'm just trusting that as long as the lights are on, I guess everything's working out, right? Exactly. And basically it's like the future, like what everybody talks about in the future, we're not going to have money, we're going to have credits. Well, the future is here. Apparently, 8% of the world's currency is in hard currency. This all sounds so dangerous when you start talking about it like that. All it takes is one big crash of electronic crash. Yeah. And what if they were like, all that money that you thought you had is not here now. Right. We don't know what happened to it. It's entirely possible. Remember they have the FDIC though, in the United States at least. Remember the early days of internet purchases, how distrustful we all were? Yeah, I'm not putting my credit card, I'm not typing that thing in. Right. And it never occurred just that we hand it to like a waiter or whoever that can do anything with it. And then it finally just became less important just because so many people were doing it, that the chances of your credit card being stolen were lower. Coupled with the fact that it became evident that credit card companies were willing to just wipe clean debts, accrued like that sure. Illegally made people a lot more trusting of it, I guess. Yeah. I had a lady in front of me, this grocery store today that wrote a check and I was just like, oh, were you? Just like, I know I felt like a jerk because I had to wait longer minute. But I did want to say like, you know, there's a better way of doing that now, checks. And I can't remember the last check I wrote. It's been years and years and years since I've written a check. For me it's usually like a government thing, like a tag or something. Tag tax or something. Yeah, I do all that with my card too. And then of course if you want to talk about the bleeding edge of electronic money eg bitcoin and that kind of thing, you should be listening to our Bitcoin episode, which we're told was pretty good. Yeah, I think even the guys from Pod on Pod reviewed our show and they listened to the Bitcoin episode and said we did a good job of explaining it. So Chuck, we were talking about the gold standard and that's what the wizard of Oz is about. Yes. And prior to that with the gold standard, inflation happened. The price of gold fluctuated, so therefore the price of anything pegged to it, like the dollar would fluctuate too when we abandon the gold standard officially in 1971. But prior to that, I think in the 30s is when it really started. We really took a huge leap of faith because there's nothing backing it anymore. It's a myth that you can take your dollar bill and turn it in for gold. Some guys in white coats will come and lock you up in a padded room for a little while. They said, you can come and buy this gold ring with your cash. Pretty much you can buy gold bullion with it, but you can't it's not a trade. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to charge you some fees for that too. So once we abandon the gold standard, it was a big leap of faith because as Milton Friedman put it, quote, the pieces of green paper have value because everybody thinks they have value. And as long as we all. Think together and believe together they will stay valuable. But there are certain times, there are certain occasions and events when we all believe that things become a little less valuable, that currency is a little less valuable than at other times. Right. So this perception of value can have an impact on the value of currency, and the grapes are given a pretty good example. It's when we deflate or devalue currency relative to other currencies, which we'll do sometimes because we want to attract that currency. Native investors over here in the US. Right. So, like, if right now you can buy five francs to the dollar, \u20ac5 to the dollar, and we say, well, we want to encourage more investment in Europe, so we're going to let the dollar devalue, and we're going to make it so it's equal to \u20ac3, and then we'll stabilize it. Well, that'll encourage more people in Europe to invest in the United States, because the Euro now has more buying power relative to the dollar. But everyone in the United States gets WTF. We got all these dollars, and now it's worth less because you just told us that you're going to make it worth less relative to the Euro. Nothing really happened to the dollar, but everybody agreed literally overnight that the dollar is less valuable now because it was devalued. That's one way that currency can fluctuate these days. Yeah. I wish I had a better understanding of when people say what the dollar is worth. Sometimes that just makes my head spin. I have one for you. You're going to love this, man. Let's hear it. The Big Mac Index. Oh, God. It's exactly what you just said. If you want an understanding of it, there is a guy in 1009 who wrote in The Economist, basically the Big Mac Index, and it says, yeah, we've covered this in one of them. We made bitcoins here. We may have done it in our superstaride to the economy then. That was 80 years ago, though. It was, yeah. So we'll go over it again. The Big Mac Index is the price of a Big Mac relative to the price of a Big Mac in another country. Right. So it's basically saying you can and it's tongue in cheek, but it actually does kind of work. Right. You can show the buying power, the purchasing power of one currency relative to another based on how much a Big Mac costs in each country. The Big Mac. And once you see it and look at it like that, you go to The Economist and type in the Big Mac Index, and it'll bring this up, and it's an interactive scale, which makes it awesome, and you understand relative purchasing power. I should spend some time on that site. Thank you. It will make me hungry. So then the other way that things can devalue is with supply, and that is just basically supply and demand, like when there's a lot more money available, it by nature becomes less valuable. Yes. Demand is high, prices go up. Supply is high, prices go down. Right. So that's inflation and deflation. That goes up. It goes down. Okay, I guess we should answer this. Are you watching the Simpsons? Every episode marathon, I've tuned in some here and there, but what I've really enjoyed is the influx of articles about the best seasons, the best episodes. It's really like a trip down memory lane. I do not have FXX, and so therefore I'm bereft yeah, but you've seen them all anyway. Yeah, but it'd be so nice to see them again like this, you know? Yeah. I mean, they're running a non stop. Like, you wake up at 03:00 a.m. And it's on. I know. Don't think I wake up at 03:00 a.m. And realize that I'm missing a Simpsons. Right, then. Well, you caught up. Bed goes down. That's because I love the Simpsons. Exactly. So we talked about inflation and deflation, but if you want to know more about that, you should check out how much money is there in the world. Our superstar guide to the economy stagflation. Those are all some good episodes we've done on that kind of thing. Yeah. And we mentioned earlier, I talked about I can see how you might be incentivized to just print loads of money if you want more of it. And we've covered another shows why that's a bad idea, but never has it been more evident than in post world war I Germany. This is amazing stuff. I think Zimbabwe beat them eventually, didn't they? I couldn't remember. It's either Zimbabwe or Hungary. Well. No, I think it was Zimbabwe. Okay. I don't know. Maybe it was hungry. Remember hungry? Had a revolution in the was just staggering numbers of hyperinflation. Yes, but this is a pretty good example of hyperinflation. Well, after World war one, germany owed in war reparations about $33 billion in like, 19 $19. Yeah. They didn't have that kind of money, so they said, well, let's just print a bunch of it and see what happened. It's not going to be backed by any kind of commodity. And it resulted in hyperinflation to the extent where in 1923, it was called the hyperinflation of the Vimer republic from June 1921 to January 1924. It's because they funded the war through borrowing, only they didn't, like, raise taxes to pay for the war. They literally borrowed money to pay for World war one, and it resulted in eventually, 42 billion with a B. German marks was equal to one penny of US. Money. And I didn't think that could be right, but it's right. Yeah. And it was so bad that there was something called a mental condition called zero stroke that it caused, which is when you're compelled to write endless rows of zeros. Cause when you see some of these numbers, it just you're like, is that even a number when you're trying to do these calculations, and there was an influx of zero stroke in germany at the time. So I was wondering, how did Germany ever recover? They basically started over again and said, this isn't money anymore. We're going to start over, and we're going to have a new bank issue. Something called deutschmarks no, the rental mark. And this is our new money. All that money is no good to start over from scratch. But this is actually back. There was a bank, the deutsche rent a bank, mortgaged, land and industrial goods to the tune of about $3.2 billion. Like hard assets that were backing this money. And it worked. And it turned around almost overnight to the point where us dollar was worth 4.2 rental marks. 4.2 billion. And I guess everyone just got on board. All right, that old money is no good. Wallpaper your walls with it. And now we have new money. A lot of historians credit that really difficult period that Germany was put through or put itself through, depending on who you ask after world war one, is the reason why fascism was allowed to take hold there. I believe it. And the lead up to over two, because when I say it's stabilized, it stabilized the money overnight. But it still wasn't like they were still in bad shape. It took a while to dig out of that. Did you see that thing I sent you on calorie shells? Oh, yeah, a little bit. Sea snail shells. They're little tiny white shells that look porcelain. And literally for about 2000 years, they were used as currency throughout the world. And they came almost exclusively from the maldives. And if you were an arab trader, you would go down to the maldives, you would buy about a million calories shells for one gold dinner. Then you go back to india or go to india, and you would sell 10,000 of them for a gold DNR. So you could just make a ton of money overnight. And then the further and further away they got from the maldives, and the closer and closer to china they got, which is the country that use these things like crazy as worth less. They were worth more and more. Oh, more. Yeah. And maldives, it's just like you just scoop up baskets full of them, right, and they were not nearly as valuable. But as you got away from the maldives, they grew more and more valuable, and they were used as currency literally until the mid 19th century. I mean, they started and we have the earliest reference in about 350 BCE. And in the 1850s is when the currency finally collapsed, just because there are so many of them on the market. That's crazy that people would pay using 500,000 calorie shells. And you'd have to count out 500,000 calorie shells, and then they use them because they were like pretty and they were hearty and didn't break real easy. Plentiful small, so you can make change with them. Wow. Yeah. And people like them, so therefore they became currency. But they lasted as currency for like 2000 years. Again, all you have to do is agree that something. Although that's a weird thing because that's something you can just go out and find if you're in the right part of the world. If you're in the right exactly. That's why they were less valuable in the Maldives. More valuable. Like in China. Right. So you want to talk etymology? Yeah. You said what was the first one? You said the buck comes from buckskin and the sawbuck, I don't know where sawbuck is. A tenor, right? I believe so. The word fee comes from the German word for cattle. V-I-E-H. Interesting, right? Yeah. Speaking of shells, I believe Pacific Northwest tribes used wampum, which were white shells. And the phrase shell out comes from that. When you pay somebody in shells, you were shelling out. I wonder if that's where clams comes from. Probably. What's your funny word for money? Beans. Bones. Rocks. I tried to look up Simoleon because everyone knows that's a cartoon currency, but I couldn't find anything. It kept defaulting and saying, do you mean Somali money? I was like, no, I mean Somalia. I even put cartoons and I couldn't find much of anything except I couldn't find an origin. Like who made that up? Right. Let's say Napoleon. Since it rhymes, maybe Chuck Jones. It's possible to ask our friend Jessica. She might know. Yeah. You saw Charles, Schultz's granddaughter emailed us. No, I didn't see that. Yeah, so now Chuck Jones's granddaughter and Charles Schultz's granddaughter are both stuff you should know fans, which is pretty awesome. I'm waiting for a return email. It's like you've got to give me some inside story here, please. About grandpa. Right? Exactly. Do you want to know the etymology of Simoleon? Do you have it? Yeah. Man. How did my Google skills not pan out? I am proud of you, Chuck. Yeah. For not saying yeah. So simolian is spelled S-I-M-O-L-E-O-N. It's an English word. Alright. That's where I got sidetracked. They think that it is a late 19th century blend of Simone, which is apparently a French word for dollar and Napoleon. Really? Yeah. And why was it exclusive to cartoons? I don't know, but they think it came from New Orleans in the late 19th century. So Simone was either dollar or sixpence coin. It was a British slang. And Napoleon. So I guess that's where Somalian came from. Where did you get that? With the website WordSense EU. All right. I believe that EU, that says it all. They have a clean look to their website, which makes me believe that they know what they're talking about. Yeah, when you look at a website, you can get a lot of information about its accuracy. Just if it looks like a MySpace page from I hope MySpace is around in 1993 because the podcast will write in yeah, there wasn't MySpace then. MySpace came about in 1994 in the word dollar itself account in Czechoslovakia in a town called well, it doesn't matter where it was. He started minting silver coins in 1519. Yakimov. And they were called taller. Grocerian, which was shortened to Tallers and taller, eventually became dollar in the United States. TADA. And we talked in the Salt episode about other words salary came from salt. So I looked again because I think you said that wasn't true. That that's a myth and it's not necessarily true that it's a myth. From what I can tell, it's just unproven. Got you. So in the first century, Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian says good beer, too. That's what the word salt came from, where they used to pay soldiers in antiquity in Salt. But he doesn't back it up and they can't verify it. That's a good story. Yes. The very least is about a 2000 year old story. So let's go with you. It's true. Yes. I had a history teacher in college, my best history teacher ever, that said, never let facts get in the way of a good story. Oh, I've heard that. He was a good guy. I can't remember his name. He might have had him. He was great. One of my first big inspirational teachers in college, that is. I got you. So much so that I don't remember his name. The one guy if you want to learn more about currency, you should listen to any number of our episodes on currency, including this one. Again. Or you can type currency into the search bar. Howtofworks.com it'll bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this rare shout out. We don't do this a lot, but I'm going to do it today because I like the cut of this dude's jib. My name is Jared Bagnall. Exclamation point. I'm writing to see if you could do a tribute to my wife, a Breeze Agnell, in your listener mail. I'm a huge fan of you guys, but my wife is most definitely your number one fan. I can safely say that a few hundred of your listeners can be attributed to her alone. She has dozens of people hooked on YSK and from them a dozen each. She's so excited every Tuesday and Thursday that your podcast comes out. She tells everyone about them. She's the nicest person in the world. Caring, sweet, shy, and deserves some recognition for being so awesome. One year anniversary is coming up. Got married in Jamaica and though it was an amazing experience, she is still bummed that we couldn't go with our family. I would like to see I would like to see if you could dedicate your listener portion to her into our anniversary so everyone can know that she's great. That's pretty nice, Chuck. Thanks, josh, chuck and Jerry did I spell that right? No, you did not. How do you spell it? J-E-R-R-Y let's just get it on the record if we have it before. J-E-R-I. That's right. For the 5% of people who listen to listen to mail. Hey, guys. This would be a great surprise for her while running into your podcast to hear this tribute. So, Jared, number two fan writing on behalf of Brie, number one fan. Happy anniversary. Way to go. Way to make it to the one year mark. Yeah. I wish you many more years of happiness to come. We both do. Yeah. Speaking for Josh, although thanks, man. Do you wish them? Of course I do. Okay. I'm glad for them. Yeah. If you want to take your chances to see if Chuck will give you or your loved one a shout out on the episode the podcast. That's what I meant. Good luck. Exactly. You can try tweeting it to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstepyysheanow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athowstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.com. Stuffyhannow is a 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 show. 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 chart topping series will have you hooked before you're listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
What's the deal with diplomatic immunity? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-diplomatic-immunity | You've heard all about diplomatic immunity, but we'll bet you don't really know how it works. Take some time to get into the nuts and bolts of this ancient and bizarre international custom and just how an embassy can be considered sovereign soil in this e | You've heard all about diplomatic immunity, but we'll bet you don't really know how it works. Take some time to get into the nuts and bolts of this ancient and bizarre international custom and just how an embassy can be considered sovereign soil in this e | Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=274, tm_isdst=0) | 38735714 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's with me. Jerry's here. It's the whole gang. It's stuff you should know. Little theme song. That was good. Thank you. Can you hear, like, trumpets going? Doc severingson playing baseline on that dock. Severingston basis. Sure. People are like, who is Arsenio Halls guy? Doc Severance for people who don't know is Johnny Carson's band leader on The Tonight Show. And I don't remember Arsenio's band at all. Oh, wait, it was a dude. They're always the weirdest flakes with band leaders. Yeah, like Paul Schaffer. He's a little odd. I love the guy, but it's had odd. Didn't this guy wear, like, tails? Like, tuxedo? Remember tuxedo thing with tails? For that matter, who was Chevy Chase's and Magic Johnson's band man. Remember that shit? No. Yeah. Short lived and bad. No. That's why I don't remember them. So, Chuck yes? I wonder, have you ever heard of diplomatic immunity? I have because I've seen Lethal Weapon, too. What is that? That was basically the premise of that whole movie. Diplomatic Community was this South African diplomat who was I think he was doing bad stuff. Oh, yeah. Well, that was the apartheid era. Yeah. And it was all under. He even said at one point, like, I have diplomatic immunity. And that's when spoiler alert. That's when Mel Gibson shot him in the face. Yeah. I don't know about the face, but I think he killed him and said something like, immunity revoked, man. I don't think he said that. Blast his mullet. Yeah, exactly. Wow. And said, I don't like Jewish people. I'm Mel Gibson. What a jerk. Oh, wow. Yeah, I said it. Yeah, you did. I'm calling him out as an antisemite right here. She put, like, an echo effect on it. Yeah, sorry about that. I have heard of diplomatic immunity. Okay. I've seen Lethal Weapon Two, I think, and I don't remember any of that. Yeah, I think it was part two, maybe I've just seen the one. Which one is Joe Pesci? I don't remember you're thinking loaded weapon. That was good. Actually, as far as spoofs go, that one was pretty good. Yeah, it was like hotshots level good. Anyway, Chuck, a lot of people on Twitter wanted to know what diplomatic community was or how it worked. How did that come up? I just asked. I was trying to think of stuff to write about, so I was like, well, people Twitter, and a couple of people said Diplomatic community. So I was like, oh, it's a good idea. That's a great idea. Did a little research and wrote a post. And, like, here we are, like, Diplomatic community. We're about to explain it. It's like one of those things that everybody knows about. Yeah. But doesn't really know the nuts and bolts of it. I thought it was very interesting. It's pretty easy to understand too. Especially if you take out my terrible sentences. They're not terrible. The structure. You just like to write, man. You like words. Yeah. You like to get those fingers a little too much cooking. Like, short sentence. What is that? I'll take three of those things and put them together. I like it, though. Why aren't you a novelist? I don't know. Work on that. Okay. So we're talking diplomatic community. It ain't anything new. No. It's at least 4000 years old. At least. And we know this because remember Hamu rabbi? Yeah. He was the first guy to come up with a set of laws. The Code of Hamu. Rabbi. The OG. And it was like, remember this thing? I don't remember what we talked about it in but it was like if you see someone burning, their house burning and you go to help them get their stuff out of their house. But you steal something, you're put to death. Yeah. There's a lot of smiting. If you covet your neighbor's goat, you're put to death. And he came up with the eye for an eye. And it was the first set of laws. Hammurabi also has the distinction of being the first person who is documented to have broken the spirit of diplomatic immunity. Yeah. He may be responsible for the phrase kill the messenger. Yeah. I don't think he killed anybody. He didn't. None. The smite the messenger. Don't protect the messenger if you don't like his news. Exactly. That's kind of what it came down to. But basically, someone sent an envoy and I don't know what the message was or who sent the envoy. There was probably, like, only two or three other civilizations at the time. So it had to be one of them. Right. But he didn't like what they had to say, so he said, you know what? I'm not providing you protection back to your homeland. Good luck. He was essentially a diplomat being set loose without protection. Right. Which is in violation of the diplomatic community of one part of it. That's right. Thomas Jefferson didn't like the idea so much. He thought, well, this doesn't make any sense. You're basically just giving permission for spies to get in there and do what the heck they want. Yeah. And that was also the sentiment of the French Revolution. The people who ran the French Revolution and the post Revolution government. Which is kind of funny because Thomas Jefferson was the ambassador to France during that time. And he was saying, Diplomatic community doesn't make any sense. Even though I enjoy it. Yeah, exactly. And you point out that it's really kind of the same over the years and, in fact, almost wrongly, has not changed much over the years. Exactly. As we'll learn. Yeah. It was one of those things that was perfected pretty early on, around the time of Hammurabi. And then it was added to in the Renaissance and yes, it hasn't changed. And now it's got to the point where yeah, it probably should change. Yeah. They should maybe look into the nuts and bolts of it a little bit. So the first concept, the one that Hammurabi violated, is this concept, this principle of personal. Oh, man, I knew I was going to have a problem with this one invalibility yeah, it's a mouthful. You can't violate the person of a diplomat as part of diplomatic community. That's right. And you make a very good point in here that it's a great concept, but it is only a strong concept if people observe it, because if they don't, then there it goes, right out the window. Right. It's almost like an honor code. It is. It's saying, like, this diplomat is untouchable, but also your diplomat is untouchable. When they come to my country, yes. Don't kill mine, I won't kill yours. Right. And it works the other way, too. If I kill yours, you're going to kill mine. So it's this kind of truce between nations that have diplomatic missions within one another that you don't touch our people, we don't touch your people. The diplomat is sacrosanct. Yeah, but a tenuous one back in the day, it sounds like it could go south and turn into, you killed mine, I'll kill yours. It could. Genghis Khan actually was an incredibly progressive ruler. You mean Ginghis Genghis? That's right. Genghis. Is it Genghis? Yes. Okay. I mean, at least at Firm bank. Oh, is that where we learn that? Yeah. Okay. Genghis Khan, he was very much an observer of diplomatic immunity, and he sent an envoy to the Emir of Korrasimon, I believe it was in modern day Iran. It was in modern day Iran and parts of Afghanistan. He sent this envoy saying, like, hey, I'm the ruler of the land where the sun rises. You're the ruler of the land where the sun sets. Let's establish a friendly peace treaty and trade relations. Yeah. And he took it really seriously. Like, if you messed around with that with him, it was bad news for you. Right. Well, the Amir did mess around with it. He had the envoy, the 500 Muslim strong envoy from the Mongols killed and had two Mongol representatives shaved and sent back to Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan. And Genghis Khan said, say goodbye to your empire. I'm going to utterly destroy it. And they did specifically because the diplomatic community of his people was violated by the ruler. So before we move on, I think it's a good time for a message break. Where were we? So there were lots of envoys, some respect and some violation early on. Right. But even when it was violated, some rulers have said, no, still not going to do anything about it. Like Darius, I said, Move you to 300. 300? Yeah. Not the 300, but sure. It's not the 300. No, it's just 300, but yeah, I saw it. It's like Ed Briekel in New Bohemians. Look at her now. All right, so why is it d? 300. 300? Yeah, it's just 300. Well, anyway, that actually happened at the beginning where he kicked the envoy into the pit. I don't know if he actually kicked him into a pit, but the Spartans did kill two envoys from Darius I. He had some Spartan nobles with him when he learned the news, and he refused to harm them because he said, quote, it would wreak havoc of all human law. Yeah. Basically, it would send us down this path of retribution back and forth, and it might not even be a law anymore. Right. And we need this law. You don't touch diplomats. Don't touch them. And again, this thing has been so ingrained Chuck, for so long that there was a power vacuum that was left after Rome fell, and there were a couple of hundred years before Charlemagne was pronounced the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. And during this time in between this power vacuum, it was so well established that you didn't mess with a diplomat that to kill a diplomat would have been like a greater crime than killing a king. In many cases, yeah. It should be obvious why you need to protect diplomats, but I guess we should just state diplomats. It's rooted in the word diplomacy. They are there to be brokers of peace between nations or at the very least, brokers of messages of peace and trying to avoid war. They're not like negotiating peace. Well, they are in some cases. Well, that's true. Yeah, but I almost said they're neutral. They're not neutral, but there is a certain neutrality to being a messenger, I think. Yeah. Some of them. It isn't just messages as part of it, but it is brokering peace, attempting to bring peace or maintain peace between two countries. And so this is kind of a special talent. It's a special job. And as such, it must be afforded special protection. Yeah. Because if they weren't protected, they would be killed. And if they were killed, no one would want to do it. If no one would want to do it, then there would be more war. Right. Plus, speaking of war, since a diplomat is often the last person in the country trying to broker peace between that country and the diplomats country, if the peace negotiations fall through, diplomat has to be able to get out of that country. Yeah. Hopefully with the assistance of the host country. Yeah. And that still happens today, as you point out. You go to New York City and you might, on any given day, see the New York Police Department escorting diplomat cars back and forth between the UN. And the W Hotel, right? Wherever they like to stay. So it's still very much the same, like, not only protection, but safe passage. In World War II, apparently, the Nazis gave safe passage to the diplomats. The Allied diplomats in the country. Oh, really? When war was declared. Yeah. All right. Which is kind of surprising. Sure. And then Benghazi was a big deal in part because the Libyan government was expected to protect the people who populate the embassies in that country. Yeah. And Christopher Stevens was killed. US. Ambassador. Is an ambassador the same thing as a diplomat? It's a type of diplomat. Okay. But a diplomat isn't necessarily an ambassador. That's right. Because we'll find out there are lots of people who have diplomatic status. Yeah. You can be an attache, an MSIR, there's all sorts of things. Tuna company, typically. Yeah. In the US. The diplomat or the head diplomat is the ambassador. And it also applies to the family and the domestic workers. Yes. People that work for you. If you have a driver, if you have a maid, your car, housekeeper, your car. It's all protected under diplomatic community. And you know what, my friend John, I wonder if you ever wrote this. My friend John in La wrote a book about Call embassy kids that I don't think he ever got published. It sounded really good to me. And it was about diplomat kids in New York City in the 80s just raising hell. I'll bet they raise hell. Yeah. I need to call him and ask him about that because I always thought it was a great idea for book. Call him right now. We have time. That's right. So you just brought up the second principle. There are two principles that modern diplomacy and diplomatic community is based on personal inviolability and extraterritoriality. Yeah. That one's kind of neat. And that's what we just touched on. It is the house you live in, the car you drive, everywhere you are. Basically it might as well be your homeland. Yeah. It's considered to be situated on your home soil. So therefore the cops have about as much right to raiding those places or entering those places unbidden as they would your house in your native country. And that's the type of legal fiction, like, I'm in my car, I'm going to smoke some weed and blow it in your face, cop, and you can't do anything about it. Okay. So here's part of a misconception. Technically, the cop can very much do something about it. They can arrest you, they can take you to jail. They can hold you until you have a hearing. And then once you have a hearing, then you're going to come face to face with the brick wall diplomatic community because the court is going to say, we have zero jurisdiction over this person, and you have to let them go and drop all charges. So basically they can disrupt your life, which they probably would if you blew pot smoke in their face. Yeah. But they might not if it was something else, because they're like, It's not worth the trouble. Right. So I have a little scene here that displays all this. Right. Let's do it. Okay. We're in England. Oh, very nice. And there's a Russian diplomat who is leaving the country to go back to Russia. Yeah. He's drunk on vodka. He's drunk on something because he's racked up quite a bit of debt at this particular pub. Well, the pub owner finds out that he's about to leave and stiff him, and he grabs the guy, has him, grabs and is holding him, jailing him at his pub. At the time, this is perfectly legal. Like, there were debtors prisons. Like, if you're a debtor, you had not that many rights. Right. Yeah. He wanted his rubles. Yeah. From the Russian. Yeah. So Peter the Great finds out about this and contacts Elizabeth I and says, hey, just rang her up. Yes. Liz. Well, you can imagine, like, how long this correspondence took and this guy was being held in the pub. So Peter the Great asked for his envoys release and Elizabeth I said, yes, of course we'll release them. And not only that, you two who are legally holding this man in your pub, you're going to jail. They're like, what do we do? And she's like, Just shut up. And then England passed an act, I think, the following year that said foreign embassies are untouchable and outside the jurisdiction of the law, including debt. Yeah. So they codified personal and violability and extraterritoriality in this act, and it does it reveals something else about diplomatic community corruption. Yes, but what's the deal with debt is, that can't still be true. Right. Like, you can't come over here and rack up a bunch of debt and then just leave. It can you know, as far as I could tell, you can. The problem is, it's very hard to do because if somebody finds out you have diplomatic immunity, they're not going to extend your line of credit because you can legally walk out. Yeah. Well, I guess it depends on who you are and how corrupt of a person you are. But if you're interested in remaining a diplomat, you're going to keep your nose clean and not do stuff like this. Sure. Now, I don't think there's too much trouble for a diplomat to get credit, but the line of credit is coming from their home country. Like, they have their credit card or whatever from their home country. So they don't need to establish a line of credit at the local tailor. They can just get spending with their own rubles. Sure. But that does illustrate a big problem. Like, corruption still remains. It might not be in racking up debt and leaving, which it could still, but there's corruption all over the place, because when you send a diplomat to a foreign country, you're saying you can't be prosecuted. Yeah. Have fun. Yeah. And that's a very tanninizing situation. Like you said, I think if you're a career diplomat, you're going to keep your nose clean. Yeah. But I bet you prostitution happens. I bet you illegal drugs happen more than you would think. Apparently, drinking and driving is an enormous thing. Drinking and driving. And we'll get to the traffic tickets, but that's obviously a big one, because you can just park wherever the heck you want. It doesn't matter. Yeah. So technically, you're still under when you're in a foreign country with diplomatic immunity, you're subject to the laws of your homeland then. Sure. And the courts and all that jurisdiction. And that has happened here and there. Sure. Over the years. Like, people have been recalled and prosecuted for crimes they committed in another country with diplomatic immunity. They've been tried and prosecuted for it back in their home country, or violating that law, as we'll see with some of these instances. Sometimes it's a hand slap and removal of your credentials as a diplomat. Like, you can't do this anymore. You're fired, essentially, but we're not going to prosecute you. But depending on the crime, depending on the person, too, the sending government, the government that the diplomat's home country is ruled by might very well just look the other way. Sure. Traffic tickets. Like you said, it depends on what it is. Let's talk traffic tickets. In 2011, july of 2011, the city of New York, which is where the UN is situated, so there's tons of diplomats running around. It was owed $16.7 million in unpaid traffic tickets from people with diplomatic immunity in that month. Now, not just that month, but in that month. If you took a snapshot of how much money was owed, the total that was owed yeah. We found a great cracked article. The six most ridiculous abuses of diplomatic community. And they did cover the parking tickets. And between 1997 and 2002, foreign diplomats got more than 150,000 parking tickets. Not finds 150,000 tickets. And they broke it down. That is 70 parking tickets a day. And they're, like you would almost literally have to try hard to do illegal things in your car to rack up that many parking tickets. Right. And that is what accrued eventually to, like, close to $17 million. They said the biggest offender was Russia with 32,000 unpaid parking tickets. That's awesome. Yeah. That's really just, like, thumbing your nose. And if you ever been in driving in New York, and if you see a diplomat double parked I don't know how to finish that sentence. I was going to recommend something, but I don't know what to do. Yell and scream. Yeah. I mean, anything. If you slash the tires on their car, that's your car. You're in trouble. You don't have diplomatic immunity. Just pick up that condom off the sidewalk and throw it at them. What is it? Coney island whitefish. Yeah. Don't pick those up. Actually, that's good advice, Chuck. Sure. So you are required to follow the laws of your host country as per the UN convention on Diplomatic Immunity from 1961. Yeah. They don't just say, go do anything. You want. They say you can't be prosecuted. Yes. You're supposed to be a good boy. And there are cases, like you said, there's people who have been prosecuted. For the most part, though, it's looked the other way, especially on things like speeding, traffic tickets, parking tickets, driving drunk, and because this extends to the person's home and of their workers, their employees. Some people have been accused lately, especially of human trafficking, because your house is considered sovereign soil. It's outside of American labor laws. So you can write a contract with somebody in your home country and say, come work for us. We'll work you 40 hours a week, and you get Sundays off, and you only have to prepare three meals a day. And it's going to be easy. We'll pay you X amount of dollars. And when they get to your house, you can literally tear the contract up in front of them, lock the doors and keep them from leaving and work them like a dog. The thing is, this violates not just American law, but international law. That's human trafficking. But it still goes on. It's apparently unnervingly frequent how often this happens. Maybe not lock the door and work you for no money for 150 hours a week, but to some degree, anytime there's somebody who feels like they're not free to come and go as they please, they're not being paid what they were told they were going to be paid. That's a violation. And so, yeah, they're starting to call it what it is, which is human trafficking, which I predict will mean that it drops off dramatically. Yeah. It's kidnapping. Yeah. It's false imprisonment, forced labor. So let's say these are well, that's not minor offense, but speeding and things like that are minor offenses. They're willing to look the other way. If they do something really bad, then sometimes you can't look the other way and you actually have to address it. If you're the country that sent the envoy who's in trouble, well, you got to address it between the two countries. Right. Like, we got a situation here. This dude did something really bad, and we really need to settle this. We can't turn the other cheek. This isn't going away. It's not going away. And that means you can recall a person, declare them persona non grata, and say, I want them out of here. Yes. If you're the host country, you're the one who declares them persona non grata. Exactly. I want them to be expelled, basically, to go back to where you came from. Persona nongrada apparently, literally means unwelcome person. That's right. And if you're declared persona nongrada, especially if you're a career diplomat, that's a big deal, because you have X amount of hours or days to leave that country, or else that country is saying, you don't have diplomatic immunity anymore, and we're going to prosecute you. Yeah. The best thing your government can do in that situation is recall you hopefully before you're officially declared persona on. Grada right. If you are declared persona ongarada, they basically have to recall you. And if they don't recall you, that means your government has just left you twisting in the wind because you're going to have to leave on your own accord, pay for your own ticket, and your government is not backing you up any longer. They're not recalling you. They're just saying, yeah, go ahead and prosecute this person. Yeah. But the recall thing can open up a big can of worms. Like in 2011, this contractor, defense contractor named Raymond Davis killed a couple of would be assassins. You remember that? Yeah. In Pakistan. And basically he was not a diplomat, but he was under there, under diplomatic community. He was like a CIA contractor. Yeah. So basically, they had to broker a deal between the United States and Pakistan in which Pakistan said, you know what, we have a list of 331 Americans now that we think are shady in some way, so we want all of them recalled. And the US. Was sort of like their hands were kind of tied, probably. Yeah. Because this Davis guy had killed two people. So did all those people get recalled in the end? All 331? Yes. And as far as I know, the deal was that they weren't declared persona nongrada, which means that they could come back right. And try again, I guess, or whatever. That's the can of worms. Like, you could potentially it could be a good thing for a country like Pakistan and be like, oh, this is our chance to get all these people recalled. Exactly. And that's what they did. Yeah. They use diplomatic immunity, they are the tenets of it, to basically rid the country of spies or contractors, whatever they were doing. I guess Pakistan just thought they were shady folks. Right. So you're not supposed to take declaring somebody persona nongrada lightly. Sure. Some countries do. Some countries are just like, oh, you're criticizing me publicly. You're persona nongrada. Get out of here. And that's how they deal with dissent among foreign ambassadors, is just by declaring a persona nongrade. And under international law, the host country doesn't have to give any reason why they declared a persona. Oh, really? Yeah. That's just you're gone and never coming back. Exactly. Revoked. Yes. You also make a good point. We talked earlier about how it might should be changing these days. Yeah. It was created at a time where things were a lot different back then. Kings like you couldn't even prosecute the ruling class back then. Yeah. You couldn't even raise a dissent. Yeah. You had to overthrow them. That's how you handle that. But then that change. Yet diplomatic immunity stayed firmly entrenched. Right. You can sue a government. You can sue the government's leaders. Typically, the average person has recourse. As difficult as it may be. Right. The people who are running the show aren't totally untouchable like they were when personal and viability was established. Right. It doesn't take weeks to get back to your homeland and along bandit ridden caravan lines sure. That you need the safe passage. Yeah. So there's all of these what are now kind of quaint rules that are associated with diplomacy and diplomatic community. And then, what's more, there's a lot more people who have diplomatic immunity than used to, especially following World War One and Two. Yeah. And I didn't realize this. International organizations that don't have borders, they generally all operate with diplomatic community. And even you pointed out the Inter American Tropical Tuna Commission operates in their family, and everyone they work with operates with diplomatic community. Yeah. So it's not just diplomats. Like, not even close. Right. There was a run on diplomatic community after the first two world wars, and yeah. It's all over the place, so a lot of people have it, and the immunity is way more sweeping and broad than is necessary. Yeah. So there's this third principle that's part of the UN convention from 1961 that a lot of people, especially career diplomats, are calling for to be exercised. It's called functional necessity. Yeah. And it's in there, but it's just not no one pays much attention to it. It's like the wet blanket principle of diplomatic community. Yeah. It basically says, whatever you need to do to function in your job is what's protected. Yes. So if you want to go out and get hookers and have a card game, it's not an official function. It's not an official function, and you should not be protected for that. And that's in there, but it just sounds like no one pays attention to it. Right. Well, one of the reasons, one of the very good reasons why people don't pay attention to it is because it's kind of subjective. It's like, okay, so you should have to pay your parking ticket or else you get in trouble, or something like that. But what if the diplomat has a really important message that has to be delivered right then in person, they don't have time to get parking? Sure. Wouldn't that be considered like, an official function, like double parking right then? Or that prostitute was really attractive? I mean, there's definitely a line, obviously. Yeah. But no one's very much interested in exploring or not enough people are interested in exploring it. And it's not like you can go to the UN and say, you guys need to carry out functional necessity, and that's it. Because the UN. As recently as 2010, invoked diplomatic immunity against for itself. After the Haitian earthquake, a bunch of Nepalese soldiers were sent down there to help rebuild the country or stabilize it, and they weren't screened for cholera, and there was a cholera outbreak, and 8000 Haitians died as a result. And the UN said diplomatic immunity. Yeah. So they're not interested in digging in too much. Right. Because they use it themselves. Yes. So. The other reason why it's probably not going to change very much is because this same structure that allows a little diplomat's bratty kid driving his Ferrari, like, 150 down a residential street keeps him from going to jail is also the same system that keeps this global spycraft agreement that everybody has alive. Very interesting. Nobody's going to give that up. So that's diplomatic community, man you said you have this Cracked article with some egregious. Yeah, these are true stories. Six Most Ridiculous abuses. One of them was pretty good. A Mexican attache. Apparently, when you go into meetings and I love this, when you go into meetings at the White House, everyone has to leave their cell phone outside to be cared for. Like you don't care to be watered? Yeah, well, no, they're water blankets. But you can't carry your cell phones in a meeting, which I think is awesome. Sure. In 2018, Mexican press attache Rafael Contero Curio took all those phones, like, just nicked a bunch of blackberries. They literally got on a plane and stopped him after they saw security camera footage of him doing it. And he was like, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do this on the plane. And they showed him the footage, and he went like, oh, I did do that. He said, Actually, it was an accident. I just found all those bag of phones, and I thought they were lost, and I was going to give them to the driver of the car, and I just forgot, and that's why I have all of them. And then he waved his diplomatic community pass, and they had to let them go. They got the phones back. So that flies in the face of something I learned. I don't think a diplomat, an individual, can waive their own immunity. It's up to the host nation to waive diplomatic immunity for a person. Well, they eventually did. Okay. Yeah. No, not waived. He waved. Invoked. Invoked. I got it. He waved in their face, like a waived without the eye. Yeah. So they had to let them go. They got the phones back. When he got back home, he was fired, of course, and didn't get much punishment or whatever. I don't you steal a bunch of phones. It's so dumb. I guess blackberries are worth a lot. It's funny. You can't take your phone into meetings in the White House. I wonder how many times they've tried to figure out who was in the star of that hockey movie Youngblood. But no one could figure it out because no one had a phone. Roblow yeah. And then they have number one on the list, a murder. In 1979, a Burmese ambassador to Sri Lanka found out his wife was having an affair, killed her, build a funeral pyre in his front yard, which, again, is legally Burmese soil, and burned her body in full view of the press and the police. And they were unable to do anything. And he remained ambassador. Wow. Burned, shot and killed his wife. Burned her alive in front of the cops. Well, if that's following the law or custom in his home country, then that's a pretty perfect example of diplomatic immunity. Totally, man, that's crazy. And then just this week in the news, this last thing in mid July, joshua Wald, he's an officer at the American Embassy in Nairobi. He was driving too fast in his SUV, hit a little mini bus and killed a man and injured eight people. And then immediately after that he was questioned by the cops. He left a statement, invoked diplomatic immunity, got his family and got the heck out of there the next day. And there are a lot of angry people saying, hold on, this guy needs to answer for this somehow. You can't just evacuate them and protect him. Although they definitely can. So there are people on Facebook, of course, and social media trying to get some attention for this and we'll see what happens. I don't know how that one is going to play out. When was that? July. Wow. Yeah. He's like, see you later. Yes, Jerry. The memories of America. Smell you later. Jerry does say that, doesn't he? Yes. Does that bug you? He likes it. Lucky than like it's so juvenile. So I got nothing else. Diplomatic community is done. We did it. If you want to learn more about it, you're going to have to go onto our website because How Stuff Works doesn't have an article. Friends, we have the article on it. That's right. Just go to stuffyshow.com and type diplomatic Community in the search bar. We have one of those too. And as I said, we have one of those two. It's time for let's remain. Yeah. I'm going to call this ejection seat stuff. Hey guys. Been listening for a while, a couple of years now. It's become my favorite mental escape while I perform Menial task of life. Just listened to the ejection seat podcast and was inspired to write. I've been a fan of aviation since I was a kid and I've learned a lot in the past fortyish years listening to the Ramblings about ejection seats. Thanks for that. Reminded me of a story I heard a few years ago. It's about a US Navy navigator, Lieutenant Keith Gallagher, who survived. Did you hear about that? I did from this guy. Okay. He survived a misfire of his ejection seat. Basically he was the second guy in a two man crew flying in an A Six intruder. One day while flying a routine mission, his seat misfired blasted him through the canopy, then stopped. He was still attached to the seat lower body in the cockpit, but his upper body was hanging out a jagged hole with like one arm sticking up. I think it was a picture of it. The pilot incredibly remained common in control and managed to land the aircraft back on the carrier with Gallagher still flailing around in the slipstream. If you check out this link, there are first hand accounts from the crew photos and even a video of the landing. And that is at www. Dot gallagher combjection and pretty amazing stuff. Had I been in that situation, my first response would have been to soil myself and start crying. Not necessarily in that order. Keep up the awesomeness. That is from Matt and Bristol VA. Thanks. Matt. Did you check out this photo? Yeah, dude was hanging out the link, went to this long post on it. Pretty detailed stuff. That's neat. But the guy is alive and well. It's for him. Massive limb flail. Yeah. Suffered massive limp. Yeah. If you've read something that has something to do with something we said, something, we want to know about it. We love stuff like that. That's how we found out. Do you remember Simo Haya? The White death from Finland? Sure. We had no idea about him, but we did an episode on the Japanese Stragglers. Somebody wrote in and said you thought this guy was bad. I can't remember his name. Lieutenant something. Was it Audi Murphy? No. He was on the list, though, I think. Yeah, we had like, a contest to find the baddest dude of World War II and we put up the Japanese Straggler who fought the war for another 30 years up there. Somebody put up Audi Murphy, and then somebody else put up Seam Ohio, who we may never have come across. Have we not heard from a listener like Matt, who told us about this guy suffering massive lume flow from an injection seat malfunction? My point is, we like hearing about stuff that we don't know about. Sure. And if we didn't mention in the podcast, the chances are we didn't hear about it. And we do want to know about it. So let us know. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebookcom stuffychannel. You can send us an email with this info to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And you should check out our website, because we got stuff you don't know that we want you to know about. Right. That made sense. Our website is called Stuffyouhaneocom. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. 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 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." | ||
SYSK Selects: How Revisionist History Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-revisionist-history-works | In this week's SYSK Select episode, perhaps you equate the term to conspiracy theories and Holocaust denials, but revisionism is a genuine discipline in the field of historical study. And thanks to revisionists, we now include a lot more reality - and pre | In this week's SYSK Select episode, perhaps you equate the term to conspiracy theories and Holocaust denials, but revisionism is a genuine discipline in the field of historical study. And thanks to revisionists, we now include a lot more reality - and pre | Sat, 29 Apr 2017 13:48:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=13, tm_min=48, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=119, tm_isdst=0) | 41999141 | audio/mpeg | "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, time, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital one NA member FDIC this July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School, 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, and welcome to this weekend's edition of SYSK Selects. This is Chuck here. I picked out revisionist history, basically because it was just a pretty darn good episode for my recollection. But of course, I didn't go back and listen to it because why would I do that to myself? But I'd love for you too. 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 with his Nazi soda. What your orange fantasy? That's not exactly true. No. Okay, well, let's talk about this because this is a pretty good podcast episode to discuss this, if you ask me. Oh, yeah. Revisionist history, I guess. Yeah, we're talking revisionist history. And for the time being, we're talking about the origin of Orange Fanta, because there is a rumor out there that Orange Fanta is a Nazi soda, that it was created by the Nazis. Yeah, that isn't quite true. Like there are Nazi products like Hugo Boss, Volkswagen, Siemens, IBM. Mercedes, I think is one, too. No, Mercedes wasn't well. Volkswagen definitely. The Beetle was created to look like the SS helmet, from what I understand. Yeah, but Fanta Orange was created by a Coke employee in Nazi Germany. Coca Cola Germany, which was supposedly well, that was the name of the company I got you. And it was supposedly cut off from its parent company during the war. Yeah, so they didn't have the supplies they needed to make Coke. So this guy was kind of mixed together a potion and created Phanta Orange. He went out back and dug up a bunch of roots and squeezed a red headed kid, but apparently he wasn't a member of the Nazi party. And it wasn't created for Nazis, but it was enjoyed by Nazis. Okay, so that's where I think you can reasonably call it a Nazi drink. It was born out of the Nazi regime in Germany as a result of directly because coca Cola drives because of the embargo on the Nazi regime. Yeah. Hitler loves Coke, too, by the way. Did he? Yeah. But I wouldn't put it in the category of Nazi products like Volkswagen and Hugo Boss. Coca Cola, the way it has it spelled out. And I mean, it depends. This story is about as good as Coca Cola can come off looking while still admitting that Fanta is a Coke product that was created in Nazi Germany. But basically their spiel is that Coke was cut off. Their spiegel was that Coke was cut off. Germany was cut off from the parent company because Coke wasn't doing business right. And then as a result of the war ending, coke was like, wow, this did really well come back into the fold and we'll just keep selling fantasy. And way to go for keeping the company alive in the face of these Nazi war pigs that's apparently like the company line. I don't know, it could be revisionist history. There are some American companies that definitely did business illegally in Germany. Most prominent among them is IBM, who literally created not only the machines, but also the programs to tally the people in concentration camps. That is not revisionist history. No, that's absolutely true. Yeah. But I didn't even know when I brought this drink in here that it would be such a great setup for the show. Yeah. I just enjoy fan of orange. It turned out pretty well. Yeah. So, Chuck, there's this really great article that Conger wrote called How Revisionist History Works. I sent her an email today, told her how good it was. I mean, it is good. And she ignored me. It's a top notch article. And she starts out with a pretty great intro that I don't feel can be much improved on because it demonstrates this whole thing pretty well. Yeah. Conger talks about George Washington, how as a little boy, he was maybe a little aggressive, and he got a hold of an axe and his father's axe, I believe, and he gave a cherry tree 40 wax. Then when he saw what he had done, he gave it another 41 and ended up chopping down the cherry tree. I may have mixed legends here. Lizzie born when his father came out and saw that he had just chopped down a cherry tree, a perfectly good money producing cherry tree, because this things were like gold back then. Yeah. He said, Georgie, what did you do? Did you cut this down in George Washington? Looked at the axe, looked at the tree, looked at his father, looked at his feet, thought about maybe a sandwich later. So I'm going to be president when they shut up. Yeah. And he said, I should probably be like every other president and not tell a lie. Right. Instead tell the truth because that's what our presidents do. And he said, Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did chop down this cherry tree. What are you going to do about it? I never understood the point of that story. Was it that he was honest? Yes. Okay. Honest forthright, upstanding, was willing to accept the heat for what he'd done. He was accountable. There's a lot of stuff wrapped up in just that one little fable. Good. With an axe. Exactly. Handy. His dad had cherry trees, so he came from a wealthy background. Wrong. But the problem is all of it's made up. And we've talked about this before. I don't remember what I think it was. Maybe how much money is there in the world? We talked about how Washington's biographer made up a bunch of stuff. Yeah. Remember in throwing a silver dollar all the way across the Potomac? And when I see the problem is there weren't silver dollars back when Washington was younger and I've seen the Potomac. That's impossible. Yeah, right. Exactly. But the point is Mason Lock Weems, who was Washington's early biographer, just made up a bunch of stuff and what is kind of a black eye or egg on the face of historians for a century or so that followed, they just kind of bought these things hook, line and sinker. Sure. And actually the cherry tree story was in our textbooks. This total fable, completely made up fable, was told to school children as the truth. I bet it still is in some classrooms, maybe in the Ozarks, but typically outside it has been revised. Right. Because they found out, I think, in 2008 that there were no cherry trees on Washington's family childhood home. Right, exactly. But there was not even evidence of cut down cherry trees. So they had to go back and say, hey, we need to take this out of the textbooks. They did. And nobody really was bothered by it. Yeah. It's pretty minor. It is. It's not like saying Christopher Columbus discovered America and proved the world wasn't round and didn't commit mass genocide, torture and rape people. Right. Yeah. That he and his men didn't sharpen their knives on the skulls of live Indians they encounter. Yeah. It's amazing to me that we still have Columbus day. What? Do you know the deal now? No one mentioned it. Well, I think people are starting to pull their heads from their butts. Yeah. I feel like this year marked the true beginning of the end for Columbus Day. I do not think it's going to be around much longer. It shouldn't be. It's just too that man is too complicated and he did too many horrific things. Even culturally relativistically. He did horrible things. And I feel like he's not going to be honored too far from now. Yeah. My friend Jerry and Portland is a schoolteacher and there was a thing going on Facebook about Columbus and I shared it, of course, and Jerry said the past three years I've been able to teach this version. So there's at least like 180 kids in Portland that are now scarred for life with the truth. And I was like, man, that's great. How sad is that? You even have to say this version instead of real history. Right, right. Well, I mean, that's part of the problem, is history, as they figured out in maybe the late 19th, early 20th century, it's objective or subjective. It's not objective. Yes. And people thought that it was and that it just kind of history happened. You talked about it, and that was that it was just history. Yeah. It wasn't continuous. And when something happened, it happened. And then once it was written down, that's how it was. Right. It's a subjective, ever evolving thing. And we figured it out, and we'll talk about when we figured it out. But first, what we're talking about overall, this idea that history is meant to be modified as new facts come to light, as attitudes change. It is called revisionism, and it's not necessarily a dirty word. Yeah, we'll get into that. It definitely has a negative connotation when you say, well, that's revisionist history. Exactly. And that's one lens to look at revisionist history through. Yeah. Let's talk about the three major parts of revisionist history. Well, this is the three ways you can look at revisionist history. Yeah. One is a theoretical perspective, basically, let's say looking at it through the lens of African Americans instead of old white men or women or any other minority. That's one example that's like, you know when people say, get on the right side of history? Yeah. That's basically somebody being aware that there is a cultural, social lens of revisionism, that what's going on is going to change, the attitude towards something is going to change, and you're going to look like a pretty horrible person when there's a picture of you 50 years from now holding a sign that's Columbus. Right. Exactly. One of the others is fact checking. That's basically just to get it right. Lens yeah. Like new facts come to life and you change the history book. And finally, the negative perspective that sees revisionism as an effort to falsify or skew things for usually political motives. Right. Let's talk about one of those. Congo gives another good example of, like, all three of these wrapped up in one guy. One, Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. So factually, Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. He wrote the Constitution. Yes. Wrote the Declaration of Independence, like from word A to Z. Yes, you're right. Might have had some help. I don't know. I think other people yeah, exactly. But I mean, yes, he was a founding father. There's a lot of stuff that we know for a fact Jefferson did. Right, sure. But there's also other stuff in particular that he had a slave with who was also his mistress, and her name was Sally Hemmings. That's right. And he had children with her. And for many, many years, this was viewed by negative revisionists it's just a dirty rumor. Yes. Which is incredibly insulting. It is. To say, because they were in love. Well, yeah. McNaulty it wasn't like, oh, he just had his way with his slaves. Like he was in love with Sally Hemmings. Okay. And it's very insulting to say that that's a blight on America that our president would stoop so low is to be in love with the black woman. Right, exactly. So the people who looked at this through the negative view of revisionism jerks that it was meant to solely were on the wrong side of history. Agreed. So in the late 1990s, I think maybe 1997, I don't remember, incontrovertible DNA evidence showed that Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson had children together. They did it. More than one. Yes. Which does imply that they did it. They did it a bunch. Yeah. Because the first time I mean, come on. So with that, we have these three different lenses coming into play. You have the social theoretical lens. Sure. Which is okay, well, now we can go back and look at history and say, maybe Jefferson wasn't the only one to have a slave mistress. Right. Maybe there was a lot of this stuff going on, and maybe black folks and white folks were commingling more than we thought. Right, exactly. Maybe at some point along the way, we, meaning like, the mid 20th century people of America, put our own racist hang ups on the people before, during this era, and we changed history unwittingly. It changed it back with this fact that came to life. Yes. Then there was the fact version, which is like, maybe this is something we should put in textbooks. Right. Or more to the point now, we can't not put this in textbooks. Yes. Or the very least, biographies. Sure. But textbooks, too. Come on. Right. And then there's a third one, the negative revisionism, which kind of was dispelled when this incontrovertible DNA evidence came to light. Yeah. Because up to that point, you could be like, no. And then once the DNA came out, it was like yes. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill, and it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less, knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill copays or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's Aflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Aflac's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let afflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover, visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.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 feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. So historians, they have kind of comparison to journalists, which is, I think, pretty spot on. There's a responsibility there to get it right and to not use your own skewed perspective. Like, take the Civil War still today, if you go out in the sticks of Georgia and ask someone about the Civil War, they're probably going to have some opinion. Yes. That may not be quite right. I don't know if people at north even care about that stuff anymore. I think the south has all the hangups. Sure. Because we lost. They were the ones yeah, the losers and the ones who wanted to secede up north. It's just like what happened. But it's amazing that this many years later, there is still that skewed political perspective because of your personal beliefs and history. Maybe family history. Right. So let's talk about modern revisionism, which pretty much started after World War I, when the onus was put on historians to suss it out and say, like, all right, World War One happened, so that happened. We now have an obligation to record this and teach the world about it. But there were a lot of different opinions about it. Right, which makes it tough. And the term revisionist history was actually coined a couple of decades before World War One by Marxists who were grappling with whether or not the revolution was inevitable and how to put that down in the history books. And revisionism was coined around this time by those people, but it really didn't come into play worldwide until after World War I. At this time, scholars started to realize that this is when people figured out history is objective, like seriously, up to this point, subjective you mean? Yes. Thank you. I don't know why I can't get those straight today, but up to this point, historians, mainstream historians overall, typically believe that history was objective. Yeah. And now something like World War One happened with all the world involved. Everyone had a stake in it, because what is history besides looking good? Sure. No one wants to look bad in the history books or making someone look bad on purpose. Right. And historians started to realize, like, it's kind of up to us what goes in the history books. And this is such a complicated, complex event that maybe history is an objective. Yeah. In 1931, the speech was given at the American Historical Association by President Carl Becca, and he was kind of the first guy to really come out in public and say, you know what? It's a living, evolving thing. It is very much subjective. And it's subjective because it's humans memory basically telling the story definitely fallible. Yeah. Or their perspective as individuals. And like I said, politics is usually one of the big reasons how it gets skewed. But not just politics. Nationalism. Everybody wants their country to be the winner or look like the good guy or what have you, but yeah, Becker was the first to say it's subjective, and therefore it's subject to revision. And World War One was the thing that kicked it off. Like we said, the Treaty of Versailles really strongly punished Germany. Sure. Redrew its boundaries and basically said, germany, you're responsible for World War I. You guys were the aggressor, and everybody else was reacting. And then as time wore on, new documents were released that showed that, no, it wasn't just Germany. There are a lot of other factors involved, including among the Allies, that contributed directly to the beginning of World War I. Germany was kind of punished unfairly. So in 1925, the League of nations basically said, hey, we need some sort of guidelines for writing historical textbooks. And they came up with that. And from that point on, revisionism was born. And then Carl Becker said, yeah, here in America, we agree history is subjective and it can be revised. Yes. And declassification of documents is a big way that things can be revised, because if you don't have it's not just someone's opinion, if you don't have actual documentation and, like, peer reviewed stuff, then you can't revise history. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So that brings us to World War II, when what is called the age of historical consensus officially began. And I get the idea that was just when people sort of historians banded together a little bit more than ever before. Yeah. Do you get that feeling? Yeah. There was a lot of patriotism, nationalism, and basically everybody said, if there's anything that happened in World War II, it's that the US. Emerged victorious and saved the world. Jingoism, perhaps. Yeah, very much so. This is among historians, and if all historians basically are on the same page that America is awesome and kicks ass, then that's what the history books are going to reflect. Yeah. And that held pretty strong until the 1960s, which, as anyone who knows anything about American history knows, it was a pretty tumultuous time. Quite a few things. The Vietnam War, civil rights movement, feminist movement, globalization, the Cold War, they all combine to basically quell that nationalism a little bit, maybe. Yeah, for sure. I mean, all of a suddenly the US. Went from this sunny, happy, suburban, white picket fence, nazi butt kicking country to one that was coming apart at the seams internally. And the historians at the time of the 60s said, like, wait a minute, if history is this ever evolving dialogue that's able to be revised, how are we going to document this? And what they figured out very wisely was, well, we need to tell everybody's story. Yeah. Through four lenses. Yeah. Well, at least I think six maybe emerged from the 60s that basically history became more inclusive. It wasn't just about the leaders anymore. It wasn't just about how great America was. It was the whole picture. That's what historians strove to get to. Right. The four major lenses from the 60s on, or political, economic, racial, and sexual. That's four. It's not six. You should make two more up. We could probably come up with a couple that aren't fully covered here. We'll work on that. Okay. Political ends, though, obviously has to do with foreign policy. Nationalism in the 1960s, I believe you already mentioned, the Marxist revisionism, outlined more of a struggle between the classes and maybe took an approach that wasn't, like, gave the lower classes a little bit more they're due. Right. It wasn't just like just because somebody was a prominent leader doesn't mean they were a great person, necessarily. Right. And yeah, that was a huge, radical change, especially compared to that age of consensus among historians, the economic lens. Charles A. Beard, a historian, had a pretty radical idea that, hey, the Founding Fathers were writing the Constitution. They sort of look out for wealthy white dudes. Yeah, and I think he's probably right. Yeah, he wrote that in, I think, 1913, and it took until the tumulti of the 60s before anybody ever really kind of championed it. Tamalti. I think that's right. Really? I am a descriptivist at the moment. Not just tumult. Yeah, but doesn't tamalti roll off the tongue a little more? Well, tumulti would be the adjective. Like, that was a very tumulti. No, that'd be tumultuous. I know. That's my point. So anyway, Beard's idea was that the framers of the Constitution said, hey, let's protect ourselves. And the landowners who owed money to the framers basically led a revolution in 1800 that was led by the election of Thomas Jefferson. Right. And that's what we live in today. But we may have had much more of an elite society or basically we have an elite society now. We just would have had one for longer. So the racial ends obviously strove to cast a light on minorities a little more that were largely ignored thanks to the civil rights movement. It gained some momentum. I remember being in school and not learning about Malcolm X or Huep Newton. Who. Yeah. I wasn't taught those things in classes in high school. I had to read about them on my own afterward. College does a much better job, for sure. Right. This is a while ago for me. This was in the 80s. Do you remember? I'd like to think it's gotten a little better. Do you remember when you learned hopefully, at least in high school, about the Native Americans applied to Native Americans in the US. I don't remember, man. I remember 9th grade finally taking a history class where they spoke frankly about it, like your friend in Portland. And I don't remember my mind just being blown because I was like, well, wait a minute. What about everything I learned the last eight years? Like, all that total BS completely is contradicted by what you're saying. Not only was this stuff left out, I learned the opposite, that they basically just went away on their own because the white man came and they were like, oh, this place is yours. And I remember being in 9th grade just learning this, like, wow, that was a big eye opener for me. I think that's probably why I got into history, because I was like, this is pretty interesting stuff. Like, there's more out there. Sure. I want to know the whole thing. Yeah. Under the Rachel ends also now you could learn about dudes like the Tuskegee Airmen or Japanese internment camps, which I never heard of until we did that episode on it until three years ago. But that raises another good point, Chuck. With the Japanese internment camps, it wasn't in the history books before, and then it comes out, maybe in the Think or it's put into the history books in the that kind of reflects why people struggle against revisionism, or some people do, because history is ultimately zero sum. Right. If you put that in the history book, the Japanese Americans who were putting their internment camps, their plight is honored just through recognition. Sure. Like, this happened to you people, and now everybody knows about it, but at the same time, the US. Government looks bad. Yeah. And reparations are, like, all of a sudden on the table, and they don't want that. So it's impossible to shine a light on something, and it not have almost always I can't think of one instance also a negative impact on something else. Yeah. Because what, it's history again if it's not somebody screwing somebody else over. Is that all it is? Yeah. I mean, at least world history, political history. Yeah. And the final lens, of course, is the sexual lens, which showed a light on women and said, hey, history is not just about old white men. Yeah. There were a lot of ladies like Elizabeth Katie Stanton, and sojourner truth, and I think the only black woman I ever remember reading about, of course, was Harriet Tubman. Yeah. It's like one person. Are you really that's the only African American female in history that made any difference was Harriet Tubman? Right. And think about it. Like, the most recent one that's mentioned here is Elizabeth Katie Stanton. So apparently we ran out of producing great women in the early 20th century. Where's the rest of them? So apparently we're still struggling with that sexual lens of revisionist history. I think women are definitely still fighting that fight. The cool thing the other day on I think it went sort of viral, where this woman had her daughter, like, little girls played dress up and stuff. Little boys do, too. But instead of dressing the daughter up like, I'm a Disney princess, she dressed her up like famous women in history and took pictures and just had a blast. And it's really neat. It's like a little photo series of this girl dressed up as all these great women in history. Nice. And it's a very cool thing to do. I feel like I saw that. Yeah, it was just a couple of weeks ago, so you probably did good for her, is what I say. Yeah, good for her. I guess now maybe is a good time to do a message break. Yeah. And afterward, we're going to get into correcting the facts, which is my favorite part. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap, and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Afflac, you can worry less, knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Afflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's aflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover, so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Affluence DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of. Mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses, health insurance doesn't cover visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. 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. So, Chuckers yeah. We're talking about revisionism as a means of correcting the facts. Yeah. Like the game of telephone, the old adage, and that's basically what history was. You start with the story and it gets passed down orally, or maybe even it was written down, and it's just like a game of telephone. Things get mixed up and in the end, you end up with what is probably not the way it really happened. Right. Purple monkey dishwasher. Like, Pocahontas is her example, but she had this it was a great love story between Captain John Smith and Pocahontas and Jamestown so crazy. And Disney made a movie about it. It seems like I'm picking on Disney a lot. And it's the same thing. Like, Disney took this idea and ran with it and created, like, a new character, but created a character who fell in love with John Smith and they had a wacky courtship and overcame all the odds and wacky courtship. Jamestown was I think he falls down at some point. Maybe there's maybe a talking animal. Yeah. There was one problem with this, though, is Pocahontas was eleven years old and James Smith was not a pederasse. Well, pederesque is exclusively with boys. Oh, is it? I don't think I knew that. Yeah. So I guess he'd be a pedophile. Yeah. Let's just generally say pedophile. Yes. And even though things people quoted younger back then, eleven was not his game. Right. So it's not true. Pocahontas actually married a widower named John Rolf. She died when she was about 21. She did help. She did introduce the colonists to her tribe. Yeah. The thing is, she did play a role in saving Jamestown, but yeah. She didn't fall in love with Captain John Smith. No. And thanks to modern times, we have things like anthropology and forensic science and archaeology and people coming out like the Deep Throat. Mark felt finally revealing I was Deep Throat. I don't think he revealed himself, though, did he? No. He was uncovered, I believe. Yeah. Documents becoming declassified. Like, as time marches on and we get a little bit more modern, we get the facts more correct, again, with declassified information. If something is a secret. It can't be part of history. Right. But then once it's declassified, these things definitely have an effect on history and impact on history. CIA did give LSD to unwitting Americans. The Star Wars program did very much help usher in the end of the Cold War. All these come from declassified documents that show, yeah, this actually happened this way. Go back and rewrite. They really had alien autopsies in Area 51, right? I saw it on TV. Did you hear that Mulder and Scully are down for making another movie? Oh, are they? I don't know if it'll happen, but I mean, if they're both game, why especially her? And we're about due for the come back in Vogue. You just lose your fitbit. Yeah, things aren't working. Or does it have a clock in there? No. Okay. It just shows. I don't have 4000 steps yet today. But you just tapped it so it thinks you're walking. I'm just shaking my wrist, tap it and watch TV. Because there's nothing like cheating yourself out of health. So, like we said, updating biographies, and more importantly for me, textbooks is a big part of this. But it's not so easy. It's not like, hey, let's just throw in a new chapter on Jefferson. You have to actually go through quite a process. Scholars and researchers, first they develop these theories and thesis, they publish them. They are reviewed by academics and teachers. Textbook authors meet at conferences and see the new recommendations. It's kind of a long involved process to make a substantial change in the textbook. Right. And there's an actual Institute for International Textbook Research that analyzes all this stuff and makes sure that textbooks are diversified and don't just tell the history of wealthy white dudes. Right, exactly. This is ideal. This is the ideal process. There's another really big factor in this that we've talked about before, where the biggest states are the states with the most students and therefore buy the most textbooks are the ones who ultimately get to write the textbooks. Which is why Texas has such an outsized influence on what the rest of the country learns. Right. Because they write the textbooks. And the publishers aren't going to make different textbooks for each state. You're going to make them for the biggest state and then go sell them to the rest of the state. So there are flaws in this process, including that it doesn't keep up in real time very well. No, you can't just economically, you can't publish a new textbook every year. Right. I think they try to have about a ten year life textbook, but it's a long time. Can't they just email history teachers and be like, hey, on page 42 it says that Jefferson did not have kids with Sally Hemmings. Don't teach that part, teach the opposite. Yes. And I wonder I'm sure it varies from county to county. I wonder how much freedom teachers have to develop their own curriculum I know their standards, but I wonder how much they can do their own thing. I'm under the impression there isn't teaching any longer. Like, all this is a moot point when we're talking about textbooks. That's not true. Sorry, teachers. I just realized how many of you listen to this? No. And you weren't saying that in spiteful way. You're saying that it's sad that yeah, exactly. Teaching is tough to get teachers these days. Thank you. Almost like a public service. What? Teaching these days? Yeah, I think it always has been. Yeah. I think that the constraints put on teachers has really tied their hands to the point where they aren't able to teach like they should or like they want to. Yeah. But I think it remains a public service. I just think our education system is in need of some real reform. Well, it is, and it's sad that I think a lot of teachers these days to treat it like a public service, and it's not bad, but I'm saying sometimes teachers these days will be like, yeah, I'm going to go teach for four or five years because people are in need of teachers. Not necessarily. I want to be a teacher for my entire career. And what they're finding out is this generation is going to be short on teachers because people are teaching for a shorter amount of time. You know what? I'm interested in this, and we should do an episode on that. But in the meantime, we're going to do a prelistenermail call out and ask for any teachers out there who are in there on the front lines, email us and tell us what can be done to solve the problems with the public school system, whether it's easy, complex, whatever. I'm very curious and totally down to help. All right, so where were we? Textbooks. Sometimes they'll publish supplemental material that's like, not every ten years just to get things right. Yeah, because ten years is a long time to go between discovery and acceptance of a new historical fact and teaching it to kids. Yeah. That's too long. But people got up in arms. The American Historical Association submitted or updated its national history standards in 1994 textbooks, and they got negative feedback because they were like, Where's Daniel Boone? And who's this Harriet Tubman? Why is she getting so much attention? A black woman. Unbelievable. Yeah. So even when they get it right, they still get Gough. It's a really good point. It's a good segue to the negativism. Even when it's true, it's still going to encounter resistance. Part of it is that people hang on to their national pride, their national story, stuff they learned as a kid. People are fearful of new things change. Sure. What does that mean about me, exactly? I dress like Daniel Boone and go out in public. So what happens if everybody doesn't know who Daniel Boone is, and I just look like a weirdo? But another part of it is because of the bad name that revisionism has been given by hacks and crackpots over the years. Yeah, that's true. I remember in 2003, President Bush used the term revisionist. Historians talking about the media and their coverage of the war in Iraq, basically saying that some reporters are questioning the reasons that we invaded Iraq and had sway over the public's opinion about this story for the media to have. And a lot of historians weren't too keen on that. Like, you shouldn't really say that because that's kind of knocking, studying history, the academic field of history, or the fact that history is able to be revised, he was making it a negative thing. Same with Florida. Apparently in 2006, they outlawed the teaching of any postmodernist or religionist history, and kids were only allowed to learn the facts, which is, number one, impossible. And number two, it says implicitly that revisionist history is not facts. And what's the opposite of facts? Well, it lies. Yeah. Man, that's sad. It is, because it's basically saying, we refuse to progress. I will not progress. Not only in bad stuff, but in good stuff too. Yeah. No, we are quite happy with that whole post war age of consensus thing. We're going to stay right there. So rest of the country, rest of the world, you go progress without us. It's crazy. It is crazy. You just can't do that. You can't dig in your heels in history. It just won't happen. Yes. You look like you're on the wrong side of history. That's going to be one of our new T shirts with you, like, pointing. Right. One reason, though, revisionist history has negative connotations, because people wrongly tie it to things like Holocaust deniers. That is not revisionist history. That is called negationism. Right. And it's not the same thing now. So if you know someone who says the Holocaust didn't happen, they're not revising history, they're crackpots. Yeah. And probably a troll too. Yeah. So you can just kind of remove the whole Holocaust and from revisionist history. The problem is, in the public image. Those two things go very much hand in hand. Same with conspiracy theories, but Kung kind of gives this little thumbnail handy dandy guide to separating the wheat from the chaff as far as revisionist history goes. So if you're encountering something like a moon landing conspiracy or Kennedy assassination conspiracy, you have to ask yourself, no one is this a professional historian or an amateur historian? Is it on a blog? Yes, that's a good one. Is this historian out for the truth or fame and money? So is it just sensationalized? Right. And we ran into something like we almost did the 1421 article about the the Chinese beat Columbus. Yeah. That's a good example of somebody who is a historian. I think his name is Gavin Menzies. It's just a theory. Yeah. And there's like all this really tiny crumbs of circumstantial evidence here or there that the Chinese did beat Columbus to the New World. The problem is, at this moment, it is just a crackpot theory. He has almost nothing to back it up. Is he looking just to sell books? He sold a bunch of books. Wow. That's a pretty big red flag. It is. It is interesting. And you can't say that somewhere down the road that we won't find that the Chinese did visit the New World before Columbus, but as it stands, that is so far outside of the mainstream, it's just a crackpot idea at this point that some guy wove into a pretty interesting book. Yeah. And she also points out, which is totally true, that we tend to be more skeptical of revisionist history that we feel like we have a stake in. Right. Or are very familiar with. Like, maybe I'm resistant to that because I was raised the idea that Columbus discovered the New World, whereas if it was from Ghana, sure, I'd be like, yeah, maybe the Chinese did do it. Who cares? Exactly. I couldn't have said it better. So basically, a very small number of revisionist histories are factual or not factual, but accepted as fact. In the end, it's just tough to pull off. Yeah. Like, Gavin Menzies is another good example of that. But here's the thing. Revisionist history, it has an unearned bad name, right. It's an actual worried. Well, we're not saying this is a fringe idea that's been brought into the mainstream. This is a mainstream part of the study of history, right. That some fringe dwellers have adopted, like here and there. But for the most part, revisionist history is a real part of the discipline of history. And it's a good part of it, in my opinion, because, like Congress points out, it levels the playing field. It's inclusive. Like when revisionist history became a thing, history became more inclusive and it started to tell everybody's story. Yeah. I can't wait to hear from historians. They're going to be like, oh, dude, thank you. Yeah. Or, Boy, did you guys screw this up. My revisionist history is nothing but crack pots. Like, where did you get the idea was no. So you got any more? I got nothing else. Thank you for letting me stay. All popped up about this one. I was a history major and this is, like, great stuff. I know I usually just throw the wet blanket on you. That is not true. Since we said wet blanket or Chuck did, that triggers me to say, if you want to learn more about revisionist history, go to the website, type that in the handy search bar. And then since I said handy search bar, we've got kind of a Rube Goldberg thing going here that triggers listener mail. That's right. I'm going to call this handwriting analysis from a handwriting analyst. And this is my favorite thing. It's when I hear from the actual people and they either say, hey, you did a good job or you didn't do such a good job. I don't mind. I was surprised to hear we did so good about the Maori. That was great. Yeah. Boy, those Kiwis love a little light shine in their way. I love it. Hey guys. Just finished episode on handwriting analysis. As I arrived to work as a handwriting analyst, or as we call ourselves, forensic Document examiners. When I got to my car at home and saw the title of the episode, I had already begun a mental checklist about the misconceptions you might pass on about the field. That's negative. I have to deal with them all the time. However, I'm delighted to say you guys absolutely nailed it. Exclamation point. I don't have a single criticism or correction in this case. Each lab has its own specialty. But at the Homeland Security Investigations Forensic Laboratory where I work, we specialize in travel and identity documents. Most of my work is determining if certain passports, green cards, driver's licenses and visas are counterfeit or altered. But I'm trained to do handwriting examinations as well. I spent months of my training and handwriting, and it is not for everyone. Let me say it is a difficult task. It takes a lot of natural ability to accomplish. The first thing we did in training was to take a form blindness test to make sure we had that natural ability before I started the job I have now though, I actually worked for the Secret Service on the Fish database that you mentioned. Fish is a lot like AFIS for handwriting. The Secret Service processed a lot of anonymous threat letters and I would put them into the database to see if I could come up with any matches. You could probably imagine how fun it was to find a hit. There were a few times this happened for me during the year I worked there and it always amazed me how well the system worked. Right. And that is from Jordan, the handwriting analyst. That's pretty awesome. I like hearing from the actual people too. That's great. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Jordan. Let's see. We already asked for it, but I think it bears asking for again. If you are a teacher and you have some ideas about how to fix the cracks and flaws of the public education system or education system in general, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comwoodo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastdisdiscovery.com. You can join us at our home, on the web, stuffyoushaneau.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.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. 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 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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopeet.com." | ||
Mermaids: Not a real thing | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/mermaids-not-a-real-thing | Mermaids aren't real. That much we know. But the history and lore of these magical and sometimes menacing creatures of the sea is pretty interesting stuff. Learn all about these half women/half fish today. | Mermaids aren't real. That much we know. But the history and lore of these magical and sometimes menacing creatures of the sea is pretty interesting stuff. Learn all about these half women/half fish today. | Thu, 04 Aug 2016 13:12:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=13, tm_min=12, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=217, tm_isdst=0) | 39222621 | audio/mpeg | "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. 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. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah, that's right there's. Charles W, chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. And the ether floating, possibly not existing. Who knows? And this is stuff you should know. That's right. A couple of mermen trying to make their way in the world, trying to keep their tails wet. Yeah, that thing dries out. You've seen Splash? Yeah, it's actually toast now. She dried out and she was just fine. Oh, I thought you're thinking of et. When you turned all white and dried out. I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It was a cute movie. It was one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks, which I'm a big fan of. Early Tom Hanks. And I just thought it was a really fun, funny movie. John Candy. Yeah, it was a great movie. What's his name played the evil man trying to expose her. Eugene Levy, I think. Oh, was he the bad guy? Yeah, he was the one. That's a high quality movie when Eugene Levy is the bad guy. Yeah, that was the SC TV crew, and he actually tried to spray her and get her wet so she would oh, and in fact turn into a mermaid on the sidewalk. That's what it was. She got wet. She turned to a mermaid. Right. She got dried. No problem. Yes. And Daryl Hannah, of course, he was running around with Neil Young now. Oh, really? Yeah. How about that couple? Sure, why not? You're both environmentalists, but there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder if you hook up with Neil Young or anyone like that if you're sort of a new relationship and not like the wife they had for 40 years. If you're, like, play song, why don't you? What? I wonder if you ask them to play music. Oh, like you're actually into them. Yeah. If you're Billy Joel's new 25 year old wife. Sure. Do you ever say, like, hey, honey, play me a tune. Right. Play that one that you wrote ten years before I was conceived. I think what I'm saying is I would have a hard time being with Neil Young and not every night after dinner, just kind of nudging the guitar toward him. Oh, I got you. And saying, I'd love to hear Old Man Please baby, one for me. And yeah. He says, I played that song 45,000 times. Yeah, I would guess that. Well, I can tell you. I would guess that once you reach a certain point in playing a song, you never want to hear that song or even thinking about existing again. Yeah. But then you still have to play it. I try not to think about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah. It makes me feel bad for them. Like, they might as well be in the monkey house or something and just throwing bananas at them. And God bless the people who really bring it. Still. Sure. Where you feel like, man, they're playing that song for me tonight at a man. Does he still bring it? He's just what came to mind. Whereas when I saw the police on their reunion, they were phoning it in. Really? Yeah. Even Stewart Copeland? Well, I mean, they were playing the songs, but it didn't look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It looked like a total money grab. Sure. They entered from three separate entrances and exited from three separate oh, yeah. And I got the feeling they didn't even speak much. I was reading an article on the Ramones, the Rolling Stone one recently. Yeah, I guess it was yeah, they had a great article on them, so yeah, I guess it it was was definitely Rolling Stone. Okay. Did you read it? Yeah. Then it was awesome. But yeah, they would just, like, get on the bus and not speak to one another, go to the next town and get on stage and play and then come off stage. They would speak on stage because they had to. That was it, apparently. Well, at least Joey. And who is his big foil? DeeDee. Those ones who really hated each other. Yeah. Supposedly they didn't speak at all for like, 25 years straight. Right. Because Joey stole DeeDee's love of his life. Right. And then they were in the band together still after that, it was just like, TS, man. So weird. So, like, a lot of songs, especially ones like The KKK Took My Baby Away, that's about Joey's stealing DeeDee's girlfriend. Wow, this is a great article. Yeah, good read. So back to splash funny movie about a mermaid. And we're going to talk about mermaids here. And mostly what we're going to cover is the lore and history and the mythology of the mermaid because there's a little giveaway. There are no mermaids. What did you look up? Like pictures of real mermaid sightings and stuff? Yeah, and it's the same thing as pictures of bigfoot sightings and pictures of UFO sightings, some weird distant blur that it could be kelp or it's such an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is if we had a time machine. Forget killing Hitler. Playback Machine. Oh, yeah, that's right. I can't believe we put this into good use. Forget, like, saving the world or keeping the dodo from going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos that are just so easy to make today back to the 1920s and be like, look at this. And they go, yeah, I know. We still believe in that stuff. With your aim being what? Just to freak them out? I figured there'd be a money angle. Yeah. Josh is traveling wonder emporium. It's not a bad idea where in which you just show them photos, but I charge them, like, 2016 rates, and no one can possibly afford that. So I go out of business, like, almost immediately. Right. There's like one guy in the town is like, I'll pay 27, 50 to see those. Step right up. Town's only billionaire. That's a great idea. I don't know why no one ever thought of that. It was a terrible idea, like, from beginning to end. Forget going back and betting on the stock market or the outcome of the World Series. I'm going to go back and set up a business doomed to fail. All right, so let's talk about mermaid lore. Well, we can start here in the more modern age because there are still places that try and take people for money. Like, we were just talking about even yeah, like me. In fact, in Israel, on the coast there, they actually have a town called Curiosityam. Great name. If you go to Curiosity, you could win. How much money does he even say? Million bucks. Million American dollars. If you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is reputed to wanda live there and appear at sunset. As of 2009. Was the first sighting there. Yeah. And of course, what that is is a ploy to try and get tourists, come and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid. Sure. Come on. We welcome you to Curiot. Yams. I'm sure Loch Ness has made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they have a standing offer as well. And that's where the mayor of Curiosity got the idea. Yeah, great idea. Sure. And actually, I saw that photo, too. It's kind of neat. I don't know what it is or who created it or whatever, but there's allegedly a photo taken, obviously from like, a cliff down onto a beach. A beach that will have, like, a big just slab of rocks surrounded by sand. Yes, sand. And mermaids. Right. There's a mermaid on that rock just kind of looking out in the sea. Yeah. And of course, it could be anything. It could be totally doctored, who knows? But it's from a distance and at least they didn't go full out, like, perfect picture of a mermaid or whatever. It's just suggestive enough that people who believe in such things would be like, right there, there's a picture of a mermaid. Totally. So that was found in 2009 or that surfaced in 2009. And since then, the surface. Right. Since then, the towns had that standing offer. Correct. So the interesting thing to me about mermaids is the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah, I did. I always wanted it to interest me more than it did me too. I don't know if it wasn't explaining me quite well enough or just the ancient non bicameral mind wasn't fused together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well, I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far as good storytelling, were just lacking because a lot of them were just versions of one another and there was usually a very basic premise or moral. Right. And in the case of mermaids, a lot of times there were a lot of folklore even was rooted in misogyny. There'll be a woman to come along and screw your life up. Right. Or if you screw up a woman, she will kill your children, or something like that. Like, women were not to be trusted and they were murderous and duplicitous in a lot of mythology. It's true. The old hag. So it was in various, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of books and text, including the Talmud, believe it or not. And we've talked about, plainly, the elder, the beer and the dude. Yeah. Rome's plan of the elder. He, in his natural history, talked about a mermaid like creature called the Nerid. Yes, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah. N-E-R-E-I-D. That EI is a tough transition. It is. Because you want to say, like, Nereid. Yes. These are C nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids. And he also talked about sea men. And we should point out that mermen. We made the joke about us being mermen. I believe myrmen were even first on the literary scene. Is that correct? Well, first, at least with mythology or theology, I guess there's a Babylonian god of the sea named EA E, a sports, just EA. And he pops up in Babylonian mythology from, I think, 4000 years ago. And they think that he's actually the progenitor of or the predecessor, I should say, of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea, and Neptune, who's the Roman god of the sea. Because the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their favorite parts and put them together. Yeah. And that was definitely one of them. Yeah, for sure. I guess it was. In the folklore and fairy tale episodes, there were twin episodes almost, about the original Little Mermaid and how she was dignified to the fullest, but the original story was far darker. Darker, but also even more touching by far. I went back and read the last section of it. Well, give me a summary at the end. So at the end, this is where it dramatically differs from the Disney story. The Little Mermaid is scorned for another woman. The guy she loves chooses someone else and marries her. And the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I gave up my tail for you. I think a witch has my tongue kind of thing, and I want to get back my life. So her sisters came and bring her this ritual knife and say, you can convert back to a mermaid if before dawn, you plunged this knife into this dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and you get some of his blood on your feet, you will regrow your tail, and you can jump into the sea and everything will be just fine again. So she goes and she finds the guy sleeping with his new bride beside him, and she just can't do it. She throws the knife into the sea and becomes seafoam. She disintegrates and becomes seafoam. So she gives her her own happiness up for this guy and dies as a result. But even better than that, when she turns into sea foam, she becomes a different mythical creature, like, basically an air nymph that goes around, like, helping humans. And she can possibly get into heaven if she helps people for 300 years. Hans Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted. It a lot less. Ohms, and likes, but it's worth raising plenty. Also talked about mermen back in the day, and there would be mermen or seamen who would at night climb up onto ships that's why I'm reading it weird. Upon which the side of the vessel where he seated himself would instantly sink downward. And if you remain there any considerable time, even go underwater. And that was something that we will see as we talk more about mermaids. They're often either in omen that's something bad is going to happen to sailors or coastal dwelling people, or they actually directly cause harm to sailors or coastal dwelling people. Yeah. And most times under the guise of something beautiful and like a siren. They are often well, we haven't even described one. Surely you know that a mermaid has the head and body torso of a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah, if you're talking about a sailors account. Right, sure. She was busy. Did I mention the boobs? Yes, you did, sir. Seven times. And from the torso down, she's a fish. Maybe web feet maybe not very graceful, very fast, and always beautiful. It depends. Oh, yeah, there were some of legend that were not ugly. Really? Yeah. Not ugly, or they were ugly, but they were not parentheses. Beautiful. Comma ugly. Well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, it's in here. I must have missed that part. It's far more frequent where you were saying that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay, but we'll talk more about that after we take a break, huh? 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 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. 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 evergrowing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. 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 were saying that for the most part, mermaids are beautiful. And one of the reasons why they are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently accused of luring men sailors out to sea to their death. Yeah. And how you do that? You do that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing voice, or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right. And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren, in which case you would not be a mermaid, because the siren is half bird, half woman. Yes. And they don't even necessarily live in the water or near the water. They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. Yeah, I guess sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer. Right? You're a mermaid. Yeah, you could be. Yeah, sure. Who am I to disagree? You'd be Beyonce, right? Or Alicia Keys. Right? Or Adele. Oh, you know who I like is Rihanna. Oh, yeah, she's great, man. Very pretty. That part in what's it called? This is the end, and she played herself. Yeah, she was pretty great. She was pretty funny. Michael Sarah likes banked her, and she just immediately turned around and smacked the heck out of them. Yeah, I enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah playing like a coat out jerk. That was really funny. So back to the beautiful mermaids, though. There was one in 1000 BCE in Syria, and her name how would you pronounce that? Ader goddess. Oh, I think you nailed it. Yeah. All right. We'll go with that. And you'll see a lot of duality, a lot of these stories, and she was one for sure. That was a protector, a goddess. I think she protected the fertility of her people and watched over them and fell in love with a human man, as you will often see in a lot of these stories. A dude. Yeah, a dude. And it was fine for a little while, like in most stories, and then it goes south and she kills him. She crushed him with her greatness. Oh, I thought, like, her big tail or something. I don't know. Well, she wasn't a mermaid. That this is where she became that's right. I forgot about that. So she accidentally kills him and then is very shamed throws herself into the lake because she wants to become a fish, and she's so beautiful that it only works half as good. I really can't figure out the math on that. No. But I guess she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of her is like, no, I won't be a fish. Just the lower half can be a fish. Yeah, because she had toe fungus, so that was easily overcome. But her face was really nice. So the fish parts couldn't overcome that. That's right. So she ended up a mermaid story. Well, like, oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm not being Xenophobic, but it really says a lot about humanity and how we think of things. Like, she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even overcome that at some point. We placed a lot of value on that kind of thing. All right, so we move on to Germany. Yes. This one was kind of interesting to me, because Germany is landlocked. I never really thought about it. What does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well, I mean, they have lakes, I guess, but mermaids are 100% ocean dwellers, aren't they? No, there are some river dwellers. Oh, that's right. Although I think the sirens were specifically river. Well, in the German myth, it was a river dweller. Correct. Okay. Yeah. The Nyxes. Yeah. And they lured men into the river. Yeah, it was a river. So they could drown them. Like, again, the call of the siren. Come in here. Look how beautiful I am. Right? Check these out. And now I'm holding your head underwater, right? And you can't breathe anymore. And the guy's like, I regret nothing, but this duality that we're talking about is what you see a lot of times in mermaid myths from West Africa. The mommy WADA the mother water. She was a mermaid who is very nurturing and very loving if you didn't cross her. Yeah, exactly. That's where the duality comes in. I don't even know if that's duality. I think that's just a complex person. Good complex character there. Yeah. So she's great, but when you cross her, she's murderous. Sure. All right. And that's what she did, actually. If you were loyal to her, you could be wealthy from her magic mirror in comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this article says is she rains down fury and destruction. She ran the H word from above. But the duality is an important part of it because the physical creature itself is two things. Sure. And they are also two things emotionally. And so the mermaid, or merman, or merfolk, as they're calling this article, are they really? Yeah. So merfolk are half fish, half people. Right? Yeah. But they're not anywhere near unique in the pantheon of mythological creatures throughout the ages. Right. Again, there's sirens, half birds, half women. There are just tons of, like, the minotaur, half man, half bull. The centaur was what, half go or horse and half man? I don't remember. That sounds right. I think half horse. And I was like, Where did all these come from? I suspected beastiality, and it turns out I may be right. Oh, yeah. What'd you find? There are some scholars out there who believe that this is the product of a much more relaxed attitude toward bestiality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah, it's a good one. Zoo. Yeah, I need that. Fell off my radar, man. It's one of those ones where they largely recreate. Like the whole thing is almost recreation. Right. And I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't feel like a documentary to me, but that one changed my mind about that whole technique. They did it so well. Really? Yeah, it's rough. I bet it's rough. Especially, like, when you think about the animals as well. Yeah. Of course, there's more than just that. That makes it rough. I need to see that. So I guess we can talk a little bit about some eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course. But they have happened in World War II in Japan, on Indonesia's Chai Islands. Supposedly, they encountered a monster on the beach that had webbed hands and feet and was kind of part human, part fish. Yeah. It's like, look at these jazz hands. You can't do this. And then back in the day, some of our most revered explorers and adventurers reported seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry Hudson and Columbus John. But he loves him. Yeah. There's a good quote in here from Columbus because he wasn't too impressed. Yeah. He said and here's the thing. I read that in his diary. He's referring to himself in the third person. Well, that says a lot. That's odd. He's like Ricky Henderson. Right. Or George Castanza. So he says that he saw some oh, yeah, the quotes on it. You got to read the quote. He's sailing around. Oh, what is that? In the ocean? I think I'll take a look through my spying glass. The day before, when the admiral was going to the admiral himself yeah, that's what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his fleet, for sure. The day before, when the admiral was going on to the Rio del Oro that's the river of gold. He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high out of the water, but were not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face, they look like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah. What they think now, and I don't know how they substantiated this is that Columbus was seeing manatees? Yes. Have you seen manatees? Yeah. It looks nothing like a human from enough of a distance, though. You're like, Wait a minute, what is that? Especially if you've never seen a manatee before. I don't think it looks human like at all from enough of a distance. Yes. I can see how somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed and you see a manatee, maybe. It's hard for me to totally get that go there and put my mind in that kind of frame. In the frame of Christopher Columbus. Well, just to have never seen a mermaid. To have never seen a manatee. To be high on green stuff. Arrowx, scalps. I just blanked on the green. Marijuana? No, the green the green drink. Absent. I don't think Absent was around with Columbus. Are you kidding me? No, I'm not. You're shooting that stuff. I can kind of see it. So he maybe saw a manatee. I was like, they're not so great looking after you all. They're not that great. What's everyone talking about? This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs. You're kind of surprised when you hear this that somebody cited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. John Smith said he saw some he liked what he saw. He liked the look of the manatees because he said he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah, he said it wasn't bad looking. It wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah, he hedged his bets a little bit. I guess he wanted to check the rest of her out. And then he saw she had a tail. He's like, can't go there. So what's going on here? Are they hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long? That's what a lot of people say, yeah. Other people say that again. They were predisposed to believing in mermaids because people thought mermaids existed. This is the age of exploration. So it's the beginning of the age of exploration, which means that before then, the oceans were largely unexplored, and there were tons of beliefs in thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed, then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could be a mermaid. So that was probably they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah, they did one on two monsters, remember? We did. Yeah. That was a good one. I thought that one was going to be awful and it turned out pretty great. That steps. Yeah. Like, I remember thinking like, this is not going to go well. Kind of like this one. Yeah. How do you think this one's going? Pretty great. All right, we'll take a break then and give each other a neck rub, and we'll come back more comfortable than ever. All right. 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. 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 persons and 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. 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. Comstuffrightnow. I love this guy. His name is Carl Bantz. He's not a Carl Bantz fan. Well, I'm not quite sure I understand, unless did you read the article? Well, just set it up. Okay, so a dude named Carl Bantz, back in 1990, he wrote an article in a legitimate journal, the journal Limnology and Oceanography, and they published it. And it is an entirely tongue in cheek, but totally played, straight account of the extinct species. Mermaid. Yeah, like where he surmises on, like for real, where they came from, what their biology was, why they left us. Yes, they were warm water dwelling that they ate human flesh, which is why they lured people to their death. He goes so far as. To say that they most likely only produced one or two offspring at a time because the females of the species had two breasts and that was it. Okay. Sure. This is the thought that this guy put into this article, and the fact that he writes it totally straight and really gives it its due attention. It wasn't that this is going to be a great idea, and just the idea itself is hilarious. So I don't really have to put any effort into actual execution. He put effort into the execution and he did pretty good. I'm not knocking him. I guess I just don't see why this journal would put something like that out there, even. I don't know. I mean, I guess they had a good sense of humor and maybe it was the April Fools episode. I was wondering if that was the case, too, and I forgot to look if it was the April issue. Perhaps. He did use the words horny skin folds, though, right. Their skin, he theorized, was not smooth scaled like a regular fish, but it had, quote, horny skin folds like an armadillo. Yeah. What's interesting is I saw another account from 1830 in Scotland. There's a town called Benbecula on the outer hebrides Right. Which is like the outer islands, the archipelago. It's the archipelago, that's how you say that. Right. Archipelago. Yeah. Either way, there's a town there string of islands, coastal. Thank you. A coastal town where in 1830, the whole town swore they saw a mermaid and tried to grab the mermaid and the mermaid swam away. So some kid threw a rock at it and hit it and it's back. And two days later they found it dead on shore and they felt so bad about it that they buried it. They gave it a funeral with, like, a casket and everything. Wow. And they said that it didn't have scales, that it had, like, kind of rough skin instead. Pony skin fold. Yeah. They didn't use that term, but this is like a thing in 1830 in Scotland. Yeah. Pretty interesting that when you read the account of it years later. That's a band name, by the way. Torney Skinfolds. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. That is interesting. Maybe there's something there. Right. How do you keep the folds of the horny skin fold clean? Like gunk gets trapped in there. Gross. I don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single, cleaning the folds. The other thing that Bantz did in his article was explain probably why they're extinct now. He came to the conclusion they're extinct. He said they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated or shared their ecosystem with jellyfish. And as humans started to fish more and more of the sea, we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to boom, which is the case, and they stung the mermaids to death because the mermaids had lacked the blubber that would protect them, not just in cold water, but from jellyfish stings as well. So they died out from jellyfish stings? Yeah, because their upper skin was just regular skin. Right. It wasn't the horny skin folds, so it provided no protection. Exactly. It's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called mermaids. They're biology, culture, and demise. You can find like, the full PDF online. Well, I think we have to address the animal planet NAFU nafu. I think they would call it a ratings bonanza. Yeah. What was the other when we talked about the megalodon when Discovery Channel aired a megalodon documentary that appeared by all accounts to be true and was not. Same thing with mermaids. But they did it twice. They did they did a sequel because it got, like you said, huge ratings. And this was a documentary? Well, not a documentary. It was a mountain that looked like did you watch any clips or anything of the second one? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it looked like a show, like a hunting bigfoot crew. It's like, we got this mermaid, we know where she is, and we're down here hunting 3000ft below the surface. Yeah. And they interviewed a guy that looked like Zac Galifinacus. If only it would have been Zac Galifianakis. It would have made it much better. But then it was only shows where at the end and small lettering well, it's probably not small, but at the end of the credits, it's like this was all made up. These are actors. Yeah, but they're still biased. If you go online, people are still arguing over the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt. That's a great name. It is. And people are like, well, if he were a real scientist, he would have been published elsewhere besides this. And he's not published and it's like, it's because he's not real. He's made up. This is like settled, right. They didn't even pretend that it was real. I don't know if that's the case or not. They said it wasn't on at the end of the show. Okay. But they didn't come out and say everybody oh, well, I know what I mean. Right. So actually, Noah, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration had to release and they felt they needed to release a statement after the first one saying like, hey, mermaids don't exist. No evidence has ever been found. We're Noah the end. And I bet they love that even. Oh, yeah. Oh my God, noah's making a statement about it. Yeah, it's going to be all over the news. Right. And so I guess enough people bought it and bought into it that they were able to release a sequel. And in the sequel, the reason they released the sequel was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a webbed hand, like smacking the windshield of his little underwater human sub and then swimming off. And so they just kept showing that over and over and over again. Yeah, I saw that shot. Galapagais'he did look like him, didn't he? A lot. I thought you were going to say it was found out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on an episode of Two Broke Girls the next week is like a waiter. Yeah. And a progressive insurance ad is like, customer number two. Exactly. There's one other sighting I wanted to mention. This one, the second for my favorite after the Scottish one. Okay. It was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it Edom? Sure. Like the cheese. Yeah. Okay. Two girls were, like, rowing their boats and found a mermaid and took it home and dressed it up as a little girl and taught it to live on land, but it remained mute its whole life. Like e t. But isn't that cute? That is very cute. They're like, you're coming home with us. Oh, you've got a family, T? Yes, we got a family, too, and it's your new family. And they just made that story up and told people and it survived, I guess. Interesting. Although they matriculated the mermaid into human society there, but we're talking 1430, so who knows what was going on? Yeah, they were eating. They probably got their hands on somebody who was like, who knows? And they're like, oh, mermaid. This is a mermaid. Oh, just someone who had some sort of physical and made them come live with them dressed as a girl for the rest of their life. Like schlitze or something. Yeah, like we did in the freak shows. They would just call them, make up whatever animal they wanted to. That was another great episode, too. Are you just recounting the good ones while we do this one? Just to remind people it gets better. So being a mermaid is an actual job you can get back in the day in the 1940s and 50s, it was a big hit to go to a sea park and have mermaid shows. And specifically one in is it Wikiwatchi Springs? Yeah. Wikiwachi Springs, Florida, near Tampa. And it was a booming business back then. They said between half million and a million tourists every year, including big famous people like Elvis Presley and Don Knotts. Yeah, those are the two they mentioned. Those two would trash a place together. Oh, I bet Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. So, yeah, it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing it there today. But it is a real job. You can go if you're a great swimmer, you have to know what you're doing. Yeah. It seems like oh, yeah, you just put on that tail. But that tail is heavy and awkward. Yeah. Plus, like swimming buoyant swimming with your legs together. Yeah, that's hard. Very difficult. Yeah, it's not an easy job, from what I can tell. Yeah. So apparently once you put, like they look very graceful swimming around in those things, but you go put one on and get in a pool and see what happens. Right. This article I think rightly. Points out that the professional mermaids that you see today, this is from years and years and years of practice. They didn't just get in the water and they're like, I'm a natural. Yeah, exactly. That would be really awkward. Sure. And you also have to know how to hold your breath like a mo. Like a mo. Yeah, I stopped myself. Yeah, you do. And you have to learn how to swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it. But it's not like regular swimming. Yeah, right. And you can make a little dough, too. A little bit. It said you can be hired, like as a one off for a party. What is that? Like, you go to like, a neighborhood pool and everyone gathers around, like, look at the mermaid and claps out of rhythm. And you're like, what do you guys want me to do? I guess you can do that. But mostly what I've seen are like the shows in some sleepy Florida town, right. Like Gator Farm shows the start in The WikiLeaks Mermaids. Or like at resorts or something like that. Yeah, back when they used to love that kind of thing. And some of these professional mermaids apparently use their status as a soapbox for ecology and efforts to keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. There seems to be a real threat of that running through the professional mermaid culture. You're like an eco activist. That's a decent band name, too. Professional mermaid culture. Yeah, this one was rich with band band names. Horny Skin Folds. Yeah. If you want to know more about mermaids, you can type that word in the search bar@houseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Actually, in lieu of listener mail today, we are going to ask you for something because people often say, like, how can I help the show? Spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But one thing we haven't actually do in a long time is to go to itunes and leave a review. Oh, yeah. Because that makes a big difference if there are reviews, even if they're not favorable, to be honest, but with your conscience. And yeah, go to itunes, leave a review for us because just having reviews is a good thing. And tell a friend, help spread the word. I feel like years go by before we say things like this. Yeah, well, I think literally that's the case. It's been a long time. So we really appreciate the way the show was built, was on word of Mouth largely. We really count on that. So tell a friend, go to itunes and leave a recommendation. And the other thing that we also need are more jingles. Oh, yeah. These jingles that you hear, these bumpers are from fans and listeners, musicians, very kind ones. Yeah. And they really enjoy doing it and we love throwing them out there. So send us your jingle and we can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will because they're pretty great. Yeah. So that's all I got. Well, thanks. If you want to get in touch with us to help us out with any of this stuff, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffieshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouseafworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouhenknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.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 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 know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during places time, 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." | ||
2a92514c-3b0f-11eb-a672-a3779b124c38 | The Ins and Outs of Albinism | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-ins-and-outs-of-albinism | Today we dive into the science behind the genetic condition albinism, which is not pronounced how you think it is.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Today we dive into the science behind the genetic condition albinism, which is not pronounced how you think it is.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 17 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=48, tm_isdst=0) | 36391786 | audio/mpeg | "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 too. So it's a good old fashioned bout of stuff you should know. Right. Ready to kick you in the duff. My gosh. About were we a sickness? Yeah. Some would say, oh, dear, I'm ready for this one. I'm so excited because awesome. I understand genetics and chemistry. I've never understood it before in my life. Well, I think that a little credit goes to our powder Grabster, who has a knack for explaining very complex science stuff. And we also need to shout out, as usual, when it comes to science, a kid's website, which is, in this case, Frontiers for Young Minds. That was a really good one. Yes. They had a pretty good breakdown on albinism. Not albinism. Let's just get that out of the way. Yeah. And I also tried to find out it doesn't seem appropriate to say albinos. Right. I didn't expressly see that anywhere. But it seems like with how we refer to things these days, that stands out as something that we shouldn't do. Certainly. Did you find that, though? I did not. Although there are all sorts of pro social sites for people with albinism all over the place. I'm surprised we didn't run into that, because it's all I used. But I'm going to err on the side of caution and just say albinism. Yeah, totally. Or people with albinism. Right? Well, sure. Or plants. Yeah. Or an alligator. That's something that came up like, certainly you familiar that it's not just people who can have albinism, but that animals can, too. Every once in a while you hear about a very rare like a shark with albinism, or, like you said, an alligator with albinism. It's just so stark and surprising. One of the reasons why is because it's exceedingly rare in the animal kingdom, but it's still around. And it's not just mammals that can have albinism, too. Although it would make a lot more sense if it was just mammals that got it, because it affects a very specific part of the body, the melanocytes, which we'll talk about in great detail in a little bit, but a whole cascade of events goes from or takes place within those millennial sites, and any part of that can get messed up or disordered. And those are what are the basis of the different types of albinism as we'll see. Yeah. And, you know, the reason that you indicated that it was super rare to see, like, a gorilla with albinism, although you can see that it's because and we'll get into the genetics more specifically, but it's an autosomal recessive trait, which means that both of your parents have to have this albinism gene. It's rare enough in humans when two people fall in love and mate for life and stuff like that. But when you're counting on two sharks that happen to swim by that happen to have that express their genes that way and they happen to get friendly with one another, bump up against one another. Sure, rub fins. However sharks do that thing, right. It makes it even more rare because you're counting on almost just like fate or destiny. Not destiny, let's not get hippy dippy about it. But a couple of gorillas getting together in the mist, they both have this genetic gene. They wait for the mist to settle and then they're like, no one can see us, baby. I just said genetic gene, too. That's just what I know. So yeah, for whatever reason, Chuck, whether it's like because the populations are isolated or what, but it does seem to be much rare albinism does seem to be much rare in the wild than it is among humans. And even in some human populations, you could call it not rare at all. Like if you go to some parts of Africa, some parts of Central or South America, you'll find groups that are fairly small, genetically speaking. And albinism has just become kind of like an endemic trade among the population. Yes. And I think that's even where the word albino was first used in the 1800s in Africa for people that had albinism. And I think the root is the Latin albus or alba from Spanish and Portuguese. That's right. So when we're talking about albinism, I think most people probably know what we're talking about. But usually when you see a person with albinism, they have either totally white hair or a very light colored hair, usually little to no skin pigmentation. Or they can have kind of like a yellowish or pinkish skin pigmentation. They might have eyes that lack color or seem red, which apparently has to do with the blood vessels in the eye reflecting the red light from back out at you, the viewer. But all this has to do with a complete in total or a greatly reduced lack of melanin, right? Yeah. And if we're going to crumble a myth, we can crumble the myth that you are not. Like if you have albinism and you don't have red eyes or pink eyes, then you don't have true albinism. And that's not true at all. There are a lot of different kinds of albinism and depending on the way the genes express themselves, there can be a range of effects on your body. It was mentioned in the plant kingdom with maize you can have and it's not white corn. That's a different thing altogether. Right? Because trust me, if you look up albinism and corn, first thing you're going to see is a corn snake. So you have to type in maize and then you're just going to see white corn. But there are a few different kinds of albinism in maize, one of which basically is no pigment or chlorophyll. And that's not even going to survive because it's a plant, one that will eventually become just a regular ear of corn. And then a third type, which is really interesting, it's striped and some parts have that pigment and some parts don't. Yeah. And like, if you put two different types of albinism, whether it's corn or humans together, the person who has both of those different traits probably won't appear to have albinism at all because you have to have matching gene mutations to have an autosomal recessive genetic disorder. And album is one of those, like you said. Yeah, and interestingly, if you just sort of look at it in a vacuum, albinism isn't necessarily harmful. There can be comorbidities and there can be other effects that happen, of course, with things like sun and sunburn and sun exposure and there's vision problems that can happen. And we'll get into all this more specifically, but just by itself, albinism isn't necessarily harmful to a person or a population. Right. And there's different types, too. There's syndromeic and nonsyndromic and syndromeic means that you usually have other related health issues and there are syndromeic types of albinism. But one of the things that tends to go along with albinism, along with the lack of skin and hair pigmentation, is vision problems, which we'll talk about. But there's other stuff, too. They've correlated autism with albinism, which I couldn't find a lot on. Me neither, but it made me wonder. There's also a correlation between vision problems and autism. And it's possible, they theorize, because no one knows at this point what the correlation is, but they theorize that it has to do with the low level of visual input leading to autism. So it's possible that if you have a low level of visual input because of albinism, that could lead to autism as well, potentially. Right. So much we don't know. But we do know that albinism is a neural crest disorder. And this basically means we can get as wonky here, science wise, as you want to. But the easy version is it means that it's very early in embryonic development when a group of cells is folding into a crest. And at this point, if something is going on with those cells, it can affect a lot of different things moving forward, including Albinism. Right. Because those neural crests, when they form the extremely early embryonic stage, they form cartilage, bone, skin, smooth muscle cells, neurons, they differentiate into a bunch of different stuff. But the point of that is that the gene that is responsible for whatever type of albinism you have, like, differentiated really early on, long before many other genes were active. It also points out, Chuck, I think something that's worth mentioning, that at this point, because it's a genetic disorder and apparently an extraordinarily early in development genetic disorder, there's no treatment for albinism. Everything is treating is just to take care of the symptoms that come along with it. I think that's a good overview to get us going, don't you think so, too? Yeah, let's take a break. I smell a break. Yeah. Well, in fact, I could just be done and we could just run a bunch of ads if you want to do it that way. I don't think everybody would like that. I think they'd rather hear us muddle through Albany. All right, we'll do a couple of messages from our sponsors, and we'll be right back. So when most people think of albinism, Chuck, what they're actually thinking of is a specific type called oculocutaneous albinism or OCA, which is the most prevalent form, but it's also the most distinct form as well. Yes. And this is if you've ever seen the musician Johnny Winner or Edgar Winner or a lot of times people with albinism will be cast in movies. Unfairly. A lot of times it's the bad guy because they have a unique look and it's Hollywood, and that's kind of what they do. They look different. They must be sinister. Exactly. And we'll get into that later on, too. But it's funny, though, I did see a couple of videos where people with albinism sat and watched movie characters of people with albinism and basically just sort of made fun of it. They were just like, oh, okay, another bad guy. That's a surprise, right? Yeah. But exactly. That's what you're talking about. That's OCA one is when you're talking about maybe someone with a pink or red eyes, the lack of pigment, the skin, that white, white hair. Right. So there's supposedly there's somewhere between four and maybe even nine different forms. But most scientists who study albinism recognize maybe four to five different forms. The rest of them are these really almost exotic, rare mutations that have occurred in these really isolated communities where albinism is actually common enough that it just is mutating into new forms. So most people say four to five forms, and if you're like the easy going type, you just call it type one, type two. If you're high strung like me, you probably call the most common one OCA one A. There's also OCA one B, OCA two, OCA Three and Four and so on. Actually, not so on. That's all of them. Right. But the thing that all of these, or at least most of them share in common is that there's either a total or complete lack of pigmentation. And then again, it affects the eyes because it's that Ocular cutaneous albinism. And so with this lack of pigmentation, that one that most people think of when they think of albinism, OCA one A, there's like, no pigmentation whatsoever, and everybody with albinism has those pigment forming cells, melanocytes. It's just for different reasons. Those melanocytes are not producing pigments to varying degrees, and in OCA one A, they're not producing pigment at all. Right, so like you kind of said at the beginning, if you see someone that has the red or pinkish eyes, it's those are the blood vessels that you're seeing because of the lack of pigment. Right. And that's what's also going to lead to those vision problems. Like you kind of hinted at. A lot more light is going to be entering your eye that's not being absorbed like it would if you have pigment in your eye. It's not being diffracted. At the very least, if you have albinism, you're probably going to be really sensitive to light. But it can also actually damage the retina as well. Right. Which is a big one, as we'll see. That's a huge problem, the idea that it's called photophobia, like deep sensitivity to light, and then also you just can't see as well. That in turn can lead to problems with learning and high school drops. It's like a cascading effect that all just begins with not enough pigment in the eye. It's really astounding with just something that seems kind of small has, like, the impact that it has. Yeah. And the great thing about most school systems these days is they make great efforts for any kind of kid in school that has any sort of a challenge to say, like, all right, well, we have something to accommodate for that now, but it's taken a long time to get to this point, and we still have a long way to go. But you can't imagine somebody with albinism in the what schooling must have been like when it was basically just like, sorry, you obviously can't keep up. You're struggling to learn to read, and we don't quite know what to do with that. Right. And they always punctuated with them. And by the way, everything your classmates are saying about you is true. Right. Hopefully teachers were at least kind about it, even back then. Maybe. But kids are always mean. Yeah, for sure. They're getting nicer, though. Are they? That's great, man. That's a huge improvement. Well, they are, but obviously there's still bullying and a lot of problems with that stuff. But the kids are getting better because I think we've proven as parents and educators that that can be taught that you start them at a young age, teaching about facial differences or just any kind of differences, and that we're all the same. It sounds very free to be you and me, but we're all the same on the inside. Right. And so teaching that stuff actually works. That's why it's frustrating when people push back on that kind of thing. Yeah. I don't want my kids to be nice. You can't make my kid be nice. It's a First Amendment issue. That was just a little soapbox moment for me. I like it. I put 1ft up on there with you, too. Oh, thank you. There's room, so there's room for you and me, Chuck. Yeah, Jerry's always up here. Of course she won't stop. It's a little much, if you ask me. So, Chuck, before we keep moving on, because I think we need to talk about that social aspect of albinism now. Sure. But before we hit that, I want to say there's one other thing. One of the big differentiators between the different types of albinism is, like we were saying, at what point in the process of creating melanin, the pigmentation is disrupted, means that you could actually produce some levels of pigment or some different types of pigment. Like, we have a couple of types of pigment that we produce as humans. You melanin. That's one. That's the money melanin everybody thinks about. It produces, like, the browns and everything like that. It gives you your tan. If you have brown or dark hair, that's all you melanin. But there's also pheomelanin, which is kind of a red, yellow pigment producer. And people can have types of albinism where you're producing no umelanin whatsoever, but plenty of yellow, red pheomelanin. Right. So that will adjust the different kinds of skin pigments you have. And sometimes you'll see people with albinism who have totally pale skin, but like a big shock of yellow gold hair, they're producing plenty of phao melanin. Just no umelanin. And those are the different, like the different gradations of albinism have to do with how much and what type of melanin can escape out into the skin, into the eyes, and into the hair. Yeah. And interestingly, birds and mammals are the only living things that have melanocytes, which are those cells that produce the melanin. So this is why you're not going to see a lot of bright colored mammals. Like, you're not going to see a lot of bright green or blue mammals. And then when it comes to birds, but you're like, wait a minute, why are humans basically shades of sort of brown? And why can birds be like pink and orange and red? It's for a lot of reasons. And we talked about some of these before. But one of the reasons is their diet. In the case of the flamingo, flamingo is white except for their diet, which turns them red or pink. Yeah. They can also produce certain kinds of chains of amino acids that produce blue or green. They can combine some of the pigments they produce with some structural stuff, like in the way that their feathers are built to create entirely new colors. There's a lot of stuff you can do, but it's typically birds. And the reason they think that birds are so colorful is because the visual acuity in the bird world is a little more important, even in the human world, as important as it is for us. But there's also another thing that melanin does is it can provide, like, structure and toughness. Like, if you look at the outer layer of fur and a cold dwelling animal, that's usually going to be fairly dark. And one of the reasons why it's dark is because it's also providing like, structure and toughness to that outer layer for not just preventing light to get through UV to get through. Right, but then you start scratching underneath. You get to that little baby soft, lighter colored undercoat. Even with my dog Charlie, who's got the longer hair, she has an outer coat and an undercoat. And that undercoat is different. It feels a little different. It looks a little different, yes. The exception to that, of course, is polar bears. They're not actually producing any kind of white pigment. I think it's the structure of their hairs, their clear hollow tubes. Yeah, they refract light so that all of the light comes back at you. Yeah, just google green polar bear if you want to freak your kids out a little bit. Yeah, it sounds susie green polar bear. While we're on that, though, we want to talk a little bit about the sort of social implications of having albinism. And it's interesting that it's much more common in parts of Africa, especially in SubSaharan Africa, but that's also where you can find some of the most stigma and people being ostracized, which is I don't know, it's really kind of sad that it seems like something that is more common might be accepted a little bit more, but that's not really the case, is it? No, it's not. And unfortunately, the reason why is because people with albinism in Africa are in some parts of Africa, we've learned over the years, you can't just be like in Africa because it's just so ridiculously different culturally and geographically, sure. But in some parts of Africa, I believe parts of Nigeria, if you have albinism, you are extraordinarily valuable. I think the body of a person with albinism is worth about $75,000. Oh, really? In places where people are living on, like, $6 a day for, like, medical research no, I know what you're talking about. For witchcraft. And sorcery they're considered the bone. There's more. So here's the problem. Not only are people with albinism subject to being ostracized and isolated, because they're different and they look different people, not just in Africa, but in other places where education is less prevalent and less standardized and science is less relied on, I guess there's just a lot of myth and lore surrounding albinism, and so people think that it's, like, contagious. Right? So you just want to stay away from those people because you don't want to catch it. And then all the way across the spectrum to their bones are made of gold dust. And if you get your hands on the cadaver of a person without albinism, you can create potions and sell them to people. And in the wholesale market, you would pay $75,000 for the corpse of a person with albinism. It happens. Like, people get murdered for their bodies because they have albinism, and it's a despicable practice, intrigue. But part of it is, like, figuring out how to get across to these large groups and populations, the science behind all this. And at the very least, it's not contagious. And at best, their bones are not filled with gold dust, so please stop chopping them up, kind of thing. Yeah. And as far as here in the United States, this is like, we talked about kids teasing or staring. As parents and educators, you should be armed, I think, with the barest bones of information, at least, to be able to say, oh, well, that is somebody with albinism, and that means their body doesn't produce pigment, and so their skin looks different than ours does. Right. And if your parents, you can just leave it at that. And that's really all you have to do. If you want to listen to this episode and get into melanocytes, knock yourself out. Sure, that's parenting plus, but at the very least, you should be able to describe it. And, like, I know when I was a kid, and this is not a knock on my parents, they were both smart people and teachers, but just scared to death of people with albinism. No, but they probably would not have known what to tell me. They probably would have said, oh, that's an albino, full stop. Steer clear of them. That's contagious. No, I don't think that either, but I just think we have a duty these days, like, to educate ourselves to the lowest level of understanding other people. Yeah. That's something that I've carried with myself for many years, is like, people didn't explain the why to me, and so they didn't seem to be purpose to anything. I couldn't totally come to appreciate the things that the reasons why we were doing things, the strategy to football, it was just get out there and make sure that person doesn't get past you, kind of stuff. No reason why. And that's like a stupid example, but it's a good case of it that nobody stopped and said, here's the grand picture, here's the grand scheme of things. And the more information I would have had, the more I would have appreciated life and probably appreciated other people, too. So I agree with you completely. I think that is a part and parcel with making the world a better place, is providing more information to kids, especially. Yeah. And again, this is slightly tangential and so boxy, but I think in our day, and certainly before our day as kids, there was a lot of just like, shut up and don't ask questions sort of attitude. Yeah, that's a terrible thing to do. All you should do is ask questions and get questions answered. My Lord. It's frustrating because I said so kind of thing, which is so prevalent when we were kids, as I understand it's, going the way of the dinosaur, which I think is great. It is, but boy, when you accidentally catch yourself saying it as a parent, it's like, oh, no, I'll be right back, I'm going to go flog myself. Right? Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of parent groups just waiting to flog you outside your door, too. Yeah, because I said so. Crowd yeah. They're like the Guilty Remnant. The Leftovers they just stand outside your house and smoke. Right. Which we're two episodes away from finishing, by the way. That happens tonight. That's great, man. Congratulations from all of the stuff you should know, listeners, I just have to say, and I knew this was the show that got progressively better and more bonkers, but, boy, what they're throwing down in season three. I am all over it. I don't believe I made it that far. What? Yes. I thought you said you wish you could go back and do it over again. Yeah, the first time, I don't think I realized that it stopped. They kept going after season one. Yeah, there were three seasons. Okay, well, good. I got some stick to watch. I got to reframe everything now. I watch this on your recommendation. So, Chuck, I feel like we can bite this up by saying society has a long way to go toward learning how to treat people with albinism equally. Agreed. Yes. But let's do that. All right, let's do that. And let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about what limited amount we know about what causes this right after this. All right, so we're back, we know and we've talked about this already that it's a recessive gene that causes albinism, but it's like, all right, so that's a recessive gene. This is like when you not off in biology class. Oh, when I woke up you wake up and you go, oh, okay, well, I know the answer is a recessive gene, but how does that happen? And the secret to it all is a little protein called tyrosinase. Right. How would you pronounce it? Just exactly like that. Okayinase, but that's how it's spelled tyrosinase. But Tyrosinase, Shirley, is the way that you say it, right? I think probably. So that's the one that is, like, the catalyst for basically everything that comes after to create melanin. Whether it's eumelanin or pheomelanin doesn't matter. Torocines is like, the beginning of it. And so in that OCA one A, the type of albinism where you just utterly lack pigmentation altogether, tarosinase is impacted. So when your torosenese is impacted, your melanin production just doesn't happen in your melanocytes, and therefore you have OCA one A albinism. That's right. And if that happens early on, that whole chain reaction is going to shut down, and that's when you're going to have the complete lack of pigmentation in the other forms. It might affect it at different stages along the way of that melanin creation. So that's why you might not be totally absent of pigmentation. Yeah. And again, there's slightly different processes that produce eumelanin and other processes that produce veomen. So any one of those things is a very complex, intricate production to create melanin. And so that means that there's a lot of different points where that process can break down. I just find that extremely fascinating. And then also one other thing I find fascinating. When you talked about autosomal recessive traits, did you mention that that means that two parents can both have the gene for albinism, but neither one has albinism, but they're considered carriers, and so they can pass it along or not pass it along to their kids? Well, yeah, and I think this is something that you would often see is two parents without albinism have a child with albinism, and someone might be like, well, how does that work? Well, it's just very easy because you have to have both parents, and if obviously these parents didn't have both of their parents that had that genetic mutation, then they're not going to have it. But it's interesting. It's one of those things where you sort of like the sharks bumping in the night. Did you say sharks first? Shark? I think I just say sharks. That's a whole different problem if that's bumping in the night, sharks bumping in the night. It's like, you probably wouldn't know this about yourself if you only had one if you were just a carrier, you know what I mean? Right. So you probably wouldn't find this out until you had a kid. Exactly. That's one reason why there's a lot of lower and myth around albinism and less educated areas. There's like a question of paternity like, this can't possibly be my kid. Sure. That kind of thing. But then on the same token, too, as far as passing it along, if you have albinism and you fall in love and reproduce with a person who doesn't have albinism but also isn't a carrier of albinism, your children won't have albinism. Right. You got to have both those parents. You got to have both those parents that have passed along both those needs, because, again, you can have siblings that don't have albinism. Sure. Because I think you have a 25% chance of getting albinism or of it being passed along to you. You have a 50% chance or 75% chance of it not being passed along. But there's a different combination of what's not passed along. Right, yeah. What I also thought was interesting was when Ed toward the end, started talking a little bit about in the animal kingdom and the fact that it's for sure a disadvantage if you're living in the jungle and you're an animal, because coloration is a big part of your camouflage and survival blending into your natural habitat as both a predator and a prey. So if you are an alligator or a gorilla with albinism, you're definitely at a disadvantage in the wild. I don't know that it's definitely in the wild because he said if you have a bunch of lab rats just sort of doing their thing, then it's really not going to affect them much at all. But we talked a little bit in the cave dwellers episode about these organisms, and I think reptiles that live deep in these. Caves that are essentially have no pigment and in there it doesn't really matter. And in fact, some of the vision stuff might be an advantage. Yeah, like the fact that you don't have pigments, like bouncing light and refracting it off. I guess basically keeping it from bouncing around means that you should be able to get more light, more visual information in very low levels of light. So that would be an advantage for sure. Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting. It is interesting. So I guess before we go, Chuck, we should talk about there's a lot of other conditions that can happen that have to do with pigmentation and melanin that really don't have anything to do with albinism. Which really kind of goes to show you like just how complex melanin production actually is. Yeah. And we talked recently, I don't know why, but we did mentioned Vital IGO recently. This is not the same thing as albinism. This is when you have those sort of very defined areas of your body that have no melanin. It is similar because it has to do with melanin, but not albinism. No. They think that there's either some sort of really bad sunburn mechanical insult, like something happened to your melanocytes mechanically, or you might have had some sort of chemical reaction and that whatever trauma happens to the melanocytes, it triggers your immune system to target them as foreign invaders. So they think now that vidiligo is some sort of autoimmune disorder. That's right. What else is there? There's poliosis, which I looked and no, it does not have anything to do with polio. Right. They miss title, this one. I think they really did, because it has nothing to do with it. But that's the one where someone will have like just a shock, like a little patch of white hair, just totally pigment free hair. Yeah, I know a couple of people that have that. The little like the white schwa. Remember John Hanson from Talk Soup? Yeah, he had the white schwa. Great example of I love that guy living with poliosis. That's right. Emily calls any kind of hair thing like that a schwa. I don't know why. No, that makes sense. I've heard it before, but I don't know what it means. I think it means exactly what it means. Right. I think she just means what? Like if I poof my hair up with a big like a pompadour, she would call that a schwa. Okay, I got you. I think no one outside my household really understands what it means. It's a tough of hair. Yeah, it's a tough OK. I don't think I realized that's what poliosis was. Yeah, that's what it is. What do you think it was? You thought it had to do with polio, didn't you? I totally did, actually. I did too, until I confirmed no, just terribly named. There's also Wardenberg syndrome. This is abnormality with the pigment in the hair and skin and eyes. But this is a congenital disease. Also not have anything to do with Albinism. Right. I think that's about it. There's piebaldism, you know the kind of piebald horses where there's a big white patch, usually like a large one sometimes on the chest. Beautiful. The type of force. It's actually a condition that humans can have as well. It's just that they bred a certain type of horse. They selected it in a certain type of horse called the piebald horse. You know, I have a tuxedo cat. I'm kind of curious about how that happens. I'm going to look into that. That's classy. Yeah, classy. Tuxedo cat. Well, that's it for albinism. That's it. If you want to learn more about Albinism, you should go out and do that. There's a lot to learn. And you could do worse than starting at Frontiers for Kids on their Albinism article, because it's a pretty good one. And then just go from there. And since I said just go from there, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. This is short and sweet. We got called out on something and whenever we get something wrong, we certainly like to and not just a correction on a fact or something, but when we get something wrong that we shouldn't have gotten wrong, then we like to call attention to it and we try and do better. Totally. This is from Natalie from California, wanting to start out with saying a big fan of the show. Found it during lockdown and made a big difference for my board and levels while working from home. But I was a bit disappointed, guys, listening to the Chow Chilla bus kidnapping as multiple times, you guys implied that not being able to spell means that you're not smart. And you're totally right, Natalie. I didn't even think about that. But Natalie says I'm an adult with Dyslexia and I cannot spell to save my life. In spite of this, I'm a highly intelligent, successful adult and it's fairly able to correlate ability to spell with overall intelligence and I expect more. And Natalie, you are totally right. And that is on us. And big apologies. We did not think that went through. No, indeed. We definitely weren't trying to throw any shade on people with Dyslexia at all. Of course not. But it's another thing, like we all learn as we go through life, and when you learn on the air, it can be a little embarrassing. Sometimes it's just a tad. That's what we do as a job. And so we take that. So was that from Natalie? Yeah. Thank you for that one, Natalie. We appreciate it. And if you have something you want to call us out on, we'll take it and you can address it to stuff. Podcast@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." | |
3fe72604-5461-11e8-b6d0-1f31d23bc10c | Selects: Composting: Nature's Most Interesting Process | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-composting-natures-most-interesting-proces | You may think composting is just a bunch of old banana peels rotting away into dirt but, friend, you're not looking closely enough. Inside that compost pile is a microcosmic universe doing some magical stuff. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode. | You may think composting is just a bunch of old banana peels rotting away into dirt but, friend, you're not looking closely enough. Inside that compost pile is a microcosmic universe doing some magical stuff. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode. | Sat, 28 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=240, tm_isdst=0) | 49304661 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody, its Josh. And for this week's select, I picked our episode on composting. You'll hear Chuck and me get super jazzed about earth science, gardening, invertebrates, all of our favorite things. I hope you enjoy it and I hope it inspires you to start composting or at least start pocket mulching. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh the man clarke. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and I think I neglected to say last time you did guest producer Noel is with us. That's right. So if you listen to the Shroud of Turin episode and you're like, man, that sounds great. Yeah, that was Noell. Thanks Noel. So today I've been replaying one of my favorite Simpsons jokes ever. Over and over in my head. I laughed already just hearing a joke. It was from one of the Halloween episodes when they did the Nightmare on Elm Street roof. This is old, old ones where Groundskeeper Willie was Freddie Krueger and he turned into, I think, like a shredder or a tractor or something and ran over people or something. Sure. And said, when I'm done, you're going to need to do a compost border dumb. Oh, wow. That is a bad joke. Yeah, it was really good. I mean, the Simpsons didn't get too puny, but that was a good one. Well, anything goes on a tree house before. Yeah. There's a bunch of cities that have kind of gotten woke to the idea that we should be recycling or composting our food. Did you know that? Sure. I saw a stat that said something like 40% of food gets wasted. But I got suspicious because I also saw that 40% of the stuff that goes to municipal landfills or trash is food waste. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's wasted food because I don't think you would count like, a banana peel as food waste. Food waste. No, because the box, they're not counting food packaging as food waste. No, but I think they're counting everything that has to do with food that could conceivably be eaten as wasted food, which is not the same as food waste. Okay. The point is, the legitimate stat that I saw just about everywhere is that if you took all the garbage that the United States throws away into a landfill, 40% of that is food waste. And I'm sure some of it is a whole cake. Some complete moron threw a whole cake away for no good reason. I was on a diet. Well, that's actually a pretty good reason, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. 40% of all that trash is food. The problem is you might say, well, who cares? Trash decomposes. That's great. That's true. It does decompose. But in the landfills that the United States uses, we make sure they're anaerobic oxygen doesn't get down there. So a whole different decomposition process takes place. And in the landfill, in anaerobic decomposition, methane is produced. And methane is bad news. Yeah. Methane is something on the order of 70%. Worse. I know there's a much more scientific way to put it, but it's 70% better than carbon dioxide as far as greenhouse gases go. Yeah. 70% more potent. How about that? Yeah. Okay. So you don't want methane. If you have to choose between methane and carbon dioxide, you want to go with carbon dioxide. And it just so happens that if you compost food waste, mostly carbon dioxide is produced, methane is not. So if you're diverting this food waste from landfill, there's a whole bunch of different stuff you're doing. Number one, you're saving all that 40% of the space for actual trash. So you're extending the life of your land. Sure. You're keeping all that methane from being produced. And as if it couldn't get any better, you are creating an amazing fertilizer that you can use. You could grow a tree out of a shoe. This fertilizer so good. The old shoe tree. Sure. Yeah. We danced around this a lot. You just referenced our and I don't like to toot our own horns a lot, but that landfills episode was great. Landfills. And don't forget the plasma incinerator one. Yeah, great. Basically any of our waste management ones are. Yes. What else? I think Gorilla gardening. We touched on this and a couple of others. We've mentioned composting, and to the extent where I thought we had done one on composting, but we had not until about five and a half minutes ago. And that's a guess. So if you write and say, like, it was eight minutes, Chuck, you're grounded. So, like you mentioned, I don't think these numbers are accurate anymore, but we generate, let's just say, a lot of millions of tons, hundreds of millions of tons of trash. And about 25% to 30% of that is recovered through recycling, which includes composting, which is good. But that number, if it was 70%, would be amazing. Does that include composting, that recycling number? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If it'd be 70, that would be great. Yeah. 90. Why not? Yeah, let's shoot for 90. Well, supposedly Seattle itself has a goal of something like 60% to 70% of all of its trash being recycled by the end of the year. Of course they do, because Seattle does it. Right. And they actually have compulsory, mandatory composting. Now you have to compost if you live in the city of Seattle. Why don't I live there? I don't know. I don't know. I asked myself that a lot. You know, Emily and I went for two shows ago on that lovely spring weekend. Oh, it was gorgeous. And we stayed extra in Seattle. And after, we were like, we're moving here. That's it. It's a great town. I've said it before on the show. Dogs and bars. That was all it took. Dog bartenders. But again, dogs playing poker. Again, it's easy to fall in love of Seattle. On a perfect weekend in April. Yeah, I hear it rains there a lot, though. I'd still live there. It's a great place. And you know what? You may see us again this year in Seattle. Tease. Tease. You're such a tease. All right, so composting is great for 1000 reasons, but one first and foremost is that it's not hard to do and it's not expensive to do. No. If you just want to be. And there are many different levels of composting, from big city programs to the home farmer that takes it super seriously. If you just want to lessen the impact a little bit on your landfill, your local landfill, feel like you're doing the right thing and get a little bit of nutrient rich goodness, fertilizer to use, you can have just a little, small, little composting operation going on at your house. Yeah. This is all you need. Organic waste. And we don't even mean something that's like organic. We mean like organic, meaning it's composed mostly carbon. It was once alive at one point. Right? Yeah. And I made a poopy noise, which you can't use. Poop? No, that's nice. Soil. That's the opposite of what I should have done. What's a banana sound? That's a banana sound. Right? You need soil, you need water, you need air or oxygen. Right. So the organic waste is the stuff you're going to have broken down, which in this case, in the case of a compost pile, is food the soil. Well, partially, sure. But no, it's food for the things that are in the soil. Yes. Right. It's an energy source. Yes. And nutrient source for what's in the soil. So you add soil. When you're adding soil, you're basically adding starter culture to the compost. What you're doing is grabbing microbes from, say, in your yard and putting them on the compost pile and say, Dinner's on, boys. They eat and poop. Yes, but you don't want to poop in it. You need a little bit of water, like you said, to keep it moist. But you don't want to keep it over wet because microbes like slightly moist soil and then air. Because, again, this is really important. You can let your compost pile degrade anaerobically, but it's going to produce methane, which is bad for the environment, bad for your neighbors, bad for your neighbors, bad for you. It's going to stink. It might blow up. Who knows? You don't want to smoke near what's called a passive compost pile. So you want to just introduce oxygen. And all this sounds very complicated. It's not. It's hitting it with your hose. And by that I mean spraying water on it with your hose. Just realize you can get with your hose, too. It's like turning it over. Right. The pitchfork to add oxygen. It's as simple as that. Yeah, it's really easy. So what you're going to end up with the end, like we said, is really fertilizer. But it's called humus. Don't call it hummus. No, that's different. That's two M, right? This is just one M. And those little microorganisms in there, they're going to break this stuff down. They're going to eat it, they're going to poop it out and they're going to multiply. And we'll talk about the critters a little more later. But they're going to be different critters along the way that eat those critters than critters that eat those critters. Right. And it's going to get really hot up in there. It might steam, then it's going to cool back down. It's going to get smaller. And it's just like this little micro environment. It is really neat. There's actually a food web in there. There's a lot of physics and chemistry that's going on. It is very neat. I'm fascinated by it, too. But the upshot of composting is that you're taking something and it's being broken down into its constituent parts so that it can be reused by plants and the whole circle of life can start over again. Yeah, you're sort of just accelerating the natural process of rot. You're optimizing it. Yeah. Like you mentioned a passive composter, which is to say lazy hippies. You could just throw all that junk out of your window if you wanted, in a big pile and throw some grass clippings on and throw your fall leaves on there. Just leave it there. And that thing will eventually compost itself well, again, it will produce methane. You'll blow up. Or you can turn it every now and then and maybe avoid that. No, I think that makes it an active pile. Well, slightly active pile then, right. I don't mean like every other day just to avoid methane maybe, but that would still technically be an active pile. It'd be a poorly managed active pile. Yeah, slightly active. Poorly managed. I'm serious. That's what they call it. I know. Okay. We like to make up our own names for things. I didn't know you were going to cease that in year nine. I got you. Sorry. We'll call that the dooby pile. Okay. No, it's called active management. I just wanted to make sure that we got it on the record. So the big goal here is to reduce your waste, they say in this article, ultimately will save you tax money because your landfill won't. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah. I mean, don't count on seeing any tax breaks coming anytime soon, but that got William F. Buckley's attention, probably. So how do you do this? Let's say you want to start composting. There's a 12345 step process to get this thing going. Okay, well, let's talk about them. First thing you want to do is just pick out the place you want to do it, right? Because it's a bit of a mess. It doesn't have to be necessarily, but depending on your neighbors, they might be like, well, great, I'm glad you started an unsightly pile of kitchen rubbish and food waste that I can see from my deck. Thanks a lot for that. So that's something you want to keep in consideration, apparently. Even if you do have a very well managed active pile, what would you call that? I'm not making a funny name. No more jokes, ruin. It still may stink here or there. Sure. So you want it kind of away from the house, but not so far away that if you're feeling lazy, you're not going to go out and tend to it on a daily or every other day lead basis. Yeah. And if you have that much land, you have a compost pile a mile from your house. Good for you. Yeah, sure. You got some acreage. There might be some local rules either from your HOA, heaven forbid if you have to belong to one of those, or maybe just your municipality might have rules and regulations. Yeah. So check with them first. Sure. That's what everyone does when they start a compost pile. They go down to City Hall and say, tell me the rules and regulations surrounding composting in my yard. I think the first thing everyone does is start throwing their eggshells out the window. Sure. That's how it always starts. Right. It's like, I'm tired of these things being in my trash. They recommend downwind because, like you said, it might stink a bit. Sun is good in a way, but you don't want it baking in the sun all day. No. Because it'll dry it out. Remember, you want it to be kind of moist. Yes. And the sunlight can actually dry it out. Sure. So you want apparently the best place to put it is under a deciduous tree. Good spot. Yeah. Because in the wintertime, there's no leaves on the tree, so the sun is going to keep it warm when it's cold. But during summer it's going to be shaded by the tree so it won't dry out. It's just perfect. It is. Deciduous tree equals love. Wind is good to provide a little air, but you don't want it blowing, scattering the stuff all over the place, drying it out again. Right. No. Good. What else? Drainage. Don't start one in that old baby pool that you don't want to throw out, especially if your baby is in there. Yeah. You want good drainage. Generally, you either build a bin we'll talk about this stuff, actually, right now. But it's off the ground. Sure. It's on legs. Yeah. Although you can't have a pile. Right. But generally you want to build a bin or buy a bin. Right. And those things sit off the ground. Right. Because of drainage. That's part of it, for sure. Yeah. You also want dirt rather than, say, like a concrete pad or something like that. Yeah. Don't compost in your driveway. It's not a good idea. As far as structures go, like you said, you can go buy one. They're not very expensive, from what I understand. Right? Yeah. It depends on the size. You can also say, go buy some cinder blocks and build something like that. Sure. But basically you can cut compost structures into two. There's a single bin and there's a three bin system. So in the single bin system, you put new stuff on top, new banana peels. This is what I think of when I think composting. You know banana peel? Sure. Yeah. You put new stuff on top and then you take a pitch fork or shovel or something like that and you work it in to the compost and at the bottom of the structure, so it's open when you're walking up to it. The finished compost will accumulate at the bottom. And the reason it accumulates at the bottom is because it's a finer grain. Yeah. And that's it. Single bin, new stuff at the top, easy peasy. Stuff that's been processed in the middle, stuff that's finished in the bottom. And it will just naturally kind of separate like that. Yeah. And when we're talking structure like that, if you want to build one, build a wood frame, and it's like got chicken wire walls and a chicken wire bottom, and that gives you the air. And if you got something to collect it underneath, it's going to fall. You know, when it's small enough. Right. Some other stuff might fall, you may need to add it back in. But with the three bin system, you've got well, you've got three bins, you've got the starter stuff, you got the once it starts to break down, little stuff, and then you have the more finished product. Right. And you have to actively manage that system. Yeah. That system sounds unnecessarily difficult. Kind of like it. Oh, you're a three bin guy. Well, we're about to get into this for real. We've been lazily composting for a while, but we're doing our whole backyard. We're getting rid of our grass, basically. Oh, yeah. 100% of it. What are you going to do? Compost mulch and beds and plants and herbs and zero escape cacti in and all that. No cacti. We do have a palm tree. We've had that forever though. Yeah. Just getting rid of the grass, basically, because it takes up so much water. It's not good grass to begin with, and I'm not the best about cutting it. Lawn mowers are terrible. Plus you don't water enough. You never let a quarter inch of water accumulate. Exactly. Yeah. It'll look nicer. So part of this and this company that's doing it is not just a landscaping company. They're a bunch of hippies. So they're designing it in such a way that it feeds itself. And part of that is composting. Got you. Anyway, long way of saying we're going to start for real composting very shortly. And you're going with the three bin structure? I don't know, I think I'm going to build it. Well, it's the structure. It Emily tells me to build. Okay, it's the easiest way to say it. Got you. Yeah, but if you buy one, like you were saying, there's all different kinds. Just look it up online or go to a hardware store, and many of them will look like a big barrel on legs, and it literally turns, like, has a crank on it where you can turn this thing in circles. It's old timing, so you don't have to use a pitch fork at all. Right. You don't have to must your hands or your hair. It's like a bingo spinner, but with banana peel. Have you ever played bingo? Like legit bingo in a room with hundreds of people? Not hundreds. Well, more than, like, you and yummy. Yes. Like a bingo parlor. Is that what they're called? Yeah. I've actually gone to a couple of senior retirement homes and helped out with bingo. Wow. And that's a pretty cool experience, actually, because do you run the bingo? You just play qualified to run the bingo. Right. Just walk around and point out if somebody missed one that they called, that kind of thing. But did you want to talk about taking it seriously? Do they? Oh, my God. And then you have to be a certified bingo master to run the show. Yeah. And they'll tell you to hurry up and shout if you're not loud enough or fast enough or going too fast. So the point is not to have fun. No, the point is to win. Wow. What do they win? They have prizes. Yeah. Nothing much, usually, but I think you can play bingo and casinos for thousands and thousands of dollars. Yeah. Usually old folks homes don't. Sure. There's not thousands of dollars prizes like honey bunny. Right? Exactly. All right, well, let's take a break here after we have talked structure and we'll talk a little bit about what kind of junk you want to throw in that pile. All right, Chuck, so we're talking what you want to throw in the pile, right? You got your bin. Either a triple three banger got your site. Or a single. You got your site. You bribed your neighbor to look the other way. Bribed your neighbor. Exactly. You bought a goat. Oh, man, talk about green living. My neighbor has goats now, like, five of them. Are they loud? No. Oh, that's great. Every once in a while, I hear them, but it's a joy to hear. So it's not like a rooster. Do you wake up and look out and say, morning, Satan? No. Well, goats are one of my favorites, so it's kind of nice to have them around. Are they baby goats or adult goats? No, they're big ones. I mean, she got them to maintain the property because she was tired of cutting. I guess she did want to zeroscape it, so she bought goats. Right. Anyway, it's awesome. Kitchen waste. Josh, that's what you want to throw in there? Well, yeah, that's the first one that's the one that everybody says, that's why you compost, right? Yeah. And yeah. Banana peels. Everybody knows that. But did you also know you can compost apple cores in orange rinds? You can also eat apple cores. Yeah. You believe there is no such thing as a core, right? Yes. Because there's not same people who leave their apple cores left over. They can compost those things. Those are the easy ones. You can also do coffee grounds. Yeah, that's a good one. Paper filters. Throw that filter and all in there. Okay. So let's just say I ate maybe a whole pizza to myself. I've got a couple of napkins loaded up. What do I do with those? Chuck I think you can throw those napkins in there. Josh yes. Isn't that crazy? It is crazy. Newspaper. Yeah. Corn cobs. If you still read a newspaper, if you get your news on the Internet, throw your laptop in there. Watermelon, rye yeah. Seeds, leaves, the butt end of the asparagus that no one cooks. Throw that junk in there. You can also do yard waste, too. Sure. Right. So you've got grass clippings, which we'll talk about in a second. We got a couple of warnings. As far as grass clippings goes, not too much, but, like, let's say you're raking leaves or something like that. There's some leaves on there. Yeah. Good, crunchy brown ones. And you can also throw, like, trimmings from shrubs, if you trim your woody shrubs. Okay. The key here is this. Chuck. You want to cut all this stuff up in small bits. Yeah. Don't throw a whole corn cobb in there. You can no your compost pile. Just throw it right back out. Yeah, it'll just spit it right back out. Right. Very funny. It'll make a burping noise. Yeah. They say to shred the corn cob. I don't have a corn cob. Shredder. I don't either. I've never thought about that. I wouldn't waste my blender blade on chopping up corn cobs. I think the point is that's breaking into little pieces sure. You can break it into little pieces, though. Yeah. You probably cut a corn cup up. Yeah. And you can also, like, you can take all this stuff and chop it. Anything you can put in a smaller pieces, the better. Because, as we'll see, what you're really doing is you're not just breaking it up. You have to look at it like what you're doing is increasing the surface area. The more microbes can work on it at once. Yes. I know you hate broccoli, but I hate broccoli. You cut the little florets off and you've got that big green broccoli stalk. Cut that thing up as small as you can. Set it on fire. You have patience for. And throw that junk in there. Yeah. Basically channel your inner anal chef. Gross. You remember him? The anal chef? Yeah. Was that a real thing? Yeah. Live Bill Hartman. No, I don't remember the anal retain of Chef. Oh, okay, I forgot the retainer part. Yes, I remember that qualifier. I don't get that joke. Mommy, remember the annual rotation of chef? Yeah, I do remember that. Now he's like, start to if he was dicing, like, green peppers and one of them was bigger than the rest, he'd just be like, okay, well, you want to take those chunks and you want to put them into a paper towel. And then you want to fold that up. And then you put that into some aluminum foil. You fold that up and you put that in a paper bag and you roll it up, and then you staple it, and then you throw it away. Boy, man, what a still makes me sad. So you mentioned newspaper earlier. If you live near the ocean and you've got your hands on some seaweed or some kelp, you can rinse that stuff off, right? So you don't want all that salt content in there. No, but it's really good and nutrient rich if you rent that off and put it in your compost pile. Yeah, and it's also good for you to eat, too. I know I sound nuts, but just eat that stuff. What do you mean? People eat sweets. So good for you. Yeah, sawdust. You know I eat that. No, but like, I'm building my compost bin. I can put that sawdust back in it. How about that? Yeah, pretty neat circle of life, baby. What should not you compost? Night soil. Which is poopy soil. Yes, poop cat. You don't go, like, a big dump of dumps on the file. No, I know. You want to. No, that's not good. No. Disease garden plants. That's a big one. Yeah. Some of this stuff, though, as we'll find, doesn't quite make sense. But it's just good to err on the side of garbage in, garbage out. Except with compost. If you put garbage garbage in, then it's going to be really bad. If you put good, healthy garbage in, it's going to come out is quite good. So you don't want to put any disease plants in there. Invasive weeds are another one, too. Yeah, but it says you can also put weeds in there, so I guess you just need to figure out which ones are the bad ones. Yeah. So this specifically calls out buttercups, morning glory, and quack grass. I'm quite sure that there's plenty of seeds that wouldn't survive the composting process, but apparently these do. So stay away from the quack grass. Yeah, I think that was the big mantra at Woodstock. Sure. It's a gateway drug. Don't have the yellow sunshine or the quack grass. It was the brown acid. Brown acid, which I mean, who wants brown acid? And what about you're talking about kitchen stuff? What about meat and dairy? Okay, that's controversial. It is, because Emily has taken classes and they were like, no, don't use any of that. Yeah, that's like animal cells and fats in particular, they putrefy. They don't decompose and putrefaction makes some stinky stuff. And I think it can also generate a lot of disease bearing pathogens. So I was surprised to see this article say, put it in there. Well, and they kind of said in this article, if you're really heavily managing this thing, you can do it. But I don't know. I've just heard don't, they said turn it into a slurry, which is gross. I don't want to see Freud and Rich's blender at home steak fat slurry with corncob bleedings on it. But he said whip it up into a slurry and as long as it's a good, hot, actively managed pile, it won't be a problem. I'm going to go ahead and say, I don't think you should do that. Okay. I don't know what to do with the animal leavings, but I don't think you should compost it. All right? It might make sense to you to say, hey, I have an outdoor fire pit. I bet that would be great in my compost. Incorrect. Although this specifically says charcoal ashes, I think that's any kind of charred ashes yeah, like burnt wood is called charcoal. So are you sure? Because I know what you just said was true, but supposedly the entire Amazon basin and I learned this from The Greatest Book of All Time 1491 by Charles C. Mann. The entire Amazon basin was a managed forest that the indigenous peoples down there had made completely fertile and feaconed by instead of slash and burn, they were using slash and char techniques. And there was way more carbon locked into the charred tree stumps and there was the ashes, so it became more fertile. So I have a question about that one. I'm going to back off of my determined stance because, I don't know, it would make sense if it was coal charcoal briquettes because they have cement and all sorts of chemicals and junk in them. But if it's charred wood or wood ash, I wonder. All right, well, somebody let us know. Charles C. Mann, tell us the pesticide treated plants. You know my stance on pesticides, period. Sure, don't use them. But if you do, definitely don't put that stuff in there because your whole thing here is you want a more or less organic compost pile right in the end. And so one of the things that people love about compost is it actually is organic. And we're going to explain how I didn't know this until we did this research, but we'll explain how because we are going to go through the process that your compost pile undergoes right after this. All right. I did something we rarely do, which is look something up as we're podcasting because it just sounded lazy to be like, oh, we don't know this one. Gardens alive.com says, wood ashes are so strongly alkaline that it doesn't take a lot to upset the balance in the pile and stop the. Processing. You can add a very small amount of wood ash from your fireplace or wood burning stove, but apparently not much. Okay. I think you're kind of right in that it's not completely foreboding. Right. But it sounds like too much is not a good thing. I think that's what Freudian was just saying. Like, don't even mess with it. Okay. So why bother? Put in animal fats instead? Well, and that's what the person from Gardens Alive was saying, is it's so little that it's not really going to make a difference? And if you're trying to get rid of it in a different way right. She's like, It's not really going to matter. But it raises a great question, Chuck. Why in the name of all things holy, would it matter what the alkalinity is of your compost pile? And I'll tell you why. It's a chemistry experiment. It is. It's a chemistry experiment. It's also a biological experiment. You have a microcosm growing there, and there's actually really easy things you can do to optimize this and basically create a zanadou paradise for the microbes and primary and secondary and tertiary consumers of this stuff that you're putting in there to break down so that they just have the greatest life that any invertebrate or microbe ever had. All right, should we talk chemistry a bit and come back to just the management and stuff? All right. What you're really talking about here, for an ideal composting scene, you need a disco ball, right. And you need a proper CN ratio, which is carbon to nitrogen ratio. And depending on how wonky you want to get if you want to start measuring things, you can do that. But from what I gather, just try and do a lot to a little about 30 to one carbon to nitrogen. Right. And eyeball it. And the rule of thumb is this if it's green and recently deceased and by green, like, a nice banana peel would qualify as this. Right. Pliable and green, or, again, recently deceased, it is high in nitrogen. Right. If it's brown and dried, it's high in carbon. So you want to actually, when you're adding the compost, you want to just kind of layer this stuff in about those ratios, 30 to one. And there's actually tables like, if you're big time into this, there are tables out there that tell you just about exactly the carbon and nitrogen ratio in each individual thing. But what we said earlier, you want to avoid grass clippings. This is why. Because they're too high in nitrogen. Right. And what happens when you have too much nitrogen? It's bad. Right. It makes your pile stinky. Yeah. Is that where the methane starts creeping in? That actually leads to ammonia gas. Okay. Right. But you also don't want too much carbon either, Chuck. Yeah. Because carbon and nitrogen carbon is like the building block, and it's an energy source for these microbes. Nitrogen is essential to their growth and their metabolic activity as well. But when they have this in these concentrations, that's when they flourish. Yeah. And the other problem with carbon, too, is just that it breaks down so slowly. Well, it depends on the source. Yeah, that's true. But generally, a lot of the carbon sources, like newspaper and corn cobb and stuff like that, it's just a much slower process. Right. So they have much tougher structural support in their cells. They have structural integrity. Exactly. They need to have a good saying that rhymes. Like, if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. Sure. I thought you were heading toward that. I was just kind of like on the edge of my seat. No, like if it's green, I walked right past it. It's brown. Maybe there is one that we don't know. Or maybe someone can write one. Like a creative listener. I'd love to hear. I'll bet we get a bunch of those. All right. Oxygen. If you're talking if we're talking ratios. And again, you can walk out as much as possible. But the good news is about your compost piles, it's not like it needs to be like the oxygen that you need walking around to breathe, I think 21% in the atmosphere. Yeah, that's what we have going on. It can get by these aerobic microbes at as low as 5%. Yeah, that's cutting it close. That's cutting it close. They say try to hover somewhere around ten or up. Right. How do you measure that? You don't. You just aerate your pile, and it's fine by either turning it, or you can do whole PVC. And I guess it brings us kind of to the management part. Sure. You don't just sit there unless you want to have it totally pass a pile. And who wants that? You have to manage this thing either every day or every other day. Turn it like we were saying. Sure. Either with a little crank, if you've got a handy little barrel unit, or with a pitch fork, or they call it a composting fork in here. It's pretty fancy. Probably the same thing. It's the same thing as a pitchfork, except, like, $50 more. You want to water it some. But again, do you want to give watering advice? You don't want it for me. You don't want it to be soaking wet. No, you want it to be moist. Yeah, damp. People hate that word. So we'll say damp. And again, I mentioned the perforated PVC pipe. Second help. It says you can avoid turning it by having those pipes. I would still turn it. I would too, just to mix it up. Right? Yeah, but putting PVC pipes throughout your pile would make it really difficult to turn. Well, you can pull them out. I guess you could, but getting them back in is a real pain. You can stick them back in. Another way to get to introduce oxygen is earthworms. Oh man, this is where I go crazy. Oh yeah. We have a lot of worms on our property because there's a lot of worms in Georgia. Yeah. We did a great episode on Earthworms, remember? Yeah. And every time I find them, I pick them up, I show them to Emily and she immediately says, throw it in the garden. Sure. And that's because we weren't composting heavily. Now it's going to be throwing in the compost file. Sure. But these guys are great because they naturally, I mean, they do a lot of things, but one of the things they do is naturally aerate by just tunneling through that stuff. Yeah. So earthworms and then worms in general are probably the most important non microscopic resident in your compost pile because they do so much. So worms, especially earthworms and most types of nematodes, they actually go in and eat a lot of the stuff that's in the compost pile. A lot of the food waste. Right. Or organic waste. And in doing so, they break it down. And as they break it down, they make it easier for the microbes to digest themselves. Should we start with the microbes? Yeah. Okay. So again, this compost pile, when you add food waste to the pile and add soil, you're introducing energy source to energy consumer. Okay. Yes. And at the base of this is microbial life bacteria mostly. But the bacteria go to town, they start eating this stuff and the smaller it is, the more service area there is, the more the bacteria can eat. And they actually take the nutrients out of this and use it for cellular respiration, which is why they need oxygen, because they take oxygen and combine them with the carbon and they create ATP, which they use as an energy source to power their cells and live in frolic and play. And in doing so, they create carbon dioxide. That's right. So as they're doing this, they're actually breaking the stuff down from what you'd recognize as a banana peel. Closer and closer to that finished humus product. Yes. So you got bacteria and they're a big part of it. And depending on the phase that the compost pile is in, there will be different kinds of bacteria in your compost pile. Yeah, and it's not just bacteria. There's fungi doing lots of work. We mentioned nebatotes, you're going to eventually get mites in there and slugs, you've already thrown your worms in some millipedes doing some action. Right. All those cute little legs. And overall, these are known as primary consumers. Some are all of them primary consumers. Well, they're listed, okay, by this person who made this fancy chart. So then above that, Chuck, you've got the secondary consumers secondo. And those are the predators of the primary consumers, right? Yeah. And then you have tertiary consumers. They're the predators of the secondary consumers. And so you put all this together and what you have is a food web if microbes breaking the stuff down, worms and stuff, doing the same thing in some ways. And then other predators, different graduated levels of predators, preying on the smaller animals to keep their population in check and to keep everything in a perfect balance so that it's as efficient as possible. And eventually a great white shark comes along the whole pile, thanks to a sharknado. What gets me, though, the best part of all this to me is that if you look at the lifespan of a compost pile from brand new to finished humus, from banana peel to humus yes. It forms a bell as far as the temperature gradient goes, right? Yeah. It's really kind of cool. So the first stage is the mesophilic stage. Temperatures get up to, I think, 40 deg Celsius. I can't remember what that is in Fahrenheit height. Yeah, we'll go with Celsius. Okay. So it's warmish and then as the cellular respiration mounts and builds and more and more bacteria are born and start eating and carry this cellular respiration out, the byproducts are CO2 and heat. And heat starts to accumulate in the compost pile, so much so that it gets up to something like 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, which is like 100 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. And it's hot. At this point, your organisms are going to change. You're going to have thermophilic. These are little heat loving critters and they move in because it's nice and warm. They're snowbirds, they're desert dwellers, and they like it when it's warm. But here's the thing, is you don't want it to get too hot. So you want to continue to aerate and keep that temperature in check. What you want is that natural bell to happen on its own. Right. So the mesophilic bacteria die off or they go kind of dormant as it enters the thermophilic phase. And then after the thermophilic phase ends, the reason it ends is because they've eaten up all of the stuff that's there to eat and only the hard stuff is left over. And so the thermophiles go away and some of the mesophiles come back and new stuff comes in, like ten of my seats, which are kind of like a weird fungi. Bacteria cross and they break down like the really hard, woody, shrubby stuff, and they finish it off. And this third phase is called the curing phase, right? Yeah. And at the end of all of it, you have this great nutrient rich hummus. Humus. But in the middle of that, when it gets really hot, it gets so hot, Chuck, that pathogens that can make you sick, that can make animals sick, that can make plants sick, are actually killed off in the face, which is why when you get your hands on compost on humus, it's organic. Yeah. It's been basically treated naturally to rid itself of parasites, pathogens, all sorts of bad stuff. And all that's left is the nutrients that have been broken down in the process that a plant can use very easily. And again, the circle of life starts over again. Yeah. And I mentioned sun earlier. It can dry it out, but if it gets over 65 Celsius, it's going to kill off so many microbes, it's going to really slow down your process. Right. So that's another reason you turn it and again, don't have direct sunlight, but it's going to keep that temperature where it does its thing naturally. Right. Where you don't want to put a heat lamp on it. Just want to keep it moist, turn it over and let it do its thing. And you might come out there on a chilly morning, there might be steam coming off of that sucker. And dude, that's when you just like you go, hot dog. Yes. Hot diggity dog. And you go inside and you eat a banana and you throw it on the pile. Yeah. All right, so when is it all over? This is why I love earth science. Yeah. It's really amazing because it requires a little bit of human management, but then you kind of just step away and say, do your thing. Yeah, it's really neat. When is it over? Well, you can tell. There's a few ways of being able to tell. The temperature starts to go down if it's below 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it's out of the thermophilic phase. Yes. And it's now into the mesophilic phase. This says that it's probably done. I disagree. I think you probably want it even cooler than that. Because the longer you let it cure. The more diverse the microbes inside are going to be. The better the soil that you use to amend it with is going to be sure temperatures. Wine. One of it is just eyeball it. And if it's about 50% decomposed. Like if you still see clearly a banana peel. Then it's not done. Right. You don't want to recognize this stuff as food at this point, or an eggshell or whatever. And is it smaller? If it's been reduced by 50% to 75% and it's dark brown or black and crumbly and it looks kind of like soil, then you're cooking with gas. My dad used to say the texture did you say smoother crumbly? Yeah. What about the smell? Well, it shouldn't stink bad at this point. No, it should smell earthy. And actually, one of my favorites, the actinumye sights, the actinomy seats. Okay. They are the reason that soil and dirt has its smell. It's those guys, they give it its earthy smell. Isn't that cool? Yeah. And I think we didn't mention, you know, that it's doing well along the way. If it stopped smelling like, it doesn't just stink the whole time. Right. And it's not going to smell earthy. The soil that you add will smell earthy, but when you grab a handful of humus, it should just fall through your fingers. It should be the closer to black, the better. Yeah. And it should smell like everything associated with earth. Should smell like the word earth. That's what it should smell like. You'll understand what earth smells like? Yeah. They said peat moss. If none of this makes sense, go to your local hardware store or lawn and garden center and smell the peat moss. Exactly. So now that it's done, you've got your wonderfully natural fertilizer. Use it. Put it spread it out in your garden, spread it out around your trees. Throw it in your yard, spread it around your naked body and run around your yard if you want to. It's got a dooby pile or quack grass. Yeah. Stay away from that stuff. It's basically like the easiest way to put it without getting too scientific is it's going to make everything better. Right. It's going to increase soil microbes. It's going to increase nutrients and enhance them. It's going to improve the PH and chemistry of your soil, your yard. It's good soil structure. And again, what you've just done is taken stuff and had it broken down into its components, unlocked it for your plants to use. So your plants are going to say, thank you, brother. Pretty amazing. Yeah. Some people create a lot of it and sell it, but mainly people do this to just use around their house. Yeah. And increasingly, towns are starting to do curbside composting, pick up food waste pickup where you got trash, recycling bin, food waste bin, appeals. Right. That's it. All right. Go forth and compost. Yes. If you want to know more about composting, you can type that word in the search bar@housetofours.com. Cornell actually also has a really great site about. Composting. If you want to know more about the science of it, we're very excited about it. I love that site. And since I said Cornell, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this child life specialists. We had a couple of these that rode in. Remember we talked about this in the pain scallops, and we kind of surmised what it was, and it turns out we're right. And by the way, we heard from paramedics doctors, quite a few people, about the worst pain. Yeah. You don't want a long bone fracture. Yeah. Almost 100% of them said a broken femur is like the worst pain you can experience. And should we say why? Yes, go ahead. Several reasons. Right? Right. Because apparently it's a very sensitive area, but also because without that structure, your muscles start spasming, which just rocks the whole thing back and forth even more, and then, like, fragmented bone, hitting nerve and all kinds of badness. Yeah. So steer clear of that. All right, so we heard from two. I'm going to read the one, but I'm going to shout them both out. Hey, guys. Very excited to hear you mentioned ChildLife specialist during a recent episode of Pain Scales. As a child life specialist myself, I thought we'd take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about our profession. You are right. Chuck a Child Life Specialist we help kids deal with being hospitalized. That's really the essence of our job. We support children and families throughout stressful situations such as hospitalizations, using our knowledge of child development and play to facilitate coping. Child life Specialists provide children with developmentally appropriate education about diagnoses and treatments, preparation and support for procedures, and opportunities for normalization and play. What a great job. Seriously. I can't think of too many jobs that are more rewarding than that. Seriously. We also provide support for siblings and provide legacy building and memory making in end of life situations. Our profession is very rewarding. Josh, you are right. She predicted you would say that. And I love going to work every day. To become a CLS, you must have a bachelor's or master's degree in child development or a related field, complete a 640 hours ChildLife internship and pass a national certification exam. You can visit www.childlife.org to learn more about it. Thanks for what you guys do. You've made all my road trips interesting. And thanks for spreading the word about child life. Maybe you can do an entire episode on our profession in the future. She said okay. And that is Natalie Valentine and also a big shout out to Amanda Butler from Auburn University, who does that there. Thanks for writing in, ladies. It sounds like it's a really great job. Yeah, thanks to you both for that. And thanks for everybody who has anything to do with making kids who are hospitalized feel better. Hats off to you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to Stephyseno.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us a good old fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with some good old country goodness, and 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." | |
96cc256a-440c-11e8-82c5-c3cfeaca02e6 | PT Barnum: More Complicated Than You've Heard | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/pt-barnum-more-complicated-than-youve-heard | When your life is as outsized as the World’s Greatest Showman PT Barnum it’s pretty easy to - you know - gloss over the grimmer aspects when you turn it into an uplifting musical movie. But the way to understand a person is to look at them, warts and all. | When your life is as outsized as the World’s Greatest Showman PT Barnum it’s pretty easy to - you know - gloss over the grimmer aspects when you turn it into an uplifting musical movie. But the way to understand a person is to look at them, warts and all. | Tue, 08 May 2018 14:46:48 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=14, tm_min=46, tm_sec=48, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=128, tm_isdst=0) | 56042990 | audio/mpeg | "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 small, 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. 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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com. 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 Jerry. Hello. Jerry's got a top hat on. I know. I don't know why. I don't know. She's trying to be all Mr. Monopoly or PT. Barnum. Yeah, I forgot he wore a top hat. Allegedly. Oh, no, he did. I saw a picture of it. Yeah. Hugh Grant certainly did. Hugh Grant. Hugh Jackman. Hugh Laurie. I think it's Hugh Laurie. No, it's Clive Owen you're thinking of. Yeah, hugh Jackman, man. Where's that top hat like a champ? He does. I don't know how much you went on the Internet for this one, because this is a pretty comprehensive article, but The Greatest Showman really set the Internet on fire, man. And it really brought out a lot of people saying, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes. This is the very definition of the word fantasy. Yeah, it seemed like that movie can be best described as a musical whitewashing in every sense of that word. So let's destroy it. Yeah. I mean, after reading this, I didn't think, like, man, PT. Barnum, what a complete a hole. No, it's just a lot more complicated than that and get a lot of stuff that you just shouldn't just pass over because you can't figure out lyrics to what rhymes with racism. Yeah, he was definitely an enigma and seems like he did some good. But also, he was a hustler man, for sure. So this is what I didn't fully understand until researching this, Chuck. He's known as The Greatest Showman. Right. But there were plenty of other showmen out there at the time. Yeah, which makes sense, because you have to have something to be compared to to be the greatest. Right, but I guess I just assumed he was, like, the first or the original. No, he was not the first showman. He was a great showman. What he really left his mark on was introducing America to pure, unadulterated hucksterism. Sure. And using it for marketing humbug. That's what he called it. And he had a lot of quotes. Some were definitely something he said, like, Every crowd has a silver lining, which means you can shake it out of them and get some money from a bunch of people. Right. Yeah. The one about a sucker born every minute that's never been successfully attributed to them 100%. Well, yeah. And one thing is for sure is that his autobiography, I think if you order it, it comes with a salt lick. So you can just lick on that salt while you're reading it. Right. I don't know what that means, but that seems like something that they would do. Yeah. I think when the man is writing about himself, it's like, you know what? You may just want to believe a third of this. I would take it with a grain of salt, but so much so that you need an actual salt lick. Yeah, I got it. Now, there is one quote that I think kind of describes this guy best, or at least his philosophy. And it also kind of reveals, like, you can't call him harmless, but also the intentions were not entirely evil. Right, right. He had a quote. It said that people don't mind being deceived so long as they're being amused at the same time, which is kind of true. It does. And it largely lets them off the hook as far as being a huckster. Right. But the thing that The Greatest Showman really glossed over, just outright ignored, was that a lot of the amusements that he was presenting to the public were extraordinarily degrading to people at the time. They were super racist. There was just a lot of exploitation. He made his money not just by hustling Americans, but by exploiting other Americans, too. Right. Yeah. And again, a lot of this is contextual. It's not necessarily fair for later generations to judge previous generations, although it's really fun to do. But yes. You could say, like, this guy was exploitive even compared to his contemporaries. Right. Perhaps so. He is just a very complex character who I think you and I can agree was not an evil person. He just did some horrible things here or there. Should we go back in time? Yes, let's go back to the beginning. Let's hop on the way back machine, which is appropriately steampunky right now. It takes many forms. I don't know if people realize that it has a clock without the glass and you can see the parts inside, but it doesn't actually function. It's strictly for decoration. So let's go back to 1810, back to Bethel, Connecticut, where this man was born, Mr. Phineas Taylor Barnum. He had sort of a mixed family life. They pointed out in this article he was firmly American. His great great great grandfather came over from England as an indentured servant in the 17th century. Eventually became a landowner, but it's not like they had a ton of money. His dad Philo. Great name. Yeah, all these are great names. He was not super successful. So it was kind of up to young PT to make his own way in life. Right? Yeah. His father was a farmer, which introduced Phineas to the idea that he really hated manual mindless work. No, he didn't like doing that farm work. But that's not to say he didn't like work. He just liked very specific kinds of work where his energies were appropriately championed. Building people out of money. Sure, yeah. That was kind of it. He was the definition of the word enterprising. Right. So he could figure out a way he could look at something, literally look at something that you could almost not give away, you certainly couldn't sell, and turn it into pure profits. He got into lotteries for a little while once, right? Yeah. He went to work. He left the farm, went to work at a country store and realized quickly, just because you're in the country doesn't mean there aren't like swindlers and cheaters out here. So he kind of learned some of the tricks of the trade there. His old man died when he was 15 and his mom had to get a job. But he was basically like, all right, it's kind of up to me now to provide for my family. So he moved, got another job as a store clerk and as you said, got into lotteries. Yeah. And he was early on pursuing a career at clerkship, which I guess is a thing, but yeah, so there's this. He saw Easy Money and lottery, so he set up one himself, apparently when he was working for these owners of the store. They were away at one point and he got his eyes on some tin kitchenware that just would not sell. So he took some other stuff that wouldn't sell at that store. These things weren't his, by the way. And he traded them for a bottle collection, which I guess is the thing that people wanted at the time. Yeah. And he put those things up as prizes. Right. And he started a lottery and these were the prizes and there were cash prizes. But he ended up selling 1000 tickets or something like that in this little town store based on these prizes and some cash prizes, saying like half of all tickets were going to be winners. And you might win a bottle or you might win like a tin muffin pan, but you could also win this cash. And so these things that had just been sitting on the shelves forever were suddenly turned into something valuable thanks to his marketing expertise. And this is why he's still a teenager. Yeah, we've covered this in something before that lotteries were a thing back then that someone could just cook up. It's not like the lotteries we have today, like these sanctioned ways of stealing people's money. But back then you could just cook up a lottery in a small town and be like, you know what? It was almost like a ponzi thing. Like I can raise money, give away some of that money and prizes and then keep the rest. Right. I think that was in our lottery episode. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Well, in order to do that, though, you have to be a natural born salesperson, which is what he was. You really do. And lotteries would play like, a theme throughout his early career. That's how he ended up making his initial I don't know if fortune is the right word, but that's how he staked himself and his family, was through lotteries and working in stores and then eventually owning stores, like general stores, grocery stores, that kind of thing. But the lotteries are where he made his money. And he actually figured out that you could make more money with less work than having to go to the trouble of setting up a lottery. Like you said, anybody could just set up a lottery by taking tickets from somebody else's lottery and selling them further out at an increased price. But then he figured out one more thing, chuck, you didn't even have to go out and sell these things yourself. You could hire other people to sell them even further out. All you had to do was give them the tickets and collect the money that they brought you. So he ended up making money by basically expanding other people's lotteries for a while. That's right. And in the middle of this and he had moved to Brooklyn at this point, he's kind of hopping all over the place there in the Northeast. And to be fair, we're hopping kind of all over his early life right now. Yeah, for sure. Chronologically. Yeah. So in this time period, he met who would become his wife, a woman named Charity Hallett, who he described in his autobiography as a fair, rosy cheeked, buckson girl, beautiful white teeth. Did I mention she had big boobs? Right, but those teeth, man. So they would get married, and I think they had four daughters, but during all this time, he had a little Josh Clark in them. How do you mean? Well, he was writing letters to local papers that weren't getting published, so he said, you know what? I'm going to start my own paper. Yeah. He Clarked himself a paper. I'll see you all in hell, Media. Yeah. And much like yourself, you started your own paper, which is kind of cool. Sure. I mean, like, if people won't print your crank ideas, go start your own paper. It's like if you want to get your manifesto out there yeah. Either become Unobalber esque, which we don't recommend, or start your own paper. That's right. And his was called Herald of Freedom, which is terrible. And this is where it gets a little weird, because he kind of went after people, was eventually hit with a libel suit, and spent 60 days in jail. But that sold a lot of papers. And he was also hailed as a hero because apparently he was legitimately exposing corruption. Right. So to me, chuck. That one really stood out because it shows just how huge this guy's life story is, that even if you make a movie out of it, the best you can hope for is to pick, like, five or six or ten different things and try to find a thread throughout them. Right, right. Whether that's an accurate portrayal or not, it can't possibly be, because this guy's life was just so enormous and he did so many things, and he was such an outsized character that a lot of times you either vilify him or glorify him, and it was much more a combination of both of those things. And I think that example really says it all. Like, he had his notions, and he started his own paper and ended up going to jail and subscription boosted, so he ended up making money from it. But at the same time, he was legitimately trying to call out corruption in this town that he cared about. So his character was much more complex than you get from just about any source, unless you read biographies about him. Yeah, agreed. So finally he says, Connecticut. Said, no more lotteries in Connecticut. So he's like, all right, what am I doing here even if I can't do this little scam? He's like, I love this town, but not that much. So in 1834, he left the paper, shut that down, moved his family to New York City, and should we take a break? Perfect. All right, we're in New York City, and we'll be back right after this. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen. 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. 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. Stop us. I got a falafel. Is it good? It's pretty good. Is it from the Halal guys? Of course. Oh, man. Who else are you going to get a falafel from? That's good stuff. Yeah. So, man, this guy really just reading through this thing. He did so many jobs. Right. He was a factoedom. Dozens and dozens of jobs through his lifetime. Yeah. And I'm glad he didn't just stick to clerking. Right. Or even lottery. He had this thing, like something about show business attracted this guy. Oh, yeah. I don't know what it was. Maybe nobody but him knows what it was. Maybe he doesn't even know what it was. But he was attracted to the idea of wowing and amusing and amazing crowds, and he did that pretty early on. I think he was 25 when he got into exhibiting a human being who he purchased and owned for a while, which, by the way, does not show up in The Greatest Showman. Right. And this is after in New York. He started a boarding house for a while and co owned a grocery store for a while. Right. His life is full of him just trying to do these kind of regular things and then being like, no, I got to go buy a lady and put her on display. Right. This is after Chuck, by the way. He had come down with smallpox for a while. Oh, did we miss a smallpox? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, this guy had a huge life. Let's get to Joyce Heath. Right? Yeah. Because she is a very controversial part of PT. Barnum's life. She was his first foray into show business, and there's no other way to put it. Like, he purchased her. She was a slave, an elderly slave who he purchased from another promoter who had been touting her as General George Washington's nursemaid. Yes. From when George Washington was a child. This is 1835. Right. You do the best. She was supposedly 161 years old. Yeah. So he negotiates a price. He went and saw her and she was blind. She had no teeth. She was partially paralyzed. But she could talk and tell her story. Yeah, she told stories about young George as a boy. Oh, yeah. And to be fair, she was already being exploited. It's not like which is not great, but it's not like Barnum introduced this into her life. No, he just purchased her and took it over. Took over the exploitation for money for $1,000. And he toured with her until she died not that long later. Just like a year later. Not even in 1836. He made a lot of dough. And it was sort of a watershed moment for him where I think he was like, wait a minute, I've realized that I can get people in a room by cooking up these stories and getting things in the newspaper and printing these posters. If business was down, he would do these crazy things. Like one of them, when business was down, appearing with Heath. At one point, he accused her of being a robot, what they called at the time an automaton in an anonymous letter to the editor in the newspaper. Yeah, a robot made of whale bone, rubber and springs. So everyone was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not only is she George Washington's nursemaid, but she's really a robot. Right. What that did was it got the people who had been avoiding going to see her, because even at the time, people were like, this is pure exploitation. This woman is being exhibited like a giraffe would be or something like that. She's an old lady working for ten to 12 hours a day. Some people think that he worked her to death, literally. And so there was part of the press that was saying, reporting on this with great distaste. So there's a segment of American society who would not be caught dead seeing George Washington's 160 year old nursemaid. Yeah. But they would conceivably go see an automaton if that's really what was going on. So he managed to dupe the very people who were critical of this exploitation that he was undertaking. He got everybody in that one. Well, yeah. And it gets even worse. Finally, when she passed away, he actually sold tickets to a public autopsy in a saloon so people could come look at this poor woman's insides. And this is where it was finally revealed. Doctor said she's maybe like 81 years old at most. Right, Jane? And my grass kind of walks past like, what a controversy this was. This guy had been very much touting that. She was the nursemaid. He supposedly had the bill of sale to George Washington's father for her. He was saying, this is legitimately 106 year old woman. So in this autopsy that he charged for, when it was exposed that she was actually half that age, there was a bit of disgrace there, and he had to learn to roll with the punches. And it was about this time that he basically said to himself, you can take this as a lesson and go on the straight and narrow, maybe get back into Clerking, or you can triple and quadruple down on this and see where that goes. And he chose the latter of the two, for sure. That's right, he sure did. The next thing that he did, the next person that he kind of took under his wing was his greasy wing was someone called Signor or Senior. Is that seniors? Yeah. Why is it spelled that way? That is the Italian spelling of seniors. Oh, well, let me turn it on then. Nice. Antonio. Antonio. Add an extra bit in there. Senor Antonio is another way to say it. Well, sure, if you're a dullard. I'm a bit of a dullard chuck, I think, you know, after ten years so this guy, we're really milking that ten year thing, huh? I've got my SYSK ten year army shirt on. I see that. It's very nice. Thank you. I've been working on my bucksemness. You're quite buxom. So senior Antonio was a balancer. He's one of these guys, like a plate spinner, walked on stilts, juggles. He could throw things in the air and catch them very fast. Yeah, he's like a hippie. Yeah, exactly. He would be on tour with he'd had those little sticks. What are those called? Devil sticks. Devil sticks. Or a hackisack, any of those things. Yeah, you pull a hacky sack out of his ear at any moment. So this guy, he said, all right, you need to be my newest client. I will make you famous. Change your stage name from Senior Antonio to Senior Vivala. Nice. Because that's a little more, I don't know, exciting, I guess. I like Senior Antonio. Yeah, I do, too. It's a lateral move. Here's the thing, though, is there were a lot of dudes out there spinning plates, so it wasn't like he was so unique. But Barnum thought you know what? I think you're better than the rest, so here's what I'll do. And again, this is just another example of how good he was at promotion. He said, I'll do a free performance for a theater, and I'll even be your assistant on stage. And people came and said the theater said, all right. I guess if people come for free, they'll pay. I think what he was saying was, yeah, I think that's exactly I think you're right. He just wowed them enough. I think that's the impression I have. Yeah. But even still, despite Vivala being genuinely good, he was, I think, head and shoulders above most of his contemporary most plate spinners. Yeah. I think people saw in the press, oh, there's a really good plate spinner. We saw a plate spinner at the office last week. So I'm not going to go anywhere to see another plate spin. I'm certainly not going to pay. So Barnum had a pretty good idea, but I actually came out of an uncomfortable situation that fell into his lap with Roberts. Another plate spinner? Yes. This is a rival plate spinner who apparently would go to performance West Coast. Yeah, he was a crypt, and he would go to Vival's performances and heckle them. I guess you call that plate spinning. Boo. Terrible plate spinning, stuff like that. And so PT. Barnum cooked up a thing where he was like, all right, I'll offer 1000 American dollars to anyone who can perform act in public. Roberts accepted. But here's what really happened, is he got together with Roberts, and they all three hatched a plan to do these kind of staged competitions. Right. So they promoted in the plate spinning competitions, east Coast, West Coast, plate spinning rivalries going on right now. Everybody's going to come see this. And everybody did. And in that first performance, roberts, as was staged, conceded he could not replicate Vivala's act. It was too good. But I would love to see Vala replicate my act, and I challenge you, Senior Vaula, to replicate my act tomorrow night at the same theater. And they kept going back and forth like that with this staged rivalry that they made some cash off of. Thanks to Barnum's ingenuity, they did. Finally, in 1836, the circus comes into the picture. He joined a traveling circus, Barnum did, as a ticket seller, which I take it to mean he doesn't sit in a booth and sell tickets, but he goes around town selling tickets. Yeah, they're like chambers of commerce or something like that. Yeah. And of course, he got a little commission off this thing, so he was making some dough. Favala joined that same circus as a performer. Of course, they were attached to the hip at that point. No, that was changing bunker you're thinking of. That's a bad joke. It totally was. And this one I thought was a little bit weird. Apparently, the circus proprietor, a guy named Turner, was into practical jokes and not very good ones, because this practical joke was he convinced a crowd that Barnum was the Reverend Ephraim Avery, who had been acquitted of murder, but everyone thought that this guy had committed murder, and back then, no one knew what anyone looked like. So he said, this guy is Ephraim Avery, and he almost got lynched. Apparently. Yeah. Like Ephraim Avery's name was not very well liked in the area. He was at the very least, he, through having an adulterous affair with a young woman, had induced her to kill herself or at worst, had murdered her to prevent her from having as a legitimate child. Yeah, but he's going to quit it, right? And he's a reverend. Did we mention so? Yeah, the crowd, according to Barnum, almost killed him. That's a real funny joke. I know, but then later on, Jane says that Barnum got even with him with his own practical joke. I could find nothing anywhere, including in Barnum's autobiography, that mentions that. I think he covered his toilet and Saran Wrap. That's so nasty. No, he gave him an upper decker gross. That's even worse. So apparently these guys got into business together and it became a thing where people would go see the circus, where the two ring masters would kind of go at each other with these practical jokes. Right. That became a thing. There's a transition going on. Another transition. Now, he started out store clerking lotterying, got into show business, where it's like, basically a Colonel Tom, two different performers. And then now he's transitioning into the circus. But by now, he's been married to the road about as much as he's been married to charity as well. And from all accounts, he was very much in love with her, and he was faithful, and they were a real couple. But he was on the road a lot. There's just no answer buts about it. He was out there on the road quite a bit. So transitioning to a circus was basically the same thing. It was just a little bigger of an outfit, so it was like a step up. But you got to also keep in mind here that he's spending a lot of time on the road at a time when travel was really long and really tough. That's right. And so he eventually decides working for someone else's circus is for the birds. I'm going to start my own. You buy some horse and wagons, maybe get a clown. You got to have a clown. I think he still had Vivala at the time. Yeah. And started Barnum's Grand scientific and Musical theater toured all over the place for a little while, and then they disbanded. Right. Nothing ever seemed to work out for very long. No, I think that he got fed up. It says with some of the rivalries with other showmen, that you would build your whole circus around like an act, and all of a sudden the act would be like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being on the road. I'll see you later. And all of a sudden, your circus would fall apart. I think they were kind of tenuous outfits. Right? Yeah. But the thing about Barnum was like, something about this called to him when his circus collapsed, and he was out in the middle of the country on the road, and he had to go back home. The first thing he would do is start figuring out his next circus or his next act, or whatever it was. He would go back out again. He was indefatigable in that sense. Yeah. So we'll quickly speed through the next couple of years. He did a little steamboat circus for a little while along the Mississippi River that didn't come along. He tried to do a respectable business again, went into business with a guy who manufactured grease paste in Cologne. That did all right for a little while, but then that failed. And then this whole time, he still feels that pull to the tent. Right. He sold illustrated Bibles for a little while. Yes. Finally. Here's the thing. He wanted stability. Like, being out on the road was tough, as Steve Perry. Right. But he wanted this to be tied to show business in some way. Finally, one day, and I think he had another big break or another big vision. There's a place in New York, a museum, and what you would call today a museum that was up for sale. I'm not sure where it was, but it was in New York, right? Yes. And it was called Scutter's American Museum in Barnum. Heard that Scutter wanted to get out and was putting the whole collection up for 15 grand, which is a substantial amount of money and definitely more money than Barnum had. But he said that's it right there. I can have a permanent place where people come to me and I can be home with. My wife and daughters but I can still have this daily interaction with show business. I got to buy that thing well and it will also accomplish this is I can still have my freak show performers. But because it's a museum, somehow it has a little bit more respectability. Because apparently at the time theaters weren't like they are today. It wasn't like we're going to the theater. Theaters could be a little bit like a second tier entertainment. Right? It was like hoypoloi taji crowds went to the theater that was associated with burlesque or something like that. Or even like human oddities exhibition stuff like that. That was theater stuff. A museum like scutters, like respectable people could go there. So what Barnum did was he bought a museum and then dragged it down into the mud. Right. And this holds the way he financed the museum. I didn't fully understand, to be honest. Do you want me to explain it? If you want. Or we could just say he ended up with the museum in 1841 through a lot of work. And I think that's fair enough because it is a little bit like Robin Peter to pay Paul. It wasn't just a straight up purchase, let's just say that. Right, but so one thing that you can say about this museum which she renamed Barnum's American Museum it was a big success. And one of the reasons it was a big success was because he tirelessly worked at finding new and interesting ways to market the thing. Right, yeah. I'm not sure exactly when, but by a very short time after he opened it, I think that same year in 1841 he charged $25 a person for admission. He had something like 4000 visitors a day. Yeah. And he took this thing, like I say, that he dragged the word museum down in the mud. He definitely added and expanded to the definition of museum. And then he also had this lecture hall where he had performances that you would see in a circus or something like that. And he turned this place into an emporium. Just something huge and an enormous spectacle. And something like 850,000 pieces were on display in his museum. So you definitely got your quarters worth for sure. Yeah. And those are just the pieces. As far as the circus element, he had everything covered. He had dancers, musicians, plate spinners, ventriloquists well, you got to have the plate spinning. He had little people, he had big people. He had ladies with beards and robots and puppets and animals. He had giraffes and grizzly bears. He really had everything humming on all cylinders at this point. Yes, he really did. And again, there's that whole thread of like, people being exploited. There were people who were complicit in that. There were people who were anyone who came to the museum was gawking at the weirdness of these other people or whatever. Which again today is very odd to us. But at the time was still odd. That's the thing that I think it's lost on people. There were sideshows and things like that, but Barnum took it to an extraordinary degree and really ran with it and became extremely rich as a result, actually. Should we take a break? I am ready to. All right, the museum is coming along. We're going to take a break. We'll be back right after this. If you want to know that you're in luck, just listen up to Josh and Chuck stuff you should know. 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 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. Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. 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. Okay, we're back. Yeah. So we mentioned earlier about the humbug, this kind of hucksterism in his biography or autobiography, which was rewritten by himself, by the way, after people read the first version and said, what a jerk. Yeah. He was, like, just openly boastful and bragged about how much he exploited people and how much he duped the American public. He toned it down a little bit in the revision, but he did talk a little bit about being slightly embarrassed about kind of how shameless he was. But then again, in the next line, he would say, but you know what? This is how everyone is in my business. I'm just better at it than them, basically. Yeah. He said, oh, there's a great quote. I can't find it anywhere, though, where basically here it is. If his advertising was, quote, more audacious than his competitors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises. He thought a lot of himself. He definitely did, but he also worked pretty hard at it, for sure. And I think if you compared apples to apples at the time, barnum's Jam was way better than anybody else's. Jam, yeah, for sure. So he had three really big successes in a row with his museum here. The first one was called the Fiji Mermaid. F-E-E-J-E-E. This is 1842. And this was a big deal. He got a man named Levi Lyman or Levy Lyman? He's an old colleague of his, and he said, here's what I'll do. You are now. Dr. J. Griffin. You're a naturalist for the British lysium of Natural History, which was not a real place, and you were an ownership of what we'll call the Fiji Mermaid, which was a what do we call it in the taxidermy? Rogue taxidermy. Yes, it was rogue taxidermy. It totally was. It was like a jackalope, except what was it? It was a head of a baboon, torso of an orangutan and a fishtail, just for good measure. Yeah. And as far back as they can tell, it was probably made by a Japanese sailor in the 1820s, and it passed through a few hands before Barnum finally leased it and put it on display. I wonder where that thing is now. I looked. I don't know. There are other Fiji Mermaids out there. Was it, like, kind of a thread of rogue taxidermy in the mid 19th century? And I think Harvard has one on display, but I look to find out where PT. Barnums is, and I can't find it. It's probably, like, on Richard Branson's headboard or something. It may have actually burned up in one of the many fires that plagued PT. Barnum's life. Yeah. Things are going to get fiery here in this last bit, too. Yeah. Anyway, let's get back to the Fiji Mermaid, though. Okay. Okay. So Doctor J. Griffin is supposedly touring with this mermaid, right? Sure. But the guy is actually not out there touring. Barnum basically creates out a whole cloth, a tour of this mermaid, writes letters about how great this thing is in different people's names, and then mails them to friends that live around the country and asks them to mail those letters into newspapers in New York, talking about how this thing has to be seen to be believed. Yeah. So people came far and wide to see this piece of taxidermy. Yeah. And by the way, this whole J. Griffin thing, like, this guy was posing as him. He was giving public lectures, made up as a naturalist, a British naturalist, and he was an American promoter. He had nothing to do with he was just making all this stuff up, but he would give public lectures on it. I love it. Like the audacity. It's amazing. So the second big victory was when he met up with a four year old named Charles Stratton. He was a little person, his cousin, actually, and he stopped growing when he was 2ft tall, and he changed his name and rebranded him as general Tom Thumb, and that name probably rings a bell. They became very famous together. He said he was eleven years old and they were a media and ticket selling sensation. Yeah. They would be like, invited into royalty. Whatever country they toured, he was a huge hit at the museum. It was like a big deal for both Barnum and Charles Stratton. That's right. A sensation. That's the best way to put it. And the final big victory of the Trifecta. When he was in Europe with Stratton. He heard of Jenny Lynn. She was a Swedish opera singer. And this was the kind of thing where he was like, you know what? She doesn't have a beard. All she is, is a talented singer, but she's amazing. And this would really legitimize me if I did like a straight up act for a change. Right. So even though she's big over here, they don't know about her in America, and she could blow up there. So I'm going to offer $1,000 per performance, which was a ton of money and a big risk, but he made about a half a million dollars with her or more, who he branded the Swedish nightingale by trotting her around the United States, and she was like, beyond a sensation in the United States. Yeah, that was another thing, too. I mean, she was pretty big in Europe, but I don't think she was well known, if known at all in America. But by the time she showed up for the tour, starting in 1850, he had managed to, like you said, just turn her into a national sensation. People had beetle mania for this lady. Yeah. This article says that she was not a very nice person. I didn't see that anywhere else, and I actually saw that. So after the contract between her and Barnum was up in 1851, she continued to tour America with an actual orchestra, I believe. And she made $300,000 in 1850s money from this whole American tour and donated every single penny of it to Sweden's public school system, which I was burgeoning at the time. Yeah. So I don't know what Jane was talking about, but I think she just kind of didn't find America very cultured, is what I get. But apparently Jane didn't like that. Well, America probably wasn't very cultured in 1850. Right. But I thought that was pretty neat. Man. She took all of that money and donated it to the public school system in Sweden, man, that's crazy. But yeah, Barnum was not legitimized, thanks to that. I think it actually didn't go all that well. But he did enrich himself thoroughly through Jenny Lynn, for sure. That's right. But he would go broke again because he's PT. Barnum, and that's what he does. In the 1850s, he bought up a lot of land near Bridgeport, Connecticut, because he wanted to make East Bridgeport. That happened in place. He invested in the Jerome Clock Company. Wanted to relocate it to East Bridgeport. It was not a smart thing to do. The company went bankrupt, and all of a sudden, he was broke again. And this is fire number one. He moves out of his mansion because he's broke, and then after he had moved out, the mansion burned down. Right. But if he had to move out, you would think that he had relinquished ownership. So why does it matter as far as his life goes? Unless he had a bunch of money stuffed into the installation or something? I don't have a Breaking Bad thing going on. It might have just been a footnote or something. Or maybe he did. No, I guess if he had moved out, then he had known it. I just thought that was a little weird. Yeah. So he was in debt, like big time, like broke, bankrupt in debt because of this terrible clock company thing, which you should always take as a reason to never put all of your eggs in one basket, which I guess is what he did. But he managed to emerge from death after, I think, five years, and he ended up, during this time, he pawned his museum, but he also put the name of the museum in his wife's name, who is not bankrupt, and so they were able to make some income off of the lease for the museum. And then when he managed to buy the museum back after five years, he just went right back to it. He didn't miss a beat. Yeah. I mean, this ten year period from 1850 to 1860, he went broke. He did the smart thing, like he said with his wife. He started giving lectures about making money. He went on tour again with Tom Thumb. He got a dead whale. He bought a dead whale. He said, surely people will pay money to see this. So he was still doing all this crazy stuff. He bought a hippopotamus. He bought two beluga whales. It's just crazy the things that he was doing. Also, Chuck, we have to say the title of the lecture tour, the Art of Money Getting. It's not even the art of making money. The art of money getting. Yeah. His stars starting to rise again. At the very least, his fortunes are reversing from just doing any kind of work he can get his hands on. And then all along this way, like, Barnum was a pretty he was what's known as a Jacksonian Democrat. Andrew Jackson was a populist president, and he was the one who was responsible for the Trail of Tears. Right. I'm pretty sure that was Andrew Jackson. It was. Remember our two parts? Trail of Tears? I do. Okay, so PT. Barnum was of this man's party. He was a Jackson supporter. And then the Civil War breaks out, and all of a sudden, Barnum has this, like, total conversion. He was not like, an outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans enslaved, worked as a Confederate sympathizer, anything like that. He was fairly unremarkable and pretty normal. Like, for example, at his museum, if you were black, you couldn't come in. It was a segregated museum. But that was like a lot of businesses at the time. So he was a very normal, pedestrian person as far as his politics go, and socially as well. But something happened around the time of the Civil War, and he converted and actually became an abolitionist, huge Union supporter, and just basically became patriotic and dedicated this idea of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. Yeah. And he used that museum as a sort of ground zero for his cause. He had speeches. He had plays that sort of endorse this. He had Southern copperheads that were protesting outside. They threatened his life. And then he said, at this point, you know what? I might as well just get into politics legitimately. And in April of 1865, he actually won an election to the Connecticut General Assembly, where he worked really hard to ratify the 13th Amendment and supported another cause to allow the rights of black people to vote in Connecticut. Yeah. So he was legitimately dedicated to the cause of abolition, which is totally bizarre. Right. And about this time, too, is when the revisions to his autobiography are starting to get much more contrite, much less boastful, and even more apologetic. Something happened, and he was converted to the right side of history, I guess you could call it. Yeah. So here's where fire number two comes in. A few months after this election, his museum burned down, along with the animals in the exhibit, which is super sad, is the first of two animal fires. He opened a new museum a couple of months after that. Three years later, that museum burned down. Didn't want to rebuild that one. And then finally, in the 1870s, it took a long, long time before he became the PT. Barnum that most people know as the big circus guy. Right. The greatest show on Earth. Guy yeah. He hooked up with Barnum and Bailey after hooking up with a guy named William Cameron. Coop or coup. I'm not sure which one it is. But he had PT. Barnum's, grand traveling museum, menagerie caravan and circus. Yeah. Little wordy. That was 1871. And then did you cover the 1872 fire? No, there was another fire that killed other circus animals at the Winter Camp, which is on the site of where Madison Square Garden is right now. There's a horrific fire in the Winter Camp in 1872, killed a bunch of other circus animals, which is why this is one of the reasons why, years later, barnum and Bailey's Ringling Brother's Circus went away was because of animals. Yeah. By the time this fire happened, what was it called? The hippo theatron, I think so. He was very successful with that circus. He started with Coup. They made about 400 grand in the first year, and it was the very first circus to kind of do the traditional thing that we all think of as travel by train, acrobats, clowns, exotic animals, stuff like that. And that's when it officially was called the Greatest Show on Earth. So the hippo, theatron such a strange word burns down. And then he's visiting his friend in England, John Fish, and this is when his wife Charity, passes away. Yeah. And as Jane put it, he was supposedly too grief stricken to return for her funeral. But the grief must have subsided quickly because he secretly married Fish's daughter at 63 years old. He married 22 year old Nancy Fish about three and a half months later after his wife passed. No word about her teeth. No. Or her bra size. So they got married secretly 14 weeks after Charity died. And then when they came to the US, they had a public wedding nine months after that. Yeah, he married her, and I guess he was with her until his death, right? Well, yes, in 1865, he took a break from the circus, got back into politics, and became the mayor of Bridgeport for a little while. Not East Bridgeport, though. He's talking trash about them East Bridgeport. And apparently he gets a little on his high horse now because even though he was a pretty heavy drinker for a while, he quit drinking and then campaigned against Sunday sales and saloons and kind of got a little self righteous, it seems like. Yeah. He also sponsored the comstock law in Connecticut, which banned contraception, which puts a lot of onus on to the ladies. And it was in place, apparently, till 1965. And there's a really important word in there, Chuck, sponsored. That means you're the person who brought it to the General Assembly. You didn't just vote yes on it, but you're the one who said, everybody let's ban contraception for 100 years. And it was successful, actually. So, yeah, he was a weird dude with a lot of different weird thoughts about things that were sometimes very contradictory over time. And then finally, ironically, here at the very end of this podcast, in 1880, he partnered with one James A. Bailey for PT. Barnum's Great London combined. It's a terrible name for a circus. Worst circus name ever. Then you have the word circus in there. And this is when he got Jumbo the Elephant, which Jumbo was a legendary attraction until 1885, when Jumbo was killed by a train and probably caught fire, too. And did you know we were just in Boston, that Tufts University, their mascot is Jumbo the elephant. No, I didn't know that. Yeah, my buddy Robert explained that to me, and apparently Barnum was one of the early what do you call the people who give universities a lot of money? Endowment, donors, grant person. Sure, he was all of that. What is that word? I know what you're talking about. He was all that to Tufts. And so jumbo the elephant became their mascot. And I think because it does say in here, he displayed jumbo's preserved hide and skeleton. I think it was, or maybe is on display at Tufts. Oh, wow. I'm not sure if it still is, but I think at one time it was. So wait a minute. This guy also gave a substantial amount of money to help found a university. I don't know found, but to the university, that's a benefactor. Is that the word? Benefactor? Yeah. Maybe to found it, and I'm not sure of the timeline there. Man, that's really crazy. He did a lot of stuff. So go jumbos. Yeah. Fighting jumbos or the passive aggressive jumbos or what? The stomping jumbos. That's pretty good. So Barnum and Bailey weren't together for too long. Initially they parted ways, but then again joined ultimately, finally for the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Yeah, they broke up, and then they got back together, and then it stayed that way until 2016, I think. And then the circus finally closed down. I went to the thing as a kid. I think we talked about that. Sure. I did, too. Now we will only go to the Big Apple trucks, as you know. And I took a long break because Emily and I were tired of going. And then now we got a kid. My mom was like, you got to start going again. You have to. So we went this year. How was it? Oh, it's okay. I'm not the biggest circus guy, I've realized. Are you afraid of clowns? No, not these. Are you afraid of acrobats? I could take these clowns. No. And actually, the acrobats at the Big Apple Circus are the what's it called? The famous ones. The family. Oh, the Flying Zambonis. Yeah. Or was it Zambonis? Not Zamboni? I don't remember. It's something like that. But it's them and still that family. Wow, that's really something. And they did a great job, but at the end of the day, I'm just kind of about a third of the way through. I'm looking at my watch. I got you. I've seen a couple of circus so late. Those are the last circuses I saw. Yeah, those are okay. But we saw the Michael Jackson one in Las Vegas, and man alive. Is it good. Yeah, there's a Michael Jackson Cirque. Yes, dude. And I have to tell you, I'm not some diehard Michael Jackson fan. But you don't have to be this to appreciate this. It is amazing. It's worth going to Vegas to go see who's done Michael Jackson turning around and going home. I don't know. It's probably a few. I'll bet we hear from some Michael Jackson auntie michael Jackson fan. Finally. 1890. PT. Barnum has a stroke during a performance. He has one weird, strange wish at the end of his life is to have his obituary published before he dies. Yeah. I don't know why I did that. Maybe. I don't know either. I don't know, but that's a heck of a way to end this podcast. Maybe he wanted to feel the public outpouring or something. It could be that. Or he wanted to proofread it or something. I don't know. But if he wanted if that was what he was after, why didn't they just send it to him ahead of time? They actually published it? Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, well, we'll find out one day when we die and go to heaven and meet PT. Barnum. Agreed. So you got anything else? No, there's probably tons more that we missed. And if you know something about PT. Barnum that we didn't know, let us know. We'll just add to this guy's story over time. Okay? In the meantime, if you want to read this great article by James McGrath, type in PT. Barnum in the search bar at How Stuff works. Since I said search bar is time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this Unibalmer follow up. Okay. I was into that one. The Unabomber. Yeah. That was a good episode. That was a good 10th anniversary episode. Milk. Hey, guys. Congratulations on ten years milk. Milk. I look forward to many more listen to Uni Bomber and thought I would share something that covers a related, if somewhat different, aspect of the story. About ten years ago, when I was still a We Law student taking a legal ethics course, one of the situations we discussed was Ted Kaczynski and the ethical dilemma his lawyers faced. Criminal defendants had the absolute right to dictate certain aspects of their representation, like whether or not to plead guilty. But there are other aspects of the representation that the lawyer controls, the most notable being trial strategy. While lawyers should always listen to the client's overall goals, sometimes it's necessary to override a client's wishes on how to achieve their goals, because the client's desired strategy is either legally incorrect, unethical, or simply ill advised. Kaczynski's case presented an interesting ethical problem for the attorneys because he refused to allow them to pursue what they perceived to be his best defense and his only hope of avoiding the death penalty, namely, claiming he was not guilty by reason of mental disease known as the insanity defense. The conflict was that, on one hand, his attorneys had a duty to zealously represent him. But Kaczynski objected so vehemently to the chosen defense that at one point he attempted to go pro, say, aka represent himself, which would have been an utter disaster. As you noted, he pled guilty, so we'll never know what they would have decided to do had he conned a trial. But his case is one which most lawyers thought about or discussed at some point in their careers. That is good. Fordham law. Gorams. And that is from Deb. Thanks, Deb. Appreciate that. Yeah, I remember kind of saying, like, his whole thing was he pled guilty because they didn't want to plead insane because his ramblings would have been the ramblings of a convicted insane madman. Yeah, very interesting. Again, thanks, Deb. We always love hearing from lawyers out there. That whole joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea being a good start? We have always found it tasteless. Sure. So get in touch with us. You can via Twitter. I'm at Josh Clark and at Fyskpodcast and Chuck. Chuck is@moviecrushchucksonfacebookcom Charleswchuckbriot and stuffyheanow. You can send us and Jerry an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.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 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 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. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get 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." | |
a6d9b006-5462-11e8-b449-8f03b64c6210 | Was the PMRC censorship in disguise? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/was-the-pmrc-censorship-in-disguise | The Parents Music Resource Center in the 1980s was really just censorship in disguise. But it kind of backfired. Learn all about Tipper Gore's crusade in today's episode. | The Parents Music Resource Center in the 1980s was really just censorship in disguise. But it kind of backfired. Learn all about Tipper Gore's crusade in today's episode. | Thu, 06 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=340, tm_isdst=0) | 53141090 | audio/mpeg | "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 over there. And this is stuff you should know. And we're going to mind our P's and Q's news because this is a family show, so everybody don't get all excited like we're going to drop the S word or anything like that, physics or not. Yes, you just said it. We're going to keep it clean. But we are talking about some dirty, dirty stuff, stuff that should never be uttered by anyone. And I, for one, would like to tip my hat to tip Her Gore for being an American hero of all time. What? Actually, it's funny, as I was reading some of this, we're talking about the PMRC, as everyone will soon find out. Yeah. And Ed put this one together and he points out that, yes, if you look at the stuff that they were trying to do, the Parents Music Resource Center, they were basically saying, like, we need to be able to have a heads up that this record album has lyrics on it that we wouldn't want our little eight year old kid to listen to. Yeah, that's really all we're asking for. Well, that's not true. The thing is, that's not all they were asking for, and it's a slippery slope of doing that where you're basically ringing the dinner triangle for anybody who's got a beef with any dirty lyrics or any world view that opposes theirs to come out and say, yeah, I like that idea, and while we're at it, let's put them in jail if they don't comply. And you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. But it's too late. The cat's out of the bag. And this all happened in real life in the 80s, which, by the way, I'm on record as saying the 70s were the greatest decade of all time. I think the 80s were one of the most interesting. At least a lot of wacky stuff went down in the got the Satanic Panic, the whole back masking thing. That was kind of part of it. You've got this a bunch of other stuff happened in the 80s, too. Spaceship program was going pretty strong. There was a shuttle disaster, even. It was an interesting, provocative decade. So there you have it, Chuck. There's the intro. Yeah. This was a commissioned piece because I remember very distinctly all of this going on sure. When I was younger and paying pretty close attention as a music fan, what was happening and not getting as a kid, that meant more than an explicit lyrics label. Right. There was more at stake. But also as a kid, you probably were exclusively like, hey, man, they can't do that. That's not cool. That's censorship. Without understanding the nuance of the other position as well. Right. No, I was too young to spout soapbox things like that. Right. So you're just, like, slipping off like newspaper pictures of Tipper Gore in your bedroom? No, I mean I was little. How old were you? I was like eleven or twelve. I wasn't a discerning reader of the newspaper. I didn't know who Tipper Gore was. Oh, you didn't? No. Were you? Yeah, I knew who Tipper Gore was. Eight years old and you knew who Tipper Gore was? Yeah. I mean, she was on Donahue and all these shows. It was a big deal. She was the face of this whole thing. Yes, I knew who Tipper Gore was. I'm not to imply that I was any more discerning than you were as far as reading newspaper. I knew her name, but I certainly had no idea who she was or what any of this meant at that age. Well, some people say knowing her name and by proxy her husband's name was the whole point of all this. But we'll get to that later. Yeah. So the Parents Music Resource Center. Well, I mean, it was sort of an extension of the grand tradition of adults saying that new music is bad for kids. Sure. And that's been happening since there's been music. Yeah. What's this? Chamber music? Amadeus, maybe. Quite possible we should do an episode just on that. I'm being threatened with getting old. Threatened by youth, I guess. Yeah. But I think you're projecting on to youth where you're really threatened by your imminent mortality, is what it is. Yeah. And you're just projecting it onto the next generation because it's weird and strange and you're being pushed out of control. Well, we can find the origins of the PMRC in this case in 1984, when Tipper Gore's daughter, I think she was eleven, turned on her new Prince album. And the song, a very awesome song, darling Nikki came on with the very famous line about masturbation, and I remember being a young church kid thinking like, whoa, I probably shouldn't be listening to this. Yeah, it was a dirty, dirty song. Did you keep listening? Yeah. Because it's a great song. It is a great song. Yeah. And if you put it even further, it's a great song on its own. But in context with the movie Purple Rain, that song shows up because Prince is trying to humiliate his girlfriend, who he's just struck because he found out that she was working for Morris Day, which is Prince's rival in Purple Rain. Right. So it's a song to humiliate her. Right. On its own, it's a great song. It is a racy song, but it also has context that Tipper Gore didn't have at her fingertips when she listened to that song. Yeah. And she wrote a book a few years after that. And I don't remember I didn't own this book. You didn't read that book when you were left and I read it when I was eight. No, I was 16 by this point. But I remember I had it for some reason. I might have done some sort of school thing on this, on the PMRC, the whole thing, because I definitely had a copy of this book and it wasn't like because I was like, this is great and awesome. I read it for some school project, but it was called Raising PG Kids in an X Rated Society. And in it she talks about how not only was she worried and afraid for her kids, but she was afraid herself about just these images that she was seeing on MTV and Ozzy Osborne crawling out of a swamp as a swamp beast. And instead of laughing at that like everyone else on the planet, sure, it scared her. Or just taking it as part of your formative years that you eventually grow out of and don't do aren't brought to worship or hail Satan as a result. Yeah, because she was a drummer. I mean, she was a musician in an all woman band called The Wildcat. Yeah. I don't know. A lot of this is surprising. It is very surprising. And it's not like she was she's a Democrat. Yeah, well, so here's the thing. From what I've seen, if you were on the industry side of this, the opposing side to the PMRC at the time, you were pretty convinced, and I think some people still are, that the whole thing that, yes, Tipper Gore was like, this is terrible. I can't believe I listened to this is my eleven year old and said something to some other people she was friends with around Washington and they were like, we should do something about this. It would probably help Al's exposure to the nation and get them ready for a run at the presidency. And that was actually like the impetus for this whole quagmire was to make Al Gore a prominent national figure. Oh, really? That's what a lot of people think. This is interesting. I never heard that. And whether that was Tipper and Al's idea or whether they were kind of led into it depends on who you are. But that's very much out there in the zeitgeist that that was the whole basis of this entire thing. Well, I don't buy that. And in fact, at the pre PMRC in Cincinnati, Ohio, there was a school PTA group, the Delhi Elementary School PTA, who also her darling Nikki, and also didn't think that it was just a great jam. And they got all up in arms about it and drafted a statewide association letter that basically said, hey, Recording Industry Association of America, we're just going to call it the RIAA probably on the show, but maybe you should have a voluntary system of ratings, kind of like movies do with the NPAA. What's the big deal? Right? They're like calls back, we want to talk about it. And the IRA never called them back. Yeah, they said, we'll get right on that. Yeah, exactly. Because they want to do that. They were scared of this idea to begin with, they were really worried it was going to hurt sales. If you have, like, an album that specifically says, this is not for kids, there are some stores in some parts of the country that just won't carry that album. And you want to be able to sell those albums. You want to either have albums that a store would be happy to sell or at least slide it in underhandedly so the stores don't know what they're selling and just the kids do. So they were afraid of this kind of idea. But they also I mean, it's the music industry in the 80s. They could afford to be like be quiet. Cincinnati School District They're not listening to you, for sure. When Tipper Gore came into the mix with some of her friends from Washington, the dynamics of it changed for a number of reasons. Not just because they were connected to government, but because the RIAA and government specifically had something going on. Yeah. So they formed the PMRC on May 15, 1985. They got a grant from Mike Love of The Beach Boys, which is just further cement him as one of the leading jerks in the history of music. So why is he a jerk? Because I saw that, I was like, why was Mike Love doing that? And I know, I know he wasn't the Manson one. That was Dennis, wasn't it? The one who hung out with the Manson family for a little while. That was Dennis Wilson. Okay. Why is my club a jerk? Because God made him that way. He's just that way. No, I mean, he's a notorious I mean, I can't use words that I want to use, but he is just Google Mike Love jerk, okay. And go down the rabbit hole of stories about this guy. Does he yell, like, at basketball players courtside and stuff like that kind of jerk? You just go read some articles. He's just a jerk. I wish I had already. So it does not surprise me that he gave $5,000 to kick off the PMRC. But what you were talking about is the tape tax, which was very interesting at the time. The recording industry was suffering or not suffering, but they were just beginning to struggle a bit with the fact that cassette tapes were pretty inexpensive or they could be super cheap if you got really cruddy ones. Yeah, but the neon seethrough ones, those are expensive. The Maxwells. Yeah, I had the black max. LS but do you remember the see through ones? They had a kind of fluorescent and neon colors to them. No. Like the kind that Emilia Westavez and Charlie Sheen find in Men at Work. No, I haven't seen that either. Great. You never saw a man at work? No. It's a good one. Is it? Okay. Yeah. So if you grew up in the made tapes, you recorded stuff off the radio, you made mixed tapes. If your friend had a tape. You would dub that tape, you would set it in front of your speaker and record your albums. Do you remember figuring out how to record tapes that had been made so you couldn't record them? There was like a way that you could break off a tape. They were like these two things. If they were broken off well, there are two tabs on top. Right. If they were broken off, then they couldn't be either recorded from or recorded onto I can't remember. It means you can't record over what's there. So if you make a tape you really wanted to keep, you'd snap those tabs. Oh, is that what they're for? Yeah. Okay. But you can put tape over those things in full whatever sense them and that you could record right over it again. That's right. But do you remember being a kid and wondering if you were going to get in trouble for recording a song from the radio? Like knowing that you were in some gray legal area that you weren't quite sure about? Really? Yeah. I didn't worry about it. I worry about getting in trouble for it. Not for my parents, because they clearly didn't care. But my local law enforcement officers, yeah, come to your house and play out of your upstairs bedroom. So the tape industry, the cassette tape industry was putting a dent in record sales and they were really threatened by it and basically went to Congress and said, hey, listen, I'd like you to pass an act, the Home Audio Recording Act that puts a pretty heavy tax on these cassettes, on these tape to tape decks that everyone's buying these days. And then we want all that money, like hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Yeah. And the music industry was like and we've got a great system worked out. 10% of all that is going to go to all the artists and then 90% is going to go to the record label. Yes. Some things never change. Right. So they had this thing, it was a House bill, HR. 20 911. And it was in the Commerce committee. And the Commerce Committee was going to decide whether the RIAA got this tax money, a special tax just for the music industry to kind of offset some of these perceived albums sale losses. That same committee, the Commerce Committee, this committee and I'm sorry. Yeah. The Commerce Committee also was decided to hold a hearing on the PMRC and its desire to start labeling records as explicit. I mean, that was a senatorial hearing. Was that the commerce committee specifically? Yes. Okay. Because I thought the conflict was the fact that members of the PMRC were married to people on that committee. I didn't know that that was an actual Commerce Committee hearing. Yes. I guess it wouldn't have been because it was HR. 20 911. So that would have been the Commerce Committee then would have been in the House. And you're right. This was a senate hearing. So, yeah, no conflict whatsoever. It's totally fine. Well, like I said, the conflict was the fact that four members of the PMRC were married to Congressmen. Right. So there was a conflict there. Basically, the record industry wanted something from Congress, and Congress now all of a sudden wanted something from the record industry, which was to label their records as potentially offensive to whomever, which is a big deal. And some people say that if the record industry hadn't been greedy and wanted the HR 20 911 out of Congress, they probably would have fought this tooth and nail. And a lot of people in the industry stood up and said, we're not going to take it to make a lot more sense in a couple of minutes, and pushed back. And I did a lot of media tour and did a lot of interviews and spoke out about this and rallied, like, their listeners to say, this is wrong, and they may have successfully fought it had the industry ultimately wanted HR 20 911 to pass, this tape tax to pass. And so they decided that they were going to play ball. Yeah. And this was before the very famous hearing even happened. 19 record labels got on board and said, yeah, we'll do this. We'll figure out a good system. And so the very famous hearing on September 19, 1985, with strange collection of humans, john Denver, Frank Zappa, and D Snyder, a twisted sister. It was moot at that point. Before we get into the hearing and we got to back up a little bit, let's take a break real quick. You want to see? Yeah. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. Don't go anywhere. 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. All right, Chuck. So we should say, I got to amend something I just said. I can't believe this is so dumb. It's possible the record industry would have fought this a lot harder than they did had that tape tax not been in existence as a proposed bill. But that's not to say necessarily that they did because we got to give a little more background on the PMRC and what they did. One of the things that they were able to do because of their connections and because of their visibility was a media blitz. Over just a handful of months. They went from meeting in a church in Washington, DC. I think they were originally like nine members or something to being on donahue the Today Show editorials across the country. They made this a topic of national they made a national conversation about explicit lyrics on albums and whether the recording industry should do something about it overnight. They made it a thing. So as a result of that, legislation among the states started to pop up saying, forget whether the federal government's going to do it or not. We can do this ourselves. If you want to sell that record here in our state, you have to put a label on it. And I think there are at least a dozen states over a very brief period of time that came up with proposed legislation for this. So the RIAA would have had a hard time fighting this off once the cat was out of the bag from the PMRC. They could have still tried to fight it. The ACLU was like, we're right here. You guys go ahead and past one and see what happens. But it still would have been just a huge, enormous problem. So the PMRC did start this, and some of the states took it up. So whether it was just the tape tax or not or whether it was to try to stem off this legislation, the RIAA said, okay, we'll play ball. And like you said, they said, okay, we'll do this. And then they still held that Senate hearing, which I think goes to further the idea that this was meant to bolster Al Gore's image because he was on the Senate hearing. Yeah. So what the PMRC called for was for explicit tags rated X. And they kind of followed the MPAA's example of movie ratings, which we did a great episode on that, too. Yeah, that was a good one. Rated X for explicit sex or foul language, DA for drugs or alcohol, v for violence, o for occult, which meant anything that's not, you know, good, strong Christian values, anything weird. And so to illustrate this, they trotted out what is now known as the Filthy 15. And I think we should go through these. Oh, yes, it's a list of 15 songs and what they were tagged for. We can't say all the titles. Darling Nicky, of course, was tagged for six weeks at the top of the list, from what I understand. Yes, I think this is the accurate list. And I think it may have been in some sort of order. I don't think they were ranked as, like, this is the dirtiest of them all. I don't know. This is the one that got tipper. Sheena Easton's. Sugar Walls. You remember that tune? No. And I went back and listened Jerry's nodding and I didn't recognize it at all. Yes. This was her big image change song because she was sort of not all American, because she wasn't American, but just sort of that clean image. Sure. And then she came out with Sugar Walls. Sure. And everyone's like, you know what that's about, right? Knows about sex. Judas priests. Eat me alive. Okay. That's sex and violence, depending on who you're talking to. But all right. If it's consensual sex and violence is it really violent? I haven't heard of a bunch of these, actually. Strap on Robbie baby from Vanity. I've never heard that one. I haven't either, but I can guess what it's about. Sure. Motley Cruz Song bastard for violence and language. I didn't know the song, but I looked up the lyrics. It is a rape revenge song. Oh, really? Yeah. It's about a woman, like, killing a man who tried to rape her. That raises a really good point here, Chuck, and we'll get into this a little more, but I just want to point this out to everybody listening right now. I can't wait any longer. One of the great things about the PMRC is that they provided endless amounts of entertainment to people who were opposed to them by grossly misinterpreting the lyrics of songs. Yeah. And that's a really good example. Yeah, for sure. And there are a few examples of that. AC DC's. Let me put my love into you. That's sweet. It's all about love. Let me put my love into you yeah. Open your heart to my love twisted sisters we're not going to take it. Which it says violence for that. That is hysterical because there's nothing violent in that song. Not at all. Dee snider at the Senate hearings was like, apparently somebody saw the video and it was a guy from Animal House. Yeah. And mistook this cartoonish violence. If you want to know, I collect cartoons, and every single one of those acts of violence was taken from some of my favorite cartoons of all time. So there's nothing in the song. What are you talking about here? Why would there be an explicit lyrics warning on my album when there's no explicit lyrics and it's cartoonish violence in the video? But this was on the list of 15 that they used to say, this is a good example of what's going on in the music industry. I read a good interview with him. It was like 30 years on about the PMR. Yes, I read that, too. And he said who they really wanted was Vince Neal, because Vince, it was a party guy and not super articulate, and it would have been a blood bath. Did they confuse them because they looked similar. No, I mean, I don't think they accidentally got Dee Snider, but he said that's kind of who they wanted was Vince Neil. But what they got and said was, me. Dee Snider very famously didn't drink or smoke or do drugs. He was very articulate, kind of well spoken, family man. And he throws a little shade to the Gorge way, and he's like, I'm still married. And the goers are separated. And one of their kids was busted for drugs, and he was even nice about it. Now he's like, look, marriage is hard. I don't want to make fun of them, but it's just interesting that I'm the one that they were picking on. I'm still married to my wife 39 years later. He also called her out because this whole thing started because she failed to read the lyrics of the Prince album before she listened to it with her little kid. Sure. And he's like, I've always read the lyrics or listened to an album before I've shared it with my kids. That's a parent's job. I've always done this. And he goes even like, when Tenacious D's first album came out, he said his whole family loved it, but he made a version of it without one of the songs. I know it's. I bet you do. For his kids so they can enjoy Tenacious D. But interesting, they weren't ready for this song. D snyder is basically one of the top heroes of this, if not the top hero of this whole thing. Yeah, for sure. And do you remember we met him, kind of said, hi. Wait, where was that? The whatever show with Alexis and Jennifer. He was on at the same time as us. That's right, yes. Because he was in Rock of Ages, so he was on I totally forgot about that. It was wonderful. One of them was Martha Stewart's daughter. Alexis was okay. Interesting. Yes. I totally forgot about that whole thing. You did? Yes. Madonna dress you up? Yes. Madonna. If you read quotes from her about this, she's like, yeah, whatever. She doesn't care. It's like a Tuesday for me. The band Wasp, if you remember them, we are sex perverts is what Wasp stands for. Oh, really? They were like a proto Guoir kind of, and please don't kill me if you're a Guar fan and I'm way off. It makes sense to outsiders. Did that really stand for that, or was that like, kids and Satan services? No, that's what it stood for. Okay. It was like a big stage show and, like, human Jackie Lawless, right? Yes. And I remember he wore a cod piece that shot out. It was wired to Pyrotechnics and shot sparks out. There was also a cod piece with, like, a saw, I think, a chainsaw on it. Okay. Kind of like presage that whole horrible scene in Seven. I think the way he was approaching was a little more funny and just kind of light hearted than the Seven One. Good Lord. So their song, Animal Sex, Language and Violence, it covered all three, but not a cult. No. Occult. Deaf leopard, high and dry parenthesis. Saturday night is about drinking. Okay. All right. And they even said, like, yeah, it's about drinking. People like to have fun on Saturday night sometimes. Merciful fate into the coven. And I think that was King Diamonds band originally. Yes, he was Merciful fate singer. So theirs was occult, and it was like overtly occult stuff like, come serve Satan with me. It's fun, kill your parents kind of thing. But don't really. You're a little psychotic 16 year old. This is not for real. This is just music, and I'm trying to sell records by painting my face. Plus, also, one of the other points that I think a lot of people made, too, was you're not going to find Merciful Fate into the coven on Casey Casey's Top 40 ever. Like, you would really have to go find this thing. Yeah, there were no songs on the radio. And even if you do find it, well, then if your kids listening to Merciful Fate, have a conversation with your kid about what they're listening to and what Merciful Fate is saying and just how real or non real it is, engage your child. And also, you will not be the one parent in the history of the world that stops your child from listening to or watching something that they want to listen to or watch. Yeah, it's impossible. When Licensed the Ill came out, I knew, like, every word on the album front to back. And one of them, I was singing it out loud to my parents about smoking that dust at St. Anthony's Feast. And they were like it was funny. They didn't say anything immediately, but they did look at each other. And like, a day or two later, they approached me and they're like, Josh, you know that song, that BC boy song where they're talking about smoking dust? Are they talking about angel dust? PCP? And I was like, I don't know. Probably. And they're like, you can't listen to that anymore. Yeah, but that's one of the points, though, that it makes in this article, is that a kid probably doesn't know. And I think research has even shown that lyrically people are more prone to bring their own experience into something, especially a kid. Well, also, I legitimately remember I can put myself back in that time and hearing that I wasn't like, angel dust. Tom, can I'll give that a try? Thanks, ad Rock. That's a great idea. I really didn't think like that. No, and I think most people don't. Ironically, if you're under the influence of angel dust, then lyrics are super suggestive. Probably so. But you have to do the angel dust first. Sabbath trashed, obviously, about drugs and alcohol. That's not Osborne or Dio Sabbath either. It's. Not either one of those. No. Who was it? Ian Gilliam? No. I don't even know. I had to look him up. That's fine. It sounds a bit like a little more melodic motor head. Okay. It sounds motorheady. It's not my kind of Sabbath. Mary Jane girls in my house. I don't know anything about that. Dude, that's been in my head all day. Yeah, I don't know that girl. It's a good song. What is it in my House? Is it rap or is it in my house? Well, that doesn't clue me in anymore. You've heard this song before. It's not rep. It's the Mary Jane girls. They were like a girl group that Rick James put together. Super 80s sexy. It's fine. You would not bat an eyelash over it today, right? Venom Possessed. Never heard of them. Occult. Okay. And then finally this is great, Cindy Loferer with her very famous masturbation song. Shebot so you know it's about masturbation? No. Okay. I'm here until I read the words today, and I'm like, oh, well, that's about masturbation. Yes. She said that Bapa Day kept the doctor away, so she was recommending it. That's why she made that song. I got the impression she's a little embarrassed as an adult for having released that song, but not apologetic. No. Cindy Lawford apologizes to no man. We saw a show of hers once. Good concert. Yeah, I went to that Halloween party of hers one time. No, in the 90s. She has a big Halloween bash every year at our place in New York, and my friend John Abraham was a member of the fan club, and I think he could get, like, early tickets or something. Oh, that's cool. So you got us all tickets, and we went. And I met Cindy Lawperson. She's cool. Party to her Halloween party, which was so much fun. She spends a lot of time and money, like, helping out LGBTQ youth who've been kicked out onto the street by their parents. It's like a legitimately great person. Yeah, she's totally and talented, too. Very much so. She bopped Cindy. She bought that's. Right. So that's the filthy 15. That's what they trotted out. And this is when, I guess we need to get in a little bit to the fact that it seems sort of okay, even me as a parent now, to be like, well, you know what? There's nothing wrong with a rating system, because as a parent, you want to know what's going on, and that just helps us a bit of shorthand for us. Sure. But it wasn't a voluntary thing, because very soon what started happening is people started doing interviews on the PMRC, people in the government, and it was clear that they were trying to be rid of this stuff. Well, get it out of stores, drive them out of business. Yeah. Kind of like they have different views than ours. We don't like it. They consider themselves the Moral Majority which was ascendant thanks to basically a pact with Ronald Reagan. They helped get Reagan elected, and Reagan made the Christian right very prominent and powerful in American politics. In the read this. One of my favorite things to do, Chuck, when we're researching stuff like this is to read contemporary articles at the time. Like, they don't know the outcome, and they also know tons of details that get lost in time over history. But I was reading this, like, long form La. Times article about this whole thing written right smack dab in the middle of it. And they quoted this one guy who was like, this part of a movement. Like, everybody's looking at it like it's just about censoring records. They're like, no, these same people tried to get rid of The Last Temptation of Christ, right? They tried to get funding pulled for the National Endowment for the Humanities. This is, like, part of a larger thing that they're trying to do, and they're trying to sanitize American popular culture to their tastes. And what you were saying, I think, is that in interviews and at the Senate hearings, some of the people on the PMRC side, including PMRC members, basically said, like, yeah, we're trying to censor this. Which it's one thing if you go into it saying that, because then the people who are opposed to, you know, where you stand. But the PMRC, their whole position, they talked out of both sides of their mouth. And one of the sides, the side that they said the loudest was, we're not trying to censor anything. We're trying to get the record industry to do this voluntarily. We just happen to be the group, right? We just happen to be married to the senators and these congressmen and these Cabinet members, and that has nothing to do with anything. But if you look at the context of everything, it was voluntary. But if you don't do it, we're going to put you out of business, or we're going to have the government do it. And that is censorship. It's also unconstitutional when the government gets into that, that's unconstitutional. And probably every single law like this would have been thrown right out by the Supreme Court. Yeah, well, which is one big reason why this wasn't a law. There was never legislation proposed. It was always voluntary, from a private group to a corporation. But Frank Zappa at those hearings said, oh, wait a minute. If this has nothing to do with legislation, if this has nothing to do with law, why are we holding Senate hearings on a private group trying to get a private action, voluntary action undertaken? What are we doing here? And he really revealed the theater behind the whole thing. He got rid of all the set dressing and showed it for what it was, which was a stab at censorship. This guy, Jeff Ling, part of the PMRC, said, do I think it should be out of stores sure, I do. I think labeling will do that. Another PMRC member, Sally Nebius, said, we want the industry to police itself. If they refuse, we're going to look into legal ways to stop what we feel is contributing to the delinquencies of minors. Pat Boone very famously said that's what the Constitution had in mind, self imposed, majority approved censorship. So, I mean, they were blatant about it, about the fact that not only were they trying to legislate morality, if it came push came to shove, they would try and do that. Right. But to Pat Boone straight up saying, yeah, if the majority wants it, sure. Censor art, which is just really scary. It is scary. There was a woman named Judith Toss who introduced legislation in Maryland for record labeling, and she apparently told Frank Zappa to stop worrying about civil rights, which is not a phrase you want to go down in history as famously saying, yeah, and Frank Zapp is the last person you want to say that, too. Vince Neil probably would have been like, all right, yeah, fine, sure. Where's the Jack Daniels? Right. And even though it's a Democratic senator there named James Xen of Nebraska, and he even said, what are we doing here? Well, okay. And I was like, hero. Guys. A hero for saying that? No, not a hero for saying that. He wanted to know because he was in favor of censoring. Yeah, but he was like, there was no legislation on the floor. Why is it here in front of the commerce community? I took it to mean, like he was like, well, this is inappropriate, then this is not right. But no, he was like, Well, I thought we were here to censor things. It turns out if you watch the Frank Zappa testimony, it happens in the first couple of minutes, that whole thing. Oh, yeah, I watched a lot of this. I watched it back in the day. Some, too, but rewatch some of it. John Denver was great. He had the most impact of everyone, because I think they thought John Denver was going to come in there and Pat Boone, mr. Squeaky Clean. Yeah, and Pat Boone it up. And he came out hard on a couple of things. He was like, first of all, you think my song Rocky Mountain High is about smoking dope, right? It's not like you're wrong. I wrote it. It's about feeling the euphoria of nature in the Rockies specifically. Yeah. In the Rockies in Colorado. And not only that, but you shouldn't be doing this. And they were like, Wait, we called you in here because we thought you might be friendly committee Denver. And he said, hey, I am friendly. I'm John Denver, but you shouldn't be doing this. They all clapped. It's funny. If you watched the Frank Zapa testimony, they introduced them, and my brain was, like, waiting for applause and, like, cheers. And I was like, oh, yeah, to send it here. They don't do that there. Then we applaud themselves. Let's pause for a second here and point something out. Chuck. We just talked about a Senate hearing where John Denver, Frank Zappa and D Snyder from Twisted Sister testified. That's a pretty significant Senate hearing in the eighties. It is. It really is. I think it is. I think it's landmark now. So you want to talk a little more about the hearings and then we'll take a break in a little bit? Yeah, sure. Okay. So the guy who's most frequently actually all three of them are frank Zappa really kind of laid it down. He brought Moon unit and Dweezil with him. And I don't know if they got to testify, but they came so that they could testify as concerned teens who are worried about their free speech. Yes, and Frank Zappa really pointed it out. He said that first of all, I think this is the parents concern, not the government's concern, and that I've got four children. Two of them are here. That was Moon and Deweyl. It's like saying both of their names. I want them to grow up in a country where they can think what they want to think, be what they want to be, and not what somebody's wife or somebody in government makes them be, which is pretty wise words. Although he does say there's a little watchword in there. Wife got thrown around a lot during this from the opposing side, and it just danced along the edge of being denigrating, I think. Like you're a Washington wife. Stay in your lane. Don't worry about big stuff like this. You know, almost kind of smacked of it whenever it came up. Washington wives or wives or ladies. It just seemed kind of denigrating here and there. Go back and listen. You'll see it. I heard it, but I had a different take than you did. Got you. Yeah. And Frank Zapp actually was mislabeled, too. Later, he had a word lyric free instrumental album that was tagged with explicit lyric because somebody in a record store was like, oh, yeah, he testified against the PMRC. Man, it's so sad. What's going on with his family? What's going on with his family? Just infighting oh, really? Divided sides suing each other. Oh, no. Yeah, it's awful. Are Moon, Union, and Dewezel on the same side or opposing sides? I believe, man, I went down the rabbit hole on this not too long ago. Well, I know. Dweezel and Ahmed are completely on opposite sides. I know. And I think I met and the mom have control of I think the mom is dead. No. Okay. I think they're in control of the catalog. And we're like, you can't play Dad's music anymore. And so I think Dweezil and Moon, I think, are on one side and there's another sister. But, yeah, it's a complete house divided. It's sad. It's really sad. Yes. It's all money. All right, let's take a break because I'm bummed out now. 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 Stampscom. 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, we're back. We shook off the whole Zappa drama. Well, now it's back again. So part of the problem here with these stickers was and is that well, there's a few things. First of all, what we've been talking about with Misinterpreting, these lyrics, you've got somebody else deciding, well, this is what this person meant when they wrote it, so it deserves a sticker, whether it's John Denver or Twisted Sister with their song. Under the Blade was about the guitarist for that band was having throat surgery and was scared. So Dee Snider wrote a song about being scared going into surgery and going under the blade. And they thought it was a song about, like, killing people with a knife. Exactly. So that's a big problem. That's a big problem in and of itself. Well, you get past that by training somebody. Right. I mean, you find an elite group of people who have all studied comparative literature extensively, probably have doctorates in it, and you pay them a significant amount of money to work at each record label to go through the songs that come out and decide which ones deserve yeah. 30,000 songs that come out each year. Right. That's what you do. And that's what they did. Right. No. Okay. I knew they didn't. No. And it's funny to go back to under the Blade thing. Dee Snyder very famously was like, that's not about BDSM. That is all in Tipper Gore's mind, apparently. Well, he got mad. He got really mad. Oh, did he? Oh, yeah. He was livid in the hearing. Yeah. I didn't see that part. Yeah, he was really ticked off at Dee Snider. So yeah, Dee Snider said that, and that became kind of a talking point on the opposing side, was, like, basically painting tibergor is like, this lasciviousius, like, dirty minded lady, pent up housewife who couldn't stop herself from talking about BDSM and things like that. And then not just Tipper, but also some of the other people, they were kind of painted as people who were just basically getting off on talking about this stuff on the Today show or Good Morning America, which just brings them right up to the line between earnestness and performance art. And they were almost saying that these people are putting you on almost because the idea that somebody's walking around getting off on it, it's just such a cartoonish Freudian sketch of a person. But this is where the talking points were on both sides. Yes, Prince is talking about darling Nikki masturbating. All you want to do is talk about masturbating. The mass media, right, basically verbatim quotes is what I just said. Well, I mean, that's the irony of it all, is the word masturbated probably not been used that much in public, like, ever because of these hearings, and certainly not on Good Morning America or anything like that. But it was the very people who were decrying it who are the ones who were bringing it to the masses. Oh, dear. A few more songs. Ozzy's Suicide Solution song, which is anti suicide about alcoholism, was promoted by the PMRC as a suicide encouraging song. Right. So they're just getting it all wrong. They are. Okay, so you've got a subjective thing. By definition, judging lyrics and interpreting them is pretty subjective, 100% subjective. You're not going to go to the trouble of training people to do this job correctly, right? At least you're going to come up with a set of coherent criteria and guidelines that can be applied across the board, right? No, they didn't do any of that. And it wasn't applied across the board because in the end and this was a survey in Portland, Oregon, only four, but let's say we could extrapolate this across the country, 8% of CDs and cassettes total had parental advisory stickers. 59% of rap albums, 13% heavy metal, 1% mainstream pop, and no country albums had stickers, which is pretty rich considering there's a guy named David Allen Co and Hank Jr. Walkthosh and all that. All they saying about was drinking and doing drugs and getting in fights and stuff. Yeah, sex, violence and drugs and drinking. And they had zero parental advisory. So that's smacked of a and again, that's an extremely narrow sample of record stores in Portland, Oregon. But it gets across some people's points on the opposing side, like, no, this isn't about values. It's about what they're threatened by. They're threatened by rap music and heavy metal. They're okay with everything else. And this is proof positive of that. They probably didn't even run the country songs through the process. Sure. That would be my guess. Yeah, I'm sure they just targeted groups. So finally well, like we said, IA had already decided prehearing that they were going to do this. And they said, all right, we're going to figure this out. Should just take us about five years. What the plan may have been was like, maybe this will all just go away. Yeah, that was part of it. But I think also they realized that it would stem off that legislation and it worked. If you read some of the contemporary reports with legislators who brought legislation to their state houses, they say, since they agreed to play ball, we're sending our bill, but we've got it over here if they don't end up playing ball after all. So it really did work. Oh, yeah. But they did it like a couple of days or a couple of weeks before the committee, the Commerce Committee voted on the tape tax. Yeah. And the RIAA didn't get their tape tax. No, they did not. But what did happen was those stickers in March of 1990 started coming out. I remember going to the store and seeing those for the first time. I got to buy that one. Well, that's kind of what happened, too, in some cases. Do you know what the first album that had the first sticker was? Was there a first album? Yes. If you could guess what album that came out in 1990, just guess who would have gotten the first explicit lyrics? Oh, man. I don't know. James Addiction. Two Live Crew. Oh, of course. Banned in the USA was the first album to get an explicit lyric sticker. Yeah. And so these stickers started coming out and I had a ripple effect in a big way, but in a lot of ways, everything from Stephen Tyler getting on stage and saying, thank you, Tipper Gore, because you throw some four letter words on an album and now you're going to get another million in sales. Right. Because kids were looking to buy those records. It's forbidden fruit all the way to the other side of the coin, which is Walmart or certain states saying, we're not even going to carry these records. That was part of it in stores. It also became an easy target for local law enforcement that decided that they were going to enact their own laws. Right. Like in Broward County, Florida, which is around Miami, where Miami is, the Broward County Sheriff sent out some deputies with their badges full uniform to go by record stores and said, hey, just wanted to give you a friendly little heads up. If you guys sell any more of those Two Live Crew albums, we're going to arrest you. We don't want to, but we wanted to give you a heads up first. Two Live Crew found out about it, and we're like that's prior restrain on free speech. Yeah, and they won, they won in the Supreme Court, actually. But this kind of thing, it was like, as the Grabster put it, the sensors were emboldened by the response from the Pmrcs. Yeah, for sure. And these labels were, hey, go after these guys, and not just their records. Like, when artists came to town, they would get arrested for their performances. In 1989, nine performers were arrested in Georgia alone for their concerts. From Bobby Brown to Jean Simmons. Yeah. And that's what D Snyder and that sort of 30 years later thing said is it worked in one way because they sequestered, which is maybe all they wanted was they sequestered a certain group of artists from the rest. Yes. And that sequestration, like you said, range from now. They're following where they're touring and cops are going to show up there to Walmart, say, not going to carry this unless you change this album cover or this lyric or the song title. Something ridiculous like Nirvana's song Raped Me was very famously changed on the album. The title to waif me. Nothing about the song. They didn't change the song itself. But if you look on the back of that in Utero Encumber, it says, WAFE Me. But it's even, like, crossed out and they're written in sharpie wave. It's not, but it should have been. So it had a big ripple effect in a lot of ways. And I guess before this, they had always had radio safe versions of some songs. Well, yeah, you just weren't going to get radio play. Right. But now it's like the albums need to be like radio safe in your home or else Walmart won't sell them or whatever. That's a big retailer it was even back then. Yeah. So there was that slippery slope that the PMRC had carried the nation across. We started to slide down it and actual legitimate censorship took place as a result. Yeah. And then the way that all of this happened, the way it was able to happen, was because there was a gatekeeper, there was a funnel for the record industry to the public, and the PMRC was able to go to them and say, you've got something, we've got something you want. You got something we want. We're going to make this happen. And just by the fact that the record industry is not like it was back then, they're no longer the gatekeepers. Like, if you make music you can sell directly to your fans, you've got a few digital platforms that do some kind of explicit stuff or labeling or something. They're still there. It's there. And I think if you still can buy a record I didn't know anybody still bought, like, physical CDs or whatever, but it can still come with a sticker. But it's just changed. It's just different. And if you listen to stuff today and then you listen to that filthy 15, you're like, You've got to be kidding me. So it's almost like the PMRC went and put their finger on a dike that didn't even really need it. And in doing so, they exploded in the floodgates. The flood just came and overwhelmed them. And just by the number of songs that were released and the amount of just filthiness that was attendant in those songs, it became normalized rather than the exact opposite, which is what the PMRC was working for. Yeah. And what didn't happen is our generation, which was the generation of the turns out we did not grow up to just be a bunch of degenerates that was going to be the ruin of our country. It's true, though, because of music, and I think that is ultimately what parents tell themselves they're really worried about, is that their kids going to become morally unhygienic and the country will go down the hill one way or another. But it just doesn't seem to pan out ever, despite it being such an ongoing and old worry. Jazz was going to be the end of moral society, then rock and roll. Yes, that's true. Although I have to say the PMRC did give us Glenn Danzig's song Mother, which is apparently an two Tipper Gore in the PMRC. Oh, really? If you go and read the lyrics, you're like, okay, PMRC was in a bunch of songs. I mean, those four letters appeared in a lot of rock and roll songs. Hip hop songs. Yeah. They got a lot of attention and maybe that's all they wanted. Well, we just gave them some more. Well, they're no longer around. They broke up the band in the do you know when? Do you know when Tipper quit? 95? No, 92. When he became vice president. Yeah. And then now you can see her sitting in with the Grateful Dead on drums, smoking grass. All she talks about is grass. Now, if you want to know more about the PMRC, well, I don't think there is anything more to know, but go look around. Read some contemporary articles. It's fun. Since I said contemporary articles, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this short and sweet member. In the olive oil episode, I said something about Greeks and Italians. Like, what's the difference? I got support on that. Okay. From a Greek gentleman. Apparently it's a thing he said. I think you'll be pleased, Chuck, to find out that you didn't offend anyone when you said Greeks and Italians are the same. In fact, there's actually a phrase una fatigue, una raza, or in Greek, mia faze miaraza, meaning one face, one race, often used to express the perception of close cultural affinities between Greeks and Italians. Oh, neat. Keep up the good work, guys. That is from Nick Kontos. Well done, Chuck. And I bet you Nick Kontos is Greek. Does it matter? Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Nick. That was very nice email to send to support Chuck because I left him hanging high and dry. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to our website stuffyousheno.com and you'll find our social links all over the place. I also have a website called the Joshclarkway.com. And you can send me, Chuck and Jerry an email at stuffpodcast@housestuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.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 technology 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." | |
c2ecd32e-5460-11e8-b38c-ebf3b35d61e7 | SYSK Selects: How Schizophrenia Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-schizophrenia-works | Up to 24 million people worldwide have schizophrenia. Despite the vast amounts of research, the disorder remains mysterious. In this episode, Josh and Chuck delve into the nature of schizophrenia, from the history of the disorder to the latest research. | Up to 24 million people worldwide have schizophrenia. Despite the vast amounts of research, the disorder remains mysterious. In this episode, Josh and Chuck delve into the nature of schizophrenia, from the history of the disorder to the latest research. | Sat, 12 Jan 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=12, tm_isdst=0) | 42050962 | audio/mpeg | "Hi everyone, its Josh here. And for this week's SYSK Selects, I've chosen our episode on schizophrenia. First of all, please excuse the rampant use of the word schizophrenic. We know better now and delight in a clip of Wesley Willis's Rock and Roll McDonald's. If you've never heard of Wesley Willis, go check them out, as I clearly want you to do throughout this episode. And also note that there is a rare corrections rather than listener mail a correction segment that apparently just didn't take off, probably because we would have just ended up doing nothing but corrections for episodes. At any rate, I hope you enjoy this one. It's a good one. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always. As Charles. Debbie. Chuckers. Chuck Tran. Chuckaluck, right. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm going to see Bob Dylan tonight. People are going to be like, how many times is Bob Dylan playing Atlanta? Have you ever seen David Bowie? That's good. I have not. Yes, you are, Chuck. I know you're very excited. I am. I've seen him a few times, but it's always good. Really? Yeah. Too short, though. He buzzes through like 15 songs, he's out of there. Is he short? Well, he's also short, but yeah. Is he really? I was just kidding. No, he's short. I guess those bell bottom long pants that he wore in the 60s on his album Bell Bottom made him look kind of tall. Yeah. All right, so enough about Bob Dylan. For the second time, not a big Dylan fan myself, let's talk about schizophrenia and stay. Okay, so I was looking for an intro for this, and, I mean, there's plenty of stuff, but it's all pretty research heavy, AstraZeneca was marketing. Saraquil off label and just settled. Let's see what else Jared Loffner is being medicated against as well. The guy who shot Gabriel Giffords. Okay. Really? Yes. He's been diagnosed with schizophrenic. Interesting. Finally. And then there was a homeless man in Los Angeles who was beaten to death by the police yesterday or today. Awful. And all of this is kind of I realized there wasn't any one thing that I was like, well, here's the intro, but I realized all of it together gives a pretty good overview of schizophrenia as it stands right now, which is it's misunderstood. It's heavily prescribed, underfunded yeah. Research, that is. Yeah. And there's a lot of people out there who aren't necessarily getting help, who need it. Yeah. In fact, I got a stat if you want to go ahead and go there, you got a bunch of stats, you said, for this, right? I do. If you want to talk about people getting help. Needing help and not getting it. 6% of schizophrenics are homeless, 6% are in jail or prison, 10% in nursing homes, 25% with a family member, 28% are independently living, 20% supervised housing. And it makes sense, chuck, too, that this makes sense because, first of all, you have all of this crazy stuff going on to you. That's your reality. So you're having trouble dealing with reality as it stands. Secondly, a lot of times, schizophrenia comes on during times when you learn how to hold down a job or take care of yourself or do whatever. So you might never learn how to do this because you're dealing with your schizophrenia. Here's the shocking one, okay? At any given moment, there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living on the streets than there are receiving care. Wow. They outweigh the people that are actually getting help. That is shocking, but not surprising, somehow. Agreed. Wow. So you said what was that last one? Severe psychiatric illnesses. That's an umbrella term, obviously. Right. And schizophrenia falls under, that for sure. But prior to the beginning of the 20th century, it was pretty much thought of as generalized illness. Mental illness was mental illness. And maybe there is a symptom. Your symptoms were different, but really you were mentally ill, which was a huge step up from the spirit possession that it had previously been ascribed to or probably millions of years. Yeah. So it's a fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until 1893 that a German psychiatrist named Emil Kraepelin classified schizophrenia as a mental illness, and he misclassified it as a form of dementia, an early type of dementia. And then in 1911, a Swiss psychiatrist named Eugen Blooter came up with the name schizophrenia. That's right, Josh. And he got that word from the Greek words for split and mind, which contributes somewhat to the misconception that it is a split personality disorder. But what he meant was there's a disconnect with reality. Right. The mind splits from reality, which today that's how you still perceive schizophrenia. But rather than split, we use the word break. There's a psychotic break. Yeah. And we should go ahead and just since that is a common misconception, it is entirely different than split personality disorder, which they call disassociative identity disorder. Now. And if you know the show United States of Terra, have you seen that? No, I know what you're talking about. That with Tony Collette. She has split personality disorder on that show. And that's the one that you always see in the movies, where you have multiple personalities and they don't know about each other and one dominates the other, and then what All About Eve was about. I never saw that sybil civil. Yeah, for sure. But it's not schizophrenia. They have nothing to do with each other, other than they're both types of mental illness. Right. And Hollywood is fascinated by them. That's right. That's a pretty good example of medicines is starting to get a hold of what schizophrenia is, what mental illness is in general, and then the public at large still just being completely under educated about it. So let's educate people about it. Yeah. I want to say, too, that this is like, a lot of conditions and disorders that develop later in life. To me, that's one of the scariest things that can happen. Like, you're cruising along at 27, 28 years old, and you think, I'm all good. And you can develop schizophrenia, like, boom, in a matter of weeks sometimes, yeah. It can either come on gradually or very suddenly in an acute manner. And like you said, later in life, with men, schizophrenia usually develops in the late teens or early twenties is when it starts. Or in women, it's the mid 20s or the early 30s. So yeah, by the time I was 30, I certainly didn't think I was going to become mentally ill. No, you thought, I know my demons, can write them down in a list. I can quit them anytime I want. And that's what they are. They're self imposed demons. Right. It wasn't something that was beyond my control that happened to my mind. Right. And, yeah, that's how schizophrenia hits you later in life, and it can happen all at once or gradually. And this is not to scare the crap out of you if you're in your teens or 20s, because there's only about a 1% chance that you'll get schizophrenia. It depends. If you're part of the general population, there's a 1% chance. But as we'll see, there are risk factors that increase your chances of having schizophrenia. And now we're not trying to scare you, but I guess kind of the newest forms of treatment or newest thoughts about treating schizophrenia is to make people aware of it so that they will be able to recognize it early on. And apparently, early treatment leads to a better success rate. I think we'll talk about that across the board. But, Chuck, there's two kinds of symptoms of schizophrenia, and they're positive and negative. And it's not like positive symptom means you hallucinate bunnies, where negative symptom means you hallucinate like a hell demon. Instead, positive symptom is like an exaggeration of normal behavior. So I see you I hear things, but I don't see you with horns, and I don't hear Kermit here talking to me. Right. So a positive symptom is an exaggerated behavior. Negative symptom is the absence of normal behavior, like, you lack affect or the ability to experience any emotion, or you basically are just generally apathetic. Right? Yeah. So that's positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Yes. And certain negative symptoms are cognitive that deal a lot with attention span and memory, lack of memory, inability to plan anything or organize anything. Right. And then another form of negative, I should say, is called abolition. It's basically, I think, crepler. The guy who first classified schizophrenia call it the annihilation of the will, where you're just so withdrawn. You no longer engage in goal directed behavior, from brushing your teeth to paying your bills to doing anything. You're just totally withdrawn. Wow. So that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually hear about, but apparently it's fairly common. Really? Yeah. So get diagnosed, Josh. You have to exhibit a certain number of these symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right? Yeah. If you have is it schizophreniform is like a shorter it's schizophrenia, but it lasts less than six months. Yeah, that's schizophreniform. Right, good point. But according to the DSM, and we should say, like, it's based on clinical observations or whatever, but this is the DSM saying six months, you may have schizophrenia and you just haven't reached the six month period yet, but you're still schizophrenic. But to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist or a psychologist who's a member of the APA, you have to have X number of symptoms for six months or more. Yeah. And they have to do that because it's like the same as the cops when they say you can't file a missing person's report unless they've been gone for 24 hours. And it's not like that, but it's sort of like that now. There's like a law, I think, in Michigan called Kaylee's Law or something that they're introducing where if you're a parent and you don't report your kid missing after 24 hours, it's a felony. Oh, really? Yeah. What kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent. Chasey Anthony. Yeah. Made the kid go away. Allegedly. Allegedly. No, nothing in general. Schizophrenia, apparently, is how it's pronounced. Can take a few forms. The one you've probably heard about most is paranoid schizophrenia, which is when you have the full on delusions and hallucinations. And then there's disorganized. That is disorganized thinking your behavior is probably incoherent. It's also called HEPA phrenic. Really? And you probably don't exhibit a lot of emotion. Yeah, well, usually there's a negative symptom coupled with disorganized behavior. Okay. So it's almost like two separate things, I think you can be HEPA phranic without being negative. Got you. There's. Catatonic. That means you move around and talk excessively. Yeah, that was a surprise to me. I always thought catatonic state where you're just, like, sitting there, but it also says they may become still in uncommunicated. Right. So it can be one or the other. Yeah, but I guess it has to do with motion or movement or lack of catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort of the umbrella term for when you have a mix of symptoms and they don't want to classify you as one specific kind. And then residual is if you have a history of schizophrenia but you have a long extended period of time with no negative I'm sorry. With negative but no positive symptoms, they'll classify as residual. Right. Which I guess that's better than paranoid schizophrenia in a way. I don't think any foreign schizophrenia. Right. It would be horrible. It is a horrible disease. It is. That's like the Curb Your Enthusiasm. When Larry asked someone had good hodgkins from the Party of Five episode is what he was referencing when Charlie got sick, he had, quote, unquote, good hodgkins. And they were like, they were so offended. There is no good hodge. Yeah, but one's better than the other. Right. And they were just like, you're such a jerk. Never seen in like that. Yeah, pretty much. And then we mentioned schizophrenia form, which is an abbreviated version of schizophrenia. And then this one has to be just horrible schizoaffective disorder. It's any kind of schizophrenia coupled with the mood disorder, like depression. Yeah, right. So we should probably say there's delusions and there's hallucinations mixed in together, often with schizophrenic symptoms, and they're often confused. But a delusion is a false belief, and hallucination is a false sensation. Like, hey, I'm Jesus Christ. That would be a delusion. Right. Or, hey, there's Jesus Christ on top of that subway car. That would be hallucination. Yeah. And you can extend that to anything. It doesn't have to be Jesus or subway car. You're right. But just studying hallucinations and delusions are really interesting, in my opinion. Agreed. The most common hallucination is auditory among schizophrenics. And the most common auditory hallucination is our voices. Yeah. They hear voices that can come from anywhere. From this kermit the frog could start talking to me, or it could come from thin air, or it could come from the electrical outlet in the wall. Right. And the voices say usually it's like one word, a couple of words. There's an implication of a word. Sometimes it's indistinct mumbling. On occasion, very rare occasions, will the voice ramble on coherently where the patient understands long sentences, but also maybe commenting on what the person is doing is very common. Yeah. Usually it's not a voice that they recognize. Although that can happen as well. Yeah, right. And then sometimes there's more than one voice and even more disconcertingly, the voices will argue about the patient. Yeah. Wow. Well, there's a guy on Marta that I see, and a lot of people that you see that are walking down the street screaming out loud, there's probably a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid schizophrenic and they are yelling at the voice in their head. That reminds me of the stand up bit I saw when I was a kid in the guy was like this comedian said he was walking down the street and he walked past this guy, he was talking to himself, and he's just mumbling. He sounded so angry. And the comedian goes and I thought, man, that guy is really crazy. He's talking to himself. And then I thought, Wait, who am I talking to? Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, I talk to myself all day long. I have arguments in my head. But of course, it's not the same thing. No. You don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing at that moment and what's best for you, or whether you should hurt somebody or hurt yourself. Not making light of that. And the reason that a frightening percentage of schizophrenics kill themselves is a lot of times because the voice in their head may command them to do so. Right. There's such a thing as commanding hallucinations, which is sometimes they could be suggestive, like, maybe we should go outside for a while, or they could be like, Go outside. Yeah. You know? And it's not always scary, like they point out sometimes it's, hey, you need to shave again. Right. And you'll go shave again. Yeah. It can be innocuous, but can it lead to violence or it can urge violence? Apparently, the vast majority of people who suffer dangerous command hallucinations are able to suppress them. Right. But it's a struggle, and this is going on in this person's head. Yeah. And I wondered about this, too, before I got to that point in the article that you sent me. Rarely do you hear really great things, like, you're doing great today and you should go. You look that flower and smell it. It's interesting that it usually takes a dark turn. Yes, it is. And they don't know why. No, they don't. There's also hallucinations of Touch haptic hallucinations, which sound pretty awful. Things are crawling on you. Things are inside of you, trying to get out. Your bowels are shriveling. You're being jolted by electricity is a very common one. Yeah. And then delusions, obviously, or any false belief there's some that you are. Jesus Christ. That's a delusion. Right, right. But there was one subcategory that caught my attention that I wasn't aware of. It's called delusion of reference. Yeah, tell me about that. Well, it's basically like every single thing that goes on in life is full of meaning. Right. So, like, in this brown university sheet I sent you, there's like a waiter leaving a crumb on the table. That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient. Like the bus boy or the waiter did that on purpose as an insult, or the street lights coming on. All of a sudden, it's a signal for everybody to swarm on you and finally take you away or kill you or whatever. Right. Like, everything in life has meaning, and it's making you it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind is turning against you. It's pretty awful. Yeah. And we said it's awful. Yes. Okay. Yes, it is quite awful. But people live with this. Yeah. I mean, we painted a dark picture because it is a dark disorder, but the majority of people, in fact, time, after ten years, if you want to know, after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia, 25% completely recover, 25% are much improved and relatively independent, and 25% are improved but require a pretty extensive support network. So that's 75% of people after diagnosis, after a decade, are dealing with it fairly well. Yeah. That's very hopeful. That's not bad. 15% are unimproved, and 10%, unfortunately, are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah. Well, 10% at least of schizophrenics commit suicide, which is incredibly high. Because in the general population of the United States, 1% of people commit suicide. So 10% to zero. 1%. Yeah. And that's people who are successful, they think it could be attempts, could be as high as 55% people that try to kill themselves. Imagine sometimes the voices say to do it, and sometimes it's just a fine piece. Yeah. I was wondering what the breakdown between those two is as well. And then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least in the public mind. Right. Yeah. But you're dangerous. Yeah. Apparently, studies have shown I remember reading about this when we talked about latent inhibition, that if you are typically violent, when the symptoms set in your early twenties or whatever right. You're going to possibly be a violent schizophrenic. If you're not a very violent person, it's just not part of your personality before the symptoms set in, then you're not going to be a violent schizophrenic unless you abuse drugs or alcohol, which apparently vastly increases the chances that you may be a violent schizophrenic. Yeah. And even then, I think the violence is generally either self inflicted or it takes place inside the home, like, against your family, which is not good. But point is, if you're walking down the street and sadly, you see the homeless man screaming out loud, you don't necessarily need to be afraid that he's about to attack you in a violent manner. Right. That's probably not going to happen. No. Chuck, let's say you do want to talk to that schizophrenic homeless man over there, but you don't want to make things worse for him. Right. But you don't want to ignore him. He's another human being. The National Institutes of Mental Health have suggestions, I guess, for talking to schizophrenics and specifically with their families, who have to deal with delusions and hallucinations all the time, specifically delusions. Apparently, you don't contest what they're saying. Yeah. You don't want to say you're not Jesus Christ. What are you talking about? Yeah. You don't definitely don't say that. No. You say, I respect your right to believe different things, and I hope you'll respect my right to believe different things, but I politely disagree. Yeah. And what you also don't want to do is agree and say, I know, honey, you are Jesus Christ. Right. You're okay, you're Jesus, and it's fine. Yeah. A lot of people probably take that tack in the family. Well, yeah. First, I mean, at the very least, because it's just easier after a while. It's like, yes. Or you get so frustrated, you're like, no, you're not, and you want to shake the person. Right. But yeah, apparently and I wonder how hard it is to say, well, I respectfully disagree with you. Yeah. I bet it's hard if it does go over as well as it seems like it suggested it should. Right. All right, Josh, I think this was really interesting, the recovery in the Third World part. Yeah. Apparently, the world Health Organization did a study in the 1960s and found that the recovery rate for schizophrenia in developing nations is higher by a full third than it is in the industrialized world. And then they did a follow up study even to correct possible selection biases, and they confirmed the original finding. And I thought that was really interesting. And there's a lot of hypotheses, but one of them is that there might not be a stigma, like, in the industrialized world, and they're just more readily accepted. And the other is that they might be able to have a job that they can do successfully and digging the trench for the farm or whatever. Right. Here in the west, we're very competitive. Yeah. It's hard to get a job that schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete. Right. And the rest of us are paranoid enough as it is about losing our jobs. If you are clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then it's probably going to be very difficult to keep your job true. Or do it in a way that will help you keep your job. That's very true. But, Josh, there have been some successful stories of people that are afflicted with schizophrenia. Some were successful, and Syd Barrett was successful, but I don't know if you call him a success story. He ended up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Yes. Syd Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd. Schizophrenic. And they believe that massive amounts of drugs that he used made it worse, way worse. He is the crazy diamond. Yeah. Shine on you. Crazy diamond. Yup. I love that song. All four parts of it, right? And they're like part, I think, up to part four. Is it? Yeah. John Nash. Yeah. From the movie A Beautiful Mind, the Ron Howard film with Russell Crow as John Nash, the Nobel winner. The one who helped figure out that cable companies would do better if they cooperated with one another. That's right. And that movie did a lot for putting us on the map in a compassionate way. Jack Kerwich, did you know that one? That one's debatable. Okay. He was in the Navy, and they discharged him honorably after a little less than a year. And the report, they said he had schizoid tendencies, but other people have said that he faked that stuff to get out of the Navy and just wanted to not take orders and drink himself to death, which is what he did. And Pop benny's, do you know how he died? No. He woke up and was just, like, coughing blood and bleeding from his mouth and basically was like, I got to go to the hospital. Took him to the hospital, and his liver was so shot that his blood wouldn't clot. And they just were giving him transfusion one after the other, and he just basically bled to death. Holy cow. From drinking. Holy cow. And he was drinking at the time. He was drinking whiskey and whiskey and malt liquor. When he started, blood started coming out of his mouth. I wonder how it tastes. Would you shake or stir that? I don't think he mixed them. I think it was like whiskey with a beer back and a garnish with a drop of blood. So, kids, there's a lesson for you. There's one more person who is indisputably schizophrenic, or was. His name is Wesley Willis. Who's that? He is a musician who had such songs as well. Really? The only title I can say is rock and Roll McDonald's. I've never heard of him. You have had to have heard of Wesley Willis. Really? Okay, let me play you a little Wesley Willis right here. McDonald's is a place to rock. It is a restaurant where they buy foodies. It is a good place to listen to the music. People flock here to get down to the rock music. So chuck that's Wesley will okay. And he was very much schizophrenic. He wrote about it a lot. He talked about it in a lot of his songs. And he said he'd just be going along, having a nice time, riding the bus. I believe he lived in Chicago. And then all of a sudden, his hell demons would take him on one of his torture hell rides, which meant he was going on a little bit of an exacerbation of his schizophrenia symptoms. Wow. But he's a great guy, great music, very prolific. And if you liked that, you should go watch Daddy Rock and Roll. It's a documentary about it. Yeah, it's really good. I'll check that out. Yeah. Lionel Aldridge is the last name on our list. And he was a Green Bay packer, and he was homeless, unfortunately, after he was diagnosed for a while and then later was able to climb out from that wreckage and go around and talk about mental illness. And he was playing in the think it was late 60s or 70s. So think about it, man. That's a big deal to go around and talk publicly about mental illness at that time. It still is now. But, I mean, back then, hats off to him. Yeah. He was the guy that I included in the presentation that you did by yourself. Okay. That you're like, he was this guy. Yeah. All right. I understand now. Yeah. It's all coming together. So, Chuck, what causes this? Well, it seems like there are environmental factors and there are genetic factors. They've isolated what they believe are some genes, the disc one, the Dsbandin, the neuragulin, and the G seven, two genes. And they think there might be up to a dozen more genes that could impact this. Okay. So the basis of that is that they can't just look at your genes and say you're going to be schizophrenic. Right. It's possible that's because we just haven't isolated all the genes and don't know the right combination yet. Right. Or it's possible that it's from other causes. One of which one of the theories that's out there right now is that it's the result of an inutero exposure to either a flu or the dread toxoplasmosis remember toxoplasmosis I do that hijacks rat brains that's found in cat urine. That's why if you have a cat and you're pregnant, you don't be cleaning up that litter box. Right. And I think that one of the reasons, I guess one of the pieces of evidence that supports this is called the birth month effect. And the birth month effect is if you were born in winter months or early spring months, you are at a higher risk for becoming schizophrenic later in life. And they think that those are fluent. And another aspect of it is, apparently the brains of schizophrenics show inflamed white blood cells, which is a sign of an infection. And they think that possibly all of us are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that lies dormant like Ms, that under the right circumstances, like early exposure to an infection, can trigger its release or trigger its activation. And it takes 18 to 20 to 30 years to come on. Now you see why people that are pregnant are worried a lot. It's amazing that, like, we've gotten anywhere. I know. So what else? Well, they did do have some new findings. I got this today from the Internet. They have a New South Wales study from Thomas Weichert. He has identified the brain mechanism that derails decision making in people. So basically, the part of the brain is called the ventral strategum. I'm sorry, stratum. And it lights up. They put people in the MRI. It lights up in response to rewards in healthy people. And it's linked to your decision making, but completely unresponsive among schizophrenics. So they don't know the difference between expected and unexpected rewards, and so they don't have the opportunity to make a good decision to begin with. And it's a nice finding. It doesn't get us any closer. Well, maybe it does. You never know. They say with proper funding that they predicted 2013, they could have a cure for this. Well, yeah, but they don't get proper funding. No, but they're looking into stem cells. Right? They're looking into figuring out if it is an infection and if so, like, combating that. And we've also long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that helped develop antipsychotics, or better antipsychotics, is PCP. Yeah. Apparently researchers figured out that phenylcyclide PCP, the drug angel dust, produced such similar symptoms to schizophrenia that they started investigating it and found that it had to do with the neurotransmitter glutamate. Right, right. And dopamine. Right. Yes. Well, it has to do with both. But the emphasis before on antipsychotics was strictly dopamine. Okay. And all it did was keep dopamine in the synapses longer by blocking its reuptake by receptors. That's what antipsychotics do. Yeah. And then in the 80s, after the PCP stuff, they figured out. That Glutamate was involved and they came up with atypical antipsychotics. And these focus somewhat on dopamine, but more on things like glutamate and it's free uptake and these things have produced better results with fewer side effects. So they're figuring out how to treat it. Right. The problem is there's all sorts of side effects, even with atypical antipsychotics, like weight gain, drowsiness, nervousness, muscle spasms. Yeah. All bulging eyes, apparently, is one. Oh, really? And I guess most of the stuff can be treated by lowering the dosage, but they're bothersome enough that a lot of people just go off their meds. Right. And it doesn't help ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy is another thing that they still do. It's not something a relic from the 50s. Yes. It's changed a lot and how they do it, and they're not sure still how it exactly works. They stopped using car batteries, but about 100,000 Americans each year still receive ECT, so that is an option. And obviously the group therapy and family therapy help just the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes. So we encourage you to seek help soon as possible. Yes. And apparently families can help in very little ways. They're encouraged to set small goals, apparently, especially if you have lost your drive or your will as a result of your schizophrenia or you're disorganized. Right. It can just be compounded by all the like when your life is disorganized. Sure. It seems just completely unwieldy. Yeah. Like, where do I start right. Now, if that's a symptom of your schizophrenia, it's just that much worse. Right. So if you can help a schizophrenic get back on track by setting small goals and building up their confidence again, apparently that has a measurable effect on their recovery. And then one of the leading edges of schizophrenia treatment right now is based on this thing called the prodrome, which is the period between the onset of symptoms where you think, maybe I am Jesus Christ, and the time when that seems like your reality. So it's this point where you're starting to have the ideas, but they still seem bizarre or weird or why am I having these ideas? So if you apparently seek out treatment for schizophrenia, when you start to have these ideas in the prodrome, the success rate of treatment is through the roof. Yes. This British doctor in the late 80s set up shop in these two towns outside of London and he's set to work finding every potential early case of schizophrenia he could, and he started treating people with therapy and low doses of antipsychotics. And in four years, those two towns had a 10th of the prevalence of schizophrenia than the rest of the country. Wow. Yeah. So apparently, like, this prodrome research, there's, like, clinics that are opening up and entire departments and universities are dedicated to this prodrome period where you can be like, Come back. This is reality. Right. Wow. Yes. And they're successful as they have been so far. Well, Josh, I got one more stat. If you live in a city of 3 million people, then over 21,000 people in your city are suffering from schizophrenia. So keep that in mind. Yes, don't make fun of people. Don't obviously get scared or violent in a reactive way. I don't know that I'm going to say that you should go over and talk to them. Like, you might want to. Just be compassionate, and hopefully they're getting help. You know what I'm saying? Yes, go to schizophrenia.com. You can find all kinds of good information. And if you hadn't already checked out Wesley Willis, check him out. He was a great guy. Check out the daddy. Rock and roll. And also, I would say, in addition to how schizophrenia works, required reading for this one is an article called Which Way Madness Lies by Rachel Aviv. It was in the December 2010 issue of Harper's. And I have a link. I'll tweet it. I'll tweet the link. How about that? That sounds great. If you want more about schizophrenia, there's plenty of it. There's an article and then some on the site. Just type schizophrenia, which again means split mine that's right into the search bar@howstuffworks.com. And that brings up what? Checklist in now? Yes, Josh. Specifically corrections. Oh, wow. I forgot about those. Yeah. Well, we'll correct ourselves on Facebook and stuff, but they mounted up, so we might as well go for it. Okay. How Wildfires work? Oh, man, I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people sent this in. The flashpoint of paper is not Fahrenheit 451. I said books. The flashpoint of books is not Fahrenheit 451. It is Fahrenheit 851, Celsius 450, and Ray Bradbury apparently changed the title because Fahrenheit 451 sounds a lot better than Celsius 450, apparently. Well, with 481 no, Celsius 450 is the flashpoint or Fahrenheit 851-0851. That sounds as good as 451, I think. Yeah. Okay. But I assume that as well. Man. I wish I had his name. You know who you are. And it was a very nice correction. Those are the ones we like to read. Then we got a correction on who was the first murderer. Apparently, David says, and even sending a copy of 1491 by Charles Mann. Where he sent an email? No, he sent a scanned copy. I got you of the page. Okay. In 1491, he says, Charles Mann says, although Billington was in fact hanged, at least two other Europeans were executed before him. One was convicted for the much more interesting offense of killing his pregnant wife and eating her. How about that? He said, I was on page 55 of 1491. Yeah, there it is. That is crazy. Okay. But still, Billington is a very noteworthy figure. Obviously sees a whole chapter on him. Sure. And then we got some first of all, some people wrote in about Wildfires in Georgia when I said, oh, Georgia doesn't have wildfires. South Georgia does. And there's actually one going on right now in the Oki phenoke. So I misspoke for sure, because I was just talking about the North Georgia mountains, which are very lush and green, but South Georgia can get quite dry and there are wildfires in Georgia. I did not know that. That is true. And then finally, we got an email from an actual Hindu named Kush Kush. And Kush says, you guys missed a few things. Hinduism, typically I'm sorry, technically only has one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain, especially in the non Hindus. But the general idea is there is one universal soul or god that encompasses everything called the Brahman. Okay, I've heard of that. Not the Broham. And every living thing has a part of that in us called the Atman. The different gods are just different forms of the one Brahman. Also, you didn't properly explain the laws of Karma. The law of Karma has three parts in Hinduism. One, the performer of an action will get the result to the results of the action will come right at the right time. And three, good actions bring good results, bad actions bring bad results. And fourth, the gods are technically subject to Karma. If you also expand the definition of Karma to include the law of Karma. But he says it was a good podcast. Overall, you guys really hit it on the head, except for these few points. He did not hit it on the head for that. No, just for that one part. Wow. And finally he pointed out, and a few other people pointed out that I was wrong and correcting you with Jainism and Jainism. Thank you. But I'm going to play you something right now. Okay. That was from Dictionary.com. That voice is obviously wrong. Maybe. So this is from Marian Webster. If it's the same voice, it doesn't count twice. Giantism oh, did you hear that? That's a different voice. Did that one come through? Matt? Yeah. Okay. And then finally, this is Google Definitions. And this is my favorite of all, actually. I don't like where this is going on. Shy Museum. Wow. So I don't know, because three other people said no. Man three other robots. No, three other real people said, no, it's Jainism. And then I went on YouTube and people said, Jainism. So I don't know. Well, I like that it's both. We're both right. Yes. Or we're both wrong. Yeah, it's genius. Well, we loved correction so much that I managed to forget that we are corrected a lot. Or we used to read them. I never forget that we're corrected. Right. But let's do this again soon. Agreed. Go through all 350 episodes, find everything you can that's wrong with them, and then let us know. Okay. Okay. Or you can just correct the most recent ones. Whatever we got wrong in this one, which I'm sure is substantial, you can go on to Facebook if you want. You can tweet to us s yskpodcast or you can send us a plain old fashioned email at 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. 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 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." | |
43bdef24-53a3-11e8-bdec-8bf3f4b6c24d | What was the KGB? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-was-the-kgb | The KGB was the notorious strong arm of the Kremlin. Run afoul and you died. Learn all about them today.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 07 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=189, tm_isdst=0) | 48028176 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. You may not know this yet, and if you don't prepare to be blown away. We are creating right now the first ever Stuff You Should Know book. It's called Stuff You Should Know colon an Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things. And you can preorder it now. That's right. And if you pre order everyone, there's an incentive because you get a free gift. And don't worry if you've already preordered, because you can just head on over to Stuff You Shouldread Books.com. It's a very beautiful little web page, and it's got all the information. And if you already pre ordered, can't you just upload your receipt and get that pre order gift? Yes, you can. And they will mail it off to you. And you will get it in the mail. You say? Oh, thank you. Don't mind if I do. And it's a poster that you will love and cherish and possibly pass on down to your children as an heirloom. That's right, everyone. We couldn't be more excited about this book. It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through, and you can go check out some excerpts@stuffyoushoreadbooks.com. 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. We are comrades and arms here at Sysky Shiny. Let me ask you something. Okay. When you were researching this and thinking in your brain about talking about it, did you get nervous? No. Okay, I guess you did a little bit. What were you nervous about? Talking about the friggin KGB and how they just kill anyone that they don't like. Oh, okay. Now I got the most nervous ever when I wrote on and we recorded on Delta Force. Really? I was really nervous. Do you think they're going to come kill you? I don't know. I mean, they're supposedly they're not supposed to exist, and we were talking about how they do exist, so I was like, Surely not. But no, I know what you're talking about. It didn't happen in this one. So maybe this is the one that'll get me because KGB and it even says in this article, when you think about the knock on your door in the middle of the night, come with us. That's KGB ops right there. Right. But that was if you were a Russian, a Soviet citizen, which is true. It's weird because you know all about the KGB. Just having been raised as a Cold War kid. But I never really put two and two together that it was a really all encompassing secret police kind of thing that they had going on. Because not only were they big on spying and getting their hands on advanced weapon technology and running disinformation campaigns around the world and trying to destabilize the United States and its reach around the world. They also were really focused internally and domestically as well. So that they were a secret police force that would come and get the centers and send them off to prison camps in the middle of the night. They basically did it all. And all of it was geared, Chuck, toward keeping the Soviet Communist Party in power. And they were successful for several decades, actually. Yeah. From reading this research, it seems like they did do all the things, but their main charge was squashing from within, it seems like squishing your head from within. So KGB stands for I'm going to try and read this. Russian comatte. That's easy. With a ghostudars. Vinoy bisopas Nosti. It sounds like you just raised like an Aramaic demon. Clattu vorata. So that means in English committee for State security. They were headquartered, and we're going to say we're a lot because technically the KGB itself is not around anymore. It's just been renamed, though. So same stuff going on. Same place. They were and are now headquartered under the FSB at Lubyonca Square in Moscow, which is where the KGB was, right? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's where the headquarters was and still is. Right. And it's this big, beautiful, sort of intimidating building right there in the square. And I mean, that's just par for the course. The KGB has basically been this entity that's changed names and official titles multiple times since the very beginning of the USSR. But it's still the same thing. And it's actually really instructive to study it because it seems that they are still very much up to the exact same things that they've been doing for decades now. And everybody very famously is well aware of the GRU, which is military intelligence, but it seems that the GRU, the FSB and another group called the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, are all basically like the KGB. It's just now been divided into separate entities, but they're all working together. But after the 2016 election, everybody got a pretty obvious taste of what the KGB has long been up to, which is trying to meddle in American politics and trying to sow discord among Americans ourselves. And this is nothing new. Apparently they've been doing it since the outset. Well, actually, since after World War II, at least. Yeah. I mean, they've been doing this if you talk about sewing discord, there was Operation Pandora in the 19th 60s, which was basically the Soviets trying to start a race war within the US. Infiltrating groups like the Klan, the Jewish Defense League and the African American militants posing as them, making fake pamphlets from the different organizations and blasting those out to basically try and start a race war. It didn't work, but it did create discord. They've also posed as people from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and they're still doing the same thing today. Yeah, except now they're doing it in this hyper accelerated manner because things can spread so much more quickly on social media and you can turn so many people's opinions on social media so much more quickly as well. So there doesn't seem to be officially any disagreement that the Russians meddle in American affairs. And I have long been like, well, it doesn't excuse it, but we can't ignore the fact that America medals in other countries affairs, too, and has for a very long time, too. And that is definitely instructive also, and something to pay attention to. But first of all, it's a what about it? And but secondly, from what I read, there's this scholar who wrote this really interesting article in the Brown Journal of Public Affairs, I believe is what it was called. Yeah. Brown Journal of World Affairs. A guy named Calder Walton wrote this article on the KGB, and it's this information campaign super readable, really exciting, kind of, but he basically says, yes, America has done some very shady stuff in the affairs of other countries and in its own affairs, too, like the CIA dosing Americans with LSD to see what happens kind of thing. But the Americans and the Brits operations just pale in scope and breadth compared to what the KGB has done and what it seems like the FSB is now still doing right now. Yeah, not nice. Guys, I just want to shout out that article. It's called spies, election meddling and Disinformation. Past and present. You should check it out. Yeah. I mean, if you want to look into the KGB and spying and espionage, there are so many great articles and documentaries on YouTube that you can watch, some a little more fun than others, some very dry. The BBC has a two parter on the KGB that's very dry but very instructive. So the KGB, if you want to talk about that organization, you got to go back to pre KGB in December 1917, when Lennon created a secret police agency called the Cheka. C-H-E-K-A. They were the punishing sword of the revolution, is what they were known as. And this was basically, like you said, it's gone under many names. It was the KGB before it was called the KGB. It was there to keep leadership in power, imprisoning, killing opponents both abroad and within the country, keeping people under surveillance, censoring news, and basically starting the espionage program on foreign soils. Yes. The checkout was followed by the OGPU, then the KGB, then the FSB SVR. But from that moment, the Checkout was formed till today, there has been a steady, continuous, basically unbroken security apparatus that has been charged with domestic and external spying, surveillance, espionage, all that jam from the get go. Today, they might still call themselves Checkists within the organization. It's a name. The Checker. That original name is kind of stuck around if you're sort of on the inside. And there are many ways that they can get what they want. This one was a pretty interesting example here. At one point. There was a group early on in the Soviet Union's existence where they had some socialists, some anticommunist that basically got together and they said, we're an organization now called the Monarchist Union of Central Russia. And what they didn't know is that the Monarchist Union of Central Russia was actually infiltrated by so many moles. It was a fake organization that real people joined that were socialist and anticommunist, but it was all a big set up to get them all in one place, basically root out who they were. You got to know your enemy, know who your resistance is, and they found who they were and they killed them. Yeah. Isn't that nuts, man? Think about the effect that it has not just in getting rid of your opposition by forming a group where they all show themselves, but also that becomes legendary. That's one of the first things that this group, this security group did. And it basically sends a pretty clear message. Like you can't even trust your own the people you think that are your allies. Right. Talk about sowing discord among opposition. And that was 100 years ago and it still can give you chills just to think about that. Yeah, I mean, you start a group that you think is going to be battling your oppressor, and it turns out that group is so infiltrated that it's not even a real group. Well, I got the impression that it wasn't even that they were infiltrated, but that the I should say the OGPU actually started that group too. They did track people, you know what I mean? No, that's what I'm saying. They infiltrated that circle, started this fake organization. Yeah. That's so nuts, man. So one thing that a lot of people forget, and our younger listeners might not realize, is that back in World War II, the US. And the USSR were allies. We weren't like BFFs or anything like that, but we had a common enemy in the Nazis US. The UK. The US. And the Soviets. And I read that from this time of basically working with the US and the UK. The USSR saw how good we were at disinformation campaigns. And it had two effects. It taught Soviets how to do these things. It basically said, hey, this is a really good way to sow discord and to get fake information out, like with your enemy. So it taught the Soviets how to do that, but it also made the Soviets think that they just presumed that the US and the UK were creating the same operations in the USSR too. So it really kind of hardened the Soviets enemy ship of America. It really kind of predisposed the USSR to be enemies with the US. And with the UK and with the west in general. And it kind of took off from there. And just to be clear, I saw a good distinction definition between misinformation and disinformation or misinformation is clear where the source of the information is coming from. It's just the information is faulty. So the US. Government is giving out bad info about Coronavirus or something like that. That's misinformation. Disinformation is where the information is faulty, but it's not clear where the information is coming from or where it came from originally. It just popped up as, like a rumor or something on social media. Right, but the information is faulty either way. It's just whether the source is clear who the source is or not. That's what disinformation is. So the checker are operating in World War II. They are spying on our Manhattan Project such that there's one quote in here that said they knew more about the creation of the atomic bomb than Truman did. They've really infiltrated things. This gave them a huge leg up in making their own bomb and their efforts to welcome themselves into the atomic age like they would have been way, way behind had it not been for their espionage efforts in America. There are ways that they did this. There were spies who were sort of the tried and true ways to pose as a diplomat and actually get in an embassy in a different country. But you're really a spy, right? You could also, if you've seen the movie or the TV show The Americans, that's called an illegal. When you basically pass yourself off as someone of that nation's origin. After World War II in Finland, they would find records of infants who died at birth, take that identity, and then basically become a Finnish person. It's called a legend. And you are essentially living in that country as an American or as a Finnish individual. But you are really a secret agent for the Soviets, right? And I mean, like super duper deep cover. So much so that you can expect to go live like a pretty mundane, everyday existence for years or decades as an American or as a Finn or something like that, whatever your background, wherever it says you're from. And then you might be called on to assassinate somebody one day or to start working sources. And it's not flagrant. It's not obvious. The point is that they make kind of contacts and friends with low level people at the edges of power, is how I saw it described. But I also saw the same person who described illegals like that as saying that there's probably more of them in the world today than there was even during the Cold War. That's so scary. Isn't it scary? But here's the thing. This is one thing that I've learned about studying the KGB. It's possible there are far fewer illegals in the world today. Maybe there's zero in the US. But the fact is somebody said that, and the KGB's track record is enough that it's possible. That's the case, right? And that's all it takes. Now all of a sudden, people are paranoid and like, wait a minute. You Tulsi Gabbard. Are you actually a tool of the Kremlin? Are you a plant by the KGB are. You a sleeper agent who's running for president. Like, people start to get accusatory, and you can't trust anything anymore, and now you're starting to see your enemies all over the place, and all it took was a rumor that there's more sleeper agents that are associated with the KGB today than there were in the cold war. Now everybody's paranoid, and the KGB's work is done for the day. And that could simply be disinformation. Exactly, because disinformation, it takes on a life of its own. That's the point of disinformation, that it makes people behave differently than they would if they had not heard that rumor and started to believe it. Because the other fact about disinformation we should do an entire episode on it, I think, is that it has to have a kernel of truth. The black panthers have to suspect that the Jewish defense league is or was prejudiced against them secretly. And so these documents that were found or sent to the black Panther headquarters just prove this suspicion that they already have or something like that or vice versa. So it has to have, like, this kernel of truth for somebody to be like, no, here's the proof, and then it just takes off from there because people love urban legends. I wonder if there's ever been an army colonel named colonel truth. I don't know. All right, I think we should take a break and ponder that, and we'll come back and talk about when the KGB was born. Right after this stuff, you should know. Josh and Shaw. So the KGB I promise to tell you, when that little baby was born. That little baby was born in 1954, when the intelligence agency that, like I said, long been operating, was reorganized officially, finally, as a KGB with that same mission in hand. They were known as this time as the sword and the shield of the communist party. And if you're talking about the structure of the agency itself, there's a lot that we don't know, but it depends on who you're asking. I've seen anywhere from a quarter of a million to 700,000 people on staff, if you count the whole extended network of foreign border guards and stuff like that. Yeah, I think 700,000 is the most I've seen, which is normal. Yeah. Huge. Huge. Compared to any kind of, like, CIA or any other country's intelligence organizations, the KGB is just massive. Right. The other thing that I saw about the KGB is that you can make a pretty good assumption that just especially during the cold war, every single one of those agents were loyal to the communist party. And one way that they made sure that every single agent was loyal to the communist party was to basically let them know that the other members of the KGB were spying on them. There were entire sections that were dedicated to spying just on the armed forces, just on the military alone, and that was one of, I think, 20 different directorates, little divisions that were responsible for different kinds of tasks or different specializations. Yeah. The official like, if you want to look at the official sort of charge of the KGB, it has four areas in size. It is the struggle or an organization, I guess the struggle against foreign spies and agents, the exposure and investigation of political and economic crimes by citizens. That certainly comes as a lot. Protection of state borders. That's what I was talking about. Like, the border guards and stuff like that. And then this is the big one. Protection of state secrets. Right. And then those are the big four. But there was another about 16 of them dedicated everything, like making sure that the phone and radio systems were encrypted to making sure the transportation sector wasn't infiltrated. Like, the KGB had its fingers and absolutely everything. There was one directorate that was specifically tasked with surveillance and monitoring foreigners and people who the KGB suspected were potentially dissidents, who were soviet citizens. And they mostly hung around like lenin, grad, and moscow, because that's where most of the tourists were. But that was like a whole KGB division. That's how many people they had and how many resources they threw at keeping tabs on the power structure and making sure that any challenges to the power structure were squashed in the cradle. Not even strangled in the cradle. Squashed in the cradle. Yeah. And they recruited the best, the smartest people, the brightest people. But like you sort of mentioned, it's not like the KGB was something to be feared by every citizen of the soviet union, I think. Oh, yeah. But joining the KGB to thwart that it's not like that got you out of any sort of surveillance. And, in fact, it may have even put you under a bigger microscope. Who knows? Yeah. I mean, they had every level of the military infiltrated with KGB agents. Like, every platoon, every detachment. If you were in a group with the military, somebody was a KGB officer posing as a soldier. That's right. In their own military. That's amazing. Yeah. I think it started, like I said, by the end of the 1960s, it was firmly in place as the watchdog of everybody in the soviet union. Right. Again. People tend to say, like, well, the KGB was the counterpart of the CIA. The CIA sent some shady stuff, including domestically. But from basically all sources, the main point of the KGB was domestic surveillance and control of domestic challenges or dissent toward the communist party. That's right. Buying on people, tapping phone lines, harassing people, arresting people, exiling people. If you were a religious activist, good luck. If you were a human rights advocate, good luck. If you were an intellectual, if you were just part of the intellectual sort of university system of the soviet union, you better watch what you say, because you are definitely being watched. And every word that comes out of your mouth, even in a classroom, is being recorded. Yeah. If you are super high profile, you might make it out with your life, and your family might get out alive, but you would be exiled for criticizing the government. A writer named Alexander Solzette. Solzet Nissan. I even practiced that. Solsk Knessen. Yeah, I think that's kind of close. He was actually, I think, a science teacher who started writing books about how bad things were in the Soviet Union and eventually won the Nobel Prize for literature. But he was eventually exiled. If you were less of a well known person and you are critical of the government, you are more likely to find yourself in the Gulag, which is a system of prison camps that we referenced earlier. And Sol Zenithsen, I think I said it right at that time. I think that's right. He estimated that about 60 million people were sent to those camps over the course of the 20th century. Yeah, I mean, it's literally impossible to put a number on the amount of human lives lost due to the KGB, but there are people that have estimated, like, perhaps tens of millions of people taken out by the KGB since its history. Yeah. I mean. I'm no CIA apologist. But I don't think the CIA has that on the millions. Which. Again. We on the outside tend to think of the KGB mostly as. Like the spy agency. But. Yeah. They kept people in line by killing them or sending them to secret prisons and making them leave in the middle of the night from their homes and never be seen again. It's just completely nuts. And the effects that that has on our society is just I can sadly but I can't imagine I've never lived through anything like that. Yeah. If you run an organization or a country or a nation from fear tactics from the top down, that eventually is going to bite you in the behind, because what that does is everyone's paranoid against each other. Right. In the case of Stalin, let's say if Stalin didn't like what you told him, he would literally shoot the messenger. He would execute anyone who told him anything that didn't basically support what he thought should be going on. It wasn't like, hey, Stalin, we found out some pretty bad stuff that's going on. Like, that's a good thing. That means we can root these people out. It got to a point where they wouldn't want to go to Stalin with bad news, and that's not good either. No, they had to go to him with some news. So what they would do, it would just kind of naturally incline toward intelligence that supported their view rather than something that said, hey, you're really unpopular, and there's an uprising potentially coming. They managed to squash anything like that, but in the end, what's called sycophantic intelligence, where it's just basically feeding you, telling you what you want to hear that eventually will run afoul of reality. And that's what people credit with the KGB dropping the ball on the fall of the Soviet Union back in 1991. Although, as we'll see, there's actually a lot of direct influence that the KGB had on that. But there's this idea that throughout its history, there was stalling kind of kicked off that thing where, just tell me what I want to hear or else I'm literally going to kill you, and that it was carried on even long after Stalin was gone. Sure. That sycophantic kind of intelligence, which is really surprising because there was a really successful organization externally. It was that they think that potentially, for as good as they were espionage and stealing secrets, the Soviets were apparently not and I have to preface this. Let me just caveat this. This is reading American sources about the KGB. The KGB was really good at keeping a code of silence. There were, especially towards the end of the USSR, more and more KGB agents started to defect, but even when they defected, we weren't sure if they were plants. So there was still, like, what they said was taken with a grain of salt. But the idea that the KGB was very successful in stealing secrets supports this idea now that the Soviet Union would not have been a superpower part of the two superpower polarity that ran the world during the Cold War had it not been for ceiling secrets. Which doesn't explicitly say it. But suggests that they did not have the best and brightest as far as technology and science is concerned. Which is kind of a surprise to me. Because I'd always heard that the Soviets had really smart scientists in their own programs. Too. But researching the KGB made it sound like they wouldn't have been able to keep up had they not stolen advanced weapon technology and built their own versions of it. I'm confused. I have no idea what's true anymore. Yeah. Welcome to 2020. I think it's definitely true that their spying efforts in the Cold War, especially when it comes to nuclear armament, were very much ramped up because they were spying with us. Yeah, but I think they were saying it wasn't just getting the atomic bomb, but basically like, all their advanced weapons technology was the result of stealing it. The point is kind of a two handed compliment or back sided compliment, that they were really good at stealing secrets, but that they wouldn't have been able to be a nuclear superpower without stealing secrets. I think that's what I found. Well, and it also could have been and I'm just speculating it could have been a thing where that was such a part of the system, was, hey, we don't need to put resources for steps one through five because we can steal that stuff. Right, exactly. And we can just start on step number six or whatever once we have whatever intelligence we need. Sure, but what do I know? I'm just a dumb podcast. Do you want to take another break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're going to take another break, everybody. That's no secret stuff you should know. Josh and Shawn stuff you should know, man. What is going on? What's wrong? I'm making puns left and right. It's terrible. Can we talk about spies? Sure. Yeah, let's do it. So I think we did an espionage podcast years and years ago, I think. Yeah. Spies how spies work, I think. Was it just spies, or was it espionage as well? Well, they go so closely together. Basically the same thing. Yeah. The Soviets were really good at well, I don't know about really good, because who knows how many times it happened, but they had some very effective moments of turning Americans into double agents. A few notable people over the years. A man named Aldrich Ames. He was a 31 year CIA officer, and for about nine years was feeding the Russians or I guess it was the Soviet Union at that time, highly classified information from the CIA. His big thing, it seemed like, was outing CIA sources and stuff like that. Yeah. Turned KGB agents. Yeah. So, I mean, there's all kinds of ways. There are other people that fed documents. We'll get to them in a minute. But he was outing sources, and I think his actions directly led to at least that we know of. Ten CIA sources being compromised and killed and then in the hundreds of intelligence operations that he was kind of dropping the dime on in addition to the loss of life. As far as the intelligence community is concerned, when you kill somebody like that, you're killing decades worth of information that the person has walking around in their head and contacts and just general knowledge of how things work. So it's a really big deal. In addition to, again, killing somebody, you're wiping out, like, the institutional memory that they carry with them, too, that's been helping out the other side. Yeah. He is in a medium security prison in Indiana today, serving a life sentence, as is Robert Hanson. He's one that is a little more I mean, he worked up until, I think, 2001, and they said that his espionage was possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US. History. He made about $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over the years selling classified documents to the KGB. Total double agent caught in 2001 after the FBI paid $7 million to a KGB agent to out him as a mole. Very famous case. Yes, I remember that as well. I remember Aldrich. James too. Made it really easy on people. He was spending lavishly and was not that well off to begin with and was just being very flagrant about it. I feel like Robert Hansen was a little smarter about it, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Who is the other guy? There was one. Other guy that basically was spilling secrets about our submarine program? No. There was a naval captain after World War II. Somebody St. John. Was that in the 60s? Is that what you saw? Yes. I can't remember his first name, but someone St. John. He was a naval captain. Yeah. There was a trove of KGB files from an operation from the basically confirmed he was indeed a Russian spy. Both of the Rosenbergs were indeed Russian spies. Alger Hiss, who I think went to his grave denying that he was a spy, was in fact a spy for the Soviets. So they did have a pretty good success of turning Americans into informants. So did the CIA and the KGB, apparently, but the stuff that they got was pretty useful, and again, it was not limited to advanced weapon designs, but also industrial technology, stuff that we were saying, there's embargoes on this. You can't export this. They still manage to get their hands on this because of their contacts that they turned in the US. Just basically anything you would want to keep your economy humming along just from stealing. That's how you could do that. Yeah. The Navy guy, he's the one that volunteered himself, basically because he wanted money. It all came down to greed. He walked into. I'm talking about John Anthony Walker Jr. That's who I'm talking about, too. Okay. Not St. John. Not St. John. He was not a patron saint of hipsters. I don't know. Yes, John Anthony Walker, Jr. Is the one that wanted money, and he volunteered because it's not like he was antiAmerican who wanted to see the Communist Party thrive. It was all motivated by greed. And he walked into an embassy in the United States with, like, a code card or something and said, hey, I'll sell you this for $3,000, and they bought it, and he was like and you know what? That went well. So just put me on the payroll. And he got his family involved. I think he tried to get his father involved, his daughter, his son, his wife, his son's, baseball coach, everybody. Well, at one point, the Russians basically knew where all of our submarines were at all times, because that's right. Yeah. And his wife was apparently a really bad alcoholic, probably in no small part due to this, and eventually outed him after he was way too Lucy Goosey with who he tried to get involved. Like, you can't try and get your whole family involved and then have them say, no, I'm not into it. And then she'd be like, all right, well, I'm going to keep doing it. What's, her dealer? Yeah, she ratted him out, though. She would call a bunch of times, apparently, and either chicken out or she was really blitzed and couldn't get across what she wanted to say, but eventually she did to an office in Boston, and they thought, well, this is just some drunk wife trying to get her husband in trouble, ignored it. Eventually, though, they did look into it, and they searched the guy's house, and they found, like, briefcase full of classified documents. And it was just this went on for 20 something years. I think, from what I understand, the most damning evidence was he had one of those Russian fur hats with the ear flaps that did a minute. As good as they were at turning people at creating illegals of sleeper agents, which may or may not be all over the world right now. One of the things the KGB has long been known for disinformation campaigns. And from reading that guy's article, spies, Election Meddling, and Disinformation, Past and Present caller Walton's article, basically every conspiracy theory that I believed as a teenager apparently was a KGB rumor disinformation campaign. I could not believe this as I was reading. It was like a trip through my formative years. Basically, the idea that the US. Government created AIDS to target developing countries, the idea that American tourists used to go down to South America and Central America and adopt kids so that they could harvest them for body parts. KGB. Get this, Chuck, there's a pole. I don't remember when it was conducted, but it was sometime after the Kennedy assassination where more Americans believed that the CIA killed JFK than what the Warren Commission concluded, which was that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. More Americans believed what turned out to be a KGB disinformation campaign than what the Warren Commission came up with. They came up with the one that the CIA killed, JFK. That was the KGB that did that. You know, the friend of your friend's mom who was on the elevator with Eddie Murphy. KGB. That's right. Everything. I mean, all that stuff. Flash your lights at somebody and the gang comes and kills you. KGB. But it's just so bizarre to think, like, what? No, I thought that I talked to people about that late at night. We had conversations about this stuff. And when you see that and when you read it and realize that this has been going on for years, it really puts things into focus now, like the 2016 election meddling. Sure. The idea that there's GRU agents, military intelligence agents who are posing as members of Black Lives Matter, or who posed as Tea Party members during the 2016 election, that they were actually working for Russia, the idea that that's still going on just becomes all the more clear when you look at some of their past campaigns. Something I do occasionally, I don't know why I torture myself, but sometimes I will read comments on a Fox News.com article. Someone will say something, and then you can leave a comment about the comment, and someone will comment like, okay, thanks a lot, Dmitry. It's funny, but you don't know, man. That's what they do. They infiltrate message boards and they infiltrate social media, and you never know. It's really staggering. That this kind of stuff still goes on to this degree, and there's nothing we can do about it. Yeah, for real. Let's step back for a second because we kind of hopped ahead, but I want to go back into KGB history. KGB was around from 1954 to 1991, and we said earlier that the KGB had a direct role in the fall of the USSR. And they did, because there was a KGB head who was appointed by Gorbachev because he thought that he was an intelligent, moderate person who was open to new ideas, and it turned out he wasn't. He was part of that same old KGB establishment who wanted things to stay the way that they were. And he actually led a coup against Gorbachev. I was too young to know what was going on, but there was a coup against Gorbachev where he was under house arrest for a minute. Yeah. And the coup finally failed because it became clear that the military wasn't in on it or wasn't going to take part in it. But it eventually led directly within months to the downfall of the USSR and the break up of the USSR, because in the meantime, they had elected, for the first time, a democratically elected president. And when Gorbachev saw that basically this coup was a vote of no confidence in him, he stepped aside, separated the Communist Party from the presidency, and all of a sudden, the USSR wasn't there anymore. It was just Russia, because the satellite states started saying, hey, we're independent now. We'll see you later. Soviet Union and the USSR fell apart, kicked off by this coup that the KGB initiated. Yeah. And I think Yeltsin excuse me, officially split it up, right? Yeah. He said KGB. You're dissolved. We're going to break you up into the FSB and the yeah, do the same stuff. Right, exactly. But just do it separately. I figure if I separate you guys, you might be less evil. And apparently that was not the case. Yeah, and not apparently, but very famously, Putin came straight out of the KGB. He was a KGB agent in the mid 19 and 70s, supposedly because he saw a movie about Russian spies and I guess thought it was awesome. He said, I want to do that. There's a picture of him in one of these articles where he's in the 70s wearing, like, this newsy cap and just looking super 70s, but he also looks like Putin, man, just complete poker face. He's staring off camera at something. Who knows what he's taken in? It's a really cool picture. There's another picture, too, supposedly, of him posing as a tourist standing next to Ronald Reagan. Oh, my God. Have you ever seen that picture? No. Oh, it's nuts. It's just so great. But then you're like, Is that Putin? And I went and looked, and it turned out that there is still disagreement of whether it's him or not, but most people say that that's not him, that he would have been in Dresden at the time, he wouldn't have been in the Soviet Union. I'm looking now. Oh, my God. That certainly looks like Putin, doesn't it? But the official line is that is not Putin. His little camera around his neck. Right. So Putin was not just in the KGB. He became the head of the FSB. And this is a real testimony to just how powerful the KGB and the KGB's remnants or successors remain. He went from head of FSB to the President of Russia. That was the step that he took. And he was not the first person to do that. Other KGB heads had worked their way up to become the head of the Communist Party and the de facto head of the Soviet Union at the time. So all of this kind of goes to show you that nothing, even the fall of the USSR, really did anything to slow down the KGB. And the advent of technology helped kind of actually speed things up quite a bit. Yeah. And if you think those murders are a thing of the past, that is certainly not the case I remember, as I'm sure you do, in 2006, Alexander Lit, Navenco Levinco. Levinco. He was the one that was killed by the radioactive polonium 210 that was dropped in his beverage. And they have a history of doing that's a really awful way to die. And they have a history of killing people in really awful ways, because it sends that message that not only can you die, but you're going to die in a really awful, awful way and everyone's going to know. Dating back to Trotsky, who went to Mexico City, and someone came up behind him, Ramon Mercator, with an ice axe and sunk it three inches into his brain. He said, how do you like this projection? Oh, my God. That was actually so bad. I think that was brilliant. Thank you. I was hoping you'd come around to that way. It was really good. I got you. Mercator projection. That's lovely. Sure. But yeah, he killed him with an ice axe, but he lived for a day. I'd always heard the story and I always thought that he just, like, planted them in the brain and that was it. But Trotsky got up and was, like, fighting him off and people came in and kicked this guy's butt. And he survived in the hospital for, like, a full day after this before he died. Well, yeah. Livin Yanko, he survived long enough that he helped solve his own murder. There's a really great Guardian article on it called alexander Litvinenannko the Man Who Solved His Own Murder. And it's definitely worth reading, for sure. Yeah. I mean, just a couple of years ago what was that guy's name? Screepal. Sergey Screepal. He was the one with the nerve poison. He wasn't killed. It was an attempt on his life, though. Yeah, but it was just like every time you think, man, this is Cold War stuff. It just pops up in the news again. You're like, man, it's still happening. Yeah. And, I mean, we should say both of those attacks were in London. Like, this wasn't in Russia or Moscow or anything like that. This was in London. These guys lived in London in exile, and they were still murdered in London through, like, radioactive material and nerve gas that was smuggled in the country. And that actually kind of goes to stand as evidence that there still are these illegals, these deep cover sleeper agents that are working for what used to be the KGB and is now the FSB. Yeah. And that's why it's a really big deal that the President of the United States would want to cozy up to somebody like Putin, who is making great efforts to put who he wants in office. Yeah. I mean, it's just pure and simple. It's unbelievable. Absolutely, Chuck. Well said. You got anything else? I got nothing else but rage. So if this floated your boat, go check out Spies, Election Meddling and Disinformation, past and present. Great article. Check out Alexander Litvinenko, the Spy Who Solves His Own Murder. The man who solved his own murder. Check out the big think. They had a good one called The History of the KGB, and it's legendary Methods. So I think you'll like all three of those. And since I said I think you'll like all three of those, it's time for listener maintenance. This is about the heroin loss of Jesus. Remember that when I wondered if they were still around. So this is from Martin. Hey, guys. In the heroin episode, chuck was wondering if there are any still heroin losses lying around somewhere. And Josh quickly refuted. But Chuck, you have been vindicated. I work in an unnamed museum in an unlamed location in Canada. I'm not even going to say where in Canada, even though he does. And we have four different packages for heroin losses from Bear. They're under lock and key, of course. We receive them in a donation from a local pharmacy that closed down in the they gave the museum a wide array of drugs to add to the collection. Along with the heroin, we also have a bottle of arsenic and two packets of amphetamines. One package has two pills missing. Oh, man, I love the show. You guys are keeping me sane during quarantine. And I steadily make my way through your back catalog. That is from Martin. Nice, Martin. That was much appreciated. Thanks for shining some light on that one. And if you want to shine some light for us, we love that kind of thing. You can send us an email 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 chef." | |
458de806-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-472adc7589d7 | Short Stuff: Honorary Degrees | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-honorary-degrees | Honorary degrees are not real degrees. They are marketing opportunities for universities. They make us mad, but we want one. Learn all about them in the next 12-15 minutes. | Honorary degrees are not real degrees. They are marketing opportunities for universities. They make us mad, but we want one. Learn all about them in the next 12-15 minutes. | Wed, 15 May 2019 14:37:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=14, tm_min=37, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=135, tm_isdst=0) | 12596080 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles De, beach hook Brian. And there's Jerry over there. And we are right smack dab in the middle of entering graduation season, and we're three doctors. We are self proclaimed. Really? We didn't even have three on a rare degree. Right, exactly. Ours are written in crayon in our own handwriting. Yeah, we talked about this in a recent episode about honorary degrees, and this ended up being kind of encapsulating. What's perfect about Short Stuff is we can explain everything you need to know about honorary degrees in like twelve minutes. We can explain it in 1 second. Marketing. Yeah, that's kind of true. But it is a little more interesting than that. Let's talk about the history, because not all universities give honorary degrees. Very famously, University of Virginia, UVA, MIT, Stanford and Cornell do not give honorary degrees. William Barton Rogers, founder of MIT, said they are unfriendly to true literary advancement and of spurious merit and noisy popularity. And William Barton Rogers had graduated UVA. So that's where you kind of double located with the idea that you shouldn't give away doctorates. And UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson, who was the one who put that ban on them. Right, but he accepted an honorary doctorate from Harvard. It's a bit of a double standard. Probably not the only double standard Thomas Jefferson has ever been involved with. Yeah, but here's the secret. Well, it's not a secret at all. Here's the very plain truth that everyone knows about honorary degrees since the beginning of time. They say, to reward donors who have given money sometimes to bring in celebrities for appeal, for media appeal, for graduation ceremonies and such like that. But it's really just, for whatever reason, it's a way to get some press by acknowledging someone that you think as a university somewhat aligns with your values as a university. Right, yeah. Ultimately that's the goal. It's not just somebody, but somebody who is doing something that your university values or everybody can get behind. Right? Yeah. And it started in Europe, not even here in the US. No, over at Oxford, I believe the first one was handed out to a guy named Lionel Wood. Lionel, that's a pretty good 15th century name. It was given out to him. He was an influential bishop, and he got his honorary doctorate unbidden. It was a bit of a surprise, from what I understand. It just kind of showed up at his house and they said, so, congratulations. Also, totally unrelated, we were thinking that you might come be chancellor of the university now, since you're a doctor and all right, I can do that. I can bring some of my wealthy connections with me to Oxford, which, by the way, was about 400 years old by this time in 1478. So they were the first one to confer an honorary degree, and they kicked off a grand tradition that is basically just kind of waxed and waned throughout the years, but mostly waxed in enthusiasm and abuse, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. Yeah. King Charles I, speaking of abuse, he really got honorary degree. Happy. He handed out 350 Oxford doctorates to people that, of course, supported his court, all within one single year. That's a lot. That's a lot. It's almost one a day, by my calculation. You took off Christmas and Thanksgiving, right? Oh, wait. Thanksgiving not then. Yeah, sure. No. Maybe All Saints Day. So King Charles. I was the first to abuse it. He was far from the last. By the 19th century, there were so many degrees being handed out left and right, honorary degrees, that they actually had a depressing effect on the importance of actual doctorates that were being earned, which is a big problem. Right. And the president of the Northeastern Dental Association, who's typically a mouthpiece for morality and direction in academia, famously warned in 1910 that the most dangerous delusive debauching and degrading the four DS thing in American educational life is the practice of granting unearned degrees. It's pretty harsh. It was very harsh. But, you know and the guy was obviously hysterical. But it does get across this point that it was getting a little much, I guess, is the point, by the 19th century. And it's calmed down tremendously, especially here in the States, but it's still going on. It just seems to be a little less problematic than I think it was before, because at some point somebody said, okay, all right, yes, you can keep giving out degrees, but people who are getting these honorary degrees do not attempt to use them like they're legitimate. And that seems to change the course of things. Yeah. All right, so let's take a break. We'll talk a little bit about how this happens, who picks these people and some regrettable choices right after this. All right, so it is a big deal to do this. A lot of times it is to get someone like a Jerry Seinfeld at your graduation ceremony. These doctorates I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everybody. No, that was pretty good. I'm trying to sound he sounded like not Jerry Seinfeld. David Brenner, probably. Okay, sure, why not? And they do say honorary degree serves as a way to inspire the students graduating that day. So that is the reason most people do that. Get Conan. Get Jerry Seinfeld in there. And most schools will have a board that decides this kind of thing, and they need to start well in advance. So typically you'll start like, a year out, just seeing if the person is interested and if the schedule might align. It probably works differently at every school. I don't know if it's in writing as a requirement to come to graduation or more like and we'd like to give it to you in person on this date at our football stadium, they're like, Come on, that's kind of the deal is you're supposed to show up. And that's really, I think, sort of the unwritten rule. Yeah. Because if you go to a college graduation, that's the show stopper, that's the reason people sit there is because there's somebody very right. Yeah. It is very boring. It's just like, can't you just email this to these people? There should be a very recognizable and or inspirational and or funny person speaking at a decent graduation ceremony. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a celebrity. They do still give these to big donors. But I think that means that you have more of a mountain to climb to impress people because you're still expected to give amazing caliber remarks at the commencement exercises. Yeah. And when you teased before the break about, hey, everyone, like you understand that you're not a real PhD or, God forbid, a medical doctor. That's the thing. They know they're not. But there have been some notable people that have called themselves Doctor of Whatever after they got this. Florida Atlantic University takes it very seriously in their rules. They say, in no instance will the recipient of an honorary doctorate from FAU represent the award as being an earned doctorate or of earned academic credentials of any kind. This award does not entitle the recipient to use the title of doctor or a pen PhD or any other earned degree designation after his or her name. And basically they say at the end, like, if we catch you doing this too, we could take it away. We're going to take it away. We're going to take this meaningless piece of paper right away from you. Don't even register at your hotel under Doctor Bryant, which I haven't been known to do. Don't even have your wife call you doctor. Because we'll find out. Yeah, because we're listening. So it's not just Florida Atlantic University it takes us seriously. There is a Grove City College professor, psychology professor Warren Throckmorton, who apparently one day realized that some general funding was about to run out, and he did a survey of university policy statements about the use of honorary doctorates. And basically to a university, it's like, let's just be clear here. This actually doesn't mean that you are a doctor of anything or that you have a PhD. Do not let us catch you using this. This is a big deal because, again, back in the 19th century, they were handing out MDS, basically everything, and people were like, yeah, call me Dr. Dangerfield, and it was a big problem. So now they seem to have it under control, although there have been some people in recent years that still said, whatever, you gave me a doctor, I'm going to use doctor. I don't care what you think of me because I'm Maya Angelou and I'm a gift to the world. Ben Franklin did that after getting degrees from Oxford and University of St. Andrews. And like you said with Maya Angelou, it's like one of those things where it's not super cool, but who's going to go tell Maya Angelou what to do? Nobody. Nobody. They'll get a palm of their face. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine her speaking in that great voice of hers. Then I would just shrink. I was about to try doing Maya Angela, but there's no way you would not rise. You would shrink. Look at that. Shrink. And then there have been some very regrettable and rescinded PhDs, honorary PhDs over the year. Of course, Bill Cosby has many of these, and they were, I think, probably all taken away. Yeah. I believe including from his alma mater, Temple. But the first one was Yale, and with Yale, he became the first in 300 years to have his honorary degree taken away, at least by Yale University. But, yeah, everybody started following suit after that. Yeah. There's a few more legendary late DJ from England, jimmy Saville. Oh, he's a terrible wow. He was a terrible human because it was exposed later in his life that he was one of the most prolific pedophiles in the history of Britain. They took away his honorary degree. Oscar pistorius his own way. Yeah, who else? Donald Trump had one rescinded. Really? From who? Trump University. You say that as if it's a real thing. No, I had it written down, but I can't find it now. But he got an honorary degree that was taken away while he was running for president because of anti Muslim remarks. Oh, wow. And they were like, no, we're taking that back. Cool. Yeah. And there's more and more. I could listen to these all day. Well, I think we should campaign to get them from our own alma mater. Well, you know, somebody wrote in from an unnamed not by us, but they wouldn't name what college they work at. But it's in Canada. And they said they do honorary degrees up there, too. And I believe she said that she was working to get us honorary degrees. So fingers crossed. Yes, I will make fun of these up until and including when I have one. Okay, that's the deal. I'm going to hold you to that. Yeah. Well, I guess that's it for honorary degrees. We got this article from How Stuff Works, so you can go check it out if you like. And in the meantime, short stuff out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Gossip Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-gossip-works | You know what I heard? That Josh and Chuck hate each other and they're just faking being friends for the show. That's called gossip, folks and it can do serious damage. Learn all about it in today's episode. | You know what I heard? That Josh and Chuck hate each other and they're just faking being friends for the show. That's called gossip, folks and it can do serious damage. Learn all about it in today's episode. | Tue, 22 Dec 2015 14:25:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=14, tm_min=25, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=356, tm_isdst=0) | 34868312 | audio/mpeg | "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. 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. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and two of us again. Man, not getting any easier. This is just getting old, man. We need Jerry back. Where are you, Jerry? Where did you go? I know, selfish. Jerry wants to be at home with her baby. Yes, we all went to shopping at Kmart, and she wandered off, and we haven't seen her since. We all want to be at home with Jerry's baby. Sure, it's a cute baby, but we can't be you know the old joke that Jerry could be replaced with those dipping birds just to hit record? Yeah. We were just kidding. That's happening. It is true. Maybe not the post production stuff, but definitely the recording thing. Clearly takes a finger to say, okay, you guys are rolling. Yeah. We cannot stop griping about this time. I know. It's just weird. When a threesome becomes a twosome, things get awkward. Yes. A triad becomes a DIAD. Or when a twosome becomes a threesome, that gets super awkward. I mean, really, anytime you're moving people in and out of some sort of dynamic, sure, it can be weird. That's right. The transition would be rough. I think that's what you'd put on the T shirt. Ultimately. Yeah. All right. The transition is rough anytime you're moving people in and out of a dynamic. Ready? Yes. Didn't you say that already? Yeah. We're recording. Chuck, I have something for you. Right. I am not much of a gossip at all. I just don't do it good. But you know who does? Jerry. A lot. And she's really vicious. I know. She's not here right now. Yeah, but just between the two of us. I don't gossip. Jerry does. And you should really watch out for her. I heard that she gossips. I'm not saying that, but I just heard that I got you. Well, I've seen her do it. She's gossip to me because she finds me very important and likes to confide to me. But it's just so vicious. So we just gossiped. We did. That was play acting. The ironic thing was that I was gossiping about how I don't gossip. Yeah, that came through, huh? Everybody gossips. Yeah, I guess so. Apparently, people gossip way more than they realize. But I think you're right. I think gossip is a normal thing. It has such a bad connotation, though, that people say, like, I don't gossip. I'm not a gossip. But liars, technically. Not necessarily even liars. I think it also as far as linguists and psychologists are concerned yes. It comes from a misunderstanding of what gossip what constitutes gossip. That's right. Like, at its basic bare bottom element, gossip is simply two or it can be more. But a couple of people speaking about a third person's business while the third person isn't there, there's another person who's being talked about who isn't there. It doesn't necessarily mean you're talking about how they're just what a lousy parent they are. Sure. Spending baby shoe money on gambling rather than gambling in order to get more shoes. That's bad parenting right there. There's all sorts of stuff you can say. You could also say, actually, that guy is a great dude. He spends all of his money on nothing but baby shoes. That's gossip. It is gossip, and it's not necessarily harmful. In this case. You're helping someone else's social status. In other people's eyes, that's still gossip. Yeah. I think Tracy, of stuff you missed in history class wrote this one. That is true. She's always thorough, and she included in here something I thought was pretty pertinent gossip v. Rumor. Yeah. And there are differences. Well, I say there's differences, but if you ask professionals who study this and there are weirdos who do that, they will say sometimes now it's the same thing. Or a rumor is just a type of gossip. Right. Here's some other distinguishing factors. Gossip is based in fact, rumors are based on hypotheses. I don't know about that one. That makes sense to me because it kind of ties in with the last one. Yeah. Gossip is a tool for maintaining social order, which we're going to talk about at links. Sure. Rumor is a tool for explaining things that people do not understand. I'm not sure I get that one. Like there's garbage raining from the sky. It's the government. That's a rumor. Okay. Whereas if you're like, Charles is up on the roof again dumping his garbage out on the street. That's gossip, technically. So yeah. Or that's just laying it out there. Yeah, true. And then finally, gossip relates something people believe has happened, but rumor expresses something people hope or fear will happen. So I have my own hypothesis of the distinction between rumor and gossip. Rumor is uncurated gossip. Rumor is any dude walking down the street. You can be like, there's garbage falling from the sky and it's the government. There's no bond that's formed. There's no requirement of a bond, whereas gossip requires some sort of connection or you're forming a connection from the gossip. You know, what I'm saying is just for anybody, gossip is between confidants to an extent. Yeah, and Tracy points that out too. And that is why supposedly celebrity gossip doesn't qualify as gossip, because it's a third party that doesn't know the others in general. Sure. Unless it's Jennifer Branson is talking smack about Courtney Angelina. No, she would never do that. Oh, really? No. She loves Courtney Cock. They're still friends, huh? Sure. Why doesn't she ever have her on cougar Town then? I think she was on cougar town. Well, I stay corrected, although I have no idea because I've never seen Cougar town. Did you hear about what happened when she was on cougar town? I heard she washed her hair in Evie in water. That's Shannon Doherty. Yeah, that's right. Is that a rumor or gossip? I don't know. I guess that would be rumor because we don't know Shannon Doherty. Sure. And then there are some other stipulations that researchers point out for gossip that I also take issue with some of these. The conversation takes place in private, usually the case. Yeah. If not, like, actual private. Depends on what private means. Everybody's got their shoulders turned there's like a creation of a private situation. Yeah, I got you. People are saying it as if it were fact even though it's not confirmed. That's definitely true. Yeah. But that's not necessarily the case. I take issue with that one. It's kind of like you were saying, like I heard all true, but I haven't checked it out to take it with a grain of salt. But get this yeah, man, I even ended up at local fry people. Yeah, we already talked about that. Knowing each other. And then the body language and tone suggests a moral judgment. That's a big one. Like when people use this tone. But again, that's malicious gossip. Typically there's such a thing, so it should be said tracy doesn't really say it in this. I think she was drinking while she was writing this one. That's what I heard. She didn't lay out that there's really two types of gossip. One is malicious gossip. That's the type of gossip people think about when they hear the word gossip. But the other type, the far more apparently far more prevalent type, is regular gossip. Yeah, there's some weird unsubstantiated stats here. That 5% was malicious among most gossip. Yes. How in the world did they pull that out of their keystroke? That's a great question. Who is there? So they are linguists. Historians. Anthropologists, psychologists. People who started studying gossip for a very long time. Everyone is aware of gossip, but they're like, it's just noise. It's not to be studied. It's not worth it. It's to be ignored. And as a matter of fact, there's this really great article in The Atlantic that talked about gossip and how it was viewed. And specifically there was this thing in 16th and 17th century England they didn't like. It called scolds bridle. And if you want to see what a scolds bridle is, you should check that out online because there are actual such things. They're basically iron masks with, like, points sticking into the woman who was accused of gossip's mouth usually a woman, and she would just have to wear that and be publicly humiliated. A lot of them had, like, a leash leading from them. So I guess the gossip or the scold is what they used to call could be paraded around town. Right. Yeah. I also get the feeling that a lot of women were probably made to wear those who just talk too much. Yeah, I have the same impression because of the time period. So that's how people typically viewed gossip. It was something to be stamped out. It was something that was very undesirable. And academia treated it the same way when World War II came around. And I think the government saw that there was some real harm that could be done with gossip, with rumors, and they wanted to start to understand that. So that kind of led to the basis of academia investigating what gossip was, what rumors are. And then over time, organizations got in on the act because there came this idea that if the rumor mill or the gossip mill in your office was really going over time, you needed to stamp that out. True. They've found the opposite is actually true. Yeah, they found it can do a lot in a workplace to keep people in line, either by scaring them in line or what it seems like a lot of gossip does in that kind of environment is it establishes the norms and the cultures expected out of the bosses. That's like low level background gossip. Yeah. If it's peaking and really working overtime. Yeah. From what I understand, you're not supposed to attack the gossip. What you're supposed to do is be more transparent at the top, and then people don't have reason to gossip. Right. So it doesn't mean that you have a lot of gossips at your place. That's a normal human situation, as we'll see. It means that your managers and the people who are running the show aren't being open enough for the hoypolois tastes. Right. See what I mean? Yeah, good point. That was the big thing that came out of studying it. But to answer your question, I'm about to finish. Yeah. They study it by eavesdropping on people who are talking in cafeterias. That's about the only way you can yeah. Because it's so spontaneous and it's largely unconscious. Yes. Unless it's just some dumb poll where you're asking people about gossiping. Self reporting polls like that, I don't put a lot of stock in. Well, actually, they're funny to look at. There's one that found that we spend about three quarters of our time gossiping, apparently. Yeah. And that's in the broadest sense of the definition, right. Not necessarily malicious, because about 5% of that supposedly is malicious. But people self report gossiping, they spend about 30% of their time. So rather than 75%, people are like, oh, I only gossip like, 30%. Yeah. And all that comes from eavesdropping on people and then asking them afterwards whether they gossip. Tracy points out, rightfully so, that most world religions have always said gossip is a bad thing, including the Christian Bible in Leviticus. Thou shalt not go up and down as a tail bearer among thy people. That was good, by the way. I want to echo the kudos that have rung throughout social media. Applauding your scary, spider growing redneck man in the Halloween episode. It was Cletus Gill yokel. Sort of. And my friend Big John, well, it was good. It was a match up. I appreciate that. Was Big John in New York. No, he's in Atlanta. Okay. I actually thought your vomit take was the funniest part of the whole thing. Thank you. Jewish Torah always also says so in Buddhism. We've talked about Buddhism before the eight foot bath. To enlightenment. No place for gossip there, my friend. No way. Not if you want to become one with the universe. No gossiping. And like I said earlier, too, it's not just the religious types that are against it. People in member of the business world kind of started looking in on this, and they're like, don't gossip. If you want to be a good person, don't gossip unless you're spreading a gossip rumor that we want you to spread. Right? That's the official company. And then there's this dude, Robin Dunbar, who wrote a book called Grooming Gossip and the Evolution of Language. And I looked into this guy. He really goes for it. He says that gossip is the whole reason that we have language, and it evolved from primates grooming each other, and that took so much time to groom one another, and it wasn't efficient. That language was created in order to not have to groom one another. And so you would vocal groom is what he called it. So this is kind of a big deal. Let's take a break for a second because we're pretty deep into this, and we'll talk about Dunbar and his mad ideas after this. 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Plus, card members get access to builtin 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 at City comAdventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. All right, Dunbar. Dunbar can't put them off any longer. Robin Dunbar. Yeah, that's a pretty out there theory, I think. Like Dunbar is saying, we developed language so we could gossip. In essence. Yeah. The tide of grooming is where he loses me a bit and vocal grooming, he says basically it was a more efficient way to service your allies rather than grooming one another. Right. So I think what he's saying is that when a primate grooms another primate, it's an act of kindness. It's saying like, I'm doing something nice for you. It gives the other primary who's being groomed an opportunity to reciprocate and form an even stronger bond. Right. Scratch my back. But it takes a little while to do all this stuff because you're actually going through the act of grooming. Whereas if you just gossip about somebody, you can do a lot of that same stuff, but just by talking. But I don't get what it has to do with picking nits out of fur. I think what he's saying is it developed out of that. Okay. It serves a lot of the same purposes. Plus, also, it's entirely possible that gossip began around the time or I guess during grooming sessions. Think about it. If you're just sitting there picking nits out of somebody, or you just going to sit there silently, not chat, start chatting, how easy is it going to be to lead to tuck tuck and what he did after he ate that for a minute? Apple. Sure. It's like the barber shop or the beauty shop, right? Kind of. There are some different roles, though, that it does play in social interactions, where I guess the grooming thing comes into play entertaining one another, like you said influence on one another. That's a big one. Exchanging information, that's important. And one of the biggest ones is learning from mistakes that linguists point out is a really big part of gossip or a part of positive gossip, and that there's oftentimes a moral lesson attached to it. Yeah. Like, you don't want this to happen to you. Right. No, exactly. In that respect, it gets across somebody who's perhaps a little more established in a group, maybe an older person. Like ingratiate yourself. Right. But it's also saying, like, I'm a part of this group. You're a little newer than I am. Let me tell you the story about what this guy did when he transgressed against the group and bad things befell him. Like you said, don't let this happen to you. Don't transgress the group's boundaries. Right. And that's important if you're like a new hire. They say a lot of gossip replies. Like I remember the movie big. Remember when Tom Hanks gets hired. Like, the very first thing that happens is John Levitt's comes over and starts talking about all the gossip of everyone in the office. I don't remember that part. Oh, yeah. He talks about, like, this lady is easy and this guy is a jerk. And it's just pretty common, I think. When you get a new job, there's always someone in there that's like and what they're doing, though, is not purely they're trying to help themselves. It's socialization. It's in doctrine. That is not what I thought you were going to say. No, I think they're trying to be like, well, here's a new ally I can get. Right. Yeah. It's reciprocal, I guess, to a certain degree. Yeah. Both people are getting something out of it. But, I mean, you make a good point. The person who is doing the gossiping, especially in that situation, is setting themselves up as a wise, older saga advisor. I know this place. You come to me if you want some information. What you'll find, though, over the years is that usually the first person who comes up and starts gossiping to you about how the office works is usually also the most disliked. Yeah, sure. That's why they cast John Lovett. Yeah, he's great for that. That or the dude with forehead the size of a dinner plate who was in all the 80s movies as that character. Was he the jerkin big? I don't know. Is it the dad from Home Alone? No, this is the coked up sidekick from the 80s with a huge forehead. What was he mad about? You. He was the sidekick and mad about you. Oh, that guy? Yeah. Same function. Yeah. He's in that show now with Joey Tribioni. It's called Joey no. Melissa and Joey. No, he's on the oh, episodes. Yeah, he's on episodes, too. Okay, great. Does he play himself? No, he plays a jerk TV executive. Perfect. Exactly. I love that guy that he's such a good actor. No, that's what I'm saying. But he always plays that part. Definitely. He's got that part down. You're right. He's not a romantic lead. A lot of times the feeling of superiority is another big part of gossip. Like, I would never do this. Right. And Tracy also points out the old shadingfreude, which is one of my favorite words. It's a good word and one of my least favorite things. You must be very ambivalent about that word. What do you mean? Well, if you love it, but you also hate what it means, we just got to tear you up inside. Well, I just don't like someone delighting in someone else's misfortune. Unless it's a bad person. Yeah, like the Jimmy John's guy shot his toe off on a big game hunt. Yeah, he's a big game hunter. I would probably think that was kind of just dessert. I think that's acceptable. shodding Friday. Okay. Especially if it was just a relatively minor injury. You go shoddy. Yes. You say shading. Shoddy fraud. That's how I say it. So chuckle. We're kind of dancing back and forth across this line, like going to the office, setting up the first day and having somebody come over and tell you how things work. Yes, there might be a little bit of malicious gossip in there, but for the most part, it's not bad gossip. It's neutral gossip. Right. Yes. But putting someone else down or talking about how much superior you are, but you would never do what they did, that's definitely the malicious variety. And there's an idea that if gossip evolved like Robin Leach. Yeah, like Robin Leach says in his post rich and famous career, he became an anthropologist. Robin Leach says that if language evolved as a means of gossiping, the guy takes it further by saying the reason gossip evolved, the reason we needed that in the first place, was because we grew out of these little hunter gatherer bands of like, 15 people. And as our societies grew larger and larger, we weren't as able to be able to keep tabs personally on others in this group. That's getting bigger and bigger. So you don't know who to trust. Yeah, I'm going to leave my crops to somebody while I go on a walk about or something. I need to make sure that all my crops are going to be there when I get back. But I don't really know this guy. Gossiping serves that function. It's like a stand in for being able to keep tabs on everybody else in the society. Because when you gossip with somebody, you're sharing a trust, a bond, that they're not going to use that information against you that you shared with them. That's right. So there's a definite element of trust to it. And when people gossip in a larger society, they're trusting that the person is either vouching for the person or they're being warned against trusting that third party. Right, right. So it works in the same way that it's like it's a means of keeping tabs on everybody at the same time. On the other hand, or at the same time, it's also a means of social control. Because if, you know, people are gossiping about everybody else, then surely they're going to gossip about you too, which means you better just be an upstanding, upright person. Yeah. There was this what's his first name? Feinberg. Let's just say Dr. Feinberg Dr. Feinberg at Toronto and Toronto University of Toronto. He's done some studies and he did find. In fact. That basically they did these studies where you were allowed to exclude non cooperators in like a group work setting. And they found that you set them out for one game. Like you've not been playing nicely. So you go sit over there in the corner. And when they came back. They were more likely to behave in other rounds. And if they knew that their behavior was gossiped about people sort of like what you're talking about with the staring. Like if you knew someone was watching you, you would return the grocery cart. If you know someone's gossiping about you, you're going to tow that line and get your act together. Exactly. Again, it's a means of social control. You know who were really good at gossiping? The puritans in colonial America. Oh, I bet they were huge. Their whole society operated on gossip and the encouragement of gossip. As a matter of fact, I think women were called gossips, and not necessarily negatively. There was a really good means of social control. Not only was God watching you, your neighbors were too. And they would go tell the preacher who would put a scolds bridle on you and maybe them too for towing and toss you in the lake. Yeah, and if you drowned, you weren't a witch, right? All right, well, let's take another break and we'll talk a little bit more about some studies and some other theories about the origins of gossip. 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 mom thing. Find Haloholistic at Chewy. Amazonandhalopeetscom 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 fast in 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 City Advantage. So feinberg. We talked about Dr. Feinberg. Okay. I hope he or she is a doctor, but if not, we just gave him an honorary sure, honorary doctorate from stuff you should know. You people are going to request those now, which is great. We can sell them. So one thing that he found is that gossip can also relieve you physiologically. Like, if you know that you're allowed to gossip, you won't get as upset about unfair things than if you had to hold it all in. It's like a way of setting injustice. Right? Yeah. It's street justice. Right. Without, like, a solid shotgun as Charles Bronson would dispense it, right? Yeah, good point, man. Have you gone back and seen Death Wish recently? That is a rough movie. Yeah, of course. Same with Death Wish, too. What did you think it was? I remember seeing movies when I was a kid and just being like, growing up. This is nothing. That was something. Those movies were very violent and very disturbing. You see, Charles Brunson did not ask questions. No, he just shot everybody. He did, man, that was crazy. Why did you go back and rewatch Death Wish? Got to watch something. Good point. It was on. That's why. Got you. I was like, I haven't seen Death Wish in forever. When was the last time you saw it? It's been a while. It's disturbing. Yeah, especially as an adult. You know what movie I love? What? Charles Bronson movie I love is Mechanic. Well, that one's good too. Yeah. What's it called? Ten Past Midnight. Is that right? I think that's on Netflix, too. Maybe there was some creepy serial killer, like psychosexual killer that he's always hunting some money. He was the Liam Neeson of his day. That was supposedly a very underrated horror thriller. Like, horror slasher thriller. I'm with you all the way. I haven't seen it, though. It's good. I'll check it out. Very creepy. Well, it's not for kids because I learned some things in that movie. Oh, yeah? It's one of those. I can specifically remember it's like, oh, well, that's how I know what this is. Right. Charles Bronson will teach you all about life, whether you want to learn it or not. I think it was ten past midnight. All right. Sorry about that sidetrack. Where were we? We were talking about the origins of gossip. Oh, yeah. Did you. Read the other article I sent, I think it was from The Guardian, I can't remember where. One of the theories is that BBC, the hunting and gathering and foraging was a big reason gossiping came about, because you had to know, you had to talk about each other. Like, Tuktuk is not very good at the hunting, but he's quite the gatherer, so it helps them organize in the most efficient way to get things done. Right, because how is she going to know unless you tell somebody what's going on? Right, so that makes sense. No, it is. And again, if the band is large enough for the civilization is large enough that the person can't keep an eye on Tuktuk all the time, that's how that person will gain understanding of tuktuk's abilities. Poor Tuktuk. Keeping tabs on poor Tuktuk. And then the other cool thing I thought was when we finally learned to harness fire, this hypothesis is during the day we were out trying to stay alive and doing our thing, finding building shelters, hunting for food, finding water. And at night, when we finally got fire, well before fire, you would just go to sleep and rest because it was dark and it's weird to sit around in the dark. But once they had fire, people literally, from the very beginning, started sitting around and talking about their day and kind of gossiping about what happened. Right. And it's amazing. It's hard to blame anybody if you think about it. When's the last time you had a legitimately interesting conversation about fantastical stuff? They're few and far between for the most part. People are talking about their day, they're talking about people they work with, they're talking about some dude that cut them off in traffic, they're talking about their immediate experience. So of course you're going to gossip. If the definition of gossip is talking about people who aren't there. You're right. Everyone gossip. You're going to it's a completely natural thing. And I'm totally unsurprised by the idea that it started out at the first campfire. Sure it did, of course. And it still happens today. Apparently there are researchers who studied bushmen in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, and they say that the language and the stories and the things they say during the day are completely different than the things they say at night around the campfire. And they say there's really no reason to think this hasn't always been the case. That's neat. Yeah. So you said it still goes on today and we were talking about modern studies of gossiping, right? Yes. There was like a series of studies. I don't know if they were all from the view of Korana or not, but they seem to be somewhat related. Where it was outside, observers could watch people playing games and they noticed cheaters, so they had this information about cheaters that the people playing the games didn't have about the cheaters. Right. And when they were given the chance to let the players know about a cheater to send them, I think, like a gossip note is what they called it. Most people would take them up on the offer and would send a note of warning to the person that they were playing somebody who is cheating. And like you said, they went from being really upset and up in arms to that release valve being undone. And everything was fine with the world again, because that person had been alerted to cheating through gossiping. So there is such thing as altruistic gossiping as well. Yeah, with altruism, Tracy had another example of, let's say there's like a coral group and the self appointed leader is really kind of lazy. And if someone then other people are kind of making up the slack, doing the duties that he or she should be doing. So when New comes in the group and they say, hey, listen, this girl Jane is the head of the coral group, but you should know, don't count on Jane to bring the sheet music for you because she never does it. Right. So that's sort of altruistic in that you're helping someone learn the rules of your new group, but you're also kind of talking smack and making yourself superior to Jane. Right. And then so Tracy added this one other thing that some people would say that the person who's doing that is really, like you said, just talking smack and isn't really working toward a solution to the actual problem, which is Jane being slack at her job. Right. And I wonder that's a really good description of what gossip is. Gossip would be talk that's not directed toward any kind of solution. It's just talking. Yeah. If you take that same conversation to somebody who can fire Jane or make her do her job right, no one would consider that gossip. Yeah. Because it's directed toward a goal, toward the solution. And that's probably one thing that people don't like about gossip. In a lot of ways, it's just blowing off steam. It's not really serving any direct purpose. They all seem to be indirect, like socializing people. I did. Now I need an honorary doctor from somewhere. Oh, you've got one. And then lastly, Chuck, one of the other things, especially from malicious gossip, it's a very dangerous game. Right. When you're gossiping with somebody, especially with somebody that you're not super tight with, you run the risk of scaring that person. Right. Because if there's one thing that people do when they hear gossip, they take themselves and put themselves in that situation. Right. And one of the things that you will immediately think when you're being gossip, too, is, well, this person gossip, so they could very easily be gossiping about me. How much should I trust this person? And that's especially pertinent when it's not already like a tight pair and when the gossip is malicious. It's a good point. Yeah. Well, it's not mine. I'm just relating facts. Do you ever watch that Gossip Girl show? No, but there's a Twitter handle Gossip Girl, I noticed in my research. Right. No, it's like real gossip. Oh, really? Yeah. I never seen it either. But it's not real gossip because it's all celebrity gossip. Right. I think that's not a kid's show show for younger people than me. Sure. It's not for middle aged men. Although I do like Blake Lively. Well, that was one other thing too. We haven't come out and said this. There's a definite perception that gossip is much more prevalent among women. Sure, but that's not true. No. Research shows that men and women basically cross the board equally gossip. It's old white men. Yeah, it's old white. Old white men under attack in America is at eleven. You go. You got anything else? No, sir. You'd be in trolley, you know that? Yes. If you want to know more about gossip, you can type that word in the search bar@housetofworks.com and it will bring up this article, complete with totally superfluous illustrations that will baffle the mind. True. Did you see them? Yeah, just weird. I kept looking like did I miss a story or something that relates to that? It became a game. I find the meaning too. And I think I said search bar and I think I said how stuff works. But either way, it's time for listening now. I'm going to call this Disney Disney band. Hello, Chuck, Josh and Jerry. And Neil. Really? Wasn't Neil the chair? No. Frank was the chair. I think he means Noel. Probably so, which is hilarious. Neil, I've been listening for a few months now, binging episodes like well, I can't see what she says. I just listened to your part. One of Fairy Tales and last time on my way to work. The reason I'm writing is about the original Little Mermaid story. When I was growing up, my parents were hardcore Southern Baptist. During my childhood, the Southern Baptist Convention did not like that Disney was friendly toward homosexuals and supported evolution. So they called on all the churches to boycott Disney. So my parents, the good Southern Baptist, said they were took everything Disney out of our house and we weren't allowed to have any Disney clothes or watch the Disney Channel. And of course, no Disney movies. So when the Disney version of The Little Mermaid came out, 1991, I was in first grade. All my friends watched it and loved it. My mom was at a loss. Luckily, Golden Films released their own version of The Little Mermaid and my mom bought it. I watched this many times as a child, honestly thinking this is the only version. Didn't learn until a few years later when I saw the original at a friend's house. I bet she felt like watching The Little Mermaid. It's in color. This version I saw followed the original story by Hans Christian Anderson, complete with a terrifying sea witch and the Suicide at the End, which was a great movie for first grader. The Sea Witch started my nightmares. That's about the time that I started smoking cigarettes. So thanks for all the great side tracking as well as the amazing content you provide. And that is from Lindsay. Well, thanks a lot, Lindsey. Appreciate that. Glad you finally got to see the Little Mermaid. I like that she thanked us for side tracking. Some people do, sure. It's pretty infrequent. People are like, on point. Yeah. And when they do, I'm like, buddy, you have a long archive to go through if that bothers you. There's a lot of good sidetracks today. And it was ten past midnight, by the way. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at xyskpodcast. You can join us on facebookcom. Stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepirts.com. And Chuck, as always, join us at our home on the Web stuck. Chuck. Yes. Stuff You Should Know. 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 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, Chuck here. Right now, there are millions of people around the world hosting on Airbnb. I mean, there's no doubt it's a great way to earn extra income, but I've always wondered about their stuff, like what happens if somebody drops a wine glass? Well, now I know. Thanks to Air Cover for Hosts, people can welcome guests into their home with confidence. Air Cover for Hosts gives you damage protection for free every time you host. Learn more and host with peace of mind@airbnb.com. Aircoverforhosts." | ||
d64f0108-3b0d-11eb-aa42-cf6284882766 | Is the Free Radical Theory of Aging Wrong? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-the-free-radical-theory-of-aging-wrong | In the 1990s we thought we’d identified the root cause of aging: nasty molecules called free radicals that wreaked havoc on our cells. Even better, we’d figured out how to counteract them with loads of antioxidants. Then science started raising questions. | In the 1990s we thought we’d identified the root cause of aging: nasty molecules called free radicals that wreaked havoc on our cells. Even better, we’d figured out how to counteract them with loads of antioxidants. Then science started raising questions. | Tue, 02 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=61, tm_isdst=0) | 48854924 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global energy company with customers in different places on different systems? So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now data is available anywhere, securely. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. IBM, let's create learn More@ibm.com 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, 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. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. And we're all looking vibrant and healthy and just so alive and sexy that makes the Stuff You Should Know. Jerry's coat is shiny. It is. She's got that high pro glow. Glow. Do you remember that? I do. We give our dogs this salmon juice that comes in a squirt bottle, like salmon skin oil, and that makes their coat shiny, and it smells like salmon skin, which I love. That's cool. Yummy, straight up cooks salmon with the skin on for Momo, that's what she has cooked food for dinner. Yeah. I mean, I love salmon skin. It's the best thing ever. It's so good. I just love raw salmon. Chuck I like that, too. I like it. Smoke, too. Sure. What else injectable salmon? Stick it in my neck. You end up with kind of like a Requiem for a Dream thing going on. That's right. But this all dovetails into antioxidants. I think it does, because I think if you eat a lot of raw salmon, especially good stuff, you know, nothing grown in a toxic sewage dump, you're going to live a really, really long time. And we've known it for a very long time that if you eat healthy food, you're probably going to age a lot better or a lot more. You're going to stay a lot healthier as you age than, say, you would if you just ate junk food the whole time. It seems like a no brainer, but along the way, a lot of people have stopped to ask exactly why that might be right. And we should say, shout out to our book, which has an entire chapter, chapter eight on Aging. It's called aging colon. Dewey gotta. And it's a pretty good one, if I do say so. Yeah, I think the first line of that chapter says, avoid sewer salmon. That's precisely right. I mean, that's just some of the best advice anyone could ever give anybody it's a T shirt. So a lot of people, like I was saying, have stopped and asked, why would food help you? And obviously we need food for fuel. But it turns out that especially in the lot of food kind of hit the scene. Well, the food was already there, but they were promoted a different way, thanks to some recent findings that decided that food that are high in antioxidants would help you age a lot better, possibly prolong your life and prevent certain kinds of age related diseases, everything from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, just from eating the foods you ate. And it all seemed to have something to do with those antioxidants, and that concept took off like a rocket. And it's still around today, actually. Yes. And this is when listeners are saying, oh, God. Are Josh and Chuck going to tell us now that science says antioxidants aren't good, too? Right. Well, let's just hang on to that. You'll find out by the end of the episode. Yeah, I want people to stick around. That's the big reveal. Let's give them some MacGuffins. Chuck yeah. Well, the point of the whole intro here, though, is that it was a big marketing blitz. Everything from blueberries to kale. I mean, good Lord, we had kale rammed down our throat, like, figuratively and literally for the past decade plus vitamins multivitamins, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta carotene, just all of these superfoods green tea, of course, which we talked about. And we're not saying these things aren't good for you. These are all great things to eat. But they were being touted as being high in antioxidants, and it will help you age, and it will help you combat something that everyone just heard the words free radicals. And consumers said, well, I don't like the sound of those. Yeah, exactly. Let's kill them, even though we don't understand them. Right. Someone literally shoved kale down your throat once. Yeah. You've never gone to that restaurant? No. Kale. Shove kale me crazy. That explains a lot. I mean, kale is fine, but kale chips don't eat more than, like, ten of them or you'll get sick to your stomach. Yeah, I know what you mean. So you hit upon this whole point. It's not so much that antioxidants are good for you, it's that free radicals are bad for you. That was the premise of this whole thing in the this idea of free radicals is rooted in some really deep science and had a lot of scientific backing for a really long time. And I guess just to kind of get a little bit of this out there, science way overshot itself. There was a really good, sensible hypothesis, and the scientific community ran with it. And then they started doing studies. And it wasn't entirely just the scientific community. It was largely the same marketers who were making money off these superfoods that they could slap a label on there. Now it just got over hyped before the data was fully in. And for my money, though, once the data started coming in, it got even more interesting. But let's just go back to the beginning of all this, because, as I was saying, free radicals form the basis for this whole thing. And there's this whole idea that it's called the free radical theory of aging. And it turns out that the guy who came up with this was an MD. But he became interested in all of this when he was a biochemist working for Shell Oil, developing things like pesticide strips. The no pest strip, very famous kind of pesticide strip of the United States, was developed by this guy named Dr. Denim Harmon back in the fifties. And also in the fifties, he came up with that free radical theory of aging. Yeah. So he was working at Shell, and one of the things that he was doing at the time was working on chemical additives that would they found out that sulfur and phosphorus were getting spoiled. These compounds were breaking down in the oil, and they were really degrading over time because of free radical chain reactions. And they learned back then and this is pretty amazing for the mid 1950s, that there was something called free radicals, these reactive particles that would take electrons from other atoms. And then those atoms would then say, well, wait a minute. I'm out of whack. Now I want to steal some electrons to get back in balance again. So it started this chain reaction where each neighbor was getting their electron stolen. And in the case of oil, this sulfur and phosphorus would just continue to break down until it was just gross. It was basically worthless. So he's studying this stuff. He reads an article in the Ladies Home Journal called tomorrow you may be younger. And he was like, Wait a minute. And he was like, I'm studying these free radicals. It's breaking down oil. We have cells in our body. We know that the atomic bomb and X rays and all that kind of radiation really increases the free radicals in your body. And you should see somebody after an atomic bomb. And he put two and two together, and he was like, this is it. This is why we're aging. It's all because of these free radicals. Yeah, that the damage that they do builds up over time. And once you reach a certain point, that's your expiration date. But then along the way. Your system start breaking down before the first catastrophic one fails completely. Say. Like. Your heart giving out. And that is aging everything from loose. Saggy skin to a buildup of plaque in your arteries or your hardening of your arteries. That all of this is an accumulation of the damage done by these free radicals. Which are. Again. Just simply a particle that has an unpaired electron. So it can take someone else's electron, or it can donate that electron. But either way, it makes things that are normally stable, like the lining of cells that give cells, their structure unstable, and bad things can happen to that. So Dr. Harmon basically figured out that he had stumbled upon the reason that we age and die. And when you do something like that, you can take steps to mitigate it. And this kicked off at the very beginning, the free radical theory of aging. That took a few decades for people to pick up on it, though it wasn't like an immediate thing that took off. Yeah, he was like, I'm going to get so rich on this. Right? Eventually he kept checking his watch. So maybe we should go do a little biology class primer for everyone to make it a little more understandable. It's really kind of simple stuff, but if you remember back in biology class, you probably remember learning about the Krebs cycle, capital Krebs and cellular jeez. Here we go. Cellular respiration. And the whole thing with respiration in the cells is the whole point is to turn glucose into energy. And that's pretty easy. We all understand that. We turn that sugar into working energy for the body. It's our metabolism at work. And this Krebs cycle is that metabolic process of doing so, of turning those glucose molecules into something called adenosine triphosphate ATP, which is like the fuel for the cells. Right. The thing is, during this Krebs cycle, one of the byproducts, or one of the products of it, I guess, is free radicals, which is put a pin in that because that's important. Your body, when it undertakes its most important process, which is cellular respiration, it produces free radicals. Right. The problem is, while some of these free radicals are put to use, others just kind of get away. They escape and they start wandering around the body. And when they get away and they're outside of the context that they're, I guess, meant to be used for, that's when they start to do some real damage. Yeah. That's when they go to other molecules like oxygen, say, hey, let me in, oxygen. And oxygen is like, sure, I'm down to party. And all of a sudden you have an oxygen molecule that has an extra electron that's unpaired. It's called the superoxide. That sounds like it would be awesome. Like super oxide sounds like a positive word, but it's not. It will get your clothes just so white. That's right. And there are other superoxides. Hydrogen peroxide is one. And these are all collectively known as reactive oxygen species because they're reacting, they're destabilized. And like we said before, they want to be whole again and they want to be stable, so they just start robbing electrons from their neighbor. And again, you have the same chain reaction. And that's basically free radicals at work in the body. Right. And so just to kind of give a human face to this whole thing, if you have a reactive oxygen species. They respond indiscriminately to whatever cell they come up against. It doesn't matter to them. There's not one particular type that they like to take electrons from or donate electrons to. They'll destabilize whatever. And so if they come across something like a fatty acid molecule that helps create structure for a cell, over time, if it sets off a chain reaction, it can weaken that cell. And when the cell wall is weak, the permeability is affected, which means that all sorts of functions within the cell can be impacted in the cell can not only no longer function and maybe decay and die, but it might also produce some bad jams before it dies and screw things up. So the proteins that it's meant to do are still kind of trying to carry out their function, but they're not doing it correctly. And so maybe they misfold, and then you've got a whole other set of problems on your hands. It's not good when a free radical, especially a reactive oxygen species, get loose. The problem is they get loose constantly. There's a constant barrage of free radicals going through your body. And, Chuck, I have to say, after researching this, during researching this, I now can feel them. I can hear them reacting throughout my body. And I didn't sleep at all last night, and I probably will not never sleep again. All right, well, I think we should take a break. I'm going to calm you down a little bit. That was a nice primer. And I need to plug in my laptop, so it's a perfect time to take a pause. 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@ibmcom consulting 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 learning stuff with Joshua. All right, so we're back. And Chuck, I am ashamed that we did not give a huge shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us out with this one. Boy, this is a good one. Fine example of the Ruse work because he did a great job so I could understand it. There was only one part that I needed to go to a kid's science website, and it was for the Krebs cycle, and I didn't learn anything that I didn't already know from that. Did you remember the Krebs cycle from elementary school and high school? Yes. I didn't learn much about it, but I'm always reminded of the adventures of Pete and Pete because there was a company that had Kreb in the name. For some reason, I always associate the Krebs cycle with Pete and Pete. It would not be elementary school, though. Probably high school. No. I don't know. I could see it in late. Elementary school. Yes. Middle. Let's go with middle. I didn't go to middle school, though. You skipped right over boy genius. No, we just didn't have it then. It was one through seven, eight through twelve, until oh, yeah. You went to that experimental school. Experimental. They introduced middle school kind of in the middle of my high school. Yeah. I have to say, though, when you put together all of your anecdotes from school, it sounds a lot like an experimental school that you went to. They just didn't tell you that that's what it was. I think I said this before. The result of that was my class was the youngest class in the school in the 8th, 9th and 10th grade. There was nobody below us just because they kept peeling off grades to go to the middle school right behind us. Oh, that's interesting. Wow. So they really carved out the middle there. Literally. They carved out middle school. And finally, by the time I was a junior, there was a sophomore class behind me, and we beat them up so hard. Yeah, I'll bet, because you were all really just a class of super warriors. Sleeper assassins. Yeah, super bullies. We just couldn't wait to beat up kids younger than us. Not true. That's a very serious thing, by the way. Of course. I've never beat anybody up. You're talking like a guy who grew up in the 80s, not a person of the 2020s. We're at Antioxidants. This is where antioxidants come into play. The wonder thing. Yeah. Because it would make sense that if your body is producing billions and billions of free radicals every second that are getting loose and wreaking havoc, it would have some way to alleviate this. And as you just said, antioxidants. Yeah. Like, the body has these. The body produces these on their own. You don't have to eat I mean, blueberries are great. You should eat blueberries and kale, but you don't have to eat that stuff to get them. They just supply you with extra. We produce two main ones, uric acid and glutathione. And they don't actually wipe out free radicals, but they neutralize free radicals because earlier you said you can actually give an electron and that's what these antioxidants do, is they walk up and they're like, hey, man, chill out. You don't need to go stealing electrons. Have one of mine. It's like a hippie putting a daisy in the barrel of a rifle held by a National Guard. Exactly. What it is. Totally. So that would be oxidative. The other thing, taking an unpaired electron that's reductive. So the whole process, that whole concept of a free radical being able to do that is called redox. Reductive oxidative. If you want to score some points at your next Biochem party, throw redox out there. By the way, that ref you made was very ironic, now that I think about it. Which one? The hippie one, because the hippie would not want to neutralize a free radical. They are free radicals. Oh, man. Mind blown. Melted my brain. I feel like the guy on the poster that says Stoned again. You know what I mean? It just melted under the table. So, like I said, vitamins, good, superfoods, all these things can really help out our own antioxidant production in our body and help protect all these proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA. Basically putting those daisies and all those rifles as fast as they can. Right? Exactly. So it is a good thing. It is beneficial. When you eat those blueberries or ingest that pure cocoa, however you ingest it, it does have that effect because you're introducing these antioxidants to your body and there are health benefits to it. The thing is, you can eat blueberries till you yourself are blue. Like the poor girl from Willy Wonka. We just watch that. Which one? The new one or the old one? No, like a few days ago, we introduced my daughter to the Gene Wilder version, and I got to say he's great, but the movie is not very good. Oh, really? I don't know, man. I'm going to take heat for this, but it's kind of a garbage movie. Except for Gene Wilder. I don't wow. Yeah. When was the last time you saw it? Like within the last year, two years. All right. You might like it. I'm not yucking. You're yum? I thought it did not age well. I appreciate you not yucking. My yum. Thank you. I have to say, I've actually somewhat come around on the remake. The first time I saw it, I broke the TV. I thought I was disappointed with it, but it actually has somehow gotten slightly better. I'm not sure if it changed somehow or I did. I'm assuming it changed. I'll have to check it out. Yeah. Just don't hold me to it if you don't like it, because I will not be at all surprised. Okay. But anyway, you can eat blueberries until you become Bianca blueberry, I think, was her name. Violet, I think. Yeah, one of those two. And you're probably not going to neutralize all of those free radicals in your body. And so when an imbalance occurs between the number of free radicals floating around causing havoc and the number of antioxidants coming in and neutralizing them, you have what's called oxidative stress. And again, this is what Dr. Harmon hypothesized was the basis for aging that over time, all this oxidative stress is no longer able to be repaired. There's just too much damage to your systems over time. And then slowly but surely, the clock starts to wind down and you fall over in the middle of the grocery store, ironically buying blueberries. Yeah. So Harmon publishes a paper in 1956 called Aging a Colon, a theory based on free radical and radiation chemistry. And this is where he kind of lays it all out there. And this idea that he hit upon, and he said, you know what we got to do? We got to ingest more of these antioxidants. He said, I've done some studies on some mice. He said, they got a little moderate dose of antioxidants and they live longer. So that proves everything. And it was like I think you mentioned earlier, it didn't make the biggest splash at first. No, it actually took weirdly. It kind of took decades or not weirdly. I guess it sort of makes sense. When the electron microscope or the electron scanner was introduced in the 80s, they could actually see this stuff happening, and they said, Wait a minute. These free radicals are stealing electrons. They're bad, and these antioxidants are sticking daisies in their rifles, and that's good. And so it got a little more traction. And then in the nineties, they did a very big study that said, hey, if you're not eating a bunch of fruits and vegetables and you're not getting those vitamin C and E, you have a higher risk of getting cancer, memory loss, bone breakage, sagging skin, like just aging in all the wrong ways. Exactly. And so the implication was, well, then take as much vitamin C and vitamin E as you can possibly pack into your body. And as a matter of fact, Dr. Harmon, who seems to have been a pretty good guy from all accounts that I came across, he took a lot of vitamin C and E every day. I mean, hundreds of times the recommended daily allowance, which in and of itself is kind of an issue worth discussing in its own thing. But he also jogged 2 miles a day, which, as we'll see, is very important. And he lived at age 98, apparently. He said, at some point, it's important that you accept that you're going to die. We're all going to die. But if you work at it a little bit, you might just make it to 100. And he came off the clothes. So a lot of people made a lot of hay about the fact that he took a lot of vitamin C and E every day, and he almost made it to 100, and he was very much alive. He died in 2014. So when this really finally hit in the everybody was like, this is it. This is absolutely we have aging figured out, and we now know what to do with it or do about it. He was around to be kind of fetish, and he was, I believe, nominated for the Nobel Prize six times and never won. But just being nominated once, I would love that. I'm not saying that anybody should go out and do that necessarily, but if you did, I would just think it was great. Six times. I can't even imagine. Well, I think after if they ever created a Nobel Prize for podcasting, we'll get it after Roman Mars and after Karen in Georgia, and after IRA Glass and after Terry Gross. Terry Gross, of course. And wait, wait, don't tell me all of NPR will get theirs. Then Georgia and Karen. Then Roman Mars, then Mark Marin, then Jesse Thorn, then us. I could see stuff they don't want you to know. Slipping in there ahead of us. Yeah, I'll cut them. We got a long line ahead of us, Chuck. Let's just keep doing our thing and see what happens. Okay, that's right. So in the 90s it was such a big deal. In the early ninety s, the National Institute on Aging and the USDA got together and they said, hey, you know what people love is USA Today style food rating scale graphics. So let's put one of those together. We'll call it the oxygen radical absorbance capacity. No one is going to know what the Oracle is. At least they stopped short of calling it Oracle. I give them credit for that. Yeah, that's true. Go look for an L and E, like life enabler or something. Exactly. And then they put this out and it was basically kind of everything we saw at a marketing it was the blueberries and the kale and the cocoa and all that stuff. Like we said, marketing, they love that stuff because that means they can sell things to people. Packaged foods as healthy. Yeah, and this thing actually just said, like, here's how great cocoa is, but as great cocoa is red wine, rose Vera Charles is even better. And so it was very helpful, especially at the time, because people were into health food for years before that. The 80s was a huge boon for health food, and this seems like just the predictable legacy of that. Now we've got even greater science and we can tell you what foods are even better at prolonging your life than just your stupid brand muffin that helps you poop. Go back to the 82 caveman lawyer. This is like real science where we're saying this food is a superfood and here's how much of a superfood it is. That's what the ORC did. Yeah, but at some point I think someone stopped and said, well, listen, we need to think about this a little bit more. And that's what I love about science. Something that seemed really settled wasn't good enough for somebody at some point. Yeah, and they said, let's start poking around this again, because we really still don't understand it fully. Because if your body is producing free radicals, the body doesn't usually just produce something that is so damaging that it's literally killing its cells. So let's kind of poke around and see what the deal is with these free radicals. And the logical answer is, well, God decreed it that way, so this is why we that's the logical answer. Sure, you just run out of something like you just stop at some point. But like you said, some people said, no, there's got to be some other thing going on here. And it turns out it's astounding how close humans can come to a mark and then just completely misinterpret it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And that seems like something that happened here not completely misinterpreted because there's plenty of stuff that Dr. Harmon supposed or that was the basis of his supposition. That's still true, but I guess I haven't quite put my finger on what's riveting about this, but it's still to this day. I've known about this for years, and it's still this day. I just find it so interesting. But the upshot was when people started looking into free radicals. So the antioxidants neutralizing free radicals, that's pretty set. There's not a lot of questions about that, but just put a pin in that for later. But free radicals themselves were portrayed as this that's what's killing you. These are the villains in all of our lives. They're the reason for aging, they're the reason for disease, they're the reasons you will die are free radicals. And somebody somewhere along the way said, well, let me take another look at them, and they found, wait a minute, these are actually super useful in a lot of different ways. And what the change in paradigm that came from all of this is that free radicals, depending on the context where they are, the time that they exist, like their lifespan, a bunch of different factors, they're either very destructive or the body can't exist or move forward without them. Yeah. And a lot of these benefits, there are all kinds of benefits, but a lot of them are based around the immune system, like hydrogen peroxide. It's a free radical. And some immune cells need a little help from hydrogen peroxide to help destroy these pathogens coming to our body. Right. I think, well, hydrogen peroxide, again, it can also signal molecules that draw immune cells to the side of an injury. So we're talking like, if you're a smoker or something, it can actually help attract immune cells to help stave off cell damage. Because of that smoking, it can be a signal. Right. Hydrogen peroxide also, again, it's a free radical. That's actually why they say they no longer recommend using it to debride wounds or clean a wound or swish it around in your mouth. It's a free radical that will damage whatever cells it comes in contact with. You don't want to use hydrogen peroxide, but the thyroid gland produces it. It's part of producing thyroid hormone. It's part of that process. Just like it's part of the Krebs cycle to produce energy. I saw another one. I didn't see the name in the study, but there was a free radical that was linked to stronger contractions of cells in the cardiac tissue, so it gave you a stronger heartbeat. They figured out that when they removed this, the heart beat still, but it wasn't as forceful as strong a contraction. There's just a bunch of different things that different free radicals do in the body. They clearly have a defined role depending on the context. Yeah, and the other thing we'll take a break here in a second, but the other thing we should mention, too, is the exercise paradox, which is we know exercise is really good for you, but we also learned that exercise really increases your free radical levels. So that was just another sort of notch or chink in the armor, I guess, where they were like, wait a minute, if you're doing something really good for your body and it's producing these extra free radicals, they got to be good for something, right? So that's why people looked into it and learned all of these benefits. So I think we'll take a break now and we will come back with some pretty interesting evidence on why they might have had it all backwards. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more Sherpa line 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. 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 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. Within 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, square space 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. comSK and start your free trial today. 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. Comssysk. All right? So evidence that it was backwards, they started doing some studies. They started engineering organisms with really high levels of free radicals or antioxidants and just sort of looking at what happened in terms of lifespan. And of course, they thought, well, listen, if you got a lot of free radicals, you're going to die a lot younger. It's going to be so painful. Yes, it's going to be really bad. And if you have really high antioxidant levels and we're going to engineer all this bioengineer it, you're going to live a lot longer. And they found the opposite was true, which was it shook the medical community to its very core. Yeah. So there was a type of Roundworm that was genetically engineered to produce lots of super oxides, way more than your average Roundworm. And you would expect, since super oxides are a reactive oxygen species, one of the most damaging types of free radicals, that those Round worms would just basically be born, shout, Why was I born? And then die? And that would basically be the lifespan of it. And that's not what happened at all. As a matter of fact, not only did they live, they didn't die prematurely. They actually lived 32% longer than Roundworms that hadn't been tinkered with genetically. That's great. Longer. More free radicals, longer lifespan in this Round worm. That definitely got their bow ties spinning in the lab. Yeah. And they also said, well, what about the other ones that were pumped full of antioxidants? They died faster. And they're like, what is going on? Like, is someone switching out our worms here? And they all looked at the one guy who didn't refuse to wear a bow tie. He's like, Why is everyone looking at me? I like my neck ties. I like my clip on necktie just fine. They accentuate my genitalia. What? Don't you remember? There's a line from Staten, Maine, where this doctor wearing a bow tie oh, my gosh. Says, never trust the person with a bow tie because the tie is meant to accentuate your genitalia. I don't remember that line. I love that movie. Yeah, it was in there. My favorite part of that movie is when Alec Baldwin is out on the date with Julius Styles and drunk and crashes his car, and then he just gets out of the car and kind of wanders off and goes, so that happened. That movie was great. He's got that great last line, too. He's like, well, beats working. Yeah, beats working. That was a great movie. Maybe the best movie about the film industry. Yeah. All right, so they said Roundworms are one thing we need to look at mice. So they bioengineered 18 different strains of mice. Again, some with really high levels of antioxidants, others very low levels. They tracked these. They published this is over, like an eight year period. And one of the scientists that was talking about the results was like, he even cursed. He did. I watched those GG lifespan curves. There was not an inch of difference between them. And basically, there was just no difference in lifespan. He couldn't find any? No. This guy worked for eight years breeding just different strains, genetic strains of mice, and there was no difference. So all this data starts coming in. That one was 2001 to 2009, I think. And this data starts to accumulate. They're like, did you hear about the round worms? Yeah. Did you hear about the 18 strains of mice? And he said, yeah, it's crazy. That guy cursed. As this stuff started to compile, people were like, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I guess someone else threw out the naked mole rat. The naked mole rat, too, which apparently produces way more naturally, produces way more free radicals than your average rat or my mouse. I'm sorry. And they typically have a lifespan that's about eight times longer in the wild than wild mouse does, which, again, doesn't make any sense. So all this stuff starts coming in, and then finally people are like, well, wait a minute. There is a lot of people who are taking lots of antioxidant supplements right now, because I don't think we really kind of highlighted this yet. In conjunction with those superfoods in the USDA promoting its OREC chart, supplements blew up, especially supplements that were proven antioxidants. People said, if you get a lot of vitamin C from blueberries, what if I just took fistfuls of isolated vitamin C? If I just took tons of vitamin C itself and just got rid of the blueberries. And a lot of Americans were doing that, taking lots of supplements that were full of antioxidants. And now all of a sudden, people are like, maybe we should look at how humans are doing with all this. And that's when it got kind of scary all of a sudden, actually. Yeah. Like you said, they had this robust population so they could do these long term human clinical trials. And all these studies started pouring in. That said, people who are taking all these multivitamins are not living longer than the placebo group and sometimes even have a greater chance of dying from things like cancer or heart disease and these things that they're supposed to be protecting against by taking all these multivitamins. Yeah. The exact opposite of what everybody thought. Right. But here's the catch. They found out when they started to dig a little deeper. In fact, they did one study in 1996 of 18,000 men and women. They found out that it was way worse in people that already had something going on like, 28% more lung cancer, 17% more deaths in a group that was given Betacarotene and retinol compared with people who didn't get them. But when they looked, they found out that some of these people, like the highest rates, were among people who were smokers or who had been exposed to asbestos. And they were like, wait a minute. In fact, they even called off a study in Finland because there were so many people getting in the antioxidant group. A lot of these people were smokers. They were getting diagnosed with lung cancer. So they're like, we got to cancel this thing and really see what's going on here. Yeah, and from what I can tell, it wasn't just like they were like, okay, we don't know what's going on, so we need to take a breather until we figure it out. I get the impression that they were scared that they were actually giving people lung cancer by giving high doses of Betacarotene to the smokers totally. And that they had to cancel the study as a result. And that happened in more than just one place, particularly, it seems like, combining high doses of Betacarotene, a very potent antioxidant that's found naturally in things like carrots, with people who smoke, an environmental toxin that produces lots and lots of free radicals, especially in the lungs, was actually seeming to cause lung cancer, trigger lung cancer in people. So it was a really scary, eye opening, mind boggling moment, or not moment, but just course of years over the I guess probably the course of a decade when this stuff really started to come back that really made people rethink whether we should be taking antioxidant supplements or not. Yeah, and rethink in a big way. And we should point out, like, not every single study had a result that was this bad, but at the best, they were inconclusive. So a lot of these journals had to walk back a lot of stuff. In 2007, the Journal of American Medical Association said, we did these 68 clinical trials, and antioxidant supplements do not reduce the risk of death. I'm sorry, we've been saying that for a while, right? The American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association now say, don't even take these supplements unless a doctor says, like, you have a vitamin deficiency and you need to and you need this one specific supplement, not a bunch of them. And the Port Oracle, that website that USA Today graphic just got taken down altogether. Yeah, and they deleted the data with it, too, which I personally take issue with. Yeah, I agree. But that just kind of goes to show you and that's 2011 that happened. But that goes to show you just how sweeping the backlash was. Hang on to the data, though. Like park it on a MySpace page or something. Sure, yeah. You know, Justin Timberlake was a big investor in the second round of MySpace. I don't think it went anywhere, though. Was there a second round? They tried to make a second round, but it didn't recently, I want to say within the last seven, eight years. Oh, wow. And I feel like he sucked, like, $100 million or some crazy amount into that to try to kick started again, and it just did not happen. The people had spoken, you know what I mean? But there was a huge backlash to antioxidants. But here's the thing, and this is really important, and I will go over it again in a second, but I just really want to point this out. What they focused on what seemed to be the problem was not antioxidants themselves, was not eating a diet rich in antioxidant foods, a very colorful diet with all the different kinds of nutrients that you get from that stuff. That doesn't seem to be the issue, which is why I don't understand why the USDA took down that site. What seemed to be the issue was taking enormous amounts on a daily basis of antioxidant supplements, isolated derived supplements that were high doses of antioxidants. But even still, we haven't quite reached the point where we understand why that might be the case. And finally, we kind of get to that because it's totally counterintuitive why we're taking more antioxidants to balance out oxidative stress in your body, actually make you likely or to die from the very stuff that you're taking supplements to prevent. Why, Chuck? Why? Yeah. Well, it seems like we mentioned earlier that free radicals can really help out the immune system in a lot of ways, and that's kind of what they landed on is that free radicals may not be the cause of this oxidative damage, but might be the result of it. So if you're a smoker or if you get that asbestos exposure, your body is going to produce these free radicals to signal, like we mentioned earlier, like, hey, something is wrong. You need to come down here and start get to work. Bring your little repair kit down here. Right. And if you're taking all these massive levels of antioxidants, it's going to mute or muffle the work of those free radicals. And that's why it explains the fact that people that had issues, like if you were a smoker already or that asbestos exposure and you were taking all these things, it was kind of suppressing your immunoresponse. Right. It's almost like you were taking such a high dose of these antioxidants that they came in, and we're telling your body, we got this, even though it didn't really have it, which allowed, like, a tumor to, say, run rampant, where it allowed for these processes of your arteries clogging or hardening to take place because your body thought it was covered. That's the current theory. And again, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. If we learned any lesson from the initial round of this, it's that we need to just kind of take it all as it comes and try to figure it out. But that seems to be the current understanding, is that it dampens the signals that free radicals send to the immune system, which actually allows disease to take place. It makes sense. It's almost like the immune system needs to be a little out of whack to know it needs to wake up and get to work. So if it's not getting out of whack because antioxidants are just keeping those electrons all locked in place or at least an even trade going on right, then your immune system isn't going to know what to do. It explains the round worms. It explains the exercise paradox. It all kind of dovetails very nicely. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I mean, it also makes sense. So, like, when you use radiation therapy, you're actually creating purposely free radicals that are targeting a tumor so that those free radicals go in and break up the tumor cell and destroy the cells that make up the tumor, I should say. And that actually kind of jibes with something, a concept called hormesis, which I heard about from a guy that Yummy and I have been watching videos from named Doctor Mark Hyman, and he's like a functional medicine doctor, which is basically like just kind of use the whole body together and use food as medicine kind of thing. Emily's way into that. Yes, she would love that guy. He's very down to earth and pretty interesting. But there's this concept called hormesis. Lady talks about it's not his concept, but he kind of punches it up a lot. But horemesis is this idea that you stress your body slightly so that when it repairs itself, it actually makes itself slightly stronger, which seems to be the basis of free radicals and exercise. The whole exercise paradox that when you exercise, you're actually stressing your body so that when your body goes into repair itself, you are better off than you were before. You have a higher vo, two max, or VOmax, your muscles are stronger because they've been repaired stronger than they were when you tore them through exercise. That's why you have a down day. But if you're like a big weight lifter like, I remember when I was a kid, I never lifted weights, but dudes would try to get me to and they would talk about weight lifting a lot, and they would be like, yeah, man, you got to have that down day, right? You got to let those muscles repair. Exactly. That's why you also want to eat protein after you exercise, so that your body has a supply of stuff to rebuild those muscles with and make them stronger. But there's this whole idea that free radicals play roles in all these different things, from hornesis like exercise to signaling to actually being part of the immune response that messes up cells that we don't want, like tumor cells. And so if we suppress them with high doses of antioxidant supplements. It interferes with our body's natural ability to do that, rather than helping the body where we actually seem to have been hindering it with antioxidant supplements. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting. I think. Even though the doctor wasn't right on the money. I think in the end it did a lot of good. Because I think where we landed and where we are now is you shouldn't necessarily believe anyone when they say they figured out the one thing about aging and dying and that it is a lot of different things going on in your body over a long period of time. And you can't say, this is it. I figured out the one single thing that's going to keep you young for more years and let you live longer. There is no fountain of youth. No, that's the problem yet. But it does seem like oxidative stress does play a role in it, but it's certainly not the case either. It's way more complicated than that. Was wishful thinking to think otherwise. But it seems like where medicine has landed now is it still makes sense to reduce your exposure to things that cause oxidative stress. Like cigarette smoke or asbestos or all sorts of environmental toxins. And then to supplement your body's ability to take on free radicals by eating a very healthy plant based well. They're not entirely plant diet that's full of antioxidants. Because that seems to be true. But it seems like extracting those antioxidants takes them out of context, that when you eat them with food, there's a bunch of other nutrients they interact with that seems to actually that's where the health benefits come from. It's from food. We haven't figured out how to replicate that. And just extract in the antioxidants didn't do it. So eat a lot of colorful plants and you will probably be a little healthier than you would have otherwise when you age. Yeah. And if you really want bang for your buck, eat them raw. Yes. There you go. May not be as fun. It depends on the plant. I like to roast that cauliflower and broccoli. Yeah. Tastes so good. But if you can munch on some raw veggies, that's really good for your body. But I think there are some processes like blanching, that just lightly kind of cook something that unlock a lot of those nutrients that otherwise would just pass right through your pooper. Oh, yeah. I think so. Yeah. I don't think raw is entirely the way I'm sorry. Raw people. But anyway, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, since Chuck said that it's time for everybody for listener mail. This is from the housing discrimination episode. That was a good one, if I may say so. Hey, guys. Chuck was talking about locking in property tax or saying you don't have to pay property tax anymore. And while it's a good idea, this is basically what California did when it enacted Prop 13 in. And while the originally stated goal of stopping displacement of older homeowners was a good one, it's unintended negative consequences are huge here in California. Your property taxes are essentially frozen when you buy a property, but the law also allows you to pass your tax basis to your children or grandchildren, and the result is massive inequity. A very common situation here in San Francisco is two households next door to each other. Similar homes, similar age, and similar financial means, one of whom pays ten times what the other does in property taxes while consuming the city services those taxes pay for equally. It's a regressive tax that benefits the half of the people who are lucky enough to inherit property while further burdening those trying to buy in, like rent control. It's a good idea, but flawed in practice because the people who have it are not necessarily the people who need it. PS. You should mention The Color of Law by Richard Rostein. Probably one of the best books ever written on housing discrimination. I don't have that person's name. I feel bad now. Probably Richard Rothstein. No, writing anonymously. I guess it's just anonymous. Sorry about that. That was a good one. I'm interested because I guarantee that's the kind of thing where somebody else will write it and be like, no, that last writer had it wrong. Here's the real deal on that. Who knows? I'm interested to see I'd not heard of that before. Yeah, I mean, Emily and I sort of lightly debated that. The email, actually, I've got it here. It's from Eric. Thank you. From Cal Berkeley. So Eric knows what he's talking about. But yeah, we kind of debated that a little bit. I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel about it, so I'm not going to run my mouth. Very wise, Chuck. Very wise. Well, thanks again, Eric. That was a very interesting email. And if you want to be like Eric and get in touch with us about something that we possibly had overlooked, we want to hear about it. You can send it to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
41eef9fe-53a3-11e8-bdec-4303731cec72 | How the Fairness Doctrine Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-fairness-doctrine-worked | Back in the day, broadcasters were bound by law to provide contrasting opinions on political matters. Why? Because of the Fairness Doctrine. What happened to it? Listen in and find out. | Back in the day, broadcasters were bound by law to provide contrasting opinions on political matters. Why? Because of the Fairness Doctrine. What happened to it? Listen in and find out. | Thu, 04 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=185, tm_isdst=0) | 51317948 | audio/mpeg | "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 Syssklive.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 Bryant. And there's Jaredog, the Roland of all time over there. And this is stuff you should know. Wow. I got to pep it up a little bit, you know. Is that what that was? You got to screw it up a little bit. That's what I meant to say. Speaking of screwing up, chicago, Illinois. Screwing up it is. I was trying to think about this. Which approach should we take? Should we just outright lie and say, like, there's very few tickets left, so you better go get them now? No. Or should we shame them and say, there are plenty of tickets left, a disappointing amount of tickets left. I think we should just be honest and not shame them, but express our disappointment. Nothing works better than disappointment. You know, Chicago, we really expected a little more from you than this. So if you're confused about what we're talking about, probably because you haven't heard, and that's our fault about our live shows coming up all around the country to cities we've never been to before. Yeah, we've never been to Orlando before. We've never been to Portland, Maine before. That's right. But we are going to Chicago again, because we thought Chicago loved us on July 24 at the Harris Theater. Right. And then Toronto the next night on July 25. They're buying a lot of tickets. They love us up there. Yeah. The Dan Fourth, and then Boston, August 29, portland, May, August 30, orlando and New Orleans, October 9 and 10th, and then Brooklyn the 23rd through the 25th. Yeah. October 3, night run at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, which is going to be great. That's right. But again, Toronto. You're doing great, guys. Keep it up. Chicago, you could stand to step it up a little bit. You got a little bit of time, but why wait? Yeah, I mean, the seats are only going to get worse. True dat, Chuck. True dat. So just go to SYSK live for our home, our touring home on the web, thanks to our buddies at Squarespace. Oh, yeah. And now let's talk about the Fairness Doctrine. Okay. If this were, say, pre 1987, we would need to have Jerry come in and say, so, here's all the reasons why you shouldn't buy tickets to stuff you should know live if we were going to follow the Fairness Doctrine, but it's not. And as a matter of fact, I wonder how this would apply or have applied to podcasting if it had still been around, or if podcasting would have been one of those things that kind of grew up around the Fairness Doctrine. Who knows? But it's a fascinating what are those called? When it's going to be sure, there's another word for it. When it's something that just can't possibly happen. Kind of like speculative fiction or something like that. I can't remember. But since podcasts don't fall under the FCC, then I doubt if it would have mattered. Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. If we wanted to right now, we could say every curse word, every awful thing in the world under the sun. We elect not to do that. Everyone. I heard a radio DJ the other day say, I know you want to cross so bad right now. This is why we're getting a podcast. And I was like, yeah, I guess we could curse. But I like that. We don't. Chuck. I do, too. And if you want to hear me curse, just A, you can come to a live show. True. Yeah, because that happens a little bit. Or B, you can just join me over at Movie Crush. I cut a lot over there. Yeah. I think at first people were like and then now I think people go listen in part to hear you curse. They like to hear that blue street coming out of that. They hear the real me. Oh, I like to think that both sides are the real you. Put together well for roughly two and a half hours a week. This is the real me. Do you find it difficult not to curse on the show? No. I mean, I'm fully used to it by now, but I definitely am not as fully freewheeling as I normally am. Yeah, I guess I should say I don't want to give the impression that I'm like some Flanders type or whatever. I curse pretty routinely myself in regular life, but I guess I find it kind of comforting just knowing that there's a safe space where I don't say the F word a lot. You should start another podcast just called Filth florence Filth with Josh Clark. Okay, that's a pretty good idea. But none of this has to do with the 1920s, except for the fact that people did not curse on the radio back then either, because there weren't a lot of people on the radio in the 1920s. No, actually early, early 1920s. That is right. Pre November 1920, there was not much going on on the radio aside from Morse code, some ham radio operators. And remember, we did a pretty good episode on ham radio, correctly. Yeah, but one of the things I remember about that ham radio episode is that there was a kind of a whole hacker anarchic ethos surrounding the early days of radio. It's just a total free for all. You can broadcast on whatever station you wanted to and getting arguments with the government if you wanted to. Who cared? There was not a lot of ways to trace anybody, so there was a lot of anything goes mentality among the early ham radio operators. But that was basically all you would hear is people saying, like, hey, how's it going? Kind of thing. Maybe some heavy breathing. And then in November 1920, a station called KDKA actually organized itself. And the first broadcast that it put out was reading the election results from the James Cox. Oh, my gosh. It almost just violated FCC rule, this dirty talk. James Cox, warren Harding. 1920 presidential election. It was the first commercial licensed radio broadcast in the world, I think. Yes. I think that's a great trivia question. If someone were to say what city hosted or whatever was part of the first commercial radio broadcast, pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the follow up would be, and what did they broadcast? Presidential election outcome. Which was a big deal, because it's weird to think about in 1920 that people all over the country were waiting for that morning paper to come out, except in Pittsburgh, they knew. Right? They did know. And not everybody in Pittsburgh. Just the people who had basically built their own radios, because that was the radios that were around. They were like, eight people in Pittsburgh, pretty much. But the fact that this happened and word spread pretty quickly. Yeah, some people in Pittsburgh knew the election results because they were listening to the radio, and they ran around yelling that out and said, we heard it on a radio. And everyone's like these people and lock them up. Yeah. And also, other little known fact, the first song played on the radio was, radio Killed the Newspaper Star. Did you just make that up, or did you have that prepped? I just made it up. Okay. Good job. Thank you, ma'am. I'm glad I got, like that. Grudging. Good job. Because there's almost contempt in that first initial. Well, because off the cuff, that's a great joke. But if you workshop that over a few hours, then I don't know when's the last time I workhopped a joke? I don't know. You don't let me in your workshop. I know. Keep it close to the guard secret. Okay, so here's the point. This is the reason we're even talking about that first broadcast is because that was November 1920 by 20,000 radios. 1924, there are one and a half million radios in the United States by 83% of every household in America had a radio. And so there was this massive transition from distributing news and making sure everybody was up to date on all the information they needed to be, like, a smart voter or hold, like, political or social or cultural opinions. That transition moved from newspapers from print, which still hung around sure. But over to radio. Radio became much more prevalent as far as the spread of information to an increasingly large number of people went in the United States in a very short time. In, like, 20 years. Yeah. In the 1940s, the FCC and there's some background to all this that we'll get to, but we haven't even really said what the Fairness Doctrine is yet. Finally, in 1949, the US. Government said, you know what? We need some help here. We're a little bit worried that some private citizen who is wealthy could go and buy all the radio stations and essentially propagandize the news. Right. And there's nothing we can do about it. Yeah. So basically what they said was this there is one thing we can do about it. We can flex our muscle as the government and specifically say, you broadcasters can't do that. That's right. Via something called the Fairness Doctrine. Which had the overall goal of basically and it's very kind of cute to look back at this time period. But its initial goal was to make sure that all the information on the radio waves was good information and true and fair and enriching and there's only so much space on a radio dial and this is very critical that there were a limited number of frequencies available. Yes. Frequency scarcity, I think. Yeah, just put a pin in that because that's a very big deal is how this weighed in the favor of the Fairness Doctrine and then also kind of help kill it in some ways. Sure. But basically the very progressive view that public interest outweigh private interest and the public has a right to really good information over the free speech of the broadcaster, even. Yes. So you just hit it right on the head. Like that is the crux of the Fairness Doctrine. And it seems like, okay, depending on your viewpoint, either, like, the most vile idea ever or just a completely sensible idea. And the reason that it can present the same two totally different opinions is because this idea, the Fairness Doctrine, sits right at the heart of the difference between the right and the left, between conservativism and libertarianism and liberalism. And it comes down to this if you have to promote public intercourse like people understanding not doing it in public, but I mean, discourse public intercourse. So, yeah, I guess doing it in public if you're going to promote public discourse and protect it as a government saying. It's the role of government to say we need to make sure that the quality of the information that's getting out there is protected. We have to do that. We have to limit what broadcasters can say. We have to curtail free speech to people on the right, like right there, full stop. That's a problem. That's an issue. It has fatally flawed because you are curtailing the free speech of somebody, whether it's NBC or Joe Schmo who wants to say something on the radio, it doesn't matter. You're curtailing free speech, and therefore that is wrong. The people on the left say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a privilege to broadcast on the radio. And in order to protect the larger public and its interests, we have to curtail that free speech of the very narrowed moneyed interests that can afford a license to broadcast. And there's no way to reconcile the two. You can't you have to choose a side. You have to form an opinion one way or the other. And whatever you choose is your larger view of whether you're a liberal or whether you're conservative. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it fell along those lines back then and still does today, even though the Fairness Doctrine isn't around. That ideology is well, it keeps getting brought out and kind of forced along, like, angry parade route in order to kind of say, look what the government's capable of doing. Look at the overreach they really want to do. Don't let them do it again with X. Right. So it is it's a huge flashpoint, and it's understandable why it seems like so kind of limp and bureaucratic and boring. But when you dig into the history of the whole thing and even the contemporary idea behind it, it's a huge flashpoint politically in the United States. Yeah. So it had a couple of main components, and then within that, a couple of big rules, very important rules. The first, the components were they were known together as the fairness Rule, which is private broadcasters must report on matters of public interest. It's a responsibility of you as a broadcaster that's right. And private broadcasters must cover opposing perspectives regarding that public interest. That's a big one. That's a big one. And then the little rules there the personal attack rule said that if you're a broadcaster and you are going to run a negative story on somebody or something prior to that, you have to let these people know or this organization know and give them time to respond on the air. And then the political editorial rule, which is private broadcasters that air editorial programming that endorses a political candidate, must inform other candidates and offer them time to respond on air, not to be confused with the equal time rule. That's different. Yeah. The equal time rule is why debates are supposed to have all candidates, because if you give one candidate at Time Airtime to say, hey, here's my platform. You're supposed to give all other candidates the equal amount of time. And that political editorial rule kind of is close to it, and it follows in the same tradition and principle. But really, the personal attack rule and the political editorial rule that were part of the Fairness Doctrine, that's just like the foundation of good journalism, basically. They're not radical ideas. That's a good point. So the idea, though, that private broadcasters have to talk about issues and then have to err opposing viewpoints, that is kind of controversial because it's saying, like, we, the government, are saying you have to do this. This is your responsibility. And the idea that the government even has control over airways is in dispute, but it actually dates pretty far back. And we'll talk about the background, the backstory behind the Fairness Doctrine after a message. How about that? Sounds good. Okay, Chuck, so there's one thing to really understand what we're talking about here. Initially, we're talking about radio waves, and then eventually TV waves and then eventually turn into the Internet. But all these things, especially something like airwaves for radio and TV, these exist naturally, right? Yeah. There's not like a government factory that produces radio waves and then the government can say, well, we produce these so we can deviate what you think. Man it's an artificial idea that the government can say, we regulate these airwaves because it's citizens listening to the stuff that's broadcast on the airwaves. And it's private companies broadcasting on the airwaves using equipment that's manufactured by other private companies. So the government is insinuating itself and saying, whoa, this is too important to leave to the market. We have to regulate this in some ways, and we're going to do that. And the whole thing actually started with the Titanic, to tell you the truth. The Titanic ship. The Titanic ship. The very one that's right. Leading up to the Titanic, radio was being used and quite a bit in maritime communication. In fact, we even passed the Ship Act of 1910, which required ships leaving the United States to have radio equipment to know how to use it and sort of laid out some basic broadcasting standards. But what they didn't do was say, all right, we're going to assign radio frequencies and we're going to reserve a channel for emergencies only. This kind of stung them because a couple of years after that, a little boat called the RMS Titanic. The ship the Titanic. It wasn't a little boat. It was an ocean liner. Sure. I used to know the difference between ocean liner and a cruise ship. I think ocean liners are transatlantic. Is that the deal? I've never heard the difference. I figured it was one in the same or something. No, I think an ocean liner specifically can cross to different continents. Yeah, I guess a cruise ship could just hug the coast or something like that. But I might be making all that up. I got you. So the Titanic sank. There was a lot of radio traffic going on as the disaster breaks out, obviously. So even though in Newfoundland they heard very early on and picked up this distress call, they couldn't really get it out because everything was all clogged up. Yeah. There are a lot of ham radio operators screwing things up at the time. That's right. And that's what prompted the Radioactive 1912, which was sort of the beginnings of the foundation of what would eventually become the Fairness Doctrine, because what it did was it established spectrum allocation, and the FCC basically said, hey, listen, if you want to broadcast, you can't just broadcast. You got to come to us and get a license. Yeah. Initially, it was the Commerce Department that was issuing licenses. Yeah. And then came the Radioactive 1927 that formed the Radio Commission, and they started handling licenses, but not only did they start saying, okay, you're a broadcaster. Here's your license. This is the frequency that you can broadcast on. Prior to that, that was around in the Radio Act. That was the Commerce Department that did that, but there was no way to police it. And so if you were, say, NBC Radio and there were a bunch of people broadcasting on your frequency at 07:00 p.m., you just switched to well, no, you just switched to a different frequency and start broadcasting. And so there was no way to police it. Well, with the Radioactive 1927 and the creation of Radio Commission, there was a way to police it because you could have your license revoked, and if you kept broadcasting, guys would come to your house and kidnap your family. Yeah, but the really important thing and this is how it not your family. Right. The really important thing was that it established what we talked about before, which is spectrum scarcity. Right. There's only so much space now if everyone has to apply for a license, who wants to broadcast? It was very key in the setup. And then, like I said, eventual downfall of the Fairness Doctrine. Yeah. Because it says this, like, okay, here's the full spectrum, the radio spectrum that we can broadcast on, and we're going to carve it up, and each person gets a specific frequency to broadcast on. That means that there's a finite number of frequencies, so there's a finite number of licenses, which means that not everybody can have a license to broadcast, which means that the people who do have that license to broadcast have a very important privilege afforded to them. And because it's a privilege, because the government has insinuated itself and said, we're doling out these privileges, we've decided we, the government, have decided that you have a responsibility to present fair and balanced reporting to the public, including basically all sides of an issue. Like, you have a responsibility that supersedes your right to free speech as a broadcaster. That's what Spectrum Scarcity created, right? The 1927 Radio Act, while it did establish that, it kind of made some errors, basically, and how they set it up. There are a lot of misspellings. Yeah, there are a lot of misspellings. But they would say basically to the broadcasters, you have to air content in support of, quote, public convenience, interest or necessity, in quote, right. But they didn't really define what that was, which, by the way, I looked it up, I was like, what does public convenience mean? Apparently in the UK, it means a public toilet. And that's the only definition I could ever find for it. So somebody just made that up. I know the air content about public toilets, right? That's been great, actually. Like that part from Naked Gun. It's just nothing but the sounds of people peeing. But this is a big problem because if something isn't clearly defined, then it can't be enforced, right? So in 1934, they knew that this was the problem. This was how many years later, like seven years later, and they said, you know what? We need to issue another act because we're the federal government. And so the Federal Communications Act replaced the Radio Act, the FCC was born, replaced the Radio Commission, and the FCC said, all right, the first thing we got to do is define what this public interest thing is all about, right? Because not only does it make it difficult to enforce, it makes it difficult to follow. So even if you're a broadcaster and you're like, I totally agree with this. I do have a right and responsibility. What's this public convenience thing again? How do I do this? What am I supposed to be doing? I don't know. And if it's not defined, yeah, you can't enforce it. You also can't follow it if you want to follow it. So there was just too much gray area. And so the FCC, when this was created, this idea of, okay, we're going to set about defining this stuff and really generating this idea of what it means to be a responsible broadcaster. It happened at a really liberal time in America's history, right after the New Deal had really kind of come along and changed the complexion of America pretty dramatically, and liberalism and progressivism had really set in and was entrenched in the fabric of American politics. And so there was this idea that the best way to prevent broadcasters from asserting an overbearing influence on public discourse because they had the loudest voice, because they had the radio licenses, right, was to just say, you guys can't editorialize at all. And this became known as the Mayflower decision or the Mayflower doctrine. It was a 1941 FCC ruling that basically said, you know what? You guys have to basically be neutral in that. You can't say anything. You can't present any particular side. If we find out that you guys are promoting, say, the policy agenda or the favorite politics of, like, your station owner or your parent company or something like that, you're in trouble. And that was kind of like the line that they drew no editorializing whatsoever. That's right. And that really sort of laid the groundwork in a big, big way for the Fairness Doctrine, even though the Fairness Doctrine sort of undid that and said, well, you can editorialize, but you just have to do it on both sides. Right. You have to present both sides. And on the one hand, that was a gift to the broadcasters. Right. They were saying, okay, you can use your own voice, you can state your own opinion, you can support your own political candidate, but you have to give airtime to the other political candidate. You have to give airtime to people with an opposing view of what you just said. It was kind of like a compromise, but it was also a weakening of the progressivist agenda, I guess. Yeah. And the broadcasters did not like it, for sure, because, again, they were still sort of confused about what is public importance mean? We're not even sure everything is decided and applied on a case by case basis. In other words. Yeah. That's a big one. Yeah. In other words, if somebody just files a complaint, basically they will take up that complaint and hear that complaint. But it wasn't some big sweeping thing. No, but it was also chuck. That means that it's capricious and arbitrary, basically applying the rule on a case by case basis rather than a sweeping regulation. But it's also a weakness because it means that the SEC is saying, we'll leave it to you, the broadcasters, to police yourselves. We're only going to act when somebody complains. Yeah. So what happened in a lot of cases was some radio stations were like, you know what? I'm not even going to go there, and I'm going to avoid controversy altogether. Because I don't think we pointed out it wasn't just about politics. It was basically covered controversial issues in general. And this will play a big part, like everything from climate denial to the antivaxx movement in the 1980s, they all had to have equal time under the Fairness Doctrine. And a lot of people point to the Fairness Doctrine as how these movements got jumpstarted to begin with because they didn't put those opinions in context. They were just like, they didn't say, this is very scientifically valid, and now here's the opposing viewpoint, which has no science to back it up. Right, exactly. The fact that they didn't do that, they were erring on the side of caution over editorializing, but also probably they were trying to make sure that everybody was not offended. They didn't offend either side because they didn't want to be boycotted with advertising, too, or fined. Sure. Yeah. So that was a big problem with the Fairness Doctrine, is that it was ill defined. It opened the door for opposing viewpoints. That put them on equal footing or equal ground with other viewpoints that were saved scientifically backed, which created what's called the false balance problem. And then there was opposition to it, to basically the Fairness Doctrine from the outset. Not just the broadcasters who thought they didn't want any kind of restriction on their speech, but also, interestingly, it represented a loophole to combat advertising, too, which I think the FCC hadn't thought of, but they said, yes, this actually applies. When it came up, there was a ruling in 1967 that found that cigarette advertising qualified as a presentation of one viewpoint of a controversial subject. Basically, cigarette smoking is great. Go smoke some cigarettes. And so some consumer groups petitioned the SEC and said, hey, we should be able to give the opposing viewpoint. Don't smoke cigarettes. It's bad for you. And the SEC said, you're absolutely right. And advertisers are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a big deal. And now they jumped in to back up the National Association of Broadcasters, which was opposed to the Fairness Doctrine in general. Yeah. And also that kind of thing. If advertising counts, that opens the doors. And it did, and we'll get to this more specifically later, but if a power company wanted to do an ad about the great new nuclear power plant that they were going to build, like a liberal group can come forward and say, no, that's not an ad. I know they're paying for airspace, but that means we need to talk about the ills of nuclear power. Right. And I mean, even if it wasn't, the opposing group could say we get free airtime to say that this is the opposite of that. And so if you're a broadcaster, especially if you're in a successful market, that 1530 62nd spot is important. You don't want to give that away, but you may have an interest in whatever the other group is protesting. So just on that in that respect as well, you don't really want to air the opposing view. The problem with the Fairness Doctrine, if you're libertarian or conservative, is that it said you have to do that. You have to air this opposing view. The SEC says so. That's right. So you got to think this is going to end up in court at some point. Sure. And it did quite a few times over the years. Not surprisingly, and for about a 20 to 30 year period, us. Courts basically supported the FCC in fulfilling this mandate. There were some real highlights. In 1969, there were a couple of big court rulings that affirmed this enforcement. One was Redline Broadcasting Company, Incorporated. The FCC. It's a little mouthy. It is. So this one was sort of two cases in. One, Supreme Court was able to kill two birds. One case was an FCC appeal of a lower court ruling that said the personal attack and political editorial rules, those two big rules were unconstitutional and. The second was a broadcaster appealing of a lower court ruling that said the FCC's application of those rules was constitutional. Right. All right, you guys, let's just combine this into one thing, and we'll hear the case. And then the latter one. There was an investigative journalist named Fred J. Cook, and he filed a complaint. And like we said, it was case by case stuff. So this complaint made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Fred Cook filed a complaint against Redline Broadcasting, who owned WCGB, because they had a broadcast with Reverend Billy James Hargis that claimed that Cook, who was an author and wrote a very kind of salacious expose about the FBI. And this reverend said, you know what? This author worked for the Communist and he attacked J. Edgar Hoover. And it turns out they didn't contact Cook to give him that equal chance to respond, and they denied him his demand for that, and it made it all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, you know what, Redline? You're wrong. You got to do this right. Since the Supreme Court ruled that could have equal airtime, this is like, I think twelve years or nine years later, I could not find anywhere if he actually took him up on it or not. But the whole thing was just like it was an ad hominem attack, an attack on him, on Cook, because Cook had written a book against Barry Goldwater, who was a presidential candidate at the time, and the people who ran Red Lion didn't like it. So they attacked Cook in this ruling, though, and this is the whole point, not that Cook got his time or his airtime, but that the Supreme Court ruled that the SEC applying this Fairness Doctrine was good and fine and constitutional, which is a big deal. They ruled that the SEC could constitutionally exercise this Fairness Doctrine. That was just enormous. Yeah, it was a very big deal. The other big kind of landmark case was that same year, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ et al. V. FCC. Another scintillating title, right? There was a US. Appeals Court who overturned the FCC's decision not to consider a petition to revoke the license of Lamar Broadcasting WLBT. So these citizens got together civil rights groups, and they were like, you know what? This station is awful. First of all, they're not covering the civil rights movement, and they're flat out racist and segregationist, right? And so we're going to petition this. And the FCC denied the petition in 1964 and said, citizens don't have the standing to file a petition like this, which is pretty surprising because the citizens are the ones the SEC have always been, like, fighting for. Right? It was a little hanky is the word that we used to use. So the petitioners appealed, and in the Court of Appeals for DC said, you do have standing to petition the FCC to revoke a license. Right. Because that's all about protecting the public interest, which is what the FCC was supposed to be doing in the first place. So get back to work. And finally, 1967, the SEC revisited. That petition rejected it again because they said, hey, this station is actually kind of taking some steps since then, and we think they're doing the right thing. Petitioners still weren't happy. They appealed that in 1969, the FCC actually revoked Lamar Broadcasting's license. They did. As far as I could tell, Lamar Broadcasting was the one and only company to lose their license under the Fairness Doctor. Like, permanently. Yeah, right. They never got it back. And Chuck a little cherry on top because Lamar Broadcasting lost the license of WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi. It was up for grabs, and it was taken by a majority black owned group that took over the station at that point. Nice. Isn't that nice? Yeah. So things seem to be going smoothly for the Fairness Doctrine. What could go wrong? Well, we'll tell you what could go wrong after a break. How about that? Okay, Chuck. So one thing that I've learned is it's not necessarily like the Supreme Court is their decisions are final forever. They kind of shift and move over time over long enough periods of time. And the Fairness Doctrine is a really good example of that because in the Supreme Court ruled pretty clearly the FCC was constitutional. But by the end of the Supreme Court started to side with broadcasters instead. The winds of change kind of blew through there. And there was one case in particular that the Supreme Court heard in 1979 that signaled a real change for the Fairness Doctrine and the FCC applying it. And it was a case that involved WJ Im TV in Lansing, Michigan, which is owned by a guy named Harold Gross. Yeah. So the complaint here was that he or the station, rather via Harold Gross had abused their broadcasting power to the detriment of the public. So what he did was he denied airtime to political rivals in some cases. In other cases, he censored coverage of local businesses if they didn't advertise with them. Yeah. He was accused of clipping, which is taking like, when a network delivers a show, it has commercial breaks in it. He would have his editors go through and add even more commercial breaks, which you're not supposed to do. That was a big one. Didn't cover the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance because he didn't like Jimmy Hoffa's politics even though it was a national and a local story. Yeah. So in 1975, a hearing by the FCC said, you violated the Fairness Rule. We're taking your license, buddy. But he appealed it, and this time he won the appeal. And like you said, this was a big shift in the way things were being thought about as far as the Fairness Doctrine went. Hey, one more thing about Harold Gross before we move on. This guy, he was such a businessman that when he started his TV station in 1950, WJM, he was actually one of the first 108 license holders to broadcast on TV. But he wasn't sure that TV was going to stick around, that it was going to take off as a technology. So he built the Wji M facilities so that it could be converted into a motel if TV didn't go anywhere. So the original WJIM TV station had a pool out back. What is it now? Do you know? What is what? The pool. I don't know. I looked up to see if there was anything recent about it, and I didn't find any new stuff, but I saw a picture of the station, and there's definitely a pool out back from back in the 50s. It's kind of a nice perk, I guess. So I wonder if you let anybody swim in it or not. I don't know. Maybe if you advertised, he would have let you. So this was mid to late seventy s. And then things really started changing in the 1980s, because that whole thing about remember when he said putting a pin in spectrum scarcity? That was no longer a problem. By the mid 1980s, there were more than 10,000 radio stations, 1300 TV stations, about 1700 newspapers, and the whole sort of drumbeat was like, wait a minute, there's not a problem here anymore with scarcity. We should be able to do what we want. Because you told newspapers from the very beginning that their free speech was protected and they could do whatever they want. Why are we any different? Yeah, that's a really big point that a lot of people pointed to over the years, is, why does this just apply to electronic media? Like, the print media literally has an editorial page where they come out with positions on candidates and all this. Why doesn't it apply to them? And for years and years and years, it was, any schmoe can basically go get a newspaper. Printed radio is different because of that spectrum scarcity. But yes, the satellite people came along, and as cable came along, that just kind of went out the door. So spectrum scarcity going away, and the fact that the newspaper industry, the print media was not regulated anywhere near the same way, really kind of removed any remaining foundation for the Fairness Doctrine to stand on. Yeah. So in 1985, the FCC got their gears turning and said, you know what? We want Congress to review this. Basically, we're going to institute a public comment, period even, and we think we should abandon the personal attack rule. And in this case by case thing, right? Yeah. And they did this for like, two years, and while the SEC is holding these public hearings on it, congress at the same time was saying, well, we don't really want the Fairness Doctrine to go away. And not just the left, there was a bipartisan supported bill that got passed in Congress to codify the Fairness Doctrine, but it was vetoed by Reagan. And so after that, that was basically it for the Fairness Doctrine. Yeah, the FCC voted unanimously to just get rid of it. They did. And so they didn't actually get rid of it. They just stopped enforcing it or some parts of it. They kept enforcing, I think, the personal attack and political editorial provisions up until like, 2000 for another 13 years. But the idea that you had to promote opposing viewpoints on your television station or your radio station, that went away starting in 1987, and a lot of people say that really changed the American media landscape big time. Depending on who you are. I'm just going to sit back and watch. I know I'm trying to dance around this. Depending on who you are, you probably have a very strong opinion about the Fairness Doctrine one way or the other, or you may think it was a mixed thing. It was definitely a flawed policy. I think everyone agrees that it wasn't perfect, but the legacy is really complex. Getting rid of it basically open the door for what we have today, which is a degraded new standard minority viewpoints that aren't necessarily covered and how polarized we are. Because people dug in and they said, all right, I'm going to start my super conservative radio stations and then people said, I'm going to start my super conservative liberal website and radio shows and liberals going to listen to theirs and conservatives are going to listen to theirs and never between she'll meet. Right. Especially if you have, like, each side promoting viewpoint or an agenda to the detriment of the other side, the middle ground is lost. Which I know some people aren't very hip on centrism these days anyway, but I mean, you can keep a pretty decent sized society together when you kind of follow a centrist axis upward and onward. And I think that to me, the Fairness Doctrine showed that. I don't think it's a big surprise where I fall on whether the Fairness Doctrine was a good idea or not. But I just don't think it's like I can see saying all these people out here need good information. And it's probably not going to just get out there on its own if we. The government. Don't step in and say. Here's how we need to get good information out. And I think the current media landscape is just complete proof positive of that, that if you just let it all go free for all, then you end up with what we have, that this is what the market offers us. Echo chambers. Echo chambers, polarization and a huge division in the country without anybody saying, well, wait, yes. Over here, you guys are right, over here, you guys are right, and things are really messed up. But also, what about this other stuff? We kind of all agree on this part. And what about this part? Yeah, we have a lot of common ground here. No one's talking about that. And that used to be the role that the media played before. Yeah. I mean, one thing we can say is without the Fairness Doctrine, we may not have gotten any of these majority viewpoints in the 1940s. People might not have been as well informed, except maybe via newspaper, about the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, how bad smoking is, about nuclear power plants. Like all of these things that were sort of in the shadows were now had a guaranteed platform. But like we mentioned earlier, because they had to give these opposing viewpoints, he also could have possibly born the antivaxx movement and the climate denial movement and stuff like that. So it was flawed, to be sure. Sure, yes. From what I understand, any Democrat to the right of Ralph Nader, which is almost everybody, says, yes, Fairness Doctrine, what a terrible idea. Terrible idea. It was officially repealed in 2011. And if you'll think back, that was under the Obama administration. So the Obama administration's, FCC was the one that officially took the Fairness Doctrine off of the books. Removed it. Yeah. But I mean, that was a purge. That was just like, there's a bunch of rotten food in the fridge and why is no one throwing it out yet? Yeah, but it was also pretty symbolic. It was a symbolic act whether they intended it or not. But the idea that it was removed by a Democratic lefty President's administration is I don't know, it's saying something, I think. Yeah. Here's where we are today, though. There was a poll, a Gallup poll just last year in 2018 that found Americans don't trust the news they guessed, let me see, 62% of what they hear is biased, 44% is inaccurate, and 39% is misinformation. Those numbers seem low to me. That's not a great place to be in as a country, though. No, it's a terrible place. It's a scary place. Like, how is this country still together? The other thing is we're going to get so much guff because we didn't come out and just stay completely down the middle. But I mean, I want to say I understand where people on the right are coming from with this ideologically this is censorship and the prohibition of the exercise of free speech. And that is a core founding value of conservativism and libertarianism. So I can understand how you look at the Fairness Doctrine and be like, this is government overreach and it's worst examples. Yeah, but it wasn't like state run radio. No, it wasn't like the government, the federal government propagandizing their agenda. It was saying, like, hey, you can say this viewpoint. You also have to show the other viewpoint. To me, that's almost impossible to argue with. Yeah. And I think don't newspapers of high standing still on their editorial page kind of print the two opposing opinions side by side. Yeah, that's what opped stands for, is opposite the editorial page. So the editorial page will be the newspapers opinion, their editorial board, and then on the literal opposite page is basically the opposing pinion of that. Yeah, it's just a high journalistic standard, but this is the government saying this. Newspapers do this on their own, I guess just out of tradition, whereas electronic media is a little more Wild Westy than that. That's right. So here we are today. Pretty interesting times we live in. And it's all because the Fairness Doctrine went away. Anyway, thanks for listening to this episode of Stuff You Should Know. If you want to know more about the Fairness Doctrine, just go outside and see how you like things. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this the sound of our voices. Or, I'm sorry, let me say this, the color of our voices. Oh, yeah, I know what my voice is colored. This is good. In fact, yours isn't even colored. This is more of a feel thing. Okay, so hey, guys, I listened to the episode on Perfect Pitch you mentioned that sent us. Toes are often good candidates for having perfect pitch. I fall into the category of being someone who possesses both. I've been serious about my musicianship since my earliest recollections in life, and that's when I began involuntarily hearing all the individual musical notes in their own unique, unchanging colors. For example, the sound of the note F I should have brought in dude, I bought one of those little what do you call it? Pitch pipe. I bought a pitch pipe. Why didn't you bring it in? No, I should have brought it in. The one no harmonica. I should have bought two. I'm going to buy you one. I would love it. Can you have it engraved, too? Sure. Okay. So the sound of F for Allison has never not caused a rush of the color orange to sweep over her from head to foot. I also hear people's individual voices and colors. What's unique about voices to me is they're incredibly textured in and of themselves. You guys have voice colors and textures. I love mine. Read mine. Josh's voice, anytime I hear it sounds like suede, if suede. Suede could make a sound painted medium to dark brown with a tiny hint of Easter egg purple. That is a lovely combo if you ask me. Chuck's voice, on the other hand, has zero fuzz to it at all. Chuck's voice is very metallic, almost shimmery, like you're gazing upon a deep blue green body of water and you can see straight to the bottom. Nice. That's a nice voice right there, Chuck. These are both great voices. Yeah, I'm very happy that I mean, who knows what could have come out of this email. Yours smells like puke and yours sounds like nails on a chalkboard. The end I've come to find out that no two voice colors are exactly the same. Kind of like thumbprints and snowflakes. A person's voice color does not morph into something else either if they suddenly start speaking in another language. And it also has nothing to do with his or her particular personality type. So they're not saying you're smooth like suede as a person. Oh, yes, clearly. Shimmery as a person. The point of the matter I delight in hearing both of your voices nearly every day is a tune into the show. It's become a staple in my daily existence. Keep on being wonderful. That is from Alison, who is at our Salt Lake City show, and she interacted with us from the crowd. That's great. Thank you for interacting with us, Allison. We appreciate that it's illegal at our shows, but I think I asked a question and she answered it. It's against the rules. That's what they say. Well, thanks, Alison. That was one of the more interesting emails we've ever received, frankly. If you want to be like Alison and go to one of our live shows, you will never regret it for a single moment in your entire life. Go to Sysklive.com and get tickets, especially Chicago. And if you want to get in touch with us like Allison did too, you can go on to our website, stuffiestnew.com, follow our social links there. Or you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the 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 up." | |
8a3facf2-4a58-11e8-a49f-67831f1a22a4 | SYSK Selects: Did Reagan's Star Wars program win the Cold War? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-did-reagans-star-wars-program-win-the | While Reagan's "Star Wars" program was derided at home and abroad, historians are beginning to wonder if it didn't help win the Cold War after all. | While Reagan's "Star Wars" program was derided at home and abroad, historians are beginning to wonder if it didn't help win the Cold War after all. | Sat, 07 Jul 2018 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=188, tm_isdst=0) | 34075908 | audio/mpeg | "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 citi comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. 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 rule up their own sleeves. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. It automation. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects, I've chosen did Reagan Star Wars program win the cold war? Which we originally released back in August of 2012. It's a pretty good look at the time. Ronald Reagan bled the Soviet Union dry so badly that it actually brought an end to Communism basically all over the world. It's a pretty good episode, and I hope you enjoy it. Let's listen now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chucker's Bryant sitting across from me. Hi. Have you ever seen Tony Darko? Oh, dude, it's one of my favorites. You know when he takes that masculine and, like, that thing comes out of his chest and he starts following it? Yeah. He doesn't take mescaline, but yes. Sometimes I feel when we're sitting across from one another, we're connected by one of those yeah. Like a wormhole of fellowship. Yes. Like from the abyss. That's what it sort of looked like. Yeah, it did look a lot like that. I love that movie. Yeah. When Ed Harris takes all that masculine oh, that movie. And sees that thing come up out of the water, it was just like that. No masculine, no movies. How's it going in which people take masculine? There's plenty of those. Sure. This is what people have been complaining about lately. Who's been complaining? Tell me their names. Various people. People have been complaining. Oh, you bring something up. I feel like we should address something. We haven't done this in a really long time. It appears to me that we have a lot of newcomers. Yeah. Welcome. Yes, welcome. And I think anyone who's been following us the whole time kind of gets the stuff you should know, Jam. Right? Yeah. But it seems like there's a lot of people who don't quite understand what we're doing and think that we purport to be infallible experts on everything and that we don't just get things wrong from time to time. We're just a couple of guys who are pretty decent at researching. That doesn't mean that we invented the topic that we're talking about or that we didn't just walk right past a fact or something that we missed in our research. It comes up. It happens from time to time. So I guess if you're just joining us, that's probably something good to keep in mind. We don't claim to be experts, so don't hold us to that standard, because we're not trying to reach that standard. We're just trying to impart some really great information as factual as possible. And we love science and wonder. Great. Are you good? Yeah. All right. How are you doing? I'm awesome. Do you have anything to get off of your chest? No. Just welcome. The pimino cheese mini sandwiches are in the corner. Help yourself. So, Chuck yes? Do you remember a while back, we talked about this stuff a lot? Mutual assured destruction. We did a podcast on that specifically, didn't we? We did. We did one on who won the Cold War. Yeah. Did one on how to steal a nuclear bomb. Yeah. It's just this fascinating period of world history. The Cold War. Agreed. Incredibly tense, incredibly scary. And this is our history. It is. In part because you're half Russian. No, but I was alive and well. A youngster war, kids, weren't we? Yeah. We've talked about this before. Sure, little Ruskis. So the central, I guess, the fulcrum of the Cold War, the fact that the reason we're all still here was the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. Yes. Which is basically like we had enough nukes to wipe out the entire world. The Soviet Union had enough nukes to wipe out the entire world. So we were just there in a tense, fragile day. Taunt. How about a nice game of chess? Exactly. That's why we're still here. So this was, I guess this accepted reality for every president and every premiere from well, I guess who, for us from Ikea, this mutual assured destruction doctrine was just kind of a part of daily life. But when Ronald Reagan came into office, he came up with a different plan. He did indeed. So instead of a tense standoff, he found that untoward, I guess. I think he found it from my understanding of Reagan, he would have found it untoward because it didn't give America a clear advantage. Well, the article says he found it morally and politically distasteful. I agree with him in that Reagan didn't like mutual assured destruction for one reason or another. So he came up with something. A game changer, you would call it today if you read books that 80% of an airplane is also reading at the same time. That's right. What is it? Josh, he came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative, which the press like to call the Star Wars program. And I remember this very well because it was largely derided in the press for a bunch of reasons. We're going to talk about. Yeah, I remember very well, too. It was all over Mad magazine. Oh, yeah. It was all over time. There were awesome illustrations of satellites with laser shooting out of them that you could see in the mainstream media a lot. Sure. But yeah. I also remember it kind of just basically being generally disliked by the public. Yeah. As well, pretty much. It was to be laughed at in many circles, although it was a very serious thing. It was. And it was laughed at for a lot of reasons. But we're going to go over so Reagan, on March 23, 1983, he held an address to the nation. They televised speech, and in it, he challenged the scientific community, who he said had created nuclear weapons to make those very same weapons, quote, impotent and obsolete. And that kind of became the rallying cry. Yeah. Like, let's make nukes impotent and obsolete. And the way you do that is to make it so that we have a missile defense system that can shoot down every single nuclear warhead that Russia has in its arsenal. All at once, if need be. Yeah. After launch, that is. So like, if they launch their missiles, we can shoot them down in space. And in Reagan's view, which I can see his point at the time, there would not be any more need for it. He thought it would, like, neuter the Cold War in its tracks. Soviet Union thought, that's not too cool. They thought, yeah, right. Because a lot of people felt like it was going to escalate the arms race. The Soviets thought, this just means you have a clear advantage over us. This doesn't neuter. It neuters us. It doesn't neuter you. Right. And Reagan said as many times as the Soviets could stand to hear it, that this was strictly a missile defense system, a net or shield, if you will, that would only be used in the event that a Soviet nuclear launch was detected. Right. But the Soviets were saying, or you could just shoot all of our missiles down and then launch a strike, a first strike where we would have no way to retaliate. So, yeah, this is totally unacceptable. And yet the Russians rallied against it. But not just them. Here at home, there were a lot of people who didn't really care for it, including the public who thought it was a pipe dream, or who thought it would escalate a new arms race with the Soviets, or who just thought it was going to be a huge money pit. Yeah. And it was a lot of those things. And when we say Soviets, let's go ahead and call out the premiere. That I didn't remember Yuri and drop off. I didn't remember him. I don't remember him either. I looked him up. He was only I mean, it seems like there was a lot of premieres there for a while that died. He died there after I think he was in less than a year and a half. I think the KGB had something to do with it. In vodka. Oh, yeah. So he was the premier at the time. He wasn't a fan. They launched a big propaganda campaign. It says 70% of their propaganda went toward poopooing the star wars defense program, even though they didn't think it was going to work. Yeah, neither did our congress, apparently. Right. Apparently the soviets were like, this is not a feasible program. Well, and they said it violates a couple of important treaties. The ABM, the anti ballistic missile treaty of 72, which the Soviet union and the United States were both a part of, said that at the time, that was two ground based missile defense systems you were allowed. Later on, it was one, and I guess this would have been more than two. Not only that, groundbased is an operative term in this case because this is going to be the strategic defense initiative was going to be space based, and that violates another treaty. 1967 outer space treaty says that you cannot use weapons of mass destruction in space. And that's pretty much what was going on. Or that was what was planned. Right. All right. So that's why they don't like it. Right. Congress didn't like it. Congress didn't like it either. Most people in congress, apparently the missile defense agency attributes coining the term star wars to describe the strategic convention initiative, to mock it, really? To Ted kennedy in an interview in the Washington post almost right after Reagan announced the strategic defense initiative. And Reagan spent the rest of the time he was in office trying to simultaneously get this pushed through and to get everyone to stop calling it star wars, because with no luck, had it caught the American public's imagination, like, oh, yeah, star wars, let's just go ahead and blow up Russia with star wars. He would have been like, yeah, let's call it star wars. It's awesome. But it was like, reagan, star wars, that crazy old kook. He's got Alzheimer's, and he wants to put weapons in space and just shoot lasers around and all that. So he spent a lot of time lobbying against people calling it star wars, but it didn't work. Now he tried to go by the name strategic defense initiative, and you know how the press is. I think he has to get a hold of something. It's all over. He was probably even willing to allow it to be called the SDI. I bet he'd be down there. Call it SDI. 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. So Europe wasn't all in favor. The allies, they had some concerns about the balance of power and how this would affect it. Obviously. And like you said, Congress, not everyone was against it, but they had some major issues, largely a, the cost, and B, is it even possible? Like, are we just pipe dreaming here on these lasers? Right. And they were kind of right? Well, at the time, they were. So in Reagan's defense, he said from the outset, like, this can take years. Decades. Sure. This is not going to be an overnight thing. Yeah. And he also said, we're going to test a lot of different stuff. Right. He was well aware the technology didn't exist, or if it did exist, it was like a glimmer in some national laboratory scientists eyes. Sure. And it was just in the nascent stages. So from the outset, he commissioned some reports, and the one that kind of got picked up was the Fletcher report. And the Fletcher report basically said, here are eight things you need to build the strategic defense initiative. Everything from sensors that can detect when an intercontinental ballistic missile launch is launched. Yeah. Because they don't phone you up and say, we've launched. Right. And you need to make sure that they're accurate, and it's not going to be like a war games thing where it's like, whatever. You also need to come up with some incredible guided missile systems. I think there were, like, eight different aspects that basically either needed to be created or needed to be refined to the point where they might as well be created from scratch. Right. And Reagan said, do this. Yeah. He said, press on. And I think a lot of people at the time, in Congress at least, were saying, good idea. Let's use this as a bargaining tool in the arms race. Like, we don't really have to do it. Right. They're like, everyone thinks you're serious. Exactly. And he said, this could work as a bargaining chip. And he was like, no, I really want the star wars, I'm sorry, SDI in effect. So apparently Gorbachev got Reagan to meet him for arms limitations talks in Iceland in October of 1986. And Reagan went and they had this great talk, and basically Gorbachev was like, let's end mutual assured destruction. Let's basically get rid of our arsenals. And the Soviets were just throwing, like, bone after bone under the table, and Reagan just can't believe his luck. And then all of a sudden Gorbachev at the end is like, okay, so we'll go ahead and sign off on this, but all this is contingent that you give up Star wars. Right. And Reagan stood up and left. Really? He left? Yes, which is kind of like that's a little crazy, maybe, but that's the level of commitment he apparently had to star wars. Well, yeah, not too long after the Soviets says, well, you know what? We got to do something. We can't build a star wars, and it's actually a pretty good idea. They said we can. Well, at least they thought they could undertake what they called the polyus skiff, which will invent a network of weapons to destroy your star wars machine, which was, hey, that's pretty good thinking, but they didn't have the funding, and it was not very successful either. No, they didn't. And that leads us to a point, if I may skip around a little chocolate, but history has kind of vindicated Reagan in one way. Like his star wars program didn't go anywhere, but it wasn't given very much time. Right. And the reason why is because the fall of the Soviet Union happened within less than a decade after he announced the star wars initiative, the program, the Soviet Union fell, collapsed entirely. And some people attribute that to the defense spending that he immediately caused them to start expanding because of the star wars program. True. So he did kind of ratchet up this arms race, but the soviets couldn't keep up. This came on the heels of us bleeding them dry in Afghanistan, secretly funding the mujahideen, which became the Taliban, by the way, but I don't know how much Reagan knew, but the Soviets were hurting financially, and then all of a sudden you introduced star wars and they couldn't keep up. Yes. And the follow Soviet union with that came obviously at least huge threat of all out nuclear war because they were the major players. You didn't have to worry about the smaller countries as far as mad goes. Right. But you had to worry about rogue states and all that, making sure that the Russians could hang on to their arsenal, which they didn't do very well necessarily, but yes, the mutual assured destruction just went the way the dinosaur and the soviets fell. H W Bush comes along. Yes. People get annoyed by the way, when we don't say president so and so, who does this on Facebook. No, I've seen people write in before, and I've heard other people say you should always address them as President so and so, but I hear all the time people say, Obama, Clinton, Reagan. So no disrespect intended, folks. H W Bush comes along. Soviet Union has fallen. So he's like, you know what? We need to really cut back on this scope of this SDI. He probably would have just scrapped it all together, but he was pretty loyal to Reagan, of course, and so he refocuses the program, cuts it back, clinton comes along, President Clinton, and refines it even more and cuts it back even more. And by the time that happened, it wasn't anything like Reagan's initial Star Wars program. No, not at all. No, but it would become handy, which we'll get to. So let's talk about what Star Wars was. We've kind of given, like, a little bit of a broad overview, but until I started researching this, I hadn't really thought about it, but intercontinental ballistic missiles, one's capable of saying, traveling from Moscow to New York have to leave Earth's atmosphere and enter orbit. And so the idea was we would have something up there that could shoot it down when it entered orbit. That's right. Which meant that we had to weaponize space. Yeah. And I wonder if they ever gave any thought to what nuclear bombs going off in space would mean. I mean, surely there are repercussions there. I know it's space, but you can't just go willy nilly setting off nuclear bombs in space. Right. You did in Nevada. Well, that's true, but bikini Atoll? Yes, and look what happened there. What happened there? Well, I'm just saying it's got to cause some kind of harm to space, even though it's space. Right. Or does it just suck into it? Like I have no idea. This is something I could not find a researched I couldn't find anything. Yes, no, I understand what you're saying. Space is a vacuum, so it should have some effect or no effect whatsoever. But it's got to someone has got to do something. There's someone out there really smart that hopefully is going to email me. I guess, though, the idea behind this was fairly utilitarian, where it was like, okay, this possible consequence in space or saving millions of lives here on Earth, and they just said, whatever, that's fine. Of course. So you have something up in space that's capable of shooting down an intercontinental ballistic missile, like an X ray laser. This is, like, where we kind of come to some of the like, there were a lot of proposals that were kind of out there, but they went ahead and spent a lot of money testing these things, like the Xray laser. And that was a physicist, Edward Teller. He created the hydrogen bomb. Yeah, I saw that. It was his proposal, so they obviously listened to him. And it was going to use power generated by a nuclear blast and it never performed well, and it really became the focus point for the press and for David Letterman and for Johnny Carson to make fun of because it was an Xray laser. And this is coming off the heels of the Star Wars movies themselves with their Xray blasters. Or actually they were star blowing up. Yeah, or the dust are blowing up that planet Alder on. I think they focus the laser and boom. You just saved me from a lot of iron. Because I was going to say tatooine. I might have got it wrong. I think it was Alderan. Man, I hope you got it. If there's one thing that I ever hope you got right, it was that one so many Star Trek fans would be writing in. So there's the X ray laser, and it doesn't go over very well, which was very much the focus of the media. And they were being chided for the fact that they sounded really far out. Right. But they tested it. It just wouldn't work. The idea behind it was that they were going to have a small controlled nuclear explosion that would power this laser to create a massive amount of x rays, concentrated amount of X rays that would be focused on a missile and go kaboom. It was called Project X Caliber. So it had a cool name, too, but apparently the people behind it were accused of falsifying the initial test results. Yeah, so it kind of went down in scandal and mockery and everything. So in the little box that said worked or didn't work, they just checked, worked and shuffled away like cartoon sweat, like coming off of Therefore. 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Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So some of the other ideas that they tried and spent billions of dollars trying, kinetic warheads, apparently they would collide in orbit. Yeah, it's like shooting a missile at another missile. And that one actually was like the big dog on the block for a while, at first, in the early stages of Star Wars, because they figured out that you could have this thing, like, basically a satellite based garage with, like ten missiles in it, and you just have it floating up there and it shoot at a missile. One came up and it was a good idea. They're like, we can actually do that. I think we can do this. The problem is somebody pointed out that all the Russians had to do is shoot a missile at your garage, and for their one missile, they took out ten. So people said, okay, let's get back to it. And they started exploring other ones. It's like bringing a knife to a gunfight. It's like bringing a missile to a multi missile fight. No, I don't think that analogy works at all. No, I think it's like a sitting dock. Okay. The other thing they wanted to try, Josh, was railguns mounted on satellites. Did you see the Popular Mechanics drawing of it? I did, and it's pretty wicked. Yeah, I got to admit it looks like an IBM coming out of the satellite, but it's shooting like a three ounce slug at 200 miles a second. Yeah, it's pretty wicked. Yeah, that one didn't go very far because of the energy requirements. Yeah, it was just way too expensive in an energy sense. Right. And then the MIRACL miracle laser. Yeah, it was another laser. But it was ground based using mirrors. Right? Yeah, it was a chemical laser. Okay. It wasn't like a nuclear Xray laser. Got you. It's like they just started to try to throw cool Sci-Fi terms of time together, like, let's make a laser, but let's make it a nuclear Xray laser and we'll shoot missiles out of the sky with tron laser tron. I said that. So then this article doesn't really go into it, but after some of these were kind of asked and answered up until and even beyond the fall of the Soviet Union, the shining star and all this became these things called Bright Pebbles. Does that ring a bell? It did for me. When I ran across it, I was like, hey, those two words sounds very familiar. So Bright Pebbles was the little garage with ten missiles. These were very small ones, like, say, 20 to 50 pound mini garages that would shoot slugs or would ram themselves. But I think they would shoot slugs. And rather than having one garage with ten missiles, you would have thousands of these little things all over the country. All over space. Oh, they're in space. Yeah. Got you. So they were hoping for a constellation of up to, like 4000 of these things just floating around in space. Wow. The cool thing about them was if you took one out, there were still 3999 left, right? Yeah. They were autonomous so they could attack on their own. If they wanted to. They could also coordinate and communicate with one another to launch coordinated attacks against missiles. So it would be very tough to overwhelm these things. And they would have been designed to protect US space based assets, like satellites. Sure. And if the Soviets ever launched anything like it, these things were trained to just go right after them and blow them out of the sky too. So basically they were like little sentinels in space. And they were going to be cost effective too. It was going to cost about 11 billion in 1980, $4 I think, which is about 20 billion today. That's a bargain. It was considering that they were looking at like 20 billion, which is about 43 billion in today's dollars, just to get some of the other ones off the ground. Right. So to get 1000 off the ground that you could mass produce just $11 billion at the time was quite a bargain. And had the fall of the Soviet Union not coming down, we probably would have Bright Pebbles up in space right now. Oh, really? And as a matter of fact, they were proven, they were tested. The Clementine probe, which mapped the Moon in 1094, that was a bright pebble that they basically redesigned as a weapon. They used it to map the Moon and it did so successfully, so they would have worked awesome. And lastly, yes, a computer model of Bright Pebbles found that had they been in operation during the first Gulf War, they would have shot down Saddam Scud missiles with 100% accuracy. Wow. Pretty crazy. Well, cheap. I was going to say expensive. No, they're cheap. They just didn't have time to come along. Well, the problem with the rest of the plans is I saw one quote that said that at the time they were just sort of taking these ideas almost from science fiction and they felt like they were or some scientists felt like they were a decade away from even they're saying, we can't even start this for ten years. We need to research for ten years to see if any of this is even feasible. But I think instead of sort of like trying these things out reagan was encouraging that, though I'm sure he was like, hurry up. But at the same time I got the impression he was saying like, sky's the limit, guys. Use your imagination, do whatever you can come up with. Definitely sky's the limit beyond the wacky ideas. So did any of these ever work at all? So apparently a couple did. They shot down a stationary object on Earth. They shot down a mock warhead in the Earth's atmosphere and they shot down another mock warhead in space. And one of those things was going 2100 miles an hour. So some of these technologies, because they had a bunch of different groups testing all these different crazy things, and some of them were successful for the most part. No, but. It eventually led to a different sort of defense system that we still have today. Right. Or isn't that what some people say? Yeah, like the ballistic missile defense system. It's the outgrowth of Star Wars. Like, the idea that we have a missile defense system comes from Star Wars. So even though we're not using x ray lasers right. A lot of people say it had some benefit in the end, after all. Yeah, because we're using sensors, the same sensors. Like a lot of the research that was not like x ray lasers, but that still had practical applications. Yeah. We're still doing today. And apparently in Pearl Harbor last month, a missile shot down another missile really? Over the Pacific successfully as a test. Yeah. I was like, somebody's attacking Pearl Harbor again. They figured the American public doesn't want us. But yeah, the Chinese shot a missile at us and we shot it down, so everything's cool. It was close. So I guess that's about it. Yeah, that's all I got. Okay. So if you want to learn more about Star Wars, I think it would bring up a bunch of crazy stuff if you type Star Wars in the search bar, how stuff works. Like the one man star wars. Star wars one man show. Yeah, that's pretty good. Landau, dr. Pepper, Caloriezian. Remember that one? I do. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff. Just type Star Wars in the search bar@housedeforks.com. And I said that, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, in lieu of listener mail, we are going to do a little Facebook question stuff that we like to do from time to time. And this is happening live, which is pretty exciting. That is scary because I didn't have this in mail. Right. And this is a good thing to do. So let's just look through some of these, and you let me know what you want to read. Okay. Our friend Don Kuby says, is there a particular side of the recording booth that you each always sit on? The answer to that is yes. I guess if you were facing from here, josh sits on the right, I sit on the left. But you really come in from the other side. So Josh sits on the far side, and I sit on the near side. That's the best way to say it. That's very well put. Yeah. And I think all the podcasters probably no one ever sits in a different seat. That'd be really weird. Yeah, I'm sure everybody sits in their same seat. Like, if I said over there, they'd be disconcerting. You'd have to be a bona fide nihilist to do that. That would just be odd. I've got one from Jerome Hanson. I would say Jerome. Right. Yeah. Who is your favorite Marvel superhero? I guess I would say punisher. I know he's not a superhero. He's a straight up hero because he doesn't have any super powers. Yeah. But he's definitely the comic I was into the most as a youngster. I'm going to go spiderman. Really? Yeah. I identified with Peter Parker, not Spiderman favorite band of all time. I feel like we've answered that many times. Okay. I'm going with pavement. Still pixie still. Okay. I would like to know your opinion of Anne Margaret. That's from Brian Throckmorton. I think Anne Margaret, in her day, was one of the most smoking hot women on the planet. So my only familiarity with Anne Margaret was from The Flintstones when they had that character, Anne Margaret, and she always seemed like she was on Lithium. So I don't have a great opinion of Anne Margaret. Got you. Oh, this is good. William Bayer. If you were speed limit, what would you be and why? You know what I would be? What? I would be one of those special speed limits in state parks. It's like 5 miles an hour. Do you know that the parking garage here is four and a half? Is it really? Yeah, that's what I would be doing. Four and a half miles an hour. It's like they're showing off because just take your foot off and let the idol take you in. That's where I'm at. What would you be? This is arguably the strangest question I've ever been asked. I would say 75. That's good. Okay. It's fast, but it's not super dangerous. I'm not even to read into it. That's what comes to mind. Okay. Got you. You got one. Let's see. Lisa Tashira asks us, what's our least favorite food. Lisa is a big regular, too, but you read that. I recognize the name. Are you there? What are you going with? Least favorite food would have to be. I was just talking to me about this the other day. It's like, one thing I really don't like, and I can't remember it because I generally like everything. What's yours? Let me think about it. Probably mushrooms on anything. I'm just not a fan. Yeah, I know. They say they don't have taste, but then I'm always like, well, then why are you putting it in something they can virtually ruin the pizza. Yeah. Oh, I've got it. Cream cheese. Cream cheese with stuff in it. Like a cream cheese spread, a cream cheese ball. Cream cheese on just about anything. Like, if you have a plain bagel hot with cream cheese, that's fine. Just a regular man. Once you put, like, garden style cream cheese or something else. Yes. I don't like that stuff either. Okay. Matt Sailor. Boxers are briefs. We've been asked that before. I'm the boxer guy. Katie Hart favorite punch line to a joke. Those aren't pillows. I can't say any ones. I know. You got any more on here? Why don't we do, like, two more? Let's see. Charlotte Jean asks, how do we take our coffee? I take mine black. There you go. That's kind of boring. Got a lot of hair on the old chest from it. And you know Jason Domini from our friends at Backdoorfin Bornson, the amazing coffee makers and roasters, which you should not. Coffee makers, roasters should support them. By the way, he gave me a personal tour of the thing and a coffee one on one. And he says if you drink good coffee and it's roasted properly, you don't want sugar. Oh, yeah. Definitely don't want milk, but you definitely don't want sugar because it's really sweet. Coffee beans are exceptionally sweet, and when you roast it right. And he called it CHARBUCKS, which I thought was kind of funny. He said their stuff is just, like, bitter because they chart too much, because they get beans from all over the place. And when they do that, they want to make them all taste the same. And the way to do that is to over roast. Our friend Rob Pointer was telling us that he goes to a coffee place in La where they don't even have creamer sugar. Oh, really? Like, they don't even offer it if you want it. Like, they tell you to leave. Awesome. Yeah. When he made his copy, that was great. All right, so I think that's good enough for now. We'll hit this up on the next one. Oh, we will? Yeah. Okay. We'll be back, people. In the meantime, you can contact us at syskast on Twitter. You can hit us up on Facebook.com whether we have a question out or otherwise@facebook.com stuffysheanow, and you can send us an email. 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. 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 ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
c525b899-6430-4e3e-9767-ae850004329d | Understudies: Hardest Workers on Broadway? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/understudies-hardest-workers-on-broadway | Being an understudy is far more challenging than simply learning the lines of a lead actor in case of emergency. Learn all about these unsung stage heroes today.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Being an understudy is far more challenging than simply learning the lines of a lead actor in case of emergency. Learn all about these unsung stage heroes today.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 28 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=118, tm_isdst=0) | 44929034 | audio/mpeg | "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. 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, 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. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. And welcome to what? The podcast. Hey, let's go. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. And this is the podcast. What is that all about? That was my impression of Broadway. Oh, I thought that was your understudy. Matt Frederick. I could see Matt Frederick doing the same thing. I didn't know he was my understudy. Is that right? Is he my successor? No, of course not. There is no successor. Ben bowling was mine on April Fool's Day. Yes, that was a good one. But we know that wouldn't fly. No, we love them. Yeah, of course. We don't want to put him in that situation. Oh, interesting update. So I was just looking josh, the reason I thought to do a podcast on understudies is twofold. Okay. I was in New York recently and I went to Broadway and saw Neil Simon's Plaza suite with SJP and Matthew Broderick and the lead broker. Are they in that together? They are in that together. Wow. First time they have shared the Broadway stage in a couple of decades. And I think their first lead performances opposite one another real life husband and wife. And it was great, and we had a great time. And two things happened on that trip when I hung out with Joey Sierra, our good friend, and Joey was talking about his friend who is an understudy in Hamilton, I believe, the touring production, but maybe not. Who knew, like, six different parts that this gentleman could sub in for. And we talked a lot about that and I was kind of blown away and it got me thinking about understudies. But then right after we left New York, matthew Broderick got covered just a week and a half or two weeks into his run because we saw the last preview and his understudy took over in a play that is almost just two people, everyone's going to see this real life husband and wife on stage. So when the understudy comes on, it's not great. But I was just looking to see if I could find his name. And as of three days ago, SJP now has COVID. So they have just canceled through when they're better, which is like another week or so. Got you. Which is something the show must go on, is the sort of line in Broadway. And that is the whole idea of the understudy is that if someone is sick or stubs their toe or falls off the stage, there is someone else there that knows the part that can immediately step in and play this part ideally close to identically as the lead or even if it's not the lead part. Yeah, I saw put that understudies or the insurance policies that make sure the show will go on right. But after reading this and Livia, who did our Unsung Heroes of the Court, she got another unsung Heroes of Broadway article here, understudies and Standbys and The Swing and we'll talk about what all these terms mean. They are truly heroes because it is astounding what they are tasked to be able to do, right? Like true, they don't save people's lives or they don't charities or anything like that, but they are heroes in their own way. They are certainly the hardest working people in show business, if you ask me. Yes, and it will become clear why. Because you might just think what you learn a part and someone goes down, you do that part. Right. Hang on to your hats. It is much more than that. Yeah, hang on. Yes. I got nothing. You're about to make a joke. So we are talking understudies and most people think that when you're talking about an understudy it is like you said. You know. Apart and if the star goes down. You fill in and it's a pretty thrilling idea. Like somebody getting their shot at a big break after it's sitting in the sidelines and it can be very aptly compared to that backup quarterback who literally is sitting on the sidelines and they get their chance and they show like what a great job they're doing on Broadway. There's the same thing and that is the understudy. But there's a bunch of different kinds of understudies and the one that most people think of is actually called the standby, which is where you are the person who knows every single word, movement, dialogue, song, blocking cue that the lead of that play knows. And so if that lead goes down, then you stand in. But you can go potentially years without ever getting that call, like over the run of a place, a multiyear run of a place. You might be on stage a handful of times because your job is that specific. You've got one role and you're filling in for one part only on the basis of some accident or unforeseeable circumstances happened to the lead. So you have to step in. That's what most people think of as an understudy but in reality that's actually the job of the standby. Right. And the standby, like in the case of Plaza Suite, where it is largely two people on stage at all times, it's probably not going to be some unknown that's going to be the standby for either SJP or MV. And in this case, I did find his name. His name is Michael McGrath. And Michael McGrath. He's won a Tony Award. He's a very sort of renowned old school, I think five or six years older than Broderick, even Broadway Guy. So in a situation like this, you have a heavy hitter on standby that is just hoping that Matthew Broderick get food poisoning or covet right so he can step in there. And I looked up Sarah Jessica Parker has an understudy, too, and it's kind of a shame that they canceled. But in the case of that, you have to make a call as a production, and when it's your two lead stars in a play of two, it's probably the right call to go ahead and cancel that, because what you don't want to deal with is a lot of, as you'll see, unhappy ticket buyers, which happens. Exactly. So that's a standby. Right. And that's they're what the New York Times called the most elite type of understudy. Again, that's what I always thought was an understudy. Right. But in understudy, it turns out, is somebody who is part of the cast, who goes on usually night after night. Well, can be, but not always. Okay. But they are also ready to fill into one or more roles, usually a principal role. That's the understudy, where a standby is like, you might not even be in the theater, but you're on call every time that show is on, and you are expected to be within five minute run or drive to the theater so you can get there because something has gone horribly wrong. And understudy is somebody that has a much more frequently attached position at the theater. And usually it's a role in the ensemble cast. Yeah, I think they're usually in the cast. I don't think it has to be. A lot of this is determined, as we'll see by the actors union for Broadway, Actors Equity, and the deals they work out with producers. But before we get to those specifics, you also have your swing, and this is what Joey's Friend would be. A swing can cover a lot of different roles, and a swing might be like a performer in the chorus, but can jump up there and play Hamilton or Jefferson or Burr. And this dude could do that. It is one of the more impressive things to accomplish, I think, because you know all these parts, you know all the songs, like you said, you know all the choreography and the blocking. You've got to know, as Libya points out, something you don't even think about, which is between sets, I have to go back and I got to know what costume I'm supposed to be in and who to talk to, who has that costume. You've got to know every single part to be able to seamlessly transition so that no one I mean, they know because they announced, like in the role for Matthew Broderick tonight, the understudy will be performing Grown. But had it not been for that announcement in a regular understudy role, you shouldn't be able to tell the difference. No, because it's not the star. It's not the lead necessarily. Right? Yeah. You would never know. But that is something with the swing. So, like, they might know anywhere between five to a dozen of those roles. And like you were saying, each of those roles has different costume changes, different choreography, different words to say or sing. And they know all of those inside and out. And when you start to understand what a swing does, then you start to get what I was saying earlier, that they are probably the hardest working people in show business. Because on any given night, they're ready to go at a moment's notice to do those roles at the drop of a hat. It's because they've worked so hard up to that point and keep working, too. It's not like there's a time where you can stop and relax as long as the show is running over the course of weeks, months, years, however long it goes, you have to basically keep your engine revving, ready to put it in the drive all of a sudden and peel out on the stage, lay rubber from the wings. That's how they always put it in the acting world. So that's the understudy standbys and the swings there are also alternates. And this is someone who is scheduled to take the place of one of the Ector's in that you might be in Chicago for a three year run. And you're like, I don't do the matinees anymore. We have an alternate that does my matinees. Everyone knows this going in. It's not like a sickness or anything happened or an injury happened. Tickets half price. So I mentioned the Actors Equity and the Broadway producers. They work through these contracts just like they would with SAG or the Writers Guild, with Film and television. And you don't have a choice on Broadway of how many understudies and standbys and swing that you hire. It's all sort of contractual. You have to hire an understudy for every single role except for bit players and in some case, stars. In the case of Plaza Sweet, of course they had understudies. But if it's a one person show, you're not going to throw an understudy up there because it's really about that one person's. Like, there may be some leeway there, according to the production and how they run it, but you're not required to understudy the star, probably. Well, they don't necessarily need to hire understudies if it's a limited run show, like for a few weeks or more, anything beyond that, though, they probably will need to hire Understudies. Right. Or if it's off Broadway or in a third area stage theater, it's all bets are off. You can do whatever you want. Yeah. You smarter understudy. Yeah, for sure. One of the other things, too, is that you start to get into logistics, because if you're working with understudies and they have a regular role in the ensemble, if the lead that the understudy is working under falls ill or sprains their ankle or whatever happens, believe me, a lot of stuff happens on Broadway that Understudy is no longer filling that role in the ensemble. Which means now you got to go to your swings. And does that swing have anything else that they were doing that you need to bring another swing in? Right. Suddenly, like, ups route in the middle of a blizzard. Right. It's like my nightmare. Logistics is like, those are the true heroes to me. You say understudies are true heroes. I think Logisticians who deliver things or reroute planes, I think they're the true heroes because I could not do it. Yeah. And in the case of, like, a Hamilton or a bigger show with a bunch of people that are singing and dancing, if you have a flu that sweeps through let's talk precovid and we'll get to what COVID did to Broadway, but a flu that sweeps through the cast and like, three people go down in a week. It's a jinga game as a production, because, like you said, you're pulling people from one role to another. Then who fills that role? Then who fills that role? And all of a sudden you're looking at the stage hand and you're going, can you dance? Right. Have you been paying attention? They rip off of their normcore outfit, and all of a sudden they're wearing a tight fitting tuxedo and soft shoes underneath. It's so good. What a story. So let's go back to talking about Logisticians. Okay, but there's an equation, Chuck, that these producers and the director and everybody, although I think it's probably up to the producers are making. When you start to go down the list and you're moving everybody around, eventually you get to a point where the show or the cast doesn't really resemble the cast that the people coming to see the show are coming to see. And after a certain point, it's probably like so many people are going to ask for a refund or some partial refund or something that you're better off just giving everybody some time off and just canceling the show for a day or two. Yeah. Libya came up with some great examples over the years of, like, when multiple people go down. In 2016, there was a cold on the set of Falsettos, and the lead role, Stephanie J. Block's role of Trina, went down. Understudy went down, and then there was a swing. Stephanie, UMO U-M-O-H covering different roles, had to take the stage in the lead with a two and a half hour lead time, and apparently had to even use the script on stage, but got a bunch of support and cheers from the audience, which, like we said, audiences can be unkind. But my experience with Broadway is that theater goers are understand this stuff and try to be supportive when something like this happens, even though their expectations and their hopes may be a bit dashed. Like Libya talks about people booing and stuff like that. I wouldn't like to think that happened. I'm sure it has. They're all from Jersey. Bridget, baby. Generally, I think there are more stories of people trying to support the people on stage than go, what is this? I want my money back? Yeah, like clapping for the person who has to use the script because they're so unprepared. That's a very metamodernist response to that. Let's take a break, okay? Then we'll come back and talk about what kind of money these people make 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? 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 capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals, backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank. A dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at Capital one. comCOMMERCIAL. 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. Comssk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer codessysk and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace, comsysk. Squarespace. Okay, we're back, everybody. And we are back to talk about moolah, simoleons, cash, clam, lettuce, cabbage. What else? What are the kids saying these days? Bread. Yeah, they're bringing dough. I think it's dough. I can't remember. Money. Well, we'll say cheese. All right. If you are an understudy again with the unions, all of this stuff is prescribed. How much you're going to get paid even if you don't take the stage, it's not like, well, you're the understudy. You didn't ever make it to the main stage, so you get a pay cut. That is not the case. You get a minimum as a Broadway performer. And this was, as of 2018, maybe a little bit different. Now. I'm not sure if they renegotiated since then, but $2,034 a week on an Actor's Equity contract on Broadway. Yeah. And so some people who are in the cast every night in the ensemble, who go on stage every night may actually make less than a swing who doesn't go on at all. And if you stop and think about it, that actually makes a lot more sense because that one person who's going on every night in the ensemble knows what's going to happen that night. They get a chance to create their character and rehearse and understand it. And as we'll see, understudy swings, they don't get those kind of opportunities, and yet they're expected to know not just one role, but eight roles and be ready to go on. So it makes a lot more sense. And frankly, I think they deserve even more money than they get because of the requirements of their job. But why would a swing make more? We didn't even say. Because they have to understand and practice and rehearse for more parts. Well, they get paid more. We never even said that. Right. Swings earned additional paybumps. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that we had kind of established that in some way, shape, or form. No, your minimum is $2,034 a week. And if you were a swing or an understudy, you make pay bumps. On top of that, swings get $101.70 or $15 if you're a partial swing. And an understudy of a principal role gets an additional $54.50 or understudy ensemble, an extra $15. Right. So take what I was saying before and now move it to, like, right here, because it will make more sense now that I said that. But you can understand. I think you should get a bump for every role that you have, not just a bump for having multiple roles, you know? Well, yeah, that'd be great. Like, if you are a swing for six roles yeah. You'd be $100 a day. Don't put me on stage. Give me another role instead. I'm sure we have Broadway understudies listening there. They're probably like, hey, let's get Josh in there on this next union negotiation. Yes. Give me a cigar and, like, an illfitting vest, and I'll roll my shirtsleeves and get down to business, because you're probably the only person that's ever asked for that. Right. It's like I'm a genius. I just came. Just give them more money. If you're preparing for this, depending on who you are as an actor, you're going to have different ways of preparing, period. And Livia found some good examples of what some people have done. There's an actor named Jay Douglas in 2007, a member of Drowsy. Chaperone. That's a laugh out loud Broadway title, if you ask me. It is. He covered two ensemble actors in a standby for four principles. So that's a lot of work. And Douglas would sit in the audience, at least initially, and sit there with a recorder and quietly record all the movements and then go home and transcribe the stuff. And then just study. Study, basically. Yeah, that's one high stress job. Court stenographer colliding with another high stress job of understudy or swing. Good point. So Jay Douglas would take all those notes and create basically, like, a dossier on each of the characters he was expected to fill in for. And so if he got enough notice, he could consult the dossier and refresh his memory of it. If you're an ensemble actor or even a lead, you probably have one script, and that's all you need. Like J. Douglas and others would have multiple scripts and multiple workouts or write ups on their different characters that in and of itself, differentiates them to an astounding degree. Totally. And then besides just learning this stuff, all the things that we talked about, sometimes it's different accents that you have to do and kind of bounce between. You also have to be in Broadway shape. And Livia found the example of it's either laquete Charnell Pringle. Who was a swing on Mrs. Doubtfire. Who aside from learning all these parts over and over again in her mind. Was doing PT and. Like. Physical training and doing voice work. Because you have to keep in physical shape. And you have to keep your voice ready for that kind of stamina that it takes. Because it may not just be a single performance. You may have to step in for a week or more, or you may eventually become that part. Yeah, that's the thing we'll talk about. But there is a possibility that you could end up, like, permanently in that role if things work out in your favor. You got to have your toolbox ready, right? One of the things I said is, I don't want to make it seem like it's easy to be an ensemble member of a Broadway show. Of course not. This is the point. It's really hard, stressful, anxiety inducing work to do that. And it's work. It's definitely craft. And the people who do this love what they're doing, but it's also, like, really hard work. What I'm saying is that if you are an ensemble or a principal and you go out there every night. You have all sorts of benefits of developing your character just through sheer repetition over time, learning everything. So it's like rote. The people who work as understudies and swings, they don't get that. They very frequently will have not actually done any sort of real rehearsal before. They might be pushed out on stage and asked to go ahead and deliver a performance that's on Caliber with whoever it is they're replacing, even though they've never actually rehearsed. That kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, if you are a principal standby, then chances are they call it a put in. Chances are you have rehearsed with the main cast, you've gotten in that costume, you've worked with the orchestra and the show lighting, because that all counts. Like if you haven't rehearsed this stuff, if you've just done it under just the regular stage lights being on and they're like the musicians aren't there. Everything changes when it's go time and that curtain drops on the night. And if you're not used to that, it's a whole different situation. But if you are a principal, you've probably done put ins and at least gotten the benefit of maybe a rehearsal or two. I would like to think in the case of something like Plaza Suite that SJP did a full run throughs with the Matthew Broderick's standby and vice versa because it's just such a high pressure situation with just the two parts. Yeah, but if you're in a big show, there are no guarantees that you're going to have gone through any rehearsal at all, necessarily. Or if you are, it's rehearsing with other understudies and swings and maybe the assistant director with no music and no stage lighting and no costumes, like during the day on a weekday. Right. And even during those rehearsals, swings might have to fill in from multiple parts during the rehearsal. Right. So just the lighting alone, you got to know the lighting cues, you got to know where to stand. If the light is supposed to be on you, you want to step in just the right place because that's where the lighting person is going to shine that light. If you're rehearsing with work lights, that's a huge disadvantage if you've never done like the lighting blocking. And that's basically part and parcel with how understudies and standbys and swings are expected to work at a genuine disadvantage, but they're expected to give on Caliber performances with the people who have had all those advantages. Another reason why I say the hardest working people in show business. I'm picturing a scenario one day, by the way, you might be able to hear hammering next door. There's construction next door. I can't hear it. Okay. I just wanted to let everyone know in case you hear a hammer. Banging was bound to happen because there's construction next door. But I'm picturing a scenario one day where we're all out in New York with you, me and Emily. We're all having dinner with a big group of people and someone's like, oh, my friend's coming is in a Broadway show. We're all excited. And Emily was a theater girl, so she's musical theater, so she's like, peppering them with questions. And you go, you take, like, a sip on your martini and say, so how many parts did you play? And the table gets quiet. And they're like, oh, just the one. It was one of the main ensemble parts. And you go, oh, just the one? Interesting, man. You just nailed your impression of me. And just everyone gets really quiet, and we're like, what's the deal with Josh? Because they get up and go to the bathroom, and I say, he's all about the understudy. And they go, oh. And I'm in the bathroom going like, what I say wrong? Don't like me? Why did you have dinner too, Josh? So, Chuck, let's move on. Rehearsals not good. As far as the understudies go, one of the other things that I think we have to mention that you pointed out earlier is that especially with principals and stars of the show, those standbys and understudies are expected to deliver exactly the same performance that the star does every night. They're not like, Go in there and do it your way, kid. They're like, Go in there and do it exactly the way this actual star does it, kid. Don't screw up. And there's real reason behind that. It's not just like you're being treated like cattle. The star has done this in a certain way so that other people have come to expect this ad lib line that was adlib once, three years ago, and now is like a regular part of the show. Even though it's not right, they expect you to say that same line. So you have to know that role, that character so well that you know the character that the actual star has created from the script. That's what they want you to do, because if not, somebody's line is going to get thrown off and you can throw off the entire production like that. Yeah, the understudy knows this, so it's not like the understudy thinks that this can be my chance to really show them what I bring to the role, and then their hopes get dashed. I'm sure you're not necessarily doing an impersonation of Matthew Broderick as the understudy. So, like, things like intonation, you might be able to change it up a little bit, but generally they want you to do what he does, and we'll talk a little bit more about what Covet has done. But one apparent thing that Covet has done is given a little more appreciation to the understudy and a little bit more of a, well, hey, in certain situations, maybe it's okay for you to bring something else to the role if we talk about it beforehand and stuff like that don't surprise everybody. I mean, if you literally have to go. On stage. Like, if someone falls over with an appendicitis, like, ten minutes before curtain, that doesn't happen a lot. Usually there's a little bit of lead time, but in the case of Olivia, found this great article for Mental Floss with a bunch of cool examples. There was a matinee of Wicked, and midway through the show, Adele Descend. Do you even get that reference? Is that Adele's last name? Okay, that was during the Academy Awards. John Travolta. He famously introduced Edina menzelle as Adele Dazeema. Did he really? I knew that he had screwed it up, but I didn't realize he screwed it up that bad. Yeah, he completely made up a first name and a surname. He's like, Why is your name so weird? It's great. It's one of the all time blunders. But Adina Manzel fell mid show and fractured a rib. And Shoshana Bean had to go on halfway through the show. And so there's all this chaos going on to try and get her in there and dress so the show doesn't miss a beat. And then poor Shashana Bean is also in the back of her mind, like, wasn't really told what was going on. Just Adele de Zine has gone to the hospital. And so this is also in the back of the mind of like, oh, my goodness, what's happened to this person that I've been understudying, who I probably have a lot of respect for and maybe have grown close to, but also, like, how heard is she? And is this my big break? Like, all the emotion that comes with something like that is something that you have to just be able to check when you tread those boards. Right. I want to verify for myself and I think every listener who caught it. You said Adele Dezine the second time. Okay. It was good job. I want to make sure because you slid it in there so well that I thought you'd pulled a josh and just completely flooded it. Well, I was going to just leave it in there as a hidden joke to begin with. We'll edit this one when I could tell that you didn't get it the first time, I had to explain. So Karen Crackenbush is another example of that I've read about in a New York Times article from 2001. She was a standby for Bernadette Peters. And get your gun. And the same thing happened. Like, Bernadette Peters got really ill with the stomach virus and apparently was able to keep it together long enough to make it to the intermission. And they called Karen Quackenbush. She was having, I guess, a birthday dinner with her husband down the street, and she ran, got into a cab and got to the show just in time to hear everybody booing her when they were announced when they announced that she would be taking over for Bernadette Peters. But that is extremely rare. But it's got to be so dramatic and stressful that those stories are eternally delightful. I could just listen to them all day. Well, I mean, even though it's basically the same story every time. Yeah. How many situations are there where you're a performer who gets their big break and you're walking into it knowing everybody's going to be disappointed when they see me walk out there? Right. And I have to withhold all of my creativity and mimic the star just exactly as I can. And on that note, Chuck, you want to take a break real quick? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. 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. Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. 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And if you're into selling stuff, square space 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. Comssk and start your free trial today. 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. Comsysk. Squarespace. Okay, we're back. And as I was saying, those stories where somebody gets their big break because the star got sick or whatever, are far between, but for the most part, all the stuff we've talked about, where the stress? Having to keep your creativity, your own personal creativity, in check, and do mimicry, like being on call and never having any idea when you're going to go on for some people you're like, I would never want to do that. It sounds awful, but there are people who make careers out of this type of acting. And it's one of those things where once you prove yourself once, twice, a couple of times, they will call you anytime you want them to. You can be an understudy, you can be a standby, you can be an alternate for the rest of your life because it's so difficult to do that. If you prove yourself, you're in. Yeah, I think there's a lot of jobs in the world that some people view as stepping stones or transient jobs that other people are quite happy to do their whole life. I remember when I first went to La. And when I was 18 and my brother worked on Dear John, and I was an ex, he got me off as an extra. I love that show. Yeah, it was so good. And I was in it. Which episode? I remember Kirk go skiing. John. I don't remember exactly what happened. I could probably dig it up, but I play a bus boy in a scene and 18 year old me, I look like I was twelve, but I was up there with the extras in between, and this is my first experience with any of this stuff. And I remember these extras that seemed so old to me. They were probably in their thirty s now that I look back, so old. But they were kind of career extras, and I remember talking to them about that and they were like, sure, I still auditioned, but the reality has hit me that I'll probably never make it. But hey, I'm in the union, I've got great health care, I constantly work as a stand in featured extra and make good money, and I know my schedule and like, I'd rather do this than wait tables or something. Waiting tables, that can be a permanent job. I worked with career waiters as well. But understudies, like you said, it's not always just a transient thing you got to have. Just because you're good on stage and you can sing and dance doesn't mean you can handle the kind of pressures, additional pressures that come with this. It takes a special kind of performer, and some people are good at it and they know it and they stick to it. I'm sure they always would want that lead part, but it's not like they're like, oh, if I could just get out of this understudy thing all the time. No, some people really get off on the additional pressure of not knowing, and knowing you could be called at any second. Some people really like that. And then the additional work of having to understand and know all these different parts, like, some people really like that. But like you said, a lot of people view it as a stepping stone. And astonishingly, it actually has been a stepping stone. Sometimes the stars have aligned for people whose names we know today because they started out as an understudy or a standby. And Bernadette Peters, who I mentioned, she went down during one performance. She actually started out as an understudy, I think all the way back in age 13. And then later on Broadway, with her first real Broadway job, she was a standby. So she started out I don't know if she had any moment where she hit it big. I think she just was one of those workhorses who's, like, doing whatever job you can and then just kept going from there and became a star as a result. Yeah. Like, as the story goes, she understudied and performed the lead part. Or I don't know about the lead because I don't know. I think the child lead. I don't know Gypsy as well, but played Dainty June, filled in and did this. And apparently, as the story goes, Bernard Peters mom put that on the resume that she played Dainty June. I'm curious. This was in the early 19 and 60s about the sort of ethics of doing that now of your resume. Like, if you put played opposite Sarah Jessica Barker and Blazer Sweet, they're like, well, you did that for three days. I don't know if you're allowed to put that on your resume. Right. Or you could point it out, like, understudy and filled in for so many days. But from the impression I get, bernard Peters mom kind of said she played this on Broadway. Right. But at least Bernard at Peters had plausible deniability where she's like, yeah, my mom did that. I didn't know this, but Anthony Hopkins apparently got a huge break because he was an understudy. Sir Lawrence Olivier. Yes. In the West End. Yes. There was a play called The Dance of Death, which sounds like a really odd, unnerving play. It's set in, like, a remote Swedish island, I think, in the 19th century. It's just weird. But in 1967, Olivier came down with appendicitis and Anthony Hopkins filled in for him. And Olivier basically said he crowned him as, like, his successor by writing about what a good job he said. He walked away with the part of Edgar. That was Olivier's role. Like a cat with a mouse between its feet. Nice. So that was a huge break for Anthony Hopkins to start out with. And long story short, Hambur Lecter, Tay Digs, who famously was in Rent and obviously in TV and films, he was an understudy in the 1994 revival of Carousel. And then Shirley McClain, film legend shirley McLean was an understudy on Broadway in the 1950s as a teenager. And ten days into the main performance, I believe it was Carol Haney fell ill. Or just fell. Yeah, I think fell. It was an injury, in this case. Finished the show, but Shirley McLean had to fill in with about a half hour's notice. Screwed up a little bit. Cursed Audibly on stage because she goofed up and dropped her hat in one scene. But everyone was impressed. And Alfred Hitchcock came to see that play a few months later and cast her in The Trouble with Harry. And she went on to great, great fame. Yeah. And she became whose mom was she? Whose kids? I don't know. I don't either. I always want to say Carrie Fisher, but that's Debbie Reynolds kids, right? Yeah. Is that what you're thinking? Maybe. Who knows? There's another one, too, Chuck, that's worth mentioning because she kind of ushers us into the Broadway in the Covet age. Her name is Sutton Foster. She was an understudy. She tried out for the lead in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and she didn't get it. So she said, okay, well, will you make me the understudy to that role? And it turned out the actor who had that role left. And so they turned to Sutton Foster and said, hey, do you want a star? And she turned it into, I think, a Tony Award in 2002. Well, fast forward to December of 2021, and she's working as the lead in The Music Man, I believe. And she catches Covet, and her understudy takes over for her. Kathy Voit to Ko. She took over for her, and she did such a great job. That one of the greatest people on the planet, from what I can tell. Hugh Jackman gave a now famous speech singing the praises of understudies and Kathy voyager, singular, almost. He had to stop himself. You could tell what he was talking about. He said something like, when she arrived for work today, she could have played any of eight different roles and then went on to basically talk about how understudies are, like, the thing that keeps Broadway going. That's awesome. And it was because Sutton Foster came down with COVID that Kathy Voico got to kind of step into that spotlight, courtesy of Hugh Jackman. And one of the reasons it became such big news is not just because Hugh Jackman gave the speech, although in large part it was, but also because COVID was just decimating Broadway at the time. And there were shows that were like having to cancel performances. There were all sorts of understudies and standbys and alternates being thrown every which way. And it was a really hard time. And I think still in some ways, is a hard time for Broadway right now. Like you said, Plaza Suite is now is currently dark. Right on hold because of Covet. Yeah. I mean, I think what it did was it really highlighted the necessity and the value of swing and understudies and standbys. I think they were probably, at least it seems just from reading up on it for many years, a little taken for granted, of course, that they would always be there, maybe under hired because Broadway like a lot in the film and television industry. You are expected to perform sick or injured unless you absolutely cannot. It's not like regular jobs. You're like, I don't feel too good. I can't go in. It's like, you go in anyway. The president of Actors Equity, Kate Shindle, tweeted out, and this was about the COVID surge and the slide on understudies. Tweeted this. My educated guess is that when employers consistently reject our efforts to negotiate for more swings, understudies and substance managers we haven't even talked about that. Like, if you're on the crew and you get sick, someone has to fill in because the industry model has grown dependent on people working sick or injured. It's short sighted and unsafe. And this kind of forced Charlotte St. Martin, who is president of the Trade Association of the Broadway League, to sort of apologize. Not sort of to fully apologize and kind of call for producers to cover their shows adequately. And like I said before, it led to more things like, hey, maybe an understudy can actually bring a little something to the role. Maybe we shouldn't take them for granted as much. Yes, Charlotte St. Martin had apparently thrown some shade on the understudies and got called out by Kate Shindle. So I guess from what the New York Times is saying, they are able to or they're using this to try to make it easier on understudies and stand by to give them full rehearsals and actually have the lighting people there during it and make it so that it's just a slightly less stressful job and that there's more of them working, which is, yeah, that is good. That's an improvement. It's the same thing like you were saying with the film industry when the transition is going through now, where it's like, no, you really shouldn't work a 28 hours day every day and just be expected to whenever the director or producer wants you to be there. Anytime there's an improvement like that, it's an improvement for all. Amen to that. The one thing I don't think we mentioned that I think is important is that sometimes you may audition as the understudy and sometimes you may audition for the lead role. If it's not like, already set in stone, like, Matthew Broderick is going to play this role and that's why we're doing it. If it's just open auditions for the lead role, they might say, you're really good and I'm not going to cast you, but I'd love to cast you as the understudy. Sometimes it goes that way. Yeah. So if you want to be on stage, you have to basically be like, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not taking understudy parts because you can get typecast into them because it's hard to do and not everybody wants to do it. Or you roll the dice that things happen. The Thoroughly Modern Millie is going to crack her ankle. Yeah. That was the other funny story we didn't kind of get to about someone wrote in feels like Anonymously to play Bill. That was an understudy that said I secretly wanted to poison the lead actor because you don't think about besides all the work that goes into it, they're like, we could never make firm plans with anybody. We can never schedule anything because you're just on call. That on call. Life is tough, whether you're a pediatrician or an understudy or a logistician. Very nice. Bring it all back around. You got anything else? Nothing else, sir. Well, everybody, I say go out and hug and understudy a standby, a swing or an alternate two day. Yeah. Ask them first. Yes, they may not want to be hugged, especially if they're not wearing a name tag with the hug dot system on. That's right. Well, since Chuck said that's right. Of course, everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this sliding Canada. As always. Hey, guys, love the show. Promise to keep it short. Just listen to the pubs episode, which we heard a lot of people really liked that episode, by the way, which brought back tons of good memories of two summers I spent taking Canadian undergrads to Wales. There were many pubs, but I can't not note that Josh said George Washington took his troops to a pub to toast the British leaving the continent of North America. End quote. Knock knock. Canada called. Unless George Washington was still kicking it in 1931 when the statue of Westminster was signed, or in 1982, when Canada's constitution was repatriated. But even then, the crown's representative is still the head of state. Appear. I realized this is the most pedantic Sam of emails. Never heard that. But one of us has to make use of a PhD in Canadian literature somehow. Love the show. Heard every episode. All the best, Brenna. Very nice, Brenda. We just got taken to school and put in one of those desks that you lift the top on to say, man, that's how hard we just got school. Chuck, I'm sorry to drag you along with me, but I'm glad you were there for moral support. I'll be there. I'll just clear the inkwell side and I'll get in with you. Who was that? Brenna? That was Brenna. It was a direction that was smarmy, but also charming and funny, which made it lovable. That's right. So if you want to send us an email like Brennan did, let's see what you got. Take your best shot. Don't smoke pot. Or do. 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. 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 leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
How Bees Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-bees-work | With less than a million neurons in their tiny heads, bees shouldn't be able to do much more than eat, sleep and reproduce. And yet, bees are capable of high functions like population economics and navigating by the sun on overcast days. Learn about these | With less than a million neurons in their tiny heads, bees shouldn't be able to do much more than eat, sleep and reproduce. And yet, bees are capable of high functions like population economics and navigating by the sun on overcast days. Learn about these | Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:27:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=23, tm_min=27, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=26, tm_isdst=0) | 41640920 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseoffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. You put us together. Give us a little nectar. Let us collect pollen with the hair on our bodies. When you have stuff you should know that'd be a lot of pollen. Yeah. You'd be honey making fools. Yeah. He would be best at his Roman Williams. Oh, man, that guy is scary. Yes, you would be a honey making fool. How are you doing? Well, sir. How are you? I'm pretty good. It's a little early. It is, but you're feeling good? Yeah, man, I love recording in the mornings. Yeah. Been up since 06:00 a.m. Reading about bees. Yeah. Well, I can imagine you could have gotten up at four or five, because it's, like, the most expensive article in the universe, how Bees work. It's Tracy Wilson joint, so it's thorough and exhaustive. And exhausting, yes. But it's a good one. Dude, I love bees. Do you? Yeah, I hate bees. Do you really? Yeah. Why? Because they sting, they hurt, they make me get up at 06:00 a.m.. You don't think they're fascinating creatures? Yeah, I like them. Okay, well, you got to talk about them anyway. How about that? I don't really have much of an intro, which is probably for the best, because this is a really long episode. There's a lot of facts. Yeah, there are. And parts and things. Let's talk bees, man. How long have they been around? Bees have been around for a gazillion years. They've been around for a long time. Ancient Egyptians, in fact, they were sort of magical creatures that the sun god Raw cried down upon the Earth. Yes. Which is fanciful. And that's where bees came from. But that's not where they came from. No. The San people think that we came from bees of the Kalahari. The San people, they have this creation myth that a bee was carrying a manus across the desert, got tired, died. Before it died, it laid some eggs in the mantis, and then that became the first human. And that's where we came from. Not buy that. Really? Sure. Why not? A lot of people used to think that, including beekeepers, that they reproduce spontaneously. They didn't, like, have intercourse to do so. And this was true until the mid 1600s, when a very cool dude named Jam Swammerdam, examined bees under a microscope and saw little reproductive parts. Yeah, we got it all wrong. He went. And I'm jam swimmerdam. That's a pretty great name. It's a great name that you're good at that. Is that what he was? It's got to be, you know, Swimmerdam. Yeah, jam Swimmerdam. Probably so. And there are, like, 200 species of bees, but we're going to concentrate mainly on honeybees. Yeah, mostly. Little bit of what are the other ones? Not the bumblebees, but we'll talk a little bit about bumblebees, too. Yeah, pretty much those two. Yeah. But mostly honeybees. They're the most studied, I think they're the most fascinating. But social and non. I don't want to say antisocial. Solitary. Yeah, solitary bees. Antisocials may be a way to describe it, but those are two categories that we're going to dive into. Yeah. So, surprisingly, bees go back even further than the ancient Egyptians. The oldest beef fossil that they found is about 100 million years old, and they think that at some point around then, during the Cretaceous period, bees diverged from wasps. Not necessarily from wasps. It doesn't mean that bees evolved from wasps, but that possibly they shared a common wasp like ancestor. That was creepy, but it was like 8ft long, too ancient. Super wash. And this is about the same time, too. Not coincidentally, when flowering plants started doing their thing. Before this, if you wanted to do the tree thing, you had to plant things. You have to do like what conifers do, dropping your cones and counting on the wind and nature to do your work. Yeah. Which may or may not work. But thankfully, bees came along and they said, hey, you know what? We can help. Take your pollen, Mr. Flower. Yeah. So bees and flowering plants, angiosperms, covalues. And that was a big step for bees. They're kind of like the sweet philosophy majors of the wasp family. They just went off and became herbivores. Whereas their wasp relatives or wasp cousins were carnivores. And not only carnivores, carnivores that used ovipositors to lay their eggs in other animals, other bugs. Yeah. It's gross. It is. And it's very aggressive. But as we said, these became herbivores. They just go around the flowers. All they want is to be left alone, collect pollen and nectar and then pollinate flowers along the way. Sure. And they're very happy with their lives like that. They're into the pan, flute and birkenstocks. You think these are like hippies? A little bit, yeah. He's never been attacked by a dozen hippies. No, actually more than a dozen. I was stung a dozen times. Is that right? I told that story before in the Colony Collapse podcast when I was tagged in the head and face twelve times. Oh, yeah. That rings a bell. One of my worst days. Yeah. Very painful. So, let's talk about parts. The bees body is pretty remarkable. It's got an exoskeleton made of titan movable plates of this. Titan? Yeah. It's almost like a suit of armor, it sounds like. Yeah, that's pretty neat. They've got, like we said, a lot of hairs all over their body. Little fuzzy that they collect the pollen, help regulate body temp, keep it cool or warm, depending on what's going on. And like a lot of insects, they're divided into little sections. They had the thorax and the abdomen, in this case. Right. And the brain is in the head. And it's not a big brain now, but it's pretty awesome. Yeah, because it's specialized. So Be brain has about 950,000 neurons. That seems like a lot for a small insect. It does a in small brain. Right. But apparently it's not. And the reason why we know it's not because just based on the number of neurons, bees should be incredibly stupid and very simple animals and they're not. The reason why is because the neurons in a bees head are extremely specialized and rather than being recruited by some executive function like we have in our frontal lobes, their neurons kind of act on their own and communicate with other neurons to carry out a very specific activity. Right. So this division of labor in the brain allows bees to do a lot of stuff that it would require a bigger brain to do normally. It's pretty ingenious. Yes, that's right. These were pretty smart when they figured out how to do this to themselves. They have a couple of sensory antenna, five eyes. Three of them are simple, a silly and then two compound eyes. And they have lots of repeating parts called omitidia. I think so. And they can actually see polarized light. They specialize in patterns and humans can't do that, obviously. We would be like just try the predator, maybe. That looks like that's thermal imaging. Yeah, that's right. That's thermal polarized to be you wear polarized glasses exactly like your polarized sunglasses. Yeah. Remember that before I got the rayban? Yes. Instead of rayban it said polarized. That's what you get for $8 at CVS. They worked. You had them forever. Yeah, until they broke. So that's how you saw polarized light. These don't even need sunglasses from CVS. They just see it naturally. And the reason this is important is because as we'll see later on, they use the sun to navigate and being able to see polarized light. That means they can see clear throughout clouds when it's overcast and know where the sun is. That's right. Very important. Like a lot of insects, they got the little mouth parts. I know we talked about mouth parts. I think in the fleas, maybe flies. Flies. Flies and fleas, they have the jaws or the paired mandibles, the tongue with the colossal and then the lips, which are the labrum and the maxilla. And they support the probiscus, which I think most people know is the pollen sniffing device and collecting. Yeah. Well, when I mean sniff I mean sniff it up in there. Yeah. It's like an Armark trunk. Yeah, pretty much. But instead of huffing ants, it huff nectar, right? That's right. You got two pair of wings. Right. You got three pair of legs. The wings are actually part of the skeleton, which is kind of cool. And so if you're a little boy that's tearing wings off of a bee, you're actually breaking it skeleton. You need a spanking. You need to get stung. That's how you learn that lesson. Poetic justice. Exactly. A row of folks called the hamuli connect the wings, so they are just beating together in synchronicity. But they don't connect all the time. They're not fused together. The wings are separate. Front wing, four wings and rear wings are separate. And then when they really want to get going flying, they hook together using the hamuli. And that's to fly, though, right? Yeah, it'll really take off. Like they have different speeds of flying and they connect or disconnect, depending on that. Tracy skipped that part. So much for thorough. And then you got the legs, which, starting from the body working out, you have the CoxA, the tricanter, the femur, the tibia, and the tarsus, aka hip, thigh, shin, foot. And that's the body? For the most part, yeah. The legs are also kind of specialized. They're almost like a Swiss army legs. It's pretty cool. They've got different kinds of hair. Yeah, you've got brush hair, comb hair, depending on the kind of pollen you're collecting. And then basket like hairs that hold pollen. You've got a pad and a claw so you can grab things. You can strangle other bees if you want, really, your bee. And this is kind of cool. There's a small groove in the arm in the leg for scraping pollen from the antenna. And then lastly, there's a press on the bottom for packing pollen into things. That's pretty neat, if you ask me. That is pretty neat. So this army leg, is that what you call it? That's what I call it. Very nice. Put a patent on that, Chuck. When you accidentally squish a bee and you look down at it and guts are everywhere, it's not red. The blood isn't red. And actually, it doesn't necessarily have what we would call blood. It's called hemolymph, and it has oxygen just suspended in it. It doesn't have red blood cells, which is why b blood hemolymph is clear. Yeah. You don't see a lot of insects with red blood, do you? Only American red blooded insects. Of course, we can't overlook the stinger. That is where the bees abdomen is, and it's an appendage. And like we said before, it's an egg depositor, an ovipositor, and then the lancet will sting you and deliver venom from the poison sac in a venom gland. And once again, these wasp like ancestors, they think that's where the bees got the venom. And it's just a leftover trait from that, even though they didn't go on to lay their eggs in meat. Right. Which is why the wasps evolved venom to subdue their prey while they were laying eggs and eating them and all that stuff. And bees, like you said, had it left over, but they just have it for defense. Yeah. And I guess it was obviously a trait worthy of keeping. Sure. And like, if I had a stinger and could inject people with venom, I'd keep it around. Sure. Use it on occasion. You'd be like, Come on, evolution, just let me have it. Exactly. There are stingless bees, though, quite a few species, and they don't have stingers at all. No. And they were very handy among the Maya until very recently, for beekeeping. Because you just stick your hand in there and be like, I'm taking your honey and what are you going to do? Nothing. That's great, because you're a stingless bee. They couldn't even bite or anything. No, they just stand idly by. That's their thing. There's a lot of stuff that a bee produces. They're like pubescent children. They just produce all these different things with all these different glands all the time. They're secreting stuff all the time, but it's very useful stuff. That's right. And then, Chuck, you know how when you get stung sometimes you've heard that a bee will die after it stings you? Yeah. I think most people think that all bees die when they sting you. Not true. No, it depends on the type of stinger they have. Honeybees, for the most part, except for the queen honeybee, have barb stingers. And if a bee has a barb stinger, it is going to stick in you if you're a mammal. A bee can sting other insects with a barb stinger and live after stinging repeatedly. If it stings in a mammal, we have this fat, meaty flesh that the barb stinger hooks into. And when the bee flies away, it leaves its stinger and its abdomen and guts stuck in you and so it dies. Which is why if you have a barb singer, you can only sing once. But some bees do have smooth singers and can sting mammals as often as they like. I wonder how long that takes for the beat to die because they sting you and they fly away. I wonder if it's like a few minutes or a couple of hours, or if they just like, think pretty quick, go quietly and bleed out. Yeah, but I mean, how long does it take a beat to bleed out? I don't know. Probably not long hemolymph out. But I know when I've been stung to see him fly away. And they look like they're doing all right to me. And right when you turn around, they just go, I guess I'm going to trail the next beat that's things and follow it. You're going to track it? Yeah, I'm going to track it. You totally should. All right. So you want to talk about some juices and stuff? Some venom? Yeah, we should talk about venom. Remember, the difference between venomous organism in a organism is venom is produced in the body, poisons outside. Right, that's right. And a bee venom basically destroyed cells. It's pretty hardcore stuff. It's a good thing it's in small quantities, probably. I can imagine if it was larger quantities, it could be pretty destructive. But they have peptids and enzymes break through the fat linings of the cell, destroy the mass cells and that releases histamine. This is where we get into, like, whether or not you're allergic, you could be in big trouble. Yeah. Because histamine is part of your immune response. Yeah. Which is a good thing. You want that. Right. And histamines open the blood vessels so that you can get your antibodies, your immune cells to the site much more quickly. But if you have a b, allergy, your immune system is too large, it's too big a response. Your blood vessels dilate so much that you lose blood pressure and fall over, which is called anaphylactic shock. That's right. And that can kill people dead. And if you are allergic to bees, you almost 100%, in likelihood, have an epinephrine shot with you because it's dangerous stuff, and that will constrict the blood vessels and save your life, hopefully, if you get it in time. I imagine it depends on the person. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. So, like we said, there's approximately 20,000 b species under the superfamily Apodia, or Apodia. How do you say that? Let's go with Apodia. Apodia. And depending on the B, you're going to have a different kind of nest. But they are similar in a lot of cases. So we'll break it down into honeybees and bumble bees for the nesting purposes and for social. They're both social it's right kind of bees there. So among honeybees, you have a perennial nest. She's always around. It's kind of cool. They build the same nest and for life. Yeah, I love that. And for generations. And they build it by secreting stuff out of their glands, because these are like the pubescent children, human children of the insect world. They're always secreting stuff out of their glands, but they make good use of it. And one of the things that they use it for is wax to build nests. Yeah. And these are all ladies, by the way. It's a very important point. Yeah. These are all little women workers. And the reason why is because male bees, for the most part, are around to fornicate, and that's about it. In fact, they don't even have a lot of the parts that you need to be a real bee to collect pollen or anything like that. They're there to reproduce and that's it. Yeah. In fact, they will even get kicked out of the hive if things get a little too crowded and food is scarce or winter's coming. The women will say, all right, it's time for you guys to leave. Yeah, but you can't stay here. That's right. Wonder what they do. They probably say, I'm going to sting you if you don't get out of here. No. Wonder what the males do, though. They go off and die. Do they die or do they form their own little, like, boys club? I have the impression that male bees are kind of too o fish to think of that kind of thing. Dummies. Yeah. So if you see a bee collecting pollen in almost every species, that's a female bee. If you see a bee stinging you or feel a bee stinging you, that's a female because the stinger is an OVA positor, which makes it a female part. But as we were saying, the nests that are built and maintained and stocked are all done by females with the honeybee. That's right. And it's perennial. Yes. And in that little nest, if the queen bee will be delivering a clean substance pheromone. They have another secretion. Another secretion. And if the little lady bees start getting less and less of this, they'll say, you know what? We need to split up and make a new queen and a new hive and let's just go ahead and start this process now and let's pick a new queen and start feeding her royal jelly another secretion and raise her right on this royal jelly. So about half of the workers and the old queen take off and found a new hive. I guess there's too much pressure on the new queen. I guess so. Yeah. We got this place built for you. Right. You just grow up and take care of it and that's what happens. The new queen grows up and the hive basically divides like a cell. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Not solitaire bumblebees. They found annual nests. I like that idea too, though. Digs every year it's not getting attached to something. Sure. Yeah. So in the fall, the queen mates, spends the winter underground. In the spring she lays some eggs that turn out to surprisingly mostly be females, if not all females, and they help her build a nest. In the summer, she lays some more eggs. Those hatch into males, those males fly off and all of the male bumblebees, somehow scientists haven't figured out how they do it. They say, hey, we're all going to be over here to mate this Friday, right. We'll see you guys there. Then all the queens from all the individual nests from miles around come over and everybody copulates and then they leave the scrunchie on the door. Yeah. And then that's that. And the cycle starts anew. The female lays eggs or goes back underground for the winter. That's right. And these are the social bees, like we said. However, less than 15% of bees are social even though they're the ones we usually think of more as far as like hives and nests and things. My favorite are the solitary bees. Why? Because they're doing their own thing. My really favorite reason why is because the different ways they make their home. I just think it's really cool. Yeah. So like social bees are known from the type of hives they have is kind of how they're divided. But yeah, the way that they make their homes for solitary bees, that's a good definition. And solitary bees, they'll get together on occasion if they need to band together for defense or something. But they generally do their own thing. Right. So some of the different ways that these guys can make homes. Like carpenter bees, which are my favorites. They bore holes in wood and unpainted, like raw wood. Yeah. And they usually are like the spitting image of a bumblebee. But if you see a bumblebee going into a hole in, like, your door jam, there's a carpenter bee. I like carpenter bees. I think it's cool. They get the little tool belt. Yeah. They always have a pencil behind their ear. Yeah. And they're always late, and the job is never done on time. But they'll tell you straight, this is going to cost two to three times what I originally estimated. Exactly. I just think it's cool that they can actually bore into the wood like that. It's amazing. Yeah. And they're always like perfectly little round holes, too. I know. What's surprising is they use their eyes to bore little laser shoot out of them. Oh, wow. I don't think I knew that Tracy skipped that, too. Yeah. There are the plaster bees. They dig little holes in tunnels and line them with another secretion that's sort of, like, blaster. Yeah. Makes sense. The leaf cutters. What do they do? They use those grasping claws, remember? And then they bite leaves apart with their mouths and line their nests with them because they like to be nice and comfy. Mason bees used to be a mason bee. Yes. And I would secrete something from my jaws that basically was like mortar and put sand and pebbles together to make a nest. It's a strong nest. This is like, basically the three pigs of the beekeeping. We're going from that. We're going from leaves to wood. Yeah. Wooden sand. Nice. The Carter bee, they like furry, woolly parts of plants. And basically, they're like the Bob Guccione bees. I think that's the home enough. Yeah. They wear silk robes and stuff like that. And then my favorite thing is when Tracy points out a few species actually will check out an empty snail shell and say, that looks like a very nice little apartment. I'm just going to move in there. And you want to move in. Let's just divide it up with more secretions. And you take that half, we'll make it a duplex. Yeah. That is really cool. Or others will go into an old ant hill or termite hill or wasps nest and be like, hello. And if they hear back, hello. They'll say, well, this is where I'm going to lay my eggs. It's already built. Yeah. And the cuckoo bee, these guys are dumb. They're parasitic bee. Not in that they eat other bees, but that they lay their eggs in other bees nests and just say Cyanora. Yeah. And they rely on their pollen. I feel like they're dumb. They can't figure it out on their own, so they just kind of sneak in there in the dead of night and do their thing. Yeah. Sweat bees. Remember those little guys? Very aptly named. They are after your sweat. I thought that was sort of a wise sale. It's not. No, they're sweat bees. That's right. The orchid bee is another good example of coevolution. They think that the orchid bee, with its extremely long probiscus, basically evolved to get the nectar out of orchids, which keeps its nectar very deep in the flower blossom. Yeah. Evolution scaring you in the face. The scariest bee. Josh, is there such thing as a killer bee? No, that's kind of a media hype. I mean, any B, especially if you had a bee, allergy could kill you. But what are killer BS? So back in the think 1957 in Brazil, some APIAs, some beekeepers imported, some African honey bees, and they got loose and they went and mated with the European honeybees that were already in the area. And what you had was Africanized honeybees, which are virtually identical to European honeybees. But they are far more aggressive, especially if they think you're messing with their hive. Africans and Europeans mating, that makes them aggressive. That's just interesting how you combine those two and all of sudden, A, they're just pissed off. Yeah. But then at some point, the media got a hold of it as they started to approach from Brazil upward toward America. Yeah, we have some here. Right? In the States. Yeah, they made it to Texas. Florida, I believe. Maybe it's in Georgia. California, Arizona. I bet there's some in South Georgia. And the media went crazy over killer bees. That seems like a 70s thing. I sort of remember that. I thought it was 80s. Was there a movie or something? Oh, I'm sure it's a swarmy movie. Yeah, I think there had to be or there should be. So reproduction the fun, sexy stuff. This is actually really fun, I think, because bees can live up to five years, some of them honey bees. I think that's the queen. Just the queen. Okay, that makes sense, because I didn't get because Tracy also said that some of them don't even live through the winter. I guess it just depends. Right. That's why I think it was the queen that she was referring to. Up to five years for an insect. Sure. I mean, she's well taken care of. She doesn't have to do a lot. That's right. The mails, like we said, they're there to deposit their mail parts in, and unfortunately, they don't leave with their male parts. Yeah. Depending on the species of bees, they may much like stinging a mammal once they copulate. Does that work for bees? Copulation? Yeah, sure. They leave their, like you said, their man parts in and die as a result. They carry on the window and out takes it more than he leaves it. Oh, is that right? I don't know. I just have a feeling the female bees just seem like they're the smart ones. Yeah, exactly. Like, I have your what's it called? Your penis? No, it's not a penis. They're endophalus. Okay. I've got your endophalus, and I'm not giving it back. Exactly. And now you're dead. That's right. So with honey bee, specifically, I think the queen bee is the only one that lays eggs. Is that correct? No honey bees. Females will lay, like, a few eggs during their lifetime, but the queen bee lays thousands. Okay. All right. So it is possible for honey bee delay an A. Okay. But for the most part, just a few carrying on hive, that's up to the queen. Oh, yeah, right. Big time. And then once an egg is laid, it goes through the same stages. That like a caterpillar whale. Yeah. I never knew that either. Beautiful. So, like, you lay an egg, and it hatches into a larvae, which looks like a little worm, a little sick, gross, white worm. And it's fed by workers for a couple of days. Fed royal jelly, which you said they secrete from their heads. Right. Yeah. I don't think the regular bees get the royal jelly, do they? For the first two days. For just two days, that's right. If you want to make a queen, you feed that bee. You feed any female larvae, royal jelly. The whole time until it happens. You're raising her. Yeah, until she spins the cocoon. So they get royal jelly a couple of days. They molt, the workers, seal off the honeycomb. Which is an egg chamber in this case. Yeah. Each little one? Yeah, those, like, build a little door, basically. Yeah. And it's one per, no more. That's right. No less. And then the larva spins a cocoon and eventually emerges as an adult. And I've heard tell that the first thing a b does when it's born is clean out its egg chamber for the next b. They're very busy and tidy. They got a lot of stuff to do, for sure. And here's the other cool thing. Males will get a little bit larger cell, but the queen can actually decide whether or not to have a male or a female. Yeah. That's remarkable. Yeah. Because a queen will collect sperm enough for her lifetime in one shot. Yeah. In one mating season. Right, I understand. You know what I mean? She'll dole it out depending on what kind of bees the hive needs at any point. Amazing. So what's the magic sauce, then? How she does it. All right. If she uses storage sperm to fertilize the egg, then she hatches female. If she leaves the egg unfertilized, then it's a male. Right. So it's up to her. And what's crazy is it all depends on what kind of state the hives in. Like, do you need more workers sure. To go gather more food, or do you need more males to reproduce? It's pretty cool. Yeah. How they strike that balance with that tiny little brain? Yeah, I guess. Years of experience. How do they pick the queen, too? Do you know that? I don't know. Is. It just random. And then they start them on the royal jelly and that just gets the process. That's the impression that I have, that as long as it's a fertilized egg that will become a female, then I think you could feed any of those royal jelly. It's probably one of the queen's daughters, though, as opposed to one of the few of the others. Right. Don't you think? Keep that royal bloodline intact? Yeah, I would think that's just a guess. I bet somebody knows. What if they accidentally raised the cuckoo bees egg as the queen jeez? What a colossal nightmare that would be. Like, the little eggs hatch and the little worker bees, they have different jobs according to their age, but they are going to be taking care of the young at this point. They're going to be feeding them pollen or bee bread, which is pollen and nectar mixed together. It sounds delicious, actually. It is. And a lot of people think that bees are just only after nectar. They collect pollen on purpose as well, and they use it to make bee bread. That's right. And bee bread does sound very delicious. As you get older, though, you're going to have different jobs. And at first you're a nurse, and then, as you said, once you get older, you might be a maid or a butler and cleaner. Not a butler, I guess a maid. Right. And start cleaning out the other empty cells. Yeah. Even though you said you're supposed to do it yourself. I guess some are lazy, maybe. Sure. Some other worker b has to come behind and take care of their business and they're like, I'm going to keep my eye on you. Exactly. And then they also learn at that point how to forge for food and make honey. And this is where things get kind of fun. And those are the oldest ones. The oldest ones are the scouts, and the ones that forage are the oldest bees in the hive. Yeah. The followers. Yeah. And I want to say real quick, too, first Chuck, that was social bee reproduction. Yeah. Solitary bee reproduction is very sad sometimes. In some species, the mother lays an egg, seals up whatever she's used as the nest with a little bee bread, little honey, whatever, and then takes off and dies. And they never see their little baby bee. No. That is sad. Isn't that sad? It is. So bees find their food in pretty remarkable ways. They can smell, like, really, really well, and like we said, they can recognize color patterns and things. And they have their solar compass, so this allows them to see where the sun is. They also have an internal clock, so when they go out, the scout bees, and find the food, they know, well, the sun is right there and I flew 300 yards, now I'm flying back and the sun is right there. So they can actually use those together to pinpoint for the others where the food is, because they're going back to tell everyone, okay? And they let them taste like, this is what you're after. Taste a little bit of this. And now come with me by way of this dance. Right. Literally, they can remember and judge and measure where they went, where the food source was, but then they also can communicate it, like you said, through dancing. And if food is really close by, they'll just basically run up a vertical wall of a honeycomb, which they call it the dance floor. Not just us. No, it's called the dance floor. That's what people who study bees call it. And they basically just run up or down in the direction of the food source in relation to the sun, not in relation to the hive. When they go out, they'll be like, oh, okay, the sun's over here. It's in this direction. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's called the round dance. Right. And they depend on their sense of smell because they don't get super specific with the round dance. They're like, I'll get you out there, and then, you'll know, trust me. Exactly. Because bees can smell from meters away, which is that's a really far distance, considering how small bees are. Sure. And when the food is a little further away, they do the actual waggle dance. And basically, this is running again in a line in the direction of the food and then making these little circles in opposing directions at the end of the line. So run up and then go to the left in a circle, and then run up and then go to the right in a circle. And that tells everybody where the food is and then the quality of the food source, how tight the circle is, I think kind of says it's really good. Or if it's a big looping circle, it's okay. Yeah, we've had better. And then the bees also flapping its wings at the same time. And all the bees that have gathered around, like you said, are called followers. They're the oldest ones in the high, and they're taking all this information in, and a specific group of them are going to be directly behind the bee while it's doing this waggle dance. Wind flapping its wings, and that wind is going to tell them about how long they need to travel for. And then all the bees take off. When they get to about the right area, they go into, like, a search pattern until somebody finds it. And then they start making trips back and forth. Yes. I mean, they're delivering a lot of information here. Yeah, very specific information. And they make about a dozen trips. Each piece can carry about half her weight in pollen or nectar, which is amazing. Yeah. And then when they come back to unload the stuff, there's more communication going on because the little unloaders that are back at the hive will behave differently according to how much more food they need. If they're like, come on, come on, that means keep going, keep going. And if they're like, I guess I'll take it since you brought it, but we're really doing okay. Right. And after that, they're like, all right, well, I'm not going to get any more if you're just not going to be excited about it any longer. Let's just find some men to have sex with. Or let's turn this nectar into honey. Yes. Just because for storage purposes, honey has far less volume than nectar. It's basically concentrated nectar so you can store more of it, right? That's right. So they transform nectar into honey in a kind of a gross way. They regurgitate it over and over, which evaporates the water out of it. And they also flap their little wings to, I guess, use air to do the same thing. And so honey is a bunch of regurgitated beef stuff because it's bee vomit. Yeah. I mean, there's bee stuff in there as well. Yeah. It's not just nectar. They're sucking the moisture out, but they're also adding enzymes and stuff yeah. Their own genes from their body to make honey. It's not just dehydrated nectar. Honey is a different thing that's made by this stuff, but it has some pretty amazing properties to it. One of the things that's added during this regurgitation process is called glucose oxidase. And when it's fed to young, to the young, it's broken down into glucose, which gives them tons of energy because there's a lot of sugar, calories and honey. But it's also broken down into hydrogen peroxide, which is one of the things that gives honey its antimicrobial antibacterial properties. That's right. And that's why humans have been using it and eating it for thousands and thousands of years to treat wounds occasionally. It can be good in a pinch if you're a survivalist. Yeah. Especially an open wound. You've heard that honey, it keeps forever, basically. Obviously, it doesn't keep forever, but it will keep a very long time. That's one of the big reasons. Another reason is that it has a high osmotic pressure and it's hygroscopic, which means it wicks moisture out of the air around it. And since it has a high osmotic pressure, it does it really strongly. So if you're a little nice moisturized piece of bacteria and you come in contact with honey, it's going to suck the moisture out of you and kill you. Antibacterial. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty amazing. If you come across a beehive in the wintertime, and they just seem like they're all in there asleep. Hibernating. Not. So they're still pretty active. They will leave the hive to poop and pee because I guess they don't pee, but they leave the hive to do their business because they don't want to go in their little cell, which, again, they're very tiny little creatures. Yeah. They know not to, like, wallow in their own feces. Right. Not feces, but be poop scat. But they are still pretty busy there because they have to keep warm, especially keep the queen warm. And so they tremble just like humans kind of shiver just to increase the warmth. In the summertime, they will flap their wings to kind of keep things climate controlled on the cooler side and drip water on the honeycomb. Yeah, that's amazing. They are pretty amazing creatures if you are. And I still hate them. We should also say real quick that while honey has a lot of antibacterial properties and antimicrobial properties, one particular bacteria that is impervious to honey's defenses is Clostridium botulinum, aka botulism, the bacteria that gives you botulism. And since it's soil born, it's very easy for C. Botulinum to get into honey. It's in honey. Any honey you eat is going to have it in there. It's not a large enough measure to affect us, but it could be life threatening to a baby. Which is why they always say, like, never give honey to a baby. Oh, yeah. Ever. I don't think we mentioned either the honey. You have different flavors of honey? That depends on what the bee has been, what kind of flowers the bee has been hanging out with. Yeah, like orange blossom honey or clover is orange blossom and clover. So I never knew that either. Makes perfect sense. Bees. I thought it was like an added flavor or something. Whatever. We'll make different flavors. I didn't know it was, like, naturally occurring. You're like, when are they going to make bacon honey? Man, that's good. Just cook some bacon. Put some honey on it. Yum. We did a podcast on Colony Collapse Disorder. Yeah. So I would encourage people to go listen to that as well. It was a good one in the archives. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay. That's bees. If you want to learn more about bees, you should go check out this very thorough article on HowStuffWorks.com and type in bees and it will bring it up and you can learn even more, including about Colony Collapse Disorder and beekeeping as well. Yeah, maybe we should do beekeeping one day. Okay. I don't mean a podcast. I mean just starter on the side to side business. Yeah, haven't we already? Did you have, like, a smoker and everything? Yes. TV will tell you I do. Okay, so since I said search bar, I think I did@housestepworks.com. And that means it's time for, of course, listen in the mail. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this correction from a librarian. Remember we did our book banning podcast? That's your correction? Yeah, that's all she said. And that is from Carly. Thank you, Carly. Hey, guys. Love your show. As a librarian, I was excited to hear what you had to say about book banning. However, I'd like to clear up a misconception about the role of a librarian in banning books. You said if a customer or patron approaches a librarian. Once a book banned, it is up to the librarian to decide. This could not be further from the truth. In 99% of the cases, public libraries are run by boards of trustees, volunteers in the community who set policies for the library. These community members are not librarians, and when someone wants a book removed, they must fill out a form and submit it to the board. Then the board reviews the material in the objection board of trustees. It is the board of trustees who decides whether or not to remove the item. The board of trustees may consult with others, like librarians, review sources, the community at large, et cetera. But it is not the librarian who decides whether to ban the book. I hope to hear this corrected. She said bam. Because it is unfortunate to hear one's profession misconstrued in an international public forum. So that is from Carly, and she says, thanks, and keep up the good work in such. Thanks, Carly. Appreciate that. I think everybody got that. It's pretty clear and concise. Yeah. It is not librarians, in most cases, to carry out the banding. It sounds like she might have been yelled at by somebody because of our podcast. Maybe. Well, she just yelled at us now. She was nice. If you have a correction for us, we are always very much open to those we want to hear them so we can pass them along because we like correcting ourselves and getting things right. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyturno, and you can send us a good old fashioned email at stuff podcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofhworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry." | ||
c5da93aa-5460-11e8-b38c-4be88a90c6c2 | Selects: How the Terracotta Army Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-the-terracotta-army-works | In 1974, Chinese farmers discovered the first of what would number 7,000 terracotta soldiers meant to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife. Learn all about them in this classic episode. | In 1974, Chinese farmers discovered the first of what would number 7,000 terracotta soldiers meant to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife. Learn all about them in this classic episode. | Sat, 11 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=345, tm_isdst=0) | 31073265 | audio/mpeg | "Hi friends. If this were to be July 20, 2015, and you're a Stuff You Should Know listener, you might be queuing up the following episode, but it's not it's modern times. But I enjoyed this one. So it's my select pick. It's all about the Terracotta Army. And it's called called how the Terracotta Army works. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. We're just hanging figure. We press record and see what happens. Yeah. We are a Terracotta army of three. Not very imposing or terracotta. Did you go to the High Museum and see this when it was around? No, I didn't. Yuumi did. And I wish I would have gone, but I did not. But she was quite blown away. It was awesome. And I hadn't heard of it until then. And then when I went and saw it, I was like, this is pretty amazing, what a great story. And then wanted to podcast about it and then just sort of forgot. And now here it is a year later, or however long. Yes, it was a while ago. Yes, it was. But it's still a pretty fascinating story. Yeah. In that exhibit, if you live on planet Earth, go to the website and see where it's going to be because it travels around. Oh, is it like the body's exhibit? Yeah, I mean, there's this exhibit and then I think there's permanent exhibits elsewhere. There's a permanent exhibit at the site itself. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. When in London I'm not positive, but London has everything. They do. They really do. The only thing they don't have is twelve ounce beers. Yeah. Because they're 16 ounce. That's right. Yeah. You don't need it. When I took a trip there, I was like, what's with all these tall boys? And they were like, what's that? Oh, I get it now. Yeah. It's not like when you go to the pub, you don't go in for a twelve ounce or you go for a pint. Yeah, it's an Imperial pint. Right. Is that more than 16oz? Is that 16.9? Is that 1.9oz? I'll bet it is. Jerry. Hold up, fingers. Jerry said 20oz is an Imperial pint, so I was wrong. 16 is a standard pint. Are you sure it's not 25? Jerry, that's called a double deuce. That's called a core's double deuce. Double Deuce is 22oz. 24 technically. Why? Because the twelve is a single. Right. No, but a double du. A deuce deuce. Yeah. I thought Double Deuce just meant we're going to put two beers into one can. That's the double double beer. What are we talking about today? I don't know. I'm thirsty all of a sudden, though. You want a beer? It's Friday. I'd love a beer. Let me just reach into my bag. Here your cooler bag. I carry around like a purse. I wish, man, that would be fun. Cooler fanny pack, drinking on the job like it's the 1950s. Yeah. All right, let's get serious, buddy. Okay, Chuck. On the morning of March 29, 1974, seven farmers set out to dig a well. So begins the article on how stuff works.com. Yes. But it also begins this story. A pretty amazing story, actually. Yeah, it's awesome. This is in the Chinese village of good luck xi Shang. Oh, that was pretty good. That's what I'm going to say. And they were digging for water and got down about 13ft and hit something hard and dug up a terracotta face and head. And we're like they're probably like, Whoa, or whatever the Chinese expression for woe would be. Woe is kind of universal. Okay, I'm curious. We found out we're not banned in China, by the way. So hello to all of our listeners out there in China. And will you let us know what woe is in Chinese? Yes. I think we should do a show sometime on Universal. Sounds like I've heard different or read different things about how people laugh in different countries and people remark of affirmation or decline something. I think it'd be really interesting. Yeah. They're called idioms, right? Is that what it is? I think so. Like, here we might go, but somewhere else they might go. Oh, yeah, we have focus here. Terracotta army. Yes. So they alerted the government, like any good citizen should, and said, hey, I think we have something here you should come look at. Yeah. Because they dug down a little more, and they found shards of the same type of pottery, and a lot of it in kind of vague human form. And that's when they're like, there's something weird going on here, so let's contact the authorities. Yeah. And the authorities said archaeologists away and sent them out to the site because it was 1974. They said, hey, let's contact the Chinese government right away. That's right. I don't know if that would happen today. The Chinese people. You think? I don't know. It depends on who they are. I would guess they probably were more likely to in 74 than today. All right, so what they knew, the government and experts in archeologists said, well, hold on a minute. You guys are digging near the burial ground of Chinxure Honda. Nice job. And he was the first emperor of China, and he had a huge mausoleum. And I bet you anything that's what you guys have found. And it turns out they were right. The archaeologists were right. So the legend had it that Chin Shuangdi, China's first emperor, had himself built a pretty awesome mausoleum. As a matter of fact, you couldn't even call it a mausoleum. It was called a funerary complex. It was so massive. Oh, yeah. But as they started to dig and get further and further along in this excavation, which they have still not even come close to completing, from what I think, 1% or something yeah. The size of Manhattan. The size of Manhattan. His mausoleum. Yes. They started to realize that it's even bigger than we ever thought. It wasn't lost. They knew that he was buried somewhere around this area. It was just you don't go digging up emperor's tombs. But these farmers had found something pretty interesting and it was enough to get the archaeologists over that. And they started to dig. And they still have yet to excavate Chen's tomb, his actual tomb, where he's buried. We'll talk about that later. But when they started to dig, they started to reveal more and more of these terracotta figures. And they would stumble upon one room first. They stumbled upon a room and they found chuck, like, 6000 of these things of infantrymen, all standing at the ready, all larger than life. They were about six to six and a half feet tall. Yeah. That's including the base. Yeah. All made of terracotta. Yes. Crossbows, finger on the trigger, dudes on horses. Well, those are in separate rooms. So first room was like 6000 infantry, man. It was lined up like a formation. Information would be lined up. Then there's another room that had specialists like cavalry, archers with crossbows, blow darters. Yeah. And then there was a third room that had, I think, 86 commanders. It was like the command room. So basically what they revealed was a Terracotta army information in this guy's grave. Yes. With the idea that he wanted protection in the afterlife because he was one of the great jerks of world history. Yeah, he was terrible. He was a tyrant for sure. He perhaps was responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million of his citizens. Okay. He also, though, got things done. Yeah, let's talk about the guy. Okay. So he was the first emperor. Before him, China had seven kingdoms. And in 481, all these kingdoms said, you know what? I want to be the main kingdom. So it started what was called the Warring States era of battling for land and superiority. And I saw this really neat documentary on that geo, I think, called China's Ghost Army. I think it's what's called I posted a link on our podcast page for this episode. Totally worth watching. It's like an hour. But they say that before this, prior to this Warring States era, when an emperor died in the Chin Kingdom, they would kill the whole court. Hundreds of people would be buried alive with the emperor. Holy cow. And then this Warring States, these battles and wars were so significant as far as casualties went. They're like, we can't do that anymore. We need them to go fight in the wars. Yeah. So they stopped that tradition. But it was because of the Warring States era. Interesting. Can you imagine, like, 200 people just being mass buried alive together? No. Because the emperor died. I can't imagine. So let's get back to this jerk. Sorry, Sheen. He overtook and basically was the first emperor, forced people to be in the army, built up a huge army. He relocated in his first year about 1200 families. That's like Stalin did the same thing. It's like you can't have ethnic unity and then that kind of collective thought, and then potentially an uprising if you break up that kind of ethnic bonds by basically busting people in and out of different areas. Yeah, it makes sense. But this guy was doing it like about 2000 years before Stalin. Crazy. He burned all the books, he burned all the writings. Scholars that didn't jibe with his line of thought were buried alive or beheaded. Yeah. He was a piece of garbage. And he sounds like terrible. He assembled a workforce of a million men to build about five 0 mile of roads and the Great Wall of China. Yeah. The First Great Wall of China. So while we said he was a jerk, you made a point. He got things done. He got a monetary system that was unified. Yeah. He also unified weights and measurements. He unified China from seven kingdoms into one country. And it's still that way today, 2000 years later. And if you've noticed a similarity between Qing and China, that's because the country is named after him. Yeah. So he got things done. Vital figure in China's history. But he did a brutal, controlling, murderous dictator. Right. He wasn't asking. Yeah. And he also had a really conflated view of the empire that he put together. And you can see this apparently in the money that he minted. There were different regions that he conquered, had different kinds of money. So he did create like a single monetary system, I think you said. Yeah. And that money was square shaped with a hole in the center, kind of like a square donut the Ban Liang coin. And that coin at the time in ancient China, the square represented the earth and the circle represented the sky or the heavens. And so what he was saying is that this earth, my empire, is even greater than the heavens that surround the earth. That's how good I'm feeling about myself right now. He felt pretty good, but he was paranoid. And I think that usually comes when you're on top and you get there by any means necessary, you're going to be watching your back your whole life. Specifically, he came from the west and conquered eastward. So when he was buried, he had the Terracotta Army facing east to protect him because of all the badness he had done. And this is after he had killed hundreds of scientists that he commissioned to try and prolong his life. Yeah. So we talked about him, actually in the bizarre medical treatments episode, I think, without realizing it, that back in the day, at the time, they believed mercury had some sort of like life enhancing or immortality bestowing properties. And he would take mercury pills. I think that's ironically what killed him. But in addition to Mercury, he sent out people to like, find fountains of youth or whatever was the Chinese legend version of that. He was obsessed with remaining alive and simultaneously, like you said, totally paranoid with dying. So he must have been a very tormented person. Yeah, he killed 480 doctors and scientists were killed who could not come up with a way to make him immortal and again buried alive or beheaded. Great. Not a good guy. All right, you want to take a break here and talk more about the Terracotta Army? Yeah. All right. So Chuck, when we were talking about this guy, I think he painted a pretty good picture of him. I guess he comes to either he comes to grip with the idea that he's going to die, cause at the time, like, he's trying to chase immortality, he's concocting like, a huge burial mausoleum for himself. I guess hedging his bets in case he does die. Sure. But by this time, like, Confucius and other scholars in China have basically, like, philosophically debunked the idea of life after death. So this man was utterly crazy by his contemporary standards. Yeah. And that kind of shows if you step back and really think about the attitude and the mentality behind what he was doing. But he at some point either came to grips with the fact that he was going to die or he was just hedging his bets and thought he was going to remain immortal. But just in case, let me have this incredible, grand, funerary complex created and let's build a Terracotta Army to protect me in the afterlife. Yeah. It's really neat to look at the Terracotta Army now as art, but 8000 soldiers? Like, this guy was clearly cuckoo. He was off his rocker. Yeah, he's a bad man. He was a bad man. All right, so shall we start with the army? Yes, let's. Because it's not all that he had commissioned, but the army is pretty significant. It is significant. Like you said, they are in formation. So the front dudes, they're kneeling down, they're bowmen. And they were famous, the armies they had then. This is one of the reasons he took over. He figured out the crossbow and they figured out how to shoot while riding a horse. And that was basically all she wrote. Yeah. Everybody else is like your mother. Yeah. Like down here with a sword on the ground. Right. And you're shooting at me from 20ft away with some weird metallic bolt. Not fair. I guess. Not metallic, but wooden. Yeah. They weren't forging steel back then. I wonder when they did start. I don't know. Sound like a podcast? It does. How steel works. Yes, that would be a good one. I could see that. So you have these bowmen they have on their armor, their fingers on the trigger. They're incredibly detailed down to the soles of their feet. Yeah, they have their shoes, they're wearing have like treadmarks on the bottom. Yeah. They took great pride, these artists, clearly, because they probably didn't want to get killed. Yeah. Because each of them had to sign in case there was a flaw, it could be traced back to who built this one. Yeah. And I bet they were killed if they didn't like it. They most decidedly were 83. They found the stamps, which were ultimately the signatures of 83 different foreman. Okay. And each foreman had a team of apprentices working under him. And the reason that they did assign those stamps was so that he could have them killed if he didn't like how slow work was progressing, if he didn't like what it looked like. And at first, Chuck, they were like, well, clearly, they just set up an assembly line. Molds were known to the Chinese back then, and that's the only way you could possibly create 7000 figures from a terracotta army. And they found that? Yes. Actually, the heads were created through molds, I think the arms were, and stuff like that. But the bulk of them were created by this thing called coiling. Okay. So is that like 3D printing? Very much so. Actually, they take clay and hammer it until it's soft and pliable, and then you wrap it in, like, a rope around it, and then you mold it. And the thing there's people who are recreating it to try to figure out how they did it. I love that stuff. And they've examined, like, broken pieces so they can see the inside. They can see the coiling evidence very clearly, and they're like, It doesn't make any sense. You can't quickly make all these figures in an efficient way by coiling. Why would they not just use molds? And finally, somebody realized this emperor was a bloodthirsty tyrant. He didn't care about efficiency. He cared about differences, distinctions. So while the heads, just the actual shape of the heads were made in molds, the bodies were made by hand. Each one wow. Through this coiling method. So where you could make, like, a molded body in maybe a week, it would take a month to do one body by coiling. And that's what they were doing. Because he wanted them different. That's crazy. Yeah. He just didn't want to carbon copy soldiers. Exactly. Wow. So each one of these, the body was made by hand through this incredibly intensive coiling method. So they're starting from the ground up, obviously, with the base. Right. And then coiling their way up. The legs then were molded and fixed, as well as the arms and torsos. No, not the torso. Oh, not the torso. No, that's not right. Okay. Got you. But then the heads, they said they found eight different head molds. Yes. And that's just the big mold, not the faces. Right. The faces were done by hand, individually, as well. Right. Each face. Yeah. The hair and expressions. The hair warriors who had had the most kills had longer hair and a bigger right. Bigger beehive. They took great care into making the most revered soldiers have their hair matched as it should, basically as realistic as they could. Yeah. All the way around. If you're just an infantry man, you'd be wearing, like, one of those beanies a beanie hat, probably. Yeah. With maybe like, your bun just kind of sticking up off to the side underneath. If you're a general, you might be wearing a huge hat with a feather and a bow, tying the whole thing underneath you. Pretty fancy. Yeah, very fancy. So these things were incredibly detailed. They weren't like a knock off Star Wars figure that you would find in Bulgaria or something like that. Or China. Yeah, sure. That was way more appropriate than Bulgaria. They probably make the real thing, too. Yeah, these were very detailed. You wouldn't want to say life like. They're still artistic slightly, but they were pretty detailed still. Yeah. And the ones you see now, when you see them in the museum or you look it up on Google, they are not colored, but that is because of humidity and time. But originally they fired them in the kiln, and they painted and lacquered them as well. That's right. I'd love to see those. Watch that National Geographic thing. They've redone one. Oh, really? In the original colors that they think almost garish. Wow. They're so different. Like, colorful, wise, and lots of surprising lavenders and blues and purples and things. Reds. Garish colors used to be way more garish. Right. Okay. They were doing some assembly line stuff. Most of the bulk of it, though, was coiled by hand. The faces, the hair, all done by hand. And then each one was painted by hand and then given a coat of lacquer. That's insane. It's insane. That sky would have had an assembly line of 70 of these things built and unpainted, but he didn't. He went even more detailed. And apparently also, I learned from that documentary at the time, lacquer was an extremely expensive product, I'm sure. And he was using it on his Terracotta soldiers. It still ain't cheap. There wasn't just the soldiers. There were also there was a strong man in another room and some what do you call them? Not circus performers. Yeah. Acrobat. Yeah. And I looked up the strong man, and he was noted for the detail of his biceps. And he had a gut. He did. He had a gut. And some guns. Gut and guns. He's missing his head, right? Yeah. I didn't see a head. Yeah, but he's a big boy. He was built like Andre the Giant. Yeah, kind of. All right, you want to take another little rest here? We'll take a quick nap. Okay. And then I'll nudge you awake. Okay. Very gently. All right? We'll finish up. Wake up, buddy. Time to finish the Terracotta Army. Oh, man. Oh, I got, like, crust in my eyes. Look at you okay? I'm back, Chuck. Okay, so Chain wasn't the only ruler to do this, right? No, he wasn't. Who else did it? Well, do you remember in our pyramids episode? Yeah. Although it hasn't come out yet. No one will know what I'm talking about. But you will eventually. We talked about how the pyramid of Khufu is the pinnacle of pyramid building in Dynastic, Egypt. Yes. And then the pyramids got smaller because the rulers credits, I guess, went down as people started to worship the sun instead. Yeah. Great point that I never considered. Very similar thing happened in China. The Chin dynasty only lasted for another four years after Chin Shirangdi died, and then the Han Dynasty started, and the Hans apparently had a much easier hand with their subjects. And so as a result, even though they had terracotta armies buried with them, they were like, a third to a 6th of the size of Chinese terracotta army. And they take that as a sign that this might and power over people had diminished tremendously. Yeah, I think it was symbolic of a kinder regime. Right. And one that was not also boobytrapped with very much like Raiders of the Lost Ark, apparently chains to them, or the whole complex was boobytrapped with blow darts and stuff. Crossbows. Crossbows. Ready to go. Yes. And also one of the reasons why this thing was booby trapped was to prevent looters, because, remember, there's a historian that came along not too long after he's part of the early Han Dynasty, from what I understand. His name is Sima Kian. And Sima Kian is the one who first described chains, mausoleum. And one of the things you described is that on the ceiling was a constellation made of pearls and gems. Crazy mountains had been chiseled out of gold, and that Chinese tomb itself was surrounded by a river of mercury. Because remember, again, that makes sense. They said that it bestowed immortality. And from what I understand, a lot of what SEMA Kian was talking about at writing has been proven correct. And they've also found that in the soil around Chian's tomb, where they think he's buried there's higher than unusually high mercury levels. Yeah, like, super high. Yeah. So they think, like, yeah, these crazy people buried them around a river of mercury, and who knows if there's a constellation of pearls and gemstones, maybe SEMA Kian is right. Yeah. And it also makes it super dangerous to excavate. Still sure. Which is one of the reasons why they haven't done more there. There are 600 pits that they have unearthed thus far, which is, like I said, I think only about 1%. And they're sort of afraid to look elsewhere because of the booby traps in the mercury. I don't blame them. So if you stats 36 years to complete this army or the tomb, I guess, right. 700,000 laborers. They estimate 820,000 deep. I saw 8000 warriors. This is seven. I've seen different numbers, too? Let's just say between six and eight. Okay. 40,000 weapons. And apparently these weapons are in really good shape. Oh, yeah. I mean, they're like bronze swords and stuff like that. They weren't made of, like, paper machete, so I guess they did have metal. Yeah, bronze. At least that answers that in each one of these Terracotta soldiers weighs about \u00a3330, which is crazy because they're not even solid. Oh, yeah, they wouldn't be. Right. So what is the coil on the inside then? They smooth out the outside. Right. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So we did mention that Emperor Han Ling Di, who came 53 years after Chin, had his smaller Terracotta soldiers. There's also the wish on site, which they found in 2002. Another Terracotta army. But they're all just a foot tall. Might as well not even be there. Symbolic and cute. Yeah, but also symbolic. Again, of a kinder. What was the one quote from do nothing in order to govern? Yeah, not quite the same as Chin. That was Emperor Han Ling dee's quote. He was remadto. Chin was a little more do whatever you need to do to squash any disruption. Well, yeah, and Han Ling Dee came along and said, you know what? We're going to not text you guys that much. We're going to do away with forced labor, so let's party. He was like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Han Dynasty. I think he got respect, though. Sure. So he was the Rodney Dangerfield post death because Rodney has tons of respect. What was Rodney Dangerfield's? Epitaph do you remember? It's like one of the best ever. Someone I was on the Mark Marin's interview show, WTF was interviewed and they were talking about the old days, hanging out with Rodney and just what a beast that guy was. What do you mean, just party beast? Oh, yeah, like legendary. You hang out with Rodney and you're in for a long night. I can imagine. Yeah, but a really good guy. I found it, Chuck. What? His epitaph on Ronnie Dangerfield's Gravestone. Oh, boy. There goes the neighborhood. So classic. Yeah. Awesome. You buy a hat like that, you get a free bowl of soup. That was pretty good. Man, you are like the rich little of this podcast. You got anything else? No. If you want to know more about the Terracotta army, go see it. And while you're doing that, you can type those words into the search bar at How Stuff Works.com. Terracotta is one word, by the way. One word. Smithsonian Magazine. Oh, did they goof it? And since I shamed Smithsonian magazine, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this animal imprint feedback. Hey, guys. I'm currently listening to how animal imprinting works and could not even finish it because I had to write you. My Godmothers. Dorsey and Susan live on own and run an urban farm in Austin, Texas, on the east side. They have several animals such as chickens, bunnies, geese, miniature donkeys. Oh, boy. Recently, a mother duck had no interest in her babies, and they got adopted by chicken. That chicken got sick of them trying to play in all of the rain and all the rain we've been getting and left them on their own. A male goose named Gustavo took the baby ducks in and treats them as his own. On top of that, the next batch of baby ducks born, he went and took as his own. Now, Gustavo has about ten baby ducks that follow him around the nest with them. He has his own private army. That's right. And they're not terracotta. They're made of baby duck feathers. The softest army. I failed to mention that Gustavo is the face of the farm, greets people, follows around my godmother, and gives tours whoever stops by so she says, she finishes with, I started listening to you all about five months ago and cannot stop. I start many of my sentences now with this podcast. I was listening to say many random facts that I learned from you. I also teach high school world history, and on the days I need the students not to talk, aka the days that I don't have a lesson plan. Man. This is Chuck's Word giggly email. I play one of your episodes. It applies to what we're learning and have them do book work. I find many of them not working and listening to your show instead. So that is from Christina mouthy. And, Christina, thank you for your work as a teacher. And hello to all your students. Hello to your godmothers in Gustavo. Yes. Hello, Ms. Maude's class. Thanks for listening, Ms. Maude. That's so nice. I'm sure that's what they call her. Yeah, that'd be great. I call her Christina. That's way too modern of a school for me. Yeah, and big ups to Gustavo. That's pretty cool. I want to take a Gustavo tour someday. Oh, and she sent a picture of Gustavo on the ducks, too. Well, we should post that somewhere. All right. Unless it's copyrighted. Let us know if you want to get in touch with us. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyhaneo. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast, how Stuff works.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyouw.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-03-24-sysk-subways.mp3 | SYSK Selects: Subways: HUH! What are they good for? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-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. | Sat, 24 Mar 2018 11:30:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=11, tm_min=30, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=83, tm_isdst=0) | 43119698 | audio/mpeg | "Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. This is Chuck here with this week's stuff you should know. Selects, select, shun. It's called Subways Colon. Huh? What are they good for? I can't can't remember if I came up with that silly, fun name or if Josh did. I think it was me. But at any rate, this is from September 27, 2012, and it's just a great episode. It's just a classic stuff. You should know. I'm fascinated by subways, and we kind of hit on all cylinders on this one. From creation, invention, and history of subways to how they're built today, they're just really a pretty remarkable form of transportation, and you should know more about it. So enjoy subways. What are they good for right now? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 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. To find the quickest way to get to Harlem, we did. Okay. Thanks to the magic of postproduction. We did. So that was taking the ATrain. Who made that song? Oh, boy. I don't know who originally composed it, to be honest. Well, I think we should find out. Well, 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. Do they do a train? No, it's a jazz tune. John Coltrane. Did he do it? Let's go with Coltrane, man. Or maybe I should just do it. Is that that song? Yeah. Taking the A Train. That's a good song. Is it instrumental? Because, you know, a lot of those instrumentals actually have lyric what, the old Jassins? 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 afterwards. Right. Well, I mean, I worked with her, but then I was like that was the first time you ever 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 the subway map, and the whole thing just turned into, like, this 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? 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 map. Yeah, 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. Right. 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, 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 hey, 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, you go, Geez, I want to go back to New York. Cleveland's where the first stop light in the country was. Did you know that? Really? Yeah. I like Cleveland. I'm just kidding. That's where my home away from home is now. Oh, yeah. 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, so I always thought Akron was more towards Dayton. Alright, so dating, let's talk about it. All right. Let's talk about subways. The metro in France. And pewe. 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 547ft. From the start, I bought that one. No, but it really you helped build up the drama. Okay. Yeah. The tube in London, mind the Gap, everyone, 275 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 1063. The Metro was next in 1900 in 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 of the Industrial Revolution. People are out in farming, and then 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. Everybody threw down their agrarian tools, like sides. 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. And it involves horses. Remember the Wingcry's 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. 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 horse drawn carriages. Now they're known by their slang term bust. Oh, 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 tourist 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 busker. 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, like, uptown at the park, you're like, 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 tourist. 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. Yes. I mean, not one Discovery Channel. 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. 1863 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. And, I mean, 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. Did you see these? Yeah, it looks awesome. Pretty amazing. It's basically like a trimmer 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 TBM 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 poops out. Yeah. And then, dudes, get rid of that stuff. And it actually supports the tunnel as it digs and does a really great job. We all love the TV. U. 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 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, do 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 out of 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 Tunnellers. Like Charles Brunson. 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 do they miss that line? I don't know. 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 this 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 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. 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 buttress 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. 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? 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. Popular semifiction 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, have you ever been in a subway, especially in 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 manmade obstructions, like gas lines, pneumatic lines, no water line with those. Water lines are probably very tough, but all of those can be rerouted. 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. 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. 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 longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. 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 throw it away. That'd be great. Maybe it's full of dangerous gases, 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. Yeah. 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 street. 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 is 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 used 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. Yeah. Pretty neat. It was very clever. And that was old timing construction, too. Is 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. And you're big on that. I love that. I'm going to make you a T shirt. This is cut and cover. I would wear that. It just makes sense to me. Yeah, it does. You can use the cut and cover method across the river. That's what they did in the San Francisco Bay. They basically just cut the tunnel they wanted and pre fabricated 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 and 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, Corey. Very deep cores. This is kind of cool. I thought this is very cool. Some of the cores 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 NYC Subway.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 19 four to 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. I'm going in 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 laser beams? They do, and they navigate it. They use brake heat to generate power. They will even let you know someone stuck in the door, open the door back up, and did not drive away. Not drive away while someone's 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. They're trying to spruce up the trains and replace the old cars. They're improving the air circulation, which he 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 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. Yeah. It takes a tremendous amount of air to be recirculated to allow humans to live underground. I think she said something. Was it? Yeah. 600,000 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 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 stop light 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 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 up front, you could probably see them. You could. And tap the drive around 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, dude, 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 can 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 it played a 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. Yeah, but yeah, it stopped. Okay. I was going to say, this isn't a work in progress. No, they've added some stuff since. Yeah, a little bit. But really, it does suck in every way. I mean, 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. Yeah. I mean, it's great for me on, like, Falcon Scheme Day, right down the street. Hop on. There my brown bag. Hop off. I'm right at the stadium. Yeah, it's nice. The 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. Yeah. 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 mooch 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. 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 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 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 checks out of alignment. And checks 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. Yes. 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, man, that's a good question. It's going 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 file and says, go fix that track. And they also, just as an added bonus, the geometry train finds hot spots 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. 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 New York. So if you're complaining about the price of a subway in New York, just remember it could be double yes. 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. 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 One, it was like that's when they were dropping bricks on each other. Like, really? That's how you would take on 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. Oh, those are mortars? Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess you would still need to take refuge against the mortar. It doesn't have to be a plane and a mortar comes through an air raid. Do 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 and shelter. That's right. As are the mole people. If you haven't seen the documentary Dark Days. Yeah. Highly recommended. Is that about the mole people or it's a group of homeless people. They don't identify themselves as mold people. I think mold 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 appointment after that, so I need to get back above ground. And then in 1995, everyone remembers the Tokyo Seren gas episode killed twelve people. I'm sure that was incredibly frightening. London, 2005. It was July 7. Yeah. Was that significant? No, that's just how they refer to it. Like we refer to 911. Is 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 and 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. So 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, 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 that 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 that? Yeah, 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 could you? Yeah. And then oh, it's good for the environment somehow. Right. As long as they took the gas out first in 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? Yes, 500,000. I wasn't counting each square foot. I got one. And this is where everything goes to get worked on 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 an extra money. It cleans the exteriors of over 1000 cars once a week. That's 50,000 washes in a year full 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. Cue runs between Coney Island, Stowell 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 are 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 taker. And then New York ranks number seven in ridership in the world. Tokyo is first. Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Kwang Where is that? Would imagine that's a Chinese word. I just haven't heard of that. Paris, Mexico City and Hong Kong. London is not even in the top ten, and that's the number one. But you know why? Because World War Two 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 wider cars become the predominant form of transportation. Number of miles traveled by an average subway car in between repairs. In New York, that was 7000 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, I 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. Like 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 is 191st street in Manhattan. That's because you are 180ft below ground. Is that crazy? Probably shift. It ran into a shift problem, so 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 lake, don't break. And I guess don't take the C train. Is that 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 in 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. Go and chuck that's 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@householdforce.com, and it'll bring up this fine article by Tracy V. Wilson. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener. Now, this one is an anniversary of two young people in love. Okay, 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's in love with us. Let's get real. Yeah. Not 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. Sweet and terrible for your artery 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 stuffing 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 SUSK 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 estranged you from your family, either way, we want to know about it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyseto. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.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, the free Amazon Music app, and listen today." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-10-17-sysk-db-cooper-live-seattle-final.mp3 | SYSK Live: The DB Cooper Heist | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-live-the-db-cooper-heist | Join Josh and Chuck live from Seattle as they (sky)dive into one of the most brazen robberies in the annals of crime and the only unsolved airline hijacking in American history. | Join Josh and Chuck live from Seattle as they (sky)dive into one of the most brazen robberies in the annals of crime and the only unsolved airline hijacking in American history. | Tue, 17 Oct 2017 21:09:39 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=21, tm_min=9, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=290, tm_isdst=0) | 87365672 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. Chuck here with another call for guests for Movie Crush, my new show debuting November 3, where I sit down with famous people to talk about their alltime favorite movie. So if you are a secret celebrity listener, get in touch with me at moviecrush@howstoughforks.com, especially if you happen to be filming in Atlanta where our studios are, because in person is always best, but we can always do it remotely with partner studios. All right, thanks a lot. And look out for movie crush. November 3. Hey, friends. This is Chuck. Just wanted to intro this show really quickly because it is from the archive. It's a live show that we did on our tour last year all about the mysterious disappearance of skyjacker DB. Cooper. This was recorded live in Seattle, Washington, at the Neptune Theater. It was one of the best shows on the tour, and we hope you enjoy it. And keep in mind this is recorded before we found out more recent news about the DB. Cooper case. So that stuff has happened since then, but please do enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And we are here live at the beautiful Neptune Theater in beautiful Seattle and beautiful Washington. Thank you, guys. Phenomenal. I'm already a sweaty mess, so that must mean we're on stage. We are off to a great start. That must mean I'm awake or sleeping. Yes. I sweat my sleep, too, big time. It's gross. I'm always wiping his brow while he sleeps. What movie we're going to watch tonight in the hotel? Is a spy out yet on hotel? I don't know. And we can leave the seat up on the toilet. I don't do that. I don't either, because I pee sitting down because I'm 45 years old. Do you really? Well, yeah. I might as well get into it. What? You do too? Why have we never talked about this? I started being sitting down during the middle of the night. Get up. Because if it just makes sense because you don't want to wake up too much and you don't want to make a mess. And then I think I just hit a certain age where I was like, it's just nicer to sit down. I don't need to prove anything to anyone. Yeah, you landed your lady. You're all set? Yeah. I stand when I pee off my deck at night. I don't do that. I live in a condo complex. They would write letters to me if I could. It's not good, man. I feel like an enormous weight has just been lifted off. I can't believe that you're not even 40 years old yet and you pee sitting down. Yeah. Let's start the podcast. Are there other guys out there that he's sitting down? All right. We're starting a movement, baby. That's right. Your ladies will appreciate it. Oddly, I poop standing up this is so off the rails already in conversation. You must be sitting there talking to me like you're pooping right now, aren't you? Yeah, it's more efficient this way. I get more done. We should probably start over. You should. We're going to get off stage and come back out. I can't believe what we've been talking about here this evening already. Okay, so I'll just take you down a notch. All right. So we're podcasting. We're about to start podcasting. I think I already started the podcast. Oh, God. Which means that's going to be on, like, the thing we that's why I said we should start over. Okay. It stays here, everybody. Yeah. It's all our secret, I think. 500 people. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W. Chuck Bryant and we are live here at the beautiful Neptune Theater in Seattle, Washington. Man times two. That's even better. It's an injoke. People will be like, even better than what? Really? There's more crossover between our fans and Howard Stern than our fans and Mariners fans. I think there's a Vin diagram out there that's confusing me already. Okay, so, Chuck yes. This is a little bit of history. Yeah. So we're going to go back in the wayback machine. That's right. If you listen to the PR live podcast, you know that the Way Back machine is imaginary. So settle down. They heard that live. Yeah. That was a good one, too. There are PR professionals here because they email me today. Oh, really? Yeah. I can tell that's the call of the PR professional. So we're going back to a cold, stormy, rainy, pretty nasty Thanksgiving eve in 1971. And the story begins at PDX Portland Airport. And a man walked into PDX, took a picture of his shoe on the carpet, and then walked along to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket desk. That's right. And he walked up and he said, hi, I am really interested in finding more about flight 305, the flight to Seattle. Would that happen to be a Boeing 727 100 airplane that you guys are going to fly on that route? And the ticket agent went, yes, as a matter of fact, it is. And the man said, that is fantastic. Here's my $20.01 ticket, please, for a one way ticket between Portland and Seattle aboard flight 305. Yes. And she was like, that's a weird question, but I guess he's very specific about what kind of plane he likes to fly on. Plus, it's 1971, and I'm in no position to publicly question a man, so I'll just go along with it. Very true. And it was $20 for that flight. This is a very 70s podcast. So they handed him his little ticket voucher and said, just fill this out, sir. Don't need to see ID because it's 1971. Just tell us who you are or whoever you want us to think you are. And he wrote down in big block letters in a red ink pin. Dan Cooper you know where we're going with this. So the Boeing 727 100 is every single person in this room knows it's a smallish plane. It's not the biggest plane in the Boeing fleet. It's not the smallest either, but it's the only one that has an aft staircase. Right. And this particular flight flying aboard the Boeing 727 100, flight 305 had a crew of five aboard it. There was Captain William Scott, not Sean Williamscott. We figured out later on not Stifler. That would have made zero sense yeah. Had he had a former life in the 70s as an airline pilot copilot. Robert Rad ASAK there's a C in there for those of you who like that kind of thing. And there were three flight attendants. There was a head flight attendant who was named Alice Hancock. Right, yes. And then two, I guess, regular flight attendants. Tina McClow, who is a hero of ours, and Florence Shaftner, I think they called him stewardesses back then, to be fair. Right. But we're forward thinking guys, so we're going to go ahead and say flight attendant. We don't use the S word. You just make well, never mind. Never mind. We've done quite enough extraneous stuff for us. I know. So Dan Cooper gets on the plane. There's 37 other passengers, because, again, it was the 70s. They didn't overbook flights back then and say, I'm sorry you bought a ticket, but you really can't fly on this flight. 37 passengers, pretty empty. And Dan Cooper sits in seat 18 C. They pour him up a bourbon in Seven Up, and he lights up a cigarette, a Raleigh Brand cigarette, because it's smoke on planes. Yeah. And he looked to be about in his mid 40s. He was kind of looked like the men of the time, which is to say, you either looked by 1971, you either looked a little more like Don Draper, kind of holding on to that 50s look, or you look like Charles Manson. He looked a little more like Don Draper. Yeah. Had the suit, had the skinny tie, and we should talk a little bit about the suit. The suit was a Russet colored suit, which was like that weird burgundy brown color, that's potato colored. Right. And it just so happened that he was wearing a suit during the one six month period in history where you could wear that color suit out in public. So he was okay. And then his skinny tie was a clip on from JCPenney. That's right. He had an imitation mother of pearl type in. He had an overcoat. He had a hat. He had a bag kind of like a briefcase. And he had these black corn rim sunglasses, dark kind of olive skin, would you say? They call them swarthy, which I think is like stewardess. It's been phased out. You know what I mean? I thought that was like a sea captain. I'm sure there were suarezi. Sea captains. Yeah, because they're out in the sun, so they ended up getting olive skinned. That's rugged. Okay. You're thinking of the Gorton's fisherman. Oh, right. Oh, he was swarthy. Sure. Swarthy is h. So he had this kind of dark, wavy hair, and other than that, he was just sort of an unremarkable dude. He wanted to blend in, right? Well, yeah. Okay, so this guy is sitting in 18 C. He's being unremarkable. Aside from wearing the sunglasses, he's smoking with his left hand, has nothing to do with anything, but we just kind of wanted to show off how much research we've done on this. And when Florence Shaftner, the flight attendant working in his area, comes over and gives him his bourbon and I think seven up, right? Yeah. He hands her a note, and to Florence Shafter, she was 23. She was very pretty. She was, at the time, a stewardess. And this happened to her all the time, like businessmen drinking Sevens and Sevens, like, past her notes and hit on her all the time. So when this guy in 18 C, Dan Cooper, handed her a note, she took the note and just put it in her flight apron without looking at it and turned and walked away with all the other notes. Right, exactly. From all the men who wanted to rescue her from her life. Come away with me. It's worthy. And so Dan Cooper sees this, and he goes, miss, you may want to have a look at that note. I have a bomb. I think you know where we're going with this DB. Cooper. When we were coming here today, we're like, we're really rolling the dice. It's entirely possible that everyone here had the DB. Cooper case drilled into them from third grade on. That's not the case? No. You didn't study it in class relief? I told that to Yuumi, and Yummy was like, that's so dumb. She's like, do you know everything about the burning of Atlanta? And I said, no. And she's like, no, you don't. And they don't know everything about DB. Cooper. And I went back to sleep. So this was not the first commercial airplane hijacking. Actually, the first one was remarkably between 1968, just three years earlier, in the time DB. Cooper hijacked this plane, there were 100 commercial hijackings in three years? Yes. So this is not new. It was not new. But I remember if anyone here grew up in the stuff, it was a thing like planes got hijacked all the time because you could bring guns and bombs on planes, and you didn't need ID, and no one cared. They were like, this is weird. Yeah, that's pretty much where the FBI was at the time. And by 1971, they were just starting to get hip to the idea of hijacking being a problem. And so their first idea was, well, we'll put an air marshal on every flight, and then they looked at the schedule of flights in the United States. And they're like, oh, this may have been a bad idea. It was a fine idea if everyone if a third of the population of the United States were air marshals. And, yes, it was a good idea. It's a good idea if you want one of every, like, 300 flights with an air marsh right. And the other 299 open for hijacking. Right. So they figured out after a few years, like, the logistics of American air travel. Jay edgar Hoover's idea, by the way. Right. He was still in charge of the FBI. Yes. So he'd been there for about 50 years, right? Yeah. So his idea was Air Marshalls didn't work, but they were still trying it. There was no air marshal on Flight 305. The DB. Cooper hijacking flight. Yeah. They're like Portland of Seattle. Maybe we should put, like, three air marshals on that one high traffic flight. And, I mean, it made sense that there would not be an air marshal on that flight, because most hijackings were crazed lone gunmen with a handgun who wanted to be taken to Cuba for political reasons. Basically, no one flying from PDX to CTAC wanted to be taken to Cuba, so there's no reason for an air marshal to be on the flight. It was a pretty good bet to not have an air marshal on. They just didn't expect BB. Cooper because he was a pretty novel person. The idea of a single guy taking control of a flight for money with a bomb that was new, and our whole conception of a mad bomber hijacking a flight comes from DB. Cooper and Sunny bonus character in Airplane Two. This is actually I did a little more research between 1968 and 79. It's literally referred to as the golden age of skyjacking. I was talking to Josh. I thought a golden age was about something good. I didn't know you could have the golden age of Dysentery, the good old days. It was good for the hijackers because they could get away with it, no problem. Maybe that's who wrote that? The golden age of skyjacking. Man all right, so Florence Schaffer reads the note, and she says, you know what? Cooper says. You know what? Give me that note back. Which is a very key thing, because that means they won't have a sample of his handwriting. So he asked for the note back, and from that point on, he did not converse. Like everything else, he had them write down to take to the captain so they would have no more physical evidence of his handwriting. Yeah, the only handwriting sample they had was that ticket duplicate, and it was in block letters, which he went like this. Cooper so she sits down and she says, I want to know that this is legit. This is for real. Can I get a look at that bomb that you're talking about? Makes sense. And he shows her right. Yeah. He gives her a little peek. He opened his bag just enough and she went to put her fingers in and he snapped the shut and she went just like Pretty Woman. But she sees red sticks of dynamite and a battery and I guess presumably like an alarm clock with two bells on it. Right. It's got like a skull and crossbone. He says you die or something. Electrical tape is all around it because he watched a lot of cartoons and he knows how to make a bomb. Well, she bought it. Clearly, she saw the bomb and she took down a note. He said, take this down. I have a ransom demand. He said, I want $200,000 by 05:00 p.m. In cash. Put it in an app sack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff, or I'll do the job, which is tough talking. 1971, again, he watched a lot of cartoons, and that's what you say when you mean business. That roughly is about $1.2 million today. I think it's a little low if you're going to go through a skyjacking. It's a lot of work for a million dollars. Yeah. I would have said, like, if you're going to ask for 200 grand, ask for 300 or 400. That's just me. Sure. I'm no skyjacker. So this turns out to be the only threat that Dan Cooper makes during the entire ordeal. He is the very first note that he gave up. So from that point on, like I said, he dictated everything else so they could just pass notes back and forth. And aside from a couple of conversations with the pilots on the cockpit phone from the rear of the plane to the cockpit, they didn't have any interaction, the pilots whatsoever, with Dan Cooper. Right. So they were like almost no help whatsoever during the investigation. Right. And then the fact that he asked for two parachutes was a stroke of brilliant, because it did show his hand to the FBI that he was going to jump out of the plane with the ransom money. But it also said, FBI, I'm probably going to make a hostage jump with me. So don't tamper with any of these parachutes, which, if the FBI had, would have been murder. But we're talking about Jigger Hoover's, FBI, so they may have tried just that. So it's pretty smart that he asked for two pairs because they didn't know what he was going to do. That's right. So Schaffner takes that ransom note, gives it to Alice Hancock, she takes it over to the pilot and the copilot. Well, what did they do, joshua do a great pilot. They called CTEC Airport and said, CTEC, we just want to advise you on a bit of a fiddle sticks we got going on up here. Sonny Bono has taken control of the plane. He wants $200,000 in negotiable American currency by negotiable. American currency. Yeah. It's a very weird thing to ask for. It was. And so CTech was like, we should probably call the cops. And the cops said, we should probably call the FBI. Well, yeah. This was the Seattle Police Department in 1971. They're like, no, we don't deal with things like this. They're like, Wait, this guy doesn't want to go to Cuba. We don't understand. We're literally waiting for John Rambo to wander through town, right? So we can harass him. Just ten more years. Wait, that was Oregon, though, wasn't it? Okay, pretty close. That joke will kill tomorrow night. Yeah, man. Rambo joke. Yeah. Remember it? So all of a sudden, there's all this crazy energy going on down on the ground, right? So the FBI comes in, and they're trying to get the money together. They're like, we have an hour. You got to give us more time. It's like, no, you can't have more time. They're like, okay, that's fine. We'll get all this stuff together. You guys are going to have to stay up there until we get everything ready for you. So the plane is circling CTAC, and they told the passengers that the plane was experiencing mechanical problems, which I would have had a problem hearing. I think they could have thought that through a little more. Yeah, it's experiencing mechanical problems. So we're just going to keep flying. We're going to stay aloft, see what happens. Captain Scott is a gambling man. Everyone was drinking and smoking cigarettes. They didn't care. They were hooking up in the bathroom. This is Chuck. You would have been like, I told you we should have driven. I know. It's nothing. I could have been to Portland. So they had to circle for an hour, and they ended up telling the passengers, oh, we just need to burn off some gas, and everything will be fine. Right? And the passengers apparently were totally unaware that they've been hijacked. That's how cool Cooper was. Right. But one passenger later said, I had a pretty good feeling we've been hijacked. And the presspo was like, Shut up. Go get off the day. He was that guy. He's the next person. Yeah, I was at that game. Yes, I was at that game. Seven. It was all right. He's that dude. Oh, yeah. Any remarkable event yeah, I was there. I knew it was a hijacking. You really had me stumped there for a second. I'm role playing game seven. CTAC is circling, right? They're circling, circling an hour killing time, but just burning off gas. And Florence Shaftner has gone away to take the note to Alice Hancock, who takes notes to the cockpit. She's on the relay team basically, now. And DB. Cooper says, well, Dan Cooper says, hey, Tina Mucloud, why don't you sit beside me for a while? And she did, and she ended up kind of taking a bit of a seat in history, if you will, to allow us that terrible analogy. And she sat down and she spent a lot of time with Dan Cooper, and they ended up chatting. She said, Dan Cooper kept a level head during a very tense situation, like, the whole time. And they chatted about things like Tina Mucloud's home state, which is Minnesota. They talked about a nearby Air Force base and how long it took to drive to CTAC. It was like, 20 minutes or something. You guys can actually probably guess the Air Force base. We don't know that one. And then they also at one point, he looked out the window and he said, it looks like we're over Tacoma. So all this would indicate a lot to the FBI later on, right. That this guy was maybe a local? Yeah. I'm kind of curious. Could anyone here recognize Tacoma from an airplane? From an airplane. From an airplane. Do they have a huge field cut out of grass that says Tacoma? Corn. What are they saying? I think they're saying corn. Yeah. The smell. Oh, boy. I knew this would go over well here. By the way, we didn't mention they diverted all the other flights away from CTAC at the time because they wanted that to be the only plane in the area. And to me, the most remarkable part of this whole story is one of the other planes in the air. The dude, the pilot gets on and tells everyone else on that plane what's going on. Well, he patched into the calm link between Flight 305 and CTAC for the listening enjoyment of the passengers on his flight. It's insane. Like, I'm sorry we're delayed, but here's what's going on on another flight nearby, right? Just sit back and listen to the dulcient tones of a skyjacking. Again, it was the 70s. Everyone was drinking. They're like. This is remarkable. Thank God it's not us. Everything's better when you're drinking. All right, so he recognizes Tacoma, which apparently everyone in this room could do. Yeah. Right. We were impressed by that, but it's nothing. Occasionally he went smells like Tacoma. So all of these are sort of clues, though, if you recognize Tacoma, you knew about the Air Force base. That clearly maybe the guy is kind of from the area. Might be a clue later on. So muckle at this point asked Dan Cooper she said, do you have a grudge against our airline, sir? And he said, no, ma'am, I don't have a grudge against your airline. I just have a grudge critic. Right? She was like, yeah, like they did. So back on the ground, the FBI is, like, going crazy. Local cops are going crazy. Everybody's going crazy trying to get 200 grand in cash together. Turns out that was the easiest part of this whole thing. So Northwest oriented president at the time, Donald Nairop, any Nairops in the house? No, he would have been in Minnesota. Oh, okay. Yeah. But I'm convinced that someone in here is going to be related to someone in this story. Oh, I am too. Yeah. I'm waiting for somebody to be like, that's a lie, or for someone to stand up and say, I am TV Cooper. Yeah, that would be amazing. We'd have to come up with a different show tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Or just bring him along. Sure. And here he is, everybody. So Donald Nairo, the president of northwest orient, he's like, yeah, sure, we'll totally pay that. We have a huge insurance policy on this kind of thing. Apparently, northwest had to pay like 20 grand, and their insurance company paid out 180 grand. And they tapped seafirst bank, which had a downtown branch. And in this downtown branch, they had a really great idea. They had stacks of $20 bills in varying amounts so that it looked like a nervous teller ran into the back and put some 20s together in the event of a bank robbery. Right. And then would come out and be like, here you go, bank robbery. You're getting off scot free. But it turns out that every serial number on every one of those 20s have been recorded. So it works for bank robberies work just as well for skyjacking as well. So they had the money, no problems. The parachutes were just very difficult. Yeah, that was actually the harder part. Back in 1971, the big recreational skydiving craze had not yet taken hold. It happened here and there. But the manager at sea tax said, I got a guy. Don't you worry. He's got an operation called seattle sky sports in isaqua. Anybody from issaquois shout out to Isaacoa. Why do you call it Seattle sky sports? Do they mooch off of Seattle? Yeah, off of the teeth of Seattle. He's like, I got a guy. His name is Earl Cassie, and he agreed to help. Little side note, earl Cassie was actually murdered three years ago. Apparently he has, like, to bring the room down. I know we're all having too much fun. He got killed by a blow to the head in his garage. But apparently some cooperates that are still active today on the Internet. You know, these conspiracy dudes that is everyone did it. I love that. Everybody. See, you can all be conspiracy dude. Get out your title hat. Although women can't be because they're too smart. It's always, guys, did you know? So Earl cosy was killed, but they think it has nothing to do with it, even though Coopers'are like, are you sure they're trying to silence a man? Exactly. That was pretty great, man. Very well timed. Yeah. So Cassie called his operation and to the dude working there and said, hey, can you get together these parachutes? I need two fronts and two backs. The guy said, sure, brah. And in his haste, he packs three regular shoots. Well, not three regular. He packs one military shoot, two regular shoots. And one thing that I still don't understand called a dummy shoot, right. That doesn't open. No. So if you were working at Seattle Sky Sports in Isaqua, you would get really sick of having to fold up the whole parachute every time somebody was training, throwing out the pilot shoot, which is the little shoot that comes out first and pulls the bigger shoot out. Right. If all you're trying to do is throw that part out, you don't need the bigger shoot. So if you're an employee at Seattle Sky Sports, and it's quite a you may have the idea that you should just sew the bigger part shut. There should be no parachute that has the most important part sewn shut. Right. That is our rule. Every parachute should open. Right. But this is the thing, and they're called dummy shoots. The thing is, everybody's like, oh, we got it covered. We'll just put a big X on it, and everybody will know it's a dummy shoot. So one of these dummy shoots made it into the four shoots that were delivered to DB. Cooper. So the money and the shoots go in the cop car and does the donuts getting out, like, in front of the plane and gets out and stands outside and waits for the plane to land, I should say. So when they get everything together, they let Flight 305 know that they come and get it, basically, and they prepare to land. And DB. Cooper does something very smart. Yeah. He said, you know what? I bet you there's going to be snipers on the ground, because I've seen a movie or two. I've seen Black Sunday. Anyone? No. Didn't that come out like, five or six years later? Maybe? Actually, I'll have to look that up. I think that was 76. You know this. Sure. All right. He said, I have a dream about a movie one day that would be called Black Sunday, and there's going to be snipers at that airport. So have everybody put the shades down on the windows. They're all drunk. They don't care. They won't ask any questions. And so they did so, which turned out to be a pretty good move because there weren't snipers. Right, exactly. So the plane lands, and no one's allowed to get off yet. Cooper says, hey, Tina, do me a solid. Go out and get the money in the shoots and come back with them. Okay? Then we can let the passengers off, and Muklau leaves the plane. And at this point and this is one of the first reasons why Tina Muclau is one of our heroes, once she's off the plane, she could have been like, so long jumps, seeing hell, which may have been a little harsh, as she said that with an earshot of somebody in this hostage situation. She could have thought it her actions, could have said as much. She didn't. She got the shoots, she got the money, and she essentially traded herself for the hostages and went back. On the plane that's Metal Chuck would have said out loud, see you in hell, Flight 305. I would have walked straight to the baggage claim or the ground transportation and said, take me to Cousin Ikex. I need some loose leaf tea. Good luck with the skyjacking. Right? Yeah. But she came back, which is amazing. She did come back. So she traded herself for these hostages, and the hostages were allowed to leave. And so too were Alice Hancock and Florence Shaftner. The rest of the crew is basically like, there's no reason for you to stay here, so go. So it was down to Shaftner and Cooper, and then in the cockpit, Radizac and Scott, right? And Scott and Radizack repaid Tina Mcloud by staying themselves. There's a rope ladder, actually, that they could have climbed out of. They had almost no interaction whatsoever with DB. Cooper. They could have at their leisure. They could have put on bathing suits and climbed out this rope ladder and laid on the tarmac for a while and then gone to the safety of the FBI barricade. And they didn't. They stuck around, and they were like, we're going to see this hijacking through. Yeah. In my comedic mind's eye, I see them getting out on the rope swing or a rope ladder. That's different. Rope swing. That would be amazing. They may have, like, a tire swing on the front of the plane. They get off on the rope ladder. Tina Muclaw never comes back. And DB. Cooper's just sitting on the plane by himself. He's like, oh, it happened again. Is he typing? No, that's it. Sorry, I didn't know they had a rope ladder. That's crazy. Sure. What would that be? Every airplane has a rope ladder in the cup. Wake up, man. Fashioned out of, like, old sheets. So the FAA actually had their chief psychiatrist on the ground, and this dude does a quick analysis, like, let me do one of those movie readings of who this guy is and what's going to happen. And he says, you know what's going to happen is you're going to give this guy the money and the parachutes. You're going to go up there in the plane, he's going to jump out and blow up the plane and just let everyone know that. Right. Pilot and copilot. This is what's coming. Right. He's going to force Mucklow to jump with them and then blow up the plane afterward. Right? But yeah, make sure the cockpit knows. And then he added and he probably has some sort of fixation on longer than usual nipples, so make sure he's not exposed to those because he has some sort of fetish based on his experience with his mother, because he one psychoanalyst for the FAA. Hey, if I had done that German accident, it would have sunk in even faster. Did you tell them that? Make sure you tell them that. Guys, is that all right? I'm going to go ahead and say, now what I'm going to say in, like, an hour backstage. All right. That was amazing. Thank you. I thought that's not what you're going to say. Actually, I didn't see that one coming. You got me. Yeah. I had no idea where you were going. Literally, you said, the usual nipples, and I went in my head, I went, is this happening, Josh? Am I stolen? Atlanta is the trip. Am I asleep? Pure gold, buddy. Thank you. 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. Where are we? I am so thrown. So we said Cooper was cool, right? Yes. A cool head. Yes, it was so cool. He ordered food for the crew during the refueling process. Yeah, he's a nice guy. You want to know who else is cool? It's Tina Muclaw. Because once they release the passengers and they got the money on board, she sat back down and he offered her a couple of the stacks of money. And she said, well, you go ahead and say it. No tipping allowed. Smooth. Again. Had it been me, well, first of all, I would have been an uncle likes by then. But if I was dumb enough to get back on, I would be like, yeah, pay it for just two stacks of bills. Yeah, what gives, jerk? I want half. She's amazing. So the plane is being refueled. He passed along a request, very specific request for what's to happen when they go to take off. He said, I want to take off with that as a staircase that I know is back there down in the jump off the plane position. And they said, you can't take off with the plane. You can't take off with the door down. And he said, well, can you check on that? Are you sure? And they said, no, you can't do that. And he said, Are you super sure? And they said, no, you can't do that. He said, all right. And they said, oh, but once you're up there, you can totally lower it and jump out. And he said, well, why don't we just start there? Because that's really the only thing that matters. He's like, Fine. And then the pilot's like, well, where do you want to go? And Dan Cooper says Mexico City, let's say. And the pilot goes, well, that's kind of far. We're going to have to refuel. Is Reno okay? And Dan Cooper goes, I don't know how I can get this across anymore. Clearly I'm jumping out of the plane. The next time we go up, fly wherever you want, just fly southward. Yeah. So they refuel the plane and the only time Dan Cooper gets a little ruffled is when it takes a little long for his liking. And he says, It shouldn't take this long. Let's get the show on the road. Right? He picked up for one of the few times he picked up the cockpit or the cabin, the cockpit phone, and said, let's get the show on the road. I would have screamed it and like, hit the phone and then hit myself in the head with it and then just started crying and been like, it's never going to work. This is never going to work. I think it's well established we'd be the worst guy. Jacker and hostages. Yeah. No, I don't want any part of it. He also gives them instructions on how to fly the plane, which is getting really specific. He said, don't go any higher than 10,000ft. Set your wing flaps at 15 deg. Which apparently we learned is an angle that only the seven two 7100 could position those wing flaps, which everyone in this room knows because the Boeing sure. And he said, don't go any faster than 190 knots. So that means they're going to be flying slow and low like you're cooking ribs or jumping off a plane. Because that means the cabin isn't pressurized. And that means when you open that door, you're not just going to suck everything out. It's still sky divable. Yeah, that's the terminology. Okay, so Cooper had some problems, right? He had specifically asked for an app sack, and the Feds had given him the 200 grand in a bank bag, which, as we all know, is a very unwieldy clumsy bag, right? It's like a canvas bag. There's nothing to it. Like, tuck it under your arm. What are you supposed to do with that? Right? So he's like, well, I need to make a handle for this thing. I'll harvest one of these parachutes for its rigging. And he chose the pink one, which the pink one was actually the best one of all. Yeah. Because it was the dummy shoot, the military shoot, and then the soso shoot is that we're going to call it yeah, the medium shoot. And then the pink one, which like Josh said, is the best one. So he cuts the stuff loose, he makes a handle for it. Things are happening at this point. They moved to the rear of the plane, he and Tina Muclaw, and he says, I think I need help lowering the staircase. So she goes back there with them. She's a little freaked out at this point. Super freak out. She was calm and cool, but it's go time. And she thinks she's going to get sucked out, rightfully so, because she didn't understand the physics of the plane being that low and that slow or she did not help with physics. I am still freaked out. We're about to lower a staircase at 10,000ft. Why did I mention physics? Exactly. So she gets back there and she said, can I at least have some of that rope so I can tie myself to the interior of this plane? Like, that's how helpful she was. She's like, Just let me lash myself to the plane. Right? I just spit all the way across it. I spit earlier. It's fine. Okay, good. We should learn to sync those up, like in Vegas. That's what I was supposed to belong to. Yeah, man, we are in sync. My God. Except well, never mind. So she asked for some rope to lash herself in, and he goes at this point you know what? Never mind. He literally like this is the quote. He goes, Never mind. Never mind. He said, you know what? You just go back up to the cockpit and you see that first class curtain. Just don't come any further back. I got it from there. He turns back around, looks and then he turns back around to where she was, and he just sees, like, a pile of dust to where she was just standing. He was like, in the cockpit all of a sudden. And so it's go time in the cockpit, 07:42 p.m., the little light comes on that says, I guess. And they said that the pilots were like, Tina, let's call back one more time. She's like, no, you can't call him. No, really, we should call. We can totally call him. Like, the FAA shrink said he might blow us up. He said some other weird stuff, too, but he said he's going to blow us up. We should really butter this guy up. And we could have left on that rope swing and we stayed because of you. Rope ladder. So they call. They do call, and the pilot is like, oh, my cooper. Yes. Ring, ring. You let it ring a couple of times. Dan Cooper. Hi, Jacker. Mr. Cooper, we want to make sure your flight is as comfortable as possible. Is there anything we can do to help you back there to make your hijacking more successful, sir? No. Click. I know it's kind of rude. He said no, hung up. And then at 08:12 P.m., the crew felt the plane kind of jiggle a little bit as if someone had jumped off the rear of it and they said, Tina, go check. We're flying the plane. Right? She's like, Wait a minute. Only one of you is flying? No, it takes both of us. You don't know, and that's it. So from the moment that Tina McLaugh left shut that first class curtain, nobody, to anyone's knowledge, ever saw Dan Cooper again. But that's not the end of the show. No, it's not. So there was a manhunt. Right. So Dan Cooper had pretty clearly signaled his intentions that he was going to jump off the back of the 727. And the FBI was like, we need to scramble some jets. Let's get some fighter jets that are in the area. We're going to scramble them to go. Follow the 727. What is the scrambling? I never get that. It's like, go. I know, but it sounds chaotic, like they're scrambling. I think that's the point. People are supposed to run around and bump into each other and fall out and then get up and get in their jets and fly off. How would that be scrambling? That's classic. I would have renamed it would be like, Activate the jets. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Scramble the jets. Sounds desperate. You're right. Activate the jets. However the jets were brought into this picture, there was a problem with them in that they were way too fast for the 727, which is busting along at 190 miles an hour. Then all of a sudden, there's a jet that goes and then the next one comes and they're like, what are we going to do? Well, we'll stick a helicopter on them. This is like goldilocks. The helicopter was too slow. 727 is just puts it along. Yeah. People are going and trying to catch up. Nothing happening. They should have scrambled the 727 and just followed right behind. It makes sense as a matter of the headlights on. Right. So they're scrambling. The point is, nobody saw Dan Cooper jump when he jumped. So they used the 812 PM. Oscillation to kind of figure out where they should start looking. And they zero it in on a place called Ariel, Washington, near Lewis River. Anybody from Ariel? Good, because we got aerial jokes. Nobody from Ariel. Anyone ever heard of the Lewis River? So they get this manhunt going, they're scrambling and combing. Those are the two things you do. Yeah, it was here in the FBI. There was a massive manhunt, too. There's like a thousand troops and cops combing this area. Yeah. No one from Seattle PD. Of course. They were just sitting around stoned, hanging out in Nicola, waiting for rainbow. Here's another fun fact. There was a millionaire, a local millionaire. Who? We don't know. Do you know the name? No, I've looked. If anybody knows, just stand up and say it with dignity. It was on the news. So this local millionaire says, you know what? That's near Lake Merwin. And I'm going to rent a submarine because I'm a millionaire and that's what I do. Yeah, I don't work. I'm a millionaire. He got a submarine and he trolled the depths of Lake Merwin. He said he rented a small submarine because he's not an extravagant local man. No 20 footer will do. The 25 seems ostentatious. The hydraulics on it. Who needs that? In a summary, does it have a metal detector? Which would not have helped because it was cash bills. Exactly. So you'd make a great local millionaire. I would, if only the other weird thing that happened was the CIA got involved, which is a little bit strange. And they scrambled the SR 71 Blackbird, right. They scrambled it several times. Yeah, it was almost OverEasy. Terrible. You should be ashamed. It doesn't even make sense, because once you scramble it, it can't be OverEasy. Terrible joke, Chuck. That's what I say. It's all right. Rebound. Rebound. Is this really happening? Did you talk about long nipples? The SR 71 Blackbird was, at the time, super secret. We all know about it now, but at the time, it was very secret. And it was kind of a big deal to get this thing up in the air, especially multiple times. Like, one time it's like, your dad is the head of CIA and you're the head of Seattle PD. So you can make it happen maybe once. Right. Multiple times. That's weird that the SR 71 was scrambled. Right. The FBI is very studious and likes to do a lot of obvious stuff. So they interviewed everybody in the area with the last name of Cooper, which there's like a square one. Sure. This is like square negative five. Yeah, sure. No, it's negative five. I looked it up. Okay, so you look up all the Coopers in the area, and at this point, they have a press conference. And if you've noticed, we've been calling this dude Dan Cooper the whole time, because up until this time, he was just Dan Cooper. So they have a press conference, and there's sort of I don't think we know who messed it up. Right. Either. Okay. A cop either a file clerk or a cop talking in front of a reporter got you either UPI or AP, depending on who you ask. And they were saying, like, what? Cooper could have done something like this, right. And somebody said, well, there's a Dan Cooper who's a cat burglar in the area. That's a terrible suggestion. Cap burglar does not go to hijacker. And this reporter was like, what a scoop. And hit the wire with cops looking for D. B. Cooper? Yeah. He said DB. Cooper. Did I say? Dan Cooper? Yeah. That's all right. A little part of my brain was like, you just said Dan, let's start over. So a cop was talking in front of an AP reporter, and they said, What Cooper do you know, could have done this? And the cop said, well, there's this DB. Cooper. What did you just say? Did you just say ad? Cooper? I said, there's A-D-B cooper. I got at that time, he's a cat burglar. And the reporter said, this is hitting the wire. And he reported that the cops were looking for a DB. Cooper, and it just changed from that point on. Yeah, he was never a DB. Cooper. It was literally a mistake. So that's why we all know him as DB. Cooper today. And the FBI actually little smart, believe it or not. And they said, you know what? Let's keep it that way. That way, we'll know if any tips come in on a Dan Cooper, we'll know it's a hot lead. So it actually ended up kind of working in their favor. Yeah. And anytime a tip like that came in, like, the office prankster would come in with the fax and be like, hot lead. Hot lead. It was like a joke around the Portland office. Everybody loved Richard. This will come up later, too, when it comes time to solve the crime. Later on, the FBI learned that there was a comic book in the 1950s about a Dan Cooper who is a Canadian jet pilot, and it was a Belgian comic, which is a little weird, but there was literally a Dan Cooper who jumped out of planes in comic book form. Right, exactly. So it could be a clue. Maybe that's a niche comic, right? I would say so. Printed in Belgium in the French about a Canadian fighter pilot in the French. All they had to do was find, like, the ten people who knew of that comedy and be like, what did you do? We know it was one of you. So the FBI had a pretty clear belief, very openly stated belief, that DB. Cooper died in a jump. It was just the line that they took right off the bat. They're like, there's no way this guy survived. And he wasn't the lead agent on the case, but he became the most famous agent. Ralph Himmelsbock. Any himmelsbox in the house? No. You're a liar, sir. You're a liar. So himmelsbox, like I said, he wasn't a lead agent, but he was out of the Seattle office, and he became the most famous agent associated with it. And he actually gave the case its official name, nor Jack, which is stupid. Oh, northwest. Jack sky. Jack. Right? But remove the celebrity the DB. Cooper case, or heist even better. So he self published a book in 1986 about the case, and Himmelsbox said he thinks that DB. Cooper didn't even get a shoot open, that he plunged to his death and hit the forest floor with such impact that he basically was buried immediately with the parachute still attached and maybe even the money. And that was him all's box take. That was excuse me. You didn't get that? I realized it wasn't a twist off. And then I realized I had my lighter from the loose leaf tea place. Nice going. You just saw the sum of Chuck's college education. So Cooper had jumped from the plane. Did he live? Did he not? The odds are against him in a lot of ways. Outside, the temperature that night was 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Hey, we're in America, man. You say 20 deg? Yeah, you're right. 20 degrees USA. At 10,000ft, it was negative seven deg. And he was going 190 miles an hour. There was freezing rain. There was like a quarter crescent or not a quarter crescent. A crescent moon. Yeah, those are two different things. Sure. Crescent moon in the sky. But it was cloudy and rainy, so there's probably zero light. It's freezing. He's 10,000ft. He's not dressed for the occasion. He's wearing loafers. He's wearing an overcoat. He doesn't have this knapsack. So he's fashioned this weird kind of knapsack with this pink rope. Plus, the area is jumping out into and he's flying at 10,000ft over the Cascades. Some of the Cascades, as you guys know, are higher than 10,000ft. Very dangerous jump. And there's a lot of pointy trees. I mean, the pointiest am I right, Seattle? The pointiest trees around. Plus, despite what the FAA guy said, the FAA psychiatrist, he did not leave the bomb to be detonated after he jumped off. He took it with them. Bank bag, bomb overcoat loafers. Parachute 23. That was my DB. Cooper. And by the way, the FBI, later on they interviewed Muclock, who was the one who saw Chefner. Yeah, Schaffner saw the bomb like you just did, and she said, yeah, these red sticks taped together. And they went, that wasn't dynamite. Dynamite isn't red. You've seen too many cartoons. Dynamite is tan. Road players are red. So it was more than likely a fake bomb with an alarm clock and road players. Plus, David Cooper did not help his cause by his choice of parachutes. Right. He chose a military shoot as his main chute. It was not a great shoot. The rip cord wasn't as easily accessed as the recreational chutes. And once it deployed, you can't steer it very well. It was not the best choice. Even worse was his choice of the dummy shoot for his front reserve chute. He took the best shoe and gutted it to make a handle for the bank bag, left the second best shoot and chose the two worst shoots to jump out with. Right. I didn't know you couldn't steer a military shoot, but it makes total sense. Yeah, they just like, Go for it, pal. Yeah, because if I was in the military, I would be like, Why don't we go over here instead? I see a lot of guns down there. Let's take it this way. So they just drop you? Apparently, yeah, man, I guess they know what they're doing, though. So some other theories. Because it's Washington, believe it or not, some people actually posited that he was eaten by Sasquatch with a straight face. I mean, let's be honest. How many of you in here were thinking the same thing? Sure. Some other people say, well, he was clearly burned up by the jet exhaust. Because when you come down the stairs of a 727, the rear jet engines right in front of you, and it would have been 7800 deg right there. But the FBI conducted a test right afterward where they took a 727 up and they took a 200 pound sled, a 200 pound prison victim. Right. He was condemned. Don't worry about it, it's fine. And threw it off. And they found that the 200 pound sled is a euphemism, I guess now. Sure went straight down. So it didn't come in contact in any way with the jet exhaust. So it kind of did away with this idea that he burned up. Well, it was kind of good news, bad news, though, because what it did do, at least, was it mimic that same oscillation. So they're like, oh, you know what? It was the exact same thing happened when you were in the air. So that 08:12 PM. Jump time. It was probably right on the money. So we know probably where he might have landed. Right. So there's a lot of questions remaining. Right. And there were some clues left behind. The thing that really kind of confounded the FBI at first was that they comb the area where they were looking for him with like 1000 people just combing this area, the SR 71 Blackbirds circling around, looking, they didn't find anything. He had left a couple of things on board the plane. Right. He left his clip on tie, which was the second biggest secret that night. Well, that's what you do before you jump out. Sure. You take it off. It was a clip on all along. You unbutton that button and you're like, I'm out of here. All right. He left eight cigarette butts of his Raleigh Brand cigarettes. He smoked eight over 5 hours. And all eight butts have since been lost. Right. They found a hair on the headrest. The thing is, the FBI traded in fingerprints. That was the big thing at the time. And Dan Cooper had been very smart to not leave a single print on any of the cigarette butts. Yeah, true. But there was fingerprints on the inflight, I guess. Sky Mall magazine rip. Sky Mall? What do you mean it's not around? Yeah. Sky Mall is gone. Did you guys not know this? No way. Yeah, that's why I said, all right, peace. I know, but I don't know where am I going to get my putting green that doubles as a cat feeder, my friend. You can just go to Front Gate because Front Gate has everything everyone needs. What's that? Front Gate? They advertised in Sky Mall, but they have stores, too. I don't even know where I am right now. That's? Uncle Ike. What year is it? No. So it would be seven years before any trace of the hijacking, any real clue turned up. And it was in 1978. There were some hunters in Oregon hunting animals, I guess. Right. Unless it was the most dangerous game. Right. You don't know it's Oregon. You never know. There are less civilized people than we have here. They found a plastic instruction placard showing how to lower the aft staircase in the woods. So this is, like, a really good clue. It was. But it didn't lead to anything new. Well, no, it was from Flight 305, which was I guess I'm thinking it was cool. It was cool. Yeah. Like, if you were the hunter, you'd be like, I'm keeping this. Sure. But it was on the flight path, so it didn't generate any new leads. But it generated a lot of renewed interest in the case because, believe it or not, the DB. Cooper case had kind of fallen to the wayside in the last seven years. People just didn't think much about it anymore. Right, exactly. So it was like a dime a dozen, but all of a sudden, everybody's like, we got to make a movie. Who's the biggest movie star we've got? Tree Williams. Make him as DB. Cooper. And that's what they did. Has anyone ever seen the pursuit of DB? Cooper? No. That's right. Nobody. That's right. Everybody. God bless you, Seattle. Smart town. Chuck I figured here like somebody because it was a local thing. 1981, very bad movie was made, several starring Tree Williams and Robert De Vault right. Whose mom needed surgery at the time. The Layoff. Well, first of all, if you want to know how big a piece of garbage this movie is, it had three directors. And if you know anything about filmmaking, if you have more than one director, it's probably a really bad movie for one reason or another. If it has three, then it's guaranteed to be bad. But all you need to do is go home tonight. When you get back to your house boat, it's a quad. Does anyone here live in a houseboat? No. Okay, because I was going to ask if I could come stay over because those things are awesome. That was just sleepless in Seattle. You've seen that too many times. I know they exist because I tried to stay in an airbnb, actually, before I came here on a house boat. Yeah, I totally did. And I ended up in some stupid hotel downtown. Go home to your YouTubes type in pursuit of DB. Cooper and watch the first three minutes, because this movie literally starts with the point from where DB. Cooper jumps out of the back of the plane. It starts from the point where we know nothing else that happened is literally fictional from that point. Logan on the movie poster is fact. Schmacks. So it starts with the pursuit of DB. Cooper and has rubber devolved the. Names all come up and all that, and it's got a Jews heart plane. It's like and treat Williams. It's a terrible voiceover recording. You just hear. Yeah. And he jumps off the thing, because that's what you do. And he jumps off a plane and you're skyjacking. He parachutes down in the night and he crashes through some trees and lands, and then just this really little sad yahoo. Everything was sad about that tree. Williams gets on the ground and he takes out a cigar and he takes out a lighter, because that's what you do, too, when you successfully landed after skyjacking. He doesn't light the lighter, though. He rips open the money bag, he takes out a $100 bill and he lights that, and then he uses that to light a cigar. And that is how that movie opens. And it goes downhill from there. And Robert Dewald, you can tell, he starts every scene going like that. Let's do it. It's so bad. But I do encourage you. When I was a kid and it came out, it was like, we got HBO on my street. And it was a really big deal when we got cable and HBO. So I would literally watch any movie that came out. It was like crawl. That's on crawl was okay. Board games. Great movie. Sure. Pursuit of DB. Cooper. Why not? I was not exposed to that. Yeah. I think my mother shielded me from that movie. Good for you, mom. Yeah, but watch the first two minutes on no. 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 homepage and enter code stuff. We're still talking about the placard, weren't we? No. All right, we'll go to the first real good clue. Turns up in 1980, right? That's a big clue. Big clue. So there's a young lad named Brian Ingram. He was eight, I think, at the time, and his family was camping on Tina Barr. Are you guys familiar with Tina Barr? Do you guys know what that is? The Columbia River. Columbia river, yeah. So are we correct in understanding that you would just call that an island, not a bar? Okay. All right. So Tina Island everywhere else. The Ingram family was camping, and Brian Ingram was fashioning a fire pit for his family. Oh, Father is going to love this fire pit. He'll be proud of me yet. Oh, Father, won't you love me? And as he's going like this to the sand, poor little eight year old, he turns up a stack of bills. Several stacks of bills, actually three. And these stacks of $20 bills total $5,880. And he's like, Father. Father takes those and starts looking at them, and he's like, we should probably call the police. So they go and call the police. Yeah. Again, they call the Seattle police, which evidently all they do is forward calls to the FBI at this point. They're like. Seattle PD. Please hold. So the FBI is like, Read us a serial number. And he reads one, and they're like, Read us another, reads another. And they're like, that's TB. Cooper money. And Ingram's father is like, what did you say? And they're like, Nothing. So the FBI gets their hands on it, and actually, we should say it turns out they let little Brian Ingram take some of the money. $3,000 of this money, actually. Yeah. Later on, they returned a little. Not bad, right? And you want to know what's even better? In 2008, little Brian Ingram sold that money on ebay for 37 grand. Right? Yeah. Take that, Father. So the thing is, this money showed up in a place where it should not have been. It showed up 20 miles south of Ariel, Washington, in another river. So they were looking here in the Lewis River, right. Everybody knows Lewis River. Aerial Washington here. Tina Bars down here, just a little south of Vancouver is my air geography. Right? Vancouver, Washington, everybody. Vancouver, Washington. Is it like this? That's even more amazing. This is what I suspected, and I looked it up on Google Maps, and they're like, what do you mean, tina bar, Josh? So I wasn't able to conclusively find it, but I did have this idea that it somehow ended up above it. And an FBI hydrologist looked at this money, said, the FBI has a hydrologist, right. I'm retainer himal. Bach got a hold of him, and the guy was like, so this stuff has only been exposed to the elements for a year, even though it was found, what, nine years after the robbery, right? Yeah. And it got here one of two ways, the guy said. So the Columbia River flooded in 1974. Yes. And it was also dredged in, like, 1977. So one of those two probably got this here, but no one's ever said conclusively how it ended up where it was. Yeah, there you go. I got it. It would be another 28 years before any more clues turned up. So that's a very long wait. In 2008, just eight short years ago, some kids were playing on was it their own land in Amboy? Little south of Ariel. Anyone from Amboy? No. I suspected not. Are we in Washington? Okay, yeah, but nobody's from Amboy. We got more response in Birmingham. No, about Amboy. Yeah, they're like, we like the sound of that. So these kids were playing in the woods on their property, and they said, oh, look at there. There's a parachute. And they start pulling out this parachute for, like, an hour. It's like a magic trick. And they finally get to the end of the parachute, and they run and show Paw, and they say, paw, I found a parachute in the woods. What should we do? Right? And Paul recognized that this is the most exciting thing that ever happened in Amboy, Washington. Called the cops, who called the Seattle police, who called the FBI, and the FBI did something smart. They're like, well, you know, who would know if this was DB. Cooper's parachute? Good old Earl Coffee. That's right. He's not dead yet. That's celebratory none of us are dead yet. Right? That's a good way of looking at it, Chuck. Good save. Way to find the silver lining. So Earl Coste looked at this thing, and he's like, yeah. He said I'm sorry. He said Cooper's shoot was nylon. That's clearly silk. Good try. Yeah, I know whose shoot this is, actually. Yeah, it turns out that back in 1945, a jet pilot named Floyd Walling bailed out of his Corsair jet that was going down and parachuted out in the woods around Amboy, Washington. Right. Which isn't too far from Ariel, and it wasn't Cooper's shoot. You guys all remember when they found that parachute, right? Like, 2008. It wasn't that long ago. It was a big deal. And it wasn't his shoot, but it did suggest that possibly he could have made it because Lloyd Walling had, and he walked out of the woods in terrible weather, just like DB. Cooper would have had to. So it kind of shined a light on the whole thing again. Yeah, it kind of kicks them interest up. So over the years, there have been many suspects, like, we're talking over a thousand. The FBI won't even say how many suspects they've had or weirdly people confessing to be DB. Cooper. It's one of those strange things that people do where they claim to be something that will send you to prison. Well, a lot of them are already in prison, but they're in worse prison and hoping to go to good prison. No, it's true. Apparently, state prisoners will try to confess to federal crimes because the cinnamon buns are better in federal prison. I was thinking cinnamon buns. Were you really? Yeah. That's because there's cinnamon buns in our green room. Yeah. Well, no, we mentioned that in the prison that's like a commodity in prison, right? Cinnamon buns. Yeah. It's like currency. Yeah. All right. Cinnamon buns and cigarettes. We know. So there's a very famous sketch if you go home before you get on YouTube and look at the first three minutes of that terrible movie, which you definitely need to do, just Google. Get on the Google and type in DB. Cooper sketch. There's a very singular famous sketch of DB. Cooper. It looks like Kevin Spacey. It looks a lot like Kevin Spacey. Yeah. Or Don Draper again as Kevin Spacey. It would be Kevin Spacey as Don Draper. Yeah, sure. So if you go home and look at that, it's like, get this kind of shorter guy. It looks like he's sort of from the 50s or 60s. He's got the hair, he's got the sunglasses on and the tie, the skinny tie. And that's the only sketch that they have of DB. Cooper that they got from the flight attendant, specifically Tina Muclaw, because she spent, like, 5 hours right next to the dude. She, incidentally, was really messed up after this. Understandably. And she went to be a nun in Oregon in the 1980s, which is a little weird. I didn't know they had convents in Oregon. Sure, they've got convents everywhere. There's a convent right over in the Apple. Yeah. There's a comment behind us right now. But even worse than that, the Mother Superior, in an article I read at the convent, said she never really fit in here. You're not supposed to see that if you're a Mother Superior. That's a Mother Inferior, if you ask me. Good one. Sorry. You go ahead. No, you all right. If you look at some of the behavior that Cooper displayed, you're going to turn up some clues, and that's what the FBI does. It kind of examine what happened. He chose a military shoot, which could mean one of two things. Either he was former military, which could narrow it down, or it could mean he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to jumping out of a plane. Right. And the choice of that dummy shoot would definitely suggest that, because even recreational skydivers, say, like, even if you're just a military parachute, you're going to see a huge X on a parachute and instinctively shy away from that parachute. I thought it stood for Extreme, right? Mountain Dew extreme. So a lot of people say, I think he probably is ex military, had some parachuting experience, probably a paratrooper or something like that. Yeah. A lot of people point to the idea that he knew a lot about the plane. He knew about the wing flap degree that it could go to. He knew about altitude. A lot of the witnesses later on said that he clearly was very much aware of what was going on in the cabin. He just knew the plane very much. So a lot of other people say this guy was probably an airline employee, maybe even a pilot, actually, based on the altitude and stuff, that he gave them to fly. Yeah. And one of the weird things that he knew was that the 727 100 had an app staircase that you could lower and jump out of, because this wasn't common knowledge at the time. Apparently a small group of people knew this. You were either an employee of Boeing or you may have been in the CIA, because in the Vietnam War, we actually use the 727 over Cambodia, which is where we were not supposed to be. And they lowered that staircase of the 727 to drop supplies. It's a go. You can't steer, but go well, and then there's the whole thing with the SR 71 Blackbird. So a lot of Coopers still say that he might have been secretly a member of the CIA. Right. He knew about the aft staircase or the blackbird was scrambled, so they had some skin in the game. Right. So a lot of suspects have come and gone and come back and stayed over the years. The FBI says about well, they won't say, but a lot of people say about 1000, like Chuck said. But one of the first ones to emerge was a dude named Richard McCoy. And in February of 1972, I think four months after the DB. Cooper heist, Richard McCoy hijacked 727 100 flight, and he asked for $500,000 in cash, and he parachuted successfully out the back over Utah. Right. Yeah. So a lot of people say it's pretty similar. Yeah. Maybe that was DB. Cooper. Well, in 500 grand, to me, that makes sense. Like 200 grand worked out fine. I should have asked for more to begin with. Right. So let me try it again. Try it again. It turns out that he was a Green Beret in Vietnam, so that sort of fits with the whole profile. He looked a little bit like the sketch of Dan Cooper and a little bit yeah. He was 29 years old, so he was much younger than Cooper, but he didn't look 29. I'll say that he looked much older than that. He looked more like Don Draper than Charles Manson. Sure. I'll say that. Absolutely. So this guy gets caught. Actually. After pulling off this house initially. And he goes to prison. And he makes a fake gun out of dental plaster from the dentist in the prison. And he takes a truck by force and literally crashes through the front gate of the prison and escapes and is later killed in a shootout by cops. Which is to say Richard McCoy knew how to live. He did and die. And his family would later go on to say, actually, he was at home in Thanksgiving 1971, so it probably wasn't him. Right. Good suspect, though. Suspect number two is named Dwayne. Webber. Right. Is this your guy? No, this isn't him. No, this isn't my guy. I like this guy. He's fine. But I don't like him. You know what I mean? Yeah. So Duane Webber was a career criminal, and the definition of a career criminal is one where you and your alias have both done time in prison, and he and his alias had done a combined 16 years. Right. So he was on his deathbed, and his wife Joe came around and said, how are you doing? While I'm still dying, I have a confession for you I'd like you to hear. I am Dan Cooper. And Joe is like, I don't know who that is. And Dwayne blows up. They have a fight on his deathbed, never speak of it again, and he dies nine days later. So Joe starts poking around after that. She's like, who is this? Dan Cooper. Which is a legitimate question after experience like that that she went through. I would say so. And she finds out via Internet this is 1995, that Dan Cooper was DB. Cooper. And she said, you know what? I think that he was telling the truth. I think he was DB. Cooper, because you know what? I remember in 1979, we were on a vacation. We were on a car trip. We were kind of right around the area where the hijacking I'm sorry. Where the landing supposedly took place. And my husband stopped the car and just pointed and said, you know what? That's where DB. Cooper walked out of the woods. Which is a weird thing to say on vacation. Very weird thing to say. It's even weirder that she didn't say, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, agreed. There's another story later on. They were on another vacation. No, this is the same vacation. Oh, it's the same one? Yeah. All right. We'll just call this the communication vacation. The non communication vacation. Because they clearly didn't talk to one another, because he stopped over the Columbia River on a bridge. Literally stops on a bridge, gets out of the car, goes to the back, opens the trunk, and it's just gone for, like, ten minutes. Get back in the car, and they just drive on. And she doesn't say anything like this. I know. Yummy yummy. Would have been like, why did you take your foot up again? Emily would have had 300 questions on why we stopped on a bridge and I opened the trunk. Yeah. Not Joe. Not Joe. Yeah. So a lot of people still like Duane Webber, but he's actually the FBI said, no, that's not the guy. We ruled him out with DNA. Right? Yes. The next guy is my guy, Kenny Christensen. Chuckers that's right. He was a pretty well liked suspect for a while. He keeping with the series of family members outing their family as DB. Cooper. Yeah, which actually supports the family motto that I was brought up with never trust family. Proud Clark tradition. So his brother Lyle actually, this gets a little weird. He outed him as a suspect in an effort to get the screenwriter, Nora Efron, sleepless in Seattle. Right? Yeah. Didn't even see that coming. He tried to get Nora Efron to write a movie about DB. Cooper via his brother being the main suspect. And he weirdly. I guess he didn't have an agent. He hired a private investigator to get him in touch with Nora Efron. Right. Very strange. But he championed his own brother as the main suspect. Or outed him. That's another way to put it, for sure. And a guy named Jeffrey Gray wrote a really great article in New York Magazine, if you guys are interested about this particular guy. But there's a lot of similarities between DB. Cooper and Kenny Christensen. For one, he looks a lot like them right off the bat. He was a purser for Northwest Orient Airlines. That's a big deal. Former paratrooper. He was quiet. He smoked cigarettes. He drank bourbon, lived in the area where the hijacking took place, which is to say around here. And I think 2011, Jeffrey Gray, the guy who wrote that New York Magazine article, got in touch with Florence Shaftner and said, what about this guy? And Florence Shaftner said, I think he may be on to something here. Yeah. And like Dwayne Weber, Kenny Christensen, on his deathbed, try to make a confession to his brother Lyle. He said, I have something really important to tell you, but I'm not sure if I can say this. And Lyle said, no, I don't want to hear it. Did you guys know that you cannot hear a deathbed confession? Well, not only that, but I want nothing more than to hear a deathbed confession. I would be dying. I would be like I could be, like a dish. Yes. What do you have to say? But he's like, no, I don't want to hear what you got to say. Just go ahead and die. And then he lay on top of him. Yeah. Billy stops forming. Here, this pillow will make you comfortable. You sleep now, brother. What is going on with these people? Did you do the Buffalo Bill voice? No. Okay, that was coincidental. Who else do we have? LG Cooper. Yeah. Little on the nose with the name. He lived in the area, too. Yeah, and he was also outed by a family member, keeping with the Clarke family tradition. Right. This time it was his niece. And she said, you know what I remember? This was in 2011. This was not too long ago. She said, you know what I remember? Back in Thanksgiving, 1971, just like it was yesterday. And Uncle L D showed up bruised and bleeding for dinner, but he was euphoric, which was weird. And I'm just now mentioning this, right? And she said, by the way, she had a book coming out simultaneously. She's telling everybody. What did she say that she overheard? Because this is where she loses Chuck and me. Well, yeah, she said, he was my uncle, and he went to talk to my dad, and they overheard them in the hallway say, we did it. Our money problems are over. We hijacked the plane. The book by Simon and Schuster on sale now. Yeah. At your local airport. But there were a few things. It wasn't totally out of the blue. He was an engineer at Boeing. No, his brother was. Oh, his brother was yeah, but they were in on it together. Sure. Right. Because we hijacked the plane. Right. He's a silent partner and weirdly. Remember those Dan Cooper comic books? He was one of the ten people on the planet that was a fan of the Dan Cooper comic book. That's a little weird. It's pretty good. The weird thing is he didn't have any experience Skydiving, which a lot of people say, oh, it's just too insane to think that somebody who never Skydived before did their first Skydive during a heist out of a 727. But the people who knew LD. Cooper say, no, he was just crazy enough to do something like that. And you can make a case that that actually explains the choice of the dummy shooting the truth. That's right. And the military. Shoot, even. All right, so the legacy of DB. Cooper to this day, the heist remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in the history of the world. In America. In America. Really? Are the other ones. I'm only standing behind America. Okay, I got you. Yeah. Right. Every year, if you go to the aerial store in Tavern in Aerial, Washington, you can go to the DB. Cooper Days Festival. Yeah. Has anyone ever been to that? We should all go. Let's go right now. We're going to meet up this Thanksgiving. You can win a DB. Cooper lookalike contest if you look like Kevin Spacey. Yes. Or Charles Manson or Don Draper, which none of us do well. I'm talking about you and me. I look like Justin Bieber. I look like I ate Justin Bieber. I just put out my tooth. That's how I lost it. I broke it on Justin Beavers. Justin Bieber's. They're pliable, though. You can go to that and win the contest. There have been songs over the years. It was a terrible movie. There have been countless TV reenactments and dramatizations. Unsolved Mysteries. Am I right? Yeah. Everybody see that one. You can watch that on the YouTube, too. And there are many Cooper's websites, most notably one called Dropzone.com and Drop Zone actually used to be a recreational Skydiving site until it got mostly taken over by DB. Cooper. The Chinatown. They hijacked the website. They did, as a matter of fact. And this site is, like, so hot for Coopers Louis, that a guy named Secret started posting on it. And he seemed to have a lot of information about the DB. Cooper case that people didn't know about. And it turned out that these Cooper sluts were so good, they unmask the Secret guy as the new agent in charge of the DB. Cooper case, larry Carr, who's posting secretly as secret on the drop zone boards. That's how good these people are. He's like, no, I'm not. Yes, you are. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. He's like, okay, I am. You can go on YouTube, boy, you got a lot of YouTube. And people, you can go on YouTube as well and look up Larry Carr. And for many, many years, they kept all this evidence sort of under wraps. And you can look up videos now. Larry Carr said you know what? We should do the modern ages. Here we have the YouTubes, and we can let everyone see this evidence. Even though I think it's kind of funny that the FBI's official thinks, like, no, he totally died, right? No one told Larry Carr that. Let's make a YouTube video. Let's show everyone the skinny tie. All the kids are into it now. They show the clip on tie. You can see the money, the clip on tie. All this evidence, hoping for a lead. And he oversaw DNA evidence actually being removed from the tie. They found three people's profiles. They also found we don't even know, but pure titanium and impatience pollen. Hopefully that will eventually crack the case, but it made everybody just be like, what? We thought we had a handle on this impatience. Pauline, where did that come from? Bring us home, my friend. Thank you. The Cooper heist, it changed America forever, right? DB. Cooper is the reason we all started walking through metal detectors shortly afterward. He's the reason, seriously? He's the reason that the airlines were given the right to search your bags before you get on one of their planes. And they apparently reinstituted the death penalty for hijacking. I don't know when they took it off. Was it like sea ships being hijacked and then I have no idea. I don't either. But I think the coolest outcome of this whole thing is if you look at a Boeing 727, they still make them airplane. If you look at that a staircase in the back, there's a white paddle that holds the stairs closed. Pretty smart. You can't open the aft staircase mid flight because you have to go outside and pull the paddle down, and then the after case will open, and it's a pretty smart, easy solution to a pretty complex case. And they call that little white paddle a Cooper vein. That's right. And that is the story of DB. Cooper. And that is our show. Good night, Seattle. Good night, everyone. Thank you. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Awesome. 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 analyst 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." | |
c45f8c9c-5460-11e8-b38c-8f48d7c6535e | SYSK Selects: How Flamethrowers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-flamethrowers-work | Who first decided that it would be a great idea to shoot flame at other people from a distance? Josh and Chuck talk about the (very) early origins, history and technology of the flamethrower in this classic episode. | Who first decided that it would be a great idea to shoot flame at other people from a distance? Josh and Chuck talk about the (very) early origins, history and technology of the flamethrower in this classic episode. | Sat, 13 Jun 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=165, tm_isdst=0) | 21629057 | audio/mpeg | "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 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. 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. Hi, everybody. Chuck here on a Saturday with my Saturday Select pick from June 3, 2010. I think I picked this one because I just got done watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Once again, here is our episode how Flamethrowers work? Have you seen that movie? You know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I hope I didn't spoil it for you. So learn all about flamethrowers right now. 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. That makes this stuff you should know. Right, Chuck? Yes, Jerry. I love it when we get last second instructions. Yeah. And they don't make any sense. Just save it for the show, guys. Right? Or show that picture on the podcast, the audio podcast. Oh, goodness. How are you, sir? I'm fine. It's by all right, Friday, but it's actually Thursday. But it's almost Memorial Day. Yeah. Are you coming in tomorrow at all? No, I'm not comfortable saying either way. Okay, well, that'll be a surprise. I don't want to get in trouble. Well, I'm not. I'm still scared of the man. I know you're not, but you're all like, hey, look at me. I'm 40. I make my own decision. Not 40. Yeah. So, Chuck, you're George Carlin fan, right? Yeah, the late George Carlin. Just the late. All right. You always had the bummer, don't you? The late George Carlin couldn't be like, george Carlin is the greatest stand up comedian ever when he was alive. The worm food George Carlin, the dearly departed. Yes. I like him. Why? I have an obscure stand up bit that I'll bet you haven't heard of. That is apropos of our topic today. Let's hear it. So George Carlin had a bit about flamethrowers. I never heard that one. He said that the very presence of flamethrowers and I'm paraphrasing sure the very presence of flamethrowers means that at some point, sometime, someone said to himself, you know, there's a bunch of people over there that I'd like to set on fire, but they're too far away for me to get the job done. I wish there was something that I could use to throw flames on them. And as a result, we now have the flamethrower. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy, when you think about it that way. It is pretty interesting. It is. And when you start to really look into flamethrowers, you realize just how horrific the acts that humans inflict on other humans can be. Yeah. It's pretty awful stuff, actually. Yeah. Actually, all kinds of modern weaponry. I know. My brother in law is in the Marines. He told me about this. I think it's called a flashette. Some sort of bomb that explodes above people and sends thousands of razor blades shooting out. I think it's mainly used for clearing, like, jungle, but I can't clear jungle of enemy combatants. Exactly. So some sicko thought that up. We're like one step away from the alien weapons in District Nine, where people just blow up in an almost cartoonish fashion. Right. Yeah. It's coming 2015. Sure. The Atomizer or something, they'll call it. Yeah. What's odd is that first person that George Carlin envisions actually lived a lot longer ago than you would think. I was shocked. I was what tree? BC. Fifth century BC, man. Right. Well, it was a flamethrower. It was a very crude, vulgar, if you will, flamethrower. It was a long tube, sort of like a blow gun. And they filled it with solid stuff like hot coal and sulfur. Yes. Ideally, you don't suck in. That would be bad. Now, I was thinking that, too, like, you have to suck in the breath before you put the tube to your mouth or else you're in big trouble. Although that's the case with any blow gun. Right, sure, yeah. Did you ever make those in your kids? No, I never did. I was too busy burning stuff. You could have done both, apparently. True. So, yeah, they would shoot, I guess, hot coal or sulfur out at their enemy combatant. Right. Instead of a flame per say. Yes. Which I guess, ultimately it would bounce off of their arm and they'd be like, It burns. Right. And then they just tussle and leg wrestle and shake hands afterwards and go eat a boar. That's how that went to life in century BC with Josh. But leave it to the Greeks, who were one of the brainiest, most thieving cultures of all time. They probably got this idea from the Chemites, frankly. But there's this stuff called Greek fire, and actually, I can't say that the Greeks came up with it. It's called Greek fire. But the Byzantines, what we know as Turks, were most notorious for using this stuff. Yeah. And they think they're not sure because it was a long time ago. It was a mixture of liquid petrol and sulfur and stuff like quick lime petrol. British for gas. Yes, it is, yeah. And they would pump it out, actually from a reservoir through little narrow tubes. And like anything that goes from a big reservoir type system to a small thin one it would create pressure to shoot it out. Right. And then some unlucky guy would be the lighter at the end of it. And that would be like a real flamethrower, like dozens of feet. Yes. As we're going to learn, anybody whose job it was to deal with any aspect of flamethrowing was the unlucky guy. Yeah, I would say so. One of the more dangerous weapons you can use, but it was very effective. Number one, since it's oil based, this Greek fire could be used in naval battles because it would still burn even when it contacted the water. Sure. And so the Byzantines mounted it on their ships, these flamethrowers on their ships and on the city walls around Constantinople and basically just repelled people out of fear as much as burning them alive. Yeah. Their enemies were really freaked out, I imagine, when they first saw, like, fire shooting at them. Yes. Freaked out and intrigued. Especially in the case of the Chinese. See, what the Byzantines had was a single action pump. You just did the foot pump like you literally did the bells. Do you see that, Jerry? I'm following your command. The Byzantines had a single action bellows pump to where when you press down on the downstroke, it would push the liquid out. Right. Yes. You get like, a burst of fire and that's it. Right. Because on the upstroke, nothing was happening except with the bells were filling back up with air to press down and compress. Right. The Chinese said, hey, that's really funny because we have a double action bellows to where you are compressing air on the upstroke and the downstroke. So instead of your stupid little short bursts of Greek fire we have one long burst that just cuts you in half. Yes. Leave it to the Chinese. Get it all better. The wheelbarrow, the kite, the hang glider, the flamethrower, you name it. Gunpowder. And actually gunpowder equal the demise of flamethrowers for about 1000 years. Right. Yeah. As soon as gunpowder came along, they were like we're just jumps with fire when we can actually shoot a gun. That's the way of the future. Right. And it was. But so it's the flamethrower, as it turns out. Yeah. Because it laid dormant for about 1000 years. And then in World War One, actually, right before World War I, the Germans a very warlike state at the time where they said, you know, what exactly can we add to our arsenal that is just totally scary and wildly destructive. Yes. Let's look back through the annals of historic weaponry and find something. And they look through and they said the flamethrower. Yeah. Richard Fielder is an engineer in 19 One. They credit him with inventing it. But he clearly was using old technology as the initial idea, at least. Right. It's a clever design, though, isn't it? Yeah. Because from this original design, there have been some polishing moments for the flamethrower over the years. But from that modern era, the design has remained relatively the same. Right. It's like a three tank design. Yeah. The flaming Burger, is that what it's called? Yeah. Nice. The German is called the ladder husband. Well, yeah. Let's go ahead and explain how it works with the tanks. All right. And this is the handheld flamethrower, which is the one that I guess was most readily used in combat. Yeah. And it's the one you see like, a guy's wearing these tanks on his back and he's got the rifle and it's just right. So you got two outer tanks, and those are filled with the flammable fuel, oil based petrol, if you will, like Greek fire. Sure. And then there's a center smaller tank which holds a compressed gas like butane. And it would feed the gas through a pressure regulator connected to the tubes. Right. And you can take it from here. Well, this is why I think it's very clever. The butane served a dual purpose one, it was compressed, so when you open the valve, it would push the liquid fuel out of the tanks into the tube and ultimately in the reservoir. And the gun pressure regulator is what they would switch on. There is another tube that came directly out of the third tank that held the compressed gas like butane. Yes. And this tube went directly to the ignition valve. Right. So it served as the igniter later on. Right. Because it was the butane that was actually burning. When you open the ignition valve, the butane flows to the end, mixes with air, the end of the rifle. Right, sure. And then there's two triggers. There's the fuel release trigger. Right. Yes. And then there's the ignition trigger. And the ignition trigger is basically you're operating a battery that operates a spark plug, sends a current, generates heat, ignites. The butane. Now you have that little blue flame on the end. Yes. That's what you've seen in movies, like if you see them around. Yeah, exactly. You see the little, like, three inch flame coming out the end. Right. That's actually butane burning. The fuel hasn't been released. The hellfire has not been opened yet. Or released yet. That's when you squeeze the fuel release trigger. Yes. And then that pulls back a little valve plug because you obviously want it plugged or else you're going to have a big mess on your hands. You'll be on fire very quickly. Yeah. So when you pull the fuel release trigger, it pulls the little valve plug back and then all the fuel supply suddenly rushes through to the tip of the gun where the flame is and boom. There you go. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. What's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all there's downtime for days. That's right. And 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. Yeah. And 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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Amazonandhalopeetscom in 1942, the Army Chemical Warfare Service, I think is what it's called. They came up with a little something called Napalm, which is ultimately a gasoline or petrol in the case of Chuck and our British friends, a gasoline thickening agent. Right. So with a slightly thickened gas, you have a longer range. It carries further because it has more mass or girth or whatever. There's less friction from the ground coming up. Right, sure. And it also can be concentrated more easily. Right. So basically that was one of those real big Polishing moments. It went from just gas which sprays, to thick gas, which sticks and burns. It evaporates much less quickly, so it'll burn forever. And it's really difficult to put out. And if you get covered in it, you're entirely in trouble. Yes. You're out of luck. And they would mount these on, well, PT boats, for one. Have you ever seen the videos of those things? Like cruising down the river, shooting in napalm into the forest? Well, there's a picture of it in the article. I've never seen video of it. It's pretty wicked. Yeah. And they called them zippo flamethrowers. Right. Oh, really? Because the ignition system failed so frequently. It's just like on a gas grill. Would they have to light it with a zip? With a zip code. You're kidding. No. And that's the other unlucky dude, I guess. Yeah. He'd be like, don't get too close to it with his hand. Right. And so Flamethrowers, it wasn't just some guy where it would be like a bunch of infantry guys and then some guy on the end happened to grab the flamethrower that morning when they went out, and it's just they were part of a tactical strategy. What would happen was riflemen would lay down cover fire. Let's say you come to the mouth of a cave and there's a bunch of enemy combatants in there, and they're shooting you, and they have snipers, and you're in big trouble. All your rifleman lay down fire on this cage. Those guys can't move cover fire. Right. To allow your flamethrower man to get close. He was highly susceptible at this point because of what he's wearing on his back. Yes. All it takes is one good shot to one of those tanks, and that guy's gone. Or a bad shot. Just a shot. Sure. Yeah. If you come in contact with it, with the bullet, the flamethrower guy gets close, basically cooks everybody, burns everyone to death in that case. That's his job. Right. And then after that, the munitions guys come in and explode the cave so it can never be used again. And that's Cyanora for cave dwellers. Yeah. Speaking of a quick death, I've always heard when I was a kid that if you were a flamethrower in war, your average lifespan is like, 30 seconds in combat. Is that right? Well, I always heard that, and I scoured the Internet, and I could not find anything to verify that, but that's what I always heard. I thought that was an interesting tidbit. I did read that most people who were flamethrower operators didn't survive. I would imagine it's a pretty dangerous thing to be toting around. Yeah. And they also had assistance because the assistance would open and close the valves in the pack form. That was the whole job. It's always a two man team, so both of them would usually not make it. If I was the assistant, I would turn on his little valve and then run for cover and then run up and turn it off again. And I probably be pretty unpopular with the flamethrower guy. Probably then the flamethrower guy was well liked, because if you can take out an entire gun nest of people, then everybody's going to applaud you and clap and probably not get too close, though, because you're going to die eventually. Yeah. I'd rather be a sniper. I think that'd be like I play Call of Duty. I got a PS Three now. Did I tell you that? No. Wow. Chuck. It was given to me by my step dad. No, father in law. You did tell me. My stepfather in law. Okay. And so I got just a couple of games. I'm not, like, a huge gamer at all. Like, I think a Nintendo, like the first Nintendo is the last thing I actually own, but I play Call of Duty now. I like shooter games, too. That's pretty fun. But you choose to be a sniper on that? Well, no, there are just certain levels where you can be a sniper. Like, you'll pick up a sniper gun if you want. Got you. And I always usually kind of just hang back and pick guys off. Yeah, especially guys with flamethrowers. Here we go again. Two liberal peacenecks like us, when it comes to this war stuff, we just get all giddy. Well, for some reason, I was reading a passage about a flamethrower operator in World War II who received the Medal of Honor for invading a Japanese, I think they're called pillbox. It was a little gun nest, burning them all and burning them all alive. And the guy wrote that there were some muffled screams and then silence. Wow. It's like being burned alive is pretty much everybody's worst death, I would think. So. It's up there. Well, we had worse way to die. That's right. Up there. And I think if I remember correctly, burning to death is consistently the number one, unlike informal polls. Right. I imagine it's pretty painful. And it happened a lot in World War One. Two, Vietnam, I imagine. Korea. This is a horrible weapon. Absolutely. But you can find civilian applications for it, can't you? Yeah. Well, before we move on to that, we also need to say that they were on tanks as well. So it wasn't just boats. They used them on tanks. And the design was basically the same. You just had a lot more fuel and you had, like, piston rotary pumps to get a lot more length on your shot guth and girth. Yeah. The backpack mounted ones had a range of about 50 yards. Right. 46 meters. That's a long way, though. Yeah. Let's have a football field. You don't have to get that close. Sure. Yeah. I wonder who the first enemy that was like, he's got a flamethrower, but we're way too far away. They were within like, 45. Exactly. Hey, summer is here, my friend. Which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music. That's so good? It's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah. From the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between. Hosts Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can 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? 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@halopeets.com civilian applications. Forced firefighters. Forced firefighters? Is that how you say it? I don't know. They actually use these when they do like the prescribed burning. Like sometimes they'll burn well, not just the firefighters. They do prescribe burns anyway. Sure. And then sometimes the firefighters do that. They'll burn a section to cut it off right there. Right. And that's what they do with flamethrowers. Yes. Which actually kind of made me want to go get a job with the forestry service. You could burn things on purpose? Well, with a flamethrower, yeah. Did you hear about this car thing in South Africa? Theft deterrent system that burned you? No. Yeah, I don't think it's still around. This is like twelve years ago and a South African man invented it was called the Blaster, and basically it would shoot a man high fireball is what they called. It what at you if you tried to break into the car for a mere 3900 rand, which is about $7. And this is $1,998 now. It's like $650. Okay. And it would squirt liquefied gas from a bottle in the trunk through two nozzles located on the front door. And the rub is you couldn't turn one on and turn one off. So if a guy was breaking in, like the driver's side door, it would still shoot fire out of the passenger side to whomever might be walking by unluckily on that site. Yeah, that's an invention that wasn't fully thought through. I would think so, but apparently he sold a bunch of them at the time and he said it's non lethal, but it would definitely blind a person, is what he said. And keep them from stealing your car. Yeah, because they can't see cars any longer. That's terrible. Yeah. Way to go. South Africa. Lastly, Chuck, fire breathers, they're a form of they follow the basic principles of flame throwing by drinking kerosene. There you go. If you want to learn about fire breathers, we have an article on them if you want to learn more about flamethrowers. And before you send us a listener mail, we are aware of flamethrower exhaust systems. We've both seen Greece before. Yeah, you can type any word you want to into the handy search bar. How stuff works.com. It'll yield something interesting, I guarantee you that. So, Chuck, listener ma'am. I'm going to call this I love this dude, and his name is Guy. And not as in, hey, guy. His real name is Guy. I got you. Guy from San Francisco says, guys, just listen to the Art Theft podcast. And by the way, we do know about the Paris heist that just went down. Yeah, pretty cool. Very intriguing. For future monetary incentive, neither here nor there. However, I have a little habit that I thought I might like to share that loosely. Pertains. I have never stolen art knowingly, however, I do frequently. I travel frequently, and I'm subjected to much distasteful art, guilty of being a budget traveler. So there's the rub. But to amuse myself, I like to take the horrible art off the wall, take it out of the glass and frame and add the eversolidest detail. This guy's wonderful. He does this in hotels. A chicken in the corner by the barn, a seagull flying over the crest of a wave. A beer bottle and fishing pole by the babbling brook. I do it in every hotel, motel, hotel, hostel, bungalow, you name it. I will stay there and I will change the art. They have art and hostels now? Yeah, probably not. It makes me chuckle to think that maybe one day someone will be staring in an awful hotel painting and look closely and notice one of the gallant cowboys has a ten of skull by his left boot heel. So if you stay in cheap hotels, keep your eyes out, people. You may have stayed where a guy from San Francisco has stayed. Just don't turn on the black light. That's all I have to say. That's awesome. That is awesome. Man, I love to hear people doing cool stuff. Vandalism. Yeah, but it's vandalism with, like, an eye toward coolness. It's vandalism. Right? Well, if you're a starving artist who shows your work at the Airport Hilton conference room, we want to hear from you. Just send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is 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. A 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." | |
How Cremation Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-cremation-works | Cremation is a burial process practiced around the world, but how exactly does it work? Josh and Chuckers take a detailed look at cremation's history, practices and controversies in this episode. | Cremation is a burial process practiced around the world, but how exactly does it work? Josh and Chuckers take a detailed look at cremation's history, practices and controversies in this episode. | Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:42:21 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=16, tm_min=42, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=243, tm_isdst=0) | 40245930 | audio/mpeg | "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. It's charles W. Chuckers Bryant with a full beard. Actually yeah. Do you know what that would smell like if it caught fire? It would smell like mayonnaise. It smell worse than mayonnaise ever did. Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell of burning hair or mayonnaise. Burning mayonnaise would be particularly bad if you have hair on top of it. Yeah. Burning hairy mayonnaise is the worst thing you can burn. So, Chuck, hopefully that will never happen while you're alive. It could possibly happen after you're deceased if you're cremated, like a fellow named Ralph White who you know about. I have never heard of the guy. You have to chuck, do you remember that horrid webcast we used to have? Yes. There was a guy who was the president, past president, of the Adventurers Club. And not to be confused with the one from South Park, this guy was a real life adventure. And I think he was like a cameraman for a skydiving show called Ripcord. National Geographic. He was there when they discovered the Titanic. Yeah. But he's with Jim Cameron. Yeah. He was second director, I think, on Titanic. Yeah. Jim Cameron was also in that club, the little club in La. That's right. Yeah. I'll bet Ralph White got Jim Cameron in. Yeah, probably. And are we calling him Jim now? I didn't realize we were on that friendly basis. Jim or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White had a pretty cool post not post mortem. He had a very cool posthumous story. And that was he was cremated. And his friends were so dedicated and loyal to him that whenever they go on to travel now, they take about a teaspoon or a 10th of a teaspoon some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated remains and scatter them wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah. I think he's in the Whaling Wall in Jerusalem. Yeah, he's in Lake Bacal. He went on a space flight. And Ralph White's posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all the wonderful things you can do with the cremated body. Yes. Which is one of the reasons why people choose to be cremated. It's highly portable, right? Absolutely. And it's nothing new. Chuck cremation has been going on for a very long time, hasn't it? Yeah. We could rattle off every country and when they started, but we really could because of this fine article written by a freelancer. Right. Michelle Kim. I've never heard of this person before, but Kim is a really great article. But it has been around since prehistoric times. China has been doing it since 8000 BC. That's more than 100 years ago. More than 100 years ago. One part of the history I did find interesting, though, and fitting since we did our Freemason cast was the Freemasons during the French Revolution. Kind of pushed for cremation because it was the whole not anti religion, but just sort of mixing it up with religion. No, they were anti Catholic church. Well, yeah. Very much against the church. And they were saying if you have yourself cremated, it's kind of like sticking your thumb up your nose to the church. Right. Well, because Catholics said you can't get cremated for a long time. Yeah. Well, it kind of contradicts the whole resurrection thing. The body's kind of got to be intact. Like, the one thing we can't do, we can rise from the dead. But if you're burned yes. Sorry. And you don't want to come back and find that you're nothing but ashes because you're going to be ticked off. Right, right. The actual cremator, the cremation chamber, which I like to call the cremator, even though that's not right. It sounds like a Krebstar product from the adventures of pete and Pete. It does. It was invented in the late 18 hundreds by Professor Brunetti, and it started in earnest in the United States in Pennsylvania in 1876. Yeah. When Pennsylvania is a non licensed state still, which I thought was interesting. Is it really? Well, there's a little bit of a scandal that we'll talk about later that apparently the crematory business. You either have fine, upstanding people or, like, scum of the earth running these places. Right. Yeah. Let's talk about how this works. All right. Yeah. Well, I got a step for you real quick, though. As far as its popularity, in 1958, 3.6% of bodies were cremated, and just a few years ago, that number is at 34%, and they expect it to be half by 2025. Right. Well, there's a lot of reasons why. Right. I mean, we're running out of land. Sure. There's a lot of people who think that burials aren't so green, which is true. Yeah. Because they use really nice woods and metals, and you have to pour cement lining the bodies and balm. So it's going to eventually leak out, all of those things. Right. We'll talk later about whether or not cremation green. And a spoiler is it's not. Sort of is, but it's not. Well, it's not green, but it's definitely not green. It's not brown either. It's not black. It's somewhere in between. So, Chuckers, you ready to talk? Yeah. Like, just the actual process is pretty gruesome. Initially, they store the body in a cool room just to keep it nice and fresh. For the cremation, it's usually examined by a coroner, and they have to sign off and say, this is good to go, because you can't exhume the body later on if you need to. Exactly. So no accidental death that hasn't been fully vetted. Like, I imagine they wouldn't cremate like someone that had any kind of relation to a crime or anything like that, at least not for a long time. And then what happens is they remove some things from your body if you have the following pacemaker breast implants. I know. Silicone breast implants, prosthesis or cancer seeds, the little radioactive seeds that they inject into a tumor and then shoot with like a laser or a radio frequency generator. Yeah. None of this stuff is good for cremation. So they remove that from your body. But there's some things that can't be removed. Well, they could remove it, but they tend not to. Fillings? Mercury fillings? Yeah. Jewelry and glasses, like some people want, like you would be buried with your glasses on. They want you cremated with your glasses on. Right. But in some countries I didn't look this up, so I don't know what countries. There are laws against anybody who's cremating a body from touching anything on the body. Right. You got to do it how you get it. Right. That's what they say on the shirt they can get off. And then they put the body, once it's been removed, these things into a flammable box, like a pine or cardboard box or one made of hairy mayonnaise. Yeah. They slide it into the incinerator is already preheated, by the way yes. To at least 1100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 593 degrees Celsius, I think, off the top of my head. And that's hot, Chuck. It's got to be hot. But that's not like you don't just put the body in and then it just burns. It just catches fire. Right. No, they actually shoot a column of flame at the torso. Like a jet engine. Yeah, basically. So once the body's in what's it called? The retort. It's called a retort. They slide it in there on the old metal rollers and families sometimes you can watch this process through the window if you want. Yeah. And if you're Hindu and if it's a Hindu cremation, you can actually push go, right? Yeah. I guess to start the column of flame. Right. You just like so long. Yes. Tina. Aunt Tina, the Hindu. So the door is sealed up. Obviously, like you said, they aim at your torso and then this is what happens. This is the gruesome part, as you would expect when you have a flame shot at your torso, it ignites the container initially, obviously, your body starts to dry out. All that water that's in your body leaves pretty quick. Yeah. I would imagine your soft tissue tightens up, it burns up and it vaporizes your skin discolors and blisters and splits just great. Like a bratwurst on a grill. Yeah, exactly. The muscle charge, it flexes and your limbs actually can extend like your limbs are moving. I looked all over the place to find the discussions about this stuff, about like a body sitting up. That's the closest thing I saw. Was there's a body sit up? I think it was a wiki answer. So it has zero credibility. But if your muscles are contracting or tightening or doing anything like yeah. Your arms can go up and crazy I mean, imagine the people in 8000 BC in China. They're like, Wait, they're not dead. They're, like, waving yes. At a goldfish. I tried to flush one time, and I put him in, and he started swimming again. And then I put him back in the tank, and he just floated. It was just like the water motion that was well, no, I didn't flush it. When I put him in the toilet, he started moving every single time. It was weird. That is weird. I'm pretty convinced he was dead, though. Or he was by the time I froze him in a block of ice. You'll find out when you get to heaven. That's right. So your muscles have charred and tightened, and your limbs are flailing about, and your bones, obviously, are the last thing to go, and they are calcified and then kind of just flake off and crumble into little bone bits. Yeah. And chuck or the stuff that is left are these charred bones that are really doesn't take a whole lot, I think, to pulverize them, but it does take an extra step, and they actually do hold their shape. So you go from a body in a box to, like, a charred skeleton is what it ultimately comes down to. And you either rake or sweep the remaining, like, bone material into something called a cremulator. Cremulator. And that's a grinder that grinds up everything and pulverizes it into this fine grainy well, actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah. They described it as, like ash is sort of a weird word because it's not like charred ash from your fire. It's more like gravel, they said, like little tiny bits of gravel. Right. Because it's pulverized bone. Right. Yeah. And it usually takes about two to 3 hours, depending on the kind of crematory, I guess, whatever machine you put it in. Yeah. There's different kinds. Right. And how big your bones are, too. That has something to do with it, too. But also I found that it depends on the level of well, there's something called the Entertain Four. You should go on to Matthewscrematorium.com. They have specs, and it's just weird because these guys are, like, selling their crematorium. Right. And here's all the specs for them. This thing is like state of the art InterTech of and it burns the body in no more than 75 minutes. Really? That's pretty good. That must have been the modern ones that they say are, like, automated now. Well, they also sell them ones that burn the body in 4 hours. Really? So it's like low end to high end. Okay. You know what I mean? Pay for what you get. Yeah. And at the end of this whole process, you're going to end up with about three to \u00a39 of ash. And actually, that's where it depends on your bones. It doesn't matter, like, how fat you are, because I think that burns away pretty easily. Yeah. I would think that's, like, your bone structure. Yeah. Bones tough to burn. I guess so, Chuck, these things we said that they are preheated to about 10010 degrees, right? But they get up to about 2000. So you can't just build this thing. You can't build an inner tech or whatever you're building out of regular brick or cement or something like that. I think it exploded the first time you tried to do this. Yeah, for sure. So these specialized composite brick material, and actually, over time, the interior will be eaten away by the heat, and the expansion and contraction will actually lose surface. So apparently what's recommended is after the bricks lose about half of their width, they have to be replaced. Yeah. And it sounds kind of crude, but the way it's described in the article and the way I've heard it described is it's sort of like a pizza oven. They're made of similar things, right. Cook a pizzabody, cook a body. So these things go for 250,000, something like that. And they use natural gas or propane or propane accessories or diesel, I've seen, but they used to burn coal. And I imagine that was a real pain to incinerate a body back in the think they were still using coal. Got to keep stoking the fire. Right. Another thing I thought was cool was and I started thinking, too, when you burn a fire, obviously you see ashes kind of floating all over the place. And I thought, well, surely they've got to account for that when you're burning a body. And they do. They ignite a second flame in a side chamber, and that burns off dust that's trying to escape the retort. And some of them even shoot water at the top to make sure none of the dust escapes out of the top of the plume. I guess it's called wet scrubbing. Wet scrubbing, yes. What else do we do? Oh, that was the fluoride thing, right? Yeah. Scrubbing the inside of the and carbon sequestration. Yeah. My brain is getting too full these days. Mine, too. We need to stop doing the show. I know. And after it's all done, you can actually get remains, cremated remains. And I found that they say that you shouldn't call them cremains. That's what the C-A-N-A says. Why? They just say it's sort of a crude thing that people, non industry people say, let's just shorten it. And they're like, they think it's disrespectful. Got you. So we won't say the word cremains. But you can have your cremated remains mailed to you via USPS if you want. But that's it in the United States. Yeah, you can't do it via FedEx or Ups or you can't if they know what's in the box. Right. And I couldn't find out why. There's no explanation on Ups or FedEx's site. They just say, we won't ship that right. They also won't ship a disinterred body. Well, thank goodness for that, I guess. But the only suggestion I could find why they wouldn't do this. You can't insure cremated remains. Yeah, that's probably it. Which I imagine they ensure everything somehow, and they want to get hit with a lawsuit. Right, because people get mad when you lose there. Yeah, probably so. The other cool thing about the USPS. Though, is that they make sure to point out that it's got to be a sift proof box. You don't want, like, ashes leaking out the side, and you have to have someone's got to sign for it. Right. So usually if you don't get an earn or whatever, when you get your cremated remains, the crematorium will have them in, like, basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic lined box designed to hold this kind of thing. Right, yeah. And there may be just, like, very small remnants of other people with your remains. Like, they do the best job they can. They burn one body at a time. Like, if you're on the up and up, as a good cremator should be. But inevitably, when you're talking about ash and you're sweeping it out, there might be a little bit of Joe mixed in with Harry, if you know what I mean. Well, I know what you mean. So, Chuck, also, I guess the industry standard is just like, you don't want to switch babies in the hospital at the other end of life, you don't want to switch cremated remains of dead people. Right. That's good policy. So apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth, like a metal disk or put it somewhere on your person so that when you're melted down, this thing is still there so you can be identified. Right. You've got paperwork that goes with you from the moment you come to the crematorium to the moment you leave. That's supposed to be with you every step of the way. And basically all this is supposed to avoid a mix up, right? It's supposed to. It doesn't always, especially when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the up and up, as you said. And there's been plenty of examples of that, haven't there been? Yes. I was a little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes on in some states. Yeah, only until the Tristate Crematorium scandal, I think 2002 did Georgia close its loopholes, and now all crematoriums have to be licensed by the state. Yeah, in Georgia, I actually got a different number here. She said 23 of the 50 states license, I've actually got only eight do not license is what I found. That's flattering. But if you look, all of these examples in this article are in the $2,000. So I wonder if that caused, like, a expansion or crematorium regulation reform. I would say so, because if you what happened in Georgia will tell you in a second. But if you see this on the news and you're in Pennsylvania, they don't want that kind of news hitting their state so I would imagine it probably spurred some action. It hit Pennsylvania, bud. Yes, it did. Let's talk about the Georgia guy first. Yeah. Ray brent Marsh. Yeah. Pleaded guilty and apologized. He owned a crematorium in Noble, Georgia. And neither Chuck Nora. I know where that is, so don't ask. I think it's probably in the Northwest because it's where Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama come together, which is why we call it Tristate Crematorium. You're serving all three states? Sure. And in all three states, the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically half buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke down and they just never got it fixed. Yeah. The incinerator broke. Yeah. And so I think 336 bodies in total were found. That originally they could only charge him with accepting money and fraud for services not rendered. Yeah. There is no law in the books. They hit him with some other stuff, though. What else did they get? I think it must have come out after this article. He was actually charged with almost 800 counts of theft and abuse of a corpse. So they actually charged him with stealing these corpses. You don't want to go to prison with an abuse of a corpse. Wrap on your head. They'll find out about that. Yeah. And he was sentenced to 8000 years in prison and plea bargained that down to twelve years somehow. Did you say 8000 years? Yeah. That was almost a spit take. Yeah. You were drinking your beep drink and you almost spit it out. So 8000 down to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him. There was a $36 million settlement from 58 funeral homes that sent bodies to this guy. So they sued the funeral homes and then they brought a suit, an $80 million civil suit settlement against this guy and his father's estate. And they probably don't have that kind of dough, so they're probably going to do what happens when that happens, which is you go after the insurance company. Oh, yeah. The Georgia Farm Bureau. The guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fix. He doesn't have 80 million. He's got 300 bodies in his backyard, but yeah. So he's in jail right now. As far as I know. Yeah. Almost for 8000 years. I know. That's a long sentence. You said Pennsylvania didn't want that to happen. It did. In 2005. What happened there? There was a guy who ran a crematorium and he had a deal with the local women's hospital to cremate the remains of preterm babies, basically aborted fetuses. This guy's job was to incinerate them. That's probably not a fun contract to sign. No. Even if that's the way you make your money, you can't feel great about closing that deal, right? Yeah. You don't go out for a big fat steak. Exactly. The authorities, I guess, were tipped off and they went into his garage and found in boxes the remains of 300 fetuses. Actually, 19 of them were post term. Really? So they were born children that he was supposed to cremate and he didn't. But they could only get them on 19 counts because they're unborn. Right. So they weren't technically human beings under the eyes of law. So he didn't get anything for those. But for the 19, he got in some trouble. I don't know. But he had them in boxes in his garage, too, which is apparently the Mo. Of the shady crematorium operator. Yeah. I hope they threw the book at him. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they did. That makes me angry. Can't you tell how angry I am? In Lake Elsinore, California, Josh, in 2003, a Dodgy owner was selling body parts for medical research, like heads to people, which means that he was cutting these heads off, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. And does they just say prison? And then in Mississippi, there was a really nice guy named Mark Seep who was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping them into trash bins, and he was found guilty and put in jail, too. Yeah. Did you say that Brent Marsh was giving people wood ash and cement? I didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did. Yeah. Because it's not like he was just like, oh, I got nothing, and they burned up entirely. He was like, here's some cement, and earn. Thanks for the money. Yeah. I understand a guy's incinerator burning and maybe not having the money to fix it, but I bet you anything he may have made enough money to get it fixed after that and was like, hey, I'm kind of onto something here. Right. We don't actually have to do this. Pure profit. Exactly. So, Chuck, before we get into things that you can do with the remains of a loved one, right? Yes. Can we talk about whether or not it's green? I got a couple of stats here that I think are important. Yeah. So a lot of people are, like, a natural burial or regular burial is not very green. And it's expensive, too, between, like, seven and ten grand. But then they also say, I don't want to go entirely green, which is bio cremation, which is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about that before. And what you can do with the dead body. Remember, it turns you into oil that's poured down the drain. That's pretty awesome. It is. So this has to be something in between, though, right? For the conscientious person who maybe kind of believes in an afterlife and wants to do more with those bodies? How do you kind of believe in afterlife? It's a vague knowledge. I wonder where you end up trying to believe it's like a tick sucking, really here, like hot dog pack. So in 2009, Reuters is doing this article on bio cremation. They were talking about how green is regular cremation, and it's not green at all. Like you think about it. You're using tons of natural gas. Sure. Not tons, it's hyperbolic. But you're using a lot of natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're using a lot of electricity. There's a mix. Both. So apparently it releases a standard cremation, releases about \u00a3880 of CO2, just one body, and that's the big enemy. And it uses enough energy to basically power a 500 miles road trip. Really? So not one and the same? Like, these are two separate things. Right. So it uses the energy to get you cross country 500 miles and depending on the size of your country, and it releases \u00a3880 of CO2 into the air. I wonder what that compares to, footprint wise, to standard burial. Is it still better? I don't know. And I think it's just entirely different ways where I think maybe a natural or a regular traditional burial, it's more polluting, like directly polluting into the ground. It's using up resources where a cremation has less of an impact over time. But immediately it's a lot of input. It requires a lot of input. Got you. That's my concept of it. Right. I wouldn't mind being burned, but I like the which country was it where they burn you on top of the wood by the banks of the river? It's India. Yeah, I like that. That's how I would want to go. Well, buddy, if you live in India and you're a Hindu, that's exactly how you have to go. That was a perfect segue of religion. I guess. So you said Hindus, they mandate cremation. Yeah, they're the only religion that does. Yeah. And it's called I'm going to go ahead and give it a whirl here. Anton Sankar, which is last. Right. Nice. You want to hit the other one? Antd. Yeah. Antsd, I think, which is last sacrifice. Yeah. And those are one of the 16 life rituals. I guess it would be the last one, actually. I probably be corrected. There may be one after that, the whole rebirth and all that. Maybe. But I guess the smoke gets the body to the next life. I bet it's one of the last four. I'll bet it is. I'll wager on that. Like you said, they're Hindu, so they say you dispose of this body and it ushers you and helps you be reborn into the next life when it remained. And while Hinduism is the only religion that mandates you have, that's how your body is disposed of. Right. Sikhism and Jainism both kind of strongly endorse it, although they don't require it. Right, right. And you were saying that they cremate people in India along the banks of the river. Yeah. Most of their cremations, from what I understand, are open air cremations. See, I like that idea. There's a city called Varanasi, which is apparently the holy city to be cremated in, and you are cremated out in the open along the banks of the Ganges. Yeah. That's nice. But they do have an electric crematorium, but since there's a billion people who live in India and all want electricity, this place suffers power outages. Really? That's sad. If you are a Christian, Jewish or you're Muslim. Josh they generally frown upon it or outright prohibit it, depending on which religion it is. Yeah. Islam prohibits it. Yeah. They want you buried that day, the same day you die, preferably. Right. So in Judaism, Chuck, I don't think it's actually restricted. I think you can if you want to, but among Orthodox and Conservative Jews, the memory of the Holocaust sure is still understandably smart. To the point where they're like, why would you want to be cremated? There's legacy is still around. So there's a lot of Jews who don't want to be cremated even though their religion doesn't prohibit it. Right. Understandably. Protestants actually is where you're going to be. Fine. Some more open minds to cremation. They don't have any literature that says you should do this, but they're definitely more understanding about it than other religions. Right. And we talked about the Catholic Church having a problem with it because of its association with subversiveness toward the Church. But in the Catholic Church said, hey, we've never really prohibited it. Right. You can get cremated if you want. And apparently they gave it a boost. Burger people really catered to the Catholics in the found. Kenneth says that 30% of Catholics are cremated now, so that's quite a boost, I would say. Right. The Mormons also, they're not big on cremation, although they don't prohibit it. And in countries where it's traditional, they're like, yeah, please go ahead. But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay. Nay. Good point. Thanks. Where are we now with some can we talk about finally what you can do with your remains? I think it's hard time, don't you? Not what you can do with your remains, because you clearly can't do anything. But that's not what you can do with your remains. Right. But what your friends and family can do with your remains. And sometimes they like to keep you in an earn and they have these little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium and they just hold ashes, from what I understand. Like your earn. Yeah, it's like a vault. So some people choose that costume dough, obviously. Go ahead and tell us about your hero. I know you want to mention that. Who Hunter T? Yeah. He was mixed with fireworks and shot out of a cannon, 153 ft cannon, also called the Memorial Tower. And apparently it was an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this and anybody can do it. And Johnny Depp paid for the whole party, right. Yeah. And from what I saw, if it was this British company, he would have paid about the equivalent of $3,000 for a large fireworks display. That's what they charge money. Actually, I did see the average cremation cost is about $1,600. Yeah. And the average funeral. I saw five grand in this article. It's ten grand decided, let's say somewhere between five and $10,000. But back to things you can do. We would be remiss if we didn't mention to our nerd friends that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek fame, everybody knows this, he was shot into space. So was Timothy Leary. Yeah, that's right. By the same company. Celestis. And they're still in business, as far as I know. I bet they are. And then you got Life Gem, which we've talked about, I think, again on the webcast. You can take your cremated remains and have them compressed into a synthetic diamond. You can have your remains mixed into paint. And I guess that's not so much you can have. But you can probably just do that. It depends. There's actually a guy who does something called Ash Portraits. Really? He painted it. He does it just with the person's ashes, but he'll also mix it in with oil or whatever. Interesting. But he does portraits of the deceased. All right, I've changed my mind. I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker. That would be pretty awesome. That's what I want. That'd be really cool. What else can you do? You can become part of the coral reef. I know there's companies that do that. There's a company called Eternal Reefs. I think it's the big one. That's a pretty obvious name, don't you know? They actually make different sized reefs. And what they do is they mix your remains with cement. So the big one, it can accommodate up to four family members. So if your family went down in a plane and you just feel like shelling out for one coral reef right. They've got you covered. It's like seven grand, really. And it's pretty big size, and it's cool looking. I mean, it looks like an artificial reef, and then you take it out and dump it overboard. Fish live amongst your family members, who I really hope loved scuba diving. Yeah, exactly. You remember Keith Richards a couple of years ago? He's still alive. Well, now his dad passed away, and he said that he snorted his father with cocaine. And then apparently he said this in an interview. Then that came out, and he was like, no, I was just kidding around. Of course I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father. I think he did, too. There's a episode where these people snort the remains of this girl. Yeah, I remember that one. It was a good one. I do have some stats for you, though, what people seem to like to do. 38% keep the ashes at their home. 37% bury the ashes. 21% do the scatter. Very popular. I thought it would be more popular than that, though. The most popular one is water scattering, and number two is scattering somewhere on family property. Not really. 3% are put in the columbarium, and you might notice, Josh, that adds up to 99%. Yeah, there's 1% that go unclaimed. So sad. It is sad. And apparently the people who own Crematoriums find it sad, too, because even though after a set period of time, in states that regulate this kind of stuff, which do we say the Federal Trade Commission regulates? Mortuaries? Yeah. There's no federal oversight for any Crematorium comes out of the state. But in states where there are regulations, they still say you can throw these out after a set period of time. But most crematoriums, the up and up ones, will hang on to these things for decades. Because, again, it's a small box. Sure, but I mean, they don't want to just throw it away. It's a person, and it's only 1%. So I don't imagine they're, like, overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not. But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk about some of the laws about scattering because you can't just scatter anywhere. No, the National Park Service has no official stance on scattering remains. They leave it up to each individual park. Yes, but most of the parks say unless there's like a grave area right. Like a designated grave area, you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they kind of turned a blind eye. Oh, really? They know it goes on. And I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park are like, how are you going to tell the difference between that and, like, fire ash or dirt or whatever? But state parks, they say, actually, the National Forest Service doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you would probably want to go, like, avoid the national park and just stay in the national forest or go to your state park. That was a beloved state park. Because they're a little more lax than the national parks. Right. If you want to do water scattering or ocean scattering, the EPA says you got to be 3 miles away from the coastline. Right. Very prudish. California is like, that's way too much. They still have a restriction. But it's 500ft, right? Yeah. Pretty close. And people don't always follow regulations, right? Yeah. So you want to tell about the Cubs fan? Yeah, this is kind of a nice story. Steve Goodman died of leukemia in 1984. Diehard Cobby's fan, sadly did not get to see the Cubs Winter World Series, as likely neither will you and I. And four years later, his buddy snuck in before opening day and threw the ashes into the wind out over the field. Nice. Pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Did you ever hear of Graham Parsons story? His body was stolen, right? Yeah. His friends, he said that he wanted to be cremated and scattered on Cap Rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Right. And his parents found out he was dead and had his body ship back for a private funeral. Really? And his friends found out that they weren't going to be invited, so they stole them and took them out to Joshua Tree and opened the casket to some gasoline on them and set them on fire. Five gallons of gas. Right. And it didn't work because we've said what it takes. So it was half cremated by the time the cops showed up. He's sort of melty. And just like Georgia back then, there was nothing about there were no penalties for stealing a corp, so they got them for theft of a casket, I think. Did you see that movie Johnny Knoxville played the guy that his buddy. It's not very good. Okay. I did stay in the hotel, though, actually. I meant to mention that in the Route 66. Yeah. The Joshua Tree in Cool. Not in his room, though. And before we move on from scattering, Josh, we have to mention, because we like to mention our movies, the excellent, excellent scene from The Big Lebowski, the scattering scene at the end of The Big Lebowski when all of them just blew back all over them. It was Steve assuming that died, right? I think so. And he threw them out in the wind and flew back in her face over the ocean. So it was good. Very good. Chuck, if I am dead and I'm being cremated and I'm part of 75% of the population, what country am I in? Sweden? Switzerland. Switzerland. I've been cremated, and I am part of just a meager 3% of the population, what country am I in? Ghana. That's right. And in between are actually higher than that. Hong Kong is 83%. Places like the czech republic in Singapore and the UK. Are sort of mid to high 70s. China and Netherlands are about half. And Italy, as far as European countries I'm sorry, ireland was 6%, Italy was 7%. And I bet that has something to do with the Catholic thing. I would think so, for sure. And the US. Is about 30%, right? Yeah. Thanks. For a large Protestant population. Right. And Hindu. And there's also pet cremation. Yeah. If you want to get into a burgeoning industry that went from pretty much nothing to $3 billion, industry is the latest at get into pet cremation. And the people at Matthew's Crematorium Supply, they make pet cremators, too. Oh, they do? Humans and pets and animals, too. Apparently there's different types. So I got one you could fit a horse into, and one are made for, like, dogs or something. Right. I would be more likely to go into one of those because they say that some of the pet only crematoriums are a little dodgy. Yeah. They're totally unregulated. Yeah. So they're just like, burning your pets together, and you don't know that the ashes you get. And if you're serious enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, then you probably want your pet sashes. Right. So you can handle cremation at home. Just dig a shallow hole in your backyard to serve as a fire break and do your neighbors a favor and shave your pet first before you set it on fire. We buried my animals growing up. My pets. Did you? Yeah, we have. I think at my old house, we probably had, like, four or five pets buried out in the woods. But we lived on, like, two acres in the woods. It wasn't, like, in a neighborhood. You didn't set any on fire? No. Well, that's it for cremation. Thanks for joining us for that one. Right, Chuck? Yeah, I think we've covered pretty much everything in there. But if you want, it's a good, good article. High caliber how stuff Works article. Not like the rest of these sneakers. Just type in Cremation in the search bar. The Jazzysearchbar@howstoughfirst.com jazzy. I'm just trying new stuff. We've been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I like the ubiquitous search bar. That's pretty good. It's not everywhere, though. I mean, I guess it is everywhere, but yeah, you're right. So I guess it's time for listener mail. Yeah, buddy. I got a couple today, a couple of short ones. First one is from the Sauna cast, and it's a little old, but I promise this guy would read it. This is from Mark and Eastern MD. I know you guys won't read this on a podcast. Those are usually the ones I read. But I just thought I'd write to tell you what happened to me this morning. In my frantic rush to get my daughter Ellie to a summer camp on time, I had to run out of the house without having breakfast. That caused me to have to stop at a fast food joint, get one of those gross, greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's bad enough, but it gets worse. As I drive from the driveway, I push Play on the iPad and start listening to the show. And Saunas, where I started hearing about butt funk. Chuck, sweating out gallons of fluid and having to visualize a naked vigo mortensen fighting in a sauna made my otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things. One for the books, by the way. The podcast that I queued up next was all about taste buds. So now I know how I was able to taste my sandwich in the first place. Thanks a lot, guys. That's from Mark. If you do happen to read this on the air, it would make Ellie and Lydia's day. Those are his daughters. Hey, Ellie and Lydia. So, Mark, that is for you, my friend. And then this one I didn't think about, but it's kind of fitting. Do you remember when I told you about the little girl in Kent, Washington who named her Beta fish, Chucker's Junior? I saw this one. Chucker's Junior is no more. Yeah. Monday night. I put Chucker's Jr. Inside his small bowl so I could clean his bowl in the morning. Yesterday morning, I went to make my breakfast in front of his bowl, as usual. But to make my breakfast. I'll tell you, she's going to make his, which would be pretty cute. I felt something sticky on my foot, and I looked down into my horror. I saw Chucker's Junior stuck to my foot, all dried out, and it was horrible. Apparently, betas have been known to jump out of their bowls. And I guess Tucker's Junior jumped pretty far because his ball was a good foot away from the edge of the counter, yet he still ended up on the floor. My theory is that he probably flopped around or something onto the floor. Can't you just let the little girl think her beta fish is special? Yeah, you're right. Checkers Jr. Is special. Katie. Also, I found out that the bowl that he was in had only a centimeter from the top. Centimeter? Where is she from? Liberia. Yeah, she's from Kent, Washington. She said you're usually supposed to leave about an inch between the top of the thing. I guess to make it harder to jump out. It's the same thing, right? 1 CM equals one inch, I think so 40 degrees below, she ends with this. At least Chucker's Jr. Died a healthy fish. That's from Katie, age 13 in Kent, Washington. Well, thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah. Kent, sorry about your breakfast sandwich. Although I'm hungry now. It wasn't Kent. It was Mark. She was from Kent. Oh, yeah. That's all right, though. Mark. Sorry about your breakfast sandwich, Kent. I have no idea who you are. If you have a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it. So wrap it up in an email and send it to stuffpodcast at household. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our of blogs on the houseofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
How Rogue Waves Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-rogue-waves-work | Rogue waves come out of nowhere and tower as much as 100 feet over hapless ships they encounter, breaking across the boat and frequently breaking the boat and its inhabitants. Investigate the mystery of rouge waves in this episode. | Rogue waves come out of nowhere and tower as much as 100 feet over hapless ships they encounter, breaking across the boat and frequently breaking the boat and its inhabitants. Investigate the mystery of rouge waves in this episode. | Tue, 30 Sep 2014 13:08:12 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=13, tm_min=8, tm_sec=12, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=273, tm_isdst=0) | 31474070 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Joshua Clarke. There's Charles Bryant. There's Jerome Rowland. All of us, full first names only for this episode. That's right. I love calling Jerry Jerome. I don't know when that started, but it's one of my favorite nicknames. Jerome Mina. Yeah. Jerse. They call her Jerse a lot too. And just what I typically do for nicknames is take the last name and half it and add an S if it's workable. Like Kristen Connors Kongs. Okay. Or Stricks for Strickland. I just call them strict. Yeah, Strick is good too, but doesn't really work. Yours is good. And that's called the nickname show. Yeah, man. I was listening to I can't remember what episode it was. Wow. This is almost not worth mentioning. Anyway, we were being very silly. Oh, really? I guess it was currency. It was a very silly episode. We just were not going to take it seriously. It didn't matter how much anybody wanted us to. Well, that's because we had a tank of laughing gas here in the office. Oh, that was that day I got you. So, Chuck, I have a question for you. Okay. Have you ever been to sea? Once on the Max One cruise. That's the first time I've ever been out to see, like, legit. Out to see? Yeah, man. It's a weird sensation, huh? It is different than knowing. Especially when you can see how deep it is. Like on the TVs or whatever, they'll tell you how deep you are at any time and you just think like, oh, my God, there's like 3000ft of water beneath me and nothing around me. Yeah, it is a little creepy. It is. But it's a neat sensation, too, the greed. Well, I take it from the fact that you didn't mention it because I would think that you have mentioned it unsolicitedly. You didn't encounter a rogue wave? No, I would have mentioned that. I would think so, yeah. It was very calm. Seas, of course. Didn't even get seasick. Oh, yeah. No, I have to tell everybody this. So you may find these things called seabans. Oh, yeah. Did you use those? I took one, but I didn't need it. We wore them almost all the time. And I have to say, when I didn't have it on, I could tell I don't feel so hot. Put it on like five minutes later. I was totally normal. It was amazing. Yes. I didn't have any sea sickness. There was the occasional like the boat would move a little and I'd be like, how many drinks have I had? But then I would remember, oh, I'm not in a hotel, I'm in a floating hotel. Plus, I had a ton of drinks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No road waves, though. No road waves for us either, because they're rare. I don't know about that. They're pretty rare. I guess if you compare it to the normal number of waves. Yeah, they're rare. That's what you have to compare it to. Right. But they're a lot less rare than scientists thought they were, even just a couple of decades ago. Yeah, that's true. So when we say rogue waves, depending on where you live in the world, you might say, what is a rogue wave? All I've ever heard of is a freak wave. Or if you live in another part of the world, you might have heard them called killer waves. They're all the same. Or if you're a fan of the band Rogue Wave me. You might just think it's music. You could that's pleasing to your ear, right? That's not what we're talking about this time. No. I just wanted to give a shout out to the rugby in case they happen to listen. I love those guys. They have a great documentary out, actually. Their drummer almost died from a bad kidney. Wow. And PBS did this really good documentary on how a guy in a small indie band gets a new kidney and affords a new kidney. It was really great. It's called my acin kidney. No, I can't remember what it was called now. I saw it a few years ago. But they're great. My Left Kidney. Zack Rogue is the name of the lead guy. That explains the band's name. Yeah, exactly. And I think it was just right kidney man. I had a 50 50 shot. Yeah. Although it might be wrong. So with road waves, not the van. Sure. The actual wave. Yes. I guess, just to define it very briefly, a road wave is a huge colossal wave that is, in most definitions, twice the size of the next tallest wave in a given area. That's basically described as a wall of water. Because if you're out in the open ocean, you're normally encountering swells, like the waves are rounded, so boat can just kind of float up and down on them, even if they are huge. Yes. Well, you got to know what you're doing in those kinds of ways. You got to drive into it, steering to it the right way and all that stuff. Right. But if you're a ships captain sure. You know what? You're doing better with a rogue wave, you're in trouble, because it is, again, it's like a wall of water. So it's much steeper, much flatter. And when it encounters a boat, it doesn't go under the boat, it goes over the boat, it breaks on top of it and conditions serious damage because these things are enormous. Yeah. And the key to being a rogue wave is right there in the name. It's rogue. Even if there's a bad storm, it is not like the other waves you're encountering, and they seemingly come out of nowhere, which is why they've never been able to photograph or to chart them from beginning to end, because you can't predict them. It's not like, oh, there's a road wave coming they just happen, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, crap. Right, let me get this boat steered correctly and hope it doesn't break my ship in half. Right. You qualified it. Nobody has a photograph of it forming or a video of it forming. There are a few photos here, there. And I think there is some documentary evidence from one of those discovery shows. Yeah, there was one on Deadliest Catch, but I think they've never scientifically recorded, like, from beginning to end. Right, exactly. So no one knows where they come from. Like you say, there's some pretty cool theories, but I think you have to kind of differentiate them because people are saying at this point, well, dummies, underwater earthquakes caused rogue waves. Bam, it's done that's. Right. Okay. What about glacial calving? You drop a huge piece of glacier into the water, creates a giant wave. Rogue wave. All right, what about coastal landslides? Okay, what's the problem here? Well, those, my friend, thank you for playing along in our little silly game. Those all can cause huge waves. And some people might say, well, they're rogue, but they're really not. No, they're rogan that they're yeah, there's a wave that's much bigger than all the other waves around it. They're not rogue because we know where they came from. Exactly. We know who their parents are. Right. With a rogue wave, again, it just kind of comes out of nowhere. Like you said, it can be even in a storm, they're much bigger than the other huge waves, but they can also just be an enormous wave in totally calm seas, which makes them extremely mysterious. Yeah. And it depends on who you ask. There is no strict definition of how much larger it has to be. I've seen everything from 33% to three times as big as the next highest waves. So there isn't, like, a rank and file definition of how big it needs to be. But they've charted some big ones in February of 2000. This is what I found, is the largest ever recorded wave by science. It was off the coast of Scotland, recorded at 95ft. It was a British research vessel. Wow. And that was using scientific instrumentation. But there are tons of anecdotal stories. Right. In fact, if you're a seaman, then you probably have one of your own, or have heard a million of them. Sailors are renowned for their stories, but rug waves really kind of like they're the Big Bang stories. Yeah. A lot of people said, well, there's such thing as navy strength gin, so are you sure you know what you're talking about? But every once in a while, a ship would come limping back into port and its radar antenna would be snapped off, even though it was, like, 90ft above water. And they would say it was a wave, and the captain would be a known sober ttotler who had no reason to lie, and they would say, okay, maybe there is such thing as rogue waves, but it wasn't until 1995 that the first one was recorded scientifically. That's right. And you know what, let's talk about that right after this message. So Chuck, like we said, rogue waves were considered sailors lower as far as science went until 1995. On New Year's Day off the coast of Norway, I believe there is an oil platform called the Dropner Platform. Yeah. And it just happened to be recording waves that day. And it was recording waves that were about 16 to 23 ft high, about five to 7 meters. That's pretty respectable. If you're a surfer you probably want to get out on that. But then all of a sudden one passed by and just one that was 66ft tall and it was out of nowhere and there was nothing else that came after it and there was nothing before it. And they figured out that they had just recorded the first rogue wave ever captured by science. Crazy. It is pretty crazy, but this is kind of coming after things like we said, like anecdotal evidence. There was one from the QE, two I believe. The captain, I'm not sure what year it was, but the captain described all of a sudden this rogue wave comes out and he said it looked as though the ship was heading straight for the White Cliffs of Dover. Which has to be kind of scary. Yeah, I imagine so. The Queen Elizabeth one as well. The RMS Queen Elizabeth more specifically was in World War II. The Gray Ghost was converted to a military ship to carry troops basically and could carry up to 16,000 men, which is staggering at 30 knots, which is very handy. But a rogue wave struck that ship near Greenland in 1942 and supposedly shattered windows 90ft above the waterline. But she survived. Because I saw cat power play on that ship. Oh, that was the ship? Yeah, it's been docked in Long Beach since the went to the Altamar Party Festival there by the water. And it was mainly like the big stage, but they had a second stage set up on the Queen Elizabeth oh cool. Which is really neat. And I walked in and saw Cat Power Play for like 20 minutes before I went back out to the main stage. A neat venue. Motor Head has a cruise going on really? Coming soon, I think this month in September. Wow, that would be pretty awesome. That would be awesome. The QE though is you can stay it's like a hotel now. Yeah. So you can stay there and eat there and see Cap Power there. It's also haunted, I'm sure. Well, her performance was haunting. All these sailors coming back saying this wave was crazy and everybody said no, you're the one who's crazy. But then after that 1995 capture and they're saying okay, there is such thing as rogue waves. And then for some reason the 90s were like a huge boom for capturing rogue waves and proving that not only did they exist, there was a lot more of them than they used to think. I think people are trying more. Yeah, just like recording them more. And then they said, okay, we understand that there is such thing as rogue waves, but we have no idea how they formed. And so they started really kind of looking into what causes a rogue wave. Yeah. And if you guys had listened to our surfing episode, which was pretty good. Yeah, it was all right. But we got into the physics of a wave, and the highlights of that are this. If you're looking at a wave, the crest, as you know, is the highest portion. The trough is the lowest portion. It's the dip in between the waves. You have the wave height, which is the distance between the trough and the crest. The distance between the crest themselves is the length of the wave. And then the wave period, or wave speed, is the amount of time between one crest and the next. And then what's the last one there? Wave energy. Yeah, that's the Connecticut and potential energy carried by the wave. Yes. And that is source from someone named Bryant, I see in the now, it's not me, what you've just described as a wave. Like, if you have all of this information, you can mathematically describe any kind of wave. And it's not just ocean waves, too. Like, this applies to optics, it applies to microwaves. Like anything that takes the form of a wave. Apparently even the stock market behaves as a wave. And a lot of this stuff applies to it. It applies to you and your breakdancing that's the Worm is a there's a wave, too. Yeah, there's a wave, but I do the Worm. Okay. That's my signature move. Or if you're at a sports stadium and you're one of those people that participates in the wave, doing the wave. Yeah, actually, yeah. I'm sure that this stuff would apply as well. Sure. But under normal circumstances, with just a normal wave or something, if you're out on the ocean, there are hundreds or thousands of waves all around you at any given point in time, and they're brought about by the movement of wind across water. And if there's a lot of unobstructed water, which is called fetch, that's apparently the amount of ocean it's unobstructed, that the wind can blow across and the wind is blowing strongly and it's keeping up its breath, then you're going to have some waves form, and that's what forms a wave. Yeah. And there's other things that can impact the wind, is the major thing. But the depth of the water at the time, tides and currents, if there's an island or something in the way, that's all going to affect it. But that big open fetch is where you're going to get your big, big waves. Right. And that's just a normal wave. What they think I should say one of the main theories for what causes a rogue wave, because just these normal circumstances don't account for a rogue wave, right? You can point to any normal wave and be like, yeah, it's wind over this, fetch, and boom, there's your seven foot ocean wave, right, with a road wave that doesn't necessarily apply. So they think one of the proposed theories is that road waves form when you have a current going one way and good size wave going the other way. Say from a storm. The current pushes up the wave and basically transfers when they run into each other. It transfers some energy so that the wave just gets freakishly large for a minute and then all of a sudden you've got your rogue wave. Yeah. So, like, if you have a really bad storm in a 30 foot wave and it hits something like the Gulf Stream, the Gulf Stream might pick it up and say, I'm going to make you larger because I'm the Gulf Stream, I'm going to make you a star. But they have definitely found more evidence of road waves in some of these currents, like the Gulf Stream on the east coast of the US or the Agulhas Agolas Aglehas, one of the two. That's a current on the southward east coast of Africa. They project with math that you could get a wave as big as 190ft, but I don't know. But they definitely have charted a lot more waves along those streams than current. And actually, if it is true, if it does pan out, that currents, strong currents with waves running opposite to them causes rogue waves, they're saying, well, then the Gulf Stream would account for why the Bermuda Triangle has so many disappearances. I don't know if we mention that, and I don't think we did. We did one on the Bermuda Triangle. I'm sure we said they were just a wave that swallowed them, but I don't know. We may have said rogue waves. It didn't stick out to me as a thing until I ran across this article, though. Plus, that was, like 80 years ago. It was 100 years ago. There's another explanation, too, and this is basically the foundation of a mathematical principle called the Peregrine Soliton. Yeah, I like this one. So the Peregrine Soliton is named after a mathematician named Peregrine, and he, in the 80s, predicted rogue waves. He mathematically proved that they were possible and showed how they would form in the 1980s. Yes, I can't remember his first name is so British. So before that, it was just like stories. Yes. Okay. And then this guy comes along and proves that a rogue wave can occur. And he's also even more awesome. Again, it's not just limited to ocean waves. He's saying, you can have this in optics, which has been proven in the lab. You can have it on the ocean, which has been proven in the lab simulation. And basically the whole thing with the Peregrine soliton is that you have a normal wave, and if you add just a little bit of noise to these predictable formations of a wave, you can have a freakishly large, steep wave that comes and goes fairly quickly, and that's a Peregrine soliton. And they've since shown that these things can't exist. But he predicted it in the 80s, like a good ten years before a rogue wave was ever recorded. Scientifically. Professor Peregrine came up with it. Did they name the falcon after him too? Probably. Well, there's also the wave reinforcement. Well, this is their relationship. Part of it. Yeah. So basically waves getting together and becoming one large wave. Yeah. So that noise that you add into the normal process yeah. In this case, the wave reinforcement, that noise would come from other waves. Got you. So the idea is if, let's say, you have a ten foot wave passing over a 20 foot wave, that's going to be a 30 foot wave. Yeah. That's so neat. Or it can go in the other direction. And I guess it just depends on how they meet each other. You can also subtract it. Yeah. So like a trough between the crest and the lowest point of the wave, right? Yeah. If the trough is like 15ft and a 20 foot wave runs into that, it drops down and just becomes a five foot wave. It's all math. Yeah. But even just basic addition and subtraction, which makes it really exciting to me because I understand that kind of thing. Not me. Well, addition and subtraction. Right. Very basic. If I have a calculator but they're saying, like, if you have, say, five waves or ten waves, that could be a lot of 5ft high, and the 5ft high is the normal average in the area, but they all just happen to get together at this right point. They're going to turn into a 50 foot wave, a single 50 foot wave, and all of a sudden you have a rogue wave that just kind of comes out of nowhere. Yeah. Or if you're in a bad storm, just a couple of large waves can form something pretty intimidating very fast. So we'll talk about how common these things might be coming up after this. All right. So they used to think they weren't so common, and like we said earlier, just the lore of the sailor. Navy strength. Jin. Exactly. What is navy strength? Is that just like a higher proof? Oh, my goodness. Is it good? It's too much too jenny no, it just destroys you. It's not good for you. Yeah. I've never thought the high proof alcohols like, to me, adding the extra just takes away from the flavor a little bit for me. Yeah, I can see that. Like that crazy rum. That's like navy string thrum. Yeah, I guess so. It is. It's like firewater. Yeah, it's navy string thrum and navy strengthen. It used to be part of the British sailors rations. There's only one reason to drink that stuff. But I mean, it went away for a reason and then they brought it back and it's just crazy stuff. Crazy. They brought it back for college students. I can't remember who makes, I think Leopold might make a Navy strength gym. Yeah, it's rough and I love Leopold's gym, but any navy strength gym I think would just be too much for me. Yeah, you get older and you're not impressed by that stuff, you know, like when you're in college though, that's when you're like, this is 5000 proof, right? We're going to put it in some Koolaid and none of us are going to remember tonight. Nobody better be putting Leopold's, gin and Koolaid. Yeah, I won't find you look to your nearest college campus because it's probably happening. So anyway, like we said, they used to think they were pretty rare, but in 2004 the European Space Agency started collecting data from satellites and they basically want to see how often do these occur. I've seen some different estimates from three and 10,000 in the ocean to three and 1000 near coastal inlets and rivermouths. But I think what they found with their max wave project was ten waves, 82 ft or higher. And that's from the ESA's data. Right. And that was over a period of three weeks. But the thing is, the previous weather data collection predicted that you get one every like 50 years and all of a sudden they saw ten and three weeks. So they're like, okay, these things are way more common than we thought. And like I said, they started to think, well, maybe this accounts for a lot of disappearances. Yeah, one thing they're going to try and do with another program called Wave Atlas is do surveys over a longer period of time. Which makes a lot of sense, of course. Sure. Because that could have been a really rough three weeks. Yes, it could have. It's like I was looking into shipping containers because a rogue wave caused two of the worst shipping container losses in recent history. Really? Or rogue waves that I should say it wasn't just one and I should say it's not necessarily just one. Apparently mathematically it's also predicted that rogue waves tend to occur in three s. For some reason I couldn't find out why. But if you look at the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the account of that from the captain of the Arthur Anderson, which was the ship that was going along what lake area I think was it, was it Superior? Superior. They were out in a storm in November 1975 and the Arthur Anderson was hit by 235 foot waves, which is huge for the Great Lakes. And they lost sight of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the next thing they know it's on the bottom of the lake. Superior broken into and they were like, well clearly the rogue wave took it down, but there were two of them that night, and apparently there are plenty of accounts of not just one, but more than one rogue wave coming out of the blue. Well, and we got a great song out of it. Gordon, lightfoot the wreck of the edmonds. It's Gerald. It's so odd. I guess that was just the time, but it seems weird that you get a big radio hit about a cheap wreck. That was when the Am stations dominated. Yeah, he's Canadian, too, so that might explain a lot. I read a good article the other day on the lost art of the fade out in songs. Oh, yeah. It was pretty cool. Slate did a good article on it and how the biggest hits of the into the 80s even had those great fade outs. You don't hear it anymore. No. Well, one of the reasons why is because it's so awkward to try to do that live. Like, do you remember when David Jones guested on The Brady Bunch, Marsha, was trying to get him to play the Prom? Yeah. He does a rendition of Girl and then it fades out at the end while he's singing. And he's, like, kind of singing, like, more softly. Well, that's because he's lip syncing to the recorded version. Right, but I mean, like, live, they would end them differently. Yeah, but he was supposed to be in the studio and it's like, fading as he's recording. It was just awkward to see, and you could tell he felt uncomfortable. It's very awkward for Davy. So I think one of the last things we should cover is the differentiation between a rogue wave and a tsunami. We've done a podcast on tsunamis, and the main differences is where it comes from and where it happens. Tsunamis aren't typically a 90 foot wall of water. A lot of times, it's a five foot wall of water that just has such force and speed coming ashore that it does all kinds of damage. Well, yes, depending on where you see it. Because rather than a wave, like a normal wave, where the energy is carried on top of the water because the wind whipped it up there, the tsunami is generated under water, so the energy carries beneath the water. So when it hits that coast, all of a sudden it's pushed upward and you have a huge wall of water. But out in the ocean, you're like, look at how fast that three foot wave is traveling. Yeah, exactly. That's a tsunami. Plus, again, we know what caused the tsunami, so it's not a rogue wave. And it's, again, not a huge towering wave on top of the water until it hits the coastline. That's right. And if your ship, they can build you better and stronger to encounter harsher waves, but they're never going to start building ships to withstand rogue waves because they don't encounter them that often. And there's really nothing you can do if you come across a 90 foot wave. I mean, the Empire State Building from the bottom to kind of where the square part ends is 111ft. Do you imagine seeing a wave as tall as the Empire State Building? No. You can't build a ship that can withstand that. So basically your ballast is your stability, and they can build you as secure as possible, but there's really not much you can do except steer it as best you can and cross your fingers and pray. But also a greater understanding of how rogue waves come about could lead to improved safety, less loss of life. Yeah, maybe. Prediction, I think, is the next wave, if you will, like that's. The only thing that's going to be able to help is if even a five minute heads up like this thing might be forming somewhere nearby or sail around this area because that's rogue wave city. Yeah, and no Opelio crab is worth it. You know, I saw this article, somebody did a study about shipping containers and the effect they have when they go overboard. And apparently they provide nice little ecosystems when they hit the bottom of the ocean. Like, they went and checked and they're like, okay, this is pretty great. Everything is just fine. They like the shipping containers down there. Artificial reefs, right? Yeah, inadvertent ones. So that's it for rogue waves. If you want to learn more about it, you can type those two words into the search bar, how Stuff works.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for the listener mail. I'm going to call this help for my future. We've gotten a few of these where people ask for what should I do with my life? So I'm going to read another one. First time email or long time listener. Guys, I wanted to say your show has been with me through some very hard times. Your humor, friendship, and connection with your fans got me through the passing of my grandfather and a very hard breakup, so thanks for that. What I was hoping you could help me out with was this one more thing. I feel lost with the path I am on in life. I'm a recent college grad from Western Washington U with a bachelor's in History and a minor in web design. I'm now out in the working world, and I find it hard to decide what I want to do with my life. I've listened to past episodes where you answer fans who have written in, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Let it be clear I'm not a struggling college graduate. I've landed a steady, secure desk job. But after the first couple of months, it's lost its luster, and I feel myself becoming the stereotypical corporate drone. I'm impressed by the position you two have found yourself in. I want to know what advice you have for a young professional and scholar in this world. Finding a career that has the potential to be more fulfilling than creating spreadsheets and TPS reports. That is from Kyle. TPS reports really exist? Or is it just like I think people just use that for catch all from office space. Got you. But it might be a real thing that's Kyle. Yeah. Kyle, I thought about this a little bit. My advice to you is to not quit your job, but to do your soul searching on someone else's dime for a little while. You've got a good job. You are way ahead of a lot of other people. Yeah, sure. So don't go quitting your job and saying, I want to go open up a Glamping operation in Colorado. What's Glamping? It's the new thing with, like, high quality camping. Oh, it's like the new butcher thing? Yes. You'll have a nice canvas tent in the woods with an actual bed and a rug and a lamp and a refrigerator, and you charge people to go stay there. It sounds very nice. Yeah. It's not camping. It's camping, Kyle. So I would not suggest you, like, go quit your job and run off and join the circus. How about that? That's easier. Kyle, I never have a heads up on stuff like this, so I never have any decent advice, but I definitely would tie with Chuck on that one. Like, if you got stability right now, that doesn't mean you're trapped. You're never trapped. Right. Figure out what you want to do. Figure out what you can make decent money at that will make you happy. If it's not the job you're in, then there's your answer. Go figure out what that is, but do it in the context of your current job as well. It's almost across the board a bad idea to just quit your job and then figure out what you're going to do. That's not smart. Yeah. And these emails are sometimes tough because, Kyle, I can't decide what you'd like and what you enjoy. If you had written in and said, boy, I really love drawing cartoons or roller skating and long walks on the beach right. But I am a corporate drone, then I would say, hey, maybe try and be a cartoonist. So you need to think about, sir, what you enjoy in life and what inspires you. And there's probably a job scenario that fits that description. Yeah. And don't be discouraged about having a history degree and not using it. It's becoming more and more prevalent to have a degree that you don't necessarily use. It just made you a more well rounded and interesting person, and you learn the skills that you need to survive after college, in college, no matter what your degree was. Yeah. And you can always go to house stuffworks.com and look at the careers page. We actually have a careers page that is updated. And if they say there's jobs, there's jobs. Boom. Because I kind of feel like Kyle was asking a little bit for a job, maybe. Well, thanks a lot, Kyle. We wish you the best of luck. And to everybody who finds himself or herself in a position similar to Kyle, we are crossing our fingers for you guys and sending you good vibes. And if you want to say hi to us in the interim, you can tweet to us at sciskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com, and you can hang out with us at our home on the web stuffiestnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-12-02-sysk-crime-scene-clean-up.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Crime Scene Cleanup Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-crime-scene-cleanup-works | Cleaning up crime scenes is a niche industry that's both lucrative and messy. In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a look at how crime-scene clean-up works. | Cleaning up crime scenes is a niche industry that's both lucrative and messy. In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a look at how crime-scene clean-up works. | Sat, 02 Dec 2017 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=336, tm_isdst=0) | 31270547 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. Chuck here with my select pick of the week, how Crime Scene Cleanup works from September 7, 2010. There's an oldie but a goodie and part of our probably not ever going to be finished suite on Crime and punishment. And this one was pretty good. Crime scene cleanup. You never think about that. What happens, who goes in there? How is it done? What are the rules around crime scene clean up? And we detail all of that good stuff in this week's Selects episode. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And that makes the stuff you should know Freshly shaven. I got rid of the beard. Yeah. I cleaned up this crime scene of the face. Your hair is sticking in a really weird way. Is it? Yeah. Looks on him out for my hat. Yeah. Thank you. Now it's even crazier. Please don't, like, lick your thumb and come over like mommy's to do, I should say. For those of you who might be experiencing some sort of alarm or terror right now, chuck kept the goatee. He just shaved the beard part or the parts that made it a beard, I guess. The burnside. Mutton chops. Yes. And the neck fuzz. Yes. Looking good. Thank you. Chuck. Have you ever seen a movie called Curdled? No. It's sleeper produced by one Quentin Tarantino. It's about this very quiet, kind of demure woman who gets a job as a crime scene clean up person. It's a girl from Pulp Fiction. The cab driver. Right. I believe she was the taxi driver who drove Bruce Willis around after the boxing match from Pulp Fiction. Oh, really? I didn't know that movie. I haven't seen it, but I think that's her. It's worth seeing. Is it? But now that I've read this crime scene clean up article on our fairsitehouselworks.com, I realized just how far off the mark some of the details were on that. Was it pretty far? Yeah, a little bit. Have you seen Sunshine Cleaning? No, but from the previous, that one looks pretty far off the mark, too. I remember seeing them carrying out, like, a mattress, just like Mrs. Brady spring cleaning type outfits. Yeah, you remember those? She had, like, the little du rag and she had the little clam diggers rolled up and, like, some Converse on, just cute as a button. That was one of the jokes of the scenes, actually. They were carrying out this Amy Adams and the other girl carrying out this nasty, like, bloody mattress, and one of them dropped her end and the other one fell on the bloody stain and it was just like it's really good movie, though, actually. Yeah, it was great. Is it by the people who made Loma Sunshine or am I just confusing that? Because Sunshine is the name. It's a little indie, though. Alan Arkin was in it, so maybe so I wonder. It's good. All right, well, both of these movies are utter frauds when it comes to the details. Right, Chuck? Yeah, for the most part. Okay. Let's talk about Crime Scene clean up, the real stuff, because there's nothing cute or about it. It's actually horrific work, and it takes a very specific kind of person. And those people last an average of about eight months before they get burned out in this business. Right? Yeah. All right. So it's actually called it's part of the cleaning industry. It's a niche part of the cleaning industry. Very niche. Not very heavily marketed in traditional channels. Right. It's not how it works, but it's called CTS decon. Crime and trauma scene decontamination. Right. Yeah. And basically what it is is it is a cleaning service on steroids. There's no Mrs Brady outfits. You're wearing full biohazard hazmat suits, no French maids going on here, nothing like that. Because you're dealing with some really dangerous stuff. You're dealing with blood, which often feature, appropriately enough, bloodborne pathogens. You're cleaning up meth labs. Yeah. That's a big one. And a lot of times we should probably warn people, this is going to get a little graphic here. Sure. You can't do times scene without being a little graphic. Right. But, I mean, you're cleaning up, like, there may not be a body there anymore, but you're picking up pieces of bone that the Crime scene investigators missed. You're scraping brain off of walls. It's not normal work. Right? Yeah. I think that's where the decontamination part of the CTS decon comes in. It's not just cleaning. Your goal is to return the spot to its original condition. Right. So it made a point in this article, like, you don't just clean the carpet because if the carpet has a two inch blood stain on the carpet, there's probably a two foot blood stain under the carpet on the floorboard. Right? Yeah. So cleaning the carpet doesn't work. You got to cut the carpet out. Yeah. Maybe cut the baseboards out. Right. So it is decontamination. Who wrote this? Julia Leighton. She's got the goods. She definitely has the goods. But the way she put it has to be actually cleaned, not just apparently clean. Right. Yeah. Which I do, apparently cleaning in my house. I do, too. But, I mean, we're not cutting up carpet and replacing floorboards or anything, so it takes a very certain type of person because of the gore that you're going to have to deal with in a large number of your cases. So a lot of the people in the CTS decon industry are former or maybe even current EMTs, emergency room nurses, people who are already trained to deal with this kind of thing. Yeah. That one article I sent you, I think that company said they hire a lot of former firemen and I would think probably military people, people that have dealt with high stress and dead bodies, basically. But it's not just that. I mean, you have to also, as a crime scene clean up person, you have to have sympathetic nature is one of the points in this article. Right. Sympathetic, but not empathetic. Right. Because there's a lot of times when all the ambulance is gone, the cops are gone, but the family is still there, and they may be sitting there sobbing while they're watching you clean the house. And you have to be able to sympathize with them without getting caught up in what they're experiencing. Right. Then you have to be able to remain detached, but fine. You have to be understanding to what they're going through, too. Yeah. The one guy in that article that they interviewed said that he cried along with families and stuff like that. And I think they also said that some companies offer grief counselors along with their service. Yes. Upon request. Apparently. If you want a grief counselor, usually that can be factored into the price or else the company will give it to you for free. Yeah. In Sunshine Cleaning, there was never anyone at the scene, but it was realistic in some ways because one of the subplots involved, one of the girls, found a wallet and an identification from the deceased and ended up looking up her daughter and befriending her daughter, but not telling the daughter that she had cleaned up her mother's suicide or homicide scene. So they kind of dealt with that delicately. That's great. Yeah. That's probably the one thing you should deal with delicately. Right. Because some of the stuff that you're cleaning up is pretty rough stuff. So let's talk about the three main scenes that you're going to encounter as a cleanup technician. Josh. Yes. Number one, you've got violent death, which is homicide, suicide, or bad luck accident type of thing. Right. You've got a decomposition, decomposing, body happening, and meth labs, a lot of their business comes from meth labs that have exploded. Because meth labs are known for exploding. I don't even know that they necessarily have to have exploded. I think just the fact that there is a meth lab there. Oh, well, yeah, that's true. It means that you have to decontaminate the scene. Absolutely. Apparently meth labs are so toxic that they're capable of making people who live in a former meth lab sick, like a decade on. Some of the toxins that you're running into are things like acetone, methanol yeah. Benzene, iodine, hydrochloric acid. This is like the ingredients of meth. Right. This is what people are snoring, kids. Unless you want to turn into a disgusting, haggard, wreck mess of a human, stay away from meth. Math equals death. Just look up those pictures. You seen those pictures on the Internet that showed the before and after. Yeah. God, that should be, like, on billboards in Oklahoma. We should probably podcast on meth sometime. We have a good article, Tom. She wrote it. Oh, really? Yeah, we absolutely should. So one of the reasons why meth labs are so dangerous is because you are going to absorb this stuff through your skin. It leaves a toxic residue not just on walls, but on the air as well. So another, I guess, prior job experience that is good to bring to the table if you're a crime scene clean up person is a construction background or at the very least demolition. Because a lot of cases like with meth labs, like if it was a house or an apartment or something, you have to knock everything out. Anything that can't be put in some sort of decontaminating chemical has to be taken out, thrown away. That includes drywall floorboards, carpet, all this stuff until it's just down to the bones of the building. Yeah, or they will tear it down or more likely haul the trailer away. Right. Well, let's talk about this. We said that you're not wearing just normal everyday spring cleaning clothes. You're wearing like a full on biohazard suit. Right. What are some of the other, I guess, tools of the trade checkers? Well, there's a laundry list, Josh. You definitely want your protective gear. You have to have bio waste containers like big 55 gallon drums to hold the stuff. You can't just throw it in a bag into the back of your van. No, there's regulations you got to follow. Right. You're going to have your regular cleaning supplies that you would need to clean up any kind of mess and disinfectants and that kind of thing. You've got your more hardcore supplies like industrial strength, like hospital strength disinfectants right. Which only allow the MRSA bug to survive. Oh really? Now there's like hospital acquired MRSA infections. I don't know any of that. Yes, or they get used to the industrial cleaners and they're like these super bugs are like you're going to bring it when you spray it on them. It's worse than ticks. Sorry about that one. You can have an ozone machine which removes odors. You can have a Foger which they will use to shoot stuff into like air ducts to get rid of odors. Right. Well, it takes a chemical and kind of get it around corners and stuff. You get everywhere with it. When you run it through a fog, apparently you've got some enzyme solvents. You want to kill bacteria. And it can also liquefied dried blood, which can be pretty nasty to get out once it's coagulated and dried. Right, which is why you want shovels. Yeah, apparently Chuck, after what, 3 hours? 2 hours. Blood coagulates into kind of a jelly like goo that you can shovel into bags. So gross, but very thick bags, biohazard bags. They also include in this article, putty knives to scrape brain matter from the wall because apparently brain when it dries, becomes like cement and will stick to something like cement. Right, which is really gross and sad. You can also use basically a steamer to steam it back into gooiness. Yeah. And then my favorite thing, which would be the first thing in my van, would be the no touch cleaning system. These are like big, long scrubbing brushes, heavy duty sprayers, things like that. Right. Like pressure washer. The no touch cleaning system seems like the smartest cleaning system. Yes, it is. Yeah. Then, like you said, you want some carpentry tools, probably ladders, stuff like that, blends Hammersh, and then a camera, because you need to take before and after pictures for insurance, and you wouldn't think about that. Right. And actually, apparently most insurance covers this, right? Yeah, insurance covers it a lot of times. Or if it's a homicide, I think it's paid for by the state, by the federal government. Oh, really? Crime Victim Reparations Agency. Okay. And I know there are state agencies that do that, too. Well, we're getting ahead of ourselves. I don't mean to jump the gun, but let's talk more about some of the scenes. Specifically, we talked about meth labs, chuck, one of the other big ones that you'll be called out to that makes quite a mess is when a decomposing body is found. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Decomposing. He's called them decompose in the trade. That's not going to be like usually it's not going to be some big, nasty blood sprays and, like, brains and things. It's not going to be all over the place. But it can be pretty nasty because a decomposing body, Josh, is really gross. Your body swells up, insects move into your body and take up residence. Your organs are going to digest themselves and your skin liquefies. Yes. Remember we talked about rigor mortis? No. I think it was on the Body Farms episode. We talked a lot about how decomposition works. So if you want to know more about decomp, go listen to our Body Farms EPI. Right. Yeah. And of course, there's the smell. You can't talk about decomposition without the smell. No. And as Julia Layton puts it, it would bring an average person to his knees. Yeah, that's bad. Apparently, it's ammonia. It's an ammonia based smell created by decomp. Like the litter box. Yeah. You ever cleaned out a litter box? Sure, I have toxic plasmosis all over the place. That's right. The other thing, too, with a decomp is and you don't think about these things when you hear about it on the news, but someone actually has to go behind after the body has been removed. There's probably liquefied parts of the body there, and there's also maggots that have already feasted and have the blood inside of them. And you got to get rid of them, too, because they're carrying disease, maybe. Right. So you have to basically scour the place looking for maggots. You collect the maggots, and then you dispose of them through burning. Right? Yeah. Tastes like burning. Wow. That's decomp. Now let's get down to the one that everybody is fascinated with that all the movies are about, and those are murder scenes, suicide scenes, accidental shootings, basically, where somebody was shot. It's specifically in the head, I guess is the worst. I mean, you've seen Full Metal Jacket, right? Remember Pile? Yes. I had to clean that up. Somebody did. Yeah. I'll bet it was Joker. Well, somebody in the art department for the movie. But yeah, a violent death is not good because there's going to be lots of blood, especially suicides, they say are probably the worst for the blood. Yes. Which is why, I guess, I can't see shooting yourself in the head at home. That's just so much of a problem. It's a huge problem. At least go to a hotel or a motel. And that one Hunter Thompson did, he shot himself in his basement while he was on the phone with his wife. So awful. But I think it's fine for him that he was on the phone with her because apparently he let her know that this was happening. This wasn't like she had no idea that something like this was going to happen. Right, but at home. He did it at home, which I can understand wanting to be at home, but yeah, I guess shooting yourself in the head if you're going to I don't see why you would do it at home. Yeah, I agree. And like we said earlier, it has to be really clean. So any bodily fluid is a potential pathogen. And not only that, but after you leave, if you don't get it all out, it can lead to mold and bacteria and cause people to get sick, like, months afterward. Right. You got to get it all out. Yeah. You have to, like you said, restore this place to the state it was in before the trigger was pulled. Right. Yeah. And it can take up to a few hours to up to like 48 hours to do this. Yeah. Depending on, and apparently a good crime scene clean up company is going to charge you about $600 an hour. Yeah, it ain't cheap for one room with lots of blood for homicide or suicide. It's going to cost you between three and six grand, I guess. Right. Yeah. One of the reasons why it's so expensive is because these people don't just take this stuff home and throw it in their trash out front. Right. There are really specific permits and rules that govern disposal of this, which, by the way, we should say the actual industry itself is not regulated. Yeah, it's not nationally regulated. No, but they generally follow OSHA's bloodborne pathogen standards, which requires training and certification itself. Right, but to be a crime scene cleanup technician, there's no national certification or even state or local certification. It's just company training. Yeah, right, but we'll talk about the training in a minute. But they obviously want to do a good job because the last thing you want is the turnover is already high enough. Sure, but like we said, there is plenty of permits and standards and procedures to follow in disposing of this waste, right? Yeah. Like you said, you can't throw in the dumpster like they do in Sunshine Cleaning. You have to incinerate it. And there are medical waste incinerator companies and the one thing I thought they charged by the pound, which I thought was kind of gross, but how else are you going to do it? Because it's a pound of nastiness. Yeah, and the other thing I thought was kind of gross was a lot of them have minimum charges. So if you don't have the minimum, you have to keep this human bio waste in your van. Well, not in your van, but if it's hot and like a refrigerated space until you have collect enough of it to go to the incinerator. You know what I'll bet is funny? I'll bet the same companies that operate medical waste incinerators also just so happen to have some cold storage units that you can put your waste in until you have enough to burn, too. That'd be smart. But I'll bet if you're in the industry for a while, you're friends with some guy who operates it and you kick him like $50 to throw your stuff in with somebody else's or whatever. Just keep that answer on it. But you better be incinerating it following proper procedure, else you're a horrible jerk, right? Yes. And it's not just the gore that has to be disposed of. If you have just deconstructed a house that was a meth lab, you've got to do something with this waste. Again, can't just take it to the dumpster you came and take it to a normal dump. You have to take it to special dumps that are out of public reach, right, and just transporting it. You have to have a special permit for that, right? You have to have a hazmat permit. Yeah. My friend Timmy, he works in hazmat disposal. I met him. Yeah, you met Timmy. Now, he does a lot of train derailments and stuff like that, but he used to live in Oklahoma and in Oklahoma, nothing but meth labs. Nothing but meth labs. And he didn't do crime scene clean up, but he worked on teams that investigated sites, I think. And he said that he saw bodies that had dirt. They shoveled dirt in their mouths and would choke on it sometimes because apparently once whatever badness happens and it becomes airborne, it's such an awful reaction like that you're breathing in a sin. They start just putting something in their mouth to try and quell this nasty taste. So they would like, stuff dirt in their mouths until they died. Wow, how nasty. Sad. That's horrible. It's another reason not to cook or do math. Yeah. What a mini. So let's say all this is like yeah, okay. And you're looking to earn no, I don't know. Between 35 and 50 grand without a high school diploma, we should say. What do you need to do to become a crime scene clean up technician? Well, we already talked about some of the traits they look for in somebody, like to be empathetic and maybe to have prior training with dead bodies and stuff like that. But they will actually give you tests to make sure that you won't throw up on the scene in front of a family. Yeah. It's like monsters ball. Yeah, that would be awful. Can you imagine losing a family member in your home and then someone coming in to clean it and then they start throwing up all over the place? Plus, if you're the owner of the company, that's just extra work. That's more clean up yeah. That you can't charge for. Right. So they will actually put you through a test to pass a gross factor that it ranges from looking at pictures of dead bodies to actually cleaning up dead animals carcasses to make sure that you won't bomb it. Right. And I wonder if they tell you that it's actual, like, human stuff, but it's actually like a fox. Oh. Like Halloween when you reach into the shapes crepes and their eyeballs. Yeah. You also really need to get a hepatitis B vaccine every five years. As a matter of fact, as many letters as there are types of hepatitis, I would get a vaccine for each of them probably every month. Yeah. What do we get? HEPA for Guatemala. So we still wouldn't qualify, huh? No. Also, Chuck, even if you are a very strong person, like we said, the turnover is about eight months on average. Yeah. And you are really at risk for a couple of stress disorders. Critical incident stress syndrome and secondary traumatic stress disorder. And basically the first one is you are on site of horrific events routinely, it's tough to shake off. And then the other one is if you become too attached to the families grief, you basically can leach off of their post traumatic stress disorder. Right. And have secondary stress disorder. Secondary traumatic stress disorder, yes. They also obviously look for people going in that don't have any sort of depressive disorders or things like that. That probably wouldn't be a good job to put someone who is manic depressive into a crime scene clean up situation. It wouldn't, Chuck, not at all. Let's talk about the business a little bit. I think you said $600 an hour, but a room, like a bloody room, can cost up to $3,000 to get clean. I thought it was three to six. Yeah, it's one to three. I misspoke. I'm sorry. Well, it could be six. Depends on how many people were killed in there. If it was a really nasty scene. Sure. It could be six. I'm sure. Yeah. And you said also that the crime victim reparation act yeah. Agency pays for the cleaning bill if it's a homicide. I don't know if it's a suicide. Because I know the insurance generally doesn't cover suicides for anything, but maybe if it's an accidental death or something like that, your homeowners insurance would cover it. Yeah. In most cases, you're not going to have to pay the bill. And we said also that marketing and advertising can be tricky and Touchy hotels and motels are the two largest businesses that have to deal with this. Yeah. With suicide. So if you own a CTSD card company, you probably go to every hotel and motel convention there is, which appropriately are held in hotels. Right. And you hand out cards, right? Sure. You hand out cards to homicide detectives. You make friends with ambulance drivers. You just make sure that everybody is going to contact these families first if they're asked. You don't want to pimp in your card. But if the family is like, yes, what are we going to do about this? They can say, well, I know this guy is good. Yeah. That's actually how it worked in Sunshine Cleaning. Really? Yes. Amy Adams was a regular house cleaner making beans, and her boyfriend was Steve Zan and he was a homicide detective. Steve Zon is great. He's awesome. And he told her that you can make a lot more money by doing this. And he got her her first job and first referral, and it just kind of grew from there. I got you. It's a burgeoning business, right? Yeah. And apparently if you like to name your business after yourself, first and last name, this is the industry for you. Oh, really? This is in waste disposal. Yeah. What was the company from San Francisco in there? There is. Neil Smithers, Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Right. And they have people they send out all over the country now, but I think it said that they do about 400 clean ups in San Francisco alone each year. This is 2006. That's more than one a day. Right. And here we reach the debate. Right. Crime scene cleanup companies literally make money off of tragedy. Right. Horrific tragedy. And a lot of people argue like that. There's this kind of commercialization of death, of tragedy. Sure. And that why are we so okay with this? Right. And I can kind of see that, like, maybe this is something that should be a free service of a police department worked into the budget or something that a city does. Right. But at the same time, you can really make a case. Like if you need someone like this, it's a really good thing that they're around. Right. Whether it's a commercialization of death or not. Right. Because before this, it was up to the family to do it. Right, or maybe some friends of the family or something like that. Yeah. But isn't that just way worse? How do you cleaning up your loved ones brains in your home? Yeah, that's obviously way worse. I would think so. But like a private tow truck truck company comes and gets a car after a car accident. Sure. So that's not taken care of by the police. Right. So sort of the same thing. I definitely fall in the line like, yeah, this is fine. This is perfectly acceptable capitalism. Yeah, well, and until it is covered by the police department, then somebody should be making money and it should be top dollar because it's no fun to clean up brains and bone out of drywall. I know. And I mean, if you leave it to the city, can you imagine the job a city worker would do? Well, that's the other point, man. These people are paid good money because they restore it to its original condition. And you're right, I would not want a city employee doing it. If you're a city employee who is good at your job, we apologize in advance. It's the rest of the people in your field that make it hard on you. And if you are a crime scene clean up technician, we want to hear from you. Oh, yeah. Send us an email to the email address that I will give at the end of the show because I got ahead of myself. If you want to learn more about crime scene clean up, go type that into our search bar. Crime scene is crime. Hyphen scene clean up is clean hyphen up. I know. And that will take you to this really good article. And that means now, friends, that it's time for listener mail. Jerry had a big problem with the hyphen thing. Like you were out of the room getting some coffee in. I had to explain to her the hyphens and that you capitalize the first one and you don't capitalize the second. I can see that. And she said, this is the most difficult title we've ever had. Is it really? She said she said yes. Okay. She's tittering josh, this is prison email part two. We have part one. Was it right before this one or are we going to split those up? We have to have the one that we recorded go first or else we've got two and then one. Yeah, this came out on this is Thursday. Right. That's more confusing than college football rankings in quantum physics. So this is the end of the prisoner's email. The guy who was busted for meth and then went on the lamb and then went to prison and is now a fine, upstanding citizen. We will continue with this. Food items available from the commissary, like ramen noodles, can, corn or chicken and soda pop were valuable for trade as well. Pack of ramen noodles were often used as currency for bets on things like football games. So you're betting ramen noodles on a football game? I guess when you're in the hoose gal, you're doing what you can to make it just like the outside. Sure. Or prizes and handball tournaments organized by enterprising inmates who would often keep 10% as. An entry fee for putting the tournament together. Huh. Is that crazy? I think it's crazy that this guy wasn't in a minimum security federal prison and he was still playing handball. Yeah. There were two escapes during the year that I was at the camp. One person took a blanket and threw it over the top of the barbed wire fence. That was just regular barbed wire, he said, not razor wire. Well, sure. And he climbed over in the middle of the night, and that was pretty much how he got out. Did they catch the guy? Yes, both were caught. The second guy left his job at the state and motor pool during the day. So I guess he just got one of the cars and left, which is pretty smart way to escape. It's a pretty typical way to escape, I guess. Well, that's actually what he says. He stole a state vehicle. He said both were caught in under 48 hours. Shank. And here's just some little points he makes. Shank is indeed both a verb and a noun, although shiv was much less common in usage. Somebody said it was East Coast, west coast, but I know their credibility well. This is Nevada, so shank is what they said there. In addition to the whole, the special housing unit was known as the shoe as an SSU, and it was more frequently referred to as the shoe than the whole. So we were sort of wrong on that one. And one of the more colorful terms that you can hear in prison was to kiss her something. Yeah. And can you imagine what that might be? Of course. I mean, to hide something in a very uncomfortable place. You're wrecked. Yeah, why not? Like the stopwatch. Did you not know that? Sure you did. You get dysentery from that when you put a watch on your Keystone. Yes. Or a wristwatch. Sorry. It wasn't a stop. Right. I got disantered, little man. Another term was man walking, which meant the correction officer was out in the yard walking around, so someone would yell out, man walking. And that was the cue to hide any contraband or dissect any activities like tattooing, which was you didn't want the corrections guys to see tattooing each other. They're heavy critic. Yeah, exactly. I've already written much more than I intended, guys. I could go on for much longer about many of the topics, including racism, which was extreme, the power structure, and what it was like not having freedom, even though I worked outside the camp in mostly an unsupervised fashion, favored trading, and so on and so on. It's weird that I have so much to write about, even though I was only in total for about 18 months. So it wasn't three years, it was 18 months total. 18 months, man. Can you imagine? No. Oh, my God. So that's the end of part two of the prisoner email. It's part two of two? Yes. And he's on the up and up now. And we wish him all the best. It sounds like he's doing really good. Thank you, anonymous jailbird. We appreciate you. It doesn't work here, right? It is not Jonathan Strickland. Okay, let's see. We already did this whole email thing, right? Crime scene clean up. Yeah, just say the email address. Yeah, just send your emails to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want morehoustofworks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.com homepage." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-03-10-sysk-cockroaches.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Cockroaches Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-cockroaches-work | You've seen them in your home and probably squealed in terror, but now it's time to learn all about cockroaches. From their ability to run incredibly fast to the appendage that alerts them when you're about to whack them with your shoe, cockroaches are fa | You've seen them in your home and probably squealed in terror, but now it's time to learn all about cockroaches. From their ability to run incredibly fast to the appendage that alerts them when you're about to whack them with your shoe, cockroaches are fa | Sat, 10 Mar 2018 13:00:03 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=69, tm_isdst=0) | 42283344 | audio/mpeg | "Howdy, everybody. This is Chuck and welcome to this weekend stuff You Should Know selects episode this week, I'm picking how cockroaches work from August 15, 2013. You have heard Josh and I debate over the years about cockroaches, the fact that they are one of the few insects that I will stomp and kill with great enthusiasm, whereas I believe Josh is on the record as saying he will not and he will try and relocate them. Crazy. Talk to me that cockroach will do nothing but spend the rest of his life trying to get back in your home to poop all over your stuff. So this is a good episode, though. How cockroaches work. Enjoy it right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryan is with me. He's got his glasses on. He's got his hair shorn, his fingernails are chewed down to the quick. He's ready to go. I was hoping we could open the show with Lakukaracha playing in the background. Go ahead. Well, yeah, we can't. I don't know if we can or not. Well, we probably can't. No, there's no way we can't. Well, hold on. Let's hum it. We could probably do that. Right? That's lame. People just imagine in your heads that you're sipping a margarita and some Marriott band is playing with Kukaracha right now. Not to be confused with tequila. No. Which is similar. No, I was confused the two. Really? Well, not when I hear them. But if I think of lacucaracha, I often think of pee weed dancing on the bar, and I'm like, oh, yeah, this tequila. Right. But you know what Lakaracha is about. I assumed cockroaches, but probably not. No. Cockroach who's lost one of his legs and is having a hard time. Oh, really? Yeah. I just found that out today. I did not know that. Look at me. I didn't either until, like, just a few hours ago. Chuck, I was once like, you naive to the way of Lakaracha. Right. All right, so we talked about Lakaracha as you'd hoped. You feel good? Yes. Have you ever seen the X Files episode with the cockroaches? I don't know. Oh, it is perfect. It's one of the top five. And it's not even, like, part of the part of the bigger picture once. It's like its own thing. Yeah, they have the name for those episodes. I can't remember what it's called, but, like, when it's just about a shape shifter and it has nothing to do with the overarching conspiracy. Yeah, it's one of those. And it's just about cockroaches, and a cockroach infestation it may or may not exist, but at one point, it's getting really, like the cockroaches are everywhere and everybody's starting to go a little crazy and all that. And they digitize the cockroach crawling across your TV screen, obviously not part of the scene. And it looks like it was on your screen. Wow. It looks like there's a cockroach in your house. Oh, that's awesome. It's a good episode. Yeah. I was late on the X Files. I didn't watch it when it was out. And then when I moved to New Jersey, they started doing reruns, and Justin, I was living at the time, was like, you never watched X Files? I was like, no. And then it was on every night. I watched the crap out of it. Did you see the Charles Nelson Riley one where he's like, it's Jose Chung from outer space. I don't remember that where I could just see the body Venture and Alex Trebecker in it. Really? I must not have seen them all because I was catching them in reruns. You didn't see, like, some of the best ones. All right, go watch those two. I know you have access to them. All right. Okay, done. So we're talking cockroaches here and apparently also just through the body of Vendura. Did you know, Chuck, the cockroaches are extremely clean insects? We said the same thing about vultures. They are personally clean. Apparently. They do track a lot of germs spread disease. They apparently leave a trail of fecal material everywhere they go because it's like a bit of breadcrumbs for them to follow back. Yeah, they spread bacteria, of course, yeah. In that fecal material, there are proteins that set off up to 60% of allergy sufferers. Allergies yeah. They'll eat garbage and waste. They'll crawl on poop that your dog lay down in the yard and eat it. If your dog doesn't eat it first. And yet a cockroach itself is very clean because they're extremely intense groomers. Oh, really? First of all, they keep their antenna clean because they have a fatty secretion or some sort of secretion that if they don't clean it off, will block their antenna from sensing things. So they constantly clean their antenna. But apparently they also clean their feet and everything. And I read about a study. It was almost anecdotal it was so outside of the scientific method. But they took a swab from a guy's hands who hadn't washed his hands for 2 hours. And they took a swab off of the foot. Or tarsus. I should say. Of a cockroach who had been walking through garbage. And then 2 hours later. They took a swab and they put it in culture. And the guy grew way more bacteria than the cockroaches culture did. Don't care. Which means that the man is dirtier than a cockroach. I don't care. They proved it. I would still smash the cockroach with my flip flop. See, I don't believe there's a sect out there, and I don't know if it's Hinduism or Jainism. It's one of those two where the monks of the sect carry little brooms, hand brooms to kind of brush everything off wherever they sit so they don't accidentally kill even the tiniest thing. That's great. And I kind of agree with that. I think everything is a right to life. Now, you have been on record on this very show talking about killing cockroaches because of the way they skitter. No, not cockroaches. I am down with killing mosquitoes and ticks. No, you talked about cockroaches. I don't kill cockroaches. You talk very much about how fast they are and how they skitter and how that freaks you out. I don't kill them. No. I don't kill roaches. I'm telling you. I defy you to find the timestamp. All right, somebody please help me. Okay. I will kill the crap out of a mosquito, a cockroach, I will generally shoe a fly. No, I'll kill flies. I generally won't kill a fly because they're not a big problem. But you don't have flies around you all the time. No. Like me. No. But mosquitoes and cockroaches I will kill. And that's about it. Yeah. Everything else right to life. Cockroaches, you must die. So cockroaches are I guess they understand that Chuck wants them to die. Many people do. They're very disliked. Right. Which has possibly accounted for them evolving to be really difficult to kill. For one, they're nocturnal, so they're hiding away from us when we're up because we're diurnal. Sure. Just the opposite of nocturnal. Yeah. They have sensors, little sensors in there. Yes, we'll get to that. Okay. That's a spoiler. They run really fast. They do. They reproduce extremely quickly. Yeah. And there's more than 4000 species of cockroach. So you would think the whole world would be infested with cockroaches, but not true. It's actually mainly just one species, the German cockroach, that is accountable for most infestations in homes around the world. That's right. That is one of the four main species that you might see. The German. The American aka. Palmetto bug, which they can get big. Oh, yeah, man. Creepy. There's one, man, like in South America, it's like as big as your hand, six inches long, 1ft wing diameter, wing span. The brown banded cockroach and the oriental cockroach are the four that you're likely to come across in your life. And the German cockroach and American are the ones you're going to see here in the United States. Yeah. And they have been brought here by you because they're not obviously going to fly from continent to continent. They hit rides on airplanes and boats and get in shipping containers in your mouth, moving boxes and grocery bags. And they are ubiquitous. And like all insects, or most insects, they do a service. Most of them are going to be out in the woods, like chewing stuff and pooping it out and being a part of the ecosystem. But it's the ones in the home that really freak people out. Right. And Chuck, I think one of the more fascinating things and by the way, it just turned out to be pretty fascinating even more than I expected. I just thought there were a few things that were fascinating. Were you creeped out like reading this, or do you no, it's not like that. You just hate them. Yeah. I mean, like you previously talked about that you deny it's. The way they move and how fast they are is what creeps me out. And there's no greater fear than laying in bed and seeing one on the ceiling above you, just waiting for it to fall into your mouth. Yeah, but apparently they are pretty good at not falling off of the ceiling. That's true. And they've had a long time to practice this kind of stuff. They've been around for about 320,000,000 years. Longer than dinosaurs. Way longer than dinosaurs. They survived that extinction event. They did. Well, let's talk about it, Chuck. Just how much of an extinction event can a cockroach survive? Can they survive a nuclear fallout? A nuclear war that would kill all humans? Could a cockroach survive as they are rumored to? Maybe. Sadly, it's like we don't know because that hasn't happened. Not sadly. Thankfully, that hasn't happened. But the answer is some people say maybe. Some people say maybe not. What we definitely know is they probably could not survive the nuclear winter because they like warm, moist places. The nuclear winter would not be good for cockroaches. Apparently, they're less susceptible to radiation poisoning than humans are, but more than most insects. So as far as insects goes, they might not be the best candidate. Right, yeah. So maybe, but probably not. Okay. I'm kind of on that side that they probably wouldn't survive a nuclear war. So we're talking about radiation, though, not like the blast, obviously. That would kill everything. Sure. All right, so they survived the dinosaurs extinction event. They have been around for 320,000,000 years. They are very hearty little insects. Let's talk a little bit about their bodies. They're creepy little crunchy bodies. So most of them are between half an inch and two inches long. Yeah. They're brown or black, usually. And that length is minus their antenna. That's just their body size. Sure. You don't count the antenna and their heads point downward, like, as Tracy Wilson, who wrote this article points out. Almost as if they're built for ramming. Yeah. Or just searching for stuff. That's another way to look at it. The males are the ones that have wings. Females may have wings, but they're vestigial wings. They can't fly with them. Males can fly not very well, though, which makes them even more horrific when the palmetto bug, a big one, is flying at your face because you know he has no control. Right, exactly. Yeah. Oh, man. It's sort of like the cicada. I don't think their wings were made for flying, but if they jump off of something high, they can help them a little bit to glide, perhaps, and not like, hit the ground as hard. Right. Short distances, basically. And they're insects, which means that they have three main body regions the head, the thorax and the abdomen. They have an exoskeleton that they molt as they grow, and they mold a number of times, depending on the cockroach species, over the course of a couple of weeks or over the course of a couple of years. And their lifespans also are in step with that molting schedule. But a cockroach will mold several times over its life before it becomes an adult. Yes. And when they molt, it's the same thing as when they're born. They're going to look white, and that's probably kind of creepy looking. I've never seen a molted cockroach. It's like a skinless cockroach. It's like the lady in hellraiser before she fully gets all of her skin right. And they're pretty susceptible to injury and death, obviously, after they've molted before burstacon, which is a hormone, makes their exoskeleton hard and dark once again. Then they have their little armor, which is no match for a flip flop. They can regrow lost limbs when it molds, which is pretty cool, and they can even put molting off for a little while in order to regrow a lost limb right in their head. Let's go over their head. They have eyes and their antenna, which we've talked about, we'll get into more specifically. And Tracey loves saying mouth parts. Yeah. She writes a lot of these articles. Yeah. She will never just say mouths, mouth parts. Yeah, it's not a true mouth, apparently. It's a mouth part. Yeah. They do have brains, by the way. And they are the brain is in the head, but the brain is not like a human or a mammal brain. It's like it's not connected to a big central nervous system or anything like that. Right. There is a central nervous system, but it's not in the head. There's some sort of ganglia that allows the roach to continue living for up to a week after it loses its head. Yeah, this is a pretty good roach fact. Okay. I think. Okay, so you can cut a roach's head off, and it will live for a week and do all the normal things that a roach does for a week, and then when it finally dies, it dies because of thirst? Yeah, because they actually breathe. They don't breathe through the nose and mouth. They breathe through their sides. There's little holes in their side called sphericals and trachea tubes deliver the oxygen to the organs and tissues through their side. So there's cut off the head and it just dies at thirst, which is my new favorite game, actually, that's not true because that's like future serial killer stuff. It is like you torture cockroaches and you torture animals and you torture humans. Yeah. Once you've moved on to Chipmunks, it's probably beyond the point of no return. You're a bad person. Jeffrey Dahmer tortured animals. Oh, yeah. He would lay down like he would come across a dead deer in the forest and lay down with it and spoon with it just like a Johnny Depp and dead man. Did he do that? He did the exact same thing. Well, maybe he was a serial killer. I don't think he was. No, he was a killer, but not a serial killer. That just shows how messed up Dahmer was that man. Yes, that was a connection to him, was like holding this dead animal. All right, back to cockroaches. So that's the head. Yeah. Let's talk about their eyes. Their eyes are compound eyes. So they see the world in a mosaic. Like a fly. Like a fly. All right, so we talked about their eyes. I actually asked Tracy today, I was like, you wrote a bunch of insect articles. Didn't you ever get sick about talking about the head, the abdomen, the thorax parts, mouth parts, the legs? They're all the same for insects. What you say? Oh, no, they're not. They're all the same, but they all have different little adaptations that make them different. I was like, how did you not get tired of it? She said she was fascinated the whole time. She said, xanax that's Tracy of stuff you missed in history class, by the way. Yeah. Plug. Plug. So we talked about the antenna. They are movable, and they are known as antenna flagella. And they're actually tiny little hair covered segments. And it's thicker where it attaches to the head, and it gets thinner and thinner and thinner until it's just like a human hair almost at the end. Yeah. And these things sense. They smell sort of, right? Yeah. They basically, I guess, sense pheromones. Yeah, there you have it. They sent pheromones. They pick up odors. I think they're pretty finely attuned to the environment. Yeah, but that's like, really how they're getting around. Right. Even though they have eyes, isn't the antenna really the secret? I believe so. Okay, Chuck, you want to talk about mouth parts? Yes. They are a lot different than mammals, as Tracy points out, but they do have parts that sort of are akin to how mammals mouths work. For instance, there's a labrum and labium, and they form the lips. Right. Mandibles. There are two of those. And they cut and grind things like your teeth might, which is very important because roaches eat literally anything, and sometimes that's like wood and other stuff that they shouldn't be able to eat, but they can. That's right. Go ahead. Thanks to the mandibles and some other things that we'll get to. Right. And then they have a stop, and then there's a couple of maxilla, and they basically manipulate the food. Squirrels arms or hands. Yes. Or dung beetle. Yes. The thorax, which is one of the body parts, one of the three pieces of the body, and that has the three pairs of legs and the wings. And the legs are so named after the part of the thorax that they're attached to. Right. So you get the pro, the meso, and the meta. Yeah. So the pro is closest to the head meso middle. Yeah. The pro or like the brakes, apparently. Right? Yeah. They just do stopping the middle ones can make the roach go forward or backward. So that's the mesothoracic legs, then the meta thoracic legs, the ones in the rear are the ones that propel the roach forward. Yeah. And here's another good roach fact. You take this one, man, it is awesome. They can move about 50 body links in a second, which is up to 3 miles an hour. Sounds very slow to us. Yes, but think about this in roach terms. That's right. If that were a human being, that would mean we would be running 200 miles an hour. Yeah. That's why they look so fast. It's because they are. They are fast. Like, to us, 3 miles an hour is not that much. But very slow walk, that equals 200 miles an hour in reality for us. Yeah. And part two of that roach fact, which I think is just horrifying, when a roach runs really fast, sometimes it gets air and just is basically running on its back legs only. But the other legs are still moving. So that's just like my worst nightmare. Yeah, they're coming after you. Exactly, man. So the three pairs are all built the exact same. They all have the same parts, but they are different lengths. They function slightly differently, but they all move the same way. It just depends on what the roach wants to do. Like we said, the protoracic legs active breaks. The mesothurstic can move it forward or back, and then the meta push it forward and they apparently move, like pogo sticks, up and down and back and forth and then back and forth, too. And they work in conjunction to allow the roach to kind of walk over just about anything. So when the pro and meta thoracic legs on one side are moving the mesothoracic leg, the middle one on the other side is moving. Yeah, that's how they move, which apparently it's a little ATV. It's like a four x four. Yeah. She also points out that there are the parts of the leg you can sort of approximate as if it were a human. They have a tricanter that's like our knees, femur and tibia resemble our thigh and shins. And then they have the tarsus, which is the ankle and foot. Right. And the tarsis is hooked in a roach, which allows it to walk on the ceiling over your head. Most frightening thing ever. And on walls. Sure. And when a roach is on the ground, it runs very quickly, but when it's on a ceiling, it moves much more methodically because it doesn't want to pull them upside down. Yeah. If 3 miles an hour equals 200 miles an hour to us, imagine what a ten foot drop equals to a poor little roach. Well, not enough, because it lands, flips itself over and then runs away again, but it's humiliated. That's true. 27 times per second. These legs can move back and forth. So these are fast little bookers, which is why you previously talked about hating them, because they were so fast. It's scary. I'm going to find it. Okay. I'll bet I didn't say I kill him. I've long advocated for roaches rights. All right, so now we're at the abdomen. They do have a heart. It is a tube like in structure and does move blood along, but it does not carry oxygen around. So A, the blood is not red, and B, they move oxygen and blood around in other ways, right. Through basically empty spaces called hemochols. Yeah, it's pretty much the absence of a fact there. Yeah, well, the aorta carries blood around to the organs, but yeah, she says the blood just travels through these spaces and then rather than having to worry about like a spare tire or something like that, like a fat belly. Right. They have an actual fat body, and it's just this little area where they store all the fat in their body. Yeah, very smart. I have that same place. It's between my chin and my waist. Yeah, I guess they do have to worry about a spare tire, but it's a very specific one. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so let's talk about digestion. The digestive system is in the abdomen, and it's really not super unlike. It's just like a simplified version of our own or any mammals digestive system. But like you said, they can eat things in digest, things like wood and cellulose. So they do need some help from specialized parts, one of which is called a crop. Right. It basically holds the food while apart. Behind it a toothy section in the digestive tract. So gross. That is gross. And it's equal to like an octopus having a beak crushing beak. They're squishy. They're not supposed to have a hard beak in the middle. It's crazy. Yeah, it's called a proventriculus on the roach. And that just pulverizes the stuff, like wood or whatever. It's tough to digest. And then it pushes it back, this pulverized part, to the gastric cassia, which houses enzymes, microbes, things that break it down even further. And all this is just preliminary stuff. This is like what we do in our mouth. All this is going through this process in a roach before it even gets to the part where it starts to digest. Yeah, this is sort of gross. Like the digestion one was we haven't said the word bolas yet. No. Well, we just did. And then the cersei that we talked about earlier, it sort of looks like short little antenna sticking out from the butt area on each side. And this is what allows the roach to not get like whenever you go to get that flip flop and you rear back and go to hit the roach. And as you're coming in, it just like darts out of the way, you're like, how did it know? How did it know? It's because the cersei, they pick up on air flow and they can actually feel and sense that shoe coming. So if you're into killing roaches like me, you have to be swift and stealthy, hard and with vigor and with, I guess, a paddle that has holes in it. Hey, maybe so, Drag, you might be onto something there. Oh, no. You invented sharknado, the roach paddle. So that's a roach. That's the roach's body. Let's talk about reproduction, because they do reproduce depending on the species. I believe the German roach can produce something in the order of, like, 80,000 offspring. Is that correct? No, way more than that. The German cockroach and its offspring will eventually produce about 300,000 per year. So a mother and her kids yeah, like the family tree from that one cockroach will eventually number 300,000 in a year. Right, but think about this. Then one of those kids and then her offspring will be another $300,000. No, I think that counts. I think that's the whole okay, well, then one of those 300,000 will have more kids, and another 300,000, it goes exponentially kicks in somewhere. Exponentiality kicks in at some point, yeah. And American cockroaches only produce about 800 babies a year. So I got something from believe it or not, the Orkin website has a lot of really good scientific information. I saw that. Did you go look at it? And they talked about female courtship. They begin courtship, it says, by raising their wings and exposing their internal membranes and expanding their genital chamber. Hey, boys, check out my internal membrane. Exactly. My genital chamber is wide open and ready. I'm going to release a pheromone. Hey, man, this is science. This is science. They release the pheromones to attract males, and that's the calling position. And then the males that pick up on these pheromones approach the female. They flap their wings a little bit to say, hey, I like what you got cooking there. And then mating commences. It says when a male cockroach backs into a female cockroach and deposits sperm from the rear to the rear. You know what I'm saying? Let's go back to reproduction. Yeah, we used to be really good at stuff like this, by the way. Wasps will actually this is just a side note. Wasps will actually sting cockroaches and lay eggs inside of a cockroach. Yeah, like baby wasps can be born out of a cockroach body. Right. They incubate in the roach and I guess probably eat it alive from the inside out. There's a movie. I'm just going to start saying that about everything. So there's a couple of ways that a mother roach, once her eggs are fertilized, can produce offspring, and a couple of them involve something with one of the worst words ever, in my opinion, the uthika. Ootheca, yes, the uthaka. You've never been to Atheau? Nice. I prefer uthika, upstate uthika. So that's basically just like an egg sac that the eggs develop in. And it can either be inside the mom, which makes her ovoviva paris. Paris. Seriously? That's the word? Yeah. Ovoviva paris. Paris. Or it can be on the outside of her, which makes her over Paris. And if it's over Paris, then she can just kind of like abandon the sack, cover it up with some newspaper or something like that sometimes. Good luck. Or some of them. It depends on the species. Carry that around with them and then actually care for the young after they're born, like a good mom should. And then there's viva Paris, which is basically like eggs developing in fluid, like in a human in the uterus and in ovovivapiris and ovarus. Yeah. Are you confused yet? No. Imagine following along with just your ears. I know, I'm looking at word. So it helps the eggs are born or the young come out live. Yeah. They actually give birth to little baby cockroaches. Right. So like we said, the German cockroach can produce $300,000 offspring. The German cockroach and her offspring can produce 300,000 cockroaches in a year. And then the Americans 800. Yes. Not many. And we talked about nymphs. Apparently the nymph, when it's born, is fleck of dust size, maybe. Oh, really? Very small. And there's a bunch of them, don't forget. Yeah. And they're white. They're waiting to molt. They're very easy to kill. Yes. And if you're a common centipede, you love to eat these things. Imagine seeing that on a microscopic level. Centipede eating baby cockroaches. Yes. There's a movie for you also. Here's another good roach. Fact is some mothers that care for their offspring after birth, some of them just either dump the uthika or they just have the babies and leave. But some actually raise their little babies. And scientists believe that the offspring actually recognize the mother. Yeah. I don't understand why that's so hard to believe. Well, because it's an insect man. It just seems like a very mammalian or not mammalian, it doesn't seem like something from the insect world. It gives them a heart that I previously didn't believe. I know. Up with cockroaches. I don't know. It just puts a face on them that I never really considered as I smashed them. Right, because you can't see their face. That's right. And cockroaches, if you want to make them a little more human, like a little more personable okay. Little hat and a cane. They're social. Oh, yeah. They're related to termites, it turns out. And actually, I've read a fascinating fact I read one of the best magazine articles I've ever read in my life, and I've read a lot of magazine articles in the most recent issue, I believe it was, of Harper's and it's about ten Ways to Satisfy Your Man. No, it's an article about the early Mycologists who discovered westerners, I should say, who discovered making air quotes. Like magic mushrooms and in between that time and the time they became outlawed. Right. And then what happened after they became outlawed and how they were all these outlaw fungal experts who all had PhDs and doctorates, but we're also might as well have just been bikers growing these huge crops of mushrooms. And there's a murder involved and all that, but it's an awesome article. Check it out. Right. But there's this one fact in there that there's a type of fungus that has evolved to mimic termite eggs so perfectly that it can fool a termite into thinking it's her own eggs. And termites salivate on their eggs to keep them moist constantly. And this fungus needs to be kept moist so it will be kept moist by a termite that thinks this fungus is one of her eggs. Does that fungus then later on kill the termite? Probably. Okay. Because that would be, I believe that's irony. Yeah. Even though we've been told we misuse that word. Thanks for the ride, lady. Well, we should do one on termites. Okay. Well, I say that because apparently rotags need to be kept moist as well. Yes, they do. Do they regurgitate on them to do so? Okay. They salivate on them. Well, another way they're related to termites, they like to hang out together. They like to live in groups. Where they differ is termites actually have sort of like bees. They have very specific roles in their colonies and a social structure that's very organized. Cockroaches aren't like that. They don't like that. But they still like to hang out with one another. And they actually make decisions, like, collectively together on where they want to ruin. Right. Which is an emergent system. Right? I think so. Is that what that's called? Yeah. They've done studies where they found, like, big, large numbers of cockroaches, if they don't have enough space, actually divide up evenly yes. Into the smallest number of spaces. They can go like, well, there's 200 of us, so let's divide up into three groups and go to three different places. Right. And you guys go there, we'll go there, and we'll go here. Right. And there's always one dude cockroach out. Like, what about me? That would be a Pixar movie. Yeah, that's a good one. They're also social in that they follow one another, although not necessarily a leader, but I guess whoever they think has the best idea at the time. Collective conscious. Yes. And there was a group of scientists that created something called Inspot, and it is a robotic cockroach, and they coated it with cockroach pheromones and introduced it to a colony of roaches that accepted it. And then they started to mess with the roaches. Of course, they had in Spot lead them out into daylight so that they abandon their nocturnality. They would wander out in the open following this thing. He got him to move and he brought them fire. Oh, really? Man, I was like, this is getting good. That reminds me of the I know I talk about Aaron Morris ad nauseam, but fast, cheap, and out of control is the robot scientist makes robots that mimic cockroaches and other small bugs. That's really neat. And he said one potential application one day is to have to imagine, like, thousands of these that clean things, like these robot bugs that you own. You just hit a button, and, like, 200 of them will dust your television and then go back to their little place. That's pretty neat. Like scrubbing bubbles. Yeah. Or like the X Files when it went across the TV. Yeah. Beverage wasn't cleaning anything, though. What's scrubbing bubbles? It's like a type of cleaner. It is, yeah. All right. Is that a plug? I don't think so. Okay. It was just a free association. All right, so let's say you're like me and not like Josh and you don't want roaches in your home. I don't want roaches in my home. It's just when I see a roach, I will gingerly pick it up with a paper towel and toss it outside. Oh, I'm sure that doesn't injured at all. It doesn't. Okay. No, I don't squeeze it at all. I just very gently like all right. What happens if that roach gets free and crawls up your arm, up your next but hopefully I'm doing it outside. All right. I just want to see where it stops. I'm trying to get a feel out your position fully. If it's injured, if I accidentally injured it, I'll go ahead and kill it. Okay, well, that's really you're quite a humanitarian. Or insectarian. I'm an insectarian. So let's say you don't want roaches in your house, which is pretty much everybody. They say the first thing to do is try and seal it off. Good luck with that, because roaches can fit into cracks that are as small as one 16th of an inch. 1.5. Just show me a house that doesn't have or at least maybe some new houses. You might have some luck. But if you live in an old house like me, there's always cracks. Sure. Like, animals can get through these cracks. So if you realize you've got a bunch of cracks, seal them up as best you can. Yeah, but if that's still not doing the trick, they say that you want to go with a bait trap rather than a spray, because when you use a bait trap, you become like a pioneer tracker. Sure. You can put the trap somewhere, and if it's not attracting roaches, even though you know you have roaches, then you need to move your trap. And when you move your trap and start tracking roaches, then you can tell where they're coming from. Then you can seal up those cracks. That's right. You come to know the roaches using the traps with the spray. It's just like you're spraying blindly. Can we do one on fleas or just ticks. Just ticks. We need to do fleas, too, because I have battled fleas. Okay. They say don't use, like don't waste your money on those sound devices. They say those don't work. That emit, like, some sound that only a roach can hear. Right. You want to keep your house clean. Yeah, keep your house clean. Anyway, Tracy, if you've ever seen The Simpsons, where Marge and Homer lose the kids and have to go take a parenting class, that's what this paragraph reminds me of. Mop up after every meal. Exactly. Clean and seal all of your food. Or cover and seal it. Wipe down counters and tables after eating. Sweeper. Mop your floor after cooking. Eat only in your dining area. I guess if you eat over your sink, run the water afterwards to clean out any crumbs that may have dropped out of your mouth. Yes. And as a last resort, you could use poisons. But I would never recommend that. Putting poisons in your household. You can always call your friendly neighborhood exterminator, and they'll take care of it for you. Or you can call In Inbot, and he can lead all the cockroaches out like the Pied Piper. There are a few natural things, though. Yeah, some things have been shown to work. Yeah. NEPA talak tone. It's in two forms of catnip. So if you have a cat, you might just kill two birds with 1 st here, also known as eucalyptol. And that is in bay leaf, and then osage orange oil. And they don't know what in that is the magic potion, but apparently that works. Yeah. So if you're into natural, you could try some of those things. Just put bay leaves and catnip all over the place. See what happens in orange oil. And you'll never have a roach again. Or you can just clean up your house. I don't see many roaches. It's good. I mean, I'm surprised with the amount of moisture and how old my house is, and the fact that I eat all over my house and spill things everywhere. Garbage laying around. There's a gum stuck to your floor. Yes, but I don't see roach as much. When I do, I have my friend, the flip flop. I'm sure you do. And coming soon, the roach paddle. Yeah, see, I don't feel as bad, cause especially after I saw those reproductive figures, I'm not putting a dent in the roach population. Yeah, I can tell you the ones that you're killing care. I don't know. It's hard to tell with their brain since I smashed on the bottom of my cheek. Well, if you want to learn more about cockroaches, you can type that word in the search bar@housetofworks.com, and it'll bring up this fine article. And I said search bar, which means it's time for message break. This is from an Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain. Not true self experimenter, though. When I was a kid, I was just about 18, actually. I noticed that when you get water up your nose, the effect is all consuming. Can't seem to think about anything, feel anything, or do anything except think about that water that you just sniffed up your hooter in English. I had a similar thought about what happens to you, both psychologically and physically, when you get soap in your eye, because that stinging sensation and the resulting fevered knuckling of the optic cavity is, for a short time, the only thing in the universe. So while playing in the bathtub with the refracted sunlight sparkling through the red tint of my closed eyes, contemplating this phenomenon, I decided to run my own experiment. I want to know which of these all powerful sensations would eclipse the other. So I got a nice big chunk of soap on one finger and simultaneously rubbed it vigorously into my eye and ducked under the water, sniffing in deeply. Jeez. The result was, as you can imagine, quite horrific. I must have looked like I was being fatally electrocuted. I thrashed and rubbed and coughed and cried. My final conclusion are you dying to know what happened? Was that, unbelievably, both experiences behaved in some sort of quantum mechanical way where I was all consumed by two separate, all consuming events at the same time. So basically, it's like a really bad if you share this information with the world, however, no one else will ever have to suffer this hitherto undocumented facet of reality. All right? Because you guys do that. Kind regards, James Holmes. Not the maniac version. Did he say that underneath? I bet he does have that signature. That was parenthetical. Yeah, for Manchester, England. So, James, I don't know why you do such a thing, sir, but I raised a pint to you. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Isn't there like a whole movement, like M plus one or N equals one? The N equals one movement. What's that? It's like self experimentation. N is the study population, and so if N equals one, there's just one person yourself. Yeah. I don't know about sniffing water and putting soap in your eyes, but he was a kid. He was only 18. Right, James? Right. Yeah. James, not the maniac version. Thanks, James. If you anyone else out there have a cool self experiment that you've done, we want to hear about that all the time. Cockroach story too. Sure, let us know. You can tweet to us at Scisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Youhow and you can join us at our homeowners, on the web, our website, stuffyoushineo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com." | |
4326835a-53a3-11e8-bdec-2bc4a6c321d6 | How Ice Climbing Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ice-climbing-works | A few decades ago, some people who liked to climb mountains decided they wanted to make it even harder and ice climbing was born. If you think rock climbing is difficult, put on your base layer and join Josh and Chuck on the glacier. | A few decades ago, some people who liked to climb mountains decided they wanted to make it even harder and ice climbing was born. If you think rock climbing is difficult, put on your base layer and join Josh and Chuck on the glacier. | Thu, 12 Mar 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=72, tm_isdst=0) | 54553360 | audio/mpeg | "Hello people in Vancouver and Portland. We're coming to see you in March. OK? Did I step on you? No, no. I stepped on you, I think. Man alright, well, this is as clunky as we usually are. We are going to be coming to those two fair cities that I learned don't have direct flights yesterday. And I can't wait regardless. So we're going to be in Vancouver on Sunday, March 29, at the Chant Center. That's right. We're kicking it up a notch there. So we need your support. Yeah, for real. And then the next day we're really kicking it up a notch, maybe two. In Portland. We're going to be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March 30. That's right. And we need your support there to Portland, because, again, these are bigger venues. We're giving it a whirl. Don't put egg on our faces, for God's sake. Yeah, so you can get all sorts of information. You can buy tickets, everything you need. Just go to Sysclive.com and we'll see you in March. 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 Bryan over there. And there's Jerry. Abominable Snowman rolling. Sorry? Abominable Snowperson rolling. I think she's more of a burger meistermeister burger. You think so? Yeah, I guess you're absolutely right. Chuck, who would be the Abominable Snowman of the three of us? I think clearly me. You think so? I'm the most horrific. Yes, but your attitudes, your general view on life is very much not like that. Abominable snowman. Well, I'm fairly likable, too. I'm sort of like the Harry and the Hendersons. Bigfoot. That's right. Scary looking, but soft on the inside. Okay, so then Jerry's, John Lithgow and I'm one of the trees in a scene. Okay, what was John Lithgowal? I missed that. Harry and the Henderson. I just got confused. Yeah, I guess I do remember him being Harry and Henderson's. But because of what we're talking about today, I thought you were making a reference to The Stallone. What was that movie where he was like a climber? No, that was the troll to movie Face Off. I don't remember. I know what you're talking about, but wasn't John Lithgow in that? I think so. But actually the big twist to all this is I wasn't making a Harry and the Henderson's reference. I was making a raising Cane reference. Oh, good Lord. This is off the rails. Cliffhanger right? Cliffhanger that's right. And John, this guy was in it. Boom. Right? Yeah. And it was still on. Yeah. From the master filmmaker Renny Harland. I like Rennie Harley. I don't care what anybody says. I saw the long kiss goodnight. Finally. That's been on your list for twelve years. World class movie starting at about the halfway mark. Okay. All right, so we're talking ice climbing today, and I guess I should probably start by asking just verifying. No, Chuck, I haven't. Have you ever seen ice? I have seen ice. I've never ice climbed. And you know, another funny little thing is I don't know if you noticed that my friend Debbie Ranka wrote this from the old house. Yeah, that's quality stuff. She puts out the good stuff. Well, she does. She did a great job researching. But it's just funny knowing Debbie, she is about as far away you can get from someone who might ice climb. But wasn't she into roller derby? Sure. Okay, so there's a sense of adventure. Yes, but I was surprised she did roller derby. Okay, I got you. So it's a surprise she did roller derby. Yeah. There's no way she's going to ice climb. No, she doesn't like the cold weather. Nothing about it. Even from what I can understand from ice climbing. I mean, we're far from experts. We just did some research on ice climbing. Never ice climb before. I haven't either, and we'll probably get some stuff wrong, but please be forgiving. We're trying our best here. But from what I can tell, even rock climbers don't typically ice climb. They are a very niche cadre. I think if you're an ice climber, you started out as a rock climber, but just because you're rock climber does not automatically mean you can be an ice climber. They seem similar at first, but when you really start to dig in, the nuance between the two is pretty significant when you're out there on the face of a glacier. Yeah. And I also think that there are plenty of rock climbers who just want to go, like, shirt off or tank top and shorts and not chalk. Yeah. Because part of ice climbing is it's really cold. Yeah, it's cold. It sucks. It's equipment heavy. Yeah, there's a lot of differences. We'll go over some of the differences as they pop up. But just suffice to say that if you're familiar with rock climbing, that doesn't automatically mean you're going to be familiar with ice climbing. No, and I don't think you need to sweat getting details wrong, because there's probably, like, six ice climbers max who might listen to this show. Yeah. Oh, I think that's a generous number. Have you seen the free solo documentary yet? No, I haven't didn't it was either up for an Oscar or it won an Oscar. I think it won a couple of years ago. Yeah, no, I haven't seen it. Really good. I'm sure. I would think, though, just watching it, you know how I am, it's pretty tense. Although I will say this, chuck. The other day I was on a flight and everything just kept bottoming out. We ran into some terrible weather, and I was just, like, filing my nails. It was nothing. That's why you have, like, ten bleeding stuff right in front of me. They ache because I filed them too deeply. All right. Ice climbing. Okay. Was that in your story? Yeah, that was it. Okay. I just thought you'd appreciate that. Now, afraid of flying. I was talking about heights and all that. So there is talking about what was it called? Free Solo is the name of the documentary. So that actually applies also kind of, to ice climbing, as we'll see later. So there are some similarities, but there's also some big differences. But ice climbing really more than anything evolved out of mountaineering, because when you're climbing an alpine mountain or a mountain that's at a really high altitude, it's not all just like green grass and the von Trapp family and birds singing in your ear. It gets really cold up there. There's a lot of snow, there's a lot of ice. And you are going to eventually face a point where either you have to turn back around and go back down and say, well, I'm not going to summit this mountain, or you have to figure how to climb ice. Yeah. And some of the earliest mountaineers had some real trouble with this, and it wasn't until a guy named Oscar Eckenstein. Right? Eckenstein, probably. Thank you. They're very nice. Invented something called Crampons that really changed the game, I guess. Yeah. These are the super cool looking toothed claws that originally you would just strap them to your boots. They're like super sharp cleats, basically, that you could strap to your boots. You can still strap them to your boots, but you can also get boots. And of course, I'm going to kind of pepper this with what I would do. Okay. That was a nice climber. I would get the built in, sure. But you can still go by the ones you strap on as well. I have to say that's all I saw were the strap on ones. Oh, really? I think they have them built in now. I looked I couldn't find them. I saw some reference to them, but they looked more like actual cleats, where it's like a cramp. Okay, maybe it's different then. Also. I really hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Is it crampon? I think so. If you're a mountaineering couple and you need to be very sweet if your wife asks you to go buy a box of Crampons. Right. Got to do that. They are cleat like in design, but when you really get down to it, I mean, the teeth on those things are really long and really sharp, and they have to be, because you have to dig into some serious stuff, some really hard ice with them. So from what I saw, everything I came across was all, like, the strap on crampons. Strap on crampon. Right. I love it. So when Oscar invented the Crampons, he was a mountaineer. He was an early proponent of what's called bouldering, which is basically climbing up over big rocks. Free Soloing, it's kind of even lighter gear than rock climbing. And this guy was doing this at the turn of the last century, he was actually friends with Alistair Crowley, it turns out. No, he wasn't. Interesting cat, though. So Oscar Eckenstein just changed everything with these crampons because suddenly you could walk through a walk on a glacier at a certain amount of a grade, and it just kind of was the first big step. And it was a very big step toward this extreme sport of ice climbing. Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned, did we, that before this you could still do that, but it would take a long, long time because you would have to literally called step cutting. You would have to cut your steps into the ice as you go instead of just having these death boots. That's a better name for them. Could you imagine getting kicked with one of those? No, you would just bleed out. Surely that's been done in a movie, probably in Cliffhanger. Yeah. Death by crampon. Surely there is no way that doesn't happen in Cliffhanger. Maybe that's how John Lithgow goes down. I didn't see Cliffhanger. Is it ice or is it just mountain? I think it's both, because I remember on the movie poster, it's like Stallone hanging by one hand from a rocky Craig, but he's wearing, like, a North Face jacket. So I'm thinking it's a little bit of both. Mixed climbing, I think is what they call it. Well, you know, Stallone, he likes to mix it up. He definitely does. So history wise, things advanced, as they do with all sports. And about 25 years later, 20 years later, there was a climber named Lawrence Gravel who these first crampons were just sort of on the bottom like cleats. He said, hey, you know what these things need? They need fangs coming out of the toe, out of the front, like those cowboy boots. They have like a switchblade. Totally. I think Roadhouse had some of those, if I'm not mistaken. Hopefully. There's one point where I think it's Sam Elliott in a bar fight says, right boot. And there's just a knife in this guy's boot. Sam Ellie is so helpful, man. He really is. Right boot. That was just a quote. My old friend, my dear departed friend Billy used to stay in college. Right? That's a good quote. So the fangs coming out of the front really change things because now they're like, hey, not only can we walk up fairly steep slopes, but we can get near vertical with this stuff because we can just kick our toes right into this and just climb. And I don't know if you said it or not, but was it Lauren Gravel? No, I'm sorry. Yvonne Schwenard? No, we just got into him in the swing and 60s. So with that crampon, with the thing that comes out the front, I've seen it called a point. I've seen it called fangs. But it can be like one point or two points. And they have kind of like the ups and downs. We'll talk about them a little bit later. But now finally you start to get to what most people think of ice climbing because we should say it took me a little while to understand just walking basically up a very gentle slope in the mountains over ice is really difficult to do. And that qualifies as ice climbing. That's like a certain grade of an ice climb. What most people think of, if they've ever heard of ice climbing is somebody climbing up the sheer face of a glacier yeah. With those cool looking death axes. Right. And those are both two different types of what are called climbs. Climbing straight up is a climb climbing at an angle, very shallow angle is a climb. Just traversing ice, whether using crampons or pick as we'll talk about in a second, or both those both qualifies ice climbs. And we got to say that. But now that we've got the fangs in the front of the crampons, that switchblade and right boot now you're starting to get into things is like vertical climbs where you can climb up the face of a glacier now. Yeah. In previous to Yvonne how do you pronounce that? Shernard I think so he went on to become a billionaire because he founded Patagonia by the way, everyone should know this, he's a billionaire. Plus he is the guy that said, you know what, we've got these axes that we've been using and I think we need to tweak them. Going to chop off a few inches, go from about 25 inches to about 22 inches. I assume it just made it a little more manageable. Big part. Yeah. And then he changed that shape from this. It was previously straight at a really shallow angle at the shaft of the axe. Now the head was kind of angled down, right? Yeah. But now I think he curved it. Right? Yeah. So it looks vicious, like it looked vicious before, but it was basically a straight line and angled downward. Now it's like angled downward and a straight line and then it curves back up. Yeah. I mean it's cool looking and it's got a little barb at the bottom which I'm not entirely sure what that's for. I think for probably smacking ice around, basically chipping at it away. But the changes to this mountaineering axe were radical enough that it's an entirely different tool now. Right. Whereas before the mountaineering you kind of use it as a walking cane if it was long enough because it was longer than the ice axes, what are called ice tools. But mostly if you started to slip backward down the ice you picked the ice in front of you forward and held on like you stopped yourself. It's called self arrest. You kept yourself from sliding down the mountain. Basically that's what your mountaineering axis for? What your ice tool? Your ice axis for is to actually just like the front of the crampons. Right. The little fangs that come out these ice tools is an axe. You swing above yourself and you basically pull yourself up with until you get another footing with the front of your crampons. And then you use your leg and then use your arm and then use your leg. And then, little by little, you move up the vertical face of a glacier, or more spectacularly, something like a frozen waterfall. Yeah. It looks beautiful and striking and it looks like an awful thing to do. It looks really hard and I think everywhere I've read it, it said that it's even harder than it looks. Yeah. And I love him. Debbie said something like, anyone can learn to do this. Technically, she's sort of right, but I think it's more like 1% of you could probably do this. Right? Exactly. Or want to do this. So now all this stuff is in place for ice climbing to become an extreme sport. And this is by the it really started to pick up, I think in the definitely by the 90s it was an established thing. So let's take a little break, shall we? And we'll come back and kind of drill in a little more to the equipment that you're going to need if you're going to start climbing glaciers. Great. Welcome back, everyone. We're here. Right. Jeez. Chuck, get right to the point already. Right, so we were talking about the tools in these axes, which I think they call them sticks sometimes. Oh, I hadn't uncovered that lingo. Maybe I might be wrong. They're probably one of the coolest looking things you could buy at an outfitter. Yes. Have you seen them? Oh, sure. I'm a big fan of the Petzel. Ergo oh, yeah? Yeah. They're really cool. Petel makes good stuff. Yeah. I got a lot of information from some of Petzel's blogs, I have to say. Yeah. So there are a couple of ways you can go with this. I mean, there are all kinds you can get. They're all sort of variations of the same thing. But when I was reading Debbie saying, it was funny because you can get one leashed or not leased. And my first instinct was, why would you ever not want to leash on that thing? Right. Because you drop it and it's gone. Yeah. It's a big deal if you drop your ice tool. Yeah. It's not good. But she makes a very good point. It's not just like, oh, just take the leash off of your wrist, like you've got on heavy gear and heavy gloves and it's not easy just to slip that thing off your wrist. So if you want to use, you might have two or three of these for different terrains or whatever, different kinds of ice, and switching them out is a pain. So what I gathered was, if you're a really experienced ice climber, you probably don't want to leash. No. And that's actually becoming much more prevalent, called is it unleashed? Unleashed. Unleashed axis. Unleashed. Right. So that's becoming much more prevalent. And one of the reasons it is becoming prevalent is because some of the fine makers of ice tools, like Petzel, who is not a sponsor of the podcast, by the way, I'm just a fan. Sure. They have started to create ice tools that have real grips on them, that have ridges for where your fingers fit. They're curved in and upward, and there's, like, something that goes underneath the heel of your hand. The upshot of all this is it's getting tougher and tougher to drop your ice tool that's right. Even if it is unleashed. But there are still plenty of people who use leashes. And when we say leash, it's very much like a surfboard leash, whereas, like, a thing of velcro that goes around your wrist and there's like some unbreakable nylon rope that connects to a carabiner that connects to your ice tool. So I would go with leashed. I think if you're going to start, you probably are going to have it leased for a while until you get used to it. Which petzel did you like? The ergo okay. Yeah, it's beautiful. And it looks like there are at least three different ways you can kill someone with this. Yeah. Do you see right here where it's, like, curved and, like, at the bottom? This grip right here? Totally. It looks like a little pistol grip. It is. And it's a really well made it's a work of art, let's just call it that. I have a feeling you might just get one of these just to have that would be great. Keep it under the bed. Yeah, no, I'd frame it in a shadow box and just make up stories about all the glaciers. That's the one. Just ding it up a little bit. Right. Because, like, Josh, that looks brand new. You got the price tag on it still. So we were talking about the crampons earlier and you mentioned briefly, some of them have a mono point, just the one fang. Some are dual point. And I, as a newbie, was like, man, I want fangs everywhere. I can get them. But that's not necessarily beneficial, is it? No. Well, if you have one fang, you can really dig in deeper because you're putting all of that force from the kick onto the glacier into that one point, hence the name, mono point. So you can really get in there and get a lot of stability or a lot of what's the word I'm looking for, Chuck? A lot of purchase. Okay, yeah, sure. But it's not as stable as the two fanned ones, the two pronged ones, because those have that pressure spread out a little bit, so you have a little more side to side stability. So you're kind of trading one for the other. I think both work is probably a matter of taste. I think it's probably also a matter of terrain. I think the mono point works better in rocky terrain. And they're a little more flexible, too, I think. Yeah. And you can get heel spurs, not the dreaded foot problem, right. But spurs coming off the rear. And again, give me all the things that you can get on my boot. Sure, I'm with you. Concertino wire wrapped around your feet, basically. Sure. So you've got the next big thing you need. And this is really basic stuff if you go online and really start to dig in. Outdoor research had some pretty good beginners guide to ice climbing. There's a guy named Will Gadd who's just like, maybe the premier ice climber in the world and has been for a while now. He writes a pretty technical blog. So there's a lot of information you can get out there. But if you ever look at a list of the basic necessities you need, it is really expensive. I mean, your ice tool and your crampons are just one of many things that you need to have on just a basic ice climb. But another thing that you have to have are what are called ice screws. And if you have ever done any rock climbing, when you're climbing up a rock, especially if it's a well traveled rock, there's going to be bolts in place in the rock and you clip onto those things and suspend yourself. Well, when you're climbing up ice, the ice that you're climbing might not have been there last year or it's not going to be there three years from now. So when you're climbing, you have to put in your own bolts. And what they've developed are what are called ice screws that are exactly what they sound like. They're long screws that you bore into the ice and then you clip your carabiner to and billet from, or at least hang from. This is where it gets terrifying to me because it's ice. Apparently ice can be just as strong as rock, but I've had some ice in my mouth before. Sure, I can chew that with my teeth. It's true. So it's a little bit unnerving to me to think about screwing into ice and supporting my body weight, which, of course, I wouldn't be up there like this. That would be a death sentence, right? Well, apparently if you ever want to get as physically fit as you ever will be in your life to start ice climbing well, we do it before you start ice climbing, probably. Oh, yeah, you have to train for it. But I'm saying, like, if you're an ice climber, you're about in the peak physical fitness that any human being is. Yes, I would agree with that. So you got your ice screws, you got your crampons, you got your axe, you've got all kinds of little spawn divots and dew hickies, you've got your super cold weather gear. And you got to have that helmet because ice does chip away and fall and you don't want to get clunked on the bean when you're hanging off of a sheet of ice. Right. And that's like, another big difference between ice climbing and rock climbing or the overhead hazards are way more prevalent with ice climbing than with rock climbing. I mean, you can still a rock slide can happen. Little rocks can fall off if you go for a ledge or something. When you're rock climbing, debris can fall down and it is a problem. But with ice climbing, it's just a matter of fact of the climb. There's going to be ice flying everywhere. Sometimes way more ice comes off than you intended to, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But there's going to be a lot of ice falling. So you have to have a helmet when you're ice climbing. That's right. You're going to be doing this. You can do it kind of anywhere in the world where there is ice on a mountain. Plenty of places in North America. You can go to Norway, you can go to Iceland, you can go to the Alps in Europe. Greece kind of surprised me, but I was just being kind of naive and dumb with my geography. Of course, Greece has big mountains with ice and snow. I just, for some reason, was thinking there are mountains in Greece. Yeah. You think of, like, olives and wine and stuff. And then Mount Olympus, of course. Oh, yeah, there's that. It's kind of a famous one. Right. I also saw Scotland actually has some really intense ice climbing. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And there's plenty of places in the United States. There's actually an ice climbing park called Urai that has an ice climbing competition every year where, like, the best of the best. And actually, from what I understand, everybody comes in and competes. Is it fake ice? Not fake, but it's built. Okay, it's built, but it's built on rocks. I think they found a spot in the world where they could kind of grow ice. I'm not exactly sure how they do it. I just saw that it's, like, human enabled. Basically, all you need is a garden house. Right. Cold temperatures. There's some dude in Bermuda shorts and a Panama hat and dark socks up to his knees just with his hose. Yeah, just go squirt that down for the next three days. Right. Stand there, Walter. There's different kinds of ice, though. And when you're an experienced ice climber, you can look at a face and kind of know what you're getting into before you even come close to it, depending on how it's laying there and what color it is, how clear it is. I try to get a read on what would be the ideal ice, and I really couldn't quite suss that out. This is what I saw. So you want ice that has been around for a while. So probably Alpine ice, which started out as fallen snow. Sure. Not snow that's falling because that creates different kinds of ice. But there was a big heavy snowfall that dumped on a mountain and then the temperatures cooled and all of that snow started to turn to ice. And as it did, the air got squeezed out of it by the heaviness of the snow to begin with. But as the ice formed, it should have as well. And then it bonds to the actual mountainside. So it's real solid to begin with. And then temperatures get around freezing, maybe a little above for about five consecutive days. And on the fifth or 6th day of that kind of temperature, the ice should be just perfect for ice climbing because it takes on the state of what's called plastic, where your ice pick just goes right in and it stays in. You can just tell it's very satisfying. There's a lot of strength to it. But at the same time, it's not like chipping into a rock because like we said, one of the reasons you have to be so fit, and you are so fit just by virtue of being an ice climber, is you expend a tremendous amount of energy with each swing of your ice tool. Because if you're working with just plastic ice, that's going to be a pretty easy, satisfying climb. But that's ideal. That's not the norm. Most of the time when you swing that pick and again, you're on the side of a glacier, say you're hanging on by your feet there in the front of your feet and you are swinging above your head, an axe that you're hoping to get on the first try. It's a really good solid stick, but that's very unlikely. Instead you might do three, four, five times to get a good stick in there and each one of those is expending a lot of energy. And you're doing this for meters and meters, depending on how high this ice climb is. It requires a tremendous amount of energy and a lot of it is redundant effort having to swing that pick multiple times just to get that one stick. Yeah, because again, my naivete thought, man, I want to go when it's 30 below zero because I want that ice to be so frozen. Right? Do you think so? You'd think so? But the colder it gets, if it's like really, really below freezing, the ice might get brittle, it might break off. Right. And that's called dinner plating, I assume, because ice pieces about the size of a dinner plate will come falling off into your face. Yeah, you do not want that, man. No. So like you said, you want temperatures right at about freezing, even a little bit above freezing is ideal. Yeah. I mean, just right around there, not too much above, because then the ice turns into slush and slush doesn't hold you very well. So it's almost like the very first step towards this long path towards slush is where the ideal ice is. And. I saw actually one reason why, maybe even the only reason why that dinner plating happens when it's really cold, when ice becomes less stable, when it's really, really cold, because I thought the same thing, but it's because the colder it gets, the more the ice shrinks. Well, if the ice is attached, like, to the top of a cliff and the bottom of a cliff, it can't physically shrink very well. Right. It doesn't have that shrink. So instead, it thins out, it gets tense. So there's a tension in the ice, and when you hit it with your pick, it just shatters. That's why you don't want it to be just ridiculously cold out and have been for a while, because the ice is far more tense because it's constricting under the cold. That's right. And that alpine ice we were talking about is that really pretty blue ice that you see, if ice is really solid and climbable, it'll be blue or blue green. Sometimes it might have a little yellow to it because of the minerality to it. Really white ice isn't great. Well, I mean, it's not bad. It's got air in it, and it makes it a little bit easier to climb, but it gets a little dicey with the screws. Yeah. And the reason why is because the air that can form when, say, like a waterfall freezes, and it's essentially a flash freeze, it doesn't happen over a very long period of time. Yeah, people climb those. Dude, I've seen pictures climbing a frozen waterfall. Yes, it's nuts. But the reason why, and you can see it is very opaque. It's very white. And the reason why is because there's a lot of air traffic in there. Same thing when it's falling. Snow that's turning to ice, not snow that was already fell and then turned to ice, but it's turning to ice as it's falling. That traps a lot of air in there, too. And yeah, you can get a pretty good pick stick in there, but it's not going to support you because it's inherently less dense, it's less solid because there's so much air trapped inside. That's right. And I don't think we mentioned the chandelier ice. It's very pretty. These are icicles that are fused together, but it's not great for climbing. It doesn't hold the screws very well. And if you're an ice climber, you know your way around all this stuff, right? You know where to head toward you're down there at the bottom, looking at your route. Anyway, which way do I want to go to get the best ice? But you can navigate most of the stuff pretty well, and you know to stay away from people still die doing it. Of course, mistakes and accidents happen, but you know what you're getting into and you know what kind of ice you're not going to just try and stab into a chandelier. No, but I did see it's called reading the ice, where you're just standing there, basically, visually, mentally doing your climb, going through it in your head. And there's plenty of perennial ice sheets that aren't going anywhere. Well, for the next couple of decades at least. But they've been there for a really long time, and people climb them. And then once you climb them and you get a good pick stick in there, when you pull your pick back out, that stick is still there. So the people who follow after you use the same things, right? It's like a ledge or something. In rock climbing, it stays there. That makes the climbing a lot more easy. Yeah. One of the coolest things about free solo and this was something I didn't know. I kind of thought. Like. You go to climb a rock and you kind of just do your thing and what route you think is best. But established places like El Capitan. Which is what this one focused on. There are only certain ways you can even climb it. And they're very well established routes. They are named. And you should see this. Dude, you're going to love it. Okay, I'll see it. It's really cool. I will watch it simultaneously when you watch It's a Wonderful Life. Okay. But I would suggest if you don't know anything about the story, you not like, googling into it. Just watch it. Okay. Because there's some stress as to what you think might happen if you don't know the real stories. The real story. I like to go in fresh. Okay, but what you're saying is there is a set way, maybe a handful of different ways you can climb El Capitan. Same thing with these climbs, but depending on whether this is new ice that's not going to be there at the end of the season because it's like a frozen waterfall. It's going to unfreeze freezes differently every single time, every single year. You may be the first person to make this climb, and so you have to get super inventive, or it could be one that's been climbed by a bunch of people, and it's a lot easier because you don't have to exert quite as much energy. I saw one climb of the same grade. We'll talk about grades in a second. Can take an hour, or I should say, not me, but can take that Will Gad guy an hour, but one that's been picked through already. It will take them, like, ten minutes. What fun is that? I would forge my own path. Yeah, I guess so. And you can maybe I don't know, actually, you should probably just follow the existing path. All right, should we take another break? Yes, we should. All right, let's do that. And then we'll talk a little bit about technique right after this. All right. So remember, ice climbing also includes going up very gentle slopes on glaciers at the top of a mountain. Like, basically when you're watching somebody, you're like, oh, they're just walking, but there's ice that they're walking on, so it's really hard to walk on. So there's actual techniques that are involved in that level of ice climbing. And the first one is just flat footing, which is you would just basically call it walking, but you're walking with your feet kind of turned out like a duck going along the ice again with your mountaineering axe to keep yourself from sliding down the mountain if you start to slip. Yeah. And the French technique is what it's also called. You may not even be using your axe at this point, but like you said, it's just sort of like a duck walk. If you look up your walking with your there's a lot of stress on the inside part of your feet right. Which is tough. And if you do this a lot, it's tough on your ankles. You might want to switch to something called sidestepping. That's exactly what it sounds like. But there's an inherent risk there because you're bringing those boots with those crampons, which are highly snaggable over each other, and it would be very easy and tricky to snag 1ft. And you don't want to do that. No, and not only that, if you are smart, you are probably using a rope line that you're connected to keep you from actually falling off of the mountain. So you're having to step over that as well, or just step with that connected to the front of your body. Yeah. So it's got to be extremely difficult to do. But again, it's a lot easier than cutting out like a foothold like they used to do in the old timey days, like Oscar Xteenstein. I wonder people free solo ice. I'm sure they do, yes. If you just have crampons and the pickaxes some people like climbing a waterfall. There might not be anywhere to put screws in. And you just use that. You use the axes above you and the crampon in front of you, and you just climb up a waterfall. That's a form of ice climbing. I think it's very rare. I think most people are much more safety conscious. And stop put in an ice screw, clip into that and then move up, and we'll talk a little more about that in a second. But I think that's the norm. But people do free solo ice climb with just their tools and their crampons. Yeah. And just like free soloing on a rock. That's the subset, even, of experienced rock climbers. Right. Because, as they say, one fall does it all. It's kooky, man. Yeah. It's nerve wracking. One fall does it all. That's good. Thanks. Then we need to talk about the German technique. This is what I would do. And this is where those front fangs come into play, because the Germans got in there and they were like, I don't want to walk like a duck. I don't want to sidestep. I don't want to look goofy. Why don't you just kick into that thing and climb it like a ladder. Yeah. And I think it's depending on what type of technique you're using, it very much depends on the degree or the angle of the terrain. Like you can't front point if there's not enough of an angle in front of you. So by the time you're frontpointing that thing is at like a 50 60 deg angle by now. Yes. And then onward to 90 degree plus. Yeah. And I've also saw a lot of pictures of people using two axes. That's all I saw. But that's not always the way though. No. And in fact Debbie basically describes as the basic technique that you're just using one axe so that you're forming a triangle with your body with your feet at about shoulder width apart beneath you and then your axe like in the center above you forming a triangle which I didn't see anybody she is right. She knows a lot more than we do about that. But yeah. I didn't see anyone using that. Everyone was using a technique that she called traction, which is basically what I described. You've got two axes, one just above each shoulder and your feet are shoulder width apart and you're just climbing up one bit at a time. Like a human fly. Yeah, I want three. I would grow another arm and I would have three axes in that ice. Right. I would just stay at the lodge. Oh man, a little hot cocoa, maybe some whiskey. Whiskey and hot cocoa. I don't know how that would be nice. Fire. Yes. What else? I think that's it. Yes. No that's it. That's all you need. Up flannel bodysuit. Yeah, I was going to say really nice. Like a sweater? Sure. Yeah. Maybe some meatballs. Sure, it sounds great. Oh, fondue. How about that? There you go Chuck. I can always go for some fondue, I haven't had that in a while. Have you ever had raquette? I don't think so. What is it? Yuumi's, aunt and uncle got us into it. It's like the 70s thing in the vein of fondue, but it's like this cooktop and you end up in bed with another woman. It's this cooktop that you cook like vegetables or you know, whatever you want. Typically it's like mushrooms or onions or something like that. And then just underneath there's another heating element and you put hunks of cheese, typically Greer, or I think Greer usually. And then you melt it and then you put it all together on your plate. So it's this melted gooey, awesome cheese over like freshly sauteed vegetables. Interesting. It's really good and it's also fun because you're just sitting there cooking, talking and everything. It's just like a good little social what's it called? 70 center raquette. And originally raquette was a big wheel of cheese pushed close to a fire so that it was kind of melty and you just walk up with hunks of bread and scoop out hunks of gooey cheese with it. This is like kind of like the Milton Bradley version of Raquette that I'm talking about. But is the rockett the actual cheese or this unit? Yeah, I think it was originally the cheese, but now it's both the cheese and the unit. Okay. Look at there. Yeah. See what you're talking about. Yeah, I can't quite picture it. Right. So, yeah, it is kind of tough to describe in my own defense, but it's really cool. It's neat. So is the idea that the juices drop down into the cheese? No. Why is it even together then? Just efficiency. Okay. Yeah. You got one unit. All right. I guarantee whoever invented that never envisioned two dudes in 2020 talking about it calling it a unit. Yeah. No way, man. That looks good. Yeah, it is good. We'll have to have a reclaimed party sometime. Fantastic. You're going to love it, too. So where were we here? We're talking about raquette. Right. But were we climbing high up an ice waterfall? I think we're talking about the techniques, and we both agreed that we would want at least two axes. You said you would grow a third arm for a third axe, but you're using both feet and both arms in what's called the traction technique. Yeah, traction technique. You're looking to not dinner plate, so you're looking for the strongest ice. If it's convex, that's probably not a good place to throw that axe into. It'll probably shatter in dinner plate. Right. Although occasionally you might dinner plate and find a very much stronger piece of ice underneath that ice. Yeah. And so Debbie suggests the best way to prevent dinner plating is to just kind of not use your full force, if you can, swinging that pick and maybe kind of testing to see what kind of resistance you get. Also, you want to listen out for sounds, too. Hollow sounds are not good vibrations in the ice when you swing your tool into it. Not good either. I would think that you don't want to trust that ice. So you're listening out, you're feeling out. And if it looks like the area is going to dinner plate or just chip away or fall away or fracture, sometimes it is best to just hit it and get rid of it and then find that better ice underneath. If you think the ice is thick enough right. And you are using your arms to be sure, but like with any kind of climbing sport, most of the work is being done by your legs. Yeah. You want most of the weight on your legs for sure. Yeah. You don't want to angle. No, but that does happen. So you're talking about one fall does it all with ice climbing? That is pretty true. Unless you have like, a good repelling system going on and you're clipped into some good ice crews that have a good purchase into the ice. If you fall, you're going to be in big trouble, because usually when you fall while you're ice climbing, a lot of ice falls with you. So even if the impact with the ground doesn't hurt you, something else falling on you might. Also, don't forget your tools are really sharp as they look. And I was reading about the Hooray competition and how I think within the last couple of years, there was some guy who lacerated his arm so badly and kept climbing that they had to shovel out the bloody snow at the foot of the climb. That's unsightly. No one wants to see that. And he wasn't the only one to do that. Like, some guy had to go to the hospital afterwards. It might have been the same guy with another laceration. So the tools are really dangerous, and that's a really big difference, from what I understand, between rock climbing and ice climbing. If you rock climb falling, it's not great, but it's not unheard of. You might even say it's kind of a common thing to fall during rock climbing. And the chances are you're probably going to survive it with a recoverable injury. If you're injured at all with ice climbing, it's very infrequent that people fall, because when you do fall, ice climbing, it's a really big deal. And you can be seriously hurt or killed from that fall. Yeah. I mean, look at those icicles. Yeah. There was a woman named Sue Knott who was a premier ice climber. She and a woman named Carrie McNeil, another premier ice climber. They were lost. As far as I know. They've never been found. Back in 2006. Mount Forker in Denali National Park in Alaska. And Mount Forker has something called the Infinite. I can't believe I don't remember the name of it. Fang. I think Mang is a pretty good band name. I know it's a great name for it. But anyway, they were lost on this. It's like one of the hardest, most difficult climbs, ice climbs in the world. And these two, the kind where you have to camp out on the side of a mountain over multiple days and nights to make these climbs, this is like some serious stuff. And these two were perfectly capable of doing it. They just happened to get caught in some bad weather and have never been heard from again. But this is in 2006 and eight years before in a competition, it might have been an ure. Sue Knot was climbing and she was injured when she fell and some ice speared her. Wow. So that does happen. Yeah, it does. It's called the infinite spur. Yeah. Infinite Spur. Yeah. So they were climbing the Infinite Spur and got lost in 2006 was a bad year for ice climbing deaths in general. Not only were Sue Knight and Karen McNeil lost, but a guy named Harry Burger. I think it's really Harry, but sure. Okay. Well, he was lost in just like, a routine training practice that was just a freak accident. And I read about it, and they said there was no amount of training. There was no amount of preparation. There was no amount of caution that could have saved him. This was just a freak accident that happened. But, yeah, he was trapped under ice. Like 150 tons of it fell on him yeah. While he was climbing it. I mean, this guy was world class from what I read. So we're Sue Knot and Karen McNeil, and this is a really dangerous extreme sport. Yeah, I mean, that's the thrill with any extreme sport deep down, as you know, you could die that day. You don't want to. Right. But that's part of what makes that adrenaline kick up to such a level that these people do those things. It's true. And, I mean, you're in the mountains, and there's a lot of chance for things like avalanches to happen, and ice can fall on you. You can hurt yourself with your tool. You can lose your tool. You can get caught in a blizzard. The wind can get so bad that it can blow you off the mountain. There's just a lot of things, and there's definitely precautions you can take. Like if you are an ice climber, you have an avalanche beacon with you. It's just a part of your gear. You have a first aid kit with you. That's part of your gear, too. You know how to use your ice crews, and you're clipped in everywhere. There's a lot of precautions you can take, but it is an inherently dangerous sport for sure, of course. And you always need to remember that you got to get back down unless you're like being helicoptered out or something, which I don't even know if it's a thing. It's probably a thing for the Ritchies. But you're going down as well, and you got to plan out your day so that you're doing that safely and at the right time of day. And they always say that even hiking downhill can be tougher on you than hiking uphill. Right. Because you're already worn out at this point, and that's when mistakes can happen. And we keep saying experienced ice climbers. I guess you always have to do something for the first time. But it seems a little redundant to say experienced ice climber, right? Yeah, you're definitely doing it for the first multiple times with a very knowledgeable guy who's telling you how to do everything. And you're probably already an experienced rock climber. I doubt if you start off with ice climbing. That would probably be really weird. I wonder if anyone ever has never climbed a rock before, but look at that frozen waterfall. But one thing I would like to be able to do this. I don't know if I ever will, but one thing that really caught my attention was when you're fueling up in the morning before your ice climb, you want to eat. What I saw is like, think the trucker special, breakfast at a diner, PBR. And eggs and steaks. I could get into that kind of sport where that's what you eat. And they were like, bring food that doesn't freeze, so don't bring bananas. Bring Oreo cookies instead. I was like, I really like this ice climbing. Wow. It's sadly not there anymore because Atlanta has just really changed in the past 15 years. But there used to be a place called the Austin Avenue Buffet. I don't know if you ever went there. No, long, long time ago. It's on, obviously, Austin Avenue, which is not kind of Shishy, but this place was a great dumpy dive, and they serve food, and in the mornings they had the painter special, which was eggs, bacon, toast, and it's all boy PBR now. I thought it was kind of funny. Wow. Yeah. Was the food good? No. Okay. I'm assuming I didn't eat. I just drank. I guess I was in there in the morning for egg painting. Yeah. It was pretty cool place, though. So there was one other thing I wanted to mention, too. There's a very controversial side to ice climbing. The ice climbing community and the rock climbing community are frequently one in the same, but also separate in some ways. And one of the ways they are separate is that sometimes ice climbers will say, hey, I'm going to practice, but I don't feel like driving up to the mountains. So I'm going to use my tools on a rock climb, which is called dry Tooling, and it has all sorts of negative effects on a rock climbing course. Yeah, I bet it can chip away ledges and all sorts of stuff. It leaves scars on the rock. Rock climbers do not like that. So there's kind of like a little bit of a civil war in the climbing community between people who rock climb and people who dry tool climb. And I get the impression dried tools are not very well liked. Yeah, that sounds kind of dirty, too. Dry Tool? I think so. Okay, one other thing, since we're just throwing stuff out at this point, I ran across a website called Jiveassanchors.com, and it basically is just this blog that makes fun of people's ridiculously dangerous and ill advised anchors for their climbs, like things they're connected into with their carabiners. Yeah. And all that was verbatim the description of the blog, including all the I believe it. You do not. All right, let's end ice climbing once and for all, shall we? Yeah. If you want to know more about ice climbing, there's a lot to go read and then try and make sure you do it safely. So there you go. And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this gifted and talented. This is great. Hey, guys. I'm a gifted and talented GT specialist at an elementary school, and my students range from kindergarten to fifth grade. We have an ongoing side project that was inspired by you. We have two posters where we have created lists of band names and song names. Someone hears something, they say, that'd be a good band name. I write it down. They do the same thing for songs. They also have decided the genre of some of these bands, which is your job. They even took it a step further, like the GT kids often do, and decided they need to create a synopsis of the songs when they think of one. I'm just picturing Kindergartners doing this and it delights me to no end. So here's some of the band names and what genre. Used Mirrors. Not bad. Okay. Mr. Ma'am. I love that one. That's a great one. Yes. She said that's a pop group. Ancient Falls. Okay. She said either frog well, she said alternative or maybe jazz. But you are the authority. Dumb and Dangerous. That sounds like an old man band. Okay, and then the loudmouths. Or just Loudmouth, which she said is clearly punk. Post punk, alternative, loud mouth. She closes with this. Knowing these kids, they will take on one of these band names one day and become the most successful band ever seen. My students are absolutely amazing, so I'm not surprised by anything they do. I enjoy listening while completing all the hours of paperwork I have to do. Keep up the good work. And big. Shout out to Angie Connell and Heritage elementary gifted and talented kids. That's awesome. Thanks, Ms. Kanell, and your class for writing in. Those are awesome. What was my favorite Chuck again? Mr. Ma'am. It's a good one. It's so good. If you want to get in touch with us, like Ms. Cannell did in her class, you can send us an 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. 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." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-09-09-sysk-hip-hop.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Hip-hop Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-hip-hop-works | In this week's SYSK Select, what you hear is not a test, instead it's Chuck and Josh discussing the cultural history of the Hip-Hop movement. Born out of the South Bronx, by way of Jamaica, Hip-Hop culture grew up suddenly as DJs learned to use two turnta | In this week's SYSK Select, what you hear is not a test, instead it's Chuck and Josh discussing the cultural history of the Hip-Hop movement. Born out of the South Bronx, by way of Jamaica, Hip-Hop culture grew up suddenly as DJs learned to use two turnta | Sat, 09 Sep 2017 22:55:35 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=22, tm_min=55, tm_sec=35, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=252, tm_isdst=0) | 49846313 | audio/mpeg | "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. Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's Saturday edition of stuff You Should know. The Selects edition. This is my pick this week, and I'm going to go with how hip hop works from July 11, 2013, a little more than four years ago. And I just remember this being a great episode. I learned a lot about it, and I was someone who was into the music side of hip hop in college. But hip hop is much more than music. It's about an entire culture which encompasses many different things. So give it a listen, and as always, if you've heard it once, you might find something new upon a second listen, and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. I'm on Mike one. He's on Mike three. Jerry's on the wheels of steel. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. That's right, terminator X is to our right. Yes. That's you, Jerry. That's my favorite DJ. Is it? Oh, man, unbelievable stuff. I think DJ Hurricane is pretty great. Yeah, pretty great. True. Yeah. I mean, if you go back and listen to Beastie Boy stuff, the stuff that he was doing, it's like I grew up with it, so I took it for granted. But with many things as a grown up now I'm looking back and that was pretty amazing. Yeah. I'm still going to go with Terminator X just like by fractions of a point, though. Yeah, I put them at the top. Yeah. Not like cool herc. Hey, cool herc, man. He's what they call the OG. Spoiler alert. Yeah. We should say that we're for rating in the territory. We have little to no business because we're pretty square. But we can still talk about hip hop. That's not true. I was into this stuff at one point. I was into it, too. I'm still square. Yeah. But I think we have business, just as much business as we would any other music. All right, fine. We're cool then, man. We're cool. To cool. Is that cool? Okay. You don't have any business. So we're talking about hip hop today. It has a very long tradition that dates all the way back to Africa, which, as we'll see, but then the modern incarnation is a little more recent still. It's kind of old. Yeah, it's got some pretty surprising and interesting routes. But we should say, and this is something that I was always hung up on for a long time, and Katherine Near, who wrote this article, points this out. The difference between hip hop and rap, they're not the same thing. Right. It's like the square and the rectangle thing. Yeah, exactly. So moving on. No, hip hop is more like it's a cultural movement. It's more than just rap. Rap is a type of music that falls under the umbrella of hip hop. So you can say that rap is part of hip hop. Right. But hip hop is not necessarily rap. Yeah. Like the square and the rectangle. They go hand in hand, though. Yeah. And I was trying to find out who coined the term hip hop. And it's one of those things where there's a bunch of people that kind of get credit for it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some people say Keith Cowboy wiggins from Grandmaster Flash. He was definitely the one. And then other people say, no, it was DJ Hollywood or Lovebug Starsky. And other people say, what about Sugar Hill Gang? Or Herc? Sure. So I don't know if it's been pinpointed, but it was used in print in 1981 for the first time in the Village Voice, although it was surely used in the late seventy s on the street. Yeah, because Herc was he coined a lot of terms like that's. One of the interesting things about this is like, we can trace it back pretty confidently and find like, actual origins of what's become this global, international cultural phenomenon. We have seen the birth of a new music form in our lifetimes, which is pretty cool. We have. And that's the only one. Oh, that's not true. What about like, electronica? Yeah, I guess so. But you could also say that that was sort of the same as synthesizer from the but that was like used in rock and roll. I don't know, maybe that counts. I think it counts. You do? Sure. Electronica hip hop EDM. That's electronica, right? I think so, yeah. Electronic dance music. Yeah. But I would say yeah, I would say that qualifies. Even still, it doesn't diminish the birth of hip hop. No, of course not. I mean, there's two that's better than one, right? That's right. So, Chuck, when you're talking hip hop, and you talk to a cultural historian about hip hop and say, what is hip hop? They're pretty much going to give you four aspects that combine make up the cultural movement of hip hop. Right? Yeah. And Catherine, who wrote this is a historical, cultural historist. That's what they call it historian. And I can't remember her graduate degree, but it has something to do with this very closely. I just can't remember exactly what it was in. So that's why when you read this, you're like, man, Catherine really got into this article for sure. It's pretty broad and there's a lot of info here. Yeah. So we should get to it. The four things. And it started out as just like, graffiti, break dancing, MC and DJing and rapping. These days, you might see it portrayed more as visual arts, graffiti included in that. But film and other graphic arts, written and spoken word. So not just rapping and MC, but performance, poetry, physical movement, which is not just break dancing, but a lot of dance styles. Right. Including my favorite crumping, crumbling is pretty cool. It's unbelievable. Just somebody going nuts. It's awesome. And so, like, herky jerky, yet controlled. And I could never in my wildest dreams do it. So I think that's why it appeals to me. Yes. The fact that it's not controller doesn't appear control is what differentiates it from the herky jerky dancer from Mr. Show. Remember him? Yeah. And then the final one is style, which is, of course, fashion, and just the hip hop style in general, everything from clothing to bling and the lifestyle. All right. Like we said, the history of hip hop, especially the music, can be traced all the way back to Africa. We would trace the modern birth of it to the South Bronx. South south Bronx, yeah. But leading up to that, you would join the slave ships coming into the West Indies, as they recall back then, and these slaves who were captured and transported to the New World, making air quotes, brought with them this tradition called greetism, which was a form of, like, familial storytelling. It was an oral tradition very frequently set to drums. And there was also very frequently dancing. And a lot of that dancing, as you showed me, very much resembles dancing that you see today. Hiphop style dance. Not very much like absolutely. Yeah. Right. So you've got this presence of this, what's now an African American, I guess, style or cultural identity that's evolved out of Africa. And music and movement and drum rhythms are a big part of it. Right. Yeah. And of course, Colin response in church was a big part of it, as well as gospel and calypso and salsa and, of course, jazz and the blues. It's all rolled up as influences that eventually made its way to Jamaica, to soldiers who are American soldiers stationed there in World War II. Yeah. So we made our way from Africa to the West Indies up to America. And then there was that boom, that birth of jazz and all that, that made it then down back to Jamaica, part of what were the West Indies. Yeah. It's a weird little circle. So when it gets taken back to Jamaica in World War II, there was something going on there in the Caribbean that was pretty cool and really the birth of what hip hop and rap would become. They had DJs there who had these big portable sound systems, and they would go play block parties and house parties and street parties, and started a tradition called toasting, which was sort of like early wrap. It was kind of like the freestyle stuff in Eight Mile. Like, a lot of times they were trying to one up other DJs or cut down other DJs, and it was included over the music. Have you ever listened to, like, a reggae show today? Like Reggae Fire on Almadier. Oh, yeah. So you know how they'll just turn on the music for a second, they'll say something, they'll turn the music back up, and they'll turn it down again. I think that's toasting. Yeah. I listened to some of the things, like the early 80s toasting. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. And that led to two different types of new reggae music, which is Talk Over and dub. Talk over is kind of what we were just talking about, the posting over music. And then dub just changed the song musically with, like, echo and massive amounts of bass or treble reverb, stuff like that. Yeah, it was like what you'd call now, like a remix of a song. But it usually followed certain lines. Like, a lot of echo are always a lot more bass than the original version. Exactly. And they would throw that on the B sides of the record so you'd have the regular version than the dub version. Right. So all this is going on in Jamaica, and in the 60s, there was a kid named Clive Campbell who lived in Jamaica and grew up around this toasting, street parties, portable sound systems, talk over. Yeah. Dub basically changing and altering music to make it sound cooler with a heavier bass line. And this kid, Clive Campbell, he moved to the Bronx in 1967, and he eventually became somebody known as Cool Herc, who was the DJ who most people say was the originator of hip hop. That's right. That's cool with a K dulhk. He's a legend. Yeah. Okay. So Cool Herc also, by the way, started the tradition of naming yourself as someone else. Oh, yeah. He wasn't Clive. He's DJ Coolhurk. Right. And that became, of course, a tradition in rap and hip hop. It did, as we'll see. So he had a big gig early on, his sister. I've heard various things from birthday party to back to school party, and he was well known as a tagger, like graffiti tagger. Which we'll get to in a minute, how that plays a role. So people just showed up en masse to see who this famous tagger was. Like, DJ Coolhurst is going to be there. Let's go check it out. Right. So it was like a lot of folks there. Yeah, they came for the tagging and stayed for the DJ. Now that's right. Because what they found at that time when we're talking the mid to late seventy s. Yeah. If you went to a party and the DJ was there, the DJ just played a record and then ended. And maybe they were good. It was like the next one came on right before the first one ended. And again, if you listen to how Disco Works episode, this is where this all came out of. Like was this block party right here, basically. Right. This is the birth of not just disco or not just hiphop, but disco too. That's right. And so they saw that he was doing some pretty cool stuff. He had two turntables and a microphone. And he saw that when people were dancing, they would just kind of stand around then when like a really good part of the song would come up with lots of great beats or whatever, they dance. And he figured out along the way, and I think he figured out before this block party happened, that if you just take two versions of the same record, you can keep that one part going over and over again and just switch back and forth between the records playing that same part, and people will dance all the time. So when all these people turn out for a sister's party to see the graffiti Tiger Herc, they came up against this DJing and that was that. Yeah, it's called a break beat, and it's typically like a drum break. And that's what the DJ is doing if you don't know anything about it. When they have the little headphones up to their ears as they're queuing up the spot on the second record, so they can cross fade or toggle in the early ages right over to the next one without missing a beat. Right. And like you said, the dance party would just keep going on and on. This is insane. Yes. They were like, is this record ever going to end? No, but Cool Herc also did something else, too, that would give rise to this. Right. He was big into toasting. That's right. So he started doing the talk over. Evidently the DJing became a little too complicated because it's much easier nowadays with your eye devices to fake all this stuff. Right. But back then, they were like pioneering electronics and figuring this stuff out. And in fact, Grandmaster Flash was like the real guy. Well, he was invented the crossfader and he was really into electronics and figuring that junk out. Right. So because it got more and more technical, it wasn't just playing a song and then kind of turned on the volume for a second, talking over it and turned the volume back up if you wanted to toast. It was tough to kind of balance those two things. So cool. Herc enlisted the aid of Coca Rock and Clark Kent to come toast for them. The Herculoids. Yeah, that's who they became. And they inadvertently established rapping. Yeah. Cochlear Rock is generally regarded as the first rapper. That's so cool, man. DJing got too technically involved, so they had to get somebody else to toast. And that became rapid. Yeah. That is so cool that you can trace it back to that instance. Yeah. And they started freestyle dancing, too. And they're known as the first Bboys, which is another term I think that Herk coined, Bboys and Bgirls, which are break dancers. So things start really kind of exploding from here on. The DJ scene, africa Benbatta, who, like you point out, was not born with that name. He named himself Kevin Donovan. Yeah. Same with Grandmaster Flash. His parents did not name him Grandmaster. His name was Joseph Settler. Right. They were early on in the scene, Benbotto was actually a former gang member. And so he saw the bad effects, the ill effects of gangs, and decided to form the Zulu Nation, which is like an awareness group to steer kids in a more positive direction in life. And that was sort of the foundation of hip hop early on, was positivity and silliness. Yeah. Doing the right thing. Talking about food you like to eat, or in contrast, talking about having a bad experience during a meal at another friend's house. Yes. Is that a song? My Bad Meal? I can't remember what song it was. It might have been like the extended version of Rapids, but one of those really early songs, like, they talk about going to your friend's house and the mom can't cook. It's all very sweet and then sweet. Yeah. Super. And it was all very positive, too. So Grandmaster Flash was a key innovator, because, like I said, he was really into electronics. Built the first crossfader. He is the first one that started punch Phrasing, which is usually like a horn blast and just inserting a very short, quick bit of another song over a song. Right. It's using two records, but not necessarily the same record. Two versions of the same record. Yeah. But you're still working them together. That's like modern DJing. That's right. And it's used to just, like, punctuate something, scratching he did not invent. That was Grand Wizard Theodore, supposedly. And the story goes there is that he's in his bedroom playing a record and his mom comes in, turn that stuff off. He stops it with his hand and he's like, Wait a minute, that sounded kind of cool. And just started doing it. And then Grandmaster Flash. Really perfected it. That's awesome. As a mom came into his room to tell the story, I love it. And beatbox, which is not the Fat Boys stuff, right? No, but they're pretty good at it, that's beatboxing. Oh, yeah. He created the beat boxes. Just hooking a drum machine up to your turntables and just go into town. Yeah. And I think that would help segue from one song to another to create just like, a seamless effect. Yeah. All right. So this is all going on in the early Eighty s. Then they started acting. These are just like parties at first. Then they actually started recording. Hip hop music got played on the radio. Mr. Magic's Rap Attack premiered 1983 in New York City. It's the first hip hop show. And then MC started kind of coming to the forefront more as, like, the leader of the band instead of the DJ. Yeah. You remember the huge confusion that DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince ran into? They named it, like, their second album, I'm the Rapper. He's the DJ. Oh, really? Yeah, because everybody thought the Fresh Prince was DJ Jazzy Jeff because they were caught in this transition where it's like, wait, I thought the DJ was supposed to be the frontman of a group. Well, Prince was like, no. Yeah. So they named an album to clear things up. You don't remember that? I don't remember that. He's the perfect example of those early Sweet songs, though. Sure. Because his were all about hanging out with my buddies and we're playing some games. Yeah. Although there's one about an extended story about a traffic accident that leads to a court case. And he's sure that it's not his fault, but that lady's fault. Is it like he was double parked or something? No, she hit him. Okay. Is that a fender bender? Yes. It's as dark as he got into the millennium. Yeah. I'm just kidding. So now we're in the 1980s, early 80s. Things start kind of crossing over, of course, with blondie's rapture, which we all knew and loved. Right. And The Clash is Magnificent Seven, which is very much hip hoppy in tone. And some genuine stars start to kind of pop up on the scene. Like Run DMC fab five Freddy Lo. Cooljay. Yeah. BC Boys, man. We already mentioned the Sugar Hill Gang, right? I don't think we did. We have to mention the Sugar hill. Yeah, of course. They had the first hit rap record ever, rappers Delight. Sure. And it was released, I think, in 1983, maybe the same year as Rap Attack came out. And it was like, that put rap on the map. Yeah. And people were like, what is this music? And, Chuck, those who listened again to the disco podcast will note that they made that record using La Chic's good Times. That's right. It all happened together. Yeah. Sampling, too. I think we covered that in yeah. Boy, this is really all coming together, isn't it? Man? It is. All right, so the industry is changing a little bit at the time as well. Sugar Hill Records closes. Deaf Jam pops up. Women all of a sudden are in the mix with Salt and Peppa and MC Light. Yeah. Queen Latifa, of course, they paved the way for people like Lauren Hill, I think, just filed for bankruptcy. Did she? I think so. She fell in rough time since she yeah, man. The food. You said that one album. There's quite a few rep groups that had, like, one classic album and then that was it. Yes. Like Blackstar and Fujis. I was trying to think of those one more, but usually they would break up like they did and become their own independent artist. That's how that happens. Yeah. Like Dr. Dre. And Snoop Dogg or NWA. And Dr. Dre or Wutang Clan. Goody Mob, of course. Yeah. 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. 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MTV gets on it because it spreads from the East Coast to the West Coast. Yeah. 1988, yo, MTV Raps came out, and I remember being so happy that that happened. Really. I remember being that agent thinking, like, where are the rap videos? Like, come on, MTV waiting for them to do this. And they finally did. And then after that, it was like, okay, you can start playing these through the day. And then they finally did about a year later, apparently, according to this article. Yeah, after it was, like, exclusively on, UMTV, reps. Right. Which was like a half hour, an hour, and that was it. And I think they started making it more than just once a week, but then finally it's just like, forget it. We'll put rap on alongside of Def Leopard. Right. I don't think the world will end. Or we'll put Run DMC in the same video as Arrowsmith. Yeah. And I wonder if that helped pave the way to just kind of, like, break the cell walls between these genres on MTV. Yeah. I think for sure they knock down some walls for NDMC. Super pioneers knocked down walls. Remember the video? Yeah, they kicked walls down. They kicked walls down. Literally, metaphorically and figuratively. Wait, I messed that up big time. Literally and metaphorically. Right? I said metaphorically and figuratively and literally all three. So we are now progressing on to gangster rap. NWA. Of course. And iced Snoop Doggy dog at first. Yes. Now Snoop Lion. Yeah. Then Snoop Dogg in between. Right? The dirty, dirty do you see? Was it NWA? Were they the first gangster rap? She mentioned someone called Sculi D, who I haven't heard of, so I don't know if Schooly D is I've heard his name, but I've never heard his stuff. Yeah, but I mean, for sure, NWA was the first one to ever take gangster rap and turn it into a hit. Yeah. Nice guys with attitudes. Yeah. And then they were another group that broke up into just really successful spin off recordings. Easy E's debut album is arguably one of the best ever made. Yeah. R-I-P-A. Pretty successful career. Well, The Chronic was my soundtrack for, like, about 18 months in college. And then Snoop Doggs was awesome too. He discovered him. Ice Cube had a great career, too. MC Ren, DJ Poo. The whole group was just awesome. Yeah, they just had a show at the Fox, like, two nights ago. What? Ll Cool J dela Soul Public Enemy What? Ice Cube, and, like, one or two other acts. How did I not hear about this? Ll Cool Jay put it together. I don't know. It was supposed to be pretty good. The reviews are in the AJC today. Yeah, I'll bet it was good. Yeah, just like a seven hour show. Yeah, well, I don't think they each played that long, but I think it's like three and a half hours. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So gangster rap, like we said, that was ushered in, and the original intent of hip hop started to get lost at this point. Yeah. In a big way. Eating food that you liked, talking about it cheerios for breakfast. Right. Yeah. You're pretty on the outs as far as hip hop was concerned when NWA came along and started talking about gangster rap. Right. Well, they were side by side there for a while. Right. And then gangster rap won out. Yeah. Because people are cynical. And of course, gang violence and drug dealing and poverty and misogyny were all hallmarks of gangster rap. Yeah. Which is still very much around today. Oh, yeah. Even though what's interesting is, like, gangster rap was a subgenre of hip hop that eventually came over, or took over and became hip hop. And then now that's broken up into other subgenres, but the source material is typically the same. Yeah, and I think another difference, too, just thinking about it, is gangster rap back then was very much like, I'm poor, and now it seems to be more like, I'm rich, right? But I'm still, like, hail from the ghetto, so I've got cred. True. And I'm still very violent, and I carry a gun and I'm not afraid to use it, that kind of stuff. Yeah. But, like, NWA and those guys, they'd never talked about being having money ever, because they didn't, right there, early in their careers, they were just poor guys. Right. And they were being kept down and they were upset about it. That's right. To say the least. So alongside it, though, you did have some great bands like Tribe Called Quest and Dela Soul and Far Side, who either had a positive message or were just like, Far Side just having a good time. Yeah, well, they're in California. I love those guys. Great. Their first album was killer bizarre Ride to the Far Side. Yeah, that was good, too, I think. Yeah, totally. Wutang came around and of course they launched the careers of a dozen guys, it seemed like. Yes, they were kind of a hybrid. Like, they would talk about violence and misogyny and all that as well. But they also it wasn't all it was about. There were some pretty smart guys involved in Wutang clan. Oh, yeah, for sure. Tupac yeah. She mentioned Warren G and Sir Mix a lot. I wasn't so into them. Sir. Mix a lot was awesome. He was, like, kind of a throwback. Like, after the transition had been made, sir Mixelot was still, like, talking about butts and buttermilk biscuits and all that, you know what I'm saying? He never wore, like, floor length mint coats and stuff like that, but some buttermilk biscuits. DJ Josh I've got, like, an accordion on the album cover. KRS One was really big in my life, too. I was a big fan of KRS One, who's Crazy Down Productions, and then both Gangstar and blackstar, I was a big fan of at the time. I like Gangstar, too. I like DJ Hurricane. DJ Premier. Who's that? He's the gangstar DJ. Oh, really? Yeah, him and Guru. That was gangstar. Okay, I like Guru. But the two of them together, it was always weird to me, even though I think Gangsta's Code of the Streets is one of the best rap albums ever made. Yeah, agreed. It's just like they were each doing their own things side by side. It didn't mesh and create something together, but it was like two really talented people doing something amazing at once. I haven't pulled that one out in a while. It's a good one. Like you said, more subgenres. Like combining rap with hard rock music and metal music. Yeah, big deal. Body Count. Ice tease, a little band. Yeah, I saw them. Did you? Yeah. La Lapalooza. And then things spread down south, of course, with Two Live Crew and groups like outcast and Ludicrous and Timberland and Goody Mob, very much like Atlanta based Dirty South. Two Live Crew was Florida, I think, but yeah, the dirty south. Well, then you have, like, New Orleans bounce. And I think that's where Crumping came from, too, is the south, right? I think so. I'm not sure, though. Do you know? No. Okay, I asked. Things are changing back these days, I think, with regards to the gangster thing, that's still around. But there are other acts out there that Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC said that it's kind of coming back around because he's like, some of this music is great to listen to in a club, but he's like, what are you going to do the rest of the day? Right. We need this to be all day music. And like, Kanye West, I was a big fan of his early on, not so much now. And who's that guy? Drake. He's pretty good. Yeah. You listen to that? No, I haven't listened to any new hip hop in a long time. Connie get the college drop out from 2004. Yeah, it's unbelievable. That's the first one. Yeah. That was amazing. I will check it out. So that's a little bit on music. I guess we should talk about graffiti some. Well, yeah. A lot of people say graffiti is its own thing. It's not a part of the fourth pillars of hip hop. And people who are in a hip hop say, shut up. It is too. And most people agree that graffiti is pretty much in extractable from hip hop. But graffiti came first. Yeah, that's true. Modern graffiti tagging, which is another word for it. And if you're into that kind of thing, you should check out our surprisingly interesting episode on how aerosol cans work. That's right. Started in the can actually trace this back to its point of origin, pretty much, too, to a guy named Demetrius. Right. What was his tag? Taki 183. T-A-K-I not Turk. 182. No, but was that based on him? You think it was inspired by that? Yeah. I got you. And it was a little Greek kid named Demetrius who in the 60s started well, he was a messenger. He worked for a messenger service, and he had a marker, and he put that together with his nickname taki and the street, they lived on west 183rd street, which is way up there, and he started leaving his tag all over the city. Yeah. And the New York Times short article that you can actually get on his website. It's like, scanned in there. It's kind of cool to read from 1971 called Taki 183 spawns pinpiles. And people are like, this guy's writing his name on things, right? But it's not really his name. And there's numbers yeah. It's so funny to think about now because tagging is just so ubiquitous, you know. Well, he also got kind of good at making it look a little pretty. He didn't write any cursive or anything like that. He developed what became a tag. Like it was the same thing every time after a while. Yeah. And cool. Herc actually became a tagger. And from that started Emulating Taki 183. And that was how people came to know Cool Herc before he was a DJ. That's right. And of course, it just evolved beyond tagging, as everybody on the planet knows. It became an art form to itself. Building murals, entire trains, very colorful sort of three dimensional aspects. I feel like you don't need to spend too much time trying to describe it because if you don't know what graffiti looks like, then just go outside. Yeah. Unless you like living Kansas and they don't do that kind of stuff there. It got a little reputable in the 70s when Patty Aster actually featured graffiti in the fun gallery, her art gallery. And now it's a common thing. Yeah, I think graffiti galleries all the time. And those hip hop historians who say, yes, graffiti is part of hip hop, point to the convergence between hip hop and graffiti and say that it's centered around a tagger named Hayes. It's got a pretty awesome website. Eric Hayes. It's like this kind of throwback to well, it's like a timeline of like hiphop and graffiti. Like, if you go through his stuff, it's pretty neat. Yeah, he did the check your head, Font. Yeah. And he was also, I guess, in the photography, too, because some of the album covers he did, either he did the fonts for him or whatever. But he did. Public Enemy. He did Young MC. Oh, really? Yeah, he did Tone Locks albums. So he's doing all these album covers and he's a tagger. So from that point on, people are like, okay, well, this is part of hip hop now. I don't care what you have. Did you see up in the air? The Clooney movie? Yeah. Remember? I was like, I hate how it ended. You're like, that's the name of the movie. I remember that. But remember the Young MC when he did the corporate party and he did Bus to Move? No, I don't remember that part. They crashed the corporate party and he was like the entertainment for the night. That was up in the air. Yeah. I thought that was an episode of Scrubs or The Office. No, it wasn't up in the Air. And it really just sort of nailed that whole like, Verizon is going to do a party and they're going to hire a rapper and make it Young MC. Right. It was pretty good. Yeah. Are we to dancing yet? I think we are. We've covered the music. We've covered graffiti. Yeah. Now we're on the dancing. Okay, well, break dancing obviously is most synonymous with hip hop, but all kinds of other dancing, popping and locking, boogaloo grinding down, rocking. The Harlem Shake. Yes. Which is an original thing, right? Yeah, there's a video from 2006 or something that this guy did. I can't remember who it was, but it's like the Harlem Shake. It's the real one. And if you see this and then you see like, all the YouTube viral videos that were going on recently and to see how far off everybody was from the actual Harlem Shake yeah. People in Harlem were actually getting mad, like, what are you doing? Do you even know what the Harlem Shake looks like? It was almost like YouTube turned into the Blue Family and everybody was doing the chicken dance. Right. Even though none of them had ever seen a chicken before. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's what a lot of people were doing with the Harlem Shake. Got you. But breakdancing is what we're going to concentrate on because it's pretty cool. Head spins, backspins. Tell me about that video you said the windmill. Oh, yeah. Just get on YouTube and look at breakdance 1940s and that's it. That dude is breakdancing? Yeah. And it's clearly the 1940s. Yeah, I tried it. I was like, Am I being tricked here? Is this some fake? It's like pretty authentic. I think it's authentic. But that was full on breakdancing. Like, at first I was like, oh, that's sort of break dancing. And then he got on the floor and I was like, that's totally break dancing. Right? So it's been around. He does the worm. Yeah, he sort of did the worm and he was doing that doing like, windmills and stuff. Well, not quite a windmill, but close to a windmill. Windmill, by the way. I was obsessed with trying to learn that in my youth and never came close. Obviously, I, too was a breaker in my youth, so I wasn't all I needed. I took breakdancing lessons. I made it on the front page of the Peach section, which was the entertainment section of Toledo Blade. I was breakdancing and, like, attracting my mom made me by hand. Man do you have a copy of that? I don't know where it is. It might be out there somewhere. I had a break in Ohio T shirt. I wasn't as into it. The French Foreign Legion. Cat. Yeah, I had the whole man, I was a breaker. Even though I sucked at it, I was a breaker. Could you do the windmill? No. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, every day. That's, like, really impressive. Still to me today, I could never do that. I get headaches from doing head spins and just fall over immediately. It was fun. The suicide, too. Did you ever do that? No. That's a pretty cool move. That's the one where the guy basically she says back flip, but I've most often seen it as a front flip. Yeah, you come in and you just flip and land on your back. And the whole point is to make it look painful. The harder it is and the more people go, oh, it's like the most successful suicide. That's when you know you've got the crowd in the palm of your hand. Exactly. You don't stop then. No way. No, you can't stop breaking, you know. Yummy took me to the World Break Dance Championships a couple of years ago. Like the world was it awesome. It was a relapse theater. The old one on 14th street. I was in Atlanta. Yeah. And they had it here in this little theater and people from all over the world who were like the best at break dancing were just there, like in break offs and stuff. We just stood around for 8 hours and watched the best breakdancing you can possibly imagine right there. It was very awesome. So, not surprisingly, I think you even said earlier, break dancing came from West Africa as well. A lot of the key elements this, hercule jerky all over body movement, interaction with the floor, with just your feet, obviously, pantomime and improvisation all came from West Africa and migrated on the slave ships. Kind of joined up with some Caucasian dancing like the Lindy Hop and the Charleston. Well, a lot of those grew out of African American dancing. Like cakewalk. Right. Which is an African American thing that actually terribly you should read this blog post I wrote on it once. The origin of the term cakewalk. You'll never use it again. But the idea of people lining up and watching other people dancing and then taking turns and all that, that comes from the cakewalk. So like, people waiting to jump in and all that. And it was in that breakdancing 1940s video you sent people, somebody else would come in and put somebody else to the side and they were taking over. Like that comes from the cakewalk. Later it became the sole train. Right? Yes. Which is some of the best footage ever. Yes. You can put any halfway decent song to like a Soul Train lineup and it's just brilliant. After that. The other thing that influenced Too was came from the Caribbean as well, in South America in the form of even saw a video on how to pronounce this. It's Brazilian martial art. Yeah, I don't think that's right. That's what he said. Are you sure? Dude, it was a video on how to pronounce the word, but I'm sure I didn't do it quite right. But yours is definitely wrong. But martial arts as a whole, kung fu was really big in that community. And so, like, Bruce Lee and all these guys tried to emulate those dance moves. Yeah, that's why you see so much, like, fake fighting in break dancing because they're all really just kind of good kids. They spend all their time practicing dance moves and so all the fighting is all just like, hey, I'm getting in your face. Oh, no. I'm getting your face now. Oh, no, you're not. And that's it. That's as far as it goes. Good, clean fun. Yeah. I'm going to outdand you. Yeah. And there's probably no other part of hip hop culture that more carries on the original tradition of, like, just don't mean any real harm or anything like that. Whereas having a good time and like, this is all this is what's cool than the Breakdancing aspect of it. Yeah, agreed. And crumping today you see the same thing. Like, it's battling each other to see who's the best. It's kind of fun to watch. In the 80s, it was like break dancing became across the board commodity. Big time again. I had a Break in Ohio T shirt that my mom purchased for me. Yeah. Probably like pennies or something. Yeah. The movie Wild Style, which is the first hip hop movie, led to Star Wars breaking, of course, breaking two electric boogaloo. I got that soundtrack in my Easter basket one year. Beat street. I was a little too old, I guess, for breaking. Maybe so. Or no, I was listening to the Almond Brothers and stuff. I got you. That was the deal. I clearly remember my two older sisters having a conversation while we were all watching Break in, too. And they agreed that the girl was really more of a flash dancer than a Break dancer. Yeah. I'll never forget that. The other one went, yeah, flash Dance had a little break in style. Everything had to Burger King commercials. Apparently, Wrangler had a line of jeans ready to go in 1984 called Rapid Transit, starting with a W like Wrangler that didn't get off the ground. The moonwalk, of course, which was not invented by Michael Jackson. No. But he was good at it. Well, yeah, he was great at it. The guy I could find was, in 1955, Bill Bailey at a show time at the Apollo show. It's on YouTube. Is it as good as Michael Jackson? Can anybody top Michael Jackson's? Moonwalk It's not as good. But he clearly moon walks. It's not like well, this is a version. I mean, he moon walks off the stage in 1950s. Well, okay, so moonwalking goes back to the 50s, they say, and they being, I think, cool. hercar Africa bombarda. One of the two said that they think Breakdancing finds his origins in a James Brown dance to get on the good foot from that song. Yeah. Which is from, I believe, the 60s. It's based on that. Yeah. And backsliding is what the originators coleman walking, by the way. Yeah. So like we said, it's commodity. It's video games, it's clothing lines. They start selling gear and knee pads and special mats to use when all you needed was a refrigerator box. Exactly. What was that for? It just to make the ground not as slicker or whatever. Yeah. So you're not, like, doing a head spin on gravel. Yeah, that was a dumb question, actually. But like I said, I wasn't into it. Things started to die down in the 80s, though. Yeah, they did. Sort of the late 80s. But it came back big time in the 90s. It did. Like the latest ninety s and it's still around. Like it never really went away. Yeah. And that led to Cramping, like we said. Which is my favorite thing to watch on the Internet right now. Did you see the crump off on Venice Beach? That one. I did see that one. That was pretty great. That was good. Well, it looks just so out of control, but it's not right. That's what makes it so great to me. I think Krumping is pretty great. I think we can all agree. So are we on the fashion? I think we are. Pillar four. Well, let's talk about it. Comfy Clothes is really how it started. Yeah. If you have ever seen the TV show What's Happening? Do you remember Rerun? Oh, yes. He was dressing pretty hip hop at the time. Suspenders. He wore a beret, but it could very easily been a Kangal hat. I think he wore Converse comfy shoes. Yeah. Adidas is really the brand, though. Or was. It was. But at the time that was super hiphop. Yeah. Just loose, comfortable clothing with a T shirt underneath that you could break dance to. She even contends that the comfort level of the sneakers was why they left them untied early on. Just to be even looser in the shoes and not have your shoes tight. Got you. I don't know about that, though. Yeah. Apparently out west it was military inspired and boots were a little more popular on the West Coast. Yeah. Is that where public enemies from? Are they West Coast? They're New York, right? Yeah. I mean, Chuck D lives in Atlanta now and has for a while. I would like to meet Chuck D. I would, too, but they were not Chuck B. Meet Chuck D. Chuck Bronson. Yeah. But they weren't from Atlanta, obviously. Where was Public Enemy from? I don't know. I guess New York. But they weren't one of those that they didn't talk about where they were from. They weren't like they were worldwide. They were worldwide, exactly. And then Run DMC, of course, brought in the cool black jeans and black leather. They had the movie tougher than leather. Was that a movie? Yeah. I never saw that. I'm sure you did. I didn't know. And one of the few movies I've ever walked out on in my life was Disorderly. The Fat Boys movie. Yeah. I was in 6th grade and I was like, this is unwatchable. Well, everyone was trying to tap into that thing. Crush Groove thing. Yeah. You ever seen that one? Oh, yeah. Crush groove is pretty good. Yeah, that's good. None of these age well, by the way. I haven't seen any of them in a long time. Even the good ones don't age well. And then the adidas, of course, with Run DMC. And they also ushered in the Kangoes in earnest and the big rope gold jeans, and lots of them. Who else did she credit with that? Curtis Blow. That's right. Curtis Blow. We got to the bottom of that one. And along with the black nationalism and remember our roots back to Africa came a big clothing boom. I remember very well in high school, african inspired clothing. The red, yellow and black and green. Huge. Yeah. Everything that everybody was wearing in the late 80s was super African inspired. Just bold prints and all that. Like everything kid and play were wearing. Yes. Remember that dance, too, where they jump through that, they'd hold their foot. I could never do that. There's no way I could do it now. I would like myself. No way. But Crisscross, of course, wore backwards clothing. Yes. One of those guys just died. I know. Very sad. Yeah. And then the basketball jersey really? Baggy clothing started to become the norm through the that's still sort of the style today. Yeah. And supposedly that comes from a prison wear where you're not allowed to wear a belt. Yeah. That's where the SAG came from. Yes. CNN is quoted as the source here. So take that with a grain of salt. And also with the durag, supposedly is another prison where thing. Yeah. And then just like with break dancing, hip hop style became a pretty big business commodity, too. Like Russell Simmons started Fat Farm, which is, I think, still around today. Right? Yeah. If you look at most any rap mogul now, it'll say, like, producer, wrapper, clothing designer. Right. Like they're too smart to maximize their brand. Yeah. It says here that JayZ sold Rock Aware for $204000000. Wow. Everything that guy touches turns to gold. Yeah. Or platinum. Because platinum, Josh, is where the gold went. It kind of transformed into platinum. Right. It's like alchemy. Yeah. Like shiny, silvery platinum and diamond encrusted grills. Bling grills. Very popular. That started out as just like, the one gold cap and then turned into, like, the grills that you can get today are just unbelievable. I don't think we could ever have a conversation about hip hop fashion without mentioning wearing a huge clock as a pendant around a necklace place. Yeah. Or wearing a stolen Mercedes hood ornament as a necklace. I thought you were going to say the multifinger ring. Yeah, you got that, too. That was big. Because do the right thing. Love and hate the two rings. That the guy with the radio. Raheem. Yeah. I saw that again the other day. Man, that movie just blows me away. Still very powerful. I like his later work more. Yes. You liked it when he got away from, like, inside Mainland and 25th Hour. I like those a lot. I still like to do the right thing, but I just like him. Branching out. I hear you. And also designer labels became a big thing like Tommy Hilfiger and stuff like that became really popular. And now, of course, you go anywhere on planet Earth and you're going to see hip hop in pretty much any country you go to. You sure are. It is all over the world. It is a global product and hey, squares and parents, it isn't going anywhere, so just get used to it. That's right. I think a lot of people thought it was a flash in the pan. Sure. Like this rap won't be around long. Yeah, suckers. Yeah, it's outlasted a lot of other stuff. Agreed. We got electronic music to do now. We do have that dubstep article. Yes. I don't know if you want to learn more about hip hop, you can type those words into the search bar, how Stuff works.com, and it will bring up this extremely large article on it. And I think I said hip hop So it's time for a message back. 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.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. 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. And now listen in. Mail time. Josh, since we're talking about international things, toward the end of that show, I'm going to give a couple of international shouts because we like hearing from our listeners in foreign lands. Yes, we do. So the first one is from France, and we actually asked in our Three Musketeers cast if we had French listeners. Hi, guys. I just wanted to drop you a few lines as I was just listening to your podcast from the Team of the Tears. You were wondering if there were any French up there listening to you. I am one of them. I've been listening to all of your podcasts from the beginning, when even the podcast was not even the great pair of you. Oh, wow. I am talking about your podcast to all my friends and I feel that I know you well from all these hours spent with you. I always laugh when you make fun of the French and our accent and do not always understand your 100% US. References but love to hear about new things. Take care from Paris. And that's Julie. Thanks a lot. And then hi, guys, joshua and Jerry. My name is Daniel. I live in Jerusalem. I work in a bakery in the city and love listening to you guys while I work. Want to share a funny little story? One day at work, my boss got mad at me and told me I can't have my headphones during work. Then I told him I was listening to a learning podcast and not music. So to prove I'm not distracted okay, is the boss like Nerds Ratchet or something like that? I guess so to my surprise, he asked, what's the name of the podcast? Confused me a little bit, but I told him it was SYSK. And I was really shocked when he took out his own phone and showed me his itunes library was packed with the stuff you should know. So you guys have helped me get through long depressing shifts with your humor and knowledge. And that is from Daniel in Israel. Thanks, Daniel. Thank you for that, daniel and Julie yeah, from France. Thanks, guys. We appreciate you listening over there and standing up to your boss. He's all like, hey, you can't listen to music. We're like, international ambassadors. Basically. Agreed. If you want to tell us how we're ambassadors in some weird way, we want to know that. Okay, what's the problem? Just do it. You can tweet to it the S YSK podcast. You can go to facebookcom. You can go to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. I'm ready for this one to be done. And you can join us at our home on the web debutnanote.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 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 know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistics made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
How TED Talks Work: Featuring Roman Mars | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ted-talks-work-featuring-roman-mars | TED Talks have been around longer than you think. They became really popular once YouTube came along to bring their often inspirational messages to the world, 18 minutes at a time. In this episode, we interview an actual TED talker, the host of the 99% In | TED Talks have been around longer than you think. They became really popular once YouTube came along to bring their often inspirational messages to the world, 18 minutes at a time. In this episode, we interview an actual TED talker, the host of the 99% In | Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:18:28 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=13, tm_min=18, tm_sec=28, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=84, tm_isdst=0) | 60058736 | audio/mpeg | "This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today@squarespace.com. Enter offer code stuff at checkout to get 10% off Squarespace. Set your website apart. Stuff you should know. Tour sprung, everybody. This is Chuck and we are hitting the road in April and May for some live shows. You live in Seattle, Portland, houston or Denver? Those are the ones we have so far. We're going to add a couple of more, though. The Neptune theater on April 8 in Seattle. Revolution hall in Portland on April 9. We're going to take a little break and we're going to go to Houston on May 28 at Warehouse Live and then Denver, Colorado, may 29. It's a Sunday. I'm sorry. Memorial Day weekend at the Gothic Theater. And you can get all the information for tickets@sysclive.com and that is powered by Squarespace, our buddies. And get this, seattle and Portland, you need to get on it because tickets are going fast. It's going to sell out soon. Houston and Denver tickets are going on sale this Friday. That would be tomorrow. And I believe we're even having a presale for Denver today. So I don't have that password yet. But if you go to Facebook or Facebook page or Sysklive.com, we're going to post the presale password for today for Denver. We hope to see you guys there. We love you. Goodbye. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sounded like Jonathan Strickland has been there's. Charles W. Chuck Bryant there's. Jerry. Stephanie Schnau in the house. Yes, sir. So, Chuck, before we get started, I think we should make a clarification here because we inadvertently offended some people on our makeup episode. I mentioned that it was International Women's Day, so it's not really a happy occasion. I understand that. I realized that. And it's not like we said, hey, it's International Women's Day. What topics should we do? What topics? Screams Women fresh International Women's Day makeup. It wasn't like that at all. We selected makeup. Sure. It was International Women's Day and I didn't want it to go by unmarked. Yeah, it was completely coincidental. So we didn't mean to offend anyone. And hopefully our track record as a feminist stands up. So maybe a couple of all those who are offended. And you know what? We're going to do one on International Women's Day. Yeah. In the Equal Rights Amendment. Yeah. Next year for International Women's Day or at International Women's Day. Yeah. And maybe we'll do the Era before then. Yeah, sounds great. Okay. Good job, buddy. All right, so let's get started. How are you doing, man? I was talking to Jerry before you came in about this life. There's a lot of life, lots of stuff going on in every avenue. There's all this planning. Like we're working on dates for stuff. It's just like constant what's going on? You're going to melt down. No, I'm not. I'm hanging in there. And I'm doing so by saying you got a pretty good brain trust in your brain. Good. I got stanma. Oh, boy, I've got Stanmina. Perfect. Wow. There it is. There's the crack in the dyke. Everybody. I have a crack in my brain today because if you remember, we were sent we mentioned the Crown Royal Rye whiskey off handedly. Oh, no, I know what your story is. And they sent us six bottles of Crown Royal. Yeah. And I got into it last night. How many bottles? Oh, no, I didn't drink bottles. Please. Which one did you start with? Did you start with the northern rye? Well, I'd already tried it. Okay. I still have not. What? No, I've been really holding everything together, so I haven't had time to sit down and really enjoy some ride. Yeah, I tried the ride, but they also sent this single malt. Yes, the XO. Well, we got two different ones. Oh, really? Yeah, we got the same rye and then the same regular, and then each of us had a different so you get like a single malt whiskey. A single malt Canadian whiskey. Nice. So I got into that a little bit bit last night because I've been stressed and now I've got cobwebs. That's great, Chuck. I was googling at my desk earlier. Hangover, blurred vision. Oh, it's that bad? Just to make sure I wasn't, like, didn't need to go to hospital for some condition. And it said, hey, don't worry, you just hung over. That's why you have blurred vision. She could listen to a hangover episode. I know. I couldn't remember if blurred vision was. I don't think it was. I think maybe if you have a turpentine hangover, blurred vision is but not from Crown Royal. It may be something else. All right, well, hang on. By threads. Sure. Well, I'll carry us both in this episode then. How about that? Just kick back and relax. Talk about Ted Turner. Right. Ted Turner, that's right. Do you remember the time when you realize that Ted wasn't someone's name? Yeah. Was it immediate or have you heard of Ted for a little while before you're like, oh, there's not actually a Ted? No, I think I caught onto the Ted Talks when most everyone else did was when they became readily available and distributed on YouTube. That was like, 2006. Yeah, that's when they really launched. Oh, you were early. That's early. Yeah, and I wasn't, like, watching them all the time, but I knew what it was and I thought, oh, this is certainly neat in a version of what we do. Yeah. I don't remember when I first saw a Ted Talk, but I became aware of them as, like, a thing. Well, we weren't doing this later on in 2006 for sure, so I didn't think that at the time. See? Cracks. Yes. Cobwebs. Right. So, Ted, in fact, for those of you who don't know, the three of you does not stand for it's not a person's name. It stands for technology, entertainment and design. And Ted Talks talks originally about things that fell under those three general topics, but have since expanded tremendously and have become this kind of global creativity thinker brand that falls very much in line with the idea and the feeling behind San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Sure. Uber, the building we work in, this whole kind of new technocrat idealism. Ted is very much a foundation of that and help foster it, for sure. Yeah. Although it covers wide range of topics now, anything a technocrat would be interested in, it is well, not even technology. Income for all kinds of neat thing, right? Yeah. Do you remember our long now episode? The one about the 10,000 year clock? Yeah. If you are at all interested in Ted Talks or this episode, go listen to that one. That will definitely be in your wheelhouse, too. Agreed. And they are 18 minutes long because supposedly that is the length of the human attention span. That's right. I love how everybody couches that. And supposedly yeah. I mean, did you look up is there science behind that? I couldn't find anything behind it. I'm sure that there is some social science study about it that concluded that that's the case. It's a neat construct and I think a selling point for Ted Talks, because this article points out they are tailor made for today because they're shortish and shareable and they're sort of perfect for our new social media age. Yeah. The guy who wrote this article, Dave Rus, basically puts it like, ted is ready made for the digital age. Like you said, they're 18 minutes long, they're shareable. And Ted very presciently started sharing these things online for free in 2006, and that was a year after YouTube. And I remember when YouTube came around, it was not a given that YouTube was always going to be here like it is today. Right. And so to release all of your stuff, all your videos online back in 2006, that had a decent amount of foresight. Very Teddy. So teddy. All right, well, let's go back in time a little bit because this very much surprised me. Not back to 2004 or even 19. Nine. Yeah. Go ahead and jump. Yes. Like Van Halen is playing Panama on the radio. And your TV. Sure. The little angel kids smoking cigarettes. Yeah. And the very first Ted Talk happened. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And it wasn't like Ray Kurzweil strutting the stage, just staccato releasing different computer terms. Nope. It was basically the ultimate dinner party, is how it was put by a designer. And his name is Richard Saul Warman. And I looked up Richard Saulworman, and he is indeed a designer and publisher and author of 88 books. Wow. And he decided that he wanted to put together something where anyone could come and listen to the luminaries in basically a dinner party like setting with a stage. Cool idea. Like, if you have a dinner party and you put a stage in the corner, there's your first Ted conference. That's right. And what he said was, I want to sort of have an anti conference. I don't want someone up here with a PowerPoint. I don't want someone up here lecturing for an hour. Right. The idea was to make them just to get smart people together on stage and in the audience and have them be kind of snappy and quick. And apparently he would even run you off the stage if you were going too long or if he became bored. Yeah, but that's so Richard. Saulworman. Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know. I'm just kidding, because one of his books is called I'm Bored. Right. It's just like, ho ho. Right. The very first Ted conference in 1984. That was very cute and adorable. Now they featured a demonstration of the Sony compact disc player. Yeah, but, dude, that's an 84. Yeah, man, I'm sure that was like, what is this? Sorcery, yeah, one of the first you don't have to rewind. Yeah, that was a big innovation with compact. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. Sure. The HVAC boy. They tried. Yeah. What was the Hrax problem? It was just too clunky. Well, I mean, the advantage of being able to skip ahead. Yeah. That's four songs at a time, though. You couldn't skip to song number two or three. It would jump in, like, groups of four. Oh, I don't recall that. Yeah, that's a big design. Or at least mine did. Maybe I had a crappy richard Saul warman would never have released something with that kind of a design flaw. One of the very first demonstrations of the Macintosh computer was it the 84 Ted. That's huge. And a little mathematician by the name of Benois Mandelbrot, famous for his set. Yeah, he spoke there's a great Jonathan Colton song about him and his fractals. That's right. Mr. Colton, who we've met oh, yeah. And hung out with. He's a good dude. Yeah, he is. He's been to our shows before. That's right. And so six years later, he took a little break because it didn't make him any money. In fact, I think it even costs him money. Yeah. So think about this. You go to a conference where the compact disc is being shown about five to six years before it's actual real release digital witchcraft, ebook reader, and Benjamin Mandelbrot, and no one wants to come. So financially, it was a flop. But he put together a good conference, and like you said, he took six years, something like that. Then he tried it again, and apparently this time it took yeah. That's when the 18 minutes format came into play, and it became like a really big ticket. Like, all of a sudden, he made a name for himself in his conference. Yeah. And these were in Monterey, California. At first, because that's where he lived. Until 2009, they moved to Long Beach, and then in 2014, they moved ultimately to where they were bound to be in Vancouver. Yeah. For now, if you go on the Ted site and look up their conference schedule or whatever, it says that they hold it annually on the west coast of North America. Oh, so they're not locking themselves into anything further than the west coast of North America. What they're definitely saying is, we're not coming. We're not leaving you. New York time zone, even though the staff is partially based in New York. Yeah. Did you read that wait, but why article I sent you? Yes. We'll talk about it some more later. All right. So Richard Saul Worman, being the Wander Lustful designer that he is, decided that he made Ted a success, and he was now bored with it, so he sold it. He was older. He was looking for a successor. Well, he found one in Chris Anderson, the Birdman of the Miami Heat. Wouldn't that be funny? This weird fauxhawk? No, Chris Anderson, he ran a nonprofit or runs one called the Sapling Foundation, and he punied up a cool \u00a34 million to buy Ted. Dude, he has made that back and then some. Oh, I'm sure. Well, no, it's a nonprofit. Right. He's made some money off of it, so Anderson took it over, started running it as a nonprofit, and kind of brought that sensibility to it. But he took the 18 minutes chunk idea, which is a huge cornerstone trait of Ted yeah. And ran with it. He did. He was the one who said, we need to release these online. He curates still to the state, from what I understand. All of the speakers. Yes, I think so. And the audience members. Yeah. So we'll talk a little bit about making a Ted Talk, if you're ever invited to produce one, and attending the Ted conference after this. So, Chuck, let's say that Ted came to you and said, hey, I'm Ted, and I want you to speak at me. Yes. Okay. So you just have signed up for a tremendous amount of work, actually, and a lot of stress and nervousness, from what I understand, of course. And actually, we'll go ahead and tease this. Coming up at the end of this episode, we are going to interview the great Roman Mars of the great 99% Invisible podcast and radiotopia, part of the original cast of A Chorus Line. That's right. And Roman spoke at one of the legit Ted conferences. Not a TEDx. No Ted, but the real deal. Yeah. And we should say so you may have seen if you're familiar with Ted, TEDx, Ted Global, that kind of thing. Yeah. And Ted conferences are held once a year, and this is the one that is like the Big Mama JAMA, where the guy who runs Ted, Chris Anderson, picked you to speak at it. It's a big honor. It is. And then there's TEDx. And TEDx are basically like local versions of Ted. And they can either be huge, like San Diego TEDx is a bona fide legitimate conference. And then I'm quite sure that there's Toledo. TEDx do you think? I think so. I think we might have been invited to it once. No. I think so. I don't think we could make it. We were invited to a TEDx somewhere. It was either in Ohio or Indiana. Well, our old friend Joey Sierra, formerly of Henry Clay people are now of fakers. He went to Harvard and was trying to get us to do a TEDx at Harvard at one point. I don't know if that's what you're thinking of. No. Okay. No. This is in a Midwestern state. Harvard is not in the Midwest. No, but is Joey still at Harvard right now? No, he finished. Oh, congratulations, Joey. Yeah, he graduated and then decided he wanted to go to film school. Dude, the guy is all over the place. He's all over the place. Can I ask? It's not the fakers. It's just fakers. He's just fakers where's the the was the great thing. Okay, where is the the? What do you mean, the fakers. It's like Edie Burkel and New Bohemians that used to drive me crazy because they were always Indigo Girls people. Same thing. They're not the Indigo girls. Indigo Girls doesn't strike me in the same way. And I get, like, fakers. It doesn't have to be the fakers. The makes it a band name, but fakers, it's a little more artistic. There's something different to it, but it's just when you leave off the in front of a band name, I notice that my antenna goes up. It's like, what are you trying to pull? I think originally the Eagles were just Eagles. I think that's correct. Or did they remain that and they were just mistakenly called the Eagles? I could see that. But I also see Glenn Fry and Joe Walsh and Don Henley not being ones to correct somebody. They're a little more easygoing than Edie Briequel. Well, I think it's just eagles. Still. Sure. The Indigo Girls sounds weird. Like, what are you doing tomorrow? Oh, I'm going to see Indigo Girls. For some reason. I know what you're saying, but it's never stuck out to me with them. Back to Ted. So Roman can count himself among some very distinguished people like Bill Clinton and Bono and Richard Dawkins and Jane Goodall and Al Gore. They've had lots of very famous people speak at Ted conferences. At Ted, yes. So that's what we were saying. We were talking about TEDx. Ted global the difference. Yeah. And Roman spoke at Ted Magama big Bamajama. So if you are asked to speak at Ted and you do agree, here's the thing I didn't know about Ted that I learned from researching this. You are creating an 18 minutes presentation that when you give this speech like you're speaking at Verbatim word for word. Yeah, it's a performance. It is. And so this thing is not like I've got an 18 minutes speech. I know pretty well it's not what we do, in other words. Yeah. For the most part, it is someone who is an expert in their field, let's say robotics, for example. And a robotics expert is not necessarily a gifted public speaker. In fact, they probably are not. Part of the Ted process is to basically be matriculated and inculcated into this Ted atmosphere where you are coached and prompted and harangued and written and maybe spanked on the bottom when you don't deliver a script on time, that kind of thing. Yeah. The reason if you've seen a bunch of Ted Talks, the reason they all seem the same is because of that reason they want them to feel similar. Yeah. It's a format of a brand. Yes. Which is Roman kind of buck convention a little bit. And so we'll talk to him about that. I can't wait. Yeah, it's going to be great. So what happens is, and this is surprised me six to nine months before they give the talk, a speaker will start working with the staff and producers and editors to craft your story along with you. Right. Which is really interesting. I had no idea. Yeah. I brought up waitbot y earlier, Tim Urban, the guy who I believe runs that site, and it's a pretty interesting site. He's got some good stuff on there. But he did a Ted Talk, the big one in Vancouver, I guess, last year or in 2014, maybe. And he talked about how he kept putting off coming up with an idea, even let alone a script. And he finally he had like a flash of inspiration and decided Procrastination would be a great one to do. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. And if you read this, it's called doing a Ted Talk. Calling the full story. He goes into great detail. He did a comic strip. It's a really good article. And you really feel it with them, where you're starting to get anxious. Because when he showed up for coaching, a month or so out, he showed up to Ted offices in New York, and he did his talk for the first time in front of Ted staffers. It apparently wasn't very well received. I'm sure that's got to be the worst feeling in the world. Yeah. And apparently up until the day he gave it, he was rehearsing constantly. Do you remember the time we did the thing at the Inventors Hall of Fame? Yes. It was the one time we did a script, and there was a script where, like, I had lines and you had lines that responded to my lines, and there was no winging this, and you and I just pounded it into our heads, did it over and over and over again, and then we finished rehearsing. And right when we finished rehearsing that last time, we walked right on the stage and did it. There was no downtime or anything like that. It was like we worked out our brain muscles, but we were hanging on by our fingernails. We had an ass back, if I remember correctly. It's not the way we prefer to work, because if you've seen us live, we have our notes, but we do like we do in the studio, and it's a general outline, but we are very much more comfortable speaking in our own voice. Right. So this is with Ted, it's not like that. It's like you have a script and you know it line by line, and they apparently have a question, a couple of questions, like measuring sticks for whether you actually have something memorized. Did you catch those in the wait, but why post? Yeah. In fact, there's different levels of memorization he goes over, and the one that you need to get to for Ted is called he calls Happy Birthday level. Like when you know that song so well, you can do your taxes and sing it out loud. Exactly. So then this just sounds like I got nervous just reading this. He said, if you record yourself saying the talk and play it back at double speed, can you say it out loud while it's playing and stay ahead of the recording? That just gives me anxiety. Right. And number two, can you recite the talk with no problem while simultaneously doing an unrelated task that requires attention, like following a recipe and measuring out ingredients into a bowl? I mean, I imagine that's a great way to practice. Oh, yeah. Knowing you have something cold. Yeah, but boy, just don't even bother asking us, Ted. Right. That's the thing. It's like fear of public speaking is an awful thing, and then it's exponentially amplified when you have a script that you have to remember word for word and line for line, and that's part of Ted. And again, like you said, I don't think they're doing this just to be mean. No, they're doing it because they have a brand in a format, and you need to stick to the format when you're doing the talk. Right. Yeah. What I'm curious about and I couldn't find this anywhere they probably don't like to talk about it. I wonder if or how often they bail on people and they're just like, this isn't working. Yeah, it's not working. From what I understand, the Ted people would not be afraid to do that. Really? I didn't know if they did that or they took the other approach, which is like, no, we're going to keep banging this out with you until you got it. Probably both. Yeah, I bet you probably both. I'm sure they give their full support and really try to work with you, but I'm sure people have turned in ideas and they're just like, that's actually not a good idea. And the person wants to stick with it, and they're like, okay, we're going to go with somebody else. Yeah. Well. There's a couple of hallmarks of a good Ted Talk that they work with you on that you'll notice. And one is that they want to frame your story as a personal journey of discovery. Which I find is a little narrow. And a talk should feel like a little miracle. End quote. And change your audience's perspective on the world. Which that's the problem that I have with it. Like, not everything is a little miracle, and I don't think you should force it into a little miracle box. Like something can be interesting just on its face. Yeah, but if then start your own conference. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's their thing. Right? No, I get it. That's why I don't like critics. Well, we'll get to the criticism. Okay. And I'll go off then. Okay. But they want it to be really focused on, like, one specific thing. Obviously in 18 minutes, you can't be too rambly, which is another reason why they would never ask us, because we'd start talking about Coen Brothers movies. They'd be like, they'd get the hook out. Have you seen Hail Caesar yet? No. I haven't either, which is weird. It is. I'm usually, like, right in that theater on the first week. I guess it's an allegory for Christmas. Oh, really? I think so. Interesting. Some of the other things that they will work with you, you're not going to use a teleprompter. Like we said, it's got to be memorized. Yeah, we don't use teleprompters even when we're shooting videos. Do you use teleprompters? I do. For the what the stuff? I find it too difficult and distracting. I don't have enough confidence in my just reading. It cold abilities do. I love it. Are you sure? I can read all day long. You can use note cards if you want to do that. Yeah. You're not a robot. No. You might be a robot scientist, but you're not a robot. Right. Yeah. They want you to make eye contact and be accessible, and they recommend picking out some friendly faces in the audience. That's big. And these actually do translate to just about any public speaking gig. Yes. And what I think is funny is having done shows with you is you tend to pick out the least friendly face, and afterwards you're like, oh, that guy in the second row, he just kept yawning, and he had his arm scratch. He was rolling or something. Yeah, it's so funny. It's easy to obsess. Like that person we've lost. Right? Yeah. That is good advice, though, to find some friendly people. You want to find more than just, like, three. You definitely want to do, like, six, seven, eight scattered all around the audience so that you're looking around and you got your people that you're looking at, and they're thrilled and delighted that you're talking. Right. To them for a second, but then they can also get very uncomfortable if you're talking to them for most of the show. Sure. So you want to kind of spread that thing around. And then also, it doesn't hurt to just kind of look in the air, too, while you're talking, or close your eyes and pretend you're not there on stage, speaking in front of people. You don't really get that nervous anymore. I know. It depends. I have a member in New York at Town Hall. I almost had to tell you that you need to push me on stage. Yeah, some are a little more nervous than others, but that goes away pretty quickly because our audiences and our listeners are super supportive. Like, you can't ask for a better room to walk into. Plus, we don't have to win the crowd over. There's probably five people who don't listen to stuff you should know at any one of our shows. Yeah, agreed. It's not like being a stand up comedian, right? No one knows you, especially if you're an opener and you have to win the crowd over. Yeah. That sounds like a living nightmare to me. Yeah, that's why I've never tried stand up. One of many reasons. And then they also say to not be too active, like, use your hands and stuff. But you want to be fairly still. You don't want to be running all over the stage. Yeah. Remember when we were on Solid at O'Brien one morning and my knee was just going like, 500 miles an hour, and they did, like, a full shot of us for the whole interview? Yeah. Not good. Yes, it was weird because it was also, like, 06:00 A.m.. It was you probably had, like, six cups of coffee or something. Might as well just stay up. One thing they point out in this article I thought was interesting is that and maybe this answers my question about working with people. One of the most popular Teds ever was from Susan Cain. Did you see that one? Yeah, it was great. She wrote a book called Quiet the Power of Introverts in a world that can't stop talking. So she is a selfdescribed, very famous introvert. She was able to do it. Yeah. Hers is very endearing. It kind of gives you the idea that and this is also mentioned by Tim Urban on Wait, but why that those people, they want you to succeed. They're not there to be like, oh, I can't wait for you to fail. Of course. So there's a very encouraging crowd at her. Ted Talk. Yeah. That's very sweet. I saw that because our old friend Bill Gates, it was on his list of ten favorite Ted Talks. Oh, really? And I went and watched it before we interviewed him because, you know, he texted that to you or send it on. Check this out. Introverts lol poop emoji. And I was like, sent from my iPhone. Oh, busted. Yeah. Actually, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were very good friends. They were healthy competition. Well, in fact, Bill Gates could arm wrestle Steve Jobs under the table, and it drove Steve Jobs nuts. Very true. Did you know Bill Gates can jump over chairs, though? That was, like, one of his things that he's known for. Sure. Did you know it? Well, I think he told me. Okay. I didn't know it until you told me. He still does it once in a while. Really? Wow. We should have had him do that. Yeah, I thought that might have been a bad idea. So I guess we should talk a little bit about the criticisms since we teased it. Yeah, because there's plenty of it. It's basically a sporting pastime to take down Ted. I just don't get it. These things are so enjoyable to read to me. Yeah, like Frank Rich wrote. One called Ted Talks are Lying to you. And it was originally in Harper's, which I think is where I read it a few years ago, and it's reprinted on Salon now because Harper's is behind a paywall. And it's just beautiful. It's not just about Ted talks. It's about this whole idea of things like Ted basically the commoditization of creativity, just being uncreative recycling of established tropes and stuff. Yeah. What did he call it? Was that him or Benjamin Bratton? It might have been Bratton. They called it megachurch infotainment for middle brow classes for middlebrow masses. Right, okay. Yeah. Well, the big Ted Talks are great. Yes, they are. Like, there are plenty of awesome Ted Talks. I don't think anyone disputes that. I think a lot of people who criticize Ted believe that there's this unspoken sentiment that Ted is changing the world. Okay. And the critics point to Ted's really not changing the world at all. It's basically saying, here's this really cool, g, whiz idea that you, too, can understand, and go tell your friends about it and let the whole idea die there. And that's actually taking legitimate great ideas from this roboticist and then just spreading it out to the masses, and it fizzling out rather than going the opposite way. Now, Ted, on the other hand, is like, Are you crazy? If you go to our conferences, most of the attendees are extraordinarily rich philanthropists or investors or entrepreneurs who might take that roboticist idea and actually manufacture it. But I think for the most part, if you did tit for tat, it compared things that panned out from a Ted Talk to things that just fizzled out or haven't panned out yet. The haven't panned out yet far and away exceeds the ones that have. Yeah, I got no problem with that. I think Ted Talks, and I think this is their mission. I think it's a conversation starter and should not be looked at as anything more than that. Let me break down something you may not have heard of and try to inspire you in 18 minutes and start a conversation. I don't think their mission should be anything but that, so I agreed. The other big criticism is that it's an extremely elitist organization and that it's not just elitist. Ted itself is not just elitist, but the people who really enjoy and get into Ted are also extremely elitist without even being aware of it. Basically, if you read the Wait but Why post, tim is talking about going to Ted, and when you go to Ted, the whole thing is you're one speaker on stage, and the whole conference is there. There's not multiple speakers speaking at once. Yeah, there's like 70 speakers over the course of this week, and so everybody's there for you. But the people who aren't in the auditorium might be out on some artificial turf under a fake tree watching it on TV, or in a giant ball pit watching it on TV. And it's like, this is the antithesis of a hard life, even though a lot of the Ted ideas are talking about how to solve problems that have hard life. So it's, like, very much ensconced. And like, to get to Ted, you pay a minimum of $8500 as an attendee. Yes. Well, unless it's changed. I thought it was on a subscription model now. So I saw $1,000 a year. You become a member, essentially. Okay. I didn't see that. I saw to attend, it was $8,500. Or you could double that and be considered a donor, which I'm sure comes with more perks or whatever. But if you take the mean between those two, the two prices you would pay for that week long conference and you have to be invited, too, we should point out. Well, that's another thing. You have to pay at least $8,500 and apply on top of that. Of course, they're not going to charge you if you don't make the cut, but you have to apply and pay. And in the application, it's like, we want to know the real you. So sit down with a coffee and really think about who you are in explaining this to us. In the application, it says that on the tips for applying some fair trade coffee, too, probably. I'm quite sure. Yeah. I think that's just insinuated there. But if you take the means of 8000, $517,000, and you multiply that by the 1400 attendees at a Ted conference, the Ted conference takes in about 17,000,850 grand in a week. They don't pay their speakers. They put them up in hotels with roommates. And I saw this thing on Joe Rogan. Eddie Huang was on. He's like a chef, and he did a Ted Talk, and he had this nightmare story about his Ted experience. So they're raking in a bunch of money, and the big thing that they put out is a $1 million Ted Prize every year. Yeah. Which Bono got one year and Jamie Oliver. So there's a lot of got a lot of stuff to be criticized, but at the end of the day, I agree with you. The talks in and of themselves, I have no problem with. Well, yeah, and there's a certain demographic that just doesn't want to hear Bono talked about starvation or like he needs an extra million dollars for his foundation. That's who that million went to that year. Yes. I think Bill Clinton won one year, too. Yeah. And Jamie Oliver again, these guys could just cough up a million dollars into their own foundations. Yeah, I'm sure they do. So I would strongly recommend go read the wait, but why doing a Ted Talk post? We have to talk about Ted, which is a Benjamin Bratton Ted Talk, which that's Kahane's, if you ask me. He did a Ted takedown at TEDx San Diego, which again, is a big one. And then Reed Ted Talks are lying to you. Which is the Frank Rich one? That's about way more than Ted Talks. Yeah. I think part of my defense here is tied to our own show. Like, we got an email that we're not even going to read, but we got an email a couple of weeks ago, and we get them from time to time where you guys should do this, this, and this. This is where your show stinks. And it should be this. Right. And I'm always like, Go start your show then. Right. This is what we do, and we're not claiming to do anything else. Right? Yeah. And there's definitely a difference between saying, hey, I think you guys should have guests on more, or whatever constructive criticism. But if somebody comes along and just does a drive by jerk move, which I want to see Erin Cooper make a photo shop of that, that doesn't help. So that's one of the things why I think the takedowns are enjoyable to read, because they make real sense in a lot of ways, I think. And also, go read on Smarm. It was a Gawker post from a couple of years ago, and it's very lengthy, but it really kind of lays the foundation. That's like the antithesis of the Ted Talk sentiment. Yeah. With social media, I feel like people are just sitting and wait to take something down, and I'm just tired of it. I know what you mean, man. I have take down fatigue. I know what you mean. But I don't have take down fatigue for thoughtful, sensible, reasonable takedowns. Agreed. But I think when the takedown is on something, it's not like they're exploiting anybody or take down child labor. Not like a Ted Talk. That's my opinion. I'm with you T shirt, too. Coming up after this break, we are going to and now we got a lot of interesting stuff to talk about with Roman Mars of 99% Invisible, right after this. All right, well, we are back with a rare interview, although we've been doing more and more. We had Bill Gates on. And now we have the great Roman Mars of the wonderful awesome 99% Invisible Podcast and Radiotopia Podcast Network. Yeah, the guy is a podcast magnate. Oh, yeah. Hi, Roman. Hi, guys. How's it going? Great. How are you, sir? I am excellent, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm so glad to be in the company of Bill Gates and yourselves. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but we did a podcast on Ted Talks that we already recorded. And so you obviously came to mind because you did your very own Ted Talk and not a Ted X or a Ted Triple X or whatever versions they had. Main Stage. Yeah, you did the real deal. Yeah, it was something else. It was really fun. I highly recommend you do it if you get asked. And that was, like, one year ago, right? Yeah, it was almost exactly a year ago. And Roman, what was your Ted Talk on? My Ted Talk was about the design of flags. How did you end up on that? Yeah, so a lot of times when you're asked to do a Ted Talk, you're a scientist or a social scientist or philosopher who is really when you're asked to do a Ted Talk, you know exactly what Ted Talk you're going to give because it's your life's work. Whereas I'm a journalist. I mean, I tell stories. So when they said, do a design story, I had a couple of hundred because I do the radio show about it. And so I just had to pick one that I was most passionate about. And I tried lots of different ideas, and I had this world grand unified theory of design that I was going to present at some point. And I tried it out in different live settings, and it just wasn't working. And I called them up and I said, I just don't know how this one? I think it's going okay, but I kind of want to talk about flags. And they said to me, I can tell by the sound of your voice you should do the flag one because you sound excited about it. So I did, and it was really fun. Well, yeah, I've seen it a couple of times, and it's one of my favorite ones. And partially because of your passion, but partially because you can literally sense you winning over that audience as you watch it because they were a little stiff at first. And as a viewer, like, I'm watching it and nervous for you at first because you're a buddy, and then you feel the audience literally warming up to you, and then before you know it, they're like, everyone's laughing at you. And it ended up being one of the funnier, more amusing Ted Talks I've seen. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I felt that, too. I felt that the whole week because I gave my Talk on a Thursday, and so I was there from saturday to Thursday, and the last day is a Friday. And so all week, when they see that you're a speaker, you can see it on your badge. The first thing people ask you is what you're talking about. And I was a little shy about talking about it because I know it's a little topic when people the guy, the next day he won a Nobel Peace Prize for freeing 80,000 child slaves, you're like, I'm going to give my flag talk. Oh, my God. And so I was really sheepish about it, but one of the things I loved and my sense of accomplishment was really I was kind of proud that it was sort of a small topic that I was passionate about, and it still won them over and I knew it would it was fun to do. Yeah. For those of you who haven't seen it, first of all, watch it because as all Ted Talks, it's under 20 minutes and it's about the design, about flag design, but even more specifically, city flags of the United States, kind of all around the world. But you did a great job for non flag enthusiasts. I mean, the first thing I did was look up the Atlanta flag afterward. And of course, ours is one of those with the state seal. It doesn't have a phoenix on it. It does have a phoenix. Yeah, I think there is a phoenix, but it's contained within the state seal, which Roman says is just bad design. Yeah, I mean, the funny thing about the Atlanta flag, if you will allow me to digress, is that, of course, is that it also has a phoenix rising from flame, just like the San Francisco flag does. But actually I think it's designed a lot better. If one of us had to keep it, I would vote for Atlanta keeping it the way it is, whereas I think that San Francisco is an abomination. But if I think we both kind of need to step aside for the city of Phoenix, which has a phoenix on its flag, too. Okay, good. But I think Atlanta, as much as it is still a seal, I think it's all right. I thought San Francisco's was tiedyed. It would be more appropriate, I think. So were you nervous while you were preparing for this? This is part of a larger episode on Ted Talks, and one of the things we ran across is that it's a very long nerve wracking process. Yeah. Is that your experience? Typically you're contacted months and months ahead of time, so I was contacted in August of the year before and performed it in March. Wow. So for a couple of months, you're just trying to figure out what you're going to do and trying to do your best to write something early so that they have something to react against. And the whole process is really nerve wracking. Even people who are really seasoned presenters run against us it's surprising how the venue really makes you nervous. One thing you probably can't see is that it's the most well lit auditorium you've ever been in. So one of the things that makes performing in front of people really easy, if you have those lights, you know, in your eyes and you can't really see anybody and you're kind of just performing to yourself, well, here you can see every face. And not only can you see every face, but you can see faces like Bill Gates and Al Gore. Wow. It's super nerve wracking. We've met 50% of the people. You know, one of the things too, Roman, that was different about yours was that you defied convention by sitting down at your table and having audio and visual AIDS, and you make a crack about it at the beginning, like, who is this guy who can sit down? He said, well, this is radio. Did you have a hard time talking them into that approach? Not at all. That was something that I psyched myself out and a lot of people do psych themselves out when they deal with Ted because it's so prestigious and so cool to be a part of it. But just like the flag talk itself, where I want to do a little small thing and not the big grand Ted Talk, I said, well, by the way, I kind of do these live presentations where I present it like a podcast, where I have sound clips, interview clips, music clips, and I sit down and it's kind of like being an information DJ. And they were so excited about that that I don't know why I didn't talk to him about it sooner. It was my fault, in a way. So they really want you to be yourself. They're trying to get you to be yourself. If you've never seen yeah, you see all the different things that they do, and there's a lot of qualities that are shared across Ted talks, and so you think that they sort of insist on that, but what they know how to do is, if you're like a plant biologist and you've never given a talk before, they know how to get you to give a good talk. But if you've presented in lots of different ways before, they're totally happy to let you defy convention. They want you to defy convention. That surprises me because we figured and I understood why you were nervous that they were really strict about what is said and what isn't. Yeah, they want to be a place of good ideas and understanding, and they have a certain way that they know they can make anyone get there in a way using their methods, and they're really smart about that. But if you have your own way and as long as the results are good and they have confidence in that and you have confidence in yourself, they're really happy for you to do it your own way. And they want to be surprised too. They're really delightful. But again, my big problem was I had psyched myself out in some way to think I was like, god, if I ask them for the table and the sound stuff, they're going to be annoyed at me and I'm just a podcaster and what am I doing here? I know the feeling, but as soon as I brought it up, they were super happy to do it and I didn't want to be any trouble and stuff. And I would talk to the different set people and sound people, and the stage manager of the thing has done the Academy Awards and they're like, don't worry, we can handle you sitting at a table. It's not a big deal. They just did Sound of Music live last week. That was the weird part, was getting over. And once you sort of like inside the fold, you realize that they're all on the team with you, trying to make you be the best you can be. So, Roman, one of the things we ran across in research was there's a definite undercurrent in popular culture that people love doing Ted takedowns. They love writing articles about how snooty Ted is and how elitist it is. And what was your experience with that? Did you see what those people are talking about and they just have it wrong? Or did you not really encounter that because it sounds like your experience is altogether positive. Well, yeah, my experience was altogether positive. I must admit that before I was involved in it, I don't know if I was really part of Ted takedown. I didn't have that sentiment, but I was skeptical because a lot of it reeks of certain types of solution where one technical fix or design fix will save the world in some way that is believable for 18 minutes, but then you get out in the real world and it just seems hokey and not applicable to actual real lives from real people. I'm skeptical in that way too. And it's also just like I'm not of the world where you spend $8,500 to go to a conference. That is not my world for sure. So I went with a little bit of that, like thinking about that a lot when I was there. And what I left with was this real joy of being around 2000 people who were really trying something and really wanted to think optimistically about the world and wanted to learn and more curious. And I just felt, I don't know, I was sold on it in so many ways and there was a very little hierarchy when you're there, which is pretty interesting, you'll be standing in line for something and it'll be some CEO, billionaire, and they want to engage with you in lots of ways. Normal people don't go to Ted in a way you don't have a lot of cause to spend that type of money. And I'm one of those people that can't go unless they ask me to go. But in general, I would say that I'm happy that those folks are engaged in trying to think about the world in lots of different ways and trying to be inspired. And if we don't live up to it all the time after we leave, at least there's some effort in the right direction. I liked it. Yeah. And I liked how you finished your episode in particular, because it was about the design of city flags, and you didn't say, like, this will change the world if you redesign your flag. But you did say it can make a difference if the city has a great flag behind them to rally around, and it can be a unifying thing. And I don't know. I appreciate that sentiment at the end. For sure. Yeah. And they're interested in that. They want people to take some action and do something, and that's something that they're really into. And there's like, this year I went to something where somebody was putting together a museum of lynching, actually, like, the Civil Rights Museum about the history of lynching in the United States. And I don't know if this thing had been released yet, but they're raising money for it. And so as soon as the thing was over everyone, it was like, okay, we're going to go upstairs and we're going to raise money for this. And they raised a lot of money for it that day. Wow. And it was just something it was like something to watch. The power of that room to get stuff done was really incredible. I try not to overdo mine to the importance of it. I was really cognizant of how small it was in a certain way, but I like people to think about it in a bigger way. That well designed things and civic pride and having pride is a big part of how we get things done. And so it leaves people with a little bit to think about, but also just to be entertained. That was my main goal. Cool. Is there, like, an after party? Do you get feedback from people afterward in the audience? Yeah, it's great. Ted is much better after you're done. Sure. Before you start. Yeah, because I had all week of just being super nervous and thinking, god, just some twerp with a flag talk and then you're done, and people kind of know what you're about and they want to talk to you, and it's fun because you're, like, an expert at that thing. And so it's really enjoyable. We had lots of good feedback, lots of fun stuff, and I think that people liked the format change, and I finally got a sense of my role in the week, along with the really important kind of heavy hitters. They do like to have lighter and comic relief. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a stand up comedian. It was just enjoyable. It's Ted comedy, like, NPR comedy is really similar, but it's super fun. So there's tons of parties and tons of like there's a big social part of Ted. Awesome. What do you feel like? And you don't have to, like, get specific if somebody, like, stuffed a bunch of money in your pocket, but what do you feel like it did for 99% Invisible and Radiotopia? I mean, it exposed me to a bunch of new people. They got to see the I know a lot of people have started listening to the show after seeing the Ted Talk. It's a little different for me, which was kind of fascinating because I do have a public show and a public profile and a pretty popular show. It's not quite as popular as Ted, but we get several million downloads a month, too, and so it wasn't that huge, like, catapult from Obscurity as a social scientist and out there in the world, but it was just nice. It was like a nice compliment to the things that we already do. Right. And it was just also fun to present stories in a new way because we are podcasts, and we are podcast often about visual things because we covered design. It was nice to have this other presentation format that had some pictures. It was just really fun. Like, it was a great experience for me. Nice, man. Thank you for talking with us, Roman. We appreciate it. You are the Ted talking to friend we have. Actually, that's not true. Hodgman did one, too, as well. Yeah, he's on a couple. Yeah, he's on a couple. The only one I've seen of hodgman. It was very sweet. He talked about meeting his wife. Oh, nice. That had to be a TEDx, maybe. Oh, no, he's a Western man. He's a regular. But it's really fun. I went back this year as a Ted mentor, so I worked with other speakers, and that was pretty enjoyable, too. Are you practicing clapping your hands and going wrong for rehearsals? No, not exactly. It's very supportive. One of the things that you don't get about Ted is, because the videos are edited, you don't see the whole mistakes. And I guarantee that everyone has made a mistake in a Ted Talk. And one of the great things about the whole vibe of the room and you might not know this from watching it, is that the whole room is, like, on your side. They're really, really rooting for you. They want to be wowed. Right? And so if something technically goes wrong or you flub and have to restart, the whole crowd just applauds and cheers and just gets you going again. And it's really something. It's, like, so joyful. Have you ever had a room full of billionaires clap for you? Yeah, but it's something you don't pick up from the presentation, which gets a little pretty slick. It is very slick. It's that roughness that makes people like you can sort of rely on them to lift you up. And it's a nice room to be in as an audience member and as a person on stage. Wow. Well, that's good to know, actually, because it seems like you're walking into a room full of, like, a firing squad. Not you, but just anybody, because it's just so quiet and it just seems stiff. Yeah, that's good to know. We assume they hissed any time you made a mistake. Exactly. It's not like that. It's exact opposite. Well, I watched a train wreck of a talk this year. Oh, no. It was the most amazing moment because people stood up and cheered and tried to get this kid going, and it was amazing. And it was such a disaster. It was like a performance art of a disaster. Oh, God, you're making my stomach hurt right now. Yeah, I know. But in a way, it was like this cathartic event for all 1600 people in the theater, and it was kind of fun. All right, Roman. Thank you, my friend. And people really I know we talk about 99% Invisible more than we should as competitors. Not enough. It's a great show and people should support that. In radiotopia, I always tell people, even if you don't think you like design, you should just try 99% Invisible, because it's much more than that. Where can they go to find you, Roman? They can find us on our website at 99 Pi.org. Nice. Or anywhere where you get podcasts. Nice. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure. I really appreciate it. I'm a huge fan. This is very exciting to me. Thanks, man. All right, we'll talk to you soon. So Chuck, that's Ted talks. Yeah. Thanks, Roman. That was awesome. Yeah. What a cool dude. If you want to know more about Ted Talks, well, just type Ted Talks into a search bar and start watching Ted Talks. There's a million of them, basically. And you can also read the article on how stuff works about it. Yeah, and I said, how stuff works, which means it's time for I'm going to call this Cremation. We did a great show on Cremation quite a while ago. If we do say so. If we do say so. This is from Emily. She says, hey, guys, my dad was just listening to Cremation. My dad was cremated in 2004 after passing away to stupid, idiot cancer. And my stepmom had a really interesting concept. She's really big on recycling. She's known locally as the Queen of Recycling in Indianapolis. Wow. Not bad. She found hundreds of teeny tiny medical bottles about the size of the last segment of your pinky with tiny rubber plugs. She hand filled, like, 300 bottles with my dad's Cremains and put them on the mantle of the lodge at which we hosted his celebration. We had a celebration instead of a funeral outdoors, under fall leaves with wine and live music. Nice. As he was locally loved as a folk musician, craig Laughlin. All who loved him could take a few of the bottles of him with them. Nice. Pretty neat. That's a great party favor. I think it's awesome. Since then, he's been to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Cool. He's in the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas, and most recently, he's been mixed into black volcanic sand in Iceland Snuffleupagus Peninsula. I think that's what it's called. She even sent me how to pronounce it snowflson. I've also scattered them in every apartment I've lived in since, always in the very back corner of a closet or in a crack somewhere. Anyways, thanks for the episode. Pretty informative. And I'm sure my dad would giggle if he knew his body was flailing around in the flames at the end. Very cool. Yeah. That's from Emily. And when I told her she was on list her mail, she just responded with a big uppercase expletive with an exclamation point. Shoot. Yes. And I was like, right. That's cool. Thanks, Emily. I'm very excited. That is really neat. That's just a great story. Yes. And you know what? If you want to send some of your dad's cremains, we'll have him here in the studio with us. Yeah. Yeah, why not? Okay. Can't play any folk music, though. No, but we would take good care of it if you decided to do so. That's right. Okay. Thanks for that, Chuck. And thank you, Emily. Either way, whether you take them up on it or not, if you out there want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S Kpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffysnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstufferts.com. And as always, join us at home on the Web stuffy.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
41babc20-53a3-11e8-bdec-7350924493dc | What was Tin Pan Alley? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-was-tin-pan-alley | Tin Pan Alley was an area of New York around the beginning of the 20th Century that served as ground zero for the earliest iterations of the music publishing industry. Learn all about this unique place and time right now. | Tin Pan Alley was an area of New York around the beginning of the 20th Century that served as ground zero for the earliest iterations of the music publishing industry. Learn all about this unique place and time right now. | Thu, 23 May 2019 17:17:17 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=17, tm_min=17, tm_sec=17, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=143, tm_isdst=0) | 39736290 | audio/mpeg | "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. The Superstar edition. The old timing superstar edition. Yeah. Man, I thought this was super cool. Tim Pan Alley. Yeah, this is one of those things where I sort of knew what Tim Pan Alley was. And you always have heard that term thrown around, but I never really got it until this episode. Yeah, same here. And it's pretty cool. Like the term tinpan alley. T-I-N. Full stop. P-A-N alley. You forgot the second full stop there. Full stop. I just want to make sure people know it's not one word like ten pan. Right. It's two words. Right. But that is linguistically speaking, that's a synecticy what it is. You know what that is, right? I've seen the movie, man. That movie. Jeez. Talking about the Charlie Kaufman thing, right? Sure. Yeah. Synecta key, New York. Yeah. So synecta key is when a specific place stands in for a broader term, like Wall Street. Like, Wall Street is a real street, but Wall Street also means, like, the finance industry. Right. Or Hollywood. Hollywood's a real place. Okay. This makes a lot more sense than the Charlie Kaufman movie. Yeah. So Tinpan Alley is a bunch of things. It was a place right. And in New York City, which we'll get to in a second, like, exactly where and it was also referred to sort of the beginnings of the music publishing industry and genre as well. It's kind of a lot of things, but it stems from the root of a ten pan. Like a ten pan or was a cheap piano. Like, if you had a really cheap piano, you would say it sounds ten panty. Right. Because that's what the hammer on the piano is hitting, is ten pans rather than strings. Yeah. It sounds just like a real tinny tone, like you're beating on a ten pan. So that's where the term originally came from. And depending on who you ask, this area of New York was called Tin Pan Alley because perhaps a journalist first wrote about it. All the sounds coming from the songwriters, from these buildings on this one block sounded like Ten Pan Alley. Right. It's no exaggeration to say Ten Pan Alley specifically this little stretch in New York, like a block or so, maybe less than a block. It's a block. Okay. Was the place where the American popular music industry was born. Yeah. So it's specifically 28th street, between Six and Broadway, kind of between Chelsea and Kips Bay, a little northwest of the Flatiron Building. Got you. And it's interesting to think that, like, the beginnings of music distribution wasn't, like, pre phonograph and pre records. There was still music distribution, but it was sheet music. Right. So I think, Chuck, we should get back in the wave back and go to an indeterminate part of the mid 19th century in the United States. Let's do it. So like you said, there's horse poop everywhere. There's a lot of it. Like you said, if you wanted to hear music, you had basically two choices. You could go here, played live somewhere, everywhere, from a barber shop quartet to maybe an orchestra. Right. Or you could have a family member who knew how to play music and buy a piano and have it in your home. Those were your two ways to hear music. Because everywhere there was no such thing as radio. Let's just say it everybody. Yeah, there was no radio. There wasn't. And if you think about it, radio, we take it so much for granted today. But it was a huge watershed change in the way that Americans in the world heard their music. You could just hear it at home being played by professionals like the greatest musicians you've ever heard. You could just sit around and listen to it at your home. Whereas just years before, a few years before you had to listen to your twelve year old trying to bang out some song on the piano that you just bought and that was your option aside from going to hear it live. And so this whole idea of the music industry being born is basically predicated on two things, Chuck. One was the fact that pianos were starting to become ubiquitous in American houses and people were learning how to play those pianos. So music instruction became kind of widespread. And then secondly, copyright law started to really solidify in the United States in the 19th century and so that sheet music became much more valuable than it was before. Yeah, I can't read cheap music. I can't either. Yeah, I learned to play guitar by ear and I guess every friend I know that's a musician except for a couple learned by ear. If you came up formally through high school band or something like that, or maybe just private music instruction, then you may be able to read music. But back in the day, if you could not instill today, if you could not play by ear, the only way to do so was through sheet music. And that was the first commodity in the music business was literally just selling sheet music to people. Right. Hard to wrap your head around now, but that was the commodity. It is hard to wrap your head around, but if you think about sheet music is basically the predecessor to the cassette or the record or the CD or the MP3, it's the exact same thing. It's just to hear it like that is what you went and bought at the store and then you came home and played it rather than listening to somebody else playing it. Yeah, and like they sold a lot of them. Like the very first hit, that Ten pan alley put out. And this was a period, this was an 1881 when Wait Until the Clouds Roll By was put out. So Ten Penalty generally was early 1880s till early 1920s or so I saw like late 1920s, was it really? Yeah, yeah. I guess you can never say when it was dead dead. Right. But in one month in 1881, they sold 75,000 copies of sheet music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By. Right. That's amazing. Yeah, because it was a good song and people wanted to hear the song, so they went and bought the sheet music. So that was one thing. Right. So there was sheet music. That was how you got this stuff out. But even before Wait Till the Clouds Rolled By, which it seems like it was probably America's first number one smash hit pop music, prior to that, there was plenty of sheet music to be sold, but it was largely like church hymn. There was a lot that were sold for schools. And like I said, copyright law changed. It allowed Tim Paneli to develop, and it did so in two ways. One, the court started taking copyrights for music seriously in the second half of the 19th century, so you could actually enforce your copyright against people who are infringing on it. And then secondly, the Supreme Court specifically said, hey, if you wrote a song outside of America, when it comes to America enjoys, you can copyright it in America, too. Which means that the music publisher source of free sheet music, which was just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out in sheet music form and then selling it and not paying any royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection, that source dried up. And so all of a sudden, this American music that they had to pay for now seemed a lot more attractive because now they had to pay for the music generated overseas, too. So copyright law and the fact that more and more people were learning to play piano and so you had an actual market for sheet music, those two things came together. All right, let's take a break. I feel like it's a pretty good set up. Okay. And we'll come back and talk a little bit about who these music publishers were and how they went about their work early on in the Ten Pan Alley era right after this. All right, so we've been throwing around the term music publishers a lot, and that sort of means a different thing now than it did back then. But back then, music publishers, some of them wrote songs, to be sure, but generally they did not. A lot of the early publishers out of Ten Penalty had backgrounds as salespeople. Right? So there was a guy named very successful publisher named Isador Witmark. He started out selling water filters, another one named Leo Feist sold Corsets, another one named Joe Stern and Edward B. Mark sold neckties and buttons and a lot of these people, I guess we should point out, too, came over from Europe. A lot were Jewish, some African American songwriters, like, they were minorities, kind of, for the most part. Early on, it feels like, right? And they saw a huge opportunity in this music business that was starting to coalesce, because prior to this, I mean, there were music publishers, but it was basically some guy who worked at a printer who had a friend who could transpose music by ear, and they would just take some song that they heard and turn it into sheet music and start selling it. Or they worked at the music store, and the music store basically did the exact same thing. And so everyone was ripping off everyone else's songs and anybody could be a music publisher, but when those copyrights started to become enforced, it became much more valuable to invest in original music because you could make a lot more money off of it. So a lot of those Jewish immigrants and a lot of the African American songwriters and composers kind of coalesced into New York. They came from Boston and Detroit and Atlanta and St. Louis and all over the country, and all those towns lost their publishing houses and they all moved to New York, and they very specifically moved to this one little stretch on 28th street and it became Tim Pan Alley. Yeah, it's really interesting to look at how it worked back then and how it sort of mirrored how music grew out of that model, really, and changed in some ways, but kind of stayed the same in a lot of ways, too. Like, you always hear about music contracts and how terrible they are for rock musicians or pop musicians, and it was kind of the same way back then. These publishers got together. They created this songwriting factory on this block of buildings through different companies, and they would recruit songwriters to come in. They had different arrangements. Sometimes they would just buy it outright from you, including the rights to change the name of who wrote it. Right. Sometimes they would have the right to throw one of the other more, I guess, once they had established themselves another co author's name on there. But they would just say, Write these songs. Write these songs and we're going to buy them from you, and we're going to try and make them pop. Like, you couldn't put them on the radio, so we're going to try and get them popular by getting them onto vaudeville and on stage and sending not moles, I guess, but it was almost like early Paola, right, sending these performers into vaudeville to sing these songs and perform these songs. And people like, well, that's pretty catchy. I want that. Right? That's how they marketed it. And that was like the whole thing. It was the first time that music became an industry because there was almost an assembly line feel to it where they would have feelers out to find out like, what people were into as music at the time. One of the early transitions that Tim Pan Alley underwent was when it started, it was a factory for churning out like comedic, often deeply racist songs, lots of ballads, just what you think of as super old timey songs. Right. And then the public started to get kind of bored with that, and they decided that they kind of like this rag time thing that the Scott Joplin Fella has started to create. And so Tim panele, this is classic Tim panele went out, figured out how to play rag time, started co opting the ragtime genre and created pop music. So they took what was a really difficult kind of music. It's called syncopated rhythm, where you've got a melody within a rhythm. Right. So you know rag time. Right, sure. Okay. So they figured out how to take this very difficult thing and kind of popify it to make it easy for the audience to play. Because again, here's the thing. They're not saying, hey, you're the best of the best studio musician. We've got this really tough song over here that sounds great, but it's really tough to play. We want to pay you to come play it. We're going to record it and distribute it onto the radio that didn't exist yet. They had to figure out how to take difficult songs, kind of dumb them down into something catchy and memorable and importantly easy to play, so that they could sell that sheet music to local musicians or those barbershop quartets or so that the twelve year old at home could play it for the rest of their family. And so that is how they kind of started to take popular music and make it even more popular. They decided what music was popular based on what America was starting to get into at the time. Yeah. And there were these musicians called song pluggers. So how it would work is a music publisher in ten penalty would buy a song, or the rights to a song off of a musician who wrote it, maybe put their own name on it, and then they would give that song to a song plugger, who is a musician who would go and perform this at a music shop that maybe sold pianos or something like that. And this was pre radio, how they got the music out in the public. And it was crazy. These song pluggers got money. Irving Berlin started out as a song plugger. Right. So it's kind of like how you go to a grocery store on a Saturday and they'll be sitting there giving out samples of something. Sure. And you'll say, oh, this cheese with this cracker tastes really good. I'm going to go buy this cheese in these crackers. This is the exact same thing. Except you would say, oh, this song sounds really good. I'm going to buy the sheet music. That's what music pluggers were for. That's how they got the word out. That's how they advertised the music, was to play them. And then another way to do it, Chuck, is like you were saying, they would set vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or Broadway shows, whatever, with these popular songs and these songwriters to help get them out that way, too, so that audiences would go, here these things. So you could hear them in the music shop, you could hear them at the theater, you might hear them well, that's basically it. It's the theater and the music shop where the two main venues, unless I'm forgetting one. Yeah, and that was the plugging, but it was also booming. So, like I said, you had Irving Berlin and George Gershwin started out as a song plugger. Al Sherman started out as a song plugger. But if you wanted to be more aggressive than that, even, you would do something called booming, which is you would buy like 25 tickets to a show. You would have the plugger up there playing the song. And then those 25 people were plants, basically, that already knew the song that would sing along to it. And then everyone the only thing better than hearing a great song for the first time in 1910 in New York City is hearing 25 people around you singing it and going and you're thinking, how have I been missing out on this thing? Right? And that may be the first time it was ever performed in public. And it was all just kind of a big scam. It was. It's hilarious, though. That's how you just look around and suddenly be overcome with FOMO. So you'd be into this new song and run out and buy the sheet music, I guess early FOMO. There is this process to all this. And like you said, you could be like a no name composer who would show up at Tim Pan Alley with the song that you're trying to sell. And if it was good, the publisher might buy it. But like you said, you would get some sort of terrible contractor. They would buy it outright, take your name off of the composition and put their own name on there. But they also hired composers, I think, like you were saying, too, where they had a few hits under their belt. So they had a steady gig at the music publisher and their contract was a little better, but they were not in creative control for the most part, where the music publisher would say, hey, everybody's into this rag time. Make me some ragtime songs. Everybody's into this jazz and this blue stuff. Make me some bluesy kind of stuff that I can turn around and sell. And the competition was really fierce among the in house composers because just because you composed a song doesn't mean it was going to be turned around and transcribed into sheet music. And then people would buy it. You had to basically audition your song to see whether it made it to the next level. And so in Temp an alley and this is where it got its name, there would be no name composers, house composers, vaudeville acts all running around playing music from these open windows because there wasn't air conditioning back then. And so at any given time, you'd walk down Tim Pan Alley and there'd be a dozen or scores of different songs all being played on these pianos streaming out of the windows onto the street at the same time. And that's where that reporter, Monroe Rosenfeld, came up with the idea of Tim panel. He said when he was walking down the street, he was kind of describing what that was like. He said it sounded like a bunch of Tim pants being struck at once. Yeah. And this whole area of New York, this one block, just really became like a creative well, there were vaudeville theaters, there were play theaters. It was sort of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before it moved toward Times Square. And then other parts of the entertainment industry, obviously, are drawn to that area. Variety Magazine, that's where it first popped up on that block when it was called the Clipper. The William Morris Talent Agency had an office on that block. And it was just sort of after, I think, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and I think one other city, kind of where the early seats of the early music industry, it all roundly landed in New York. And just such a creative area and era. It's so neat to think about it, too, because that's happened in places before where if you take a bunch of creative people and jam them into a small area, just amazing stuff happens. Like, you can do something as big as birth a genre of music or like pop music, which is like an umbrella. It's not even a genre. There's genres underneath pop music where something that big can happen when you get that many creative people together in one place. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, let's take another break and we'll talk about some of these songs, these composers in the Great American Song Book right after this. All right. So there's money being made, a lot of money, even for early on. I mean, I can't imagine what sheet music cost, but they were selling so much of it, it added up. Irving Berlin, he went on to start his own music publishing business. But early on, when he was just pumping out tunes in 1917, he made about $100,000 a year in royalties. Yeah, that's $19. $17, too. Right? Yeah. And these songs like, these are some standards. It's what's known as the standard American Song book. Just like it's an unofficial designation, but they're considered to be like the classics of the early 20th century. We all still know these songs. Stuff like ain't she sweet? I don't know that one. Ain't she sweet? You're walking down the street what, you don't know that song? No. That one I've not heard. Oh, boy. Do you know Baby Face? Yes. Got the cutest little baby face? Yes. I love that song. It makes me smile every time. By the light of the silvery moon give my regards to Broadway sure. Happy days are here again over there a lot of this had to do with early wartime stuff. Sweet Georgia Brown. Take me out to the ball game yeah. And that in particular, we got to say that was written by two guys, jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer. And they'd never seen a ball game before. Well, maybe that's what they were saying, the original Take Me Out to the Ball Game because I've never been exactly. And they changed that line. But that was so Tim Pan Alley like, where it's like everybody's into baseball right now. So let's make a song about baseball. You, too? We've never seen a baseball game. It doesn't matter. Make me a song. And that's how Take Me Out To The Ball Game was formed. Yeah. And I think under one of the like you said earlier, some of the earliest work were, like, kind of humorous comedy songs. One that still stands out today, I believe, from that genre, is yes, We Have No Bananas, which I always thought was kind of funny when I was a kid. It's a little funny, and I guess I still do, if I'm being honest. Yeah, you can go down this line. And there's some pretty substantial songs that were written during this time and not all of them were standalone. A lot of them, like I said earlier, were created for musical reviews. America the Beautiful was written by Irving Berlin for a musical review called Yaphangk, which no one has heard of. No one does that anymore. But it was meant to be performed and produced by soldiers. It had an eight show run. But the song, obviously, America the Beautiful has survived long beyond that because it became an American standard. These vehicles that were built around to kind of get the song out there to the public faded away. But the songs themselves have stood the test of time. Yeah, absolutely. I think he pulled it from that production, or was it in the original production, or did he pull it? I think it was in the original one. Well, he eventually pulled it out of the production then because he thought it was too sentimental. And then that song went on to be the one that everyone remembers. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry it didn't show up in there. But you also said you mentioned Irving Berlin forming his own publishing house. He was quintessential rags to riches story for Tim Pan Alley, where he was like a waiter in a cafe, became a song plugger. One of those guys who plays songs to basically his marketing, couldn't read cheap music, knew everything by ear, had a friend transpose the songs he came up with into actual written music. That's a pretty good little factoid there, that Irving Berlin couldn't read or write music. Right. And then he became a well known composer, and then he became such a well known composer, he opened his own publishing house and then started making $100,000 a year in royalties. Amazing. There was another guy named Charles K. Harris who was one of the earlier success stories. I think in 1893 or two, he had a song called after the Ball, and he just knew it was a gym because he offered it to a publisher, and they offered him a price for it that he was like, that's way too low. I'm going to set up my own publishing house. And he did, and he started selling it and was making something like $25,000 a week in 1890s money, which is like 700 grand a week. This guy just went from nobody to 700 grand a week. Ended up selling 5 million copies of the song after the Ball. And if you listen to it now, it's not that good, frankly. It's not. But bully for him. It's no Anchy suite. No. Yeah. It's amazing, man. Popular music hit the world like a lightning bolt from the beginning. Yes. Because it was so ultra tailored for the American public. Like, again, they would take Ragtime, which there was a Scott Joplin creation. And Scott Joplin was the son of a slave. He was an African American. A lot of people thought he was white. Still, to this day, a lot of people think he was white. I think because of his name, frankly. And the predecessor, ragtime was the predecessor to jazz. And it had a real feel to a real soul. Everybody's heard, like, some of the original rag time music, like The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag. And if you can't immediately bring those to mind, just go to YouTube and you'll be like, oh, okay, of course, I get that. But the idea that Tim Pan Ali could just kind of come along and take this cool, deep soulful music and pop up it basically to make it palatable to audiences, in particular white audiences who had the most money at the time. That was why it became so successful. It was almost dumbed down. It was music that was dumbed down in a way, to make it appeal to as many people as possible. Yeah. Or even worse, co opted by white publishers and producers to be used in menstrual shows. This version of music, this new genre of music that was so unique in the Harlem Renaissance by Scott Joplin, was co opted for menstrual show. So shameful. Yes. So there's a real debate going on now about the legacy of Tim Pan Alley in some ways, and some people point to it and say, look, these guys were churning out the most eye poppingly racist songs that America has ever come up with. Yeah. Some, to be sure, they were selling them to the masses. And in doing this because this was the origin of popular music, they were really effectively perpetuating racial stereotypes and embedding them more than they ever had been before because people were not being mass. Audiences were being reached like they were with this early sheet music. And so in this respect, Tim panele doesn't deserve to be revered or respected or designated as a historical landmark as the real fight. Yeah. As recently as last month, I believe, Chuck, there was a landmark commission, city landmark commission meeting where this was being debated, right? Well, yes, like you said, some people are saying that on one hand, other people are saying, yeah, but so many of these were Jewish immigrants and ethnic minority. So many of them were African American songwriters. And Tin Pan Alley was also the home to the first black owned and operated music publishing business in the country. Yeah. Some people are saying, look like, yes, it was taken and co opted to be popular, but so were operating as it and ballads. That's just what they did. It wasn't meant to be offensive to African Americans. And as a matter of fact, it was basically these Jewish immigrants saying, I kind of identify with your plight. I want to preserve and celebrate this and expose this music to as many people as possible. And that some people pointed this process in Timpan Alley as the way that the African American arts became exposed to the larger population of America at the time. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah. So that debate is going on. That's where the idea of whether or not this area should be designated as an historic landmark is falling. Right. Yeah. And like you said, it's kind of hard to pinpoint an actual death date of Ten Pan Alley because these things like that happen gradually over time. But technology, like it has so many other times, kind of killed the notion of Tin Pan Alley, didn't it? That's a really good point. Right. With the radio. It was the radio. Radio killed the old timey sheet music star. He has been video killed the radio star. Right, exactly. So, again, you didn't need to make sheet music any longer or you certainly didn't have to learn to play sheet music at home. If you want to enjoy music, if you could just buy a radio. Yes. People quit buying pianos, and it's kind of sad. It is sad. It would be nice if everybody was walking around and knew how to play a piano. Like hotel lounges would be a lot more interesting, right? Yeah. But once the radio came along, everybody said, so long, cheap music. I hated you all along, but you were my only option. Now I can listen to, like, Benny Goodman and all of these other cats who are super hip. And really good at what they're doing and I want to listen to their music. And not only did technology kill Tim Pan Alley in this sheet music publishing industry, but it also changed the genre a little bit. It kind of skewed it more into swing and big band. Yeah, big band. Some of the stuff that came out of the 30s onward, that was really kind of where the transition went. Yes. Have you ever been somewhere where they have a public piano and seen someone just walk by and sit down and blow mines? Didn't you see Greg allman do that? My God, no. If you know someone who saw that, please try and remember who it was because I need to hear that story. I'll try to remember. I can't remember who it was. That's pretty amazing. Okay, I don't think I'm making this up. Let me go back through my specific mental roller deck. But have you ever seen that? Sure. Not Greg Allman, but I've just seen your regular average person sit down at a piano and like, wow, someone. New York does this from time to time. They'll have them on a sidewalk or in a park or something. And in Atlanta, they have one over in Atlantic Station. I've seen people do it there and it's always just really cool. And that makes me miss the fact that piano like a lot more people used to learn piano than they do now. I think I would love to know how to play the piano. Me too, for that very reason, because I'd love to be able to sit down and just play that guy so bad, right? Someday it's not too late. I remember the first time I saw it was at a student council retreat in high school. There was this one all the student councils from the county get together over the course of a weekend or a weekend, do stupid stuff and learn about leadership. But there's always like this one guy on student council at another school. You're like, man, he doesn't seem like a student council type. He seems like he's 30. This guy did, and he was on student council at some other school, but he had like the rat T shirt and was just sort of like a dirty metal head. The bad boy of student council. He totally was. And there was a piano in one of the lobby of the dormitories where we stayed at Barry College in Rome, Georgia. And on the very last day there were a bunch of people hanging out in there and this dude goes over and sits down and just crushes it. And I remember seeing the girls in the room and thinking, that guy has got it all going on. Right. Like that's the key, man. And that boy and the rat T shirt grew up to be Greg Allman. Have you ever been to a SIG Gold's request room in New York? Yuumi's. Friend Joe Mcgeinte owns it. He's co owner of it and he plays piano there. It's just like sing along piano karaoke. Oh, wow. And it is amazing. I cannot believe you haven't been there yet. You have. So does one person play the piano and everyone sings along? Joe McGinty plays and then people can sing along if you want, but it's really one person going up there and doing karaoke with Joe accompanying you on the piano. Okay, well, I've done the rock and roll live band karaoke before yeah. Here in Atlanta, which is a lot of fun. Okay. What do you do that somewhere in the Highlands, I think. The Dark Horse, maybe. Okay. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. I went for my birthday a couple of years ago and did Cheap Trick Surrender and did a pretty good job, if I may say so. Is that? Surrender. Parentheses dream police. Those are two different songs. Okay. Is it? Surrender. Parentheses, I want you to want me. Yeah, that's the one. Okay. I've heard that song before, but it's funny. That the one in Atlanta. There's the DJ. English Nick. No, wait, was he on the radio, like Radio DJ? Yeah, he still is. Sure. English Nick in Atlanta? Yeah, he hosts it and he is the emergency backup. If you're no good because being bad at karaoke is no fun, but being bad at live band karaoke is really no fun for anyone. So he stands back there and if you're not very good, he's singing along with you. And he will just give the signal to sort of do a little upping of his vocals and lowering of the other vocals. Is it like the slice across your neck like that? No, I think it's just like an eye signal. I got you. And I remember being nervous. I was like, oh, man, if they bring up English Nick during Surrender, I'm going to be mortified. But they didn't. And afterwards, he gave me a nod like, Good job, buddy. Oh, you got the nod from English Nick? Yeah. It means a lot. I have the opposite story. Oh, what happened? I went to Claremont Lounge to do karaoke years back. Okay. Chose to do. Darling. Nikki. Oh, interesting. In the middle, the karaoke DJ breaks in and goes, it's like William Shatner singing, isn't it, everybody? Oh, my God. Yummy. Was there supporting dancing, but really just hanging on by her fingernails. You got stopped and insulted midsong. Midsong. But I finished, buddy. Good. Yeah. I would literally pay $100 to have seen that. I wagered that it would have been worth 250. Okay. It was pretty bad. Do we have anything else on Tin Pan Alley? I forgot what's? What we were talking about. Chuck well, we're not going to get into it here. We should do a full show on ASCAP, though. Yeah. Because yet another thing that Irving Berlin did was create as cap the American Society of Composers and Performers. Right. I think producers. Producers, I think. Yeah. I didn't even have it in front of me, but they basically protect and register copyrights for artists. Yeah, it's so convoluted, too, these days. Yeah, I think it definitely deserves its own thing. But that was another thing that was born out of Tim Pan Alley. Yeah. And you know what? I am living in the future now because I have a turntable now, finally, again, after many years of not having one, that I can play wirelessly throughout all the speakers in my home. Isn't that amazing? That is the future for sure, that you can actually do that. And it sounds great. And now I just went to the record store for the first time in a long time yesterday and bought 13 records. I traded in probably 500 CDs to get 13 records. He was like, I'll give you $130 for the lot. And I was like, Fine, fine. Just get these stupid 90 CDs away from me now. They're great. But I felt like I should pay him to take all these off my hands. Did you still have the jewel cases? Oh, yeah, they were worth something. Jeweled up. And so, yes, I bought records for the first time, and I'm going to make that when we go on tour now. And when I travel, I'm going to make it a point to go into local record stores again. I think that's great. I really had a good time coming through records. It was a lot of fun. I'll go with you. Text me. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. I think that's it for Tim. Pan Alley. Ri P ten Pan Alley? Depending on your viewpoint, I guess. Yeah. There needs to be a great I know there was a movie in the 40s called Tin Pan Alley, but someone should do a really good look at the early Burgeoning film. Sorry. Movie almost. Oh, boy. Music industry, about ten penalties. Oh, yeah, that would be great. There are so many characters involved. Just put Hugh Jackman and a sharknado in it. Yeah. And by the way, you got called out for bringing back bread. I did. I said in some episodes, I think the Diving Bell episode, that we should bring bread back. And I guess that's what the kids all say now. I didn't realize that, but at least ten people emailed and said, yeah, millennials are talking about getting that bread. It's like they are. I guess so. I like to think that I had absolutely nothing to do with that. No, I bet you are the seed. Do you think so? You never know, man. That would be cool. Before we go, Chuck, I do have one more thing. I have to give a shout out to what I consider the greatest song to come out of Tim Penalty. And I believe it was an Irving Berlin song. Yeah, it was. Let's have another cup of coffee. Have you heard that song we used that for something, didn't we? I don't remember. We probably did because it's prominent in one of my favorite movies of all time, paper Moon. That was a great song. I love that song so much. If you haven't ever heard that song, go listen to it because it's one of the most just blindly optimistic songs of all time. And it's about coffee. Yes. And pie. Okay, now that's it. Now. I've got nothing else. If you want to know more about Tim Pan Alley, you can go read up on it and maybe follow whether it's going to get designated as a historic land mark or not, we'll find out. In the meantime, it's time for listing or mail. So this is just a very sweet email from someone. Hey, guys, I'm sure you receive emails like this all the time, but I would be remiss if I didn't. Thank you for all the wonderful work you do. I've had a really tough time with mental illness and there have been a lot of nights your wonderful podcast saved off panic attacks or worse. Thank you for keeping me calm and educated, and thank you for making me feel safe even in perilous circumstances. Thank you for giving me something to talk about when my depression has kept me in a fog. Without your massive backlog and seemingly endless supply of fresh, fascinating subjects, I surely would be lost. I spent some time researching, and I can truly appreciate just how much time and energy go into becoming familiar enough with something to explain it as succinctly as you guys do your superheroes and rock stars. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the wonderful work you do. You have truly saved me. Kindest and warmest regards. Georgia. That is really lovely. Georgia, if we're ever in a town near you, you are guest listed. Yes. Wow, Chuck, I think that was a really good idea. Thanks a lot, Georgia. That was very sweet email. We appreciate it. We're glad we could help in some small measure. Thank you very much for the kudos. If you want to send us kudos, we love that kind of thing, including Kudos, the candy bar. Yeah, I remember those. The kudos. They were great. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if somebody sent us one if it would still be so great. Are they not around? No, I think they would have been manufactured in 1986 or something like that. I don't keep up with the candy bar scene. That's what I'm saying. They're not around anymore. No, I know. Okay, so wow, that was a little sidetrack on Kudos, wasn't it? Yes. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyheanow.com and find all of our social links there. And you can also send us an email 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." | |
Can Nuclear Fusion Reactors Save The World? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-nuclear-fusion-reactors-save-the-world | The world's energy consumption is ruining the planet but for decades physicists have been working on what could solve the world's energy and climate change woes for centuries to come - nuclear fusion. Learn about building stars on Earth in this episode. | The world's energy consumption is ruining the planet but for decades physicists have been working on what could solve the world's energy and climate change woes for centuries to come - nuclear fusion. Learn about building stars on Earth in this episode. | Tue, 04 Nov 2014 15:34:46 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=15, tm_min=34, tm_sec=46, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=308, tm_isdst=0) | 41680238 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles. Debuteuk. Bryant. There's Jerry. There's Barrel. Laughs and this is stuff you should know. She gave us the old quick start. Yeah. Like, I don't want to hear anymore. I'm pressing record. Yeah. She knows that. It shuts me up or at least cuts off whatever conversation I'm tied in. It was great. I'm telling you, if we could release the 20 seconds before each show has its own show yeah. It would be terrible. No one would care. No, we'd think it was funny. Everybody else would be like, you edit this out for a reason. So, Chuck, how are you doing? Great. Have you ever been to Is? On Provence, France. No. Is that a place? Yeah. No, I haven't. It is a rustic little town in Provence and it is strangely, maybe even ironically, in the non hipster use, but in the actual yeah. It's a real word definition of the word. Also site to one of the most futuristic engineering projects humanity's ever undertaken. Meat. That's the sound it makes. Oh, I thought you were mocking me. No. For being thrilled by the thought of this thing. No, it is kind of funny that this thing is in a sleepy little town, a hamlet, maybe even CERN in Switzerland. That's not in the city, is it? No, you can't build these things in cities. That's why they're in sleepy towns. Exactly. Because no one knows they're being poisoned. Yeah. And you can push the mirror around pretty easy. Exactly. This thing is called ITER I-T-E-R which is an acronym for the International thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. That's right. Which really gets the point across. Did you know the word acronym is an acronym? That's not true. Okay. I just want to see how long you would try and sort it out in your head. I would have kept going on 30 seconds, maybe. That would have been a great joke. I could have just kept it going. I'm not going to tell you maybe 15 seconds because you got that much more. Sure. So I wouldn't have looked it up. I would have figured it out myself. Anyway, ITER is this a colossal engineering project? Somebody compared it to the pyramids at Giza. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's exciting stuff. Sure. The thing is, it's a nuclear fusion reactor and it's the culmination of decades of attempts to create a nuclear fusion reactor, because we got fusion down and we'll talk about the difference in a minute. But fusion has been very elusive and nowhere is it more apparent than in the IDA project, because this thing is going to cost approximately $50 billion when it's completed. $50 billion. They started in 1993. They're hoping to turn on the switch in 2020, but it's looking like 2023 or 2024, and it won't be starting to produce anything until the earliest. So what's the point? I'll tell you the point. If we can figure out nuclear fusion, Chuck, the world, literally the world's energy problems will be solved for millennia. If we can just figure this out, we will have almost no radioactivity nuclear option, almost limitless fuel supply, totally green, clean, no pollution, no greenhouse emissions. Right. And with plenty of energy to spare using the already extant infrastructure, we have to supply power. You don't have to completely rebuild everything. You can just to the electrical cables outside. It'll be the exact same thing. Yeah. You can just go to a nuclear fission reactor and press the button that says fusion and it'll all of a sudden join atoms instead of split them. Exactly. It's that easy. That's what the difference is with fusion, you're splitting atoms and you're gaining energy from that. With fusion, you're smacking them together and you're gaining even more energy because you're exploiting a different fundamental force. Yeah. And I was being coy. Clearly there is no button because we would have pushed it a long time ago. Yeah. And when I say no pollution and no greenhouse emissions before the pedantic among you right in. We know that just even shipping something from here to there causes pollution and greenhouse emissions. Good. But we're talking about the output of the reactor itself is very green. So if you want to know all about ITER well, we're going to talk about it here or there because you just can't talk about nuclear fusion reactors and not mention ider. But if you want to know a lot about ITER, there's a really great article called A Star in a Bottle and it's by a person named Rafi Kachidoran, and it was written in The New Yorker not too long ago and man, it is every detail you want to know about the Idle Project written really well and it's long, but it's totally worth the read. Yeah. It's all over the news lately, and for good reason. You said a lot of energy. I have a stat going to throw back to the old days here. Per kilogram of fuel, if we're talking fusion and fission, fusion produces four times more energy than fission. I saw seven. It's probably one of the things it's like four to five to ten or something I found four times and 10 million times more than coal. 10 million times the energy is coal. And that's with equal fuel per kilogram of fuel. Right. It is the future. Yeah. And you can say, well, that's great because we want 18 million times the amount of power that coal provides. You can say, well, there, buddy. You can also bring it backwards because you can supply an awful lot of power then with a lot less fuel. Yeah. Like the advantages. Nuclear fusion are mind boggling. Sure. And very few downsides. Which we'll get to, of course. Yeah. I mean, really, genuinely, it's not just like some here's all the great stuff about it and just don't pay attention to all these really horrible aspects. Yes. There really aren't too many downsides. The downside is we are at this moment incapable of successfully creating a commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor. That's right. But we've got an understanding of what the challenges are ahead of us thanks to the last 50 or so years of really, really, really smart physicists working on the problem of nuclear fusion. And the great inspiration for nuclear fusion is the sun. The sun and all stars like it are enormous, immense nuclear fusion reactors. So if you are building a nuclear fusion reactor here on Earth, you're essentially creating a star. And that is a very difficult thing to do, it turns out. Yeah. The sun creates I know we talked about the sun in our very famous episode on the sun. The sun creates 620,000,000 metric tons. It fuses 620,000,000 metric tons of hydrogen at its core every second. So every second at the Sun's core, it produces enough power to light up New York City for 100 years. New York City every second. And that's the sun. And all we want to do is do the same thing on a much smaller scale. I think the guy there's this kid who built one in his garage, and he said he wanted to create a solid Ted Talk. He wanted to create a star in a box is what he called it. Yeah, I've seen it. Like, this New Yorker called it a star in a bottle. Yeah. This kid's name is Taylor Wilson, and he's a nuclear physicist, and he's like 16. Wow. And he created heavy hauser. Yeah, he created a successful one. And the key, though, is not to be able to create the fusion. The key is to be able to harness enough plasma, which we'll get to at a high enough temperature and density for there to be a net power gain. Right. You can create fusion, but in order to get out, more than you're putting in is the only thing that matters because what you want to do is create electricity. Exactly. There's two huge challenges right now to nuclear fusion. We pretty much understand it enough to start it going and get energy from it. The problem is material science isn't at a point where it can build a containment vessel to really house a thermonuclear reactor. And then the other big obstacle is, like you said, net energy gain. Like, if you're putting in as much or more energy than you're getting out of your nuclear reactor, then you're wasting energy, and it's the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah. They're not just trying to impress people with their science knowledge. No, but up to trying to create energy. Up to now, though, Chuck, every single thermonuclear reactor that's ever been built has just been impressing people with knowledge. They haven't gotten any net energy out of a single thermonuclear fusion reactor. Right now, they're up to, like, ten. Presently, they're at 10. MW. Is that right? Yes. And that's more than they put into a net gain of 10 MW. Currently. Everything I saw was when we turn this thing on, it should have a net gain, but I didn't see that they've actually done it. Yeah. 10 ITER is going to produce 500 MW once it's fully operational. Right. So the next challenge then is this. If we're already getting a net energy gain out of it, then that means that the net energy gain is not sustainable. As you said, you want to keep the thing going so you don't have to keep starting from scratch to power it up. You want it to basically be self sustaining. So you just have to add a little more fuel to it. That's the dream. So let's talk about the history of fusion reactors. Chuck. Yeah. It kind of goes back to this guy named Lyman Spitzer. He's a 36 year old Princeton astrophysicist. And this was in the 1950s, and he was recruited to work on the HBomb and went out and got a copy of a paper that was released from Germany, I think. Right. No, Argentina. Oh, Argentina. Yeah. They announced that they had to get that wrong. They had successfully built a fusion reactor. Right. So he gets this paper, goes on a ski trip, starts thinking about how he can do this, take a little break from his job building the H bomb, and figures out, I think it's possible, if we can harness this plasma. I guess we should just go ahead and define what plasma is, since we keep saying it. Well, there's the normal three energy states that we're familiar with water, solid, and gas. Liquid, solid, and gas. Right. Right. There's a fourth one. It's plasma. And plasma is basically like an energetic gas, where the temperatures are so high that whatever atoms you put into it, the electrons are stripped off and allowed to move around freely. Right. Basically, the surface of the sun is plasma. That's what plasma is. It's a gas. It's a roiling gas. It's really hard to control and it's really unpredictable, which is when you see the sun like that rippling, wavy looking thing. That's plasma. Right. And the reason the sun manages to stay together is because it is enormously, massive, and has a ton of gravity at its core. Yeah. We don't have that advantage here on Earth. We don't. So we try to make up for that by increasing the temperature. That's right. And he was onto it way back then in the 1950s. If we can just harness this, we can just get it hot enough. And he created a tabletop device called the Stellar Ratio. And it was in a figure eight position. It was a pipe and a figure eight. And this would keep things from banging into walls? Theoretically, yeah. And he was onto something because well, we'll get to Lockheed later, but they're using a similar device now a figure eight. Yeah. I didn't realize that was a figure eight. It is, which is weird because what they eventually found out was that a doughnut shape was really the key to get that net gain. And the reason that they found out that a donut shape worked was because in the, I think the late fifty s, the US. Had run up against the wall. They're saying like, okay, we've got this, but we can't control the plasma. Because, think about it, what you're trying to do is create a star inside something, but it can't touch any of the vessel that it's in or else it will just completely erupt it. Right? Yeah. They compared it to holding jelly in rubber bands. Right. They couldn't figure out how to control the plasma. So when the US. Ran up against this wall, they said, hey, rest of the world, we're going to declassify what Lyman Spitzer has been doing to help us out, and we'll share with you guys. Share. And it turns out that the Russians had already come up against this problem and licked it. They figured out that if you put the thing in what's called a toroidal shape a doughnut shape. Yeah. Using electromagnets, you can tame the plasma, essentially. And the donut shape itself was pretty ingenious. But the real stroke of genius was by running electromagnets in rings around the doughnut. So it's like you have a doughnut and you put a bunch of earrings around it, right? Yeah. And those are electromagnets. So you're creating an electromagnetic force field which contains the plasma, but then you also put an electromagnetic force field in the middle of the plasma. So not only does it heat it up to the temperatures you want, it also stabilizes it further. So the Russians had invented what they called the Tacoma, which is this doughnut shaped nuclear fusion reactor that basically became the standard for the next 50 years or so. Yeah, you basically could achieve a really dense, super hot plasma. And we'll get into temperatures and stuff in a bit. But since we can't create that kind of pressure that they have in the sun due to their gravity. Their gravity, the sun's gravity. The sun and all those people. Yeah, like you said, we had to make up for it here on Earth with temperatures. Right. Because apparently if you are in the middle of a nuclear reactor or nuclear fusion reactor, you're going to find that the temperatures inside are about six times hotter than the core of the sun. Not even the surface of the sun. The core of the sun. And the reason why it has to be so much hotter is because, like you said, we can't replicate that density. We can get to those temperatures that we need, but we can't get to the density, so we have to make up for it. So we'll talk about kind of the physics of what's going on here and why you have to have high temperatures and what we're making up for with density and everything right after that. So, Chuck, we're talking about nuclear fusion, and it's actually surprisingly understandable at its most basic core. Yeah. You're fusing atoms. It's not the hardest thing in the world to wrap your head around. Yeah. So with fission, we're splitting atoms. You're taking an atom and you're splitting its nuclei apart. You're splitting the neutrons and the protons apart from one another. And when you do that, one of the four fundamental forces, electromagnetic force, pushes them away, and you get this burst of energy. With fusion, you're taking nuclei from different atoms, you're taking protons and neutrons and you're smashing them together. And when you do that, you're unleashing what's called the strong force, which, appropriately enough, is stronger than electromagnetic force, which is why nuclear fusion yields more energy than nuclear fission. Yeah. Einstein himself said, each time you smash these things together, you're going to lose a little bit of mass. And that little bit of mass is a ton of energy, as it turns out. That's right. The famous E equals MC Square. Yeah. And I don't think he realized in maybe Einstein did. Einstein probably did. Yeah, Einstein probably did. I would guess he did. Yeah. So the problem is, even though it is very easy to smash some protons together, there is a tremendous amount of resistance to that smashing together. They don't want to smash together. No. Because it's just like if you take a magnet, two magnets, and you put the positive poles toward one another, they repel one another. Right. Yeah. Same thing. That's the same principle on an atomic level, too. If you take protons, which are positively charged particles, and try to put them together, they repel one another. And the closer you get them together, the stronger the repellent force is. The electromagnetic force. Right. But if you can get them close enough, the electromagnetic force is overcome by that strong force, the strong nuclear force, and they become bound together, because the strong force is one of those four fundamental forces of the universe, and that is the force that keeps atoms together, and that force is stronger than the force that repels like charged particles. Yeah. And when you talk about close, they need to be within one times ten to the negative 15 meters of one another. Right. So that is fuse, if you indulge me. Sure. Are you going to read a bunch of zeros? Yeah. It's .1 meter apart. Right. That's how close they have to be. That's right. To get them to accept one another and to fuse. I have a theory that if they're not fusing because they think they're going to be made into a bomb, and if we told them that we're creating energy, they might be more willing to fuse together. Yeah. Because protons are peepsmix. Everybody knows that. Sure. When they do fuse together, right. When you do cross that threshold and the strong force takes over and overcomes the electromagnetic force, like we said, a tremendous amount of energy is released. And it's released in part in the form of neutrinos neutrons right. Which are neutral particles which suddenly start carrying a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. So let's say you have one atom, you got another atom, and they're both like, I'm not getting close to you. We're not going to get okay, we got together. Yes. That force, that mass that's displaced, is transferred through the neutron that gets kicked off of the atom, right? Yeah. And is carried out. Now, a neutron doesn't have any kind of positive or negative charge. It's neutral. It's a neutron, which means that it can pass through the very electromagnetic fields that are keeping this plasma where this reaction is taking place together. Once that happens, Chuck, it can go out to what's called a blanket wall and a thermonuclear reactor warm it, and then that heat is transferred into a water cooling system. The water is warmed up, turns steam, which generates which I guess moves the turbine. And then all of a sudden, the turbine is producing electricity. Yeah. It's funny how it gets so complex, but all you're still trying to do is create steam and turn a turbine. It's like hooking the ISS up to a horse. Right. Move it over there. So there are a few types of fusion reactions. The ultimate goal right now, what we can do on a small scale is what's called a deuterium tritium reaction. That's the one that we can currently achieve. That's one atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combining to form a helium four atom and a neutron. The ultimate goal. I mean, that's good. And that will create a lot of energy. But there are a few downsides. Tritium is radioactive, for one. You have to mine it from lithium. Yeah. And lithium is fairly rare. Sure. The ultimate goal is to reach deuterium, deuterium reactions, which is two deuterium atoms combining to form that helium three and a neutron. And you can get that from the seawater. It's abundant, almost limitless, and I couldn't find this, but I think clean water can be a residual effect of this. Am I wrong? I don't know. Well, you're probably not injecting water, but to get the deuterium, I mean, desalination plants are the key to the future as far as supplying the world with fresh water. Yeah. I thought I saw somewhere where it was an actual byproduct. Is that right? Yeah, but then I couldn't find it, so I'm not sure if that's right or not. You know what? You just joke my memory. I feel like in a hydrogen powered car, water is one of the byproducts, so maybe so. Yeah. All right. Don't quote me on that, though. At the very least, it's a great way to create energy. Right. You also can get tritium from helium, I believe. So even now, with the deuterium tritium reactions that we're working on, there's a work around. You can create a thermonuclear reactor, that's a breeding reactor to where the byproduct helium can be used to harvest more of the fuel. You're using tritium. Yeah. And aren't we running low on helium? We are. Remember when we were talking about the dirigible, the zeppelin? Which one was it? Blimps. How Blimps work. Yeah. And then a long time ago, we did one on the Mars turbine. Yeah, mars turbine. But yes, there is very clearly a helium shortage, and the idea that we're just using it for party balloons rather than this is scary. Yeah. And don't be confused. We say things like deuterium and it sounds super complex. All that is hydrogen with an extra neutron. Yeah. It's an isotope. Yeah. So there's three isotopes of hydrogen and they're all still the same element. They're all still hydrogen, but they have different configurations as far as their neutrons go. So protium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and no neutrons. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron, and tritium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and two neutrons. And like you said, tritium is radioactive. But the beauty of it is you need very little of it to fuel a nuclear fusion reactor. And it becomes a stable helium, a non radioactive helium in the reactor. So you don't have this leftover radioactive fuel. Is that awesome? I think they said it would be equivalent of the radiation we just see every day and walking around on the street. Right, yes. The background radiation. I believe I saw that, too. The thing is, the parts to the nuclear reactor themselves will become irradiated over time. Apparently, though, compared to the kind of radioactivity that's generated from nuclear fission, this stuff you could just disassemble and bury in the desert for 100 years, go back and dig back up, and it will be totally inactivated. So the stuff that is radioactive is extraordinarily manageable. Yes, it is. And like I said, we don't want to make it sound like this is perfect. They do predict the short to medium term radioactive waste problem, and they say that's due to activation of the structural materials right. The actual thermonuclear device itself. Yeah. And while you don't need much tritium, even a few grams of tritium is problematic. But hopefully there's no accident. Although they say accidents with these, if you just turn the power off, it stops everything. It's not like a chain reaction can occur, like a fission reactor. There's nothing out of your control. There's not a meltdown, which also, if you want to know more about that ghost indoor how nuclear meltdowns work episode, that was pretty good. We released it right after Fukushima. But it applies to all fission reactors. That's right. So the goal is ultimately deuterium reactions, where you're tearing down those together. It does. And the reason why is, again, it's abundant fuel. You can get it from desalinating seawater. And then secondly, it's not radioactive at any point, so it wouldn't make the thermo nuclear reactor itself radioactive. That's right. The reason why we're not doing that already is because we can't achieve the temperatures necessary. That's right. Which leads us to the two big stumbling blocks. Everyone knows this is a great idea. There's no one out there saying, oh, I don't know about this fusion thing. Creating a star in a box sounds kind of weird. The problem is the barriers that we have here on planet Earth, which is one, temperature and two, pressure. We have achieved the temperature, which is the requirements, is 100 million kelvin. Like you said, that's about six times hotter than the sun's core, which is pretty intense. And the other is pressure. Like we said, we need to get them within. I'm not going to make you read all those zeros again, but smash them that close in order to fuse. And since we don't have that kind of mass and gravity that the sun does, there are a few pretty genius ways that we're working around that. Yeah, there's basically two as it stands, and then the Lockheed Martin one, which a lot of people are skeptical about, we should say. It's kind of a variation on one theme. But basically there's two ways that we figured out to create nuclear fusion reactors so far. One is using magnetic confinement and the other is using inertial confinement. So magnetic confinement uses that Tacomac technology? Yeah, it's sort of like CERN. It's using magnets to create pressure. I guess in CERN's case, you're using it to create speed. Right. But in this case, it's to create pressure. Right. So what you're doing is you have this doughnut shaped chamber, and that's your reaction chamber. And then again, rings around the donut that go around the inside and outside of the doughnut. I know, I'm kind of imagining wonderful donuts. We're doing Homer Simpson here. They create electromagnetic fields. Now, remember, this plasma is hydrogen gas that's been heated up to a temperature so hot that the electrons just float off and move around freely. And because of this higher temperature, these particles have become really energized, so they're moving and bouncing all over the place and the pressure is building up. But because electrons are negatively charged, and because protons are positively charged, if you use alternating electromagnetic fields, you can contain this plasma so that this incredibly hot gas that's six times hotter than the core of the sun, can be contained within the electromagnetic fields. That's right. And we talked about power and power out. You'd need about 70 power to create this to start this fusion reaction. But you're going to yield about 500 MW. That's the ITER project I believe. Yeah, that's the ITER. And that's only a 300 to 502nd reaction. But like we said earlier, the eventual goal is that it's sustaining itself. Right. Which is just a beautiful concept. Yeah. So basically what they do is they have the gas is injected into the chamber, the hydrogen gas, and then there's the electromagnetic fields that are holding the plasma in place. But then, remember we said the Russians figured out that if you put an electromagnetic field in the middle of the whole thing, it will stabilize that plasma, but it also heats it up so it serves as double purpose. And then just to add a little extra temperature, they shoot it with microwaves and some other stuff and then heat it up. And then as the plasma goes crazy and all the fusion energy is released, the neutrons move their way outside of the electromagnetic field into the blanket, which they heat up and the heat energy is transferred to power that turbine to move the horse down the lane. And it's just creating steam. Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. That's what they're trying to prove. And then also as aid is spending billions and billions and billions of dollars and running into tons of delays and it's an amazing project. Lockheed Martin basically just came out and said, oh, by the way, this thing that you're trying to do that's going to be 100ft tall and require staggering amounts of energy and money. We're doing one that puts out the same amount of energy as yours, but it's a 10th of the size, which means it's almost out of the gate. Commercially viable. Yeah. That is their Skunkworks division of Lockheed, and they announced this like three days ago here in mid Octoberber. And they've gotten a lot of blowback from the scientific community because they wouldn't release data. They don't have data. They said it's a high beta device right now and kind of shut out the scientific community as far as questions go. And every scientist that I saw interviewed for this said they're trying to get some attention, to get some partners to join in. Well, yeah, plus it makes you want to run out and buy Lockheed Martin stock because if one company can figure out how to create a thermonuclear fusion reactor here on Earth, that's scalable, that fits in a truck. Yes. That person would be very wealthy. Yeah. So it's a dubious claim, but they're working toward a good thing. I'm not like, poopooing the whole thing. Right. But until they have hard data and like some proof, then I think the scientific community has got their arms folded right now. Yeah, I mean, they have released some details. It's just not detailed enough for scientists. It's detailed enough for Aviation Week. I bought it. Yeah. They wrote an article on it and basically what the guy they interviewed was saying was that over at IDA, they have a low beta ratio, which is the amount of electromagnetism that you need compared to the amount of plasma you can put into the chamber. Yeah. So there's like. 5% plasma to 95% electromagneticity or electromagnetism just to keep this plasma thing from just blowing up. Because that can happen. Sure, they might not melt down, but if everything went wrong, the whole thing could blow up. Well, and you know what an atomic bomb is? It's a fusion reaction. Right. This is a lot of those all put together in 100 foot tower. This guy was saying that the beta ratio for their machine is like so what he was saying is they figured out a way and again, it's not very detailed. Sure. But they figured out a way to contain the plasma, but in a way that also allows it to expand. Because if you think about it, the more plasma there is, the more hydrogen atoms there are, the more hydrogen atoms, more isotopes there are, the more nuclear fusion reactions or events you can have, the more energy you can yield. Right? Yeah. So they're saying they figured out how to contain the plasma, but again, like you said, the scientific community is really skeptical because they think it's just a PR site. Well, I think they made the mistake by saying they invented a magic ometer to make it all happen and don't ask about it. Yeah, right. I did see, though, that where Lockheed was using the accelerator configuration, and I think that's true. I found a couple of more sources that were kind of vague about it, and I think the details on it are just vague, period. But I don't know why they would abandon the donut shaped if the figure eight was 1950s technology that sort of been disproven. Well, supposedly their whole jam was that even in the donut in the Tacoma, this donut shaped reactor plasma has a tendency to just move around and make its way out. Sure. Like it's still not fully contained. And they're using something basically mirrors to catch the plasma that's getting out and moving it to parts of the electromagnetic field that are less dense. So there's a bunch of protons in this part of the field. That field is being strained, but then maybe there's not that many protons over here. So they use mirrors to direct the protein protons to the low density area to keep it all even the whole thing out, which makes sense. But again, if you're not releasing data, don't expect the scientific community to buy it. You got that right. So there's another way to build a thermonuclear reactor that's currently being worked on, too, and we'll talk about that right after this. So, buddy, magnetic confinement is pretty neat, and we talked about that, and that's understandable, and I love it, I want to date it, but internal confinement I want to marry because it has lasers. At the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore laboratory. They are actually using laser beams. They have a device called the NIF Device, where they focus 192 laser beams on a single point in a ten meter diameter target chamber called a hall realm. That's got to be German. And basically inside that target chamber they have a little tiny peasized, pellet of deterior, tritium, and a little plastic cylinder. It's funny that it can be plastic somehow. Yeah. You'd think it would introduce impurities or something into it. Yes. Or it would need to be like iron or something. I don't know, it just seems unstable. But that is 1.8 million joules of power from these lasers that's going to heat the cylinder up, generate some X rays, and then that radiation will convert that pellet into plasma and compress it. So again, they're creating plasma, but instead of smashing it together with magnets, they're superheating it with lasers. So your money is on that one. I just think it's neat because I like lasers. But that's your preference of the two. Yeah, well, actually, whichever one works is going to be my preference. Okay. And that one will yield 50 to 100 times more energy out than energy put in. I got you. So that's a good goal. I guess. Basically the whole point of magnetic confinement is that if you can do without electromagnets, you have a more simple and elegant you mean internal confinement? Inertial yes, that's what I mean. Inertial confinement. Basically the whole thing just happened so fast you don't even need these magnets to confine plasma because you're not creating the sustained ignition. Right, yeah, I might have said internal confinement before, by the way. It's inertial. Yeah, that's all right. So what about cold fusion? Buddy, that was all the rage. I remember back in the because in 1989, some researchers said that they successfully created nuclear fusion using just room temperature stuff like palladium. They took palladium and banana peels and beer cans, pretty much heavy water, which had deuterium in it, and they put the whole thing together and created nuclear fusion without the high temperatures, hence the name cold fusion. And if you can get around these high temperatures, then you work out the whole material science problem. Right. And if you work out the whole material science problem, then it's a desirable thing to have cold fusion. The problem is a lot of scientists tried to replicate these guys findings and weren't able to. So basically they were kicked to the curb. So does that mean has cold fusion been abandoned or people still trying to get on that train? No. In 2005, some UCLA researchers basically said, we think we might have this thing down, and they did something called Pyro electric crystal fusion. Pyro electric fusion? They use a crystal? Yeah, basically it's the same result. They do what would be called cold fusion. The problem is it has a negative net energy yield. You have to put in a lot more energy than you get out of it. Right, well, that's no good. No either. Seems like they are making headway more than Lockheed, despite their claim. Like we said, it's in Europe, and it's being financed by a bunch of different countries the US is in, but they're kicking in. I think the least amount only about \u20ac17 million. Last year, of course, we contributed dollars, but they're giving it to us in euros. Right. I think the EU spends the most, about 80 million. South Korea and China kicked in about 20 and 19 million, respectively, each. And I saw earlier where Russia was involved, but then I didn't see what they had contributed financially. Yeah, they definitely are. They still all right, well, maybe they're just we're writing a chit for them for later. They'll just pay us back. All right. But it is a very expensive prospect, and you need countries getting together for something like this is not the kind of thing that the US can take on on their own, I guess. Unless you're Lockheed Martin. Right. And you don't have to prove your data. Right. So that's nuclear fusion. We'll see what happens. Yeah. You got anything else, man? No, I just say everybody should go read A Star and a Bottle on The New Yorker. It's really good. Yeah, it's pretty neat. You can also go to Instructables. If you want to build a nuclear fusion reactor in your garage, you can do so. You're not going to create energy, because, like we said, you're going to be putting more than you get out. But there are instructions, and that kid did it. His was a little more advanced than the Instructables one, obviously. Yeah. Nice. The 16 year old kid. Yeah, he's amazing. Because his was legit. He's done more than that, too. His Ted talk was pretty impressive. Cool. He's like, working with home and security already for various projects that have nothing to do with it. Yes, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, if you want to learn more about nuclear fusion, you can type those words in the search barhowtuffworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. And, Chuck, before we do listener mail, I want to give a shout out to our Kiva team. Yes. For those of you who don't know, we did a podcast many years back on micro lending and Kiva. Kiva.org is an organization where you can loan entrepreneurs, and well, it used to be just developing countries. Now you can do it here in North America as well. $20 at a time that you can get paid back for. You can get your money back if you're not happy, or you can just keep reloading that money, and it helps them get their small business going. And we started Kiva team many years ago, and it is killing it. So you got some stats for us? So, basically, as of October 19, our team has loaned $2.7 million to people in developing countries. Nice. And in the US. Here. And the big one is we've exceeded 100,000 loans by our team. Our team only has 8079 members, so all 8079 of you guys. Thank you. Way to go. Congratulations. Yes. And thanks, as always, to Glenn and Sonya are de facto Kiva. What would you call them? Presidents. Presidents. Presidents of the stuff you should know. Team. Yes. Captains of the stuff you should know. Team no, presidents. Okay. Presidents. President. Glenn's like, yes. President. Yeah, they've been really, like, keeping it going for us. Yeah. Sometimes we'll forget, and Glenn will not just, hey, guys, remember the Kiva team. We should mention it, right? The next goal we have is for $3 million in loans, and we're on our way to it. So come join us. We don't begrudge people who are late to the party. Just go to kiva. Orgteamsstepyhoodnow and you can sign up. That's right. So now it's time for listener mail, right? Indeed, sir. I'm going to call this Skywriting follow up from Australia. Hey, guys. Recently listened to how Skyriding works, and it reminded me of something. Although this may not be suitable for listener mail, which I disagree, actually, because I'm reading it clearly. I was maybe eight or nine when a few friends and I were out on the street playing and doing things that nine year old would do. It's so awkward to say that. So you're not replacing something right there? No, they were just doing nine year old things. Okay. Good, clean fun. We looked up and saw planes starting to skyrim, were instantly intrigued at what was being written. It started with an H and then an O. This went on for maybe 20 minutes until finally the word hooters was scrolled across the sky, albeit backwards. So I guess they had the Hooters restaurant chicken wing chain in Australia. I guess they're rich kid. Really immature rich kid. Yeah. Or that. My brain couldn't comprehend how this person managed to screw up writing a word backwards. The best reason my childish brain could come up is that Skyriding took place somewhere between us and a group of people that it was initially intended for. That I just thought it was written up and downwards rather than across the sky. Until now, I never understood or bothered to learn why it was like that. So thank you for keeping the podcast great and allowing me to figure that out. That is from Marlin. Oh, boy. Nice. Have you ever seen a word like that? Purachi Marlin from Sydney, Australia. Man. Thanks a lot, Marlin. H. And that's Marlin with an A. Even. Oh, yeah, marlin. Well, thanks a lot, Marlin. We're going to say it like that. Sure. If you have an awesome last name and want to share it with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffycheanow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housesteploy.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com." | ||
How Play-Doh Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-play-doh-works | Do you love Play-Doh? Chuck and Josh certainly love to talk about it, from its interesting history as a wall cleaner, to its more scientific chemical properties. It's everything you ever wanted to know about the pliable children's toy. | Do you love Play-Doh? Chuck and Josh certainly love to talk about it, from its interesting history as a wall cleaner, to its more scientific chemical properties. It's everything you ever wanted to know about the pliable children's toy. | Tue, 05 Aug 2014 13:02:22 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=13, tm_min=2, tm_sec=22, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=217, tm_isdst=0) | 40322264 | audio/mpeg | "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 this is the first of two Stuff You Should Know that we're required for you today. My voice already sounds weird to me. What do you mean? It doesn't sound a little weird? You know how when we get toward the end of the second one or it gets a little, like, worn out or something? Yeah. Like it's been extruded through a Playdoh fun Factory. Was all that is set up, or do you really feel that way? That was off the cuff, baby, okay? No, it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice never sounds weird unless you're sick. Jerry, judge me a call. Yeah, Jerry. Brookely, she sided with me. Well, Jerry wears headphones, but you and I fight the broadcasting business by being the only people that don't wear headphones or cans. I never get it. I'm like you're 2ft from me. Why do I need headphones? I know. And I don't want to hear myself anyway. I don't want to hear myself better. No, it's terrible. It sounds like torture. How about this for a new SYK T shirt? No more cans. Okay? Just have a little X through some headphones. I think when you make a Stuff You Should Know decree from now, we should have, like, a fairy wand sound effect. Here's. This for a new T shirt. I decree it be made into existence. Yes. By the way, since I mentioned it, we're going to have some new shirts coming soon. Yeah, like some fan designs, even. Yes, pretty exciting. We do have some now that people can go by if you want. I like those first designs we had. Well, let's just have this out on the air. It's not an argument. Let's have this discussion. Are we going to retire the original six from the contest, or should we just let them keep going in perpetuity? Oh, unless there's a reason. I think perpetuity is the way to go. Someone might like the dancing. You know what we call that? The Skeleton Woodcut. Yeah. Parade of dancing skeletons. The Macabre Parade. That's what I would call it. Yeah. All six of them were excellent. The baby with the fly on its forehead. Still my all time favorite. Yes. Good stuff. If you don't know what we're talking about, go to Stuff You should Know.com, our venerable website. And in the top navigation, there's a store button, and it will take your store, and you can see with your own very eyes what the heck we're talking about. That was off the cuff. Yeah, it was. I wasn't like, we got to plug the T shirts. No, you very rarely say things as that. Okay, Chuck. Yes. You want to talk about Playo? Yeah. We promised to do this recently, and here we are. Yeah. In my defense, it was already on the list. Oh, wow. So it's not like the beck and calls anybody do playdoh, do this, do that. No, it was already on the list. Dance monkey. Right. Did you play with plato a lot when you were a kid? Oh, I played with it. I ate it. I don't recall eating it. I do specifically recall eating the paste. That was an off brand that had a purple pirate on it. He was a pirate wearing a purple hat and I think maybe an orange pirate. Yeah. Was the paste on the inside the lid, did it have an applicator attached to it? Yeah, I totally ate that paste. That was the best tasting paste on the planet. As a matter of fact, I think that paste might have been manufactured in part to eat like it's rule served to kids. Some bad kids. Yeah. Actually, I want to revise my statement. I licked and tasted plato. I don't remember swallowing it, but I remember tasting it and then maybe even put it in my mouth and spitting it back out. But I don't think I didn't swallow. I got you. Yeah. I don't think I ever ate playdoh in any form or fashion. But the scent of it it's unmistakable. Unmistakable. It's so unmistakable, in fact, that apparently back in 2006, plato or hasbro through a year long celebration for Plato sure. Which it owns. Which it bought off of Kenner. Yeah, which Kenner bought from a dude named Joe McVickers. Actually, they bought it from Tonka. Tonka bought it from Kenner. Yeah. How did I forget? Tonka? Exactly. For the 50th birthday party they had a scent, a playdoh perfume released that smelled just like playdoh. Can you buy that? I wonder. I looked and I think you can get it, but I don't think as easy as you could back in 2006. Yeah, I wouldn't want to wear it. I was just curious. I think. Yeah, nostalgia. I would like to smell it. But don't spray that stuff on me. I don't think you're supposed to wear it. Oh, is it just like one of those things? It's a mood stabilizer. Okay. You know what I mean? Yes. Spray in front of your face and you just go, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. Like, Rosie, you have to put this lead pipe down and rethink things. Right. Remember when I was a kid and less violent? Right. Somebody gave me some paste to eat. They should do that. Well, back when you were a kid, did you know much about the origin of plato? No, not at all. I didn't either until today or yesterday when I started researching this plato, everyone. And in this article by Tracy Wilson who hosts stuff you missed in history class, she says that it's lower, but I've seen it all over the place. And from what I understand, it's the truth. I think it's the truth. There was a dude named Joe McVickers who had a company and his company produced, from what I understand, McVicker's invention, which was wallpaper cleaner. Yeah. His father and uncle started it, and they were called Coutol Products, and it was a soap company, but their big seller was this wall cleaner, because when we heated our homes with coal, your house would get coal sit on the walls. Yeah. Which is really weird to think of now. Yeah. But it's true. And your wallpaper can still get dirty. Grease from cooking things, food fights, whatever. Yes, your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts, everybody. And McVicker's company had this putty. It was kind of a pliable gooey putty that you slapped up against the wallpaper and rolled up and down, and it just took that sour, that grease or that spaghetti sauce clean off. And it was wallpaper cleaner. Yeah. And it was doing okay, I guess. Great. I don't think they were, like, hurting necessarily, but Joe was married to a woman, or was. His sister in law was a teacher. Yeah, it was Cincinnati. Yeah. They sold a lot of the stuff for a while, but then natural gas came around, and so they fell upon hard times. Right. But Joe took over from Cleo was his father and his sister in law Kizu Fall of New Jersey. Read about kids that were making Christmas ornaments out of that stuff she said, out of the wallpaper cleaner. Yeah, and much like kids do today with Plato. And she said, hey, we're hurting. Why don't we try and turn this stuff into a toy? And they did. So he made a non toxic version, added some almonds in, and you had your first little off white playdoh. Yeah. Kind of exactly what you would think of when you think of a gummy colored, like, dough offwhite khaki, almost. Yeah. And McVicker was a pretty smart dude as far as business goes. He donated a bunch of cans to Cincinnati city school system. Very smart. And so got these little kids hooked on Plato. It was a huge hit, but it might have just been a regional hit if he hadn't approached a dude named Captain Kangaroo. Yeah, he went to what is Captain Kangaroo's name? Bob. Bob Keishan, I think. Bob Keishan. Nice memory, Chuck. I pulled that out from I don't know how many years ago was the last time I heard that name. Well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo? Oh, yeah. Me, too. Huge fan. Love Captain Kangaroo. I like Captain Kangaroo more than Mr. Rogers. I like them both. But, yeah, I think I might have been Captain Kangaroo a little bit more. It was a haircut and I was electric. Company over Sesame Street. Amon. Yeah, I like both. But I like the electric company more. But I like pinwheel most. I didn't watch that. It was for real little kids. Okay. Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show, and Joe McFicker somehow got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey, I have a little deal for you. Yeah, we've got this awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it. We're calling it Playdoh right now. It's an offwhite, or it used to be, but now we have four colors red, blue, yellow and white. Those are the four original colors of Plato, by the way. Yeah. And he gave someone to Captain Kangaroo who said, I will give you 2% of gross sales if you mention this on your show two times a week. Yeah, he played with it. Bob Keisha was a money grubber, as we all know. I think he believed in this product. Yeah. And he's a smart guy. He is. And he believed in it so much that he upped the number of mentions without any additional compensation from two times a week to as many as three times a week. He would play with Playdoh on TV, and it just took off like a rocket from there. That was his additional compensation? That he got free playdoh. No, he had a percentage. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You're right. But it suggests that he believed in it. That's right. He did believe in it. And do not shatter my image of Captain Kangaroo. I'm not saying he just wanted to make more money. Of course not. Isn't that the show that Mr. Green Jeans is on? Yeah. Big fan of that guy, too. They formed the Rainbow crafts company. They wanted to take it out from under the Kutol products banner and got famous wildlife artist John Ruthman to design that first package. Originally, it was very briefly. It was an elf. Yeah. And those, I think if you have a Canada, it's probably in a museum or something. That wasn't around long. No. And then they went to Plato Pete, the kid with the smock and the beret, because all little kids wore berets and smocks back then. Or you wore your dad's dress shirt, like, backwards. That made a good smock, too. Yeah, the one he didn't want anymore or that you thought he didn't want anymore, but he really got mad at you. He got paint on it. That's my good short sleeve dress shirt. And finally, it took all the way until 2002. Did the herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts? Oh, man. Really? With slacks and ties. My dad, usually as a principal, wore a coat. But when you take off the jacket and you've got the short sleeve that's something else. With a blue felt tip pen, a red felt tip pen, and a green felt tip pen in his pocket. Front pocket. That was your dad? Yeah, he was a mechanical engineer. Oh, so each one had a different use. Yeah. Interesting. Plus, I think he also just thought they were pretty. Yeah, they made his shirt pocket pop. That's where you get it, with your shirt pocket thing. Right. All right. It took until 2002 for that beret to become a baseball cap. And then now he's just gone. Yeah. I was looking somebody. Not at all. Yeah. Now, it's a can with arms and the lids kind of pulled back. And in between the rim of the can and the top of the lid are a couple of eyes. It looks a bit like a garbage can, but it's obviously a playdoh can, but just kind of I don't like it. Yeah, I like Playdoh Pete, the kid with the beret. Yeah, me, too. He's great. That's what we grew up with. It's nostalgia. Yes. But he was around for a really long time and now they just do away with him like he's nothing. That's another shirt. Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah. We'll get sued. Yes. Although I didn't get the impression that they were too terribly litigious. Well, plus, we could tell them we sold nine T shirts. Here's your $73. Here's your 2%. So, Plato, we all played with it. It was fun for modeling, but it was not like if you were like me. Your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled something and left it out overnight because you thought it would make it into a permanent exhibit. But it would really just kind of break apart. It's not like you can't cure it like you do modeling clay. No. I was on Plato site, and they readily admit that. As a matter of fact, they say, if you want a permanent thing, go get you some modeling clay. Yeah. Get some Sculpy. I don't want to buzz market, but Sculpy is a lot of fun. Okay. We're talking about plato, though. I think sculpting is fun. But they say modeling clay. They don't say Sculpy, but they say if you want to make a permanent thing, go get some modeling clay. It's not what Plato is for. No. It's for being in the moment, making fun things and then smashing those and then putting it back in the can. Right. Doing it all over again every day and driving your mom crazy because she can't stand colors to be mixed together. She sits there and picks them apart or whatever. Or it's in the orange shag carpet, which, again, hasbro has some helpful suggestions for how to clean this stuff up. Sure. Number one, and you will understand eventually, by the end of this podcast why do not use warm water when you're cleaning up playdoh from the carpet. It will make everything a million times worse. What they say? If possible, if you have the patience of Job, just go ahead and let this thing dry, turn brittle. Use a stiff brush and just kind of brush it out of the carpeting. Vacuum it up. Boom. Yeah. Or do the reasonable thing and get hardwood floors. All right, we'll discuss that very soon after this message. All right. So Plato is fun enough on its own. Like, when I was a kid, I had zero accoutrement to go along with my Plato. I don't recall having anything but just the Plato, too. All I had was the Plato in my imagination. And in 1960, I said, you know what? Let's get a couple of engineers from General Electric to design what's going to be called the Fun Factory. That was it. That was it. Then you could put Plato into various forms and molds and press it and have it come out like sausage or spaghetti or just whatever they decided to design. Have you been to the site recently? Yes. There are hundreds of different things that you can buy now with your Plato, of course. Yes, for sure. And different types of Plato, too, to make different looking things as well. Yeah, but the original Fun Factory thing is basically just a hand pushed lever that shoved the Plato inside through a hole. It was a sausage grinder, basically. Yeah. And then in front of the hole, you had just kind of like different shapes that you could make this thing into. What did you say? Spaghetti. Spaghetti. Or a star? Rope. Oh, yeah. And the rope. Speaking of the rope, all of these are basically what it is, an extruder. This is a Plato extruder is what these guys came up with. And I guarantee they had colored felt tip pens in the front of their pockets, too, when they designed those things. But if you took all the Plato by the way, here's a Plato Fun fact. If you took all the Plato ever created and ran it through the Fun Factory and extruded it into one long rope, it would wrap around the Earth 3000 times. How many big max is that? No, I'm sorry. It would wrap around 300 times. Let's not go crazy. Oh, only 300? Yeah. And you could go to the moon and back ten times with that rope. You could make a pretty good little bridge that would be kind of crumbly by the next day. Yeah, but it'd be colorful. That's right. That's a lot of play, though, man. Yeah. They've sold \u00a3950,000,000 of this stuff, more than 2 billion cans since 1956. Yeah. And they apparently make about 100 million cans every year. Yeah. What I find heartening is those are current statistics. They're not rated for inflation. No, but this article that Tracy wrote was apparently written in 2006 and she said that they make 95 million cans. So they've upped their production by 5 million cans a year. Which means Plato is not going anywhere. That's right. I'm pretty psyched about that. Yeah. And all the stuff they have now, like, they've got all sorts of licensing deals. Like they have, like, the Plato Disney princess. Set. And you can make dresses for your Disney princess out of Plato. And they have a longstanding tradition, too, of making fake food. I wouldn't really call it documentary. It was almost just a compilation of Plato ads over the years. Yeah. And there's one from the 80s where you could make Pizza Hut pizzas out of Plato. I think I remember that. Nowadays they have, like, kind of a sweet shop, I think is the name of the line. And like I said, they have different types of plato. Some are squishier and thinner and more pliable. So you can use those to make the frosting. Use regular Playdoh to make the actual cupcake. That's because the cupcake craze, I bet. Yeah, probably. It's filtered down to kids and with the gluten free craze on their website, it says contains gluten. Yeah. As wheat. Yeah, but they have to advertise that now because your child will want to eat the Playdoh. And if you have your kid off gluten, they can't eat the Playdoh. No, mommy has to explain that. Or Daddy. But if your kid has a peanut allergy or milk allergy, yes. You're fine. That's right. Water, salt and flour is the general I mean, it's a very proprietary recipe, obviously. Right. It's a Uspatin number 671-3624. But if you look that up, you're not going to find the ingredients. No, like you said, it's proprietary. They do give kind of like a general ingredient list somewhere, I guess, in the patent itself. But yeah, they're not going to tell you how to make it, but we'll list those really quickly, and then we're going to talk about chemistry. Yeah. We're going to get to the chemical molecular basis of plato itself. But in broad terms, it is water. You got a starch based binder. You have a retrogradation inhibitor because you have to inhibit that. retrogradation. Sure. Salt. No, there's salt in there. In fact, at one point, it was too salty, and they had to get a new chemist to remove some of the salt. Is that right? Yeah, but you remember how salty it tasted? No, I didn't. I never tasted it. Oh, you didn't know? I thought you said you tasted it. No, I said I never did. I ate the paste. Okay. I never tasted it. But the smell was the taste salty? No, no, it had a weird sweet taste to it. It wasn't overly sweet, but of all of the tastes, just sweet enough to get a kid to eat it. Right. Salt. You got your lubricant, and all this will make sense in a bit. A surfactant, a preservative hardener, a humectant, a fragrance, of course, in color. I know we used almond for the first fragrance, but I wonder if it's still an offshoot of that. It smells like almond. From what I saw, they've admitted to vanilla. Oh, really? That's all I've seen. Okay. And they're saying that doesn't tell us anything. That's all they admitted to? Yes. Under questioning, yes. But the colors, we should also say checkers. They originally had red, yellow and blue, the primary colors, and they added white. And this is all in the those were the only colors until the 80s. Wow. And then they added a couple more, and they had eight colors total. And then now today, it's like a whole rainbow a whole galaxy of different colors. I never got the white because it looked dirty so quickly. I never really understood the purpose of the white. I liked it. I thought it was a nice juxtaposition with the primary colors. Yeah. You were an artist. Yeah, I was just kind of sore. All right, so now the rest of the show, we're going to talk about chemistry. You're not happy about this, are you? Well, what did you think about this article? I thought it was good because that's what House Stuff Works does. They tell the story behind things like, we can't just talk about surfing. We have to talk about the physics of a wave. Right, I get that, but yeah, chemistry was not my bag, baby. This one, Kissing and Roller Coasters has a little bit of protest going on. Come on, this is fun stuff. Yeah. When you're talking about kissing, you want to talk about remember the title of it was a Rigid, Sterile Look at Kissing. Well, I don't know if the title for this will end up being what I wanted, but it was going to be Taking the Fun Out of Plato. No. Let's call how Plato works. All right, but you heard it here. That was my working title. Yeah. All right, well, I will kick the chemistry off and maybe I will spark your interest. Are you ready? Yes. Do you have your beret and your smack on? This isn't even the fun chemistry. You get to burn things. No, this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding them together. There's a little heat involved, as we'll see. Possibly you could start that flame. Okay. Okay. So the whole basis of Plato, it turns out, is an interaction between starch and water. That's right. And starches, they're polysaccharides, which are sugar molecules. And there's basically two varieties or two types that combine. There's amylose and there's amylo pectin. That's right. And amylose is like a string. Amylo pectin is branched. And when they get together, they form a starburst shape. They form a molecule in a starburst shape. And it's arranged around a central area hollow called the highland hilum. And it's all held together thanks to hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that, these polysaccharide chains all mixed together with hydrogen bonds, forming a starbursts. And, my friend, you have a starch molecule. And when you have the starch molecule, you have one of the two bases of Plato. Yeah. And this article does have some pretty handy illustrations. If hearing this doesn't make as much sense, you can follow along on your own computer. Look at the illustrations. If you add cold water to starch, the granules are going to absorb some. But when things really get interesting is when you add warm water, or when you heat up that cold water to be warm water. You can mix it ahead of time and then warm it up. And basically what you're doing is making a gelatin. Just like when you make jello, it's going to be warm water. Right. Like if you've ever had, like, cornstarch or flour or whatever and you add cold water to it, they just kind of separate. Right? Yeah. It's really untoward. It doesn't do much. It's almost like the starch protects itself against the cold. Like you stay over there, cold water. But when you use warm water or a mechanical action of mixing together, it forms, like you said, it gelatinizes. That's right. And now you're starting to get the basis of playdoh. But the problem is when you just add warm water and the starch in this case, it's wheat starch that they use. Right. Because they have to gluten against gluten. When you add those two things, they mix together well. They form a nice gelatinous goo. But as it dries, you've got the problem of retrogradation. That's right. And that's trouble. Yeah. Because it really depends on the breakdown of amylose to amylo pectin is the key. If you have a lot of amylose, it's going to take more swelling to gelatinized. Right. But you get a nice robust gel when you have a lot of amylose. But the problem is that excess amylose separates some from the water, binds to itself, and then you have something that's not a full compound anymore. It's basically like a couple of it's. Like you've got that gel and then some extra ammo, and it's dry and brittle and it's not good. Well, yeah. And in the case of making a product for kids to play with, it's too firm. Like, they had to get this recipe just right to make it firm, but still pliable. And a lot of work went into this, I'm sure. Yeah. Because anytime they started with a starch and a water, put it together fantastic. But then that created this problem. And then when they went to solve this problem, it created this problem. So then they had to solve this problem. And then after adding like, seven things, they finally have this, like, precariously balanced compound. That's perfect. That's perfect. But it's pretty neat. It's really complicated and it's self complicating, which I find very interesting. It is. And what they ended up settling with, as far as percentages go, for that weed starts, was 25% amylose and 75% amylo pectin. They found that to be the secret sauce. Right. As our buddy Chad likes to say. And the reason they have the amylopectin is because the amylopeptin is a waxy starch, and it keeps the amylose from binding to itself. So you've prevented that retrogradation problem where the amylose separates from the water and just binds to itself. The problem is now that you have this extra amylo pectin, the amylo pectin. It keeps the whole thing together, but it does it too much. And now you have a sticky, tacky compound. Yeah. You don't want it sticky. No. And anybody's ever played with Playdoh and tried to make something you can't make it sticky. It'll stick to your hands or it'll stick to itself. It's not going to make a cheeseburger like that. No. So they added something else. A lubricant. That's right. In this case, I don't know if that's part of the secret or not, but it's probably some sort of a vegetable oil or mineral oil. Well, they think possibly it's a mineral oil which is derived from petroleum, which petroleum, which is why it's non toxic, but you still shouldn't eat it. Yeah, I did see that there was petroleum. I bet you they're going to come out with a gluten free play, though. I'm surprised they haven't already. But that would almost be like admitting your child is eating this or can eat it. Well, some of the new stuff, like the sweet shop stuff, I would be very surprised if they hadn't done some R and D of different flavored playdoh. Right. Because they have the different colors. And this is supposed to look like this frosting. It's supposed to look like this frosting. So I wonder if they were like, well, we can make this taste like vanilla or cotton candy or whatever, but yeah, and then they kind of shook their heads off and we're like, wait, we can't have kids eating this stuff. Or I wonder if they've done R and D on how much of it you can eat before it makes you sick. Surely. Like, if they're making something that looks like a cupcake yes. Some kid is probably going to eat that entire thing some point. And like we said, they've pretty much always been like, you can make fake food with this. Yeah. Pizza Hut gave us money to do this, but don't eat it. Right. It's a weird mixed message. It is totally mixed message. But you were saying they use the petroleum oil as a lubricant. Yeah. And that keeps it from being all sticky. So if you've ever played with it, you know it's very pliable and moist, but it's not going to stick to your fingers, which is the key. Right. So you have added the mineral oil or some sort of lubricant to prevent the extra amylopectin from making it sticky. And the whole reason he added amylo pectin was because too much amylose can cause retrogradation. So you've got all these solutions and you've got the lubricant solution. The problem is you can't just drop it into lubricant and expect it to stick. The lubricant won't bind within this compound. So you have to add yet another thing. The surfactants. Yeah, surfactants. You'll see in a lot of household cleansing products if you use that chemical junk to clean your house. But a surface active agent is another name for it, and it basically they're artificially manufactured their molecules, but it's going to suspend something in water. The whole key to being a surfactant. Imagine a surfactant has two ends, and one end is hydrophilic, which means it attracts water. And is attracted to water, and the other is hydrophobic, which means it repels water, and it's actually attracted to fats lipids right, yeah. Or afraid of it, even. The cool thing about a surfactant is that if you take it and you throw it into a solution of water and oil fats and waters. Right. Yeah. One end will attract the fat molecules, and another end will attract the water molecules. And the end result of all of this is that you can basically suspend fats in water or water and fats, so that you have effectively, molecularly speaking, a compound that's all mixed together. Yeah. It's not going to separate, like oil and water because the whole thing is being held together by surfactants. That's right. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. It actually binds to the molecules of the lubricant. The chemical reaction is taking place and keeps them all mixed together. It won't allow them to separate. So we've got the lubricant in there. The whole thing is being held in place by the surfactant, all lubed up, ready to go. We've got a little extra water. Chuck, what are we going to do? Well, I don't think we mentioned earlier the reason it dries out to begin with, if you leave it out overnight, is just because Evaporation right. And Hasbro recommends that if this happens, you take your Playdoh modeling clay and you wrap it in like a damp paper towel, put it back in the camp with the cover on it, leave it overnight, it should be good as new. Yeah. And I've seen you can also add a little water to it as well, but I've never tried that. So that, my friend, is a very fine tuned mixture. Like you said, they had to share. It took a lot of work over the years to get it just exactly right. And we're going to learn how you can make your own right after this break. So, Chuck yeah. We should have said there's a couple of other things that they add, like you get excess water, so they added a little salt. Sure. And apparently for the excess salt, they brought in a new chemist. So it's just perfectly fine tuned stuff. You get to color it, of course, and give it a scent. Yeah. And then possibly make it taste in the future. Who knows? I'm betting on that. Yeah. And the salt also adds a little anti microbial element to it. Right. Which is nice. So it has acts as a preservative as well. And to make Plato, you just put all this stuff in the right measurements and apply heat to it and mix it together and package it. And that's Playdoh. Yeah. And it's got to have that shelf life. It's really hard to come up with a product like this that meets all those needs. And we'll still, like I'm sure there were times early on where, like, oh, this stuff is two weeks old on the shelf it's like a brick. Back to the drawing board, put on your beret and your smock. Remember in our How Twinkies Works episode, they dealt with that initially. Oh, the shelf life. Yeah. Right. So they just made it infinity. Man, that was such a good episode. That was good. One of my all time favorites. Agreed. We still get emails from people they're like, I found the banana Twinkies. Yeah, they have them in limited release from once in a while. Yeah. I have yet to try one. I remember trying one years ago, but it wasn't my bag. I don't like banana flavor things, but I like bananas. You're a very complex man, Chuck. Well, they don't quite get it right, I don't think, ever. I've never tasted a banana flavor thing. That got it right. Got you. I'm hard to please. So man, you just totally threw me off. What were we talking about? I think we are to the point where we're going to make our own. Right? Right. So it's very tough to make until you come upon the recipe, but apparently a lot of people, even though it's a proprietary recipe, a lot of people have come up with their own recipes for playdoh. Sure. And it's fun to do with your kid. If they like playing with it, then you can teach them a little chemistry along the way. Right. In a learning moment. If you want to save some money or you don't want to feed the corporate beast. That too, or yeah, you just want to do something with your kid and make it. You can do all this stuff. It just takes a little elbow grease and work. And there's recipes all over the Internet. There's some for, like, glow in the dark playdoh. Oh, really? There's some for glittery playdoh. There's a couple of recipes in this article on how stuff works, but basically you're doing the same thing. You're adding starch to water, you're adding some sort of lubricant to it, something to hold the whole thing together. In this recipe, it's a cream of tartar, which stiffens eggs and gives homemade plato. It's firmness, but there's a lot of recipes online that if you want to not only just play with plato with your kid, but make it, that's a great chemistry teaching experience, I think. Agreed. You can explain what each ingredient is doing, and then at the very end, you're going to have plato and your kid is going to say, this plato stinks. It's not nearly as good as the real thing, unless it's the peanut butter variety. And I'll bet you're like, oh, this is tasty playdoh. Do they have that? Yeah, there's a recipe for it in this article. The peanut butter is one of the ingredients. Yes. Interesting. Yeah. Or you know what? You could make it with your kid while you listen to us stumble through the explanation. Yeah. And to everybody who's doing that right now. Hello, everyone. And your kid is going to say, who are these jerks and why does my Plato not work? Can we just go to the store and buy some Playdoh, please? Yes. Well, we're portable. We go around on mt. Three Players so we can go to the store with you too. Exactly. What else you got? And then you can listen to our episode on temper tantrums on the way to the store. That was a good one too. It was. What else you got? I've got nothing else. I got plenty more. Oh, please. Mr. Bill. Remember him from Saturday Night Live. Of course. He was made of plato. Yeah. They made the first Mr. Bill short for $20. That's pretty good stuff. What else you got? Fun facts. There's not just one, but two at least Plato 3D printers on the market right now. Really? Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So you put a hunk of it in there? Different hunks in there? No, I was about to say a hunk in there and then it widdles it down. But that's the opposite. 3d print. No, it extrudes it. It builds up. Yes. That's crazy. There's one on Think Geek for $50 that plugs into your iPad. So that's where your schematics are and it tells you what to do. And it makes pretty cool little 3D play dove stuff. That's kind of fun. It is. At the same time, it's kind of like you're really building a little geek there. But the imagination and the hands on things kind of taken out of it a little bit. Well, I think that's the new imagination, my friend. I guess so. To follow forms and schematics to a T maybe. So it would be cool as if you could design your own schematic, which I'm sure you can. Yeah. And then Plato has one called the do vinci. I saw that. And that's a 3D printer too. And then one other thing I found. We were talking about Plato ads earlier. There is a series of banned playdoh ads that were published in Singapore a couple of years back. Oh, band is in. I thought you meant like bands recorded music. No, like bands taboo Plato ads that are very adult centric. Really? Yes. Can you say what? How about this? I made a slide show of them on our site. You can go check them out. They're pretty crazy. Okay. They're not like naked or not adult in that way, but kind of violent and a little dark that this ad agency made basically without the approval of Hasbro. Yeah, clearly. And Hasbro came in and denounced it and everything, but they're pretty great. So if you go to Stephen.com and search band Playdoh ads, it will come up. And Hasbro had a news release. It says, we don't endorse this use of Plato brand moldable clay. Right. They just kept working the name in there. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called scam ads where advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based around brand names without the brand names permission simply to submit them for awards consideration to expand their prestige. Interesting. Well, if you want to be a TV commercial director, you have probably made some spec or fake ads yourself just to have on your reel. I'm going to make a doritos. Well, doritos. Does that come past every year? Right. So this is the same thing, but sometimes they really run afoul of like the spirit of the brand. Sure. And there's scam ads. Yes. They're like European commercials which are always way better and risque and like funny. Yeah. Get with it, America. So if you want to learn more about plato, including a few playdoh recipes, you can type plato into the search bar athouseparks.com and search bar. It's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this another MPAA called the golden f bomb. Hey, guys, I discovered your show. And he says hello to Jerry and spelled her name right, too. Oh, that was nice. Which doesn't happen often. The spelling, that is. I discovered your podcast while looking for something interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic farm in kauai. I heard the MPAA show and I just had to write in. Growing up, my friends and I were always looking for a way to sneak into movie theaters. Either exit door, having an older friend or parent buys tickets using a ticket, single ticket stub, pass back through to get in on the same ticket, et cetera. Get all sorts of ways of stealing. Our goal is to get into an r rated movie underage with nt 17 being the ultimate prize. PG 13 always felt like we had failed or were settling. So to make it fun, we would count how many expletives we heard and compare notes after the movie. He really took things to a different level. Yeah. There must have been a time when movies weren't as good as they are today in the theater. No, movies have never been this bad. I know, man. It is really out of control. Terrible. One pattern we soon realized was that PG 13 movies are allotted one f bomb. Listening for that one f bomb became the look for moment, making the PG 13 movie experience. It's a more interesting and something I look out for to this day. Still, there are some real classics, including Ron burgundy's and anchorman, most recently in skyfall when Judy dench uses that naughty word she did. I don't remember that judy, the first one in the bond series. Judy, Judy, judy. Oh, I just saw filament, by the way. Finally. What did you think? That was fantastic. Wasn't just an amazing change of pace for her. She always plays like a sharp pulled together like boss lady. And this one, she was just kind of working class. Yeah, that was a good movie. It was really good. Love that movie. Highly recommended. And then I noticed the rating rule is not ironclad, however, because recent examples of Lincoln and Philomena hey, how about that? Had two of those naughty words a piece. Lincoln had it in there, huh? That Spielberg gets away with anything. Well, he's the one that had the whole thing changed. Oh, yeah. He was the one that created it. PG 13. Yeah. And then he ran a foul of it. Anyway, my absolute favorite PG 13 golden goal, naughty word not mentioned anywhere else that I've researched, was the one that got me out of my seat cheering like the president's speech. And Independence Day is from Oblivion. Tom Cruise's character waits to the very end of the movie to deliver the perfectly timed line to his enemy. That movie stunk did it. Yeah, I heard. The other one was pretty good, though. Edge of Tomorrow. Yes, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And he closes by saying, mahalo Nuela. Thank you very much for all you do to infotain us. And that is Evans on Kauai. Yes. Sorry, Evans. Oblivion was no good. He said he liked it a lot, but to each their own. I'm not going to poopoo his tastes. Good for you, Chuck. Thanks for your game and your fevery. If you want to talk to me and Chuck about movies, we are always down for that. We love talking about movies. We just do an episode where we just say, have you seen this movie? Oh, yeah, I love that one. For like a half hour, there'll be a couple of people out there, they're like, this is a good episode. There are podcasts exactly like that. You know that what was I just saying? Oh, yeah. If you want to get in touch with us for whatever reason, movies or otherwise, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com, and you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushaneau.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 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." | ||
How the Paleo Diet Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-paleo-diet-works | You may have heard of the Paleo Diet, also known as the Caveman Diet, but do you know the science it's based on? And did you know that the saturated fat it and other diets avoid may be healthier than you were taught in school? | You may have heard of the Paleo Diet, also known as the Caveman Diet, but do you know the science it's based on? And did you know that the saturated fat it and other diets avoid may be healthier than you were taught in school? | Thu, 15 May 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=135, tm_isdst=0) | 41372601 | audio/mpeg | "This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the allinone 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.com stuff and use the offer code. Stuff off. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. Hey, congratulations to Jerry. Oh, yeah. She's got married. Congratulations, Jerry. Way to go. She just gave a thumbs up. She has the right to remain silent. Yeah. So congratulations to Jerry and Anna. And sadly, Jerry had to go to a different state to get married. Yeah. But she did it. Yes. Because they have initiative. That's right. Don't you, Jerry? Yeah. Thumbs up. Okay. Nice. Yeah. Congratulations. Cheers. Yeah, we're very happy. Pretty fast. So happy, in fact, that we have a podcast. I just realized I said I'm very happy for you guys, and it sounded not at all happy for them. Yes, I'm very happy for you. I'm really happy for you guys. Yeah. But I think everybody bought that you're happy for them. Okay. Everybody knows you. They know me. Well, Jerry bought it, and that's what counts. Jerry, did you buy it? Comes off. Interesting. I like your French, Chuck. Thanks. That's the only thing I know how to say. Is it? No, I mean, I've got the bonjour down and frost fries, frost dressing. Frost dressing. Yeah. So you say all those things. French dressing, french bread, french fries. And I can tell you that none of them were around 20,000 years ago. Nice segue, my friend. It was pretty clumsy. I liked it. It felt clumsy, but thank you. Yeah. You're talking about? The Paleo diet. Yeah, which, by the way, is short for Paleolithic Diet. And this thing's been around longer than I thought. The book was written by a guy named Doctor Lauren Cordain, the creator of the Paleo Diet back in 2002. And Dr. Cordain is no slouch. He is a celebrated PhD in health and health sciences, and he started looking at the massive, chronic health problems that face Westerners and Americans in particular. I think we might be the most chronically, unhealthy country in the world as far as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, all of these things go. And Dr. Cordain was like, there's got to be a better way. And what he focused on was the idea that the Western diet is also a very modern diet full of processed foods, foods that are preprepared, prepackaged, boxed, even. A lot of them have pictures of the food on the box laden with chemicals. Yes. Preservatives stuff you're not going to do at home. Right. And stuff that tastes really good, mainly because it's been designed to taste really good. The problem is, Dr. Cordain believes this stuff is really bad for us because of the preservatives those chemicals. And a lot of the good stuff that was president and at one point has been worked out, removed. So his idea was, well, let's create a diet that's the opposite of modern, that's prehistoric, even. And what he came up with was the Paleo or Paleolithic diet. And the Paleolithic era ended at about the advent of agriculture. So the premise of the diet is, like, all of this stuff would be the same diet that a hunter gatherer would eat. Yeah. And the idea is and there's a lot of controversy. Not everyone believes this. There's controversy with every diet. With every diet. But if you subscribe to this, the idea is that our body chemistry and physiology has not changed. Like, if you think of it like a 100 yard football field, we went 99 yards as hunter gatherers, and then the last yard is, since agriculture has come around, that's the longest time. So our bodies have not changed genetically, and they're the same way they were back then. So to eat how they were back then, and they did for thousands and thousands of years makes more sense. I'm concerned with that analogy with what happens when we score a touchdown. Is that the end of humanity? I don't know. But the dude you mentioned, he wasn't the first. It was actually a guy in the 70s that wrote a book. Walter Vogen wrote a self published book in 75 called The Stone Age Diet. Oh, I didn't know that. Based on in depth studies of human ecology and the diet of man. But like I said, it was self published, and it didn't blow up. It definitely took till the gain traction. Has Cordain given this guy credit? I don't know. He's based his ideas on this guy or what, I don't know. But I think he was the first guy to actually coined that term. I got you. But yeah, these are people who subscribe to that notion that since we haven't changed physiologically and how we're supposed to eat, then we shouldn't be eating how we're eating. We should eat how we used to eat. I would suggest that that's not necessarily true. And part of the problem with saying things like that or saying like, this is how Paleolithic body, human body, absorb nutrients. Right. These are the nutrients that could absorb you're making a pretty broad and unsubstantiated claim in and of itself. They did. Okay, well, also, you don't have a Paleolithic body to dissect, to study. All you have are modern bodies and assumptions about what Paleolithic diets were like. Now, I mean, there are still 100 gatherer tribes currently, but I haven't seen anybody say, well, we study these huntergatherer tribes specifically for a very long time. No. And we've concluded that this Paleo diet is totally supported by this. It's basically people saying, this is what Paleolithic people would have eaten. Right. So this is how their body would have been. And when they make a step to that second sentence, you're making a jump into an unsubstantiated claim. Just keep that in mind. Yeah. That's all. And like you said, every diet on Earth is you're going to find studies that say they're great and studies that say they're not so great. You're going to find people who say the food pyramid is what you should look at, and other people that say the food pyramid is out of whack and we shouldn't be eating that many grains. Oh, yeah. The food pyramid is out of whack. Yeah. But there is no definitive right or wrong, I think, because every time there's a study done, it seems like there's another study that can refute it. You just hit the nail on the head. There is no right or wrong because we don't understand our body, our bodies and our body's metabolic processes enough to say, this one's right and this one's wrong for everybody. Yeah. There's no baseline that's been established. We don't know quite enough yet. And so the problem has been. As we set ourselves back decade after decade. By basically picking a study. Whichever one got the most media play and seemed the most sensible. And going with that. Throwing lots of money and education. Time and effort at bolstering the findings of that study. Even though it may or may not have been the case. Rather than just saying. Like. We're still figuring it out. In the meantime, we think maybe don't eat so much of this, or whatever. Yeah. And I think that set us back quite a bit, but we'll talk about more later. Yeah. And I think, just personally, if you're doing it healthily, then find something that works for you. If that's Sugar Busters great. If that's Atkins or if that's Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or Super Calorie Restriction or whatever, not everything is going to work for everyone. Or Paleo. What are the other names? The Warrior diet or the Caveman diet. Yeah, they're fads, but that doesn't mean there can't be something to some of them for some people. Well, the other thing I think about diets, that makes each one so controversial, too, is that they do end up ultimately being fads, but every single one of the diets aspires to be that one diet that works for everybody. Right. They all kind of claim that and that's to sell books. Let's get real. But it's not like these things are necessarily just totally made up out of whole cloth. No, we'll talk about the Paleo diet and the basis of it. Right. So the whole idea is that, like I said, the modern diet has a lot of foods involved in it that are not good for you. And by cutting those things out, that's step one. Yeah. Basically eating cleaner. Right. But step two isn't just like, okay, so anything that you can find growing on a tree or that has a face and you can eat it besides humans is healthy for you. If you take it a little bit further, there's some things that you really shouldn't eat. According to the Paleo diet, one of the things that it's centered around are foods that if you have to cook them to gain nutrients from them, like beans are a really good example. Right. You can't eat them, you don't want them. In the case of the Paleo diet, the reason is they affect gut health, supposedly. Right. What else? Well, should we just go ahead and talk about what is on the good list and the bad list? Yeah. You've probably heard of the diet before, especially lately, but generally very high in protein. Yeah. A lot of people make the mistake of saying, oh, it's just like eating huge steaks all the time and pulling women by their hair. It's like that. It's actually no, they say protein is 19% to 35% of the diet. Right. Whereas protein for the average diet here in the west is about 15%. Right. So more protein. And when we say protein, we mean poultry and pork and fish and eggs and even red meat is on there. Of course. Right. Then lower carbohydrates, like a lower amount of carbohydrates and different kinds of carbohydrates. That's right. The carbs you want are slow burning carbs. And the idea behind this extends beyond just the Paleo diet. There's a lot of diets, including Atkins, that believe in lowering carbs, and they base it on, but it's not no carbs. You do want some carbs because your body does need some energy. Right. But you do want some carbs. But you want carbs from things like an apple or from celery or black olives, things that are slow burning carbs that will give you energy without raising your blood sugar. Yeah. Something low on the glycemic index. Yeah, that's how it's scored. So something that has about a 55 or lower on the glycemic index is considered low. And that's what you want as far as the carbohydrate is concerned, because it is going to give you energy without raising your blood sugar. When you raise your blood sugar, as I think we talked about recently, the insulin comes out to stabilize your blood sugar. Well, insulin sends a signal to your liver to start producing fat for storage. And that's why you tend to gain weight when you eat carbohydrates, because your blood sugar spikes and your insulin comes out. Yeah. And the difference like that's the difference between eating a sweet potato or a regular baked potato. Sweet potato good. Baked potato not so good. Yeah. And it's glycemic index. Yeah. Both carbohydrates, though. Right. The problem is also the glycemic index is extraordinarily unproven still. I don't know that it's a relatively new thing, but it's been used much more frequently recently. But if you start really looking into the glycemic index, any reasonable source will say, like, here's the glycemic index. This is a pretty good understanding of it. But the difference between a tart apple and a very ripe sweet apple you can't just say apples have a glycemic index of whatever, like one that's ripen more than another that's just the same exact apple from the same tree are going to have radically different glycemic indices. Yeah, that's interesting. That's a solid point, too, because it seems like there are too many definitive statements about diet yes. When there shouldn't be. Absolutely. The one that I think keeps coming up again and again that's the most sensible is we'll get to later. But it involves moderation. Basically, paying attention to your food is very important. Yeah, but moderation, if eating a bunch of Twinkies over the course of your lifetime is not going to kill you. Right. But if you have a box of Twinkies a day, that will kill you. And that's a moderate moderation is, I think, the key to health. I agree, man. And that's sort of the key to, I think, most things in life. Yeah. I mean, it pops up everywhere. Like moderation. Moderation is the spice of life. No, I don't think so. Fiber. Fiber is a big part of the Paleo diet. Fiber is super great for your health. And people are getting too much fiber from grains, or at least the thought is that you're getting too much fiber from your grains, whereas you should get it in things like fruits, maybe, or whole grains instead of refined grains. Non starchy vegetables. Yeah. If you're counting carbs, too, on a low carb or no carb restricted diet like, say, Atkins or something. Sure. You actually look at the total carbohydrates and then subtract dietary fiber to come up with what's called net carbohydrates. And those are the ones that you actually count because apparently fiber is counted toward carbohydrates, which is why it shows up in things like non starchy vegetables and things like that. Right. But it doesn't raise your blood sugar, which is what we come back to again and again and again. Okay. As far as weight loss is concerned. Right. Another part of the Paleo diet is fat intake. Higher fat intake, but what they call the right kinds of fats, omega three and omega six fats, mainly. Right. So you want to get into that? Yeah. I think it's time. Well, before we do, man, let's pull back from the preposter here and take a message break so quickly to recap, things that you're going to be eating on the Paleo diet are lots of protein, lots of protein, lots of vegetables, slow burning carbohydrates, fruits, nuts, things that you might have hunted and gathered throughout the day. Not beans, not legumes. No, not modern processed foods. Yeah. Not salt. And refined sugar is a really big no no. Yeah. And we got too fat, and this is extremely controversial. I thought this was super interesting. Well, the Paleo diet, like pretty much any typical diet these days, recommends that you really take it easy on the animal fats. And the idea that the reason why pretty much everybody recommends you take it easy on animal fat. Saturated fats, which are steric acid, palmitic acid, and lauric acid. Yeah. Those are the three biggest saturated fats found in animal fats. The idea that everybody has for steering clear of them is because they will give you heart disease. Heart attacks. Coronary disease. Yeah. If you eat too many saturated fats, you're going to die of a heart attack. Exactly. This idea gave rise to a complete change in diet among Americans and Westerners in general. The whole concept of a low fat diet, which is everywhere you go to any store, it's like fat free, low fat, fat free, low fat. Everything is low fat. Now, there's a version of it. It's low fat. It came from an initial study from the 50s by a guy named Ansel Keys who carried out what's called the Six Countries Study. Yeah. And he basically was the first to link animal fat intake to heart disease. Yeah. And it's what did they call it? The diet heart hypothesis. Yes. And what stinks about that whole scene is that he sort of did the elementary school science fair project approach, which is he kind of ignored the data that didn't support what he wanted, and cherry picked out the data that did and went with it. And somehow, even though there was some opposition to it at the time, somehow it became the basis for how Americans were told to eat from now on. Yeah. Even though it was flawed. I mean, for instance, one of the countries he studied was the United States, one of them was Japan. And he kind of said, hey, they have way more heart attacks in the US. Than in Japan. And it's because they eat more fat. Yeah. They eat more animal fat and they have more heart attacks and eats less animal fat and has fewer heart attacks. So facto, eating animal fat leads to heart attacks and heart disease. Right. Not considering the amount of sugar Americans ate or bread or nothing lifestyle or anything. Yeah, nothing else was controlled for. So that was part one. Part two is, like you said, he cherry picked six countries that supported his hypothesis. And at the time, some other people pointed out there's a lot of other countries. Yeah, we've got data for 22 countries. And when you take all that data and do a survey across the 22 countries of a correlation between animal fat intake and heart disease, it goes away. That correlation dissolves. Not only dissolves, but disproves that in some cases, the death rate from heart disease in Finland, for instance, was 24 times that of Mexico, even though in Mexico, the fat consumption rate was twice as much as Finland. That's right. So that's complete opposite finding. So Keys does the 6th Country Study in the then in 1970, follows up with a seven countries study. Who did he add? Well, this time he did. Japan, Italy, the US. Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland and the Netherlands. And he found the animal fat was a strong predictor of heart attacks over a five year period. Again, they basically said, Dude, what are you doing? Like, you're not doing good science here. And it's unclear, I should say it's unclear whether he's misrepresented his data. He published his findings, like, all his findings. He wasn't like, I'm just not going to publish this. It was more like in his discussion at the end of the studies, he was saying, like, yeah, this kind of came up, but we're not paying attention to that. It doesn't matter. Right. So he doesn't necessarily misrepresent the facts. It seems like he was more a victim of the media saying, yes, there's the answer. We've been wondering why Americans die more heart attacks. This guy just figured it out. It's animal fat intake, saturated fats. And it took off like a rocket from there in the 70s. Well, it makes sense to the ear. When you hear saturated fats, it sounds like, well, that's got to clog your arteries and give you a heart attack. Saturated? Well, you know, it's saturated with the word saturated means that there's no double bonds of carbon in these fatty chains, these fatty acid chains. So unsaturated means that there's at least one atom of carbon linked to another atom of carbon in the chain in a saturated fat, there's hydrogen carbons linking all the carbon atoms together. That's it. It's saturated with hydrogen carbon. It doesn't mean it saturates your arteries and clogs it up. Which is what it sounds like. Exactly. Keys comes up with this. It takes off like a rocket. It becomes adopted officially by the federal government to encourage a low fat diet. And study after study after study just kind of follows in key footsteps. The thing is, if you really kind of look at these studies, especially ones that are just pointed to, is like, these are definitive proof that animal fat, that saturated fat intake produces heart attacks. They kind of all fall apart. And you realize that for decades now, we've just been taken as gospel. First of all, an unproven correlation as causation, like, completely unproven. Yeah. As far as unarguable evidence goes, yeah. And there is definitely a dogma that's evolved around this that's been tough to crack. But a lot of scientists have been creating research and publishing research that says, look, man, we don't understand fat. Like you think it's not black and white and as simple as that. Like, for example, there's LDL fat and there's HDL fat. And people typically think that HDL is good fat. LDL is bad fat. Cholesterol. Yes. Right. And your body uses cholesterol to do things that produce hormones, especially sex hormones. You need cholesterol. Right. But it's the idea that animal fats raise your LDL, which is the bad cholesterol, that gave them this bad rep. But even if you look at LDL cholesterol, not all LDL cholesterol is the same. There's different things called sub fractions, and depending on the sub fraction, these start to correlate to heart disease, finally. Right, right. So some are small, dense types of LDL. Yeah. Some are puffy and pillowy. Right, exactly. And the pillowy ones are fine. They seem to be totally fine. And what they found also is that the overall ratio of pillowy too dense LDL is what? Finally, you can get a good predictor of heart disease risk, not just LDL cholesterol, but the ratio. Like, you can't even say, oh, this guy's got a ton of small, dents LDL particles in his bloodstream, so he's going to die of a heart attack. That's not necessarily true, because you haven't taken into account the fluffiness. And if you have more fluffiness than dense, it's got to be particles, then it's going to even out. Yeah. Well, I like Ronald Krause. He's a doctor out at UC Berkeley. He seems to kind of be hitting it on the head with at least how he's characterizing some of this stuff. Like, one of his statements that struck me was he said, these findings may simply suggest that unsaturated fats are a healthier option, but not necessarily that saturated fats are killing you. Yeah. And that's just a very reasonable thing to say to me. Yeah, he seems like a very reasonable guy when he came in the other day. Right. He's a nice dude. Well, in this article, we should say this is an really exhaustive NBC News article called what If Bad Fat Isn't So Bad? It's really worth reading. Well, it is. And one of the leads, how the article leads in is super interesting. They have found tribes in Africa, one called the Masei, nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania, and they basically live on a diet of fat supplemented with blood from cattle they heard, but they basically exist on red meat and whole milk. Their diets like 60% fat. Yeah, 60% fat. And they're super lean and they're super healthy. And their cholesterol levels were some of the lowest they've ever measured in people. Right. So people who responded to this, these findings said, well, obviously the Masai have some sort of genetic predisposition to lower cholesterol somehow there's something going on. No, because they studied a group of these tribes, people who moved to the city and basically adopted a Western diet. And all of them just immediately they went right into the normal levels of risk for heart disease. So it's clear that it's not just animal fats that are associated with heart disease, and they may not really be associated with heart disease at all. We're kind of in the stage now where science is undoing the damage while it still hasn't figured out the true answer. They just know that the heart diet hypothesis is not correct. Yeah. And there's more to it. Why did Congress say this is the way to go, even though the American Medical Association said this is not necessarily true. Why is the food pyramid endorsed? Does it have something to do with people lobbying for grains? Like, who knows? And apparently it wasn't just very recently. Also, the government endorsed an even lower saturated fat diet. They dropped the percentage of calories daily from 10% to 7%, like this year or last year. The big problem with this is that it's not like, oh, all these people missed out on all that prime rib they could have been eating the whole time. That's not the problem with it. The problem is when we adopted this low fat diet, fat gives taste to food. Yeah. Delicious taste. It does. So when you remove fat, you're not going to sell a product that's just fat free or even low fat unless you add more salt or unless you add more sugar. So if you look at the nutrition info on a low fat product, like, yeah, there's lower fat, but buddy, you got a lot more calories than you do in just the regular version of that side by side. Yeah. Which if you look at the medical records of every American, if you could from the today, you would find that while we reduced our intake of fat by a third rate of obesity, multiplied by almost three times and eleven times more people have diabetes. Yeah. And I think it's a truth that they found that people eat more of low fat foods because they think they can. Yes. Like, oh, this is low fat mayo, so I'm going to slather up both sides of my sandwich bread because it's low fat. And again, that's why I'm not a paleo diet guy, but I think there's definitely something to eating cleaner, and a doctor and a nutritionist that knows what they're doing will tell you straight up, like, don't eat things from a box and you're headed in the right direction. Yeah, it's true. Anything that's kind of been taken from its natural state, even if it's not in a box. Like, for example, I did a brain stuff on what's the difference between whole milk and skim milk? Well, skim milk is really messed around with milk processed, you could say, whereas whole milk, you're like, oh, it's got a ton of fat in it. I mean, that's cream mixed in there. It's whole milk for a reason. It's not messed around with yes, there's the whole thing with antibiotics, and you may be lactose intolerant, but I'm just saying specifically from a nutritional point of view, if you have whole milk, you have whole milk. If you have skin milk, you have milk that's had the fat removed and replaced with something like high fructose corn syrup or something like that. Some powdered milk proteins, it's messed around, it's processed. It's not the same thing. The other problem with drinking anything but whole milk is that when you take the milk fat out, which, by the way, some margaric acid has been shown to actually lower your risk of heart disease. It actually increase your HDL, good cholesterol. Right. When you take the milk fats out, you're also taking out the vitamin A and the vitamin D, and those are fat soluble, which means that fat needs to be present for your body to absorb them. Yeah, and you can make up for that in other areas, but you have to know to do that. It's like people who jump on and become, like, vegan or vegetarian. You have to do your homework. If you want to do that, that's great, but you need to find a way to give your body the things it needs that maybe was in that milk or that red meat. Right. Like with the Paleo diet, they say stay away from dairy. Right. Which I disagree with. Yeah. I found that some Paleo will drink dairy or ingest dairy, but it definitely isn't endorsed. But it's interesting that we're the only animal that drinks milk into their life after we're weaned off of it. Yeah, it's definitely an odd thing, and I think that's why the Paleo, they say not to drink milk because caveman didn't go around milking cows. No, I mean, we are reared to drink milk. We remember in the microbiome episode, we talked about how your mother's gut bacteria is transferred to you so that you can break down breast milk. So apparently the newest thing that I saw was that lactose intolerance comes from the fact that everybody can digest milk, but then only something like a third of humans maintain that ability to break down milk, and everybody else loses it as they age. It's interesting. I never thought about it before, but no one else but us drinks milk as adults. Even goats, they don't drink milk. So before we keep going, you want to do another message break? Yeah. Okay. Hey, Chuck, I don't know if you know this or not, but this episode is brought to you in part by Squarespace. That's right. It's the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. And we don't have to do that because we have our own website, but if I was a single guy, I would sign up for Squarespace. Okay. Do you have intuition? You do? Yeah, you do. And since you have it, you could use Squarespace. It's like drag and drop. There's no need to learn how to use code. And if you find yourself in a pickle, they've got 24/7 customer support, email support, live chat. They're there all the time for you. Yeah, and it's super. Design focus is going to look amazing. And it's not too expensive either. No, it isn't too expensive. Costs are as low as $8 a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year and get this. Everybody, we have a special offer for you. You can go to www. Dot. Squarespace. comStuff and sign up for a free 14 day trial with no credit card necessary. And if you use the offer code stuff stuff, you can get 10% off of your first purchase. Well, that sounds like a deal, my friend. It does. So everybody go to squarespace. comStuff and use the promo code stuff. So, Chuck, I wanted to also say you said that some Paleo people say, well, you can still eat butter or something like that or drink milk if you go on the Paleo website and read stuff from Cordain. There's people out there who are like, Paleo experts who say you can eat legumes or you can have a little burger or something. He's like, they're wrong. He said none of that. Right? Yeah, he's basically saying, like, what I wrote is right. Right. And it's not an evolving concept that it's like, you can't eat legumes. You can't eat beans. It's not okay. There is something called the 80 515 Rule that he built into it, which I think was smart, looks at like 85% of the time. Go Paleo. Yes. You can have about three meals a week that are non Paleo and still get the benefits of the Paleo diet according to the Paleo diet. Well, do they have any definitive research? There is no definitive research on any of these. Right. Like, the Paleo will cause you to be healthier. Yeah. I mean no. Here's the thing from this episode. I think the one thing everybody should walk away with besides an understanding of the basics of the Paleo diet are you saying this is the takeaway? Yes. All right. The takeaway is as follows, Chuck. If you see a study in an article, click on the link and read the abstract right. And see if the sample size is enough to convince you that it's a believable study. Yeah, we didn't even get into the four studies that a lot of the saturated fat argument is based on throughout the years. But there are four notable ones that are always pointed to, and every single one of them are flawed in some way. Yeah. I mean, there's a problem with it. I say that also because even the article that we have on how stuff works sites in 2009 study published in Cardiovascular Diabetology, which is a journal, and it found that people with type two diabetes who followed the Paleo diet for three months benefited more than those who followed the standard recommended diet for diabetics. That sounds like a problematic study, but if you just read that sentence and this is a very typical sentence for any media article you're like, oh, well, that proves that the Paleo diet works. At least there's one study out there that proves that it works. But if you click the link and read the abstract, there were 13 people in the study, ten men and three women, they carried it out for two consecutive three month periods. Wow. And, like, sure, okay. The findings prove that among these 13 people, the Paleo Diet was better for people with type two diabetes than a diabetic diet. But can you extrapolate that? And the problem is, even on our beloved House Stuff Works website, the way that the media is set up, it's like, here's something that proves my point. Yeah. Sounds like a trap, almost. Yeah. If you as a consumer or a thinking person can just go a step further and just click that link, I almost guarantee you whatever study is being discussed, the journalist is linked to it. Right click the link and it'll take you to an abstract, and you can read yourself about this study and make your own decisions. Agreed. I think that's my takeaway is be your own health advocate. Read the labels of the things you're eating and putting into your body, do the research, read studies, and decide what works for you and try it out. It's not like the end all, be all. You don't have to stick to it for life. No. I think most of the diets that are around these days are, for a prescribed period of time, very difficult. There's like a boot camp version at the beginning, and then it becomes easier and easier and you reach some sort of level of general maintenance. But I think from doing any diet like that for a couple of weeks, even one of the great things that you get from it is that you learn about your food whether you want to or not. Right. Because just by preparing your own food, planning your meals every day, rather than just, like, going down to the cafeteria or going to a fast food place and just buying something, you're forced to get to know the food you're eating. Like, you know how many carbs are in celery? You know how much fat is in this five ounce steak? Right. Like, you just know these things. And that, in and of itself is something that makes you better off just for having done it. Yeah. I think the ill health comes from not planning and resorting to what's around you, because what's around you and easy is usually not good for you. Right. So you got to put a little effort into it. I did find this and I'm pooping it right off the bat, but US. News and World Reported evaluated and ranked 32 diets from a panel of experts. To be top rated, a diet had to be relatively easy to follow, nutritious, safe, and effective for weight loss and against diabetes and heart disease. So according to the experts, these are the top ten diets. And by the way, the Paleo Diet was 32 out of 32. Wow. They had it dead last. Wow. The Dash diet is number one. And we're not going to get into what all these are. You can look it up if you're interested. But the Dash Diet came in at one. The TLC Diet is number two, and that is not the TLC Network. It stands for something. The Mayo Clinic Diet, the Mediterranean Diet and Weight Watchers. All tied at number three. And then at number six, something called the Flexitarian Diet, which you've never heard of. Also tied at six was Volumetrics. Number eight was Jenny Craig. Number nine was the Biggest loser diet. Apparently, they have their own diet. That's not surprising. And number ten was the Ornish diet. Ornish and man, it's a big industry. If you want to write diet books, try and get people going on good health. Write diet books. Start making, like, convenience food. That falls within the diet. Yes. That's the money. So what's our advice? Be your own health advocate. Try to avoid packaged foods and put some time into it. That's right. How's that? We should write a book. That's good stuff. If you want to know more about the Paleo Diet, too, you can look them up online at paleo diet.com. And, yeah, just start looking around. Once you start poking into that kind of stuff, it's almost like a great entree into the world of understanding your own nutrition. It's empowering. Yes. And if you want to learn more about the Paleo Diet, you can type those words into the search bar housetofworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this defending Skinner. Hanky is my name, and I don't know how to pronounce it. H-A-I-K-E. Any idea? Hikee. H what? H-A-I-K-E. Maybe. I'm going to go with Haik. Hi, guys. My name is Hake, and I'm an Austrian psychology student. I just wanted to defend poor BF. Skinner in case no one else did it yet. In the Indigenous episode, you mentioned how Skinner's daughter should be honored because she was tortured in a box. Well, all Skinner ever put in the Skinner box were rats and pigeons. The thing he invented for his daughter was called the air crib. It is a crib that is higher than the average crib, so it's easier to stoop over and in it. There was a controlled climate for the infant. Fresh, clean air was coming in from the outside, and temperature as well as humidity could be controlled. Sounds like a box to me. It was just a device designed to make the baby's life more comfortable and the parent's life a little easier. Deborah Skinner is fine and untraumatized, and she herself says that people should stop talking rubbish about her dad and her. So maybe I can help help her out with this email she owes you. She does. I keep up the good work, guys. My boyfriend is also a fan as a lady. Not necessarily. Yeah, that's true. Look at me. I find out I'm a caveman eating meat and nuts. That is very unlike me. Too. You got a boyfriend, got to be a girl, right? And also, I wanted to point out an error I made when I was talking about how I wanted to punch Jared with the toxic bread of Subway. Oh, yeah. You heard about it for that? Well, in my defense, it turns out that it's not true. But all that stuff came out after we recorded. Like, that had just hit the news the day we recorded, and then all the other stuff saying, no, it's just one lady who had a bun to pick, and she was wrong. That came out afterwards. So Subway does not do that, and I still want to punch Jared. Okay. I hope Jared doesn't listen to this. I'd feel so bad if he came up with Dave, like, man, I really am a big fan. Yeah. Videocon. Oh, I'd hug him. Yeah, I will look forward to that. I'll get a video of that and touch it if you want to get in touch with me and Chuck and point out how we were wrong or how we can better ourselves, that kind of thing. Oh, and thank you, by the way. What did we end up on? Hake or Hake? I went with Hake. We'll go with Hake. Thanks. Haik. If you want to be like Hake and correct us, you can send us a tweet to s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyoushouldnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushaneo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howe.com." | ||
Josh and Chuck's Christmas Extravaganza 2012 | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/josh-and-chucks-christmas-extravaganza-2012 | Kick back and raise a glass of eggnog to Josh and Chuck as they carry on a new holiday tradition of exploring the ins and outs of all things Christmas - and maybe even warm your heart along the way. Happy holidays, everybody! | Kick back and raise a glass of eggnog to Josh and Chuck as they carry on a new holiday tradition of exploring the ins and outs of all things Christmas - and maybe even warm your heart along the way. Happy holidays, everybody! | Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:45:21 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=17, tm_min=45, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=356, tm_isdst=0) | 44619480 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, before we get on with the Christmas shenanigans, but how about we do a little TV show reminder for the folks out there? We have a TV show called Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. It debuts Saturday, January 19 at 10:00 PM. After the hour long season three premiere of Idiot Abroad with Carl Pilkington and Ricky Travis. And then comes our show. Then comes our show. We're airing two episodes back to back on premiere night. Then following that, on Saturday nights at 10:00 P.m., you will get to see one episode 30 minutes long. And if you don't have cable in any of that junk, you can get them on itunes the day after release and watch them there at Buck 99. That's right. But there's a Christmas present. You're ready? Yeah. The first episode you'll be able to get for free on itunes today after it's premiere. Yeah. And you know what? This is just me talking. If you're going to throw down a Buck 99 per episode for ten episodes August 9, you could probably upgrade your cable package for that and get Science Channel, I'll bet. Of course, it's a per month fee, but you know what I'm saying. But not only will you get our great television show, Stuff You Should Know, where we play ourselves as podcasters in this fictionalized office world that we live in. You'll get all the other great shows that Science Channel has to offer, including Idiot Abroad yeah. And oddities through the wormhole. Through the wormhole of Morgan Freeman. Yeah. And I watched one on the Hindenburg last night. It was really good. It's one of their one offs. Yeah. You're saying Hindenburg. And what was the other one? The nuclear bomb that is off the coast of Savannah. Those are showing that. That's right. Anyway, fascinating. We're very happy to be on Science and help support us January 19 at 10:00 p.m.. Yes. And if people want to hang out with us in person, they can come to Brooklyn and do it on January 8, tuesday at The Bellhouse, right? That's right. We are throwing a premiere partybriety show for the TV show featuring performances by people like John Hodgman. People like Lucy Wainwright. Yeah. Lucy's in the show other special guests, there are going to be some other special guests not performing, just kind of milling about in the crowd, hanging out. And this all goes down at the bellhouse in Goanas, Brooklyn, on January 8. You actually have to buy tickets for this one. Yeah, we're trying to cover costs on this one. Everything else has always been free. Don't get mad at it. Yeah. And plus, I should tell you, like, this can be a big show. Yeah. And it's only $10, though. So buy your tickets at thebellhouse Ny.com. And doors are at 730. Showtime is at eight. And that's it. The bellhouse that is in Guanas, Brooklyn. Specifically, 149 7th street. Nice. Okay, so we're done. It's time, Chuck. Finally for Christmas. Yay. It's Christmas. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. We're just a couple of little elves ready to do this thing. How are you feeling? Do you have some glad tidings around you? We're not naked elves, which that is foretelling from later on in the podcast. You're a bespectical elf. Yeah. I got glasses at 41. Looks good. Yeah. The aging hipster thing is now fully formed. Yes, it is a velvet jacket. Yeah. They're just for reading and computer stuff, though, and to look cool with. Because you look cool. Yeah, but I can't walk around in them. Why? Well, because they're for reading. It's like they mess up my eyes. Oh, I thought you meant, like you physically can't like you can't chew gum and walk at the same time. No, but I am having to get used to it. Well, you need to put those on a little chain to dangle around you. Yeah. You can look at a bill like an old kosher. Well, it must be Christmas, because it's 90 degrees in the studio. Right. It's warm about 75 degrees outside. Yeah. But the building doesn't know that. No, the building thinks it's wintertime. Right. So I'm sweating. Yeah, I am, too. So don't feel bad. Good. It's a little gaming here in our Christmas studio. But it is Christmas time. That's right. And like I said, we do have glad tidings of great joy. So I guess I don't have anything more to say before we get to this to you. Let's just kick it off. I'm very excited. I am, too. It is, after all this gets me in the mood. Christmas time. Chuck. Josh essays are Christmas extravagance. There's lots of celebratory stuff, but there's also a lot of really good, solid information, specifically, like, if you it being Christmas Day and all, have been selected a Christmas tree yet, we have some tips on how to select one and how to care for it. Really all kinds of Christmas tree stuff. So with Christmas trees, the vast majority of Christmas trees sold in the US. Are real trees. And this is actually, like, a huge industry, isn't it? Yeah. We've got 30 to 35 million Christmas trees produced a year, and that's worldwide. But about 20 million or so those are produced here in the US. Yes, which is a lot. There's also in the United States, the National Christmas Tree Association that is a thing, says that the industry supports 21,000 growers and employees, more than 100,000 people. Those are job creators. This is a crop. Yeah. And that's the way and we'll get into whether or not it's green to have an artificial tree or a real tree. But here's a hint. It's a crop. And that's maybe how you should think about it. Right. It is. About a million acres of land are set aside to grow Christmas trees in the US. Correct? That is correct. And my stats say Oregon leads the United States by a long shot in producing trees. About 6.8 million in 2007. Yeah. North Carolina about three, and then Michigan at 1.5, pennsylvania 1.2. And it just goes down from there. But apparently Michigan and Pennsylvania, they're dropping. Are they 30% down? Well, every state in the Union, except for Alaska has a Christmas tree farm on it somewhere. Why not Alaska? I don't know. I would think that southern Alaska would be able to grow them too cold. They're just too hearty to pay for a Christmas tree. They're like, we'll just go get our own. We're Alaskans. So while there's, what how many did you say we're going to be sold in the US. Every year? I think about 20 million. 20 million in the US. Okay. There's still 400 million growing in the US. Yeah. Because it takes about six to seven years for a tree to mature to a five to six foot harvestable height. How long? Six to seven years, I understand. Yeah. And during that time, you're going to have a lot of shearing going on, which is very important. Yeah. Is that what gives it the shape, or is it already sort of shaped like that? I think it's already kind of shaped like that, but then to convert it from that wild Christmas tree, that never quite does the trick to the Hallmark card Christmas tree. The people who grow these, the fine Christmas tree farmers, share them on a pretty regular basis, and they cut off the lateral branches that go out. Then they'll cut off the top, too, depending on how pointy they want it, how wide they want it. Do you get a real one still? No, we have an artificial one. Yeah. Very nice. Good. Just drenched in ornaments. It's not one of those preordinated. It's prelit. Okay. But no, we collect our own very special ornaments. Well, sure, because that's what normal people in society do. Right, but I didn't know that they made them pre decorated as well for the Mad Men do there. Yes, that's what I said in this article. You can get one fully decorated that you just assemble. Yes. You just put your Christmas tree up and then start eating your Hungry Man dinner and then cry on Christmas and then bury another body in the backyard. That's what that's for. So where do Christmas trees come from? Right. I mean, this seems like a pretty recent phenomenon, the idea of going to a Christmas tree lot and buying it way older. Yeah. Apparently, like many things Christmas, it is German and tradition, and maybe as early as Ad. 700, they started cutting down trees and putting them in the house. Yeah. I've always heard the story that it was Martin Luther who was the first to actually decorate them, though. Oh, really? With candles, which is a fire hazard. But that's a long tradition with Christmas trees, too. He was the first and last to decorate with candles. And of course, like all things German, it spread to England, it spread to America. And that's why we eat sauerkraut today. Right. And again, you would think that up until maybe the 50s or something, when the cities were really starting to boom. Well, I guess it's when the suburbs started to boom that people went out in their backyards and cut down trees. Right. But apparently there have been commercial Christmas tree lots in the United States since the mid 19th century. Yeah, that really surprised me. Yeah. I figured for sure that people in the 1800s would just take the axe out and cut one down in their own backyard. Sure, that's a logical thing to think, but no, apparently we've always relied on guys from that movie A Christmas Story to sell us. Yes, I saw a lot the other day in New York that was just, like, on a sidewalk. And obviously, space is a premium there. I'm sure there are lots of empty parking lots where they do this, but it's not like the suburbs. It was literally just on a sidewalk. Some dude had set up his little farm. Yeah, why not? It's an American tradition. So you've got your Christmas tree. You have it all selected. You're like, I like the plump, short one, so I know that they sheared the top off several times in addition to the lateral branch. Yeah. And I'm going to bring it home, but I don't know what to do with this thing. We're going to tell you because it's very much like cut flowers. It's a plant that's dying that you can keep on life support for a little while by feeding it water. That's right. And these days, you can get the little trunk a little inch or so, cut off of the bottom of the trunk by your Christmas tree. Dude. Or dudette, probably. But if not, you should do that yourself, because fresh cut is what you want down there. Okay. And I guess the reason is it drinks up the water more readily. Well, yeah. It's the same thing as bringing home flowers. When you get flowers, you want to cut them again before you put them in the water stems. Yeah. But there's actually a rule of thumb for how much water you want to give a Christmas tree. Basically, a live tree, or fresh cut tree, as you call them yes. Can drink up to a gallon of water a day. Yeah. I am remiss every year. Here's how it goes in my house. Oh, crap. I haven't checked the water in, like, three days, and I'm going to stick my finger in there, and it dries a bone. Sure. And the needles all fall off of my hair, and then I pour water in it, and the tree just looks at me like, thanks, jerk. Well, apparently there's a way to handle this. Right. So you get a Christmas tree stand that holds, I think you want probably up to a gallon with the tree in it. Sure. Because a lot of people will say, oh, it holds a gallon. Well, if you put a four inch diameter Christmas tree trunk into that, it's going to hold less than a gallon, or it's going to spill out on your floor. And you need to give your tree a court or a liter of water, depending on where you live in the world, for every inch of diameter of the trunk. Okay, so if you have a four inch diameter Christmas tree trunk, which is pretty substantial sure. You want to make sure that your tree holder can hold a gallon of water, and you want to add a gallon of water every day. Yeah, I used to hear some sort of, like, syrup or sweetener or something helps, but I'm not sure about that. I've never heard that one. Really? Yeah, I've heard that, but I don't know if it's true. Well, we'll find out. Yeah, I mean, I should have looked it up. I guess it just hit me. I've not heard that. Really? That's good stuff. But maybe it's just like a tree for the tree. Yeah, maybe. So here's some sat back. So if you don't feel like keeping up with a live Christmas tree, you can always, of course, go the artificial route. And those are actually also older than I realized. I boo. Artificial trees. Man, I'm telling you, our artificial tree is awesome. What does it smell like? It smells like heaven. It smells like love. Or does it smell like PVC made in Asia? No, I mean I know what you mean, but we have, like, a cinnamon broom behind it. Takes care of everything. Does your tree smell like cinnamon? I don't think it does. No. It smells like a tree. A lovely fur tree. I'm just anti artificial, but I get it. Some people don't like the fuss of going out and getting one or cleaning up needles or whatever your reason is. So, Chuck, apparently people have wanted to get around that fuss for many years. Apparently, again, in the 19th century, artificial trees were around. Yeah, it seems like it sort of mirrored the Christmas tree lot around the same time, I guess. And they were originally made to look like real trees, many of which still are, but in the 1950s, it got a little crazy. And we actually have one of these trees from the 1950s. You don't put it up? Yeah, I put it up in small, so we have one in the sun room. So you selectively poopoo artificial trees? I selectively poopoo using an artificial tree in lieu of a real tree. Got you. So we have our little 50s retro with the color wheel, the fire hazard tree in one room. What color is it? It's silver. Nice. Yeah. Do you have, like, the bright colored ornaments on it? And everything. I think we just do like one kind of single red ball. Nice. Not a single ball, but one single style. I got you all over the tree. Very tasteful. And it's not like our regular tree. We have all of our childhood stuff and the stuff we bought together and stuff like that. And our exxon commemorative and our chevron commemorative ornaments, McDonald's ornaments. But you know how, like every corporation on earth has Christmas ornaments? Could you imagine if that's all you had? Yeah, that'd be kind of sad. That would be awful. So you were saying that a lot of people turn to fake trees because of the mess and all that stuff. There's also another really good reason that people increasingly are selecting artificial trees. And there are some really top notch, expensive artificial trees out there that look very much like real trees. And it's becoming a growing alternative for people who are eco conscious. And there's developed this big debate over whether artificial trees or regular trees are better for the environment. And it seems very logical if you grow a tree to cut it down, to use a gallon of water a day to keep it alive for a few weeks before you throw it out. Well, right, throw it out, mulch it. Maybe not everybody does. It seems like an environmental nightmare. Yes, it could be. So the artificial tree would seem smarter. But apparently there's a study done in 2009 that basically said once and for all, like no, actually, depending on how long you keep your artificial tree, you're better off getting a real tree every year. Yeah, they did the study in Montreal and they said this is the most definitive study yet. Said that you have to reuse that artificial tree for more than 20 years to be greener. This includes greenhouse emissions resources, human health impacts. Like I said, a lot of fake trees contain PVC. They're generally manufactured in Asia and shipped over here. You definitely cannot mulch those. No. Once you get sick of it, it's probably going to be what do you call it, a garbage lot. What do you call those landfill? Lanfield or field? Lanfield. Is that no? So of course, the chairman and chief executive of Balsam hill, makers of artificial trees, says, no, ours from our green. Yeah, well, he was saying the point he makes is that if you take all of the emissions created by all of the Americans driving to a Christmas tree lot, getting their Christmas tree and driving home in addition to whatever transportation costs, because most of the Christmas tree lots around here, the trees are coming from North Carolina and they're being trucked in semi down and all that. You put all that together, you compare that to a ship carrying 50,000 artificial Christmas trees from China, the artificial trees more environmentally conscious. Yeah, but does this study supported it, too? Which one? Well, the study eventually oh, sure, over the course of 20. You'd have to take care of your tree for 20 years, but yes. Well, and look at the bright side. Your tree will then be retro 20 years later. You can use nothing but red ornaments. Exactly. So that's all I got. Except for mulch your trees afterward, because they can end up I mean, you don't have to do it yourself. Most cities have programs where you can put it out and they'll mulch it, and it'll end up on a playground somewhere, a nice, fine smelling playground of Douglas FIR. Or if you have an artificial tree, you can reuse it. Yeah, just box it up, put it in the attic, reads it again next year. So, Chuck, you've heard of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, right? I'm a big fan. They're basically like the missile defense group for the US. And Canada. Yeah, I did not know it was a joint effort by both countries. I did not know it was US. And Canada. Makes sense. I have a feeling I'm probably wrong, that the US. Set this all up and then told Canada, yeah, we need to put some of our stuff up there. That's a distinct possibility. It'll keep you safe if you just give us that plot of land. And they said, sure. Yeah. Well, NORAD, famous for tracking missiles, is also famous for Christmas tradition of tracking Santa Claus. Pretty great tradition. Yeah. Back in 1955, this serendipitous accident happened when Sears department store accidentally listed Conad, which is the Continental Air Defense Command, which was the predecessor to NORAD. Sears listed Conan's Operations hotline as Santa Claus's number. So all of a sudden, Coned started getting all these calls from little kids wanting to talk to Santa Claus, right? That's right. And instead of being an old kirmudgeon, the director at the time, colonel Harry Schupp, said, you know what? We've located Santa sleigh on the radar here, and we're tracking him as we speak, no doubt to the delight of the dozens of calls received from the kids that year. And it started a little tradition in 1958, and all of a sudden, it was a thing. Yeah. Well, 1958 was when NORAD started. Right. Oh, before that, it was Coned. You're right. And then the FAA got in on it. Right. As of 2006, the FAA cleared Santa for flight every year, which is pretty cute. I wonder if they did they just say, yeah, we're tracking him, or do they put a little realism into it? Like, if the slay weighed this much and he's traveling this fast? Oh, there's, like, a whole website you can go to if you'd like to delight kids. Real science, though. No, it's not. FAA govsana brings up all sorts of different stuff. This whole epic saga about Santa's preparations for his Christmas deliveries. And then if you want to track Santa at home, you can go to Noradsana.org. All right, Josh, let's talk about one of my favorite Christmas time drinks. Eggnog is one of my favorite, too, and I don't drink it much to have about one solid cup at my Christmas party. That's all you have a year? Yeah. How much of that can you drink? You're totally out of it. Plus, you drink it a lot. You need to open your eyes, buddy. What do you drink? You can drink more than one cup of eggnog a year. Well, I mean, when do you drink it besides Christmas? Or do you drink it multiple times at Christmas? Multiple times around Christmas. Okay. Yeah. I make a batch. Homemade, of course, if you buy it in the carton. So you make it. Oh, sure. Have you tried George Washington's recipe? No, but that's going to be on the list this year, I can tell you that. I tried George Washington's recipe using storebought, but with this boost, and it is out of sight. We'll get to it soon. But let's talk about eggnog in its origins first. All right. They can trace it back to possibly the 14th century, and of course, it was the medieval Englishman drinking something known as pacett, which didn't have eggs, though it was hot milk cooked with ale wine, often sweetened and spiced, which sounds really nasty. Criminal milk. All right. They were trying to get bombed is what they were trying to do. Pretty much. And then eventually somebody said, hey, let's see what happens when we add eggs, some raw eggs that could make you sick. Yeah, they did. Eventually, the wine came to be replaced by sherry and madera. And as this drink that eventually became eggnog became more complex, it became more expensive, and over in Europe, basically, you had to be rich to have a decent glass of eggnog, right? Yeah. It became the stuff of I don't know. Would you say aristocrats, or is it a little too high? Fluting? No, I would say that. Okay. We should say we want to thank our friends over at Mental Floss for providing us with this material. Yeah. Here's our glass of eggnog. Right to you guys. Boy, I wish I was drinking it right now, actually. So the first eggnog in the US. Apparently was drank by Captain John Smith and his settlement. Yeah. 16 or seven. Sure. What are you going to do? Kick back in Jamestown, have a little agnog? Yeah. And because of the US. We had plenty of eggs and plenty of booze, so it wasn't like in England, and it became pretty popular here. Yeah, and it's still in England. Its popularity went down the tubes. And even still, like some people drink eggnog there, but not very often. It's very much an American thing, even though we totally cribbed it from Europe. Yeah. Well, good for us. And they actually think that the word eggnog. One of the origin stories for the word was that it's a contraction of egg and grog, which is what Americans used to ask the bartenders for at the end of the 18th century. Right. Or it came from the word noggin, which was the little small wooden mug that they served it in. And yet another says Norfolk slang nag refers to the strong ales that were served in those cups. So somewhere in there lies the word origin. Which one do you like? I like the American contraction. Egg. Yeah, eggnog. All right. Regardless of where the name came from, the first use of eggnog to describe this drink came about 1800. And there's a guy named Isaac Well Jr. Who described eggnog as consisting of new milk, eggs, rum and sugar beat up together. Pretty simple. Yeah, he had to put new milk in there, I guess, cause the old version was curled milk or buttermilk. Yeah. Can you imagine buttermilk eggnog? I've never even had buttermilk except in when you were bad things. Bad. And when it makes me drink buttermilk, I've only had it in, like, recipes that I've used for cooking and baking. And I might very well like it to this day. But I've been so grossed out my entire life because my dad drank it. And he would put like a whole thing of cornbread in it and stir it up until it was just a big mushy. Goopy mess. And he would eat it with a spoon. And I just can't even look at it to this day because that gross me out so much as a kid. I don't blame you. Wow. Southern thing. Are you sure? Oh, I'm positive. Okay. Buttermilk with cornbread. Very big. Okay, so George Washington very American. Yeah. What's more American than George Washington? Not much. George Washington's eggnog. Yeah, we have his recipe. He left his recipe, and he must have been south when he wrote the recipe because he forgot to include how many eggs, but he included everything else. And this is the verbatim recipe left by George Washington found in the Mount Vernon records. Okay? Yes. May I, please? One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoon sugar, one pint brandy, pint, one half pint rye whiskey, one half pint Jamaica rum, one quarter pint sherry. So that's two and a quarter pints of liquor we should point out, right. Which makes okay. That's a lot of liquor, that's a lot of biz. I want to point out here that you can do an easy conversion here. If you take the cream in the milk, that's 64oz. You take the two and a quarter pints, that's 36oz. Okay. And you can do some easy conversions. So basically, if you want to buy your eggnog, this is my tip here. This isn't in the recipe. If you want to buy commercially made eggnog, you use 4oz of that to 1oz brandy, one half ounce rye, one half ounce rum, and a quarter ounce sherry, and you will be pretty close to Washington's little concoction. All right, back to the recipe. Yes. Mix liquor first then separate yolks and whites of eggs. Add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream. Slowly beating beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. These days, that would be a refrigerator. Taste frequently, which means go get a buzz every day making sure your egg dog is all right. Yeah, and apparently Georgie boy loved the stuff. Oh, he did? He loved his liquor. Oh, yeah, that's why his teeth are all rotten. Actually, that's not true. It might have contributed. So if you get eggnog in the stores these days, you're probably not going to have a lot of egg in it. FDA regulations say that only require about 1% of the final weight be made from solid egg yolks, and then eggnog flavored milk is really just milk. It's got maybe zero 5% egg yolk. So I say make it yourself. It's fine. If you do make it yourself, though, you want to use pasteurized eggs? Because you should. If you use fresh eggs, you could come down with salmonella. A lot of people say, well, wait a minute, I'm putting two and a half pints of booze in this concoction. Of course it's going to kill all the salmonella. FDA says not necessarily. Don't risk it. Just use pasteurized eggs. I don't use pasteurized eggs. I should, though. Yeah, you should. Do you boil your water when you nettipot yet? No, I live by the seed in my pants. Well, then don't even bother using pasteurized eggs then. I don't. I'm not the one that's always sick. All right. Is that it an eggnog? Unless you want to tell the story of Judge Garnet of Matthews County. Should be sure. All right, 1900, Good Housekeeping ran a story about the tradition in Virginia and it had this anecdote so religiously is the custom of eggnog drinking, observed the judge. Garnett of Matthews County tells a story of rushing in on Christmas morning to warn his father that his house was on fire. The old gentleman first led his son to the breakfast table and ladled out his glass of eggnog, drank one with them, and then went to care for the burning building that is the love of eggnog. Oh, and little whipped cream on top. Look, cool Whip Josh. One of my favorite parts of Christmas, because I don't have a working fireplace, even though I'm working on that, by the way. You see the soot on my hands? Oh, nice. Yeah, I've been cleaning my chimney. Very nice. It's awful work, by the way. I imagine. And I have black lung and I'm sneezing up black boogers. So because of all this, one of my favorite traditions is the eulog on the TV set. Yeah, that's actually dates back to 1966 when a guy named Fred Thrower, who is a programming director, realized that a lot of New Yorkers who subscribed to station WPI XV New York didn't have fireplaces. So he figured out, maybe we should take a video loop of a nice little fire set to Christmas music and broadcast that. Not only does everybody get a fire in their house, but we all get the day off except for the one engineer who has to make sure that this is going right. Yeah. And I didn't see this in there, but I bet a bunch of people in programming thought, this is not going to work. This is a really stupid idea. Yeah. And it became a pretty big tradition. So Fred Thrower came out on top, right? That's right. In 2004, they started broadcasting it in high definition cable. Picked it up pretty shortly after cable came around. And then now you can find it on YouTube. Yeah, I watch it on my local cable provider. You just search through during Christmas time, and you'll log right there. Do you prefer Christmas music or crackling fire sound? I do my own Christmas music, so therefore I prefer the crackling fire sound. Very nice. Yes. You I like the crackling fire myself. Yeah. So do they do that? They don't give you both? Not in Fred's throwers neighborhood. It's such a Christmas music. But if you go, like, onto YouTube, you can find one, two, three hour increments of just crackling fire. Nice. Hey, Chuck. Hi, Josh. Have you ever heard of a guy named the Grinch? Yes. A dude. You've seen The Grinch? He stole Christmas many, many times. Right? How the Grinch stole Christmas. Yeah. Yes, it is. How the Grinch stole Christmas. I've seen that many times. I've seen the movie. I love the Grinch. Yeah, the Jim Carrey movie pretty good. Not bad at all. Really got into the who's. Blew your mind at the end that it all took place on like a Molecule and a snowflake. Yeah. I was surprised by that. Spoiler, is it? Well, sure, but he hasn't seen that. I don't know. Yeah. Hopefully no one's listening to this, but we've got the origin story, thanks to our buddies at MPR, right. About how the Grinch stole Christmas and how Ted Geisel, A-K-A Doctor Seuss, created this thing. Yeah. Apparently Geisel was a little more like the Grinch than your average who in Whoville in the 1920s. He was an illustrator, and the very first idea of Grinch came about when he was drawing illustrations of basically what looked like a boogeyman combined with Santa. And it was sort of the first little inkling that a malevolent Santa was around and spoiling things for people. So he was apparently a bit of a kirmudge. I think one of his daughters said that he was Grinch on his bad days, and Cat and the Hat on his good days. I could see all those based on himself. Sure. With The Grinch, he published that in 1957 at age 53, and it was pretty much an instant success. Yeah. He was literally inspired. Apparently, one day he looked in the mirror. He was doing a self portrait, like Rockwell style, where you look in the mirror and he said he looked in the mirror and saw the Grinch looking back. So it was very much based on his perception of himself, at least. Sure. Yeah. So the book takes off and then in CBS says, hey, man, let's make a version of this, a TV movie version. And this is how The Grinch became green, actually, thanks to a guy named Chuck Jones who made a name for himself creating characters like The Road Runner, Wiley Coyote, Bugs Bunny, just to name a few. His granddaughter listens oh, is that right? Yes. She wrote in a couple of weeks ago about I can't remember what it was about, but she said, by the way, I'm Chuck Jones'granddaughter. Oh, that's cool. And I wrote her back, you're messing with me. And she's like, oh, no, I'm not. I get that all the time. I'm the real deal. Well, it's a good thing that Chuck Jones came on board because he ended up being to Dr. Seuss with Stanley Kubrick, was to Stephen King in The Shining. He took a very classic, awesome idea and put the modern, possibly better, spin on it, brought it to life. You could say that's true for people around the world. Yeah. Because it was in black and white in the book. A little pink here and there. But like you said, Chuck Jones made him green and apparently changed the face a little bit to look like himself from the original book, which he said he liked to do. And a lot of his characters was give a little bit of himself. Well, he said that I heard subconsciously he snuck himself in when he looked in the mirror, like Norman Rockwell or Dr. Seuss to kind of get an expression. Right. He would end up inadvertently drawing himself as well. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So the original cut was about twelve minutes long, which was too short. So it was up to Jones and Geiger to fill it out. And one of the main ways they filled it out was through Max, the dog, who Jones felt represented the audience. And Max became a much larger character in the short TV short than he was in the book. Yeah, a lot of stuff hinged on him. He had to keep the sleigh from going over. That's a lot to put on a little dog. It is. Another thing that brought it to life is the soundtrack. It was narrated. And the voice of the Grinch was done by Boris Carlos, of all people. They were like, well, let's see who's the master of horror movies at the time. You come do the voice for this children's cartoon. Well, I saw an interview with Chuck Jones and he said, I'm glad that that ended up happening because he knew what a great voice actor he was. And he said not many people because back then, he did a lot of voices without people knowing it was him because you just couldn't Google it and find out who did that. As they very aptly put it in this NPR story. Boris Karloff nailed the story simultaneous lighthearted and ominous tone. I think that's a pretty fair assessment. I agree. Albert Hague wrote the songs, and then, you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. Yeah. Wrote the music, but guys, Will actually wrote the lyrics. Oh, you did? Yeah. That seems appropriate. Yeah, totally. But you're a mean one. Mr. Grinch, of course, was sung by thorough. Ravenscroft had no idea. And I think, like most people, I believe that it was Boris Carlos. No, it was Tony the tiger. Yeah, he was Tony the Tiger. Reverends Croft. They're great. So Ravenscroft was uncredited in the original film, is that right? Yeah. So was June foray who did Cindy Luhoo? And apparently Chuck Jones and Geyser were both, like, pretty upset about this. And every interview they ever did made sure they pointed out, like, it's not Carlos singing. He couldn't even sing. And June 4 A was Cindy Lou who? And so they tried to get it in as many articles as possible. That's nice. Yes. Good for them. Everybody loves the Grinch, except for two brothers, David and Bob Grinch, who lived in Ridgefield, New Jersey, and wrote a letter to Theodore guys all and said, hey, can you change the name of the Grinch? Because that's our last name and everybody's teasing us. And Dr. Suze wrote back, and I hope that they still have this letter because it read, I disagree with your friends who harass you. Can't they understand that the Grinch in my story is the hero of Christmas? Sure, he starts out as a villain, but it's not how you start out that counts, it's what you are at the finish. And he sealed it with a kiss. So I've got the lyrics here for the classic song, and the Grinch is compared to many things in the song. Charming as an eel cuddly as a cactus a bad banana with a greasy black peel an empty hole brain full of spiders garlic in your soul a sea sick crocodile a heart full of unwashed socks that's my favorite one. Or a dead tomato squash with multipurpose spots it's pretty good. Crooked jerky jockey and he drives a crooked horse you're a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce I'm very surprised I didn't understand that Dr. Seuss wrote the lyrics of the song. Yeah, it's different when you read it. When it's sung, it just sort of goes along. You read it, it's like, man, this is the work of a madman. So you got anything else? No. It ran on CBS for 22 years, and then TBS acquired it. And now you can find it all over the place, thanks to TBS. Thank you, Mr. Grinch. All right, Josh. I see dangling the mistletoe above my head. Yeah. You know what that means? Come over here. Give me a big smacker. There's a procedure to all this. When people kiss under the mistletoe, the kiss initiator takes a berry from the mistletoe. I never knew that. And eventually, once all the berries are used up, the mistletoe is used up. There's no longer good luck for kissing under it. That's right. And it's supposed to be good luck for married couples. Means their marriage will be successful and long bad luck if you don't, and you're a married couple, and if you're a single woman who fails to get kissed, you will not get married for another year. A year? Don't even bother. And this is a very ancient tradition. They think that it dates back to the Vikings thinking that this is a fertility plant. It possibly derives from enemies who would meet under the mistletoe. If they happen to be under a missile toe, they would put their arms down and embrace and go on a ceasefire for the day until they took up arms again the following day. Yeah, exactly like our little story last year. Remember that? Yeah, the Christmas trees. Actually, they partied well into the new year. Yeah, they did. I wonder if there was mistletoe. It would seem appropriate. So what else? It's a source of luck. It is a sexual symbol of virility. And what else do you need? Oh, apparently, maidens would place it under their pillow at night, like a Tooth Fairy style. But I don't see what they would get in return. They would get the dream of their Prince Charming. And also, if you were a maiden, you could burn some mistletoe and find out how your marriage is going to go. If it burned very steady and long, you're going to have a nice, long, happy life with marriage. And if the flames flickered, you might want to work a little extra hard. That's right. And that is missile towed. Chuck. You've heard of Santa Claus? Censor Claus, Krampus, all those guys, right? Yeah. St. Nicholas is the Dutch version of Santa Claus, and he's not as nice as our American version. In fact, he had a little helper, an elf named Black Pete. And Black Pete's job was to accompany I know, St. Nicholas on his rounds and to keep up with the naughty boys and girls. And when they encountered one of the boys or girls who's naughty, black Pete would whip them. That's the Dutch Santa Claus. Yeah. I love it. Well, you found a great story for us about elves that I think we should read word for word, because it's just beyond adorable. Yeah, this is classic. You've heard this before, right? I have, but it's been a very long time. Yeah, I was the same way, and there's been different versions, but this is called The Elves in the Shoemaker from the Brothers Grimm, and it is our annual Christmas reading. Last year. We did Night Before Christmas. Yeah. This year it's the elves in the shoemaker. So, without further ado, a shoemaker, by no fault of his own had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning. And as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep. In the morning, after he had said his prayers and was just going to sit down to work, the two shoes stood quite finished on his table. He was astounded and he knew not what to say to it. He took the shoes in his hands to observe them closer and they were so neatly made that there was not one bad stitch in them, just as if they were intended as a masterpiece. Soon after, a buyer came in, and as the shoes pleased him so well, he paid more for them than was customary. And with the money, the shoemaker was able to purchase leather for two pair of shoes. He kept them out at night, and next morning was about to set work with fresh courage. But he had no need to do so, for when he got up, they were already made, and buyers also were not wanting who gave him money enough to buy leather for four pair of shoes. The following morning, too, he found the four pairs made, and so it went on constantly. What he cut out in the evening was finished by the morning, so that he soon had his honest independence again and at last became a wealthy man. Now, Paul, that one evening, not long before Christmas, when the man had been cutting out, he said to his wife before going to bed what? Thank you. If we were to stay up tonight and see who it is that is lending us this helping hand the woman liked the idea and lighted a candle. And then they hid themselves in a corner of the room behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker's table, took all the work which was cut out before them, and began to stitch and sew and hammer so skilfully and so quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker could not turn away his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done and stood finished on the table. And then they ran quickly away. Next morning, the woman said well, I would have said a lot of things, but this is what this lady said the little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so and have nothing on and must be cold. I tell thee what I'll do. I will make them little shirts and coats and vests and trousers and both of them a pair of stockings. And do thou too make them two little pairs of shoes? The man said. I shall be very glad to do it. And one night, when everything was ready they laid their presents all together on the table instead of the cutout work and then concealed themselves to see how the little men would behave. At midnight they came bounding in naked and wanted to get to work at once. But as they did not find any leather cut out but only the pretty little articles of clothing they were at first astonished. And then they showed intense delight. They dressed themselves with the greatest rapidity, putting pretty clothes on and singing now we are boys so fine to see why should we longer cobblers be? Then they danced and skipped and leaped over chairs and benches. At last they danced out of doors. From that time forth they came no more. But as long as the shoemaker lived, all went well with him and all his undertakings prospered. The Elves and The Shoemaker by the Brothers Grim so I guess the moral here is if you are ever helped by any unclothed elves, close them. That's what I got from this one. That's what I got, too. So I've got no listener mail. I say we should just give our annual glad tidings to you. I agree. I agree. Glad tidings to you all. Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanza. Have a tiptop tet. However you celebrate this time of year and even if you choose not to, I just hope you're feeling great. Yeah. Real quick, Chuck. Sure. I wanted to say a very special merry Christmas to my lovely wife. Yummy. It's very nice. And to your wife as well, Chuck. Hey, thanks to all of our families. Merry Christmas. Yes. To all of our listeners, thank you for a very wonderful year with you guys. And we look forward to another, another wonderful year with you as well. Yes. Jerry, do you echo the sentiment? Absolutely. Merry Christmas, everybody. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1222783571787hsw-sysk-entomophagy.mp3 | How Entomophagy Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-entomophagy-works | Entomophagy -- the practice of eating insects -- is common outside of Europe and North America. Despite cultural taboos, you've probably eaten insects without knowing it. Check out our HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about entomophagy. | Entomophagy -- the practice of eating insects -- is common outside of Europe and North America. Despite cultural taboos, you've probably eaten insects without knowing it. Check out our HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about entomophagy. | Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=281, tm_isdst=0) | 12679282 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Guess who's with me? Michael Douglas. No. Chuck Bryant. Even better than Michael Douglas. Less intense, a little more laid back. Yeah. How are you doing, Chuck? I'm doing well. We're a pair of writers here@housethworks.com. We got some stuff to share with you. Have you heard of intimacy? I have. And try every part of the world except Europe, Canada, and the United States, basically. That's so weird to me that we see things so differently. Right. I wouldn't need a bug. I wouldn't. I've actually considered it. I've read your article, and I was thinking this would be an awesome, cool dinner party to have, like, have some normal food, but also have, like, fried cricket, something like that. And the more I thought about it, more I was like, there's no way I'm ever going to do this. Yeah, you know, I almost ordered some for the article just because I could, basically. And I didn't. It's a hell of a story truck. Great one. So let's get into this, shall we? Let's talk about this. You said Europe, America and Canada. The only places so in Mexico. I didn't notice anyone eating bugs in Mexico. It's big there. Oh, yeah. Okay, sure. So I imagine that there are regional differences based on the is anyone importing bugs, I guess? Or do people just generally eat locally? You eat locally, and it's one reason people eat bugs. And actually, we should call them insects, I guess, all over the world, is because they're everywhere. They're cheap, they're nutritious, and they prepare them to where they enjoy the taste. Well, I know, yeah, bugs are I'm sorry. Insects are definitely plentiful, but I would imagine it would take a lot to fill up. Like, I can eat, like, a side of beef in a sitting. How many caterpillars would it take to fill a man like me? I've been described as beefy, by the way, for Factor Fiction listeners. Right. I don't know how many caterpillars it would take to fill. I imagine it's more than ten. I would imagine that would be my guess. But as you said, they are plentiful. They are. Well, before we get into the whole modern entomphage is that how you pronounce it? We should talk a little bit about the history, because they did this all throughout the Bible. The Greeks and Romans, eight beetle larvae and locusts, and even Aristotle eight cicadas. So what I noticed that I found strange was that in the Bible, there is some food that's off limits. Plenty of bugs are perfectly fine to eat. Locust especially. I saw it recurring over and over again when I read the Bible last night, and there was some that was off limits, like rabbit pelicans. Interestingly. Yeah. Okay. Rabbits, you said. Pigs, mice, weasels. Yeah, I probably wouldn't eat a weasel. I need a turtle. Turtle soup is not bad. We should say this is all Old Testament stuff, which I know people that subscribe to the Bible and it's teachings would tell you that the Old Testament isn't really where it's at. It depends. If you're of the Judaic persuasion, I imagine that you put a lot of stock in the Old Testament. That's a good point. Also called the Torah, right? Sure. But you can't eat those things, according to the Old Testament in Leviticus. But you can't eat locust and grasshoppers and beetles. It's recommended. And I know John the Baptist famously lived for months on locust and honeycomb. Famously, sure. Yeah. So people have been doing this a long time. Aborigines in Australia have been doing it for a long time and continue to they eat grubs and apparently grubs taste like roasted almonds. I used to build ponds many lifetimes ago and there was this kind of ongoing challenge. Yes, there's this ongoing challenge. Anybody who ate a grub while we were digging became like the on site tough guy. Right. Never saw anybody actually eat it. Oh, no. Never. I saw one guy pretend to you, but that was it. Yeah. These days people eat bugs. Like I said, they're plentiful. And by plentiful, I mean more than 1400 edible species of insect. That's just the edible kind and that's just species. It's not like there's 1400 insects walking around we can eat. I mean, how many millions or billions or trillions of insects are there right now on planet Earth that we could just pick up and eat a lot? Beetles, for instance. There's close to 350 tons of beetle alone that you can eat. And ants, bees, wasps, butterflies, moss. Wait. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Chuck. You said wasps? Yeah. People eat wasps dead, I imagine. Yeah. They generally with most of the winged creatures, we'll take off the wings and the legs and prepare them either on a skewer, like a roasted wasp or sometimes they're boiled and put in soup, that kind of thing. But the venom doesn't affect you once it's dead. Or does it add spice or what's the deal? You know, that's a good question. I didn't get to that. If you're just asking for my opinion, I would say maybe if you eat it, it's not bad for you. But if it's injected in your bloodstream through a stinger, it's probably a different kind of thing. There's plenty of people out there for us to ask. I noticed also that there's about 3000 ethnic groups around the planet that consume bugs. They do. And I think it's telling and interesting that you kind of delineated it like that. These are ethnic groups that eat this. It's a cultural thing. We could eat anything at any given point in time. Unless we consider it disgusting. Which we do to an extent. Right. Because as you said, not crustaceans. But I'm sorry, lobster, crabs, arthropods. Yes. Lobsters and crabs are just a cousin of the spider, basically. And you pay a lot of money for a lobster restaurant. Oh, yeah. And lobsters eat nasty stuff. They're kind of bottom dwellers. And they eat a lot worse things than spiders do. Like license plates. Yeah. Well, the jaws did. I don't know if a lobster eats license plates. Oh, hey, I can tell you I've seen a couple of lobsters that could have eaten the license plate. So, yeah, it's basically in the eye of the beholder. It's a cultural taboo in Europe and Canada. In the United States, not so in the rest of the world. They eat in South America, dude. They eat tarantulas and scorpions. Scorpions. I've heard of eating tarantulas. I had never heard of that before. I got the impression that it's prepared in such a way that the hair remains on the ingested part of the tarantula. It is. There's actually a good quote because I wasn't brave enough to find a tarantula or eat one because spiders get the crude out of me. But Peter Menzel, he's the author of a book called Man Eating Bugs, and he has a great description about eating a tarantula. If day old chickens had no bones, hair instead of feathers and were the size of a newborn sparrow, they might taste like tarantulas. Yeah, so he really kind of lost me at the old chicken. The old chicken doesn't sound that bad. It was the hair part that got me. That's just disconcerting I find. Yes. I think Americans aren't used to eating anything that's hairy. No. Have you ever eaten pig skin? I've eaten the pork rinds. Does that count? Have you ever found, like, a hair? Like an errant hair? No, it's troubling. But you know what, Josh? It's funny you should mention errant here, because there's a little book that you may not know about by the Food and Drug Administration. You know which one I'm talking about? I don't remember the title, but I know what you're talking about. The title really says it all. It's called the food defect action levels. Levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans. It's quite a mouthful, as it were. So basically what this is, it's a big handbook that the FDA puts out that lists an acceptable amount of things like errant hairs, maggots, larvae that are in things that you eat that are acceptable to sell in stores because it won't harm you. Acceptable by federal mandate, not necessarily acceptable on a personal level, I found, by the fact that it won't physically harm you. Right. So I've got a few if you want. I am all here. If I gag, though, please forgive me. Frozen broccoli. There can be 60 or more aphids and or mites per 100 grams. Broccoli in and of itself is bad enough. You throw some aphids in there, it may actually make it okay. I love broccoli. Your ground cinnamon may have 400 or more insect fragments per 50 grams. Which fragments? That's anything that's like the hot dog of spices, apparently. Right. Your macaroni or noodle product can have an average of 225 insect fragments or more. Okay. And 4.5 rodent hairs per 225 grams. And I know that's not insect, but I just throw that in there. Broden hair is pretty bad. And actually, folks, you can thank Upton Sinclair for it being just that small. I think had it not been for the jungle right. We would be eating whole canned rodents in our canned tomatoes and things like that. Well, I've got two more. I know this is probably turning off some of our listeners, but these two are I think most of our listeners clicked on another podcast long ago because they want to hear these two. Trust me. You know the nice black and white whole peppercorn that you crunch onto your filet mignon? An average of 1 MG or more of mammalian excretia per pound. And by mammalian, you mean any mammal? Mammal, poop. Does that include humans or mammals? I mean, it's like Joe down at the packing plant maybe causing a little surprise at the FDA standard at the pepper packing plant. Maybe so. And the final one, popcorn you enjoy at your movie theater, that popcorn, by law, can have one or more rodent excretia pellet per sub sample. And they didn't say the size of the sub sample. Wow. Well, thank you very much, Chuck. I appreciate you sharing that with us. I know our listeners do as well. Sure thing. That was great. Do you have any more gross out stuff to add? Not gross out, but I think we should just finish up by talking a little bit about the benefits of eating insects. Yeah. Also, I think that's a great way to close out. I also want to point out that there is a huge difference between eating rodent excretia and eating bugs as far as cultures around the world go. Right. We're not trying to equate the two. No, of course not. So go ahead, Chuck, because from what I understand, there really are some great health benefits to eating bugs. They're really good for you. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, 100 grams of crickets will give you only 121 calories. That's it. 49 of which come from fat, and you'll get 13 grams of protein and 75 milligrams of iron and 5 grams of carbohydrates. Yeah. What's the one powerhouse insect if you're really looking to lose some weight but retain muscle mass, that kind of thing, what insect do you go for at one word? Caterpillar. Yeah. Yes. Of caterpillar. You can get 28 grams of protein for 100 grams of caterpillar, as well as iron, vitamin B one and B three. Yeah. And actually, I looked up salmon, and that's on par with salmon, actually. Right. Which is great for your heart. Oh, it's great food. One of the all star. So if you can't afford salmon, go out into your backyard and find some caterpillars. But there are some precautions you should take first if you're going to raise your own insects to eat or capture your own insects to eat. Right? Yeah. I mean, if you live in the United States, you probably shouldn't go out to your backyard and get anything, because chances are they might have insecticide on them or something. But if you did want to collect some, you could capture them and feed them fresh grass for a few days, and then it cleans out their system in no time. And if you're in a survival situation, obviously you'd want to eat some. Whatever. Well, not whatever, buddy. Okay, here's where the warning start your wisdom. There's a rule of thumb. It's really easy to remember. Red, orange, yellow, forget the fellow. Black, green, brown, wolf it down. Black, green, brown. Yeah. Basically, anything is brightly colored or really pungent you want to stay away from, because that's kind of the warning signal to the world that I'm poisonous and I can hurt you. Right. So stick to worms. Earth tones, grubs earth tones. Sure. Okay, cool. And we recommend, before you go eat any bugs, read How Intimacy Works on Howstep Works.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseoffworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
What's the deal with headstones? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-headstones | Headstones have quite an interesting history. From the beginnings of marking graves with simple wood carvings to the elaborate tombstones that would come in the Victorian era, Chuck and Josh break down the deal with all things headstone in this episode. | Headstones have quite an interesting history. From the beginnings of marking graves with simple wood carvings to the elaborate tombstones that would come in the Victorian era, Chuck and Josh break down the deal with all things headstone in this episode. | Tue, 26 Aug 2014 14:42:33 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=14, tm_min=42, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=238, tm_isdst=0) | 45736939 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Suns out. Jerry's over there. It's the end of the July. Is the sun out? What can you tell in this tomb? I can see I have a window I can look out behind you, over your shoulder. I can't imagine you're not depressed. Oh, just staring at foam. Yeah. When I look behind me, it's like, jeez, but you're the light. Thanks. That just makes everything okay. That's so nice of you. You're making me blessed. I know. So how are you doing? Oh, I'm sleepy. Okay, well, let's get this over with so I can take a nap. I guess so. We have those, like, Japanese style nap rooms here. We're very forward thinking. That would be wonderful, how stuff works. Yes. I don't think I'd be able to do that at work. Take a nap? No. No way. No, I don't think I would be able to either. But I would think it'd be wonderful just because it would show how progressive, how stuff works. We should have nap cubbies that are like lexi so you can just watch people nap. How uncomfortable would that be? Yeah, that would be very uncomfortable. There's probably one or two weirdos here that would love to do that. Yeah. Jonathan Strickland sucks his thumb. Not a surprise. Yeah. We cobbled together this one, which is unusual. Yeah. Where did you get some of the information? One was the International Southern Cemetery Gravestones Association and the other was the US. Department of Veterans Affairs. Booya. Definitive sources. They know all about headstones and grave markers and tombstones by any name. Yeah, I think the professionals who make headstones or grave markers or tombstones call them funeral markers or grave markers. That's the lingo, the jargon of the industry. Yes. And this pairs nicely with our coffins podcast. Dude, it pairs nicely with a bunch of them. This is part of the Dying suite. Yeah. We'll never end until we die. Here lies Josh and Chuck, the death suite. So, Chuck, do you want to talk a little bit about the history of this stuff? Yeah, I've got a little bit of history. I don't know if you have or not about how long humans have been burying the dead. Let's hear it. It's pretty old. Yeah. As a matter of fact, there's evidence of weird funeral rights, kind of, or at least an assemblage of people acting differently or an assemblage of primates acting differently around a recently deceased member of their group in Bonabo apes. So they'd, like, poke it and think it's not moving? I don't think they were poking it, but the way that they were interacting with one another, like, those with the highest rank had the most access to the body. Right. They were kind of guarding it from being disturbed. So, like, early signs of respect. Yeah. Interesting. And apparently neanderthals as well. Used to as far back as 250,000 years ago. There's evidence that parts of the dead Neanderthals were put away from the rest of the group in what you could consider, like, a resting place, like a cave or something like that. I wonder if that started because of just obvious things like smell and riding bodies, or if it was just or maybe both. Well, I mean, we're hardwired for disgust to experience disgust and disgust warrants. It's like, don't eat that poop. Right. Unless it's a fecal transplant. Don't eat that vomit under any circumstances. There's a lot of stuff that you shouldn't do. Don't eat that dead body. It's turned yeah, it's not a nice, fresh dead body. So I would guess that funeral rights grew out of our sense of disgust, like you're saying, yeah. That's just kind of ambiguous stuff, though. The Neanderthals, like, they deflashed bones and then placed the bones in separate places. Some people are like, well, it's evidence of cannibalism. Other people are saying, that's a funerary practice. Right. The unambiguous evidence of burials comes, I think, about 80,000 years ago. Between 40,080 thousand years ago in Egypt, a child was buried next to a cobble pit. What's that? It's where you excavate stone to pave roads or something with got you. Although 40,000 years ago, they weren't making roads. I'm not sure what a cobble pit is. Nothing to do with shoes. It's an excavation pit. Okay. I guess that they were excavating stones to make tools, I would guess, rather than roads. But there was a child buried by anatomically modern humans between 40,080 thousand years ago. Wow. So we've been doing it for a very long time, but this is just burial, right? Well, we're talking about our headstones, and they didn't come along until far after that. Right. Well, let's go back to them further, to Roman and Celtic times. Yes. They had headstones that were kind of it seems like they were pretty advanced for the time. And then there was a period where they weren't so detailed. Yeah, but early on they were super detailed. They would have pictures. They would describe things that happen, these battles that took place. If they died in battle and same as in Scotland, they would describe the profession. Maybe sometimes it was pictorial. Like if someone was a carpenter, they wouldn't say heroes a carpenter. They would just have a hammer, maybe. Right. Like a saw. Yeah, that's a dead giveaway, that it was a carpenter. Scotland was very descriptive. Apparently in their early days of headstones too, they would describe professions. So, like, early on, it seems just like the profession was a big deal. Right. Like, this is what they did here on Earth and in other cultures too, there was this idea that you could erect a memorial to somebody by placing a stone or something, an upright stone, not necessarily at their grave, but there's things called stella that are basically just markers that say, like, this person did this. Right. Or this person fought this battle and won or lost, or this person was great for some reason that makes us want to memorialize it by carving this into a stone and placing it upright. And never said, this person didn't do so much. Not really. That came later in the 20th century. But the idea of stone's period was before gravestones, even. I think the term headstone, from what I gathered, is from the Jewish custom of marking graves with stones. Yeah. And then I think the other cultures did that, too, supposedly to keep the dead from rising. I thought that was pretty cool. But I've also heard, and I think it makes sense, that they didn't want the bodies to be disturbed by packs of wild coyotes. Yeah. So to combat that and if you were lazy and didn't feel like burying or you lived in a place where the dirt was just too hard, you could make something called a carn or carne, yes. C-A-I-R-N. Right. Yeah. I'm not sure how it's pronounced, which is basically like you lay the body on the ground, maybe you dig out a little bit of a shallow pit, and then you place rocks around and on top of it so that even like the hungriest coyote is not going to be able to get through this pile of rubble. Right. And then you may also erect like, a marker at the head of it. Sure. And these, I think at this point, pre 19th century, I don't even think there were cemeteries. It was just you would be buried near your family plot, right near your home with your family. But they weren't all gathered together. A bunch of dead people in one area. Well, the whole family was there. Yeah, but not like a cemetery. And then, depending on where how many people lived in a village, say, eventually that morphed into a churchyard. Yes. The graveyard was moved to the church because the church was so intertwined in people's everyday lives that it just made sense that's where you would go to be buried. The thing is, these were almost purposefully, gloomy places. They were reminders. Yeah. It was a reminder that you're going to die. A memento mori. The churchyard itself was a reminder that you're going to die. And they were not landscaped. They had a fence around them, maybe, and there were the markers, but that was about it. It wasn't meant to be a place of solace or peace or meditation. Yeah. There's one over in my neighborhood. There's a churchyard cemetery. And it feels a little different than just your average cemetery. It looks a little different. And it does seem a little like I don't know. Well, the reason why is because you and I are used to what's called the rural cemetery movement, the RCM. Right. You have a T shirt, but that came out of the 19th century. I think, the early mid 19th century, where this idea of cities built up. Right. And people became further and further removed from nature. And you also had less and less space to just bury somebody in a churchyard. They started moving the dead slightly to the outskirts of the city. Right. And also put some thought into landscaping the area as well. So what you have is what you and I think of as a modern cemetery, very park like. Nice shrubbery paved roads that allow people to go through. Yeah. A nice place for visitors. Yeah. So much so that very early on in the rural cemetery movement, and for a while, families would go picnic there on Sundays. It was like a park. Yeah. But you also plant your dead there, too. It was a little bit of both. And also during this time, it's not very surprising, because during this time, death was so much more fully integrated into the life of the average person that having a picnic there on a Sunday doesn't seem the least bit bizarre. I'm a cop. Yeah. There weren't the hang ups like we have these days, it seems like. Right. Because nowadays it's sterilized and removed. Death is. Yeah. Back to the headstones. The Celts started using once Christianity came to Ireland, they started using the Celtic cross, which was originally, I think it's called the Sun Cross, which is a pagan symbol. Yeah. But then I think St Patrick put the Christian cross over the Sun Cross and we now had our Celtic cross and they started using that became kind of a common, but again, not specific, just sort of like an unmarked grave still with the Celtic cross. No inscription. Right. Yeah. That didn't come until later. But like you said, there was a lot of symbology or symbols attached. And then over time, it evolved to include things like date of birth, date of death, the person's name, and then inscriptions later on. Yeah. And thanks also to the Irish, they were the first ones, I believe, to get a little cheeky with their sense of humor. With dirty limericks. I don't know. But they probably see that. Yeah. But one example that in the article I read said, think of me as you walk by where you now stand. So once did I, which is for the 18th century. That's big time funny. Right, because it rhymes. Yeah, exactly. But again, that's what's called a memento mori. It's like a reminder that you're going to die, so don't get too big for your bridges or don't forget to go live your life. There's all sorts of reasons for that. Yeah. In America and the Colonies, colonial times, it wasn't super fancy, and they started to do things like limestone and marble instead of wood, which would last longer, and sandstone. But then in the 1860s, they moved to igneous rock, which I always want to say Ignatius, because of Saint Ignatius, I always want to say because confederacy of Dunces, I think. Was that the name of one of the characters? Yeah. The main guy. Ignatius Riley. Oh, was it? It's Igneous. What about Saint Ignatius? Who? I don't know. Who was that? If there was ever a name for a saint, it's Ignatius. Saint Ignatius. Well, what was he the saint of it? I don't remember. No, his name always stood out to me like that is a saint's name. The patron saints of podcasting. All right. In the 1860s, they started using the Igneous rock, which is underground cooled rock, and that was much more permanent because other stuff crumbled. Yes. Sandstone. Yeah. Let's talk about weathering, shall we? And in colonial times, too, when they were using these markers and headstones. So symbology has been a part of headstones for a very long time, whether it was the Celtic cross or a saw to indicate a carpenter or whatever. And in the colonies, apparently, they like to remind everybody that only the most pious, select few are going to go to heaven. The rest of you are going to hell. Right. No bones about it, buddy. You are going to hell. Sorry. And I would like to use my headstone to remind you of it, so I'm going to put a skull and crossbones on it. The death head. They carved the death head onto the gravestone to remind others that they were going to hell. That's what the puritans did. Yeah. The Victorians were fancy in all ways, so they had really elaborate headstones and tombs, and they were also big on the really nice park atmosphere. Well, that's what it grew out of, was the Victorian era. Yeah. And you sent a link, too, about what some of the Victorian symbols mean, right? Yeah. They weren't intended to be a reminder that you're going to hell. They were a lot more hopeful. And a lot of these you still see on tombstones today, headstone, like modern ones, and people who are buried today. Like, you'll see a bundle of wheat gathered together, and that's to indicate that somebody lived a nice, long life and they were harvested and they will go on and into the next life. Yeah. A gateway might be nice because that means that's the gateway to Heaven yes. Any kind of arch or gate. Yes. Butterfly is a symbol of resurrection. That's very nice. If you have a broken column, it indicates that you were cut down in the prime of life. Oh, man, that's taken too young. If you have a flower that's broken, have you ever seen that? No. It'll be like a rose or something, and then it's, like, snapped in two. That indicates that you died suddenly. And if it's a bud, if it's not an open flower right. It indicates it was a child. So there's, like, all this code. Yeah. An hourglass is the transience of this life. Or lamp, the light of truth. Class hands where there's, like, somebody holding somebody else's hand. Yes. That means, like, Take care, I'll see you in a few years. Or the saddest, maybe the willow tree. That's just mourning. That's just really sad. It is sad, but none of these are reminders that you're going to go to hell when you die. It's going to be bad. The Victorians were a little more uplift a thing. If anybody had their finger on the pulse of death, it was the Victorians. They just knew what they were doing. Another thing human beings did in the 18th century was mortise. These cages, iron cages, they would put over. But the Victorians were like, no, that's really untoward. Well, get rid of those. Part of the reason why is because there wasn't that need for it anymore. You remember the Cairns or the carnes? Yeah. I'm going to say carnes, and it's probably wrong, but that was to protect from coyotes disturbing the grave. You also said morgulons. Yeah, morglon. And the more safe were to protect the body from being dug up by people who are robbing graves to sell the bodies to anatomists. Yeah. Or I imagine maybe loot the body as well. On your way. Yeah. Like, here's your body disregard where that gold wedding band was on the finger. Right. Remember Mr. Burns has the suit that Charlie Chaplin was buried in, in a shadow box on the wall. That's a good one. And that kind of brings us, I guess, skipping forward, though. But the modern era, the last 100 years has been I mean, the headstone industry is a big deal. People put a lot of thought into what goes on their headstone or their family's headstone and costs a lot of money. And you can be as ornate as you want to, or you can do like, in royal tannin bombs and invent your own fly fake headstone. Yes. Which is pretty good. You want to talk about some of these ones? Yeah. Some of these epitaphs. We have the slideshow on stuff you shouldn't. Dot.com called 21 Remarkable Epitaphs and it is definitely worth checking out. And this one is my favorite, chuck Charles. Bukowski. Yeah. Bukowski. Don't try I love that one. Yeah. And he has a little pugilist, too. Yeah. Well, he was a huge boxing fan. I think he might have been a boxer himself. He died in 1994. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. For some reason, I thought he was, like, in the 80s or something. No, he was still working in the Boy. He didn't look good there at the end. Well, he pretty much drank himself to death. I know, but he looked really bad. I remember seeing a documentary, I think, from the 80s or early 90s. Is it the one where he kicks his wife off of the couch or something? He's, like, being physically abusive in the documentary. I don't think so. He wasn't a nice fellow. No, he really wasn't. No, not at all. You saw Barfley, right? That's one of my all time favorite movies. Yeah, I figured. It's a good one. Who's that one? Mitchells. Oh, it's just a person. Yeah, these are just like noteworthy. Well, this sucks. Isn't that awesome? Yeah, that seems like something I might do, actually. Well, this sucks on your gravestone. Yeah, because this got me thinking of what I would want. I didn't come up with anything, but I think I would just want something sort of like humble. Like he tried his best, but maybe didn't do such a good job all the time. You get it more. Yeah. I wouldn't want to tout anything or trump up any life. Here's a simple dude ride to not be such a jerk. Right? How's that? That's a good one. What about Mel Blanks? Yeah, that's all folks. Yes, that's a good one. Man of 1000 Voices. That's very nice. Some of these are a little schmaltzy and sweet. This one is good. Robert Clay. Allison his tombstone. He died in 1887 at the age of 47. His epitaph says he never killed a man that did not need killing. That's pretty good. That's a gunslinger right there. Did you know that only like four or five times in the history of the United States? Where is there an actual gunfight? In the center of town? No, it sounds like a good don't be dumb. Yes. Make a mental note. Okay. I think it's verified like five times or something. It's very much a movie thing. I mean, there were plenty of people shooting and gunfights, but the whole time come out in the middle of town and draw your guns at the ticket, the clock or whatever. You know what? It was a surprisingly good movie. 03:00 high. Did you ever see that? Richard Tyson and Casey Semesco. Yeah, I saw that when it came out and thought, man, this is kind of a different movie. Yeah. Then years later, it's sort of a cult favorite thing. Yeah, it's a good one. That guy, what was his name in the movie? The Bully. His real name? No, his name in the movie. I don't remember. It was like he had like a scary first name or something and he went on to a sale. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kindergarten Cop. I didn't see Kindergarten Cop. Really? Yeah, you should see it. All right. Do you want to do any more or should we just tell everybody to go check these out? I think we should just here, let's do this one more. Raised four beautiful daughters with only one bathroom and still there was love. That's nice. It is nice. He wants to be morbid, you know? I don't know. I think there's something to be said. Yours is going to be some morbid. Mine'll probably say, Boo, I'm coming to get you. And Chuck, one more thing about Epitaph and gravestones before we move on. There was a thing, remember Y two K? The y two K Bug. Yeah. I wasn't sold on that to begin with. Well, there are a lot of potential problems. Sure. It wasn't just with computer programs. One of them was the grave marker industry. A lot of people buy their headstones ahead of time, and they had 19 and then nothing after the date because they expected to die in the 20th century. Well, a lot of people had to have this filled in and reedched because they lived into the 2000s. There was a big problem, and apparently a lot of long standing gravestone makers around the 60s or seventy s started really trying to persuade their customers to not etch that in. Right. A lot of people didn't listen. Some people did, some people didn't. Why would you get that done ahead of time? I understand picking out your plot and what you wanted to say, but the actual etching, like, who cares? I guess these people really didn't want their families to have to do almost anything. I get that. Like, just put 99 in there. All you have to do all grumpy like, I'm alive. It's 2000. Got to call that guy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, what a thing to have on your to do list. I know. I need to get my epitaph filled in and recarve. Drink Ovalteen, get all right, so we'll move on here after this message break and talk a little bit about military graves and government funded headstones. Okay, so government furnished headstones. And this is from the Veterans Affairs website. And I thought it was pretty interesting they also call them Obama stones. That was off the cup. That was good. Originally, I found it interesting that standard grave markers were even before the national Cemeteries were established in 1862. And prior to the Civil War, they had all these frontier armies and they would just bury you. Don't bury me on the open prairie. Basically, they'll bury you if you died in battle. Not a mass grave as in they would dump everyone in there but a mass grave site initially. Like, they would just bury everyone together and they wouldn't even mark it. Yeah. Or you were just buried in battle, like, where you died if things were really tough. Yeah, if you're lucky. I'm quite sure there are plenty of soldiers who are left on the frontier to basically be picked off by vultures, sky burial, sky burials on the American frontier. Yeah, you're exactly right, I'm sure. But it wasn't until, like, the 19th century that they started even marking these mass grades. It was like, oh, a bunch of soldiers died here. Let's take a pit, fill it in, and just forget about it. Then in the mid 19th century, like the Crimean War, for example, they would raise a monument saying, there's a bunch of guys buried here who fell in this battle. Yeah. And it wasn't until World War One that they started to really try to individually bury men who fell in battle. Yeah. Initially, in the Civil War days, they used a wooden board and it would have a registration number and some sort of inscription, but they didn't keep any kind of records of burials at that point. That came along later as well. But once the Civil War happened, after the Battle of Manassas, they were like, a lot of people are dying here. This is becoming a problem. We need to find a way to respect these soldiers. And so the Quartermaster General from the General's orders in September 1861 was directed to finally start keeping records and provide headboards, headboards in blank forms to all of the commanders around the country. Yeah. So they could just keep track of everything, at least. Right. And this is the first time that anybody ever made a coordinated effort to track burials. Ever, apparently. Yeah. And after the Civil War, they made an effort for the first time to relocate people that were buried in battle and have them relocated to an official grave. Yeah. The wind after the Civil War. Oh, yeah. Because they had a bunch of Confederate dead that the Southern states reclaimed and moved down south to bury so that they wouldn't have to be buried in any Yankee earth, Yankee dirt. And 1865 is when they started thinking, hey, these wooden burial markers are not lasting very long. No. They were expected to last about five years. Yeah. They each cost at the time a dollar 23, which is not cheap now. And so when you suddenly multiply that by the 300,000 expected dead from the Civil War that you had to bury and then maintain their headboards every five years, they suddenly were like, this is going to go well into a million dollars over the next 20 years. Maybe we should come up with something a little more permanent than Popsicle sticks. Yeah. It was the economics of it, and the public sentiment started growing, too. Maybe we should memorialize these soldiers in a more permanent way. Yeah. Because a little wood thing that's rotting after a few years is really kind of a disrespectful thing. And apparently there was a huge and vigorous debate over what we should use as a headstone. Should we use something like marble or should we use something like galvanized iron coated in zinc? Which I wasn't even familiar. That was the thing until today. Yeah. I've never heard of it either. And I guess over the course of, like, seven years, there was a lot of debate and angry words flying, and I'm sure the marble industry was like, yeah, marble. The galvanized iron industry was like, you better get in there and get this passed. And then finally the marble people won. Yeah. And then 1873, Secretary of War William W. Belmap said, you know what? We're going to design these stones. They're going to be in national cemeteries, they're going to be permanent, but they're only going to be for the known dead at this point, right. The unknown came about later as well. And not only that, this is just for Union soldiers. Yeah. That we're not providing for the Confederate soldiers. That was a bit of a slap in the face. I believe they reversed that position later on. Yeah, they did. And then anybody who'd ever fallen in battle in the United States got a marker and they made different markers for the unknown dead. They were basically just blocks of stone. And then it had the grave, the burial plot carved into the top of it. And then eventually they said, we're going to make all of them the same. Everybody gets the same marker. Yeah. And they made it retroactive, too, and started including past wars, revolutionary War of 1812, mexican War and Indian campaigns, and then eventually the Spanish American War. So a lot of thought went into it. I thought it was I just kind of never really think about that kind of thing. You just see, like, Arlington, and you don't think about all the behind the scenes work and decisions that need to be made on exactly how to do that. Yeah. And they even did a study in 19 Two to find out how the 1879 markers were holding up. And they said, we need to change this a little bit. So if anyone ever asks you what the official military headstone in the US dimensions are, this would be the most arcane piece of trivia anyone would ever ask. It's pretty arcane, but you could probably impress some weird uncle or your grandpa or something like that with this one. The height of the stone is 39 inches tall, twelve inches wide, and the thickness is four inches. And apparently the height extends twelve inches above the ground. So you have 27 inches buried below the ground. Yeah. You ever been to Arlington? It's pretty neat. It is really something. You go to Oakland Cemetery. Here in Atlanta. Yes. Been there too? Yeah, it's pretty nice. It is really something. Yeah. And Oakland even has and I've always felt I don't think I have death hang ups, but they have like concerts there and stuff like that. Yeah. And I think they show movies there. Yeah, I think so. Like on the outside. Yes. There's some really neat mausoleum there's like a miniature Statue of Liberty. There's some really ornate, beautiful mausoleums. Bobby Jones, the famous golfer, is buried there. And there's a pudding green on his grave site. I've never seen that one. Yeah, there's usually golf balls there. I think if you bring your own putter, you can just sit there and put on his grave. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I just recently saw Washington and Mrs. Washington's grave up there in DC. Which was cool, but they were moved as well. That one's really kind of when you go there to Mount Vernon, you see them buried. Oh, yeah, we saw that recently, too. Yeah. They removed from their original one, but the. Original tomb is still there. Right. And they made a nicer one. And then there's the slave burial ground, which is just a really kind of a sad place to visit because they've done something now, but I don't know, it's just sort of a reminder of what went on. Which, speaking of that, Washington is lauded for freeing his slaves, but it was after he freed them, after he died, and then in his will, it was after Martha Washington was to die. Then they would be officially freed, and that's great. Whatever. He still held slaves until he died, at least. Sure. Martha Washington did something remarkable, though. She gave the slaves that she inherited from her husband their freedom within a year of his death. She didn't wait until she died. She was like, you guys be free. And I mean in Washington's favor, for sure. He also provided substantial amounts of money for them to just start a new free life. It wasn't just like, you're free. Good luck. You guys are free. Like, here's a new life for you. Right. Did you go recently? Yeah. Pretty neat. It is like a really well done, I guess, living museum. Yeah, I went last year with just my sister and then went again. Actually, you and I probably went within the last few weeks of each other. It's funny. Yeah, because I went with my niece and Emily and highly recommend going to Mount Vernon and Monticello, too. I still haven't been there. It's amazing. Yes. Both of them are just really great spots to go check out. Yes, it's pretty cool. I mean, you can stand there and look at the bed where he died. Yes. You're like 5ft from it. Yeah. I tried to get in and lay down, and they got snow, got smacked on the wrist. All right, after this break, we're going to talk a little bit about unmarked grades. Chuck? Yeah. I am interested in learning the definition of an arm mark grave, as per, say, someone named Jolene. Well, it means it's a grave that's not marked, right? Pretty much. It's almost exactly what you think it is if somebody is buried in a grave. And this is according from this article from How Stuff Works, according to Jolene Mason, who's the general manager of Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, which is where a lot of celebrities are buried in Los Angeles, it's really one of the most useless quotes I've ever seen. She says, quote, if there's no marker headstone or nameplate and there's someone in the grave, it qualifies as unmarked, end quote. She was probably, like, duh in her head. She hung up to shaking her head. There's a lot of reasons why you might want your grave unmarked. Man, that was so caddy of us just then to make fun of that lady. Well, to make fun of the quote, the whole thing. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, everyone. I didn't think it was that caddy I was moved to say something. All right, like I said, there's a lot of reasons you might want or not want. There's a lot of reasons you might have an unmarked grave. Historically, you might have an unmarked grave if you were a really bad person like himler. Oh, his grave isn't marked. That makes sense. Yeah, he's a pretty bad person. He's a bad person. Good example of a bad person. Hey, thanks. You're welcome. Executed criminals a lot of times have unmarked graves. A lot of times, the show, like, contempt for what they did on earth. But a lot of times, too, it's also so it doesn't draw people there to go do bad things to face the grave in any way. Sure. Family victims or whatever. It's also families. If you die of popper, you will be buried in what's called the potters field. And Oakland cemetery has a potters field. There's, like, one next to the theater, to the drive in theater. Is there a potter's field there? Yeah. I didn't know that. Right next to it. But basically it's just a plot of unmarked graves. Yes. And the state still does that. Yeah, the one next to starlight driving is, like a lot of bad stuff goes on over there, apparently. It's like prostitution and drugs. What else could you do? You could scatter the remains of a bad person and not even have a grave at all. And that's what some of the Nazi war criminals that was their fate, like, Ikemen and Goring were just scattered so no one would know where they were. You know, it wasn't around then, but today it would seem like if you came up against the Nazis again, the best way to dispose of their body would be something we mentioned in our episode or different ways to dispose of a body. And remember the auto license, one where you turn into a viscous goo that can be poured down the drain? That's what you should do with Nazis these days, put it in the toilet and flush it. Yes. Pretty good. Heads up. Nazis. Yeah. But in some cities, don't they treat wastewater for eventual drinking water? The process of autolysis renders it sterile, so you can just pour it down the drain. But would you want to drink it? That was mine. I can't imagine the molecules that we drink, the things that we drink, what they used to be, that still make it into our body on a molecular level. I'm sure it would be revolting to know. Sure. As a matter of fact, if anybody out there does know, if you work in wastewater treatment or something, share some stories. Yeah, that'd be a good podcast. I don't know if I want to know. Do you remember the story of that poor girl in Los Angeles who went missing? She was on a trip there by herself for a few days. She's from Canada in the last couple of years. Oh, the one in the tank? Yeah, they found her in the drinking and the hotel water tank on the roof after, I think, a week or two. Yes. Because people said the water tasted funny. Yeah. And looked funny. Yeah. She was the one that did the strange stuff with the elevator, right? Yes. She was mentally ill. That was really sad. Was it mental illness or was she on drugs? I don't believe she had a history of mental illness. Did she? Yes, she did. Oh, she did? Yeah. It is sad. I mean, it's sad either way. Yeah. But at first it's like, oh, my gosh, it's the creepiest thing I've ever seen. Because her behavior was so weird. Yeah. If you look online, there's a lot of 16 year olds that are, like, proof that she was possessed by a demon, and they actually mean it. They mean it. Come on, 16 year olds, get your act together. All right. And now to close, we're going to go over some famous people with unmarked graves. Because sometimes if you're famous, your family might want an unmarked grave so your grave site doesn't become a tourist stop. It's one reason, I guess, because you ever been to, like, Parade Lache? No, I haven't. But I've seen pictures. Yeah. I went, of course, because I was just out of college, way into The Doors. And you didn't go to Louvre? No, I went and looked at it. You don't like The Doors anymore, though, do you have this combo? It was a passing fancy, but I don't like dislike The Doors, but I was, like, really into them for a while. Yeah. And then now I'm kind of like tim Morrison was not much of a poet. I bought his poetry books back then, and I was all into The Lizard King. I think it's something that happens when you're 20. Sure, yeah. That's good music. I still like them. I was into Pink Floyd for a while, too, but I don't listen to them much anymore. They have a new album coming out, from what I understand. Yes, I did hear that old material that they've it's going to be awesome. Yeah. I still love Pink Floyd, but not like I did when I was 14. Yeah. All right, Mozart. He's in an unmarked tomb because even though we see him as a big shot, he at the time was not in the upper echelon of society. No. You had to be pretty highfalutin in the 18th century in Vienna to get a grave marker. Yeah. So he's buried in the 1850s. They built a monument over where they think he was buried, and then that was later moved to a space where they just had honored various musicians that were buried there. And they put up another monument near his original assumed or presumed gravesite at Mark Cemetery, st. Marks. M A RX. And it has an angel leaning up against a broken column, which, as you remember indicates someone who has cut down the prime of life. And Mozart died at age 35, suddenly, of rheumatic fever. The vapors. He had the vapors that they called that that's what I call the end is nice. You ever been there? No. Lovely. It is. John Wayne, he is buried in his family, gives his reason for his unmarked grave for just not wanting to be disrespectful to others that are also buried there, which I think is a pretty nice thing. That's kind of I don't want to say a trend, but a lot of celebrities families do that they're buried in unmarked graves either because they have the same thought that you have. Sure. You want to be humble. You can't be much more humble than being buried in an unmarked grave. Yes. I want to be marked, at least. So, like George C. Scott, Frank Zappa, they're both buried in unmarked graves. Yes. Roy Orbison. Roy Orbison is, because apparently his family never got around to putting a headstone on his grave. They were planning on moving him and never have. So he's been laying in an unmarked grave since 98. Yeah. Bessie Smith, famous blue singer, she was big in the vaudeville scene in the 1920s and like a lot of the siren singers of the day, had a problem with alcoholism and died in a car crash in 37. And she didn't have a grave because her husband, apparently, the rumor is, didn't want to pay for it. And years later, Janice Joplin was such a fan, she had moved to pay for and commissioned a headstone for her, and I didn't see if it was ever done. It says she died shortly thereafter, but I don't know if that project was ever completed. It was okay. It went through all right. Mike Tyson did that, too. His mother died very poor and I think had an unmarked grave or a very small marker. And after he hit it big, one of the first things he did was get this huge gaudy, elaborate headstone erected for they've had some problems with fans of Belushi's partying at his grave, so they moved him from his grave in Martha's Vineyard to a spot that only the family knows. But they have two sinnotes which are empty tombs, one at Martha's Vineyard, one at his family part in Chicago, where you can go visit, but apparently only his family knows where he's truly buried now. Got you. And I hung out in the room where he died a couple of times. Oh, really? Yeah. In the Belushi Cabana. The Chateau Marmont. Oh, yeah. I always think he was Chicago, but that was Chris Farley who died in exactly the same manner that Belushi did, just in Chicago. Yeah. It's a little weird. I mean, you're sitting there, and I was having a good time and having a few drinks, and it's like John Belushi died right here where I'm standing. And yes, bad way to go. What? Speedball. Yeah. And then chuck. I've got one more. Remember the movie Peter Pan? The Disney movie? The cartoon? Yeah. Little boy who voiced Peter Pan, he is buried in an unmarked pauper's grave. That is sad. Yes. His name is Bobby Driscoll. He was in not just Peter Pan, but also Treasure Island movie called The Window, and he was a child star. And after he hit puberty, he was apparently discarded by Hollywood and hit the skids, and he actually died. The guy the kid who voiced Peter Pan died at age 31 in an abandoned apartment in New York City. That's so sad. Not even of a drug overdose, but of a whole bunch of drug overdoses that finally led to catastrophic heart failure. And his mother started looking for him a year after he died and found that he died because, I guess the police printed him. He was just a John Doe until his mother started looking for him. Well, but he's still buried in an Omar grave, from what I understand. Yeah, and it's not just like, oh, he was famous. And it's so sad that he died that way, because thousands of people die every day in this country. Homeless people that died with no family and no one that cares about burying them. Well, there's also a lot of people who have family whose family don't have enough money to do anything and have no choice but to allow the state to handle the funeral. And it is not an elaborate funeral. State run funerals are not elaborate, I'm sure, unless it's ahead of state. Whizbang. 21 Vin Salute. Yeah, I got nothing else. I don't either. Go to our website and stuffiestional.com and check out 21 Remarkable Epitaphs. It's pretty good, if I say so myself. It is good. You can read the let's see, what is it? Ten famous people buried in unmarked graves. That articles on housetopworks.com. And since I said houseofworks.com, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this branch of illusion, and this is something that we hear about a lot as fans of radio and podcasting. Myself, if you've never seen someone that you've always heard, it's always jarring to see what they look like. Yes, and some people still don't even want to know what we look like, which I get. I don't blame you, man. I've seen Kyrrzda all before. Yeah, it's just fun to look at the NPR. People like Lois Ritz. I expected to be 300 years old. Lois Ritz looks exactly like I would have thought she looked. Younger than I thought. Yeah, but not much. All right. Hey, guys. Josh, Chuck and Jerry. And again. Jerry's spelled correctly. People are really getting with it. Oh, man. I've been an avid listener to your podcast and the sister podcast since 2009. Never thought I'd have anything interesting enough to write in about, but it finally happened, and it was so perception altering, so randomly odd. I thought you should know. All these years I had an inner podcast movie playing of YouTube bantering going through my head. Always good. I could see Chuck laughing. I can see Josh studiously explaining things. And I stayed in podcast land, never having ventured out to see your shows or videos yet. I would enjoy them in time as well. But what turned my world upside down and seemed like a brainical illusion was that I finally did see a video of the two of you. And Josh's voice was coming out of Chuck's face and Chuck's voice had a beard on it. All this time I had thought of each of you was the other person. And this is after he had already seen pictures. That must be really weird. Yeah. Seeing those voices coming out different faces has done my head in. I think the culprit is how your pictures are situated on the podcast image with Chuck on the left and Josh on the right. But since westerners read from left to right, and the show always starts with Josh and Chuck and then Chuck, that's the order my brain put you in. I now have to fight with my inner podcast movie to correct which face the voices are coming from and it causes constant bewilderment. You guys send me to my dreamland every night with your friendly voices. Thanks a lot. Perhaps I would just follow the advice of one of those funny t shirts. I reject your reality and substitute my own. Because no matter how hard I try, I always see Josh with a beard and Chuck with a buzz cut. You got it wrong, pal. And that, even though I did have a buzz cut recently, is from Avalon. Thanks a lot, Avalon. We appreciate you writing and we do hear that a lot. So for everybody who that's ever happened to? I'm sorry, I guess, but not really, because there's nothing we can do about it. It's your brain. You look like what we look like. If you want to share something from your brain with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffychildnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, check us out at our home on the web stuffyousheno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com." | ||
How HIV/AIDS Works, Part II | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-hiv-aids-works-part-ii | In part two of the series on HIV/AIDS, Chuck and Josh explore how the battle against the disease is being fought and won thanks to new treatments and possible cures. | In part two of the series on HIV/AIDS, Chuck and Josh explore how the battle against the disease is being fought and won thanks to new treatments and possible cures. | Thu, 03 Dec 2015 14:20:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=14, tm_min=20, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=337, tm_isdst=0) | 38656669 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Nobody's in here with us, so it's just two of us and you fearlessly listener. We're just freewheeling. Bob Dylan. Yeah. Whoever that is. Bob Dylan. Who. Come on. And this is part two of two of a special two part series that's right. On HIV AIDS. Yeah. If you didn't listen to the first one, I would suggest you do that. Yeah. You're going to be lost. There's probably going to be a lot of injuries and referential jokes back to the first one. We explained it in the first one. Yeah. That's very important in, like, the actual nuts and bolts of disease. So skip ahead. Don't be lazy. So, Chuck, we left off, we talked originally about the different varying levels of risk depending on the type of intercourse, depending on the type of group you're a member of. We talked about how it works, where it came from, what could possibly be left to talk about as far as HIV is concerned. There's a lot yes. Because we did not touch on and I know you're being coy because I see all your notes in front of you. Yeah. Look at all these. But one thing we didn't talk about that we're going to start with is treatment. Yeah, that's a big one. It's a big one. You want to go and talk about the H cocktail? Yeah. So back in 1991, a very famous basketball player named Irvin Magic Johnson played for the La. Lakers, announced that he was retiring from the NBA because he had been diagnosed with HIV. I remember the day. That was a huge deal. I was at Georgia Southern for some weird reason that weekend. That is weird. It was a big deal. Yeah. I mean, you talked, I think, last episode about Eazy catching it and that was a big deal. This is probably even bigger. I think Magic Johnson was a bigger name than Eze, were more widely recognized among more people. He was a sports figure. He was straight. What the heck is going on? And I remember thinking, like many people at the time, oh, my gosh, Magic Johnson is dying. Yes. I think a lot of people, most people who are familiar with this thought, well, he's a goner in a couple of years. But he kept living. He kept living and he kept living. He came back and played more basketball. Even I didn't know that. You got to be pretty fit for that. Sure. And he kept living. And everybody thought, what the heck happened with Magic Johnson? And it turned out that he had access to what's now known as the highly active antiretroviral therapy, aka heart, which is now the standard of treatment for HIV. And he had access to it a couple of years before it became widespread in the 1995. And it has helped keep him alive he was 32 when he announced that he was diagnosed with HIV and he turned 56 in 2015. That's awesome. That's a very long lifespan, especially for somebody who was diagnosed in the early 90s when people were still like, what is going on here? Yeah, so, correct. Magic Johnson got a head start. Not because he's super famous. Well, that had something to do with it. I think I'm very rich. Well, but he was willing to it was still in the experimental phase at that point. Yeah, but I'm sure there were plenty of HIV patients who were like, do whatever you need to do to cure me. Sure. But didn't have the money, so he got to jump on it. But he has not I think a lot of people think that he is getting some other special treatments that no one else is getting or he's paying his way into something. Supposedly there's a Kenyan witch doctor rumor. Yeah. He's getting the same treatment that other people are getting, and there are plenty of people that have lived much longer than him. Oh, yeah. And he's just the most famous. And that's a good thing because he's HIV activists and AIDS activists, for sure. Yeah. Not to disparage anything about Magic. He definitely took that label at a time when there was a gay disease and he became an HIV activist. We should say specifically, he does not ever have had AIDS. His T hat cell count never got to the 200,000 or less mark. So he's HIV positive and he is still, like we said in the last episode, it's a chronic disease because reservoirs develop, and I believe it was a couple of years between diagnosis and treatment for him. So those reservoirs had a chance to get a foothold. But he got it early enough that his lifespan, it's basically that what was it, 24 years that he's been alive since diagnosis. That's pretty normal for people who were treated with the heart cocktail in a reasonable time after being diagnosed, which they're finding that window of time is intensely important. Yeah, we're going to get to that. Man, that was a great article. You said. So we're talking heart. Yeah, heart or cart or just art, whichever you want to call it. I call it art or heart with the double A. I call it the AIDS cocktail. Oh, yeah. That's another word for it. So each one of these drugs we talked about in Part one is very specific to its task to basically disrupt as many stages of the process as possible. Should we go through these? Yeah. NRTIs, nucleoside, reverse transcript, days inhibitors. They basically block the ability to replicate. Yeah. Remember, the reverse transcript takes the RNA instructions for the viral creation and turns it into DNA, which is then inserted into the CD four plus T cell nucleus. Right. So you block that. It's a big problem for the HIV virus. Yeah, it's a big problem. It is in RTIs, non nucleotide reverse transcription inhibitors. They disable another protein, requiring it to replicate. Yeah, another disruption. PiS protein inhibitors. So proteins, that was the one that actually cut the polypeptides into their individual components. So you had a long chain of enzymes that made up these viruses. That's the part I didn't get right. And then you cut them up. So the thing that cuts them up isn't there. You just have all these long chains and they build up and it's basically like Lucy's running the chocolate factory assembly line or something there. Then you have entry fusion inhibitors. They block the ability to enter those CD four cells to begin with and then finally integrates inhibitors. Once they get in that CD four cell. We talked about the inserted that genetic material and it basically blocks the ability to do that. So the current cocktail recommended cocktail are two NRTIs in the shaker, one in an RTI and a Pi, and then either integrated inhibitor or a Rito neighbor, which I don't know what that is, do you? No. Let's just say it's the key. Let's say it's the bitters in the cocktail. Nice. And makes it bright. You put it all in there, you shake it up, you've got your AIDS cocktail. Once you put that into place, if you catch it early enough, you can bring your mortality rate just about to normal. Yeah. Like it's a chronic disease. Yeah. And your immune system will probably not become so compromised that you're going to die from something. Right. You need to be on it for life. And everyone is supposed to be on this cocktail. Although if you have Hep B, have a recent CD four count below 500, or if you are pregnant, then you are given priority. Right. And it's all going to cost you about ten to $12,000 a year. Although that is supposed to increase. And the reason why you have to stay on it indefinitely is because we said in the last episode that HIV produces reservoirs of inactive virus that just spread throughout the body and accumulate. And even when you're treating what amounts to one outbreak, another one can come very soon afterward. And that's what makes it chronic, right? Yeah. With heart it will eventually get all these reservoirs, but it takes, I think we said 60 to 80 years. Yeah. It's a very long time, right? Yeah. So there's been some suggestions as to how to eradicate this disease a little faster than using part different ideas, which is great. I mean, they're really smart. People are coming up with different strategies. One of them is kind of nuts, but also which one? The one that uses prostratin, I believe is what it's called. It basically goes in and says, oh, you're an inactive HIV cell, well, I'm going to activate you. Oh yeah. It's basically making an HIV outbreak take place. But you're doing it while you're under heart care, right? Yeah. The way I thought of it was it's like flushing out those invisible reservoirs. But the only way to flush them out is to activate them, to get them going so the T cells actually know it's there. It's scary sounding. It is. The heart treatment also disrupts their function, so it starts them up, and apparently they don't stop and go back to sleep or go dormant again once they start up. So it starts them up. The heart treatment keeps them from doing what they want to do normally, and then also the cell that they're infecting will die sooner than later and just get it over with. So it's basically a way they're trying to figure out to accelerate an HIV infection while in the presence of highly active antiretroviral therapy keeps you from actually dying from this accelerated HIV infection. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So that's one strategy. They call it anything. They should call it something cool, like the Wild Cater. The gunslinger. Yeah, the gunslinger. All right, I think we should get to this next, you send an awesome article from the Pacific Standard called Getting to Zero are We Close to a Cure for AIDS? And the city of San Francisco is doing something. They're pretty radical out there in San Francisco. Sure. You know, all those hippies out there. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to make their city the first city with no new infections, no deaths and no stigma, and they call the program Getting to Zero. And they're doing this in a lot of ways. Some of the background here is historically, over the past few decades, hasn't been a ton of money allocated toward finding a cure for AIDS. Yes. And not because for various reasons, I think a lot of people, especially initially, are like, because it's gay disease, I think it's spread out and started infecting more non gay people and more non gay white people. It started to get a lot more funding, but it also didn't get a lot of funding because a lot of people were like, we can't cure this. It's an incurable disease. Yeah. And I think cynics might also say, like, you make a lot more money to keep people on drugs for life than you do carrying something. But from what I could tell, the main reason was because it was such a new scary thing, they put all of their efforts into trying to save people who got HIV and coming up with this drug cocktail. Sure. However, things are changing, which is good. In 2008 and 2009, there was a very cool case. Timothy Ray Brown. He was the Berlin patient. Yeah, the second Berlin patient. There was another one in the mid ninety s. I didn't know that. Yeah, I know everything. There was an anonymous Berlin patient in the mid 90s who I think got HIV and then no longer had HIV. Wow. But what's up with Berlin? I know. Seriously, it's a cool city, but Timothy Ray Brown was a special case. He's an American that was living there as a translator, HIV positive, and started taking medications, and then about a decade later found out he had leukemia. Right. So his doctor, very clever person, dude, let's call him Hero, I think. Hero. He had a very weird, unique idea. He said, Why don't we see if we can take there are these people out there, 1% of Caucasian. Yeah. 1% of people who have a protein, caucasian people, CCR five, which basically makes them immune to HIV. They lack that protein. Yeah, that's a protein on the surface of your T helper cell that the HIV virus docks with can't dock, can infect. And very few people have this 1%. He said, Why don't we try and find someone like that who can donate their bone marrow, which is where stuff like that is produced into this guy and basically replace his immune system with this one percenter and not that kind of one percenter. Like, I'm going to be rich, right? I got rich. Pomera. So he did that. They found someone that had that was a good match. And it worked. It worked. He was functionally cured of HIV, I think fully cured. They keep testing him and testing him. This is, I think, 2008 or 2009. Yeah. And they keep testing the guy. No signs. Yeah. I don't know that enough people have been cured of HIV AIDS so that they it's like with cancer, I think if you're five years without any kind of growth, it's considered remission. I don't think they have a standard like that yet. No, they don't. But so they keep testing this guy and it's not coming back. These reservoirs are not becoming active again. It doesn't appear that he has HIV or AIDS any longer. Right. And the doctor was excited, obviously, but he also knew, like, well, we obviously can't go around replacing people's immune systems with these 1%. Sure. But what it did was it kickstarted New Hope, and now all of a sudden, there was new funding for trying to find a cure. And it was what they call a proof of concept. I think we mentioned last episode, it showed that AIDS can be cured. Yeah. Before this, only about 3% of AIDS and HIV funding went to cure research. Now there are new grants totalling 14.6 million a year. And Obama in 2013 said, you know what? How about another 100 million toward a cure over three years? Is that funny? It's just what 100 million used to be and what it is today. Yeah, it just sounds like, sure, yeah, stowing money around, go get yourself some nice funding. So we talked, I believe, in the first episode about catching it early. There's another story here. Basically how it works now is you can get diagnosed with HIV, and until your T cell count falls below a certain number, you're just like, not on any drugs, you have to get sick before you get treated in most cases. Is that right? Well, yeah, that was the old I mean, that's what it says in this thing. Oh, that was the old icy. Yeah, that was the old guard I got you. Yeah. The bleeding edge. Is that right? No, leading edge. Okay. The leading edge is quite the opposite of that. Yeah. Because they found if you get to it super early, like those first few days and weeks after you get HIV in the bloodstream is when it's most dangerous, very critical, most easily spread. And they found that if people who take these drugs right, then are 96% less likely to pass it on to a sexual partner. Here's why. Again, one of the insidious pernicious characteristics of HIV infection is that inactive reservoirs build, which makes it a chronic disease. Yeah. And again, when you first are exposed to HIV, your immune system can mount a pretty decent defense on its own. Yeah. You don't have those reservoirs just yet. Right. And it's those reservoirs that eventually overwhelm your immune system and can lead to your death. If you're treated with heart very early on after infection, those reservoirs never have a chance to build. And that infection that you do have is helped with this extra therapy, and your immune system can defend against it. These people feel like time is such a critical essence. That ward 86, which is a legendary the United States, at least first dedicated AIDS ward AIDS clinic, San Francisco General they're very cutting edge. They've led a lot of treatment programs for HIV and AIDS over the years. But they have this program now where they will pay for a cab for you to be brought from your doctor's office where you were just diagnosed, to ward 86, to be treated right then with heart to begin treatment. Yeah. There's a doctor, a researcher called hero. You hatano another hero. Another hero you're, right. And the program is Rapid, which the first letter also stands for rapid. I know. I don't think that's okay, well, we'll give it to them. Rapid is the rapid anti retroviral program initiative for new diagnoses. And like you said, basically, it's a test and treat program where as soon as you know you've got it, they want to knock down any obstacle in your way, including that first cab ride to get there and just get going on that stuff so you're not spreading the disease. So we got more on treatment and stuff like that, and we'll get to it right after this message. All right, chuck, there's a group out there running around, too, who are saying that they are working on an AIDS or I should say an HIV vaccine. Yeah, you sent me this one. They are studying what are called controllers. And these controllers, they get infected with HIV. It's in their body, and they never get sick from it. Yeah, they're called long term non progressors or Elite Controllers. I'll bet they prefer to be called Elite Controllers. Sure. And they've estimated anywhere from one in 200 to one in 500 people. They don't think Magic Johnson is one of these people, which we talked about? No, he just responded well, but there was a thought that he might be and there's a project called the Immunity Project. It's a nonprofit that seeks a cure by setting the blood of these Elite Controllers, which I don't know why it's controversial, but I have seen that other researchers are saying, like, don't do that, so it's not going to work or what? Yes, maybe that's it. Maybe they think it's not resourced. Well, they feel like they figured out what makes Elite Controllers, what gives them that trait? Apparently there's some proteins that show these people signal proteins in their body that show the immune system. Where the best place to attack an HIV viruses? Yeah, just genetic. It is, but it's also like it's not like there's something weird with their own cells. It's like their antibodies are specialized to search and destroy HIV viruses, which is weird, but that's definitely who you want to study. Why not? Yeah, throw an extra 100 million at them. This other part of this article from Pacific Standards was interesting. There was a case of a French girl, she's now 18. She was infected with HIV from her mother during pregnancy or delivery, immediately started on the antiviral drugs, stayed on them for six years, and then she stopped taking the medications for almost a year. Usually when that happens is HIV just really gets going again and it's back on the move because of the reservoir. Yeah. Didn't happen in her case. And so she stayed off them, and she's been undetectable for twelve years. So now they're thinking maybe one thing we can do is get people on the drugs super soon. Right. And then wean them off of the drugs at a certain point and see if that works. Basically, yeah. Like keeping a close eye on them, obviously. Not just being like, all right, we'll see in a decade. Let me know how it goes. Right. I mean, why not? So that's pretty promising, too. There's another potential strategy, which is called shock and kill, and that is flushing out the particles into the circulatory system. Is that part of the one we talked about earlier? I think so. The prostratin where the same thing, it activates dormant HIV cells to get them to attack. I would say if it's not the same drug or the same research group, it's the same principle. Okay. Trying to awaken the sleeping beast and give us some big problems. Patient zero. We teased that in the first episode. Yeah. I thought this was super interesting. You referenced the book and movie, and The Band Played On by the book was Randy Schultz about the early days of AIDS and HIV, and there's now a book out called plane queer. And that is plane as an airplane. Airplane terrible. Yeah, I know. Colon Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the history of male flight attendants. And there was a man named Guten Dugas. Gayton. Gayton. Is that an A? Yeah, G-A-E-T-A-N. Okay. Gayton Dugas. He's Canadian flight attendant. He's Quebecua. That's Canadian. The people in Quebec just made me a national hero in this book. Basically, there was a big fear that this book wasn't going to sell and get any attention. So the book published. Yeah. Because it's like 600 pages of methodical reporting on the HIV AIDS. Yes. And the editor now, or the publisher, has come out and said, you know what, we kind of resorted to yellow journalism by allowing and leaking this supposed patient zero, this gay flight attendant, good looking guy who was very sexually active, he claimed to have more than 2500 partners over a ten year span from the early seventy s to early 80s, flying all over the world. Yeah. Obviously it's a flight attendant. And they let the story leak to the New York times, was it new York Times? The New York Post. But not only did they leak the story, they really built up or overstated the guy's role as depicted in the book, too. Yeah, basically, like this guy brought AIDS to the west, AIDS to the North America. This guy is patient zero. I think in the book he does compare him to kebab kwa typhoid Mary in a way, because he did say, like, I'm not going to not have sex. Are you nuts? There are some stuff that this guy definitely did do, and he was one of the early patients. But to lay the AIDS epidemic in America at this one guy's feet is patently unfair. Yeah. And untrue, because he was not the first person they did trace. Early on, when they were chasing it around the country, they labeled patients with La. As in Los Angeles or New York, like La four, NY three, as what patient number and where they were. And originally they said that his designation was o for out of California. Eventually that became zero, and he got unfairly pinned with spreading AIDS. He was part of a smallish group of very traveled, promiscuous gay men that did help spread AIDS, but he was not the reason. He was not patient. He was a reason. He was a reason. Right. But unfairly labeled. But in the end, it ended up bringing a lot of attention to it at a vital time. That's why there's a weird conundrum. That's why the editor, the editor of the book is admitting it now. He's saying, like, ultimately it was a good move because it helped bring a lot of attention to this through promotion of the book. But it was at the expense of this one guy. Right. And he died in March 30, 1984, of kidney failure. Very sad. I think we need one more break, correct? Yeah. And then we'll come back and we'll talk about some other celebrities who have helped put a face to AIDS and the AIDS quilt for this. All right, Chuck, we're back. Yes. So UT celebrities. Everybody loves celebrities. Everyone does love celebrities. Then someone who is a celebrity who dies of AIDS is no more important than any other person who dies of AIDS. But they are vital to putting a face on things into getting media attention and basically slapping people in the face who think, I can never get AIDS. Eze we mentioned. Yeah, it definitely makes it gives people pause. I didn't remember that some of these people died of AIDS. Rock Hudson was a big one. Absolutely. Arthur Ash, I'd forgotten about that. Oh, yeah. Freddie Mercury, obviously. I was watching. You ever seen Queen live in Montreal? I don't know. Maybe. Was he wearing white jumpsuit, white jeans and the Superman tank top? It's like Queen's famous concert movie that was on plate the other night. And I've seen that thing probably a dozen times. Every time I'm knocked out. Oh, yeah. Queen was great. And Freddie Mercury was just such a rock star, dude. And at the time, when I was a little kid, I didn't know what gay was. Sure. I just knew you liked Freddie Mercury. Absolutely. I was the same kid who drew the village People in crayon, and my mom was like, what's going on there? But Freddie Murphy, he still blows me away. What a fantastic, awesome rock star. I wonder how that movie is going to be. Sasha Baron Cohen is working on he dropped out of that. He came back. Oh, he did? Yeah. Back on, baby. Well, I think he looks enough like him and he can do great impressions, but he's just tall and lanky. So that's the only thing that bothers me. Wasn't Freddie Mercury pretty tall. Yes, he was a little guy. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Spitfire. So whatever. It's not like Christoph Waltz playing a guy from Nebraska and doing big eyes. Did you see that pile of dudes? Yes, I did. That movie bugged me so much, every moment of it. I'm just a nice man from Nebraska. It was just so like he didn't even tried to copy he didn't try to hide his accent at all? No, he didn't. Because Tim Burton probably wasn't even on set most of the time. Why? Because he's phoning it in. Yeah. Yeah. He stinks now. I did look up, though, like, why in the world did he cast him in Tim Burton? Because he got some flag for it. And he was like it was more about the spirit of the guy. Not that he had a heavy Austrian accent. Missed it a little bit. Maybe redo the character. Ted, there's all sorts of stuff you can do. Or was it Cameron Crowe who cast what is her name? The white girl is an Asian character. What his most recent movie? Aloha. I didn't see it. Yes. Who? I can't remember her name. She's a very famous actor. The redhead? Yes. From Birdman? Yes. She plays an Asian character. Yes. What? Yes. Really? All right, I'm going to look that up. Yeah, let's go read about it after this. All right. There was the one tangent for the two parter. Yeah, we got a lot in there. So back to celebrities who have passed from AIDS. Liberatchi. Of course. That was another thing, too. Have you seen behind the can of labor? Yeah. Great movie, right? Agreed. Are you going to say Gia, the model? Yeah, that was a big one because that was a woman. Hers was from Needles, right? I think so. He's a pretty big heroin addict. Perry Ellis, fashion designer. Okay. Mr. Brady himself. Oh, yeah. Robert Reid. Yes. Great guy. I remember Pedro Zamora from the Real World. That was a big deal because I don't remember that. I think each one of these cases kind of opened the eyes of a different segment. And Pedro MTV's Real World before it got really bad, I guess it was the San Francisco, and he helped up the line for a lot of teenagers and kids because it unfolded in real time on television. Oh, I didn't know about that at all. Yeah, it was a really big thing. Anthony Perkins, psycho. Brad Davis from Midnight Express. He was straight, but he was a drug user, so that kind of shown a light on that. And then Keith Harring, the artist, tom Fogerty of Credence, john Fogerty's brother, got it through a blood transfusion. So between he and Ryan White you're right. Those are all really different segments. Yeah. And I think that's why I'm mentioning them, because I think each segment, like, it just shines a light to a different group of people who might be fans of theirs. So you're saying we're going to talk about the AIDS quote, right? Yeah. Are you there? You got any more celebrities? No, I mean, there are more celebrities than that, but we just went through a handful. Sure. The AIDS quilt. So have you ever seen the movie Milk? Yeah. One of the main characters, Cleave Jones, is a real life person, as was Harvey Milk, who played Cleve Jones in the movie. I don't remember. I want to say it was like the dude from Big Bang Theory, but it's not. I've never seen that show, but it looks a little bit like him. I don't really watch it either, but I'm aware of pop culture, you know what I'm saying? Sure. So, anyway, Cleave Jones was a guy who was a friend of Harvey Milk, and Harvey Milk was very famously assassinated by Dan White. Yeah. The twinkie defense. I recognize the guy, but I don't know what else has been him. He was from the Dog Town in Zboy's movie and among many other. Things. Okay, so Harvey Milk was killed, and in his honor, starting in 1978, I think, Cleave Jones organized a candlelight vigil for him and George Moscow, the mayor, who was also killed by Dan White. But Harvey Muk was, I think, the first openly gay politician in San Francisco. So here's a gay rights hero for sure. So to honor his memory, Cleveland Jones would organize these candlelight vigils. And at one in 1985, he found out that about more than 1000 San Francisco had died of AIDS. And during organizing the candlelight vigil, he asked people to write the names of those people down on little cards. Right. And then he took the cards, he and some other volunteers, at the end of the vigil and posted them on the Federal Building wall. And apparently it looked a lot like a patchwork quilt. Boom. And he thought the little light bulb went off over his head. And Cleave Jones said, I think we should make a quilt. Yeah. Because they've been trying to figure out a memorial for people who had died of AIDS. Yeah. I didn't know how organic it was and how it started, and I just think it's such a neat story. That is so good. Jones it is very cleve in June 1987, while the first panel he created in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. And in June of 87, he teamed up with a guy named Mike Smith and some other folks to organize the Official Names Project Foundation. And they started pouring in these pieces of quilt. These patches started coming in from all over the country, then all over the world. And in October of 1000, 987, they displayed it for the first of what would be 12345 times in its full glory in Washington, DC. Yeah. The first time it was the size of a football field. Yeah. The last time they displayed it, Chuck, was wind. 1996 was the last time. And it was much bigger, wasn't it? Yes. It covered the entire National Mall. That really drives it home. Oh, yeah. Well, which is the whole point. Right. Like, look how massive this thing is. It has been on tour. More than a half a million people visited the first weekend. And since then, it's gone on many tours all over the country. All over the world. And has raised a lot of money, I think, so far over $3 million. Is that right? Oh, yeah. Easily. It seems like it would be more than that. Sure. But it says through this one project yeah. It says the Names Project Foundation has raised over $3 million. I'm surprised that it's all in 1989, it was nominated the quilt itself was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. That's so cool. And it's still the largest community art project in the world. And if you have not seen the documentary Common Threads colon Stories from the Quilt, you should. Yeah. 1989 one Academy award for best documentary. And it has become a symbol. And it all grew out of that one neat little idea from that candlelight vigil. Pretty cool. Pretty cool, indeed. And the reason they're not showing it in full anymore, I think, is because it's too big, which is sad. Yeah. Like there's no space large enough to hold it. Well, that's not true. You could probably go out to the desert somewhere. Oh, yeah. But then it gets all sandy. Yeah, you don't want to do that. You go to the beach, you'd spend weeks shaking that thing out. Yeah, it would be tough. God, I can't imagine, like, transporting that. Yeah. I don't know how they do it. I'm sure it's in pieces. Yeah, I guess they may resell the whole thing back together every time. I don't think they sew it. They probably just put it together. Oh, I see. That's my guess. I'm not sure. Okay. I doubt if they fold it up as one piece, though. Throw it in the truck. Yeah. Well, it will very quickly reach to the moon. Have you ever heard that you can fold a paper normally? I see the paper several times, and very quickly it reaches right into outer space. I thought something couldn't be folded more than a certain amount of times. That's a lie. Was that a don't be dumb? Yes. What was the number of times? It was supposedly seven. And this girl in high school somewhere in the early 2000s proved it is possible. She did over, like, eleven or something. Oh, wow. But the paper that she used went from paper thin to that after ten folds. And so she did the math to see after 20 or 50 folds or something like that, it would hit the moon. After, like, 120 folds, it would expand further than the visible universe. Wow. Isn't that cool? And now she volunteers with the age quilt. Yes. Folding it. That's right. You got anything else? No. I think you're right that we could have made a whole entire podcast series out of this, right? Yeah. I hope you did a good job. We tried. We definitely did. If you want to know more about HIV AIDS, you should go research that, especially for this AIDS Day week. You can start by typing the word AIDS in the search bar@houseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener ma'am. Yes. And if you are sexually active, go get tested. Yeah, that's a great way to celebrate. Do it. No reason not to celebrate. Observe. How about observe? Observe? Yeah, it's a little more solid than celebrating Aid Day. I think celebrating awareness is okay. All right. Thanks. I know what you meant. Thanks for letting me off the hook. All right, this is going to be called listener mail at the end of the HIV AIDS series. Cool. Hey, guys. Just recently came across your podcast. Thanks to recommendation from Holly and Tracy. Stuff you missed in history class. Nice. Thanks. Guys, I just finished listening to Ten most Disturbing medical procedures, and I have a story. My husband recently was diagnosed with mini air disease. While he was being diagnosed, he was sent to an audiologist. An audiologist took him to a room no bigger than a closet and strapped him into a chair. The lights were then turned off and the chair spun while the audiologist audiologist audiologist. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you got it right. She asked him questions. The chair was then reversed in direction, and he was asked even more questions. These were basic questions, like what's your wife's name, children's names, et cetera. He was even asked at one point to say a boy's name for each letter of the alphabet, starting with A and ending in z. That'd be a fun little test. Zeke, I found it amusing because you had mentioned in the podcast how the Whirly chair is no longer in use and you couldn't find anything about it. Well, today it's called a rotary chair, and it's used to study the workings of the inner ear. But you would find it even more amusing after airing that show. Some people are treating the rotary chair as a new invention. So I think Heather here is saying that rotary chair is the same thing as the Whirly chair. It's alive and well. Yeah. Thanks, Heather. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Heather. And best of luck to your husband. Yeah, he's still stuck in a whirlwind chair going David Elias. Frank. She's like, Frank doesn't count the short for Francis. Start over. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouseprest.com. And as always, join us at ours home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
Prisons: Not as Fun as You'd Think | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/prisons-not-as-fun-as-youd-think | Most people have a basic understanding of how prisons work, but it's often heavily influenced by fiction. What's it really like behind those bars? In this episode, Josh and Chuck reveal the practices, controversies and harsh realities of prison life. | Most people have a basic understanding of how prisons work, but it's often heavily influenced by fiction. What's it really like behind those bars? In this episode, Josh and Chuck reveal the practices, controversies and harsh realities of prison life. | Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:58:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=17, tm_min=58, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=224, tm_isdst=0) | 41972801 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. As if you're surprised. And that makes this stuff up. You should know. Right, Chuck? Yes, we are here, Josh. And can we talk about prisons now? We can talk about prisons. I remember in the presidential pardons episode, I was talking about how people have been calling for President Obama to reduce to basically issue a blanket pardon for people who are convicted under the mandatory minimums for crack. Yes. Where there's a huge disparity. Right. And I said it was, like five to one. Actually, it was, I think, 180 to one disparity. Right. Well, he got that one wrong, didn't he? Well, he did. It, like, pretty much as we were recording that. Really? Wow. He signed this law congress is passing this law that reduced the mandatory minimum and basically, in effect, overturned the sentences of first time offenders who are convicted and were given these five years and anybody who was convicted under the old mandatory minimum laws. So there's going to be a lot of people coming out of prison looking for crack. Well, that's one argument. Yeah. That's not very fair to say. No, it's not. But, I mean, isn't that kind of the way that Americans and probably people in general, view prisoners? It's like you did something wrong, so you deserve to be where you are, but without having any real concept of what prison is like. Yeah. I mean, I know I don't want to be in prison. No. Have you ever seen the movie An Innocent Man? Remember we talked about that? Yeah. Tom Sellak. Very scary scene. That was it for me. I was like, I don't ever want to go to prison, ever. But that's about all I knew about it until we started researching for this very robust podcast on how prison works. Agreed. Yeah. So, Chuck, I guess apparently when this article was written by grabbing Aki, it was, I think, 2005 is. Sure. That was the latest stats he had, and he said that there were, like, more than 2 million people in prison. Right. And it's actually decreased. Yeah. I've got 1.6 million at the end of nine. But when I look at the stats, there are all kinds of stats. One in 31 adults is in the correction system, but that includes jail, prison probation and supervision. So they narrowed that down to only in prison. One in every 100 Americans is in prison. I know. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. Did you see what their state topped the list for? The most number of adults in prison. That's right. Georgia. Georgia. One in 13 people. One in 13 adults in Georgia is in the correctional system. That's crazy. We live in a state of criminal. Yeah. Either that or, like, a real police state. One of the two, yes. I'm not going to comment on that. So, Chuck, we should probably calm down. Let's settle down here. Let's talk about prison. Prison is a deterrent, it's a punishment, and hopefully there's increasingly it's becoming a place of reform and rehabilitation. We'll talk about that a little bit. Sure. But in the US, there's pretty much three types of security levels for prison, right? Yeah. With one extra little added measure that we'll talk about. It's a big extra, though. Yeah. You got a minimum, you got medium and you've got, of course, everyone's favorite maximum security prison. And minimum security prison, we're mainly going to cover maximum because that's really the most interesting. Sure. Even though I think they said, like, only 25% are in max. Is that right? Well, according to 2005 stats. Right. But minimum is more like a college campus, that kind of thing. It's like that weekend that you did orientation at the college you eventually went to. I would think that's like minimum security prison. Right. And that's definitely nonviolent offenders with pretty clean criminal records. Or maybe you've served time in a medium and you are really good and they're like, let's bump this dude down to maximum or minimum. Right, yeah. Right. Then you've got medium, and that's the one that actually you would see most on television shows or something. People think that's maximum, but when you see prisoners able to move around and play cards and stuff like that, that's generally medium from what I understand. Right, yeah. They have like dorm room style accommodations a lot of times with eight or ten guys to a room. And like you said, the little social day rooms where they hang out and trade cigarettes. Like an Oz. Yeah, exactly. Do horrific things to one. We'll get to that too. And then, of course, the granddaddy of them all is the maximum security prison. These are the violent offenders. Guys that have escaped or tried to escape. We're going to say guys a lot. I think less than 10% of the prison population is female, so it's not like we're not trying to give the ladies their due. We know you can do awful things as well, so perhaps to you, but we're going to say dudes a lot. And then there's a subcategory that is pretty rare that came about in 1983 at the maximum security prison in Marion, Illinois, I think not Juliet Marion, right. Yes. Two guards were murdered in two separate incidents on the same day, and the prison went into lockdown, which they call it a bad coincidence. Is that what they called it? That's what I call it. The prison went into lockdown, which is where you're in your cell all day, you can't move around, you can't do anything, you have no freedom of movement. And it remained in that state ever since. So it basically gave birth to the supermax prison, right? Yeah. And since then, a lot of prisons have been opened as super max prisons. They're in a state of lockdown. And if it sounds a bit familiar, basically the entire prison is a series of solitary confinement. They're the whole. Yeah. They call it officially it's called security housing unit and shu, but everyone calls it the whole. Right. Just like in the movies. And as far as prisons go, solitary confinement and then especially super max, is extremely controversial. Right. Yeah. Solitary confinement originally was created in 1830 by a warden at a prison in Pennsylvania with the lofty goal of giving a convict nothing but time to contemplate what he'd done. Bad things that he'd done. I think anything that was supposed in 1830 is a good way to punish people. You might want to review that notion again here. So, yeah, they basically found out that actually they don't sit around and think about all the bad they've done. They kind of go nuts. And not just kind of go nuts, they go clinically insane, as anybody would. Right. Or they go in sort of insane, and they really go off the deep end. Right. Because prison has also and still remains used to house the mentally ill at times not as much or as overtly as before, but still, you find the insane in prisons. Right. Yeah. The other problem with a supermax facility, besides the fact that it amounts to torture, psychological or otherwise, is that these places are reserved for the worst of the worst, supposedly, and in any given state, there's a couple maybe of the worst of the worst. But a supermax prison may have a couple of hundred cells. Yeah. You got to fill the cells somehow. So you have relatively minor offenses or convicts going into supermax prisons and killing themselves in really horrible ways. Yeah. This is a big build up in the think. They said by the end of the decade of the different states had a supermax prison. Well, and you said that each state only has a handful of dudes that even qualify. So, like you said, they get put in there. They kind of go through a zucosis of sorts, like weird behavior. Right. Like the bears walking in circles, except way worse. Way worse. This one guy in Wisconsin, he was a 16 year old car thief. Another guy, 20 year old David Tracy, hanged himself in a Virginia supermax when he was 19, and he had been there for two and a half years. For selling drugs? No, he'd been there for a year, and he had a two and a half year sentence, and he still hung himself. He couldn't even make it a year. He killed himself halfway into a two and a half year sentence. Yeah, because he was immediately put in solitary confinement. And then it gets worse. Apparently, people have been known to swallow razor blades. One guy in Indiana supermax prison choked himself to death with a washcloth. And another guy, 21 year old mentally ill prisoner in that same prison, set himself on fire and later died from those wounds. Yeah. The good news, though, my friend, is that a lot of supermaxes have been downgraded since then. Like, the current trend is to downgrade your supermax to regular max. So they're kind of getting the message a little bit that we really don't need this many super max presidents. Yeah. Apparently the 90s were bad. Yeah. But there's only one federal supermax. Only one? Which one? ADX in Florence, Colorado. ADX Florence, but like you said, it's mostly on the state level. That's for the really, really bad tax evaders. I imagine ADX is not the kind of place you want to take a tour. I wouldn't think so. The single federal supermax is not the kind of place you want to be. So, Chuck, you, buddy, have just been popped, say, growing marijuana indoors, you're going to prison. Let's come to terms with that. There's a couple of ways that you actually get to prison, right? Yeah. And they are as follows. You can take a taxi, which apparently is more routine than we would imagine. I had no idea. You can be dropped off by a friend or family member. That's what I would choose. As in, I think, the 25th Hour. That's what Edward Norton did. I'd have my mom take me drop me off at prison. Right? And you can also take the prison bus, right? Yeah. It's called the Diesel tour because it's a prison bus. It's not like some luxury Greyhound bus liner. You know how nice those Greyhounds are? Oh, yeah, they're nice. It's not like that. It's kind of cramped and nasty and smelly, and it sounds like a locker room on wheels. Well, not just that. You go take yourself to the sheriff's department and curse your family member for not being like, really? You couldn't just take me the rest of the way to the prison? Right? So you get to the sheriff's department, and you basically just wait there for the prison bus to come pick you up. And then you stop at sheriff's department after sheriff's department. After sheriff's department. Well, that's the insulting part. Yes. You're like, all right, can I go to prison? Can I just start this, please? And they're like, well, we got to make six stops on the way. Just hold on. And the bus is going to break down in exactly eight minutes. We're going to go pick up your future boyfriend first. So, Chuck, you finally get to prison, right? Thank God. Those cookies that your mom gave you have been taken away from you. I mean, just immediately. You didn't even need to eat one. They're chowing down on those two cards are and you have a new moniker. You have a new name, a new catch all name that describes you as a newly inducted prisoner. You're a fish. Yeah. Just like in the movies. A lot of this I thought that's just like in the movies. And it is just like in the movies, because they know a lot about prison. So why would you make a prison movie that was completely unrealistic, right. When you can make the real deal and it's very compelling. Yeah, and we'll talk about movies, too. But yes, you are a fish, Josh. All your stuff is taken and cataloged, hopefully kept. We'll get to that later as well. Some of it might be lost along the way. You are allowed to bring in like your reading glasses and maybe a few books. No cookies, though. No cookies. Your legal papers, if you are into that, you're processed, right? And you're actually processed often in full view of other cons. You in the fish tank. Yeah, they call it the fish tank because all the guys who are already in prison can sit there and watch. Right. But they keep you segregated for about 30 days or more. You have had no idea it was that long. I didn't either. I thought it's not like they deloused you. They sprayed you at the fire hose, gave you an orange jumpsuit and threw you in there. That's what I imagined. But yeah. No. For 30 days, you're basically segregated. I imagine what, the other fellows on the Diesel tour? And you are assigned a job, most likely. But you're in about 15, though. Like you're on full display, like for 30 days. Dudes are sizing you up. Are you hungry? Well, like in Shawshank when they took bets on who is going to be the first fish to break down and cry that first night. Who won? It was that fat guy broke down and cry and then he got beat and then bad things happened to him. I always confused that in the Green Mile. I didn't like that one. No, sean Shank was definitely better. But wait, I often confused scenes. They were shot almost exactly the same. Agreed. So once you get out of your fish tank, you get your cell assignment, you may get your job. Right. And again for about $0.10 an hour. That's what you're paid. Should I read the letter real quick? Sure. There's actually a site on the web called Prison Talk.com. It's not as hot as you would think, but you can go to forums there and read ex cons and maybe even some current cons if you have internet access and like a minimum security. Talk about things on these prison forms. So I found a letter. I was digging around about jobs, and this one guy said the worst job he had was being a dorm janitor. He got paid forty cents a day. This is not by the hour day. Five days a week, there were four dorms. Total of about 60 guys in each. Two bathrooms in each? Yeah. You don't want to have a salaried prison job as a convict. I'm not sure if that hit home. 60 guys sharing two bathrooms. And this guy was in charge of cleaning that on a daily basis. I do appreciate you repeating that. So he swept off in he said he kept the dorm rooms clean. You've never seen a battleground of chaos until you've seen a bathroom after 30 guys take a shower. Mud, dirt, torn tissue, blue state soap. So I guess they get soap assigned to them. I never really thought about that. Sure. So, anyway, tobacco, spit in the hangout room, garbage, cigarette butts from roll ups. Basically, this dude had to clean that stuff up for forty cents a day. And he said that was the worst job you ever had in prison. And he didn't even mention the fecal matter. Well, I think that's implicit. Oh, well, I just made an explicit check. Yes. So that is one example of a prison job that you can get. And then you're off to your room, which I would encourage everyone now to walk off 8ft by 6ft, wherever they are, and get a good look at how large that is. And that's about the size of your prison cell. That's close to what we're at right now. Yeah, that's small. Claustrophobic. That's two dudes. Usually. Well, it depends. Most prison cells are designed for one guy, and then as prisons have grown increasingly overcrowded, they'll go and bolt another bunk to the wall. Right. And then, voila, you have a sale for two, and then sometimes there's three. Right. Whatever. Usually if it's designed to house more than one or two people, it's a dorm, and it can accommodate about eight guys per cell. Right. Yeah. I mean, we could do a whole podcast on overcrowding and the issues there. That's like a very deep problem. But we'll just mention it and say it stinks, come back literally and otherwise. Right? Yeah. So, Chuck, you've got the general population cell blocks, which are all of the cell blocks aside from the fish tank and maximum security, which is also known as the whole. Right. Yeah, basically. Did you watch Oz? A little bit. I think from what I understand, that's really accurate. I'm sure it is. So there's like a centrally located guard in, like, loose sight or whatever. You can't get through this. Operating all the cell block doors and letting people in and out. And they have a 360 degree view. Yeah. Right. Well, in each one, I thought, this is interesting. Each wing is fully staffed in case you need to lock down that wing. You've got all the dudes there. You need to take care of it. Right. And it can be sealed off from the rest of the prison. Exactly. Because apparently the riot mob mentality can spread like wildfire among a prison population. Yes. Yeah. And you would think people try to escape. Which, by the way, there's a double check. There's a stuff you missed in history class podcast about Alcatraz and The Great Escape. Oh, really? They escape from Alcatraz? Yeah. Great movie. So if you want to learn more about that one. You can check that out if you're so inclined. But to make sure that no one has escaped at any given point in time, they do counts about the same time every day. Probably the same time every day. They just do a head count where you have to line up and they say, okay, everybody's here. Right. Then at night they walk around and count you while you're sleeping, right? Yeah. And then not only are you there, but you're where you need to be. So if they say, Well, Josh, you're in Chuck cell again, you know where you need to be, and they'll beat you down and take you to your own self, I'll be like, I need to be here. Don't you hear our podcast? The Chuck is my partner. I wonder what the good fellas? That had to be minimum. Or was that just a sweetheart deal? That was a sweetheart, too. Remember when they were all in the same room, like cooking steaks? Yeah. The one guy could slice the garlic so thin it was liquefying the oil so great. So, Chuck, let's say you've become acclimated. You're no longer a fish, you've shanked your first guy, and you're settled in for a nickel. Right. Is shank a verb? Yeah, shank is a verb and a noun. And shiv is also another name for a shank. Right. Which is a homemade knife. Yes. Okay, I just want to get that clear. I don't know that it is 100% clear. Well, a shiv and a shank, I know, can both be nouns for the knife. But I've also heard that you can shank someone and you can shave someone. You can. I think they're both nouns and verbs. They're very loose in prison, hopefully the same one. They're very understanding. Yes. With the vocabulary. Yes. So you settled in and you are living your life in prison behind bars, I would imagine fairly horrible. But there are bright and shining moments and those basically consist of the trip to the commissary. Right? Yeah. And I didn't know this. You don't see this a lot in movies. All you see is the black market stuff. Right. But there is actually a commissary where you have an account where your little prison money goes into your account. They obviously don't give you cash. That wouldn't be a good idea. And you go to the commission and you say, hey, whatever is approved on the list, like a pack of smokes. And People magazine, and they're like, well, that's three and a half dollars. Go work for a month, people from January 2008. Yeah. Woohoo. Sexiest man alive. Mark carmen. And actually each prisoner has an ID card that is linked to basically their prison work account. That's when they pay their debited credits or given credits, and then it's debited from their account when you buy stuff from the commissary. Yeah, I learned about that from Snoop Dogg. Oh, really? So that's the fancy. Modern prisons have it all electronically hooked up, which makes sense. But like we said, there's also a black market, which you've seen in every prison movie ever. There's dudes trading cigarettes for favors or for protection or for better books or better people magazines or whatever. And there's also visits from out of doors. Yeah, right, sure. That's how you get the bad stuff in a lot of times. Again, good fellows. You remember Karen snuck in, like, this huge bag of pills? I mean, just like in her purse or in her bra or something. Yeah, they clearly didn't check her. Again, I think that they got special treatment. Right. And, Chuck, one of the things that I would imagine goes for a pretty high price, maybe a dozen cigarettes or so, is prison wine, right? Yeah. Which prison wine? Pruneau. Have you ever seen the site where the guy eats nasty things? Steve don't eat it. No. I think it's called it is really funny. And I saw this years ago. This guy made Pruneau prison wine in his house, and it's made with, like, fruits. It's sort of like a sangria type of thing. Then you put, like, moldy bread in a sock and it's soaking altogether in a bag till it ferments. And it's, I imagine, pretty disgusting. Steve said it wasn't that bad. He drank it. He did a white and a red. He said the white smelled like rectum, but he said it tasted just like alcohol. And he said the red actually wasn't that bad at all. Is it like two buck? Chuck no, he said it tasted wine, like, and got them drunk. Two book. Chuck which is the deal. So that was the deal with Bruno. Wow. I wouldn't recommend trying in this at home, by the way. No, but that's the whole point. I mean, you're not at home, you're in prison, and you want to get drunk, so you make bruno's yes. Unless someone wants to. Like you said, with visitation, you can sneak things in if you're on the download. You're really not supposed to do that. Supposed to you get searched. No. Yes. We are talking about visitation as well now. Right. I didn't realize that visiting hours are basically like business hours. Yeah, I didn't know that either. I thought it was like one day a month and everybody came at the same time on the same day. But that makes zero sense. Prisoners are assigned a set number of visits per month, and I think the maximum number of visits you can get per month is for the most exemplary prisoner on the planet. I would imagine that that's something that they take away pretty routinely if you are being disciplined. Yes. Josh and you also have to have a list when you go in of who you say can and can't visit you. And if you're not on that list, you can eventually visit. But it's going to take a long time and a lot of paperwork and red tape. Yes. Right. Yeah. And I think you have unlimited visits from investigators, your lawyer, and that's about it. Right. Yeah. But they still keep track of all that. And your search coming in. The prisoner and the visitor are both searched coming in and out. Right. I don't know if it's full body cavity. It probably depends on the max level. Sure. Or your crime, I think, kind of follows you around in prison, like what you did, what you were convicted of. Like if you were convicted for smuggling things in your butt, they might check you a little more carefully. Sure. And of course now, since we're talking about during visitation, like just regular visitation right. At a minimum security, remember, this is just like college orientation weekend. It looks like a waiting room. And then in maximum security, visitation is like through that bulletproof class on the phone. It's pretty accurate. Yeah. And then there's a different kind of visitation that I think everybody likes to think about, at least thinks about whenever they hear prison. And that is conjugal visitation. Right. Yeah. It's one of the two ways that you can have sex in prison. Right. Yeah. This is far more, I guess, more governmentally defended way of having sex in prison. Yes. Concerto visits actually were originated in 1918 in Mississippi as a state prison in Mississippi, where they remain in effect. But originally they were created as a reward for hard work on the chain gangs and stuff. Right. Well, and to incentivize them to work harder too. Right. And it worked really well. Nowadays it's not used quite as overtly as an incentive or reward. Right. It is a reward for good behavior. Or you have to be like the one who can get as many visits a month as one possibly can. Level of good behavior, prisoner but it's generally defended in two ways. One is a basic human right. Like you have a right to have sex even if you're incarcerated, just like you have a right to food and water and be kept clean. Sure. Right. And then the other way, and this appears to be much more legitimate in the eyes of the correction system, it's a way to maintain the family bonds throughout a stint in prison. And that's what it's even officially called as the extended family program. So it's not just about sex. Like you can have your whole family come over and barbecue. For some prisons in Canada, I think they have their visitation areas look like apartments have barbecues. They're such voices. You can have up to three family members at a time visit, or you can just have your wife and it has to be your wife. And you have to have been married before because that's the whole point. They don't want you to turn into even more of a deviant than you were going in. They want you to keep talking to your wife and keep loving your kids, being loved by your kids, and to make that transition back out into the normal world, that much easier. Right, right. So if you're one of those serial killers and you have one of those weirdos that writes you and you marry and then you marry them, they can't come and visit you and have sex. Right? Right. No. Okay. If you are gay, however, and you have a domestic partner and you are in Mexico City, Brazil, or California, you are entitled to conjugal visits as well, which is pretty significant in California, because in 2007, you could have a conjugal visit if you were gay, but you couldn't get married if you were gay. Thanks to Proposition Eight. Yeah, but that was just overturned. Yeah. Yesterday. It's not over yet. No, but Proposition eight was overturned yesterday. Yes. So that's the skinny and conjugal visits not quite as, again, like Arrested Development. I don't think it yeah, and they don't use it a whole lot anymore. They say it's pretty uncommon. No, there's only six states. Right. Yeah. But the one thing I thought was funny, though, that one of the rules for the visiting person is the dress appropriately, and they said on the list of rules was no transparent clothing or bare midriffs strapless attire or anything with obscene or offensive language, so your wife can't get all dolled up in her baby doll lingerie. I don't know. I think they're like, can't you just put a trench coat on like everybody else? Have you not seen the movies? Exactly. And I think it's a mixed bag on whether or not experts agree. They agree and disagree, whether or not it actually serves a really good purpose. Well, yeah. And the studies on it have shown mixed results about whether or not it prevents recidivism. Yeah, that's one bonehead word. So, Chuck, you mentioned there's another way to have sex in prison, and this is one of the reasons I don't want to go to prison, because actually, there's two more ways. Oh, yeah? Well, you can have consensual sex with another man if you're in there. Okay, sure. Which doesn't necessarily mean you're homosexual. A lot of guys just there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of guys just do that because they're in there. And there's also rape that happens in prison. That's the reason I don't want to go to prison. Just one reason. In 2007, Josh, we have a statistic from the Bureau of justice. It says 4.5% of state and federal prisoners reported being raped in the past year, and that is 70,000 prisoners in a year were sexually abused by either guards or other inmates. See, that's all over the place, because I've seen other numbers. One 2004 study found that 0.5% even reported being raped while they were incarcerated. And then a lot of those were probably untrue. Well, that's the deal is reported. That's the key. Like rape goes unreported a lot. Just period. Sure. But it definitely goes unreported in prison because they don't want to be a snitch. Well, sure, but no, I think these are people who have been let out already. Oh, okay. Yeah. But then in 2003, the year before Congress created the Prison Rape Elimination Act did you know about that? Yeah. And the number they used was 13%. An estimated 13% of prisoners are raped during their incarceration, and their goal is zero. Well, yeah, they're like you have to have a zero tolerance policy on inmate to inmate rape and guard to inmate or employee to inmate rape. That kind of thing, too, because it's not just inmates raping one another. Guards at correctional facilities have been known to be a little heavy handed and possibly psychotic themselves. Yeah. I can say this because my cousin was a prison guard for a little while, a corrections officer. Cousin Wolf. Was he a high school grad? Well, he had to be. Yeah. But you don't have to go to college to be a corrections officer. No, you don't. You just have to know how to shoot a shotgun. But to be the warden, you do. Yes. Okay, josh, let's say you're in prison and you commit an offense, or you're caught raping somebody under the new zero tolerance policy. Well, if you're caught raping someone or murdering someone, you would actually go to trial. Okay. For real. But if you're caught doing something a little less offensive, you can go to the hole. They can remove your good behavior time, transfer you to a scarier prison, or, like you said, limit your visiting hours. I'm sure that's a good way to dig back at a prisoner. Sure. So you can't get visits, and you get demerits called shots, and they log those to your little file. Yeah. And they take those into consideration when you're up for a parole hearing or you're up to maybe get more visitations. Anytime they're looking at your behavior, they'll look at the shots, and they follow you around. You don't want any shots. And that's official punishment. There's also unofficial punishment needed out by guards, right? Yeah. I would rather have the official punishment, I think, because, just like in the movies, the guards can shake you down. They can investigate what you have in your room, and what they're really doing is, like, destroying the things that you've grown to depend on to keep you sane. I know. Have you ever seen Birdman of Alcatraz? Yeah. It's awful. And they take his birds away. I know. Well, and then escape from Alcatraz. They took away the one guy's paint. The old dude that painted that was, like, the only thing he loved. And they took away his canvas and his paints. Some jerk warden. It's always a jerk warden. Well, yeah, except Brewbaker. We'll talk about that, too. And guards can also beat you down. And if nobody sees it and no one reports it, then it's just what happens. Well, I think that's officially sanctioned. I don't think that they have to get permission to beat you down, if not permission to say, hey, this guy's getting a little ornery. So I'm going to break a river, too. But what I'm saying is, I think they have a pretty wide berth as to what sanctions the beating and grab. And ASCII put it, I'd like to quote them here, it is not uncommon for guards to fire shotguns at prisoners whenever they see any commotion. I didn't understand that one. And I double checked, and it says at prisoners, not just fire shotguns, like up in the air or something. It's just like, hey, you guys are scuffling kaboom. Yeah, I don't know about that one. Yeah, this is indoors. So like we said, snitches are not you don't want to be a snitch in prison. It's very much that mentality that you see in the movies where keep it quiet, don't rat on anyone. Because if you do, then who knows what's going to happen? Well, I can tell you what's going to happen. You're likely to be shanked or shaved, which is the same thing. Or rate in Shawshank. Yeah. Remember Andy's problem there with the sisters? Yeah, but he got back. That was one of the great redemption scenes of all time. I think that whole movie was great. It sure was. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was thinking of the Green Mile. Sorry. But the funny thing is, and it's not funny to the guards, but there are way more prisoners than guards. And every once in a while in history, we've had these big uprisings where the prisoners have actually taken control of the prison. Yeah, if you work at a prison, you don't want to hear the word Attica sounded out, like enchant form by one or even more one or two prisoners. Is that what they use now, is the signal? Well, no, I mean, that means that there's violent unrest right around the corner. I thought that was a signal. And I was like, Attica, I don't know if it's a signal. It's more like a call to arms. Got you. And all of a sudden there's toilet paper on fire and guys are coming at you and it's just not good. Yes. That didn't work out too well. No, it was right. And apparently Attica prison in upstate New York was really deplorable as far as its treatment of the prisoners went, which is really saying something, because they're prisoners to begin with and to have like, the prisoners even know, like, you can't do this, that's pretty bad. So they took a couple of guards hostage, rioted, held them and demanded for better treatment. And the state of New York was like, okay, all right, we hear you, and we're going to store in the prison. And I think 33 people died. 39. 39. No. Yeah, 39 guards and prisoners. Crazy. Died. And that was in 71 and then in 1980, there was one in New Mexico, right? Yeah. The New Mexico State Pen near Santa Fe was another uprising, and that was where 33 inmates were killed and no guards were killed, but seven of them were captured and beaten pretty severely. Right. And apparently some of the inmates that were killed died from torture. Oh, really? Just pleasant. I mean, think about it, Chuck. It's bad enough to go to prison, but one of the aspects of prison is that there's an end of your sentence. Right. There's a light at the end of the tunnel if you can make it. Dying in prison is about as bad as it gets, especially dying of torture in prison. Yeah, that seems pretty bad. So, Josh, let's say you don't die. Let's say you serve your time and you do get out. What goes on there? Well, you would be like 90% of all prison inmates. 90% get out. Yes. Which is one of the reasons why you want those family bonds in there, because you want to keep people on the up and up rather than prison represents a real double edged sword. Either it reforms people or it makes them worse. And a lot of that depends on how a prisoner is treated and the options given to them in prison. One of the big trends now is education as part of rehabilitation. So I think every single state prison in the US. Offers a GED course, and some of them require it for parole, which is good. Yeah. Right. There's also vocational courses, that kind of thing. Right? Yes. But once again, like in Shawshank, you can take that course and pass the test, but if you have a jerk warden, you still might get shot. You know what we should have done at the beginning of this podcast? We should have just said, everybody go watch Shawshank Redemption. Everybody will see you next week. Everyone loves that movie. Yes. Can we talk about the movies now? Are we there? Not quite. Okay. Chuck, there's a lot of people out there who don't think that prisoners should just be left to rot, that there should be prison reform, that there shouldn't be any rape, that Congress shouldn't have had to have passed a law requiring zero tolerance on prison rape. And there's actually been a prison reform movement going around since, I think, 1790, possibly earlier than that. I don't know why. Clearly it's working if it's still in effect. Yeah. The Quakers are huge on prison reform as well. And again, you want prison reform. You want your prisoners treated in a way where there is the potential for rehabilitation. Sure. Because of recidivism, right? Well, yeah, that's why they pay them to work these jobs, because they want to give them some semblance of normal life so when they get out, they can say, oh, well, I held a job in prison for the first time in my life. Maybe they were like a drug dealer or what have you. Right? Well, think about it. Recidivism, the highest rate is among property offenses, and that is a crime of the poor breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff. That's what you do when you're poor. And that's got the highest rate of recidivism. So it would seem like some sort of education or occupational program would help deter that. Well, yeah, but the other stat, though, that kind of makes me feel weird, is that I think 67% of people who commit crimes to go back into prison, it's an entirely different crime that they commit. Oh, yeah. That was really discouraging. I would think maybe if the guy just can't not steal TVs, he gets out and steal TVs. You would think so. At least go back to what he knows. But, yeah, that's a little staggering. It is. That would shut any quicker up. And what is the rate? I can't get the most recent stat, but it looks like between 50 and 60% somewhere in there from year to year for recidivism rates. Yeah. In 94, it was 67.5, right? Yeah. I think it's gone down since then. Yeah. And that's surprising because the incarceration rates have gone down, too, which is totally bucking a trend. I think they're going down. That's what you said, remember, in 2005 that the stats are based on it was 2 million and change. I'm sorry? It was 2,193,000 prisoners in the US. You said it was less than 2 million in 2009. Yes, but I think that's people that are currently incarcerated, but that doesn't necessarily mean more people aren't being incarcerated on a daily basis, because I think that's true. Because of mandatory minimums, I think more people than ever are being incarcerated. So maybe that was people that had left. I don't know. Well, whatever it was, there was a 274% increase between 1982 and 2008. Sure. That's huge. And we spent, I think, $51 billion to incarcerate people in prison. In jail. Whereas I think that comes out to $29,000 per inmate per year. And remember our bail podcast? I do. It costs $1,250 per inmate per year for probation. How much? $1200 rather than $29,000. But these minor offenses throwing these guys, especially like the car thief that was in a supermax, that was 16. Oh, yeah. I mean, come on. Nonviolent offenses? You can rehabilitate that kid. Sure. With some work. All right. So, Chuck, I think it is movie time, don't you think so? Yes. Josh movies. I made a list of my favorites. Feel free to chime in. Shawshank Redemption. That's number one for me. The Green Mile. That's not on mine. What else you got? I've got Escape from Alcatraz because I saw that when I was a kid, and it's still, like, an awesome movie. Papillon Classic with Dustin Hoffman. With the glasses. Yes, the glasses. And Steve McQueen. Right. It was in The Great Escape too. Also a great prison movie. Cool Hand Luke was probably the funniest one of the lot. The Longest yard, actually. That might have been the funniest one. Never saw either of them. Really? You're nuts. Bad Boys classic with Will Smith. No, the Sean Penn went about the juvenile detention. Sean Penn was, like 19 years old, and he was in juvenile detention. And then he filled a pillowcase up with soda cans and just annihilated this dude one night. Wow. Yeah. That's called a slack, by the way. No, that's when it's in a sock. Okay. I imagine this is me. It's called a slaves. American History X. That was pretty brutal. Yeah, that was very brutal. Brewbaker. Did you see that one? No. That's where Robert Redford went in undercover as a prisoner to sniff out how awful the prison was because he was going to be the next warden. You're talking about the natural. Yeah. And then most depressing, definitely. Midnight Express for me. The Turkish prison one. Yeah. Midnight Run was pretty depressing, really. And Animal Factory is the one I'm going to say is the most realistic. I have not seen that one. That's the one that Steve Bushimi directed and Edward Furlong. And I think William defaults in it. It's really good. And it's called Animal Factory, so you have a pretty good idea that it's realistic. I saw a Taxi to the Dark Side last night, and it's about the US's policies on torture and how we implemented them post 911. But there's a lot of prison stuff in it, like abu grave and bagram and stuff like that. It's pretty disturbing. Yeah, we didn't get into I mean, there's so much about prisons that we didn't get into here. We could do, like, three more podcasts if we wanted to, and if it seemed like we danced around something. Oh, I don't know. Capital punishment. Yeah. Didn't go there. That's coming. I can't wait to do that one. It's going to be sweeping. There's going to be top hats and people doing, like, the can can and stuff at the beginning. It's going to be enormous. Yeah. I think we have the rockets lined up with that, which we do in Prison Garden. Yes. So Chuck's telling me he's giving me the double wink, which means there is no listener mail. Right. It was too long and too full of goodness. You know what that means? That means we just haven't gotten any listener mail, so we want to hear from you. Just type some stuff out that we would find interesting. Spank it on the bottom, maybe. Yeah. Talk it first. Sure. And send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com." | ||
fae6fe1e-6abe-4356-a175-aec200d18e9c | How Alien Contact Might Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-alien-contact-might-work | If we ever found evidence of intelligent alien life (or they found us) what would we say? Who would say it for us? These seemingly silly questions are vitally important depending on your view.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | If we ever found evidence of intelligent alien life (or they found us) what would we say? Who would say it for us? These seemingly silly questions are vitally important depending on your view.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 28 Jun 2022 12:48:33 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=12, tm_min=48, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=179, tm_isdst=0) | 48192445 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck is here too, and so is Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. I don't have a shirt on. That's cool. I don't have pants on. I probably should have told you that before you got going or not at all. That is definitely the state that we're in these days. It's totally fine that you're not wearing a shirt while we're recording. I went to put one on and then I was like, why? That's a great question to ask yourself every morning, really. By the way, we should point out I just noticed I don't even think I told you this, but I noticed today I always have a Google search setting for Stuff You Should Know. When that pops up and it popped up that our board game is for sale on Amazon.com again. Finally it came back in, huh? I guess so. And it's on sale, so it's like 20% off. Even if anyone wants it, we should point out I looked at the negative reviews, this is not Trivial Pursuit. This is a completely different stuff. You should know game. The Trivial Pursuit loved and wanted to co brand. So as far as the one star reviews that say this doesn't work with my Trivial Pursuit board, I've tried to mash them together, but it's out there again. I think if people are interested in that yeah, hopefully they are. I didn't realize that was a plug until about halfway through. You're still thinking, I thought there was some story coming out of it. And then I was like, oh, I see where he's going with this. No, I just noticed that this morning. So I thought I'd mention before we get into what will admittedly be a bit of a freewheeling discussion, I think on Alien First Contact, this one didn't quite fit into what we like to do, which is sort of a tighter beginning, middle end type of thing. So I think this will be a little more freewheeling. It's actually super appropriate because that's basically the same insuish and attitude that humanity has shown toward the possibility of having to communicate with aliens thus far. Freewheeling. It's just kind of like, yeah, we'll figure that out on the fly after it happens kind of thing. In some ways, it's like, yeah, why would we waste any time figuring out what we're going to say to aliens if we're not even certain that aliens exist? But in another way, if you look at it, you can say, like, that is extraordinarily irresponsible, and really, how much time and resource and money would it take to say, hey, you group of humans who are into this, can you go figure out what we should do and what we should say? Some contingency plans, just in case? Just in case. So, I mean, it kind of just depends on your perspective, I think. But there are people out there, Chuck, who are working on this. They're just not really receiving any government funding and they may or may not be being listened to by governments around the world. But there are people who have us covered to an extent. Yes, that's a good preamble. Thank you. I guess the first thing we should talk about, briefly at least, is a couple of ways that this could go down. One of them is far less interesting than the other. Which is to say if we find evidence of primitive life. Let's say the Mars rover finds and there has been some promising evidence of life on Mars. But if we find like a mold or some weird virus or just microbes or anything on Mars. Not super exciting. But they still have to sort of prepare how they would handle that. And they have talked about that kind of thing and they basically have said that if that happened, there would be like a joint press conference and all the scientists would be involved and then they would start studying that stuff. I think the real money and sort of the fun of this discussion comes when we talk about intelligent life. Right. Because that's the money topic. It's something more like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. No, definitely, but a little more on discovering primitive life. What you just described at that press conference, that already happened back in 1996 with the Alh 84001 meteorite that turned out to be a chunk of four and a half billion year old Mars basically, that had broken off at some point and landed in Antarctica. And there is multiple circumstantial evidence on this rock that suggests that a magnetic microbe inhabited this rock at some point. That maybe within four and a half billion years ago there was microbial life on Mars, and we have evidence of it. There's a lot of people out there who are very well versed on this and say it's still not proof of life. It's still all just circumstantial evidence that, yeah, put together is pretty convincing, but it's not convincing enough to say, yes, there's life out there, but it's still up for debate even all these years later. So that press conference with the scientists who discovered it, with skeptics who present the opposite side, that has actually been put into practice before. But, yes, I agree with you, finding intelligent life elsewhere what are commonly referred to as extraterrestrial intelligence or ETIs, which sounds way smarter than just saying the aliens. Yeah, that's the money contact, for sure. Right. And within that becomes a whole host of issues and we're going to just kind of talk about all those because there are a lot of things at play here. One is we have no idea what that could look like. We have no idea if and we'll talk all throughout this about different ways we might try and communicate or pick up communication from them but we have no idea if that would even be possible or if they even have brains like we do that could process any kind of communication like we do. So there's just a lot of speculation when it comes to stuff like this. And I think that some of it probably has been informed by the movies a little bit. Right, yeah, I think it absolutely has been informed by not just movies, but, like, the science fiction genre of books and Romcoms, for sure. A little bit, definitely maybe in there. But yes, the reason why is because science fiction writers have, like, a really long, outstanding history of making fairly accurate predictions or figuring out paradoxes weird solutions to issues that normal scientists aren't necessarily thinking about, and they've contributed to the field. So it makes sense that we would kind of lean on science fiction to come up with some of these or let it influence us, too. Yeah, and there are a lot of smart people thinking about this stuff. There's a gentleman named Jacob Hawk Mizra who works at Penn State University called Nitney Lions and is an astronomer there and said basically and this is in an interview with Live Science. Said what we would probably do if we did spot some sort of intelligent life as we would probably or we should probably slow our role and just sort of watch them for a while from a distance. Try and gather information. Learn as much as we can. And then maybe at some point before we even send humans. Send out. Like a robot or something. Right, so what he's talking about? Bears. Robot. Right. What he's talking about? Bears. A really strong resemblance to a military document from the 50s that no one has a copy of but has been written off by people who supposedly have read it before back in the day. It's called Seven Steps to Contact, and it was basically that plan. We find something, we sit and observe it from a distance, we get a little closer. There is a procedure where we abduct a member of that species or whatever, if we can, to learn what we can from them. Then we announce our presence, and then we try to communicate. Right. And communicating using a probe or some sort of, like, computer makes a lot of sense, but it leads us to a really important kind of rule of thumb in this field, and that is that if we humans have come up with it, there's a really good chance that an advanced civilization that we will come in contact with has actually done it already. So if we've decided that a space probe is probably the best way to contact people, that's probably what we should be looking for, because that's probably what they will actually do. Yeah. And this is where it's sort of a heady thing to think about. But the idea is that they would be in advanced way more advanced civilization than we are. It's sort of an assumption that if they contact us or if we can make contact with them, that they're way far ahead of us in technology and that they have actually survived beyond where we are now, which is technological adolescence. It seems like we've done a lot, but Livia points out that we've only been communicating via radio for, like, 100 years, right? So we're super young. So the idea is that if there is something out there, they're way more advanced. They've survived beyond that. They have technology that they have advanced that did not end up killing them. So they survived what's called the Great Filter, which we're not even you know better than I am. How close are we to approaching that? The predictions are within the next 100 years. If we can survive the next 100 years, we might be okay. Of, like, advancing tech to the point where tech then takes over and wipes us out. Yeah. So if we can survive that, the Great Filter, that means that we'll have such a mastery of technology that we can defend ourselves from extinction in any form natural, self imposed, whatever. We'll have such a mastery of technology that it can't wipe us out, and we can't be wiped out. And so the lifespan of humans could go on for billions of years. So if we detect an advanced civilization, what they tell us, Chuck, is that it's possible to make it through the Great Filter, because we don't know if that's the case or not. All the evidence we have is that we're the only intelligent life in the universe. So that raises the question, are we the only intelligent life in the universe because all other intelligent life has destroyed itself as it's tried to go through the Great Filter, right? And if so, does that mean we're about to destroy ourselves because we're about to go through the Great Filter, or there never any or was it already in the past? Was there some other stage in evolution that we've already gone through? And so if we come in contact with an advanced civilization, they show us that the Great Filters probably behind us, and we have a long, happy, technologically advanced life ahead of us for our species, right? We should probably break. But before we do, I do want to mention that that same Jacob Hawke misera also points out kind of the obvious. But we do need to mention it that they may are like this whole idea that we could be out there watching them. Potentially, they may already be out there watching us, and we just don't know about it. And then we would be in a reactive mode rather than a proactive mode. And it's just something to think about. We're not, like, trying to say aliens, man, but just because we don't know what's out there yet doesn't mean that they don't know that we're out there. No. And again, it's probably not aliens if we're being observed. It's probably a probe of some sort. And the spot dejure that people are suggesting where it would be hiding out is in a coorbital asteroid out in the asteroid belt that has the same orbit as Earth around the sun, but doesn't orbit Earth. And that would provide a really great hidden spot to check out Earth and kind of keep tabs on us because he would be crazy enough to fly their spaceship into an asteroid field. Well, what's really exciting is we'll probably be mining asteroids in the next 20, 30, 50 years. So if that's the case, we would find that probe and possibly Han Solo. That's right. Super old Han Solo with a single diamond earring for some reason. Right. All right, let's take that break, and we will come back and talk about a topic that we previously covered SETI right up to this. All right, we have a whole episode on SETI, the search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Was that one at Comic Con? No, because we got a UFO one at Comic Con. I think that's the one you're thinking of. That's the one I'm thinking of, yeah. Those are always fun with those. Definitely the Comic Con. That is. They were always fun because we had a mix of stuff you should know, listeners, but also sort of arms crossed nerds. It entertained me. Yeah. That ended up liking what we did, generally. Yeah. So I just have to say now, anytime I hear ComicCon have you seen Love on the Spectrum? US? The new season of Love on the Spectrum. No, I never saw the old edition. Oh, you got to see the new one. So there's a new one, and there's one regular person I want to say character, but it's like real life. Sure. So there's one person on it. Her name's Danny, and she's, like, super into animation and is just laser focused on finding a partner who is equally into animation as she is, which is really tough because she's really into it. But one of her first questions in any one of the dates she goes on is, have you heard of Comic Con, or do you feel you would ever want to go to Comic Con? Or something similar to that. It's really super cute. I think you can say cast member. I think that still covers reality. Oh, it does? Okay. Yes. So one of the cast members named Danny. Yeah. All right. So SETI. Like I said, search for extraterrestrial intelligence. You can listen to that full episode. There is a key body for SETI called the International Academy of Astronautics, and they are non governmental, and they were founded in 1960. And what they try to do is bring together experts from all over the world. I think there are 77 member countries at this point. It is UN recognized. So it's not just a bunch of crack bots out there talking about aliens. Yeah. And they helped establish some protocols in the late eighties and then updated them in 2010. Just sort of some guidelines about how to handle it if said he did find something. Yeah, and they're really kind of basic and boring, even when you stop and think you're talking about discovering and searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. But it's good that they do this. They provided a baseline so that if you're a scientist working in this field, you know, oh, I can speak to the press, or, oh, I haven't really confirmed this discovery, so I shouldn't announce it yet. There's just really basic guidelines that I think if you are in the grip of having discovered something like this, it would be really helpful to be able to refer to them, I think. Yeah. And I think what's promising about these guidelines is they talk a lot about being honest and open with the press. Like you said. And working together with people from all scientists from all over the world and forming task groups and not jumping the gun in the movies. If you get the computer screen pops up an alien signal. Like. The first thing you do is type back an answer. Like they say. No, don't type back any answer. You are not the guy in the chair. What we need to do is take our time with this stuff and consult everybody, including the UN. On Best Next Steps. Right. The guy in the chair who's big, sweaty, bearded, and has a really affectionate relationship with the heroine who's actually interested in the mail lead. Yeah, you just described me right now. Except that guy has on the shirt. Right. So you've got what you've got searching. You do it transparently. You're supposed to communicate with the public. And as we'll see, if you think about it, if you pay any kind of attention to science journalism, there's all sorts of discussion and talk about searching the stars for extraterrestrial intelligence these days. And that is part of this protocol. Like, keep the public informed, tell them everything you're doing, tell them what you're finding. And then later on, as we'll see, tell them how excited they should be about that. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess we should talk about that. They actually have a scale that they developed to gauge how excited the general public would be about finding something out. And it's called the Rio Scale. And it was proposed by astronomers Yvonne Almar of Hungary and Jill Charter of the United States in 2000. And it's kind of funny. It's based off, or at least modeled on the Torino Scale, which is a scale of the effects of an asteroid hitting the Earth. But it's how excited would the public be? And what's funny about it, it's a zero to ten. And one of the examples that Livia gives is all right, let's say they found a pretty foolproof report that they found of a signal from potentially intelligent life, but they found it in the archives, like, hey, we dug this up from 2002, and it's confirmed, and it was a signal of alien life trying to speak to us. That ranks at two out of ten. Right. And two is nominally low important. I just think that's so telling people in there, like, having to be so in the moment, like, when did this happen? Okay. Yawn. Right? So it's not just, like, how excited the public will be. It's also how excited you should tell the public to be, like, how important finding this is. Right, right. So you would turn around and it strikes me as really weird, too, that, hey, we found a beacon that we've confirmed is from an intelligent life outside of our galaxy, but it's not that important. That's weird. The wow signal wasn't the what? EVs signal. They were excited about it. They included an exclamation point. Right. I should point out, though, that same signal, if they found that, like, right now, tomorrow, they said that would rank as seven out of ten. So it would be newsier, I guess. Right. So seven is high importance, and then ten is oh, my gosh. Oh, man. Oh, jeez. Yeah, that's that level of importance. Yeah. Well, which is potentially like, panic level, right? It is. Because basically you essentially have contact, is what a ten would be, or a signal that is coming to us from our solar system that we can study. It's all about how credible and reliable it is. And the first Rio scale that was introduced in 2000, I think you said that was updated here, there, I think, in 2003, and then in 2018, I believe there was an update to it. So much so that they call it Rio 2.0. It was led by Duncan Forgen of the center for Exoplanet Science at the University of St. Andrew in Scotland. Go, Scotland, go. Golfers, I'm sure, is the University of St. Andrew Master. And so he and company updated the Rio scale to make it even more robust. And again, it all comes down to how credible is this information? Right? Like, how credible is this discovery? Can we study it? What do other scientists in the field think about it? And you put all this together and then you say, this is low importance, this is high importance, this is as important as it comes. And then you tell the public, we found something, and the importance of it is as important as it comes. Or it's not that important, which would be a tin, which is she dances on the sand. I don't know what that means, but I like the sound of it. Chuck. All right. Should I point it out or should I let you just discover it later or never at all? Or maybe someone will email and tell you, no, point it out. I hate it when people email to tell me stuff that I missed. It was a dad joke. An 80s kid of the 80s dad joke. Okay. All right. I've got. Maybe Mr. No, you're close. It's the Rio scale. She dances on the sand. Yeah. That is great. I can't believe I know. Is it all right? It was great. It's a great song. Okay. Bad reference to it is by proxygrade. Should we talk about Seth? Yeah. Just one more thing before we pass on from the Rio scale. One of the important things is the reason why the scale is so varied from low importance to she dances on the sand. Importance is you're supposed to communicate this to the public. If it's low importance, that doesn't mean don't bother. It means go tell the public we found this, but it's actually not that big of a deal. It's instructing astronomers how to present this to the public, how excited you should tell them to be, how important it is. Yeah. And then also, before we go on to set up, once you actually have a detection there's that set a permanent committee from the IAA. They have protocols for when you do actually confirm you have detected an alien signal or presence somehow. Right. So it's all sort of set up. Yeah. And so if they're broadcasting on the electromagnetic band, which we are out there looking for, so hopefully that's what they're using, that band would be protected. Everybody else would get kicked off of that band, and then that band would be studied as intensively as an electromagnetic band has ever been studied in the history of humanity. I love that. And then lastly, Chuck, there's a protocol not to respond. Again, you're the guy in the chair. Like you said, you don't get to respond. But neither do the astronomers. Neither do like the IAA. It's meant to become an international global discussion on how humanity should reply to this. And that's based on the idea that how we reply is going to have a really big impact on how the conversation goes from that point on. Well, yeah, because what we don't know, and one of the things that I think would be the most pins and needles sort of thing to find out is whether these ETIs are what they call selfish or whether they're universalist. So are they here to help us and say, we have all this great technology, then we can help you out. By the way, we have a cure for cancer. You might be looking for that. Sure. Well, I guess that would be the universalist or are they selfish and are they here to conquer us? And there was a researcher that you dug up that pointed out something kind of key, which is, sure, we wonder if they are selfish or universalist, but I don't know if anyone has noticed. Everything we talk about is how it benefits or is bad for us. So we are definitely on the selfish side because nobody at all is talking about how we might be able to possibly help them. Right, and it sounds pretty goofy and childish to say, like they want to conquer us or whatever, but there's actually legitimate reasons an alien intelligence would want to conquer us. They might want our resources to exploit for their own uses. That's a big deal. They love corn. They may also basically have their own protocol where anytime they meet intelligent life, they snuff it out because they don't want any potential future rivals to come along. And it's not worth their while to investigate that life further to see if it ever would be arrival. So they just wipe it out wherever they encounter. So, yes, it sounds childish at first, but when you start to think about it, it becomes a little eye popping because there are universal you would expect universal reasons for them to harm us, and they're predicated on the idea that natural selection is a universal phenomenon, that all life, or more to the point, no life, just comes fully formed into being out of nowhere. It progresses from other forms of life and develops along the way. And so it makes sense that it would happen elsewhere in the universe. And if that's the case, then, yeah, you could make a really good case that there are destructive intelligences out there that just wipe out competition and rivalry. Yeah, the other option too, though, is that's hanging out there is they may have initially been selfless or universalist or benevolent, and then they either accidentally infect us somehow. I mean. We've seen that if you look to our own past of when conquering colonialists. Invaded foreign lands and brought their disease with them. It's not a far stretch to think that could happen on an interplanetary or I guess. Well. Sure. Interplanetary level or that doesn't happen and they come here and they want to help us out. But then they study us for a while and hang out and they're like. You people are awful. Either they undermine us some way by accident or on purpose, or then they decide to wipe us out. Right, because they place a higher value on life in general. And they're like, these guys are actually a threat to life in general. So maybe if they are utilitarians, it would make sense for them to eliminate us to save more life. Right, because, again, let's say we actually did encounter an advanced civilization. Their perspective is much different than ours. We have no idea how long humans will be around. And frankly, those of us living today in the 21st century probably have a shorter idea of what the human lifespan is than people in the past did. Right, so they're coming at it like these guys might be around forever, and who knows how technologically advanced they could become so they could see it as beneficial to the greater good by getting rid of us now, like going back and strangling Hitler in his crib when he was a baby or something like that. That would be their opportunity to do that because we would be utterly defenseless against a civilization that was so advanced it could come visit us. But baby Hitler is the human race. Exactly. In this case, which is really sad, but yeah. Right. Let's just move on to setup, which we were going to do minutes ago. But I told you this would be freewheeling, everybody. It was so freewheeling. I have one other thing. Really? Go ahead. I have two other things, actually. So we actually have legitimate reason to believe that they wouldn't be a conquering type because, number one, they're very long lived. That's our assumption. Right. Okay. And if they're very long lived, they're probably a cooperative society because noncooperative societies fight amongst themselves and can end up wiping themselves out. They're much likelier to. So if we encounter an advanced civilization that is very, very long lived, has been around for millions or billions of years, as a species, they probably are super peaceful because they learned along the way and maybe even evolved along the way to cooperate. So it would be more likely that they would be those universalists that we met. Okay. And then there's one other example of life here on Earth where there was, like, positive contact, not necessarily between societies, but between an encoded version of a society and a new society. And that was when the Spanish Moors of the 12th century discovered lost Greek knowledge, and they turned around and introduced it to Europe, and it brought Europe out of the medieval or Dark Ages into the Renaissance. It was triggered just by this knowledge that had been lost. So you can imagine that if we were suddenly bestowed with a tremendous amount of new knowledge, who knows where we could go with it? Well, yeah. And that brings up a point, which is if we're talking about what might happen if a super advanced civilization got in touch with us and you want to do that brain experiment, one way to sort of go about that might be to look back at our past and say, well, what's happened in the history of humanity when the equivalent of that has happened? Which is like, let's say more like advanced. And it might as well have been aliens contacting humans, but a much more advanced European nation, like going into a primitive tribe and deep in the Amazon. And the answer isn't pretty if you don't know anything about world history. Yeah. So if you want to look to the past of how humans have kind of operated when they're the advanced civilization, maybe a little humility going forward. And what might happen to us is in order. Right? For sure. And we'll talk about societal impacts, but that really kind of sheds a little light on that foreshadows it at least that like, whether we wanted to feel humbled or not, we probably would if we. Encountered an advanced civilization. All right. I think we beat around the bush so far that we can actually take a break. Okay. And then talk about porcelain is just sitting out there. It's a fun bush to beat, though, isn't it? It really is. I like this kind of stuff. Good. All right. We'll be right back with CETA, I promise. Okay, Chuck Seta, I got a few more points to make. So if SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, seth is the search for extraterrestrial artifacts. Because again, there's a lot of people out there who say the best way to explore the universe is through machines that we deploy and then send back information. And maybe you're so advanced that they can actually serve as ambassadors for the civilization. Right. So not only maybe that should be our way forward for us, but with Seta, it's a search for extraterrestrial artifacts. Maybe we should also really keep an eye out. Not just because typically we've been listening for things and they said maybe we should also be looking for evidence of a probe. As far as us doing it, there are some benefits. One is that maybe they wouldn't know where we're coming from. Like we're not literally sending out a beacon from where we are just in case they are dangerous. So if they found our probe, unless it was stamped Made in the USA, which it probably would be with a map to the map, Dallas, Texas, they wouldn't know where we are. So there is potential benefit there. But I think that it's interesting the idea that we should be looking for stuff out there, maybe in those asteroid fields. Yeah. So back in the mid eighty s, a couple of steady researchers, robert Frieda's Junior and Francisco Valdez, they basically said we can conceive of three different classes of artifacts that an intelligence and extraterrestrial intelligence might send out. And they weren't talking about this kind of von Newman probe or something like that. They were saying as far as detection goes, it would be put into three categories. The first one is ones that actively seek out other intelligences. The second one is one that avoid detection. And then the third one are ones where the extraterrestrial intelligence is indifferent to whether we find it or not. And after examining it, they said we should be looking exclusively for class three artifacts because class one we would have detected already because they would have come and found us if they were seeking attention. And then class two we're never going to find because this is an advanced civilization. So we would just gas that they would be able to keep us from knowing that we were being watched. Yeah. Like maybe they just figured out invisibility something as basic as that. Sure. Yeah. So we should look for the ones where they're like, who cares if they find the sold space junk? Right. And that's actually what is thought to be by at least one astronomer. Do you know about that? Excuse you. Oumuamua. Was that the guy that's working on the Galileo Project now? Loeb. Yeah, avi Loeb. All right. Well, yeah. Talk about Uamua, then we'll talk to you about the Galileo Project, I think. Okay. So MUA means, I think, like, visitor, and it was found in 2017. We're not quite sure what it is. It's probably a hunk of a planet. But the one thing everybody agrees on, it's not from our solar system, it's from another star system, because it doesn't move like anything in our star system does. But it supposedly has been observed exhibiting gravitational acceleration, non gravitational acceleration, meaning it's accelerating faster than gravity would suggest it would on its own. Right. Which means, like, it might be propelled by something which is crazy to think about. And that Avi Loeb we were talking about is a Harvard astronomer and came out and was one of the only people that came out and says, straight up, I think this is alien technology. And so Abi Loeb is who launched the Galileo Project in 2021, which is the only sort of active set of thing that we have going right now. And right now. There was the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Report last year from the US. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and that's basically they were meeting about that. Even just recently, the government the US. Government is finally saying, like, all right, we don't need to be embarrassed about talking about this stuff. There are things that we've seen that we can't identify. They are unidentified flying objects that our military has seen, like our best pilots are reporting about. So we should start talking about this. And part of that was this report. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon report. And the Galileo Project is sort of combing through. That also has some telescopes going now, watching for objects. I'm not sure, like, how vast that is at this point, but it's just launched a year ago, so I'm sure they're getting going. Yeah. And we should say Avi Loeb is viewed alternatively as a genius or a maverick or rogue or crackpot, but he does have legitimate bona fide. He's not one of those guys. He parks his camper on the campus of Harvard. So he's a Harvard astronomer. Like, he's a legitimate he was the head of the astronomy department for quite a while, I believe. Yeah. He thinks, from what I read, that, umuumua, is a billions of years old, defunct alien probe that no longer works or operates and just happened to stumble into our solar system for us to find accidentally. What does it look like? I didn't even look it up. I should have. It looks like a kind of cigar shaped. It's apparently between 303,000ft long and 115ft thick. I'm looking at it now. You're generous with the cigar. It looks like a joint. Okay. Straight up. Yeah, it looks like a splif. It does so, yeah, it looks like an alien split is probably what it is. Maybe they're sending us a message. I've never used the word split before in my life until just now. Yeah, I don't say that word either. No way too for us, I think. Oh, is that hip? It didn't used to be. Oh, I don't know. I think it was European, maybe at first, right? Didn't used to be. Yeah. I don't know. We are so cool. I have no idea. So, Chuck, if we run into somebody or somebody finds us or we just detect life and figure out a way to communicate with it, we're going to immediately hit a wall because the idea that we'll be able to communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence presumes a lot of factors and variables that would have to be in place that may or may not. And if you take one or two of them out, we're totally up the creek as far as communicating goes. Yeah. That's why I always loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind because even as a kid, I remember thinking how cool it was that they didn't just like, hold up a sign that said, hey, how are you? And that they use and that they use the and the lights. I thought that was kind of cool because we don't know if they even have the same senses that we have as far as hearing something or seeing something. There is a book that someone put out, a German mathematician named Hans Freudenthal called Lincoln Lincos colon design of a language for cosmic intercourse. And by that he means speaking to one another, I think, and this is kind of funny, livi included a quote from an astrophysicist that said, it's the most boring book I've ever read. Logarithm tables are cool compared to it, and it sounds like it's not anything you'd want to read, but it is linked to this radio wave language that this guy came up with that basically conveys symbols from math and science, from Latin, symbolic logic. And it starts very fundamental and then gets like these are numbers and they're conveyed to you through pulses, and then it gets a little more advanced as it goes. Not to say that Linkos is like everyone's like, oh, we should just use Linkos, but it is to say that very smart people have thought about how do we even think about thinking about communicating with these things? So from what I can tell, you could use Linkos. It would be something that we could try to use. It's like that established. And that book actually kicked off a field of study that's still around today, and I think it's kind of getting going called xeno linguistics, which is basically the idea of how do you speak to a culture that you don't share anything in common with? Potentially, yeah. Yeah. Because if we talk to an extraterrestrial intelligence, it will be unlike talking to anything that we've ever tried to talk to before, including non human animals, because nonhuman animals have shared a lot of the same experiences that we have here on Earth. I saw it pointed out in one paper. Humans share 50% of our DNA with a carrot. Right. These intelligence, we would have basically nothing in common with no shared experiences. And like you said, we might not even have the same senses. And so when you start to see what's stacked up against us, what if they don't communicate using their eyes or their mouths or sound and they use magnets instead, or magnetism? It would be totally lost on us. We might not even sense it in any way, shape or form. And even if we did, we wouldn't know how to put it into whatever thought they were trying to convey. Yeah, I mean, there are very smart people. There's a gentleman named John Billingham who is a leader in that field and a social psychologist named Roger Haines who have worked a lot with historians and scientists and psychologists about how to do this and the repercussions. But there are people like Bellingham that have said, hey, this is likely impossible. Like we should think about these scenarios, but we should all prepare ourselves for the fact that we just may not be able to communicate with them at all, ever. Right. And even if we do, we would be communicating with them on intergalactic distances, which is Carl Sagan put out. Like, even if we communicate with somebody 50 light years away, which is pretty close considering how big the universe is, our conversations back and forth would still take 100 Earth years. So not only would we have to gather everybody together to come up to some consensus on what we're going to say, we would have to keep that consensus and that level of coordination and cooperation going over multiple generations just to have one back and forth. Yeah, like people are working on this and they know that their great granddaughter is going to follow through on it, or the hope is that they will. Right. Which is kind of cool if you think about it. It is something that could really bring humanity together. It could also be just another thing that divides us further because, I mean, when was the last time we came to a global consensus on anything? Have we ever? Yeah. It is an interesting thought experiment, though, to think about. And these are the things that these groups of people that John Billingham and Roger Hens get together and they talk about this stuff, is to explore the idea of some of the first things that we should want to find out is, is there a universal set of ethics or morals? Do they believe in something like a god like we do? Did they evolve it all? Do they only look at things as, like, predators and prey? Like, are we screwed to begin with? Would they mirror us at all. So it's all really heavy and interesting, I think, and I just think it's cool that people are out there thinking of this stuff. Yeah. And there are people thinking of it, for sure, but probably not enough. And in 2020, a group of researchers got together, led by Katherine Denning and Stephen Dick, and they created a white paper that was signed by NASA researchers, SETI members, other experts, who basically said, hey, we need to be throwing a lot more funding at it, we need to be doing a lot more research, and this is important. And they cited the World Economic Forum back in 2010. Every year, the World Economic Forum puts out a global risks paper, and in 2013, they included a list of X factors, which are possibilities in the not too distant future that could happen to humanity that we just couldn't possibly predict for, especially because we're not doing anything to try to predict. And one of those X factors was being contacted or discovering life off of Earth. Yes. I would say that's pretty high on the list. Do you know the other ones? Yeah. Runaway climate change, of course. Profound cognitive enhancement. Like, I have them tattooed on my forearm in Elfish. Rogue geoengineering projects. That could be a problem because there's actually, like, rich people thinking about doing stuff like that. And then the cost of living longer, which I found fascinating. But it's true. We can barely support humans through age 80 now, socially speaking, how are we going to support people if life expectancy doubles in the next 2030, 40, 50 years? Yeah, it's a good question. I got to say, if you're probably too shy to plug your own show, but if this kind of stuff interests you guys, you should definitely, if you haven't already, listened to The End of the World with Josh Clark, your ten part series. Ten, right? Yeah, ten. Thank you. It's great, and it's very heady and smart and thought provoking, so I'm plugging it. That is very nice. Thank you, Chuck. I appreciate it. It lives on. It's still there. It is. It's still there to go. Be listened to. If you want to listen to it for free. Wherever you get podcasts, it's not old news. It's free. Yeah, no, it's definitely still out there because the world hasn't ended yet. That's what I always say. Somebody should jump on that and do a limited series documentary on it. I've talked to a couple of people about it, and it just hasn't ever quite worked or worked out, so I'm still open to the idea, for sure. Well, that just goes to show how hard it is to get any TV project off the ground with email, really. But if anyone out there does that kind of stuff, you should get in touch with Josh and do man, Chuck, I owe you a fiverr at least for this. Well, just don't quit the show if that happens and we're all good. I definitely won't. This is where my heart is, man. Good work, wise. Yeah, sure. You have to for the outburst. I didn't want anybody to think I was, like, a total weirdo loser. Right? He loves work like that. Yeah. Usually home is where the heart is, Josh. Right, you guys. Your priorities mixed up. You got anything else? Nothing else. All right, everybody. Well, since Chuck said nothing else and plugged the end of the world with Josh Clarke quite nicely, that means it's time for listener mail. That's right. And there's nothing like a nice, intelligent heady discussion followed by pedantic. You said the wrong words. Email. This is a nice guy, though. I like Danny. Hey, guys. Long time listener. He was very squeamish about even mentioning these things. I'm a longtime listener. I love everything you guys do, and I hate that I'm giving in to pedantry. But the amazing free press episode was all I could take. Naturally, with that topic. I believe Chuck said people's voices were being squashed. I hate to say Chuck, the word is squashed. And the reason I hate to say it is that squashed is a much more fun word to say. Yeah, I'll probably still say squashed because I just like saying it. You're not off the hook, though, either, my friend, while I'm on it. So sorry. I have to get it off my chest. And it bugs me when Josh says to look up contemporary articles about a topic meaning from the topic's time period. This is an amazing insight, but the word he's looking for is contemporaneous. Contemporary will always mean articles from right now. Contemporaneous means from the same time as that topic. Can't you see Danny, like, at his computer and his hands are shaking because he's using all his might to stop himself? He's like, can't I know? Correcting. I think that was the deal. He says, please don't roast me for being a pedant. You guys are a true inspiration. I wouldn't say anything about it if I thought it would offend you and know how graceful you are about such things. So Danny really set us up where we had you really did. Nice. Yeah. Good email, Danny. Thanks for sending it in. It was. And, Danny, if I start using contemporaneous in reference to articles from a certain time, it's because of you. That's right. And as evidence that we didn't squash your voice, we are open to criticism. That's very good, Chuck. If you want to be like Danny, just don't. Just send us an email about something else. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Is there a dark side of the moon? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-there-a-dark-side-of-the-moon | Josh and Chuck explore the old notion that there's a dark side of the moon. There is, but it turns out it's not always the same side. And yes, there's a side we never see, but it's not always dark. Make sense? It will in this episode. | Josh and Chuck explore the old notion that there's a dark side of the moon. There is, but it turns out it's not always the same side. And yes, there's a side we never see, but it's not always dark. Make sense? It will in this episode. | Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:24:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=13, tm_min=24, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=210, tm_isdst=0) | 28521695 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's someone in our heads, but it's not us. Nice. And there's is Jerry over there. She's got her own self in her head she's not a loony our band does that song. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's one of my favorites. It's a good one. We do it in the basement. It's not like actually, we did it at one public show, and afterwards everyone was like, we shouldn't do this song out. Oh, really? Yeah. I was like, Man, I love it. Yeah. Were you like that was out of sight. I thought it was totally groovy and the audience didn't like it or I think the rest of the band felt like there's a bunch of songs we do just in the basement for our own fun. Right. And then there's the songs that we'll do in front of people twice a year. You guys do yakity sacks in the basement. Did you see Dolly Parton played that live at that huge festival? And she did a good job. Yeah, it was at Panorue, right? No, it was at the one is it Glastonbury out in the UK? Dolly Parton doing yakit sax, playing the saxophone at Glastonbury. Yes. Who would have thought that would ever happen? She had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand. Yes. She's putting out a new album that she's calling her gay friendly dance album. Yeah. Is it the name of the album or the name of the track is just a Wee Bit Gay or something like that? I thought that's just how she described it. Is that the name of one of the songs? I don't know. It wasn't quote, but I couldn't tell if that was because it was a title or quote. Yeah. Well, she's got a huge following in the gay community and she embraces it fully. Yes, she does. And there's always been rumors about her. Oh, I don't think those are correct. Well, I mean, doesn't mean there aren't rumors out there. She has a long term husband. Yeah, she been married for, like, 50 years. But I think the fact that he's, like, try and find a picture of this guy, he's a total recluse, and she just says, that's just the nature of our relationship. Yes. Have you been to it's like that Oprah thing? She has a really close girlfriend, and everyone is like, oh, well, of course, right. Oprah and gayle are gay. You can't be friends, lifelong friends with someone of the same sex. Right? Yes. Have you been to Dollywood? I have not. Still. You should go to Dollywood. There's a Dolly Park Museum that's part of Dollywood that's, like, worth the admission by itself. Can you just go to the museum? There's no reason to just go to the museum. But yeah, you could. I mean, it's worth going just for the museum. Sure. But then when you exit the museum, you've got all the rest of Dollywood to go hang out at, which is substantial. She's updated it. And there's roller coasters, which I don't ride. You don't ride roller coasters at all? No. You mean I went with some friends and, like, everybody else is riding roller coasters, and we were just like, that's. Okay. Have you never ridden roller coasters? I've ridden roller coasters before, but I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm like, I don't feel like being terrified out of my mind right now. Okay. So that's the reason. All right. Dark Side of the moon is off to a banging start. Yes. Who'd have thought Dolly Parton would make an appearance in this one? Dolly Parton. So, Chuck, we're talking about the dark side of the moon. Yes. And it turns out there is such a thing as the dark side of the moon, but it's just misused in the popular vernacular of the dark side of the moon is that there's another side of the moon that we never see, and it's dark. It's out there, exposed to the cold chill of space. And the dark side of the moon is the side of the moon we never see. Yeah. The one that faces opposite our purview. Right. There is a side of the moon that we don't see. Right. We're going to go ahead and call it The Far Side of the Moon. Yes. And I think that song would be equally as cool. I was thinking about it if it was see you on the far side of the moon. Yeah. That's even, like, a little more psychedelic, if you ask me. Yeah, because of the whole far out thing. I don't know. It resonated far out. In fact, in the basement. I'm going to start singing that. Are you going to adapt it? Yeah. Okay. There you go. Just not out. Never again. So there is a far side of the moon. There is a side of the moon that we don't see. People are correct in assuming that. And there is a dark side of the moon, and sometimes the dark side of the moon and the far side of the moon are one and the same, but sometimes they're not. Yeah. It gets a little confusing, but everything I just said is true. Yeah. And it's our job to get you to wrap your heads around this like we had to. Yes. Because it's extraordinarily confusing. It's almost like, why couldn't just the popular conception be correct? Because this is kind of difficult until you wrap your head around it, and then it's easy. Yeah. But it is hard at first, everybody. So buckle in, tie your shoes on tight, maybe pack a granola bar, and let's get down to this. All right, so I guess we can start by saying that the moon is not like the sun. It doesn't generate that warm, lovely glow itself. That you see, I think most people know at this point that that is reflection from the sun, and the Moon is really big, and that's why it looks super bright. It's not really very reflective, but it's large. It is. So on a dark, dark night, a full Moon looks really super bright because it's big. Yeah. And that's from sunshine, sun shining on the Moon. That's what makes the Moon glow to us. There's also something called Earth shine. And when there's no sunshine hitting the Moon, as far as we can see, the Earth is still reflecting light on it. And they've recently found out that the Moon, if you can somehow and they figured out how to, using radio telescopes, subtract any kind of sunlight interference and just isolate the Earth shine. If you could just see that, then what you would be seeing is a kind of dark, turquoise, cobalt blue moon. Yeah. So technically, the dark side of the Moon is turquoise. Yes. And they have figured that out for the first time. It was just this year. Right. It was published. Yeah. So that's exciting new news, because they've tried for a long time. That's right. But it took some smart people, and people used to be dumb. Yeah. So there is a side of the Moon, like we said, that we just don't see. And you would think, well, that's because the Moon orbits the Earth. Right. Which it does. And so if the Moon is just sitting there stationary, orbiting around the Earth, of course we're going to see the same side all the time. That's a fallacy. That's right. As a matter of fact, if the Moon orbited the Earth and didn't rotate around its own axis, we would see all sides of the Moon at some point during that lunar orbit, which we call a month. Sure. And you can test this by just getting a tennis ball and keeping it still and rotating it around your hand and pretend your hand is Earth. And you would see at some point, the Earth would see all sides of that tennis ball. That's right. The trick is the Moon rotates on its own axis at the same rate that it rotates around in orbit. And so now, if you take that tennis ball well, you'd have to be pretty precise to spin it. But if you could spin it at the same rate that you're going around, you would notice and there's a handy animation on this article on how stuff works.com. I thought it was a little fast. Well, I did two, actually. I think they need to go in and slow that thing down a little bit. It's handy and fast. Yeah. But you would notice that if it's spinning on its own axis at the same rate that it's spinning in orbit, then you're going to see that same side. Right. And it seems like a miracle, but it's not. It's a mind boggling, colossal, cosmological coincidence. No, it's not coincidence. Okay, well, then I'm hoping you can explain this to me because, Chuck, what you've just said, I think it bears repeating. The Moon's orbit around Earth lasts 29.5 days. That's right. The Moon also rotates on its axis. That rotation. The Earth rotates on its axis. That lasts about 24 hours. We call that a day. The Moon rotates on its axis, so it has a day too, but it's day last 29.5 days. So the Moon's rotation on its own axis and its orbit around Earth are the same. Which is why, no matter where you are on Earth, you can't see anything but the near side of the Moon. Because even though it's rotating on its axis, it's revolving in orbit at the same speed at the same rate around the Earth. So you will never see anything but the near sight. Should we say this a third time? This was what got me the most. That's why I'm saying it again. This was mind boggling to me. So there's a day side of the Moon and the night side of the Moon, just like there is on Earth. If you built a little Moon lunar cabin which would be great, by the way. Yeah. You would see a sunrise and a sunset. I don't know if it would look exactly the same. Well, it would take a month. Yeah. It would be a very slow sunrise and a very slow sun. That'd be nice. What to us is a month. A lunar month, right. Which involves the four phases of the Moon the waxing, the waning, the gibbons, the crescent, the full, the new, all that jazz, the super. Yeah. That, to the Moon, is a day. Yeah. So our whole concept of there being a far side of the Moon and dark side of the Moon and phases of the Moon to the Moon, it's just like, hey, man, this is just a day to me. I'm just the Moon. Right. Reflecting light. Because just like over the course of 24 hours on Earth, different parts of the Earth are exposed to the sunlight. Over the course of 29.5 days, thanks to the rotation of the Moon, different parts of the Moon are exposed to sunlight. Yeah. So that far side of the Moon that we never see because of the rotation and the orbit being the same for the Moon still gets bathed in sunlight for two weeks out of the year. Yeah. And sometimes we're seeing the night side. Sometimes you're seeing the day side. It just depends on when it happens to fall during that lunar day. Right. It's not the same thing as our day. Yeah. It is confusing. That's why I said it twice, but not a third time. Well, I guess we should explain a little something about gravity. And we did cover this. We did something on the tides, right? Tidal bulge. Yeah. Is that a video? At least once we've discussed it. I know we've done it at some point. The reason that everything is in synchronicity like that is because of gravity. It's because Earth is exerting gravitational pull on the moon and it's locked it in with us. But the moon is doing the same thing to us, and it's also getting further away from us, about an inch and a half a year, I think, 1.48 inches per year. And that's what causes tidal bulge. The gravitational force on us causes the tidal bulge on the near side when the moon has the greatest pull. So water is going to be pulled toward the moon and inertia is overcome by gravity. And on the far side, the opposite is true, but they're both bulges when it's at its nearest point in orbit and its furthest point in orbit. Right. Yeah. Okay. So if the moon is moving further away from us by 1.48 inches per year, that means millions and billions of years from now, things are going to be completely different. Yeah. Like a billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted 18 hours, and I think the month was 20 days long. 20 days, yeah. And then now, thanks to gravity and the effect of the moon on Earth and vice versa, the Earth's rotation is slowing. Right. Yeah. And eventually, I think in a billion or two years, the day is expected to be about 40 current Earth days long. Yeah. It says 40 days. So that's interesting. I've never thought about that in terms of the evolution of mankind. Not many people not doing a whole lot. Not a lot going on short days now everyone's populating the planet. Longer days and longer days. Yeah. It's all coincidental, I'm sure. Yeah. I wonder what impact it would have on our sleep cycle if we still have one a billion years from now. Yeah. All right, so coming up in just a second, we're going to talk about the phases of the moon because there's some misconceptions about that, too. So, Chuck, you had promised everyone that we would talk about the phases of the moon. I think that's called a tease. I think you should deliver on it. Yeah, well, I think Strickland, jonathan Strickland of Tech stuff wrote this article, by the way, that we're working from, and there are some misconceptions about the faces of the moon. He thinks. And I agree. One is that a new moon occurs when the Earth is blocking light from the sun. And if you're just a dumb human like me, and you look up and see a new moon, that's sort of what it looks like. It looks like the Earth is blocking it. Right. The sun. Because you can almost see the shadow clearly. That's what's going on. Right, right. But it's not true. No. Because the moon is actually in between the Earth and the sun at that point. Yes. Which makes that impossible. When the moon is full, the Earth is between the sun and the moon, right. You're saying? Well, no. During a new moon, the moon is between the sun and the Earth. Yeah, exactly. But for a full moon, the Earth is between the sun and the moon. Correct. So both of them are kind of counterintuitive. Totally. But they make sense when you remember that the whole reason the moon glows is because of its exposure to sunlight. Right. So if the moon if we see the side that's being exposed to sunlight, that means that the Earth is between the sun and the moon. That's right. Because that's the only way we could see that part exposed to sunlight. Yeah. But if the moon is between the sun and the Earth, and the side that's being exposed to sunlight is the opposite side of the moon, the far side of the moon. So of course we couldn't see that. So that's what the new moon is. Yeah. And Jonathan, he broke it down in another pretty easy way to understand. Like if you're sitting in a room and someone and there's only a single light source, like a spotlight, let's walks in between the light and you, you're going to see a silhouette of them, but you're not going to be able to see their detail. Right. But if you could somehow get behind them right. You would see that their back is bathed in that light. Exactly. Now, if they walk behind you, you're both facing the sunlight. Yeah. So if you can just kind of make your eye travel around the side of your head to the back, poke out through your hair there, you would see that that person is a full moon. That's right. And the initial one, when they are between you and you see their silhouette, that is the new moon. Right. So it makes sense when you think about it that way. I think it does. Or if you look at this illustration, that's helpful, too. It definitely is. Lunar phases is definitely one where it's like just look at a picture. It's so much easier to see. The irony of this whole thing is that thanks to the phases of the moon, this lunar day, that the dark side of the moon is sometimes the side that we can see. Yeah, that's the one. That blows my mind a bit. It's during a new moon, we're still seeing the near side of the moon. That's all we'll ever see. Right. Side that has the man in the moon or the rabbit making mochi in the moon. What's that? That's a Japanese thing. Oh, yeah. It's like their version of the man in the moon. It's a rabbit making mochi, which is like sweet, sticky rice treats. And is it something that they see in the moon? I guess, yeah. And what you're seeing are the lunar seas, like the Sea of Tranquility, all that stuff. Right. Well, I guess with the advent of the Soviet Luna three spacecraft, that was the first time we ever saw the far side of the Moon. Right. And that was, I think, in 1959. Wasn't that crazy? So that long ago we were that advanced. Yeah, it is. And if you're into that, you should go listen to how the Space Race Work episode. That was a good one. Yeah, because Russia was advanced, too. But these photos sent back from the Soviets showed that the far side of the Moon didn't look anything like the near side of the Moon that we see. Right. It was all just little pockmark craters. There weren't any Sea of Tranquility or anything like that. And for a long time, it posed this riddle called the Lunar far Side Highlands problem. Why was the far side of the Moon so different from the near side? So they finally, recently think that they came up with the riddle, like recently, this year. Oh, wow. Or the answer to the riddle. Yeah, they came up with the riddle after 1959. But the reason being that the side of the Moon, the near side that's closest to us, has been locked. It's called tidally locked. It's the whole reason that we have why this whole podcast is going on. Because the Moon and the Earth are locked into orbit, right. And because they affect one another through gravity. The side that's closest to Earth was subject to Earth's gravity more than the other side. So as the Moon cooled and the Earth was cooling but it was still super hot, it was heating the side of the Moon that was closest to us. Right? Yeah, that makes sense. So on the far side, as the Moon cooled, the crust was thicker and sturdier. On the near side, the crust was a little thinner. So as the Moon was still cooling, it got blasted with asteroids and meteorites and all that jazz. And on the side that's closest to us, the thinner crust side lava flowed up from those meteor impacts and formed things like the Sea of Tranquility. On the other side, the crust was thicker, so no lava flowed up from it. Interesting. That's what they have to explain it. I wonder if there's any value in exploring the far side of the Moon or if that would just make a great movie. I mean, they're talking about doing that. I don't know what the value is. Yeah. And with the way that funding we've talked about with NASA's going, I doubt if it's a priority. Yes, but that would make a good movie because one creepy thing about it, it made me think of space movies and such, is that you lose radio contact on the far side of the moon. Right. So in the movie version, obviously, you would have to sign off and go dark for a period of time. Yeah. And that's when the event horizon occurs. What was the well, the event horizon that's like yeah, sam Neil goes crazy. Yeah. Something happens. Creepy on that other side. Right. What's that in that movie? Moon with Sam Rockwell? What? The far side of the moon. Yeah. What was the movie where the guys are racing to get out of the nightfall on the moon? Because, like, the sunrise, I think that was Moon. Okay. But we'll hear about it if it's not. I like that movie. That was a good one. Fantastic. Yeah. I think David Bowie son directed that. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Duncan Bowie's name. Oh, it's Duncan something. Oh, he took because David Bowie's not even his real name, probably. No, I don't think so. Sticky Stardust. Right. Duncan Stardust is his name, and he's from the moon. You got anything else? I do. I have one more thing. Oh, good. It turns out that we can see more than just the near side of the moon sometimes. All right. How's that? Well, because the orbit of the moon around the Earth isn't a perfect circle, it's elliptical. When it's furthest away, we can see an extra eight degrees of the eight of the eastern side. Okay. Now, when it's closest to us I'm sorry. And then when it's further away, we can see an extra about eight degrees of the western side. Got you. And I think we didn't mention we said that if you stopped that tennis ball, we would see all sides of the moon. But even if it fell out of sync a little bit and slowed down or sped up a little bit, we would see portions of the moon that we've never seen before. Exactly. So this is why I'm, like you don't find it incredibly amazing that we're alive at a point in time when the moon's rotational spin and its orbit around Earth are completely the same? Who said that wouldn't be amazing? You don't think it's a coincidence? I think that's why I think if that weren't true, then there wouldn't be Earth as we know it. Right, okay. So you subscribe to the anthropic principle. What's that? Well, it basically says that things are the way they are because we're here to observe them. And if they weren't the way that they are, then it wouldn't be possible for us to be here to observe them. Yeah, I think I never heard of that, but I think that makes a lot of sense to me. What about you? I don't know. It kind of smacks of, like, intelligent design a little bit. Okay. Yeah, because it's basically saying, like, the idea is that the universe is fine tuned to support life. Right. But if that's the case, why do we appear to be the only one out there? I don't think necessarily fine tuned. I think just lucky that things locked in to support life. And that's another interpretation of it, too. Yeah. Should we wake Jerry up and ask her? Jerry she is the answer. I do recommend people go to the article. The article on the website is called what and where is the dark side of the Moon? Yeah, because there is a very handy phases of the Moon graphic and a super fast animation. It actually wait, I think I got it. And it's kind of small, and you can't really see that spinning. So I'm going to retract my statement that it's super handy. It kind of stinks. Okay, then it's stinky flash animated. But I bet you there's a YouTube out there that shows it in better colored high graphic detail. Yes. There's YouTube out there. Yeah. Sounds like an old man. I do have one more thing, too. Oh, great. We were talking about billions of years that the Earth and the Moon will have such an effect on one another that the Earth's day will last 40 current Earth days, and that will also be the exact amount of time the Moon's orbit. So the lunar phase and the Earth day in a few billion years will be one in the same 40 days. And then apparently, after that, it's not going to change much. So they're both going towards some sort of equilibrium, right? Sounds like it. Well, because the Earth day will be in lockstep with the lunar cycle, at that point, the shoe will be on the other foot. And when you're on the Moon, you will only ever be able to see one side of the Earth, the United States side. Who knows? Well, there won't be a United States at that point. You don't know that. In 3 billion years yes, the Earth, there will be no mankind. Don't kid yourself. It's quite possible. We have to talk about the Great Filter sometime. I don't even know what that is. You're going to love it. Is it a full podcast or is it a definitely. Okay. I think we have, like, a few we could break out of that one. I think you just threw down the gauntlet. Sure. That was a gauntlet. So, Chuck, we just did that. Yeah. I'm pretty happy with it. I always feel lost in space, like I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth when we do these things. Well, you did great. Thanks. But we always hear, like, really good feedback from astronomers. It turns out they are very much non jerky when they write in very forgiving. Very forgiving. Very helpful. Yes, because I think they really want other people to understand, and they're not including us. Look how much we know that you don't know. They're like, look how much you could know. Right? They're not, like, proctologists as jerks. We're soccer fans. All right, so, Chuck, we are going to do a listener mail as usual, but it'll be right after this message break. Josh yeah. Let's chat about squarespace, my friend. Okay. Because if you need a website and you don't have one, there's really no easier way to do so. No, I mean, the whole thing is drag and drop. It's very intuitive. There's no need to learn how to use code? No. And in case you find yourself in a bit of a pickle, maybe even a bind, they have 24/7 customer support, so you can live chat with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yes, all that stuff is great, but what I love about it is it's beautiful. The designs are great, it's going to look clean, it's going to look professional. Everyone's going to be tricked into thinking you're like, a master code or web designer. Yeah. And if you want to sell stuff and make some money, all plans have commerce options, from hosting an entire store to accepting donations for your personal blog. Plus, Chuck, you can get the whole thing risk free now. Wow, that sounds pretty great. Risk free on your laptop, on your mobile device. It's going to look great on your tablet. That sounds like an all in one solution to me. That's right. Like I said, risk free. You can try Squarespace if you go to squarespace. comStuff for your 14 day trial with no credit card necessary. If you like the product, 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, St UFF, to get that 10% off your first purchase. Okay, so we're back. If you want to know more about the moon, you can type in Dark Side of the Moon or Moon or whatever in the search barhoustofworks.com. It'll bring up this article and others. And since it's a search bar, it is time that long last for listener mail. I'm calling this cool kid because we like to highlight cool kids that listen to the show, because they are some of our favorite fans, because they're not yet cynical. Hi guys. My name is Ethan. I'm eleven years old. This is the first time I'm writing in, even though I've been wanting to for eight months. There was nothing to talk about. Then out of the blue, your podcast seemed to mostly match what I was doing and thinking. I was talking to my friend extensively about the space race and you did a I love that this eleven year old is talking extensively about the space race in the 1950s and you guys did a podcast on that. I was wondering about why Sugar was so sweet and unhealthy. I was picking out a movie when I saw some that were unrated. And that got me thinking, when it's not unrated, who rates it? I think he means not rated. Right. And the most recent, I was playing Monopoly with my family, and since we only have been playing 2 hours per day, it stretched into a three day game and counting as of writing this email. It still isn't over. It's got to be over by now, though. That'd be horrific experience. On the second day your podcast, How Monopoly Works, came out. If either of. You are mind readers or have a mind reading device, please tell me how that works. By the way, I have an old, old podcast correction to make. In the Magnets episode, you said that the second most powerful force in the universe is magnetism. The real answer is electromagnetism. And my source is how stuff works.com. Cheeky. Ethan, it would really please me if you did a podcast on electromagnetic, so I've always been fascinated by them, their many uses. Listening for more stuff you should know, Ethan PS. I'm using my mom's email. Smiley face. So I wrote Ethan's mom back and said, don't have your permission to read this because he's a great kid. Sure, she said he would be delighted, and so am I. That's awesome. Thanks, Ethan. And thanks to your mom too, for letting us read your very spectacular listener mail. Thanks for the correction, too. Absolutely. We are so dumb. Not magnetism. Electromagnetism. And I'm taking his word. Well, if you're a cute kid and you want to correct us or just tell us high or whatever, we want to hear from you, you can use your mom's email or your dad's email or your legal guardian's email and send in a hello. You could do that via Twitter at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comsteffynow. You can use that email client to send in an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our or home on the webstuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | ||
Carl Sagan: American Hero | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/carl-sagan-american-hero | Carl Sagan was the world's first mainstream media super scientist, capapble of breaking down complex ideas for the common folk. But what made him tick? Billions and billions of great ideas. | Carl Sagan was the world's first mainstream media super scientist, capapble of breaking down complex ideas for the common folk. But what made him tick? Billions and billions of great ideas. | Tue, 08 Dec 2015 21:02:07 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=21, tm_min=2, tm_sec=7, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=342, tm_isdst=0) | 36836491 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Noel. The stint of Knowle is winding down, sadly. It's such an unforgettable thing, having Noell here. No. The stent of Noel. Right. Oh, you mean the wording. Yeah. Wording is fine. All right. How are you doing? I'm fine. Just like that wording. I am sleepy. Why about? I've just been staying up late writing till one and two in the morning. Like a dope. Like 17. Oh, yeah. A manifesto. No, just staying up too late, typing. It's neat. Do you drink wine while you type? Last night it was bullet bourbon. Yeah. And then you're just like, I'm not typing words correctly anymore. And then it's time for bed. You get on a roll and you look up and it's 02:00. A.m. Nice man. I'm glad to hear that. 630 rolls around and here we are. That's awesome. Yeah. That's great. So your creative juices are flowing? They're flowing, baby. You know who else's juices were flowing and still flow through this universe? Carl Sagan. He was he was a creative science type. Yeah. And it made him kind of controversial. And it also made him beloved. Beloved. And I think one of the precursors to what we do. In fact, there's a quote on him being an explainer, which I thought was very cool, which is the geekiest term ever. But it's a good term, science. Yeah. He said, I think I'm able to explain things because understanding wasn't entirely easy for me. Some things that the most brilliant students were able to see instantly, I had to work to understand. I can remember what I had to do to figure it out. The very brilliant ones figured out so fast. That sounds familiar. They never see the mechanics of understanding. Yeah. So I really identified with that. I'm like, man, that's kind of what we do. We work really hard to understanding this because we're not experts. And he wasn't an expert on one thing. He covered a lot of that's what made him unique. Right. A lot of different facets of science. Yeah. Which you don't see much. No, you don't. I mean, it does pop up here and there. But if you think about the people who are like that, like, Jared Diamond is a really good current example. Neil Tyson? No, it's Dustin Diamond. Okay. Jared diamond. Man, I don't even remember what he's trained in. He's just such a generalist. But he wrote like guns, germs and steel. Oh, that guy. Yeah. He's got a little Robert Borkbeard. Really good guy. He's one. Neil degrasse Tyson has definitely become one. Although he's still very much an astrophysician. Right? Yeah. But he sort of talked about a lot of times in terms of being like Sagan and not just because he rebooted Cosmos, which was Sagan's show, but he's just the face of science. He's the go to guy. Sure. I mean, he was the obvious choice for Cosmos because he was already so much like Sagan, following in those footsteps. For sure. There's other guys there's like Brian Green as a science explainer. Bill Nye is a science explainer. Yes, they're definitely out there, for sure. But you make a good point that Sagan was one of the originals, if not the original, but the idea that he was somebody who was willing to draw parallels from different disciplines in science or bring them together to create something approachable for people to kind of invigorate people's love of science, I think it's amazing. Yeah, it made him beloved. It also just made him not reviled. This is not the right word, but he was definitely criticized in the scientific establishment in parts, for sure. Some people in the scientific establishment loved him, and some were like, you're not doing much real research. You're just sort of a face guy. And I poopoo that entirely and say that he did a lot for science, and people like him are necessary, and I value their work. Okay. You're taking a stand, huh? Yeah, man. Carl Sagan's amazing. He's one of my heroes. I watched Cosmos when I was ten years old. I have never seen it. Man, it was great. I mean, it was a PBS show that had tens of millions of viewers. Yeah, I know. Millions and millions. Yes. That's your say again. Yeah. And you know what he told Johnny Carson? He never said billions and billions. He said billions upon billions. Right. I never heard it. There's a super cut on YouTube of all of his billions. Millions and trillions from Cosmos cut to hiphop music. Bed. Is that a glorious dawn? I don't remember the name of it. There's a song somebody created with him, a super cut of him. It's called Gloria Stone. It's pretty great. Well, I never heard billions and billions in there. There's a lot of billions and millions and trillions. He loved those words. Right. But he said I never specifically said billions and billions, and I didn't hear it either. He's a misunderstood genius. Yeah, I think Carson did it first, or maybe it was Saturday Night Live, and then that just became the thing. Billions and billions. Yeah. Because he is a weird little dude, for sure. In a lot of ways, he's easily parody, but he also seemed to have a fairly good sense of humor about himself, at least. And in general, he smoked grass. He thought, Grass is far out, man. We just vaulted back in time with that one. He smoked the marijuana trash, making it contemporary. He was on the pot. Yeah, he did. He liked to smoke weed. And in fact, I have a quote here. He wrote an essay. The quote reads in Waiyahui best Pavement album, by the way. He wrote an essay. I don't know about that. Yeah. What's your favorite? I think Planet and enchanted. Yeah. The first one. Although crooked rain crooked Raymond is pretty good. No. I've never seen him more interested in what we're talking about. It's funny. In college we used to have a saying it's not a matter of which album are we going to listen to next? It's which Pavement album are we going to listen to next? Just put down T shirt. Yeah. So, anyway, Sagan wrote an essay in Marijuana Reconsidered and here is one of his quotes. He said, the cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art a subject which I never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist, which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. Is that Kermit de Frog doing? Carl Sagan? That was for a kermitie. It doesn't define him or anything, but yeah. He likes to smoke the pot and he likes to get out his little tape recorder and talk about stuff. Put on a turtleneck. Yeah. With nothing else. It was the course. You are, I think, the maybe even into the 90s. That's true. So I guess let's go back to the beginning. We've done some pretty good teasing here, right? Yes. And when you're talking about a human being, there's no place better to start at the beginning than with their birth. Brooklyn, New York. Yeah. His mother was rachel was a garment industry manager. And apparently I think his overbearing was yeah, but his mom was overbearing. Yes, mom was overbearing. Sorry. Dad was a Ukrainian immigrant, Samuel, who worked as a garment industry manager because in 1934 they probably didn't hire women to do jobs like that, which is really stinky. It's not like we've met the lady or anything and can report that she's overbearing. The idea that she's overbearing comes from this long standing image of her of she had very high hopes and high expectations and aspirations for Carl very well may have made the man. Yeah. I moved to New Jersey after a little while and was voted the class brain at Rawway High School. And I thought, this is interesting. What article is this? The New Yorker. Which one? Why Carl Sagan's truly replaceable. Yeah. Or Smithsonian. Smithsonian. Joel Akinbach. It was a great article, though. But they tracked down in 1953 a questionnaire from high school that he had to fill out on his own character traits. And Sagan said he gave himself low marks for vigorousness, like with sports, an average rating for emotional stability and the highest ratings for being dominant and reflective. I'm going to start using that. Vigorousness. Yeah. It worked out this morning. I'm so vigorous. So that's not just a piece of paper they dug up, Chuck. That's from his archives, which are actually sold to the Library of Congress by his widow. What is his widow's name? Anne. Andrew his widow. Right. But he was married three times. Right. And Anne sold the papers or supplied the papers for an honorarium, I guess, to the Library of Congress. And the Library of Congress. Got that money from Seth McFarlane. So basically, Seth Macfarlane bought Carl Sagan's papers and donated them to the Library of Congress. Yeah. Pretty cool. That's why it's called the Seth McFarland Collection of the Carl Sagan and Anne Drurian Archive. Had to put his name on there. Well, I mean, sure, why not? No, it's fine. He's a huge fan of his work, and he's the one who rebooted Cosmos. Right. And genuinely, I got to say, like, whatever you have to say about Seth McFarland, there is plenty to say, I think, about Seth McFarlane. He proved himself a true fan of Carl Sagan. And a rich guy, too. I've always liked Family Guy, so I don't have anything bad to say about him. Have you seen American dad? No, I never got into that, actually. It's okay. Yeah, it's not Family Guy, but it's definitely just totally different. Got you 798 boxes of stuff, archival material. The guy loved to log every conversation he ever had and every thought that ever entered his brain, mainly through cassette tape. Right. But I guess that was transcribed by other folks. Yes. Apparently, Joel Ochenbach says that his writing style is so conversational because he didn't write, he dictated into addictophone. And then it was transcribed, basically. Basically, he was like the Hunter S. Thompson of science. Yeah. Remember Hunter T had, like, the real he'd wear around his neck. When one is high on marijuana, it is a buzzkill to type, actually. That's funny. We bring up Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson loved acid. You know who else loved acid? Timothy Leary. You know who hung out with Timothy Leary? Carl Sagan. Yeah. Timothy Leary was trying to get Sagan to advise him on how to build an interstellar arc because Leery just totally lost his stuff by this time. Right. We should do a show on him. Oh, yeah. I'm surprised we haven't. That'd be crazy. Let's do it, man. We should do one on, like, the Mary pranksters, the whole thing. Just basically redo the electric koolaid acid test. Totally. That'd be a good episode. But Leery at a mental institution because he'd been popped with a bunch of acid, I think had a visitor in Carl Sagan and Frank Drake of the famous Drake Equation, and they came by to say hi, and Larry was like, seriously, you guys have to help me design this. And they were like, the closest star is too far away. You kook. Yeah. This isn't going to work. And Lee said he sensed that they had some sort of neural blockage. That's why they couldn't think like he could. Yeah, man. So that was Carl Sagan timothy Larry's story. But I think they stayed in touch. Oh, I'm sure they did. So young Sagan, his life kind of changes when he goes to the World's Fair in 1939. He was just five years old. Do you remember whose World's Fair that was? No. Is it Chicago? Eddie Bernays'oh? Yeah, that was the one. Wow. The one that changed everything, including Carl Sagan. That's a big one. Yeah. So Sagan goes to the World's Fair, and it was sort of a great time to be a young kid interested in science, because in the late thirty s and forty s and fifty s, it was like everyone was captivated by the the future. Right. There's this idea that times could do anything and very soon would. It was really exciting, and it was just a great time to be into it. What's his name? OppenheimA. No, Abohama. Oppenheimer. No, I'm talking about the article. Oh, yeah, oppenheimer. This guy. Yeah, I'm become death. That's what I thought you were talking about in the article. He makes a great point about just that time period and how exploratory everything was really from then, like, through the that was a great 40 year period in science where basically there was funding and anything is possible, we can do anything we want. Until they started to, I guess, disprove things here and there. Right. And actually, what's interesting is there's a corresponding boost in technology from that era, too. And a lot of people point out that all of the stuff from about 1975 on is actually built on the backs of the stuff that was built in the 40 years before that, from about 1935 to 1975. And ever since then, we've had a technological plateau. It's really interesting. And you don't think about it, you're like, well, no, I mean, we have iPhones now. It's like, yeah, iPhones are all a combination of different stuff that was first discovered or invented 40 or more years ago, and basically everything is like that. We're in a slump right now. So it was not only a time where they thought science could do anything. Science was doing just about anything. And we've sensitive plateau. And the author described him I thought it was a great description, sagan as a nuanced referee, because really cool thing about Sagan was he was very grounded in science and proof and facts. But he wasn't just a square and a skeptic. Although he was a skeptic in square. Yeah. But he wanted to find life on other planets. Sure. And he didn't shut things down. He was all about the discussion of everything, as long as you still did the research and were grounded in fact, as a matter of fact. And he did not believe in UFOs. He did not think that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft. But in 1969, he mounted a conference on UFOs in which everyone apparently had their say all sides. Yeah. It wasn't like, we're mounting a conference on UFOs. You can come, so the rest of us can poopoo your ideas and beliefs. It was Come and share your position on it. That's enormous. And that in and of itself is worth remembering the person for. But this is 1969 before you'd even become, like, a household name or anything like it. Yeah, and I like to think we do that. And we still get emails, so we got one today from people that said it's dangerous to even mention other schools of thought. That's dogmatic. Yeah, and I just don't agree with that dogmatic. And close minded. And don't even email us with that crap. Yeah, just don't don't even bother because we're going to make fun of you on the air. Yeah, because that's not what our show is about. Even if we don't believe something, we like to throw all sides out there, because I think discussion is healthy no matter what. Sure. That's just me. Even when we were mocking crop circles, we still talked about crop circles, did we not? It's not like we just pretended that there wasn't such a thing as crop circles. That's right. And we have Carl Sagan thank for laying that golden path in front of us. So you want to take a break? I don't want to, but we have to. We need to. Yeah. Okay. All right. We'll be right back. All right. So we've been beating around the bush here, have we? Let's talk well, not really. We've been getting into it, but let's talk about some of the things that sagan he wasn't just some Johnny come lately. He had degree upon degree. I think he had billions and billions of degrees. Well, he had an undergrad degree. He had his masters, he had his PhD. He was well versed in a lot of realms of science, but his big thing was astronomy. Right. He had two degrees in undergrad and masters in physics and then a doctorate in astronomy. And he did a little stint at Harvard, didn't get tenure, so he's like, I'm out of here. And Cornell was like, you come to us, and we will treat you like a god. And they did. And he settled in at Cornell and set up his own lab. Right. The Laboratory for Planetary Studies. Yes. And that was when he really started to get going. He was doing side work for NASA at the time as well, doing consulting. He did that throughout his whole career. Formulas, that kind of stuff. Sure. When NASA is picking your brain about the Apollo mission, you're doing pretty well for yourself as a scientist. So he had this potential to really go as science as he wanted to with this stuff, and he did in some ways, in a lot of ways with his consulting with NASA, but he also kind of pushed NASA into humanities direction as well. Like the Voyager discs. That's a really great example of it. Like, he talked NASA including discs on Voyager one and two of the golden record. Yeah. They're basically like, here's some stuff that represents humanity on Earth. Yeah, pretty much. Like, if we ever do find life on Earth, we need to have something to offer them to represent us. Life elsewhere, you mean? Yes. What I say. Life on Earth. Yeah, there's life on Earth. It's pretty much documented as fast life out there, extraterrestrial life. He said, we need to present ourselves in what Earth is like and what humans are like. So he included 115 images representing the diversity of life and then sounds basically like his wife, literally. This is pretty out there. I don't know if marijuana had anything to do with it. I think so, yeah. His wife, Anne, she created her own sounds for the project. Basically, she meditated and then thought told the story of the universe by thinking it with her brain. And then those brain waves were translated into music, and she said, My mind also wandered to my love of my husband. So that was translated. So they blasted that was her message that they blasted out in space, which is pretty far out. Right. But awesome messages of love. Sure, man. It's pretty neat. He wasn't afraid to show his tender side. No, he definitely wasn't. He was vulnerable in a lot of ways. And also on those disks, there is, I believe, etchings. Of a man and a woman. I think it's etched on the disk, and they're, like, laser disk size. They're super retro. Sure. And made of gold, which is pretty cool. And then there's basically a depiction of where Earth is in the Milky Way, I believe. So it's basically saying, we're here if you ever find this. And then, of course, Voyager One, I believe, got lost and awakened and became sentient and then became a god on to some beings, remember? And I think Star Trek One the first movie. I never saw those vijr. You never saw any of the Star Trek movies? Dude, I've never seen one episode of the TV show. I've never seen one episode of Next Generation. Yes. No. The only Star Trek thing I've ever ingested was our apologies to Will Wheaton. By the way, was that first movie that JJ. Abrams did. I saw that. I saw the second one of that. I also saw, I think, Star Trek maybe one, two, and three. In one of those, there's this god Vijer who's like, this artificial intelligence and then finally meet Vijer and realize that the Oya is blotted out, and it's really Voyager One, the space probe. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty neat, too. I'm not a Trekkie by any means, but they are still entertaining. I just never got into it. I was always a Star Wars guy. Not that they're mutually exclusive, but I don't know. It just didn't grab me. You know, who would have predicted that we go off on a Star Trek tangent and the Carl staying in episode? Although I think I've told the story of working on a commercial with William Shatner. You have? Didn't he, like, bend you over a car and pretend to arrest you. No, that was punch. Hey, shatner was TJ. Hooker. It could have happened. Yeah. He was great, though. He was awesome. He loved being William Shatner. Oh, yeah, man. You can tell that guy wears it like a suit. Yeah, he was awesome. Very nice guy. So we're getting off track again here. Say again with science. There was actual science and stuff. As a matter of fact, the idea of the greenhouse effect is rooted partially in his work. Yeah. That had been around since the late 19th century. But he looked at a planet like Venus and said, you know what? Venus is really hot. And I think, why is because this greenhouse effect. And then because of that work, people started thinking, well, maybe earth has a greenhouse effect going on too. Right. It really opened the door for that line of thought. It did. And he's correct. Earth definitely does have a greenhouse effect, and it's problematic. Correct. Another one that he's widely cited for is the fate young sun paradox. I don't know if he was the one who first pointed this out or if he just kind of built upon it and it's still not fully solved, I think. So he and George mullin figured this out. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So the idea is that earth, early on in its history, was a ball of ice, but problematically. There was also some liquid water on earth, too. It wasn't all ice. This doesn't make much sense because the sun, as it stands now, is just about enough to keep earth from being a frozen ball of ice. But back then, when earth was mostly a frozen ball of ice, the sun was only at like 70% of its luminosity or lumosity. Luminosity. One of those luminosity. Right? Yeah, sure. That it is today. And so it doesn't make sense that there should be any liquid water on earth. And it's called the faint young sun paradox. And I believe they figured out sagan and Mullins said, well, it's the greenhouse effect. Yeah. And I don't think they ever fully settled on that. No, it's outstanding. Yeah. I think it might be a combination of that and some other stuff. That's right. What else did he do? He looked at titan, Saturn's moon at one point and said, you know what? I think there's organic molecules up there, and that's why it looks red. And he was right. Yeah. He went to DA. Yeah. So he wasn't afraid to throw a wacky hypothesis out there. And that did not do him any favors in the scientific community either. No, because there is a definite arrogance associated with throwing out the hypothesis and not doing the work, leaving it to other people to do the work, and then you still get the credit for throwing the hypothesis out there. It's one of the main reasons why sagan was highly criticized by some people in the scientific community. Yeah. In the Smithsonian article. They say there's sort of an unwritten rule among scientists. Thou shalt not speculate. Thou shalt not talk about things outside your immediate area of expertise. That's a big one that he transgressed. Yeah. He was all over the place and now shouting out horse around on late night TV talk shows. Yeah. With Carson. Yeah, he was on Carson two dozen times over a couple of decades and was, like I said, sort of the Neil degrasse Tyson he was the go to. When anyone in the press needed anything for television. He was the guy. Anything that had anything even remotely to do with science. Even if I had to do a theology and somebody wanted a science opinion of theology, go to Carl Sagan. And so from Sagan's point of view, he's just furthering science. What's the problem? Sure. From the other scientist point of view, it makes it look like Carl Sagan is trained in everything from astrophysics, which he was, to theology and biology and anthropology and ecology in between, and he wasn't. True. There's some professional jealousy, too, I think. You know how it is. Sure. Like, he's getting all the press and other folks are stuck in a lab doing what they think is the real work. Right. So I kind of get it in a way, but I just think that people like Bill Nye and Tyson and Sagan are hugely necessary. Sure. You got to have a face out there furthering it. You definitely do. Yeah. And you got to have a media outlet like Parade magazine to put that face on. Yeah. That was his go to, for sure. Oh, is he in there a lot? Oh, yeah. That's the Sunday insert, right? Yeah. And that was kind of the big joke, is that he stopped publishing in academic journals and started publishing in Parade magazine. And if you remember, in our nuclear winter episode yeah. Did he completely think of that? No, he just furthered it. He was part of a group that was organized that basically said, if you guys start setting off nuclear bombs, it's not going to be this thing that just ends. There's going to be this thing called nuclear winter. And they hadn't done all the science yet before he went and wrote an article in Parade magazine and told the world about nuclear winter. And then the opinion of the scientists he was working with really undermined their case because it sensationalized it. Yeah. But what it also did was it got your average Joe thinking about nuclear war and the Cold War, and maybe we shouldn't be zooming toward our own demise at 100 miles an hour agreement. And that's the big back and forth about Sagan's legacy. Yeah. Or the actual work he did, too. Yeah. And you mentioned the theology. He was famously spiritual agnostic. He was a spiritual agnostic. That's how he defined himself. Yeah. He didn't classify himself as atheist. No. And the reason why true to Sagan's own way was that he could not scientifically prove that there was not God. So he said, how can I call myself an atheist? Which is pretty cool. And actually he's the guy, supposedly that coined the term extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That's what I hear, is that go back to him. So he's like, Skeptics love the dude. Oh, yeah, he's the father of the skeptic. But I don't know, I think he gives skeptics the good name. Sure. If you want to prove your bones to how hardcore skeptic you are, criticize Carl Sagan in the skeptic community, you can really show that you're a super skeptic. Right? Yeah. Sagan was a milk toast as far as skeptics go. Yeah. Because he would indulge other lines of thought. Right. But still require proof. But he wouldn't just shut it down right out of the gate. So we will get back to Carl Sagan right after these messages. All right, truckers, we're back. Yes. So there was one thing that Carl Sagan, he would poke fun at himself he never abandoned. It was this idea that possibly, maybe, just maybe, there was intelligent life out there. He wanted there to be for sure. He helped disprove or set the conditions against life being out there. For sure. Like, for example, he suggested that on Mars, the shifting features of Mars were results of dust storms, and it turned out he was right. But those dust storms also basically said there's probably not life on Mars just for that reason alone. Those horrible dust storms. Right. Yeah. And he actually want to pull a surprise for some of his work. I think he wrote more than a dozen books, but one of the things he wrote was Contact, the novel. He was totally into sci-fi and wrote the contact. McConaughey and Jodie Foster. That was based on his novel. And of course, that movie was about sending signals into outer space, trying to find life, so you could tell the guy it was something he loved to talk about and write about. Oh, yeah. But he also loved actually that kind of research. Yes. Which is totally up his alley. Like SETI the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is evidence based and science based search for extraterrestrials. Right. Yes. That's Carl Sagan through and through. That's just totally him. He wanted to believe in extraterrestrial life, but he needed proof to believe in it. Really? Yeah. He just couldn't make that jump to just saying, yes, they exist without any proof. Yeah, exactly. So he's writing books, NASA's picking his brain, he's all over the place. And eventually we've talked about his TV show debuted on well, actually, it debuted was that 80? Yeah, yeah, I think it was 1980, so I must have been nine years old. I was four. I thought it was ten. What month was it? I don't know either. But originally the TV series was going to be called man in the. Cosmos, but he thought that was sexist, and he was a feminist, so he said he proposed a couple of more titles. One was called there terrible. T-H-E-R-E with some subtitle. And then the other was Cosmos along with the subtitle. And you spent, like, three years around the world filming this thing, right? Yeah. It's not like it ran for seasons and seasons. It was like a single run of shows on PBS. Television event. Yeah, it was a TV event, exactly. One of the other things he did, which I never knew, was he wrote along with his son now, because the son has a byline, I guess. Jimmy Sagan. Todd Sagan. No, he has five kids, I think, total. Okay. But one of his sons became a Sci-Fi writer. Another one became more of a science writer. So basically he split into two. Yeah. Actually, I never thought about that way. Bam. I just explained two of his kids existence. He wrote the entry for life, for Encyclopedia Britannica. Like, this is what life is. Yeah, he was fairly energetic dude, for sure. Yeah. To say the least. I mean, he did Cosmos in his mid 40s, just out of nowhere. He got a lot accomplished for a Pie Ed. He really did. Yeah. He's like the Cypress Hill of science. I don't know. Hey, man, they put out, like, three albums in, like, four or five years. Yeah, it's a lot of work. And then retired. Sega did not retire. No, he did not, sir. He worked up until his death in 1096. Yeah. He dies after battling a bone marrow disease for about a year or so. Two years, I think, is closer. He's diagnosed with it, and he needed a transplant, and his sister stepped up and volunteered to give him a donation and did. And apparently it wasn't quite enough because he died of an infection after about a year and a half after the transplant. Yeah. Just 64 years old. Yeah. Way too young. It really is. And in fact, yesterday, the day we're recording this is November 10, I believe. Yesterday would have been his 81st birthday. Oh, yeah. You didn't plan that? No. Wow. That's pretty impressive. He's speaking to me from billions of light years away. Yeah. That's funny that you say that, because somebody wrote to him. They said, how do you know that there's not a heaven? And he had this really great response. He remember in his archives. He was a pack rat, so he kept a lot of correspondence. And from it they found in this, Ahimbach article, there's a citation of a letter that he wrote to somebody, and he says, thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about 10 billion light years. And then in parentheses, he puts one light years, almost 6 trillion mile. Best wishes. And the point is, he took the time to write the letter back to this guy, like he would engage rather than just ignore the letter entirely. So he entertained and indulged people's ideas enough that he would engage with somebody he didn't even know about, whether there's heaven or not. And this was sent the year he died, actually. So he's writing this from his sick bed. Wow. That's awesome. As far as whether or not it bothered him, whether or not how he was thought of in the scientific community, it kind of all came to a head. In 1992, he was on a list to be included as a nominee for the National Academy of Sciences. In the end, he was not included, and it bothered him. He kind of brushed it off to people in public saying that I didn't think I would get in anyway. But his widow said, quote, it was painful. It seemed like an unsolicited slight, end quote. And in 1994, they ended up giving him an honorary medal, which was nice, but that was definitely a big sting for him. Yeah. The National Academy of Sciences said, no, you're not a member. You're not one of us. They basically said that the actual research that you did wasn't strong enough. Right. Which stinks. It sounds like a definite calculated slight. Yeah. He's included in my book. Yeah, for sure, man. So my hat is off to you, sir, forever. You got anything else? No, man. Someone needs to make a great documentary or movie about the guy. Yes. Starring Ashton Kucher as Carl Sagan. That guy can play anybody. Yeah. If you want to know more about Carl Sagan, you can start with this delightful little article on how stuff works by typing Carl Sagan in the search bar. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. My name is Connie. I've been listening for a couple of months after my brother turned me onto the show. Since then, I've been completely obsessed and haven't been able to stop listening. I'm on track to become a nurse, so I can't get enough of anything science or biology related. I wanted to thank you for a couple of things. I'm in a base level anatomy class right now, and the rigor mortise podcast saved my behind and my grade on my cadaver dissection and muscles desk. A lot of the things you covered, like the nature of the muscles relationship with ATP and the integral proteins, really helped me pass my exam and not pass out in the cadaver lab. You also even taught my anatomy professor something new about HeLa cells? No. Last year, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression due to the fact that I can never really fit in the right way. I lost almost all of my friends when I made an early jump from high school to college. And being able to count on YouTube weekly has really helped a little bit with the loneliness, and learning something new is always a healthy distraction. From anxiety. So you guys really give me something new and exciting to discuss and learn about twice a week when you work 40 hours, it really goes a long way. Nice. It would absolutely make his year if you give a shout out to my brother Matt, the physics teacher. That is very nice. Yeah, he's the reason I started listening to you. And sharing a love of knowledge is really something that has kept us close in spite of our eleven year age difference. It sparked so many interesting and inspired conversations between us. Thank you for what you're doing and helping many of us make it through tough spots. That is much love from Connie from Illinois. So thank you, Connie. And hello to Matt, your brother. Hey, Matt, the physics teacher. Yeah. Thanks, guys. We love families that listen and bringing people together, man, it makes us feel good. Yeah. The family that listens to SYSK together stays together. That's right. The dire warning. If you want to let us know how great somebody in your life is because they introduced you to the stuff, you should know we love hearing that stuff. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshow, you can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshitnow.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 for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. 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How Underground Mining Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-underground-mining-works | People used to use deer antlers to beat the minerals out of rock hidden in the earth. Luckily, they got better at it, and now modern mining is a mind-boggling process for efficiently removing stuff we want from inside the planet. | People used to use deer antlers to beat the minerals out of rock hidden in the earth. Luckily, they got better at it, and now modern mining is a mind-boggling process for efficiently removing stuff we want from inside the planet. | Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:49:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=13, tm_min=49, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=180, tm_isdst=0) | 40770326 | audio/mpeg | "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. What if you were a global bank who wanted to crunch billions of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data, and now you can supercharge your audit system with AI. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibmcom. Welcome to stuff you should know from Houseetworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant looking chipper and bright eyed and bushy tailed. There's Jerry over there. She's dressed like Snow White. Some birds flying around the place. Wow. It's like all the stuff you should know. It's like Disney all up in here, huh? Which, by the way, we learned the hard way. Well, I may get over it, because I'll mess it up again. That's good. So, Chuck yes? Have you ever been inside an underground mine? No. Do you remember episode where we talked about what happens to abandon mine? Yeah. Boy, did we do a show on that. Old timing. Crazy old. It was a good one, if I remember correctly. Okay, yeah. And then we've also done one on mountaintop removal mining with Bensoli. That's a good one, too. This one's totally different. We have Fracking, too. Oh, yeah, we did do Fracking, but the frick is fracking. Yeah. What? It was called one of our better titles. But this was totally different. This is underground mining. Yes. This is what people normally think of with mining. Rather than stripping the top off of a mountain or fracking. This is mining. Yeah. And you usually don't think about mining much as a regular person walking around on a day to day basis, unless there's some sort of accident. And that will usually cause regular folk to say, oh, yeah, right. People still go underground in Mind, and it can be very dangerous. They're like, how terrible. Now, back to life. Like in 2010 in Chile. Remember that? No, that one was huge. Yeah, well, they got those dudes. They did. And there's, I think, a movie coming out, or already out, if I'm not mistaken. Antonio bonded us. Oh, yeah, I think so, too. Sexy. Yeah, that's one sexy minor. Do you remember that life? You don't remember the Antonio banditis? How do you say? Yes, that's right. I remember that. Now, did someone played him, though, right? Or was he yeah, I'm sure he guessed it at least once, but yeah, I think it was Chris Catan. I think. Brandon, you're exactly right. The least sexy guy of all time, actually. We're sorry, Mr. Kutzan, but it's true. I think he would admit that. No, I think he likes himself. He doesn't care what we say. What was that crazy character he used to do? Like monkey mango. Yeah, that was very funny. Oh, no, mango is different than the monkey boy. Mango is like the super sexy flamenco dancer down in Miami or something that every people would give up their lives for just be around. Mango wasn't the one who ate fruit called? No. All right. I don't remember. God rest his soul. Who Chris Cotton? I'm just kidding. Okay. Does that have to mean your dad or can God just rest your soul? He needs a break. I think there's a sense of finality to that when God rests your soul. I think your soul is bad. R-I-P. You can still rest in peace by taking a nice nap. So, yes, in Chile, it was a disaster in 2010 that turned out with a great ending because like I said, they're all rescued, but they spent 68 days underground. Yeah. In a little room. Crazy, man. Which probably smells a lot like pee when they were finally taken out of there. Yeah, it's a long time. I mean, that's remarkable. I believe the room was designed as an escape room or something, so it worked like it was supposed to, but they had to dig like an escape hatch. They did dig down to these miners hundreds of feet under the ground. Yeah. Which in and of itself put their life in danger, I'm sure. Right. And that happened in 2010. And Julia Leighton, who wrote this article, points out that was as far as mining goes. That was a bad year. Yeah. So there were those guys, like 33 were rescued, but a bunch of their compatriots were killed in that same disaster, I believe. Well, yeah, and I think she also makes a great point that the disaster gets all the headlines, but people die all the time, individually or several dudes at once. That doesn't hit the headlines. Like a couple of guys die on the job in a day and regionally you might hear about in the news, but it's not going to sweep the nation like a big disaster. And apparently also things like black lung are still around even though they shouldn't be. And I was reading that these deaths, although they're preventable the deaths of people who live in rural communities outside of the spotlight of the media, and so it still happens. So yeah, the point is underground mining in particular is extremely dangerous. I have a question for you, though. I was looking at pictures of modern mining operations and guys are down there without even like a dust mask on. I noticed that too. And I'm just thinking that seems to be the most preventable thing you can do is why the things the firefighters wear with the tank and the full mask face mask. The closest thing I can come to for an answer is that, no, the mine owners are supposed to have that place so ventilated that you wouldn't even need that supposed to I don't know about that. But I mean, like in 1969, Congress said there should not be black lung anymore. We want to eradicate it from the mining industry. Since then, 76,000 miners have died from black lung. Right. But apparently it's totally preventable. It's just mine owners being cheap and or lazy. Right. When was this done? When did they well, you could have stats of people that theoretically started their career after that. I'm sure they did not have black long. Sure. But they're definitely people who weren't even born then that died of black lives. Right. Since then. All right. Well, we're talking about underground mining, though, as he pointed out to Jerry when she said mining and you were underground mining. Big difference. Does it sound like that? I've got a lot of self reflection, too, but surface mining is different. And that is a very viable way to get or if you only want to go down and that's a top down up. That's like mountain top removal. Yeah, if you want to go down a couple of hundred feet, it's a good way to get some. Or below that the efficiencies it becomes inefficient. So they say, well, why don't we get down there? Yes. Go to the source, working our way up. Right. That's what they do. Or at least maybe just go get that big chunk of Oregon 1000ft down. Did you see this thing about kind of the early history of mining? Yeah. Should we do that? Yeah, man. When you talk about going like 1000ft down or how far does the uranium mine go down to 6500ft. That's mind bogglingly deep. That's more than a mile. Right. Isn't a mile in the neighborhood of 5000ft? I have no idea. I think it is. It's something like that, right? Yeah. So that's a very deep amount. Sure. But that's using machines and mechanization, which we'll talk about. Yeah. So if you go around the world and find some of these ancient mines, like Roman mines or Egyptian mines, they're the first ones to really get into mining. Although they are prehistoric mines that take back to the Neolithic age, them going down like 100ft or so. That's pretty impressive. Oh, yeah. And they're working and it's like something like three or 4 meters a month of an advanced rate. Yeah. Because they're using pickaxes. They were using pickaxes and slave labor and prisoners. And prisoners of war criminals, basically. So the conditions, as you would imagine, were terrible because they didn't care. No, they died. Go ahead and die. We'll just go conquer another land and take them. Exactly. But as that source of employees dried up and they had fewer and fewer prisoners of war because they conquered everyone, they said, well, maybe this is a real job and we should make it safer. Yeah, like pay some probably still like unskilled yokels, but at least they Egyptian yokels. Yes, but they weren't prisoners of war and slaves. So they wanted to pay them a little money, not much, and make it a little bit safer now. And as a result, the occupation of mining became more respected and respectable because it's a pretty hardcore occupation and one that should be admired and respected. Especially if you're talking about back in the day when they're using pickaxes and stuff. Yeah. Your article that you sent was pre 1600, and for hundreds and hundreds of years, it kind of stayed the same. And the Egyptians kind of set the standard and everyone followed suit. And they would dig down with pickaxes and shovels. It depends. Everything from bone to when they finally got metal from mining, they would use metal. Right. It kind of looks like a cycle. They also very cleverly. And apparently this is a really old technique they would use. I think it was called fire quenching. Yeah. That says fire setting or fire quenching. Let's just say they would heat up rock with fire and then throw water on it. Yeah. And if you've ever done that, you can see a rock will crack pretty quickly because of that change in temperature. That really rapid change in temperature. Not safe. No, it's not, because that rock can go flying. Yeah. Especially in fifth century Rome. Yeah. And they were also using it not just to hurry along. It was basically their version of drilling and blasting before there was drills or blast equipment. And they would also use it not just to drill or blast or break up or they were doing it so they could free their axes or picks that would get stuck in the rock. Right. So, yeah, that thing could come flying out and hit you. But again, you are most likely a prisoner of war, a slave or a convicted criminal who was not only using a very cheap pick to break up rock all day, there's a guy behind you lashing you with a whip to egg you on and keep you standing upright. Yeah. And it is weird. I just thought about the cycle. They use metal for other things, but they were kind of mining to just improve their own equipment for more mining and the discovery of more metals. Initially they wanted, I think, flint for tools and weapons, but they were using bone. And then eventually they were like, oh, well, we found copper. Right. So we'll use copper to dig and like, oh, well, now we found bronze. Right. And then all the way we found some iron. Right. Now let's use iron. Yeah. Pretty neat. Yes. And each time it was like a snake eating its own tail. They just go do some more mining with the new stuff. That's right. Like you said, that was pretty much the early history of mining, and it stayed virtually the same until the age of mechanization. The industrial age. Right, but even after the industrial age, people were still using like, ancient mining techniques. Yeah, TNT. Yeah, well, it's not that ancient. But blasting and I think what they say in this article, like 5% of mining today is the blast technique. It's mostly mechanized, right? Yeah. Well, you want to take a break? Yeah. Man. Okay. We'll come back and talk about mechanized mining techniques right after this. 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. 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I bet you there's two mines that are the same, exactly the same, but there are different kinds of mines. But most of them have a few common characteristics. You got to have your ventilation shafts. You got to have your access shafts for the employees. You got to have exit shafts for the ore. There's a lot of shafts. So many shafts. So many shafts there's. Did you say vent shafts to vent away the stuff? Yeah. That's number one. Recovery shafts that the.org goes up out of calm systems. Breakroom break room, escape rooms. Yeah, escape rooms, that kind of stuff. Totally. But I think the point of Layton here is that the or deposit itself is going to tell you what kind of underground mining technique you want to use, right? Yeah. Like what the ore actually is. What it's shaped like? Is it like a big flat slab? Is it a big, huge blob? What kind of rock is around it? Are you mining petroleum jelly? You raised a question, Chuck. I could not find this to save my life. So there's two types of underground mines, right? Okay. There's hard rock mines and soft rock mines. Yeah. There's soundgarden and steely dan. I had docking and bread. Did you really? Yeah. Is docking metal? Yeah, but see, that's the thing. Hard rock and metal. That's a fine line sometimes. Oh, yeah. I think bread. How about soundgarden and bread? Okay. Look at us. Sound garden bread working together. So I couldn't figure out if that is meant to describe the ore, the type of thing that's being mined or the rock surrounding the ore. I saw both. Now what now? Oh, for the hard or soft. Right. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I think I assumed it was the or, but you may be right. Maybe it's so Layton says, for example, coal deposits live in relatively soft sedimentary rock. Right. Which would make you think that she's saying that it's the rock that's around the ore that's soft. Yeah. And that would be a soft rock mine that is not dependent on the type of ore you're getting out. I saw elsewhere, I saw that what she was saying being supported in other places, but I also saw no, it has to do with it describes the ore that's being removed. So if there's any miners out there that can tell us the difference definitively, we want to know. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get a wonderful follow up email. But the point is, depending on whether you've determined it's a hard rock mine or a soft rock mine, that's going to also inform not just where the ore is and the size and shape of the ore deposit, but whether it's hard rock or soft rock is going to determine what type of mining technique you want to use. Yeah, it seems like there's more hard rock mines than soft. There was gold, diamonds, copper, silver, zinc and nickel and hard rock. And the only mention of soft is coal. Yes, but there's a lot of coal mining going on, so maybe tons. Literally tons. So let's talk a little bit about hard rock mining. It really helps, I found, to look at either cross sections. Like if you look up room and Pillar mining, there's always a great cross section diagram. I love those. That kind of brings it home. You know, looking at this stuff, I saw you watching a video that I saw too. It brings out the little boy who loved honka trucks. Again, this stuff is really neat. Yes. Well, we'll get there. The continuous minor. Yeah. That's amazing. Definitely part of it. But also like trucks driving underground and going pull me up. Yeah. Just awesome. All right, so Room and Pillar is for a flat or deposit that doesn't, let's say like it starts at 200ft and goes down 1000 more feet. It's more horizontal and flat. And this is where basically you use this machine called a continuous minor. And they say it drills, but maybe that's the terminology. But when I think of drill, I think of something long drilling a hole into something. This looks like a boxy tank with a huge metal dustpan at the bottom and a huge rolling pin with teeth on it at the top. Big appetite for coal. Yes. When I say rolling pin, it's kind of like a bulldozer. You can raise and lower it and you just drive that thing through earth. Right. But you leave these pillars. So you basically clear out a huge room with these big pillars left to keep you from dying. I find the terms room and pillar, they're kind of misleading because it makes you think that the room is going to be vast and then there's these little kind of supports that are left behind and that's not the case at all. The pillars are huge. They're enormous. From what I saw, they're frequently bigger than the room itself. And they're left behind to keep the rock above from crumbling in. Right. Yeah. That's still got to be scary. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. Like, this is extremely dangerous. So you're hollowing out inside the mountain. That's super dangerous. Well, when I did my one caving experience a few years ago yeah. I forgot about it. And there was this one, I think they call it a pancake crawl or something, where for 20ft you have to shimmy on your back with the world's largest stone slab five inches above your face. And I just kept thinking, like, what if the earth moved a little? Yeah. This thing just smashed me flat. You'd be a pancake yourself. And that's one of the dangers, is trimmers and things. Sure. Underground trimmers. Have you been to Rock City? Yeah, when I was a kid. It's been a while. There's like an enormous rock that's being held up very precariously by a small boulder and walking under that same thing. I don't need to go caving. I can just go to Rock City in Tempt. Fate. Yeah. And then you can go to Stuckeys and buy a pecan log after all those. Yes. You don't know? Rock City is Tennessee, right? Yeah. Chattanooga. Chattanooga, Tennessee. Very beautiful area. It's our version of Carlsbad Caverns. You've got Rock City. It's super. Itchy there's like 1930s glow in the dark gnomes everywhere. Yeah. It's really interesting. Cool. And you got Ruby Falls. You walk underground and you come into a cavern and there's the water coming down. Very pretty. And then there's also, like, Lookout Mountain. Beautiful. Yeah. Definitely worth going not too far from your beloved Dollywood. Yeah, it's not far. So the point is with the room and pillar right, you're basically your pacman or your DigDug yeah. Going through a coal seam. And then that space you just carved out is called a room. When you come back through, you leave a big space in between of coal and then come back through again. And that's another room. So what's in between those two rooms now is the pillar. It's just the strip of coal that you left intact. Yeah. And they will come in at the very end and even take care of those pillars one by one, allowing everything to collapse as it leaves. Yeah. Which sounds probably like the most dangerous phase, is knocking the pillars down. They're like, make todd do it he's in the break room having a nap to wake him up. That's why he always sleeps on the job. Did you see that picture of Richard Branson, like, squatting next to one of the Virgin Airlines employee sleeping on a couch in the break room? He's like, squatting next to him giving a thumbs up. What was this whole thing? Because he's like the boss of all bosses of this guy. He's like, no, he's saying, like, I busted you sleeping on bed. Got you. It sounded staged. It was a real thing, supposedly. Yeah. Did he stick his hands in hot water? Genitalia. And the guy's face is sharp. He put toothpaste on his hand and tickled his nose. He's a fun loving boss. All right, so that's room and pillar. There's also the cut and fill method, which I don't fully understand. It is for narrow deposits. And you basically drill a ramp adjacent to the deposit from the surface of the earth down to the bottom of it. Right. And then you start at the bottom. At the bottom. And just start drilling sideways. Yeah. So imagine the or deposit is just like a big, tall rectangle. Okay. Okay. In the earth going upwards. It's a vertical or deposit. Yeah. You just go down the bottom. You make a cut across where you're digging out the coal from one side all the way to the other. All the way to the other. Right. And then you back fill that with rock rubble that say you gathered when you made the initial shaft down to the bottom. And then you drive on that backfill to do the next thing. So you fill the entire room you just did with rubble. And then when you cut above that, you're using that rubble to drive on. And then you do that same thing again. That makes sense. Yeah, it's pretty good one. And if you imagine a big yellow truck doing it, it can just send you barreling right back to age four or five. I didn't play a ton with Tonka trucks. There was a lot of model cars. Richard Scary was really good at drawing stuff like that. Really sucking you into that. I had those books great. Books were great. But I was big on I had that evil caneval stunt cycle. Oh, yeah. That was just amazing. Yes. That was my toy of choice for probably three or four years. I can imagine. Yeah. My brother and I made don't try this at home, kids. This is the 70s. We were much more dangerous. We would make hoops out of coat hangers and dip them in gasoline. I was really hoping that you were going to say a ring of fire. Yeah. When you jump the evil canevil through it. Man, I really missed out on having a Scott of my own. Yeah, it's good to have a Scott around. Yeah. He's going to be at our New York shows, by the way. Oh, great. Just randomly going to be in New York. Same exact topic. Listen to both of them, actually. I don't know if he's going to come to the show. He was going to, but then I said it's the same topic you've already seen. Anyway, back to cut and fill. You can use it for wider deposits as well. You just have to have two adjacent ramps. I guess you have one on each side. Yeah, I didn't really get that. Aside from maybe they're just crisscrossing, I think that's what they're doing, one above the other. That seems really dangerous. Yeah, well, it's all dangerous. All right, let's talk more about Scott. What about block caving? This one is you don't see it a lot now. It's for hard rock excavations and basically it's not for like precious metal or anything. It's for low grade junk. I saw that here, but then I also saw videos that sounded a lot like this. That seemed a lot like this too. So I don't know if it's just for junk or whatever. Yeah, it's basically where you cut through and then you let the roof collapse behind you. Yeah. You dig out of room and then blast it and let it just fall in on itself and then you haul that stuff out. Yeah, I guess you wouldn't care about the stuff you're recovering like that much. Obviously it's worth going into the earth and retrieving it, but I guess it's not high grade, you know what I mean? That's right. So coal, like we said, is softer and that is usually room and pillar style. But now there's a thing called long wall mining. It is all the rage in the break room of the mining. So it's really efficient. They get out 90% of available ore with this method where room and pillar is only about 50%, which is a huge stiff. Right. So we were talking about hard rock mining. Right. With the room and pillar works for hard rock mining and soft rock. Yeah, it crosses over, but then the cut and fill, that's just for hard rock, right? Correct. Okay. And then longwall, that's just for soft rock, basically. I think so, yes. So longwall. Yeah. That's the one where I'm like, oh man, this is so cool. Yeah, the machine, it's pretty awesome. How much those machines cost? I don't know, a lot. Like four, $500. Easy. Easy. At least. It's really neat. You're not drilling into a single deposit through the deposit. You basically have a machine that just kind of sort of a cross cut and just shaves it off as you go onto a conveyor belt. Just constantly moving the stuff out. Right. Rather than drilling through, going forward or backward, you're going left to right. So what you would do is you drill a shaft down to the or deposit and then you drill a shaft that's parallel to the face of it right. That goes from left to right and then you go down and you bring in your long wall machine which is apparently up to 800ft. Long, wide, costs $500. Right. And each part of this machine, which sounds like it's modular, like you can make it shorter, longer or whatever, and they just hook up to one another. It's like a hydraulic jack that holds the roof of the mountain up above it. Yes. It provides its own support. Yeah. And then on the front of it is where the coal eater is the sole eater. Amazing. This thing in action is really cool looking. Yes, it really is. Because when you're watching videos of it, you just see it from the side and it looks like, okay, it's going to go straight. And then all of a sudden the coal eater shoots off out of sight further back into the or deposit. And as it does that, it drops that coal down to a conveyor belt in the front of the thing and it shoots the coal off to the shaft that raises it up. Amazing. It is very amazing. And there's another method called short wall and it's the same thing, it's just for shorter cuts when it's a narrow deposit. Right. And then after the cut is made, the thing advances a little further and the roof behind it caves in. Amazing. I'm a big long wall fan. What about you? I like the room and pillar. Really? Because it's the machine. The continuous miner. Well, I think that's why I like the long wall is because of the mining machine. They should have named the continuous miner the John Henry like a throwback. But he was a railroad guy. Who was the guy who had the casey at the Bat? No. Wasn't it John Henry who had the contest against the steam machine? But I think they were what you're talking about? I thought it was steel driving man. Right. He was driving spikes. Yeah. What was the one that was, I don't know, digging into a rock. I know what you're talking about though. And I feel like they were trying to build a train tunnel too. I'm going to look this up during the break, okay. And we'll come back with the answer. How about that? Let's do it. It's called the cliffhanger. Do 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. 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That was another good episode we did tunnels. Do we do that one, too? Yeah. Jeez, man. Starting to lose it. Yeah, I like our civil engineering episodes, too. Is that a tranche we have? Sure. We've done bridges, tunnels, mining a couple of times, some other stuff. Yeah, I guess landfills would probably qualify. I could probably come up with more, but we should move on. You want to talk about the dangers of mining, Chuck? Yeah. Well, they're rampant. Well, first of all, can be bad for mother Earth. It's a tad just a little tin. We're talking you're changing the physical make up of the earth right beneath our feet. So there's got to be ramifications air pollution, of course, is one. How water flows? The water table underneath the earth, where that goes, that's bound to change things. Well, and also, a lot of times they are releasing other things in the earth that shouldn't really be in our drinking water. And that stuff does get into drinking water. The soil pollutes the heck out of it. Sometimes there's a fire, underground fires that you can't even get to to put out, like in centralia Pennsylvania. Isn't that crazy? A fire burning deep within the earth? Yeah. That just sounds dangerous. Yes. If a coal seam catches, you're in big trouble, because that is not getting put out anytime soon, maybe 150 years, it will burn itself out. Who knows? Really? Yeah. That's what centrally has got going on still? Yeah. Wow. Still on fire. Like, it will probably be on fire for a century. Man, I need to look into that. I haven't heard of that. Oh, it's neat. Really? Yeah. They abandoned the town. They had to. Crazy. Yes. There was a kid in the 80s after the fire caught, there was a landfill or a tire fire, something stupid, and it caught a coal seam on fire in an underground coal scene. And they knew it was burning, but they didn't evacuate the town until a kid in, like, 1982 was just playing in the street, and the street opened up and almost swallowed them into a pit of fire. They were like, we need to get out of here. Holy cow. Yeah. So that area is just like, is it fenced up and it's a death zone? Yes, but apparently there's still a couple of people that live there. Like, I'm not moving. Really. Man never heard of that. Have you heard of wildcat mining? I don't think so. Why don't I know anything about mining? I asked that same question. Why do you know everything about mining? That's a good question, too. Wildcat mining I know about because I couldn't find the name of the article. But there was a great article I think I read in Harper's a year or two back, and it was about wildcat mining in giana. And basically it's just illegal mining, but they are the most polluting mining operations you can imagine, really. Like, they use mercury quicksilver to bind to gold, and they're handling the quicksilver. It's getting everywhere. They're leaving it behind. It's going in the soil, it's going in the water. And that's just like one problem with it. They do nothing to remediate, like the diesel exhaust or anything like that. It's just a really big problem. What country is this? Guiana. Is it completely unregulated, or is it like a rogue operation? Well, by definition, it's a rogue operation, right. Wildcat. It's just an unlicensed mining operation. Man and it's not just Guiana that has that problem. It's around the world. There's wildcat mining, but they have a particularly bad problem with it. Man and I bet they make a dollar a day. Oh, yeah, very sad. Well, we might as well talk about the human toll since that's where we are. Like I said before, major accidents are the one you're going to hear about. But as an example, in 2010, about 2500 Chinese miners died, but none of them were big accidents. So you didn't really hear about a lot of that. Yeah, I'm sure you didn't hear about it in China. I didn't hear about it, but yeah, in China they were like, that's a big death toll, though. Miners family received windfall, didn't say why. They got paid out. Yeah. And you talked about was it in 2010, chilean in west Virginia? That same year, there was 29 people killed. 29 to 31 people at the upper big branch mine in west Virginia. Massive Energies. Mine. New Zealand. Another 29 people died that same year. Yeah, 29 or 31. Again, of the people present, 29 of the 31 died at pike river mine. Things are getting better, though, like, a lot of these accidents. Well, like you said, sometimes it's trimmers, like we said earlier, sometimes there are explosions. These gasses can ignite, there's underground gases. It's really just volatile down there. And in developed countries, though, there's not supposed to be explosions, right? Like the mining operations are supposed to be sophisticated enough these days that there should not be explosions. I remember massive Energy got in big trouble because they just were totally lacks, really about safety precautions, that kind of stuff. And some minors blew up because of it, man. And then, of course, the health risks that are long term. We mentioned black long, but it doesn't have to be just black long. There are all sorts of things you can breathe in welding, fumes, radon, mercury, all kinds of respiratory disease that can arise from being down there without even, like, a hanky over your mouth in some of these photos. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah. I would wear at least a dust mask. You would be down there anyway. I could mine. I'd be like Derek Zulander's family. He'd be break room, josh, go wake up Josh. Make him do it. But you did mention remediation a second ago, and it's all gotten better, safer, and more strict, environmentally speaking. But there are different depending on where you are, there are different remediation laws and rules from take care of it right now like you were never there, which, let's be honest, it's got to be impossible, right? Yeah. Come back every year and check on it if you want. I remember in the abandoned minds episode, it's like there's a lot of really dangerous spots, especially out west, that are just abandoned minds that people just walked away from. And if a company liquidates and you don't really know who the owners were, then there's not a lot you can do. True. Should we talk about the canary? I think we should. Man you've heard the phrase canary and a coal mine, which I never really understood, not where it came from, but I didn't know what people meant by that until more recently. The indicator that things are about to go south. Yes, I get it now, but I would just hear it and go, like, I don't know what that means. Well, there's actual, like, legitimacy to it. Right? Yeah. There was a guy named John Haldane who was quite the self experimenter. He would try and kill himself. Well, that's not true. He would try and bring himself near death by sitting in rooms full of gases so he could record results. Right. Amazing. Yeah. My head is always off to scientists who pig themselves. Yeah. I love those guys. No, really. He was also very sharp. Right. From his studies, he found out that carbon monoxide poisoning stained tissues red with hemoglobin. Right? Yes. And so he's working in the 1890s here. He noticed that miners would come up with bright, flushed faces, mysteriously dead, and he figured out probably carbon monoxide poisoning. So he said, you know what you guys should do? You should start carrying canaries down there with you. Yeah. Think of something really mean you could do to an animal right. And carry it down there in a cage. And if the canary dies, then that means you have troubles. You should turn and run. Yeah. Because apparently, birds, the way they breathe, they're getting twice as much oxygen or just intake as a human. Both. Okay. I guess they're breathing in twice as much because of the way their little feathery little system works. Yes. Which is pretty I didn't know this is from, I think, Gizmodo article, maybe from Esther English Arkell, and she points out that a bird's respiratory system, when they suck in air, some of it goes to basically like their lungs and perfuses their blood with oxygen. Right. But some of it also goes to these secondary sacks that just kind of hold it there. And then when the bird exhales, that air that never went to the lungs goes through the lungs. So they're getting oxygen on the way in and the way out. But that also means that whatever they're sucking in, when they take in that breath, they also get on the way in and the way out, which makes them very susceptible to dying from poisoned air. Yeah, but great, if they're not in a mine and they want to fly around, sure, because they're super oxygenated. Right. But if you can get your hands on them and shove them in a cave and take them down to a mine with you, you can use them as an indicator. Yeah. And she pointed out, even if they didn't breathe this way, just the fact that they're birds, theoretically, you could probably take any small animal down there. Oh, yeah. And if it died before a human, then that's probably bad. But birds were small. Put them in a cage easy. And then they had the whole doubling down on breathing. Wasn't that a KFC sandwich, that double down? Probably. I think it was. You got anything else? Nope. Well, if you want to know more about underground mining, you can type those words in the search bar@howstofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listening. I think this girl is trying to sue us. Oh, good. It's actually not true. Hey, guys. I'm new to the podcast thing, but discovered yours and it is awesome. All caps. I was born and raised in Seattle in an intentional community. Not religious or culty, just lots of hippies. In the late 90s, my housemates and I set out to free the Seattle airwave via pirate radio. Long story short, we got up and running with a show called Ape Shall Not Kill Ape. Great title. Yeah, it was a mix of music, live commentary, and how stuff works. I actually read from one of the coolest books I had, which was How Stuff Works. Remember we had those books years ago? Yeah. By Marshall Brain. Yeah. And she would read these things. Like she kind of had the first version of our podcast, and she said, even though you guys have an amazingly sweet and popular podcast, and I had a pirate radio show just reaching Capitol Hill in Seattle in the late ninety s. I feel akin to you guys. Fortunately for me, unfortunately, after a few months, two guys wearing suits knocked on the door. They thought it was our studio we had a secret door and Ladder club. Knocks. Yeah, Secret Knocks. And obviously we had been found out, which is crazy because we barely had a mile radius of coverage. But the government is a government and we weren't paying them, so they got upset. They actually sent dude. Dudes. After I'm not sick, we ended up getting shut down. And though I am very thankful for podcasts, I still feel like the people should own their airwaves. And I encourage everyone to start a pirate radio station of their own. Thanks for everything. I can't wait to hear about the feet washing ashore in my state. Yeah, great show. The Mysterious Feat. Yeah, I love that one. British Columbia and I will write you again. So that is from Aaron. Thanks a lot, Aaron. Power to the people. Yeah. I thought for a minute when I was reading that she was going to say, this is my idea, so get the checkbook out. Yeah. If you want to see us, please don't. Instead, you can just get in touch with us. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can hang out with us on Instagram at S YSK podcast as well. You can hang out with us on Facebook.com Stuffyoushhno. You can send us an email to Stuffpodcast how Stuff works.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.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 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 at petco, pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
86ab6e2e-3b0e-11eb-9699-8f74f9deb691 | How Fireflies and Lightning Bugs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-fireflies-and-lightning-bugs-work | Whether called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glow worms, the tiny, bioluminescent bugs that light up the evening are universally beloved. Which makes their sudden and swift decline very distressing. Listen to find out how you – YOU – can save the firefly.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Whether called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glow worms, the tiny, bioluminescent bugs that light up the evening are universally beloved. Which makes their sudden and swift decline very distressing. Listen to find out how you – YOU – can save the firefly.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 12 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=224, tm_isdst=0) | 46721238 | audio/mpeg | "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 over there. And it's just the two of us, and we are here to today to present you stuff You Should know about firefly enlightening bugs, which are pretty much one and the same. I assume you're a firefly guy, right? I'm both. I vacillate. I'm a vacillator. Really? I'll say it again. I vacillate. That's weird. I don't know many people that kind of interchange these well, I grew up in Toledo, and I think that's where I picked up lightning bug. And then down here in the south, firefly. Right. You got a backward son. Well, then I picked up firefly as a kid and lightning bug in the south. That's it, then. Yeah. I mean, I'm obviously born and raised here forever. I just can't imagine saying fireflies. It just seems very strange to me. Yeah, it makes you think of, like, arsonists. No, it makes me think of brown coats in the TV show. Okay, sure. That was a good TV show. Yeah, I mean, that's a good thing to think about, for sure. But yeah, that's the deal. Apparently in the south, it's lightning bugs generally. I think firefly out west and Northeast and then Midwest and south is lightning bug. Generally. Yeah, generally. I mean, there's pockets here. There of weirdos who call them other things, like Jack Wilkins and stuff like that. Yeah. But most people see fireflies and lightning bugs is, like, synonymous and interchangeable. But apparently there's a group of firefly researchers that differentiate where they use fireflies is like the umbrella term for a few other categories. Right. There's the glow worm, of which the ladies don't have wings and they have a steady glow. They're big in the UK. Huge. Like big in size or just popular. Popular is basically what I mean. They're like 3ft long. Then you've got your daytime dark fireflies, which just get this out of here, if you ask me. I know, it's sad. Yeah. They don't even have light, so why even throw the word firefly in there? They ruin it for everybody else. That's the problem with using genetics for taxonomy, you know? Right. And then you've got your flashing firefly, and that's what we're kind of talking about here, which is the lightning bug. Yeah, that's where it's interchangeable. Flashing firefly, lightning bug, one and the same. And we're not going to be pedantic from this point on, but I felt like that was worth pointing out, you know? No, I agree. Well, we're going to be a little pedantic one more time. I get you. Right, I forgot. Because fireflies aren't flies, lightning bugs aren't bugs. And there's quite a few little facts of the podcast that, you know, this is one of those, I think, where people don't know a lot about lightning bugs, so they can always delight their friends at their next backyard party by saying they're actually all beetles. That's right. And everybody will be like, what? Oh, my God. You just won the party. Oh, man. I haven't won a party in so long. It's been a while. I haven't been to a party in so long. Even long before the pandemic, I stopped getting invited. Oh, really? Sure. Because you won too many parties. I guess you can't have Josh. It was like having Simone Biles over for a gymnastics party. What? I don't get that one. The goat thing. I don't get the goat thing. She's the greatest of all time with the gymnastics. I'm saying I'm the greatest of all time with party winning, with facts. I have goats that live across the street and I literally just fed them. So my mind went to the animals. So I didn't get it. Yes. All about Simone Biles. She's great. Taking care of herself. I love it. Yeah, sure. No, I'm sorry. This sounded like I was ambivalent. I agree with you. I think it is because she took care of herself. I agree, too. Well, you said first, obviously you agree with yourself. Should we cut all that out? No, I think that's stuff you should know, Gold, we haven't had some weirdo exchange. Yeah, for a while. It's been a while. All right, can we get back to lightning bugs, for the love of God? Yes. Their class. Oh, boy, here we go. I'm going to say the order kolyoptera. I think you just nailed it. You just won the pronunciation party. You want to try the family? I've been trying to figure this out. I think it's Lampyride. I think that's about right. Because Pyro like fire, like, hey, the bright. It could also be lampyride. It's one of those two. That's what I'm staking my claim on. I'm going to vacillate between lampyra day and lampura day. All right. But altogether, in this order and family, there are here in the North American continent, there are more than 170 species and more than 2000 worldwide. And they're always discovering more species. Not always, but they're still discovering like every day they're discovering more species. So that list grows and grows. Yes, which is pretty cool, especially considering that they are dropping like flies as far as anecdotal evidence is concerned. Including anecdotal evidence from me. Yeah, me too. Which we'll get to very disappointed. So the thing about fireflies is, since they're a beetle family, most of them are all winged beetles, almost all of them are, like you said, some glow worms are typically include females that don't have wings. But for the most part, they have wings and they fly around. And like winged beetles, they have certain parts. In particular, the elitra. Yeah. I would say elitra or Elitra. Okay. And that is very cool. Little closure that they're like bay doors that open and close on the back of the firefly to allow the wings to spread out, to take flight. It's really neat. It's like a DeLorean. Yeah, it is a lot. Or like the Tesla SUV. Oh, do they open like that? Yes. That's so showy. It's pretty cool, though, man. What is it about those doors? I don't know. Yes, I know. I also love the old Lamborghini when they slide open, ever since I was eight. Something about doors like that or just tickle me. Yes, those encased the wings and protect them. And then they also have an encased head. It's called a PrideM. And that's the covering over basically the entire head. So if you're looking from a bird's eye view, you're just going to see you're going to see any face. Yeah. It's just like a protective cover. It's like Jerry, only from the misfits. It's like that get up that he wears that covers the back of his neck and head. I don't think I've seen that. Yeah, and it has spikes. And I can tell you that you meet has been impaled briefly on one of those spikes that show that Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein invited us to Madison Square Garden. Yes. But it definitely caught our attention because those things are not for show, man. The spikes are very pointy, and they're metal. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know if it was, like, guarantee. And it's all, like, foam. No, Guar is apparently doing, like, a model of what Cherry only was wearing all these years. All right, how big are these things? What did we settle on? I know you sent an update. Is that just because it was incorrect or because 716 of an inch makes no sense to anyone? Well, it said that they range in size from, like, 716 of an inch to 916 of an inch. I think that's specifically like the Big Dipper firefly. Fireflies in general typically range from about a fifth of an inch to an inch. Typically like five to 25 mm, starting at about the size of a grain of rice all the way up to an inch. But there's some that are, like, way bigger than that. Yes, there are some that can be as big as the palm of your hand, but here in the United States is good old American ones. You know how big they are? They're about as big as a fingernail. That's right. And when they fly around, they go, I'm going to squirt some light on you. And you and speaking of them squirting light, just last thing about their body. The light organ in their abdomen or tail is called the lantern, which I think is all I love that. Besides backyards in the suburbs, where do you find fireflies? Charles well, you can find them on any continent, except, of course, Antarctica. I feel like we say that a lot. Poor Antarctica. They are going to be in tropical regions, temperate zones. You're going to see them. It depends on what stage they're in. The stage that we all love the adult stage. It's only a couple of weeks long when they're flying around and lighting up their bellies. But mainly, and we'll get to their life cycle, they spend most of their time as larvae on the ground, on the forest floor, kind of near water. Usually the larvae stage, they look like almost like little dinosaur caterpillars. They're really interesting looking and they look nothing like you would think if you're used to seeing like, these fireflies fly around. Yeah, especially, I mean, fireflies just seem so like mild mannered and almost kind of dopey to some extent when they're flying around. When they're in a lot of the stages we'll see they're holy terrors, basically. But they have all sorts of different habitats. You can find them up in the southern provinces of Canada. You can find them in some arid areas as long as there is permanent water. You could conceivably have firefly populations and even like just perpetually moist areas too. It doesn't have to be like a pond or something, but moist, like real moist areas. Yes. And you're going to see them in the humid summer evenings generally in the south it can be hot all year long, so you can see them some in the fall as well, and some like there are outliers, like you said, some of them are really super aquatic and some of them never come down from their trees. And these are the ones of the 2000 species all over the world that we're talking about. Right. And if you are looking for a firefly show, the best seasons that you're going to have firefly shows are after a warm, wet spring, or even during a warm, wet spring and or after a mild winter, because those larvae that live in those marshy areas will have higher survival rates in a colder climate with a mild winter during the overwintering period. All right, I think that's a great set up. Sure. Let's get started. Maybe we should take a break and reveal to everyone what the heck they're doing with those lanterns to begin with. I think so. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, Chuck, we're about to act as Lucifer to all these people because we will be bringing light to understanding of how fireflies produce light using appropriately luciferase. Right. And I guess we can go ahead and since I promised a big reveal they're doing all this to attract a mate. They're trying to get down and boogie with another lightning bug. That's why they're lighting up like that. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot about the reveal in the one and a half seconds between your cliffhanger and coming back. Yeah. I wonder if people think we leave for 120 seconds and just go take a stretch or whatever. We just sit there in silence for 120 seconds. That's what it's going gerry won't let us talk, so yeah, they're lining up to attract a mate. And what they're doing here? They have these specialized cells in their abdomen to make that lantern light up. And it contains, like you said, that chemical called luciferin. Sure. And it makes it an enzyme called luciferase. If you don't want to sound devilish about it, that would be a fine pronunciation. I like luciferin, luciferin and luciferase. But they need something else too, right. They need oxygen to make that thing blaze. Yeah. That anodenacym triphosphate or ATP, which is that chemically stored energy that's found in basically all cells of all life everywhere. Yeah, it's just kind of that ubiquitous thing that kind of makes it's what powers life. So when it all kind of combines where you have oxygen and ATP and luciferin and luciferase, the enzyme that's produced by luciferin, this chemical reaction produces light. There's a couple of byproducts oxyluciferin and adenosine monophosphate and then lights given off and you would think like, okay, light and heat. Sure. That's the chemical reaction. So it's going to produce some heat? No, absolutely not. Yeah. Here's one of those facts of the podcast. In my opinion they call the kind of light that fireflies produce, the kind of bioluminescence that fireflies produce cold light because it is 100% efficient. None of the energy released from that chemical reaction is lost to heat. It just produces photons only. Yeah. And that's why children can let a lightning bug land on their finger. And that little abdomen that lander can light up on their finger and they don't go owl and smash it. Yeah, try that with the sparkler. Don't do that. It doesn't work. The light is the actual light and the wavelength is between 510 and 670. Looks a little greenish. It's been described as reddish green, but it looks like a yellowish green to me. It depends on the species, I think. Yeah, I think there's ones that even give off blue, right? Yeah. There's some around Asheville called the blue ghost firefly, and from a distance they look blue. But up close if you catch one and hold it in your hand, it's like a greenish thing. So it has something to do with the distance that makes it look blue. But I saw pictures of those things, I'm like, oh, I want to go see those one day. Asheville is a nice weekend trip. Sure. It's beautiful up there. Do you guys ever go up there? No, we went a couple of years ago. It's great. Go to the what's it called? The Big House. Sure. Who's it's name? I don't know why I'm blank the house. Yeah, but there's also like the mountains around there need and the town itself has a lot of great restaurants. You're looking for vegan food, you could do a lot worse than Nashville or craft beer or homemade chocolate. Just don't go to the Biltmore house during Christmas unless well, I just think it's better non Christmas. Like the Christmas is so done there. Sure. That I feel like it obscures a lot of the beauty of the biltmore house. And that kind of Christmas stuff that they put up is not my style. It's just a lot. Is it like the bell style of Christmas? Yeah, I'm with you, it's not my thing. And the belt more stands on its own. It doesn't need all that garbage. So that's just my opinion. You're like? I like my Christmas gaudy. Plus you don't get the gardens that you would. That's just me. We made the big mistake of going there in Christmas one time. Never happened again. It was the worst mistake. And I had a drifter once with my car. Here's. Another cool fact of the show, I think, is that the lightning bugs all have gout. Or they could very well have gout because those cells that make that light are riddled with uric acid crystals, just like you have as a human with gout. But they do it because they are crystals to reflect that light away from their little abdomen. Yeah, it's just like the lenses they used in Robert Agar's masterpiece, The Lighthouse. Yeah. Oh, boy, what a movie. Yeah, I just wanted to slide a reference and in order to get that oxygen, we've been saying it needs oxygen. You're probably like, well, how in the world do they get it? Sure. It is not just gathered through the air. It actually goes through a tube in the abdomen called the abdominal trachea, which is very interesting. Yeah. They're not exactly sure if fireflies are able to turn the supply of oxygen on or off. It's almost like how it would inject fuel into a combustion engine. They are injecting oxygen into their luciferase engine and producing light with it, but they don't know if they can use nerves to turn it on and off or if they're just subject to the whims of oxygen availability. We just don't know at this point. We just don't. Now, here's how I understand this next bit, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but they use this chemical reaction that happens in fireflies to produce that bioluminescence. They can use that. We said the ATP, like every animal on the planet has ATP but if you have cell damage, maybe you might not have as much or if it's disease, you may not have enough. And do they actually use this bioluminescence to inject in the cells to see if they get that glowy reaction that they're looking for? Yeah, they use it for that to make sure that the cells have an expected amount of ATP to locate cells that don't have enough ATP because that would suggest there's some sort of problem going on there. And then also they figured out how to attach the luciferin gene to other genes using, I believe, CRISPR, which ties into our optogenetics episode where they're using the light that's produced by luminescent to turn on and off nearby genes, which is nuts. But the thing I saw that this luciferase was used for most abundantly, especially in the 20th century, was to detect spoilage in food like milk. Because if you had bacteria growing in your milk, if you added luciferase, the milk would start to glow because the luciferase would interact with the ATP in those bacterial cells and you would know you needed to pour some bleaching with your milk. Right? Don't ever do that. Don't ever drink glowing milk and don't ever pour bleach and drink it in anything. But apparently we humans have no problems ingesting and working with luciferase. It doesn't do anything bad to our bodies as far as we know, which is pretty interesting. All right, so now I know everyone's like this is all great chemical reactions and stuff, but I would really love to talk about the sexy stuff because anytime we talk about animals and insects we always get to talk about sexy stuff, which is a lot of fun. It's basically our only outlet. It really is. Except when we blush our way through episodes on puberty and stuff or see a good pair of goal wing doors open up on a car. Right. And of course puberty isn't sexy stuff. I hope that didn't come across a good save. So when they're flashing, like we said, it is a mating ritual and it is usually the male flashing their light high above the sky or high above the yard in the sky to show off to females who are on the ground kind of sitting around having a glass of wine and they're watching the light show and they're like, what do you think of that one, Marge? And they're like, well he looks okay so let me flash back. And they'll flash back and then the mail will see that and they'll say, hey, she just swiped. I don't know if it's left or right but in the correct direction and let me go down and see if we can have a little party for the next few hours. Yeah, because that's how long they couple. And by couple I mean have sex. They stick together for an hour or multiple hours Chuck, which is pretty impressive. Agreed. Yes. An hour to 3 hours. That's great. Good for them, right? I'm really happy for them here's. The cool thing too though is each species has its own little blinky pattern because they want to mate with the appropriate match and so they're going to send out their blinky pattern. In some places around the world they are synchronous. I think Southeast Asia has the only really truly synchronous lightning bugs and that they all blink in unison, which really must be cool to see. Yeah. And I guess the message is like come and get it. I guess. So all it was kind of in a creepy Children of the Damned tone. Other places I think they can synchronize but they don't become like completely synchronous as a unit. Right? No, I mean they will like in little localized areas and for a few seconds only. And you've probably seen this and didn't necessarily recognize what you're looking at, but this is like when I thought about it, I was having trouble understanding it from the written description. And I thought about it and thought about it. I sat down for a little while, thought about it some more, and finally, yeah, of course, that's just a given. And then I finally was like, okay, I think I got this. And I think I've seen this before, where you'll just see a few firefighters start to kind of like, fall into a rhythm and then they fall out of the rhythm after a few flashes. That's still considered synchronous. Right? Give them a break. Yeah, they're trying their best. They have an oxygen abdomen, tricky. Love of God. One of the things I saw that I thought was like, really interesting is, as we'll see when we talk about what they eat, most of the adults that you see flying around either don't eat or maybe eat plant stuff like nectar and pollen. But there's this one kind of firefly which is actually pretty abundant in North America, the photaris species, where the female of the species will actually mimic the female of a rival species and they'll attract males from the other species, the Photinus species, to come over thinking that they're going to mate. And then what they find out is that, oh wait, this is the one female of the one species that is actually going to eat me, that is actually predatory against other fireflies. And now I'm dead. Yeah, they're tricksters. Because the male faulturist can also imitate another male photinis to attract a female of its own species. So she shows up thinking that she might have food and he's like, oh no, it's time to get down in boogie. That's right. And then beyond that, chuck it goes even one more level deeper because they are pretty sure. And there's this really great website called Firefly.org. It's run by a guy named Ben Pfeiffer. From what I understand, he seems to be quite dedicated to fireflies. This is the only place I saw it. But he was saying that some researchers think that male Fturas no male fatinus, the ones that end up sometimes being food for female photuruses. Male fotinuses have figured out how to put off bad flash patterns that make it look like a female photurist, impersonating a male photionist to scare off other male photos fireflies so that it reduces competition for female photographs. Isn't that it's kind of brain breaking? It really is. But this is apparently what the fireflies are doing with their time. That and getting down and boogieing. Like we said, it's a few hours, one to 3 hours of that. And when this happens, the male is going to transfer his sperm packet to the female. And they call this in the field of studying this in entomology, they call it a nuptial gift that the male gives a female. Sure. And this all occurs individually over, like we said, a few hours, but a few days total of mating. That's going to happen usually in the spring. Then the lady is going to lay her fertilized eggs either on the ground or just below the surface, maybe in some rotting logs or in mulchy sort of leaves and things like that. It's got to be moist. And then three to four weeks later, they're going to hatch out those little larvae who are going to live on the ground, terrorizing their neighbors for about two years. Yeah. And in the meantime, mom and dad have gone off and died because they only live as adults for a few weeks. But you said it's. Larvae live for up to two years. It's by far the longest part of the life cycle. And they are terrors of the miniature world down there. Yes. They have mandibles, and they inject their prey and paralyze them with neurotoxins. And I know we've talked about some other insects that do this. They secrete these enzymes that basically liquefy what they're trying to eat so they can just suck it up. It's like a Seth Brindle fly. Yeah, exactly. And then in that stage, they'll eat worms, and worms will also eat them and return the favor. But they'll eat snails, they'll eat slugs, they'll eat other insects, and they're just down there kind of wreaking havoc and then also trying not to get eaten. Yeah, because it goes both ways in that world. And frogs apparently will eat firefly larvae pretty commonly. They'll also eat firefly adults that land on the ground. I think snakes eat firefly adults on the ground. Some birds, I think ducks do, but it's not necessarily on purpose. They might just get swept up with some other actual duck food. They might caught up in the frenzy, pretty much. And then fish also like to eat firefly eggs and larvae that are like, in marshy areas, like rice patties or things like that. But apparently the most widespread and abundant predators against firefly larvae are spiders. Yes, but don't feel bad because firefly larva eat spiders as well. And there are also some spiders that have learned, like, you don't really want to eat a firefly. I'm kind of scared of those things, it turns out. Yeah. So here's the deal. When you see them flying around, they're flying around very sort of lazily. They're lighting up their lanterns, broadcasting that they're out there. And the reason that they're broadcasting their presence is like, you would think that that's not good. Like, oh, you know, a bird will swoop down and eat me because they clearly see me flying around. That's actually a warning sign because they're not great flyers. They're not going to dodge you and outmaneuver you maverick style in a dog fight. They're going to secrete these nasty I guess they're toxins that are really bitter. They really kind of stink. I think if you're studying fire flies and you have like thousands of them in a room, it can kind of be pretty stinky in there. Yeah, a nauseating odor when 10,000 to 20,000 are confined in a room. Yeah, that was one researchers quote. So what they do is they deliver this bitter, like, I think they secrete a few drops of blood and it's just this toxic bitter taste that everything's eating them, but everything is also like, oh God, why did I just eat that? Yeah, and apparently this toxin that they create, lucid buffagins, which is not a great word, it is akin to those neurotoxins that some like poisonous tree frogs produce and secrete. So it could conceivably kill some things. And I think that might be the same neurotoxin that the larvae uses venom to paralyze poor slugs and stuff like that. But some species have been like, you don't want to eat like fireflies. In one study of trying to feed them to lizards mixed in with mealworms, the lizards will basically spit out and wipe away like the firefly and then wipe it snout with its forearm, like gross. It's really funny. That was disgusting. I think bats learned bats are smart. We have a great episode on bats and they have learned not to eat them because they did a study in Boise State where they coated their AB, the little lanterns, with paint. So the bats couldn't see them and the bats started eating them. But it didn't take very long till the bats were like literally spitting them out and saying, you jerks, why are you painting those lanterns? I don't want to eat those things. We've learned not to eat those things. Right. And they also found that bats that I guess hadn't been exposed to fireflies before, if they didn't paint the fireflies, those bats learned even faster to avoid fireflies because of the bio. Luminescence so what these Boise State researchers who conducted that study concluded was that the bioluminescence, the flashing of fireflies and lightning bugs actually developed as a way to warn off predators, including bats, and that it probably co evolved with that predation and then became the main trait that it is now, which is a courtship ritual later on. But it had a different purpose at first. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. And they think this because I think in some species the eggs and the larvae actually glow as well. And they're clearly not mating. No, not yet. Not for hours at a time, I can tell you. All right, let's take another break maybe, and we'll talk about why these lightning bugs are disappearing almost at the F word and what we can do about it right after this. Chuck, I think it is one of the saddest things on planet Earth, and I mean that quite actually that fireflies are vanishing very quickly because we're talking about an enormous drop. And again, this is largely. Anecdotal from people of a certain age, like our age group. We grew up, like, seeing tons of fireflies, like, so many fireflies, it never even occurred to you that they could possibly go away to where they're just gone in some places now or in my backyard in Atlanta, it's like, if I see five or six, I'm like, it's a good night tonight. Whereas before, it was like the whole yard would have been filled up with it 20 years ago. And it's really distressing to think of a world without fireflies, and that seems like where we're headed. And it's all our fault, basically. It really is. I see them a lot more at my house than I do, I feel like, elsewhere in our neighborhood, because our yard is crazy and it's wild, and we don't spray from mosquitoes or use pesticides or anything like that. So we have a pretty good wild habitat back there for all kinds of insects. But for a long time, they were harvested, I think, in different parts of the world. They were harvested commercially in Japan, the Genji firefly, and then in the US. From 60 to about 95, the Sigma Chemical Company harvested about 3 million a year to get that luciferase and loose friends. Yeah, apparently they sold it to the biomedical industry, who would use it to detect spoiled milk and stuff like that. Right, exactly. No, for real, that's what all those were harvested for. Like, all that stuff we already talked about, that's what they needed it for. 100 million fireflies over that, like, 30 something year period were harvested by it for their loose phrase. And then, fortunately, somebody, some saint, patron saint of fireflies, and I think that's Nathan Fillian. You're right. Nathan Fillion synthesized luciferase, and it started to become widely available and cheaper. And so the fireflies alone after that, why did it take 15 years to cease it? Just to roll it out, I guess I think it was more like ten. And it was probably really expensive at first, and then it took about ten years for them to figure out how to produce it, mass produce it cheaply. And then the Sigma Chemical Company was like, it's a penny less than the lightning bug one sold. So, yeah, you are seeing fewer fireflies. It's not a figment of your imagination. They surveyed, I think, 350 lightning bug experts, and they said it's really three things, and they're all because of us. It's habitat loss, toxic chemicals, and light pollution. Habitat loss. They have I don't think we mentioned this is, to me, one of the coolest facts of the show is that if you see a lightning bug in your backyard, then it has a very high likelihood of being born in your backyard. They're super, super localized. And I just love the thought of that, that they sort of live on your property. Yeah, I mean, that's their whole world right there is your little backyard so it kind of makes you like when I heard that, I was like, oh, I want to nurture that and take care of it. These are like family, basically. They're like yard family. Yard family. They're not interlopers, they're not neighbors. They belong in your yard. That's their yard in a lot of ways. So I thought that was kind of neat to realize. One of the problems of that is, though, Chuck, is that they don't migrate very well, if at all. So if you disrupt their habitat and kill off the firefly population there, they might be gone. Unless you go find some other firefly larva and bring them back. Like a new group is not necessarily going to migrate in and repopulate the area. Yes. And this is like we're looking at you individual homeowner, like you can say the contractor who comes in and bulldozes the forest to build a neighborhood. And that's certainly true. But if you say, you know what, I don't have a view of blank, so I'm going to cut down these seven trees in my backyard to have a big golf course like scene. You're disrupting their habitat by doing that. Yeah, for sure. I don't want to be too judgy, but I am very much judging you. Well, I think we should take the other tack and then promote things people can do. So I get them interested on the one hand and then lay them with the haymaker of how they can help. One of the other problems is artificial light at night. Chuck yeah, Alan. Alan it is light blue. We should do a whole episode on light pollution right out of my mouth. How do they smell? Chris? How weird. Did you have a Frittata for breakfast? Yes. Can you smell the olives in there? You can smell them on the words. Yeah. So we're talking about everything from just street lights and business lights and any kind of light you would find in an urban or more urban or suburban area to something called sky glow, which is that just more diffused illumination that you kind of see everywhere as well now. And that can be so bright it can exceed full moon levels. And I see that stuff a little bit out of the camp. Even in the middle of the woods, you can see that sky glow sort of on the lower horizon. It's off putting. It is. But when you're a lightning bug and you rely on light to find mates, if you're distracted by a bright light or the light that you're putting out is being drowned out by competing artificial light, that's a real problem. And that can lead to a decline in the population. So especially when you combine habitat loss with somebody keeping their back porch light on all night, every night, year round, that's not good for the lightning bugs and it's a big problem for them. So too are cars because so many fireflies and lightning bugs live in wooded areas. We've built so many roads through the woods that when people drive through there at night, those car lights can actually create a problem for their courtship and their hours long coupling as well. That's right. And then the last thing, of course, is if you're using pesticides and herbicides on your lawn and in your yard, you're killing all kinds of things, including lightning bugs. If you're spraying for mosquitoes, you are wrecking the pollinating system in your property and killing lightning bugs. Yeah, and I am not going to judge because Josh told me not to, but don't spray for mosquitoes. Just don't suppose we need our bees. That's supposed to be a last resort. Like, there's so many other things you can do to get rid of mosquitoes beyond just spraying for them. And then yeah, not just the mosquito spray, but any neonicotinoid pesticide is really bad for basically every insect in the area, including bees. Remember our colony collapse episode? Yeah. So saying all the pollinators are being affected, it's devastating. But in addition to the chemicals, too, you can mow your lawn too much. Our lawns actually make a pretty good habitat in the absence of other habitats that lightning bugs prefer. If you keep your grass long enough, you want to kind of provide a buffer between the mower blade and the lightning bug. So if you cut your grass a lot and keep it nice and trim, you may want to consider growing it out beyond, like, say, the two inch length. And you can mow it, but just know that when you're mowing it, you're also stepping on and crushing lightning bug larvae, too. So just be thoughtful when you mow your lawn. How about that? Yeah, be thoughtful. Mulching is a great idea. I'm actually down to kind of almost zero grass, but when I did have grass, I would just mulch mow. I'm not a big fan of raking leaves, certainly as stuff you should know. Co host and not a fan of blowing leaves, because we know that you are of the devil if you're doing that. Right. Yes. What, you don't hate leaf blowers anymore? I hate leaf blowers, but I use one now. I know things have changed. I feel like I needed to fess up about it. It's battery powered and I use it sparingly. But yes, I have a leaf blower. I do, too. I never hated them like you did. I just don't think you should blow your whole lawn, like, out into the street. I use it totally just to blow the leafs off my deck back into my yard. You know who hates the sound of the leaf blower almost violently is David Spade. Oh, really? Yes. If you follow my Instagram, probably one out of every five posts is like he's just, like, ripping into some guy who's using a leaf blower over, like, on the other end of his neighborhood. Wow. He hates leaf blowers. We'll have to exchange brands because I don't know if yours is good, but I got a great cordless battery powered blower that's super powerful. I use the DeWalt battery power. It's pretty great. Okay, what do you use? I can't remember the name of it. I have to go look. Is it one of those, like, Eco ones? Orange is probably Huskvarna. No, it's not Huskvan. Echo? No, it's not one of those big brands. I think it's, like, works like wexx yeah, they're good too. I was always like those battery power and don't have the juice you need, but these have to do now. Yeah. I've got a battery powered lawnmower that I charged one time, and still it just cuts like crazy a year after the first time I charged it. They definitely were. Yeah, that's what I got, too. They last a long time. So, Chuck, one thing you said about blowing leaves out into the yard or out into your curb or something like that, or even raking them up and removing them. That is where firefly larvae live. So you're removing the firefly larva from your yard to God knows where, probably not some place where they're going to be cared for and repopulate. They're probably going to die in the bargain. So, yes, if you really care about your grass, you're not just going to leave leaves on there. But if you have garden beds, you could do that. Apparently, you don't want to clean up your garden in the fall. You want to just leave it as is over the winter because that is a habitat for all sorts of great creatures that keep your soil going, including firefly larvae. And then you clean it up in the spring. And if you do, like, rake your leaves off your lawn, don't just throw them away. Like, put them in paper bags and keep them wet, like, maybe under a tree for the winter and then work them into the soil in the spring. And you've got a great yard, suddenly for the firefly larvae that you just kind of help nurture over the winter. Yeah. Plus, it's great for your garden beds. It's just really super rich good stuff. It really is. What else? You said basically, you don't want to cut down those trees to give yourself a golf course view. You want to kind of leave parts of your yard wild too, right? Yeah. I mean, my backyard now is a little too wild for my taste. Really? It's pretty crazy. Oh, man. I got to come over and see it. Yeah. I mean, Emily went nuts planning things over the past few years, and it's something else. It feels like a science experiment going on back there. That's awesome. Yeah. So, yeah, we let it go wild, but you can just let parts of your, like, designate a corner of your yard and let that kind of go a little bit crazy. Remember when we studied Darwin years ago how he would just let everything go crazy because he could just study so much more stuff. Yeah. And if you have, like, a tree line or something on the fringes of the yard, let that go crazy. Let it grow out a little bit more. Leave some of the shrubs you think are kind of ugly that are growing in there. Or replace them with native shrubs. Even better. Or it can be as simple as if a tree falls down in your yard and it's not like covering the grass. Just leave it where it is and let it rot. That's a great firefly habitat right there. Totally. The final thing you can do. Well, there's a couple of things, but turn those lights off. You got big old yard spotlights. I don't know what you're doing, but no one wants that. Your neighbors don't want that. Fireflies don't want that. Nobody likes that. Yeah. At least put them on, like, a motion sensitive thing that turns off after, like, a minute. Yeah, that's fine. But yes. Turn those lights off. Try and make it dark. And then this last thing is something I'm really bummed that I missed out on this year. I did not know about it. Yeah, me, too. But I'm definitely going to sign up. It's called the vanishing firefly project. And what they do is offer up an app that's for free, and on three different days, they have a census, june 6, July 4, and August 1, where you go out and you count fireflies or lightning bugs in your yard for a certain amount of time and then enter that into the census. And they're getting a pretty robust body of data from this. Yeah, there's another group called Firefly Watch from the Museum of Science in Boston, and they have even more extensive census. But it's basically like citizen scientists contributing to much needed data, because, like we were saying, all the stuff about the fireflies vanishing is anecdotal. And only now our research is really starting to turn to studying the issue so we can figure out what the biggest problems are and how to alleviate them so we don't lose fireflies. Because nobody wants that. I don't care how nihilistic you are. I don't care how little you care about anything. If you stopped and really searched your feelings, you would find that you don't want a world without fireflies. Agreed. For lightning bugs? Agreed even more. And I have to say, Chuck, I really feel like we brought the country together. Much needed by using both fireflies and lightning bugs in this episode. Agreed. Okay, well, since Chuck had agreed at least three times, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this hot off the presses. Hey, guys. This is Kelsey from Chico, California. I'm a counselor and professor of local community college, and I've never gotten sarcasm. My family is very blunt, and if anyone is sarcastic, well, I wouldn't know it I start all my classes wait a minute. That was sarcasm, right? I don't think so. I start all my classes explaining that I'm being genuine, and if you think I said something sarcastic, I didn't. But in the podcast, you mentioned that individuals that are neuro atypical might not get sarcasm. My friends who work in special education have totally used hand signs with me when they are being sarcastic. In your podcast, which I've listened to from the beginning, I only know Josh is being sarcastic when I think that was kind of mean. And then Chuck giggles a little bit. That's the tell, I guess. Yeah. When my husband is sarcastic and he gets a double laugh, meaning he laughs at himself for the joke, I do that a lot and then giggles a little when he has to explain it to me, that's when I know he's being sarcastic. Nice. Anyway, you two are great, and I often use your podcast as another form of learning in my courses. And that is from Kelsey. Thanks a lot, Kelsey. Thanks for pointing all that out, because I hadn't really realized how that could be interpreted. But Chuck is my sarcasm beard, everybody. Thank you for that, Chuck. I appreciate it. Well, we appreciate Kelsey, too, for writing in. And if you want to be like Kelsey, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c3937166-5460-11e8-b38c-2be214f806eb | SYSK Selects: How Wills Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-wills-work | Whether it's oral, scrawled in blood or signed on a deathbed everyone should have a will. But how do they actually work? Join Chuck and Josh as they explain that "of sound mind" thing in this classic episode. | Whether it's oral, scrawled in blood or signed on a deathbed everyone should have a will. But how do they actually work? Join Chuck and Josh as they explain that "of sound mind" thing in this classic episode. | Sat, 14 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=257, tm_isdst=0) | 37650261 | audio/mpeg | "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. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called 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 demands, 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. Hey, everybody. It's your old pal and trusted confidant, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen How Wills work to died in the wool example of a classic Stuff You Should Know episode where we did our absolute best to find the most interesting stuff about a seemingly boring topic. Plus, it's chock full of helpful legal advice issued by a pair of decidedly nonlawyers us. At any rate, hope you enjoy it. Take care. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chucker. Chucktran Bryant. Chuck Tran is so weird to me. I don't get it. Yes. I have no recollection of where that came from. Oh, no, wait. It was from a show, though. Yeah. You didn't just make that up? Not just now, no. It was in relation to something we were talking about at the time. It made sense once. Okay. I was on our Facebook page. I was looking for discussions. Like, sometimes I like to go on and read, what's your favorite line? Really? Have you ever read those? I didn't know the word. It's just like a trip down memory lane. Really? Yeah. There's a whole discussion threads. There's like 40 different threads that people have created. But there was one that was like, what's your favorite stuff you should know line of all time? And I can't find that thread any longer. That's a good one. Did you go through and count on how many you had and how many I had? I did not count. I kept a running tally, but I didn't count. Just mentally. I didn't write anything down, as it were. Chuck? Yes? 1979 was a pretty good year for movies. Yeah, sure. Allow me. That year the Muppet movie came out, kramer versus Kramer was number one at the box office. One of my personal favorites, amityville Horror. The first one. Woody Allen's Manhattan. The Jerk. That's my favorite all time movie. Manhattan is? Yeah. I've not seen it. What? I have not. Okay. The Jerk is awesome. Oh, wait. The jerk or Manhattan? I said Manhattan. You said yeah, Manhattan. I was changing the subject. Okay. All right. I like The Jerk. Alien Rocky, two Alien, so far ahead of its time. Moon raker so behind the times. But none of these held a candle to, in my opinion, overlooked movie by director Michael Schultz, a classic called Scavenger Hunt. Really? Have you ever seen it? No. You've not seen Scavenger Hunt now? Is it kind of a riff on It's a mad, mad, Mad, mad world? I can see how some maybe some elitists might make that distinction or that comparison. Okay. I personally think that it's a great movie, and it's about Vincent Price while it begins. Vincent Price is this aged video game magnet. Was he ever young? No. Okay. He was born, like, golden grey. Yeah. And suave, though. Yes, he was much more suave than he let on. He is dying, and he actually does die playing one of his video games. And then you cut to his former home, and his lawyer is executing his will, which his estate is worth $200 million. And it turns out we learn very quickly, as all the characters assemble, that the whole thing is up for grabs to a single team who go on a scavenger hunt. Did you really see this, or is this just I grew up on this one. Okay. Yeah, it's a great movie. Have you really not seen it? No, I never heard of it. I strongly recommend it, and I found it just to get myself in the mood. I found it on YouTube in parts, I think eleven parts, like, ten minute segments. So if you're a very cheap person or can't find it, it's up on YouTube. Sweet. I think if you search Scavenger Hunt and then in parentheses, it'll bring it up. Awesome. So the whole point of that was that, number one, scavenchron is a good movie. OK. And number two, people do some wacky things with wills. That scenario wasn't that far off from things that people have done with their wills. We're talking about wills. Chuck, let's get ready to talk about contract law. I know this is one of the first articles I wrote, and it was a little rigid, but there's not a lot you can do. I mean, I tried to make it a little fun in the end, but I was fully planning on complimenting you on this article. It's a good article. It's comprehensive. It's got everything you need. I mean, you don't get into, like, any of the legal momo jumbo, but that's not the role of the site. And you know what? Let's just go ahead and say I'm glad you brought that up. We are not attorneys. You should not take this podcast and base your will and life on it. Please do not do that. No, but that being said, you can get all the documents you need to create your own will for $6.95 at Staples. Really? Yeah, they have everything. Well, that brings up one of the first points, which is a will isn't super complicated to draw up, and it varies from state to state. So you can do it yourself, but you should get an attorney to look over things. But if you want to save a few bucks, you can always go to Staples. Well, we should probably say that again and again through this podcast, as you did again and again through this article. Really, you should have, at the very least, an attorney look at your will if you're going to do it yourself. Right. Let's talk about some of the specifics. Man, if you have 10 minutes to write this thing, a piece of paper and a pen, what are the high points that you want to hit to make your will as close to legal as possible? And by the way, state law governs wills, right? Yeah. And you always got to check with your state if you want to call it up and be like, state, I got some questions for you. And if you have a will in one state and you move, it'll still be valid, but you still should check your state's laws and stuff like that, right? Because is it the state you die in that is the state that your will is executed in? Jesus. Because it seems like if you were going to move, it would seem like that's the way it would go. I guess so. But what if you die on vacation in Hawaii? Your will would not be based on I think it's pertaining to the state in which it was drafted and approved. Check with your lawyer. Check with your lawyer or at least call the state. I didn't think you'd stump me so early. Sorry. All right, so what you want to have at the very bare minimum is your name, your spouse's name, if you have one, and when you were married. Yeah. Your children's name so they can make sure they're not confusing you, your other spouse, with your spouse in the will. That's right. Your children's names, and I love this part how you want any step children or foster children to be treated. You could be like, well, yeah, please treat them well. A statement revoking any other wills, if you have one. You got to name your executor in an alternate you should name an alternate list of powers that you want that executor to have special gifts, personal property, and instructions for distributing paying debts. Actually, you can't decide whether or not you want to pay your debts, but after debt has been paid, how you want your stuff to be doled out. So I'm officially founding a movement that if your debtors can't get the money they need out of you while you're alive, that's that. Yeah. Didn't you look that up? What's the law? Well, it varies by state again, but generally, if you have enough money to pay, say, like a credit card debt, you have to pay that credit card debt. But there are onuses on credit card companies, like they have to notify your executor within 60 days or something of this outstanding debt. Okay. And if it turns out that there's not enough money, then you can basically say, like, sorry, that's that, and the credit card company has to write it off, and then we all pay for it with our outrageous financing fees in the end. Burial instructions. You can sometimes put it in a will, but you should. What instructions? Burial. I just got thick tongue. Did not. Burial. And you probably want them somewhere else, though, because sometimes the will isn't immediately accessible. If you've got it locked in a safe and your family doesn't know the combination, they're just going to leave you lying around on the floor of the kitchen for days. You don't need to sweat your pension plan or life insurance or annuity, stuff like that, because that's all taken care of. The beneficiaries are in those documents. So it doesn't need to be in your way. Right. And it can actually screw things up. Right. Not screw things up. It can slow things down because you can say, I want my life insurance policy to go to my estate and then divvy it up. Yes. But that just adds a lot more time to the process. Correct? Absolutely. You should probably, in most states, have to be at least 18 years old to have a legal will. And everyone knows you have to be of sound mind and body or I think it's just sound mind. Yeah. Because, I mean, what does your body have to do with it? As long as you can make an X or draw a whale like quickwig, you're fine. So what does that mean, legally speaking, mentally sound? Well, I'm glad that you brought that up, or I'm glad that you put this in the article because I think it's a good idea. Basically, you have to know that you own property. You have to know about it. Right. If you don't know that you have like, 100 acres in Montana, then you're not probably of sound mind. Or you did at one time know that you had it and just don't remember any longer. Yeah. That could be a problem as well. And it's sad. It is. I don't know. It is kind of sad to not be of sound mind if you're not suffering from a mental illness, which I remember I saw a remake of Psycho, which wasn't Psycho, too, it was made for TV, and it was kind of a spoof comedy. And the thing starts with the execution of Norman bates will. And it gets to the point where it says, I Norman Bates, being of sound mind. And everybody in the room is like but it kind of brings up a point, like, what do you do if you are mentally ill and you have a bunch of assets and you've never created a will and you want to create one? Do you die in testing? That's a good question. Interstate. I do know that if you become mentally ill later on, then it doesn't matter as long as you are sound mind when you first wrote the will. Right. Okay. You also need to be aware of the people who are related to you. Again, not like you fathered a kid back in 1962 that you didn't know about. That's not what they're talking about. They're talking about the kid that you had in 62 and raised into an adulthood is still recognizable to you. And also, you generally probably shouldn't hold conversations with leprechauns that tell you to burn things. Right. That's usually a big red flag that you might not be as soundmine. That's right. So Chuck, that's sound mine. And let's say you've got that check. Check. You know about your lane in Montana, you know your kid's name, you don't suffer from mental illness, and you are ready to create your will, right? Boom. The executor. Yes. That is the most important person in your will, because that is the person that is going to make an inventory of all your junk. They're going to pay your debts. They're legitimate debts. That is not vinny who comes over and says, you owe me $10,000. Although you may want to pay that, too, if you're smart distributes the assets under the terms of the will so it can be anybody. But you want it to be someone you really, really trust. Someone who's probably pretty smart, maybe has a little business experience, and someone who is thoughtful because it can get ugly. You want someone this is a tough time for a family, usually. And you want someone that's got some good bedside manner if they're going to execute your will. Right. Not some jerk. Right. You also want somebody who has a lot of time to go to your house and inventory stuff. Yeah. I remember when I found out my sister is my dad's executive tricks. And I was like, what about me? And I read about all of that, dude, you're just, like, cut me the check. Yeah. I actually think my dad likes me more than I thought, now that I know what an executor has to do to let you off the hook. Yeah. 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, everybody, if you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. 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SYSK squarespace 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 is host Barretun 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 podcasts. So, Chuck, let's talk about the different kinds of wills. There's obviously the standard like ironclad will, it's been drafted by an attorney or whatever we'll talk about in a second. But there's some kind of interesting wills, because death doesn't necessarily happen when you're counting on it. Exactly. That should be stuff you should know. New model, new slogan. Death doesn't happen when you're counting on it. Yes. Death doesn't necessarily happen when you're counting on it. Just to add that extra. I like it. Yeah. Bit of suspense. So you're talking about probably a couple of things. One can be an oral will, which is a lot of times in the old days, it might still happen because soldiers are still very young and might not think that they need a well because they're young and they're bulletproof. But a lot of times, soldiers on the battlefield would execute an oral well to their buddy there as they're dying in the trenches. You want to do two buddies? Oh, two witnesses. Yeah, that definitely helps the case that it's legal. Yeah. And the scenario I just mentioned, which is the dying soldier on the battlefield, is one of the more common ways that an oral will will be upheld. Right. Because I imagine they have a lot of compassion for something like that. Yeah. And if they can find your buddies and get them to sign an affidavit, or they can actually come to probate court and say, yes, this is what he said. He said to leave it all to me. Yeah. No, he said to leave it all to me. Then it turns ugly. But if they both agree that it is what you said, then it's probably going to stand up in court. Right. So what's a deathbed will? A deathbed will is virtually the same thing. But say rather than dying young and being of sound mind, you might be on your deathbed and are suffering from Alzheimer's or something like that. Right. So the deathbed will, it also can be written, too. It's more of, like, the time rather than the type. Right. So it can be written, it can be oral, and you can have several witnesses, but it's also the most commonly challenged one because mental capacity is frequently argued. Like this person didn't know what they were talking about, or somebody had their feeding too kink, so they did it under duress. Right. There is a holographic wheel, Josh. Very informal handwritten. Usually this is the coolest looking wheel. That's right. It's not a hologram. Not all states recognize these as valid. So, as always, check with your state. But scenario where this might happen is you wreck your car on a snowy road in the middle of nowhere, and you're like, I'm going to die, and I'm going to scratch out my will. Or you pee it into the snow. That would be awesome. Or if you're James Franco or that real dude and you're stuck in a boulder, you could probably videotape it. Although I think holographic is strictly handwritten. Yeah. So that would be an oral deathbed will sort of commonly written in blood, but he lives in one's own blood. Right. Yeah. That's a pretty cool one. I said it was cool. Yes, I think that's the coolest one. Do you think so? Yeah. The impending death by oneself. Yeah. And you just scratch it out on whatever paper you have and then succumb to the elements. I think that's neat because think about it, you're thinking about the people you love, and in some way they're there with you. Right. Then, yeah. But what if you're saying, I don't want to leave any of those no good nerdy wells, anything, well, then you deserve to freeze to death. Okay. There's the DIY well, which you mentioned you can get on the Internet, or I guess it's staples. Yes. You can get the forms. Self probating wheels can save you a little time. Well, this is the ironclad will, right? I think so. This is the one where you hire a lawyer to draft it, at the very least review it. But probably you've hired a lawyer to draft your will a couple of $100 from what I understand. Oh, really? And the witnesses sign affidavits ahead of time that are part of the will saying, like, yes, this guy did say this. So these witnesses don't have to appear in probate court to testify that this is the correct will. Right. So it expedites the whole process. It makes it more difficult to challenge, and basically it's the battleoon but of being of wills. Don't contest me, baby, is what it says at the bottom. Since we're talking about contesting and changing, that happens all the time. Totally legal. The only person that can change a will is the testator. Is that funny? That's like Hodgman says, complainant and defendant. Does he judge John Hodgman tested or the testator is the only person that can do this. It's very common. A lot of reasons. You might have a new kid, you might get divorced. You might get married. You might start hating your kid. Start hating your kid. The tax laws might change in your favor. She can tweak it a bit. You might all of a sudden, you might win the lottery and think, oh, you know what? I might want to rethink how my will is read at this point. Or you might just feel like, you know what? I'm kind of old and my kids are doing okay, so I'd rather just leave my money to some great charities. That's a nice thing to do. Yeah. Bill Gates, he's leaving the line share of his toe to charity. Oh, yeah. Well, he's alive even. That's right. Okay, so let's say that your elderly parent dies and you decide that he or she is obviously crazy because he or she left his or her money to charity. Right. You can challenge this, right? That's right. And there are a number of ways to challenge it. But first of all, it's a very difficult, long, and expensive process. Unless you have, like, real solid evidence of one of may be several points that could possibly overturn a will, it's going to be you're not going to win. Not anyone can challenge, like, Joe Schmo off the street. Or let's say I couldn't challenge your will and say, but Josh was my podcast partner. It doesn't matter. I don't know. You could technically be a person of legal standing, which is what you have to be to challenge a will. You either have to be someone who is in the will and you're challenging. It like I got reamed. This is terrible. I want more money than this. What is your problem? But you can't challenge unfairness. You can do it, but you won't win. Thank you for correcting me. You could be like, somebody was holding this guy's feeding tube. So that's when you could challenge. Or you could be someone who should have been in the Well Eg. Podcaster. I would think that's usually a family member, though. You probably have to be a blood relative blood or maybe marriage. But I'm sure if you're a blood relative, it helps your position as a person of legal standing more. I'm going to challenge your will, like, when we're in our eighty s, and this is going to be like some sort of proof that I agree you should be a person of legal standing. At least we'll be like the Sunshine Boys. We haven't spoken in 30 years, and our children are trying to get us together for one more show. Did you ever see that? No, that was a good one, but I laughed anyway. All right. And by the way, I'm leaving all my stuff to Yummy, so you can challenge it all you want, pal, but I just contradicted your challenge. And this is going to stand up because this is a very public thing. I would think this would work. Yeah. I wouldn't challenge you. She can have it all. Okay. She can have your junk. Good junk. You do Josh have a good junk. If you do challenge it, what you're going to you can either rewrite it completely, revoke the original, or add something called a cottesill to your existing will. It's just like an addendum, basically. Oh, that's if you want to change your will. Yeah. But if you want to challenge it, the will is forged is one. Yeah. That it didn't meet the requirements of the state. Like maybe the state requires two witnesses and there's only one. Right. The person was coerced. The testitor was coerced with the kink in the feeding tube. The testators was a victim of fraud. What would that be? I don't know. Like maybe the person who drew up the will wasn't really a lawyer, but charged lawyers fees. Okay. And then lastly, the beneficiary doesn't improve the executor. And this could be like the executor is maybe the fraudulent attorney. Yeah, it can't just be like, she borrowed my pearl necklace once and never gave it back. There's no way she can execute this estate. Right. And I didn't get stats, but the general feeling I get is that wills are pretty tough to overturn. Unless, like you said, there's some pretty blatant egregious errors or fraud going on. And if it is rejected, then they just go to the state law, which is your wife gets this percentage, your firstborn gets this percentage, and on down the line. Okay. And that's as if you had died without a will. That's how they treat it, which is called dying intestate. Yeah. I never heard that word. Okay, so let's say that your kid just really turns out to be a jerk. You did everything you could, but you just don't like your kid. You nurtured, you nurtured. You nurtured. And then natured one out. It's like Sean Penn in the game before he went through the game. Oh, yeah. Like that kind of guy. Okay. All right. Okay. You can cut your kid out of the will, but you have to follow a specific guideline. And that guideline is you officially have to disinherit your kid. Yeah. And I was surprised. It's easier to write your child out of your will than your spouse. Yeah. And you brought the child into the world. You married the spouse. I was surprised by that, too, Chuck. Yeah. Like you said, you disinherited a child unless you have some sort of ironclad prenup, then your spouse, husband or wife is going to be going to be getting some dough. A third to a half generally is the way to go. Yeah. So spouses are tough, kids are easy. Right. But most lawyers will be like, don't do that. Do not just disinherit and don't try to cut your spouse out. It's going to make you look like a jerk. It's going to make a judge overturn your will. Here's what you do. You give them each fifty cents. Okay. Right. Pretty horrible. Right? That didn't make you look like a jerk. No, it doesn't. But you put in an interraem clause, right. That says that if they challenge the will, that they forfeit everything. Yeah. And you know what that means in Latin? It means in order to frighten. So basically it's saying it's trying to scare someone off. Right. So the $0.50 thing wouldn't work. Right. You want to leave them enough so that they're going to have what they need, but they're still offended. Exactly. Right. They're like, well, I could buy $5,000 worth of crack with that. $5,000. Maybe I should just stick with this. Divorce can complicate things. Obviously, some states renders the will invalid, but most times, just the parts where the spouses in there will be addressed. So the bequest is what the people get. The beneficiaries are the people who get bequests. I actually figured out like, a pretty good sentence to explain all this. The beneficiary receives a bequest from the testeder's will and probate court at the behest of the executor. So clever. Thank you. 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 than Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. 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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. So the beneficiaries are all going to get slapped with what is called a death tax. Really? It's called an estate tax. But opponents of the estate tax, the rich basically created this other name for it called the death tax, which is like you're being taxed to die. You're not actually being taxed to die. Your estate is not even being taxed. Your beneficiaries bequests are what are taxed? The thing is, it's a lot. You know what I call it? One final little from the government, from Uncle Sam, like, you paid your whole life, you paid your whole life, you died on the battlefield, and then we're going to get some more tax. And it's hefty. Yeah. Well, I mean, part of the reason why the estate taxes around is to prevent dynasties from taking place. But the problem is, with all the loopholes tax shelters, that kind of stuff, the rich are the only ones who can afford to get around from paying estate taxes. So that kind of goes onto the middle class, and it prevents middle class dynasties from being formed. But, you know, it's really weird. What I cannot describe to you how severe the level of deja vu I have right now is. Really? Have we had a conversation about estate taxes in that same vein? I don't think so, but we've done a podcast on deja vu. Well, then prepare for some really vitriolic listener mail from that one. Oh, really? Because in my deja vu memory yeah, that tick people off. What? Because you said that only the rich people can know about these loopholes. Well, they can afford accountants that can figure out these loopholes lawyers, that kind of thing. It's like, you're not going to get that at the 695 Staples package. No. Okay. No. It actually says, good luck with the death taxes, pal, doesn't it? So, Chuck, if you are a person living in, I think, 2006 in the United States, and you inherited over $10,050, what did you pay 25.96 close to three. That's just for inheriting $10,051. Right? Yeah. Well, that's the base thing. Then you have to pay an additional 35% over and above the $10,050. So let me ask you that. Is that 35% on the whole thing or 35% on the whole thing minus $10,050? That's a good question, and I don't know, and I'm sure some smart attorney will say, here's how it is, guys. Yeah. But if you're inheriting a million dollars, who cares? Yeah, well, that's a lot of change, though. It's like $350, right, on $10,000. Yes, Josh, you're indeed. Right. $9, who cares? So there's the death taxes. You can set up a trust. That is one good way to maybe pay fewer taxes. If smart people often set up trust. Rich people often set up trust. Well, it also keeps you you don't have to be rich, though. I've looked into trust. About two grand to set up a trust. Yeah. And this number one, it's very speedy. It keeps it out of probate court. Like when you die, you're dying wishes that are part of your will that are incorporated into this trust. That's that right. So all of these stuff gets divvied up right away. It stays out of court. Yes. And if you have a minor in your family, a lot of times you'll set up a trust, because if you don't set up a trust, the court is going to assign or there will be a conservator who will oversee the assets of the miner in 18 to 21, generally in most states, as when a minor can all of a sudden handle their own finances. But if you set up a trust, it's managed by the trust or and they'll handle it for your kid, whoever that person is. I would imagine someone just as trustworthy as the executor, maybe one in the same you're right. And then, Chuck, of course, there is the living will. Right? Yeah. And there's a whole article on living wills, so we won't get into it too specifically. But a living will has nothing to do with your money and properties. It is hey, if I'm ever in a serious accident and I'm on a ventilator, here's how I would like you to pull the plug or not pull the plug. And it's more complicated than that. Yeah. Because that's line one. And line two is if I'm ever attacked by a dog and I need a heart that my family can afford to pull the plug and then down the line. Right. Yeah. And these need to be signed and witnessed, and power of attorney is usually included, because if you can't cover every scenario, obviously. And the power of attorney would be, let's say, you know what, I want Emily to be in charge of making this decision, and not my mom, let's say, because my mom would be like, no, he'll pull through. And Emily be like, yeah, he doesn't look too good. She wouldn't do that. I'm just kidding. It's still funny, but yeah. Living well is very important, though, for anyone of any age. It can get real messy. We've seen it in the news time and time again. So, yeah, get your living well taken care of. And I think you can also just do, like, a blanket. Like, don't take any heroic measures to save me. And I don't want to be on any kind of life support. Mine says, Never ever unplug me. Really? I want to be a burden on my family for the rest of my life as long as that machine can keep me alive. I want to be shaved once a week from top to bottom. All right. That segues nicely into odd things that can happen. Stipulations with your will. Nice. Is that how we should finish up? Yeah, totally. You can have requirements of your Quest stores. No, the Beneficiaries, like, hey, wrote this article. I know, a long time ago, like, hey, I want to give my son the majority of my fortune, but he's got to finish college first or quit smoking. I saw. Were you thinking of me when you wrote that? I was not. You were smoking a ton back then, though. Yes, you were. So let's talk about some funny and odd things in history with wills. Josh finished on a lighter note. Well, there's Portuguese aristocrat Luis Carlos de Norona, Cabral de Camaro. That was terrible. And it sounded like I took a bite of peanut butter toward the end. Do you want to do that one? Well, now that you said his name, I'll tell you what he did. He picked 70. So you don't want to try that one? No. Okay. He picked 70 strangers, random strangers from a phone book in Lisbon and 13 years before he died and said, These are the people, but don't tell them. It's going to be just a big surprise. Yes. And some people thought they were being conned. If I did that and I died, everybody there would be 70 strangers, each getting a $1 bill. But I put in my will that it had to be, like, crisp from the bank. Never circulated $1 bill to make them feel good. I thought you were going to say, like, a roll of quarters or something. That's another way to go. But that's more than $1. Yeah, you're right. McNair ill Grandfitz was an unsuccessful but wealthy composer, and he said, you know what, Metropolitan Opera of New York, I'll leave you 125 grand if after I die, you put on this opera I've written. And the Met said, we could use that money, but nothing. Which is like, ouch. Yeah, but they said the music, it was workable, not like they said, this is awful. I think I guess it just wasn't in their plan. Yeah. Who else? Josh what else do we have here oning Nurmi finished Businessman. This is my favorite one. He apparently laid in life, made some friends at the rest home where he was dying and died, I imagine. And he said, you know what, I'm going to leave everybody here 780 shares of a rubber boot company that I imagine I had something to do with at some point, maybe. And that rubber boot company went on to become cell phone giant Nokia. And all of those people became millionaires, I imagine all of those people's children or grandchildren became millionaires because I don't think Nokia went from a boot company to the cell phone biz, like overnight, but it was still very nice. This is a good story, if you ask me. These are pretty cool. Josh Ed. Hedrick the inventor. Well, not the inventor of the Frisbee, but he's credited with perfecting the modern Frisbee. He took it out of its original square shape. Exactly. He worked for WMO, obviously, and he said, you know what, I want my ashes to be molded into memorial versions of the Frisbee and sell those and use the money from those to open up a Frisbee museum. And then another guy, a Marvel comic writer, Mark Grewenwald, said, I would like my ashes to be mixed with ink and be on a comic book. And when he died young, at 42, there were 4000 ink and ashes issues of Squadron Supreme printed. Yeah. Wouldn't you be disappointed if that was the one you got printed in? I would. Well, that might be in the punisher. It was probably his comic, though. I still want to be in The Punisher. Okay. I want to be in a better comic. Yeah. And who else? Dusty Springfield. Should we mention her? Hers is kind of neat, I guess. It's kind of silly. She had a cat named Nicholas, and Nicholas had a favorite meal, which was imported baby food. So she left the singer of Son of a Preacher Man, she said, you know what, nicholas is going to lay on my night gown for the rest of Nicholas life and my music is going to be played and lifetime supply of that cat food for Nicholas. Yeah. And then Leona Helmsley left 15 million to a dog for the care of her dog. You can't actually leave money to an animal. Yeah. You can stipulate in your will that this money is for the care of this animal or something. Right. And she left a couple of grandkids. Nothing. Yeah. And then there was the tree that owns itself in Athens. Yeah. The elderly couple that died or the elderly woman that died and left this piece of land apparently set up a trust for the tree so that it can never be cut down or removed. And actually, if you drive along the street, you have to go around the roundabout that's built around the tree that owns itself, and it's got a little placard and a little chain around it. And that tree grows up to the center of City Hall and that tree grew up to be Roy Cohn. I got nothing else. I don't either. If you want to read a fine article written by a young, strapping Charles W. Bryant when he first came to houseofworks.com, just type how wills work into the handysearch bar@housetofworks.com. That, of course, brings up listener mail. All right, Josh, I know you're going to balk at this because we have another request from a boyfriend trying to get his girl. No. I feel so bad for Timmy, though. All right, go ahead. All right, Timmy, before we read this, dude, if you don't get back in touch with us and let us know what happened, we will find you. Yeah, you're dead to me. Even though we can't find the other guy, we will find you to me. Yeah. And since we mention it, other guy who we propose, we don't like you anymore. What happened there, dude? People are clamoring to know. All right. To my beloved Josh and Chuck and Jerry since 2009. Let me skip ahead to the interesting part. Okay, jerry's cracking up today guys have been a big fan since 2009. One big thing that has changed since that time was I found an absolutely brilliant girlfriend. She also loves you guys. We would spend our nights together, falling asleep, listening. Stuff you should know. She would fill me in on bits I missed. Sounds like a very sweet thing. Unfortunately, recently we were having a rough time of things. Sort of lost perspective and the spark faded. Let me go ahead and tell you. Tell me that spark always fades. You got to have something else going on there. Substantial model airplanes is a good one. So we both amicably agreed that it would be easier to split after 18 months together. And the best thing we both do the same university. We have the same courses at times. Where is this guy from? He must be English or something. We still chat a lot. And I really miss her, though. And I know she misses me, too. You don't know that, Timmy. You're about to find out. We were great together and just needed this time apart to sort out our heads and commit back to one another. What I would like to do, guys, is for you to say to Elaine, would you please get back with him? Go back out with him. He's boyfriend again. I'm sorry, girlfriend. I know she'll be listening. It would be a great way of me showing her how much I still care. Or you can just talk to her. That's another thing. Or that he's watching her. I don't think I'll do any more of these. I love her. I want to spend my future with her. I would be really grateful for this. So that's the deal. Timmy says, much love, Elaine. Take him back. Or don't. Either way, Timmy, please let us know what happens so we can follow up and tell people what happened with the two minute and socket, and that is it. That is as dead as haiku and disco. We are not doing that anymore. Never again. No. All right, agreed. Okay. Thanks a lot, Timmy. Good luck to you forever. Right. Chuck, are you okay with that? No, I'm fine. Because it just gets out of hand, and then we're asking people out on a first date all of a sudden. Hey, can you tell my friend Joe to pick up the tab every now and then? I'm okay with that one. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. You know how I feel about freeloaders. All right, well, then let's call for that in the email. No, we'll do that. They'll send them anyway. Okay. All right. So if you know a story about a crazy will, a crazy stipulation in a will. I love that. I can't get enough of them, so let's hear them, right? Yeah. Real ones. Yeah. Well, yeah. Don't make them up, jerks. We want to hear it. You can put it on Facebook. STUFFYou should Know facebook. Facebook. Comstynow. S-Y-S kpodcast. That's our Twitter handle. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstoughfarks.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 show. 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. 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 amazonandhalopets.com." | |
How Police Interrogation Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-police-interrogation-works | Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of
criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk. | Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of
criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk. | Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=266, tm_isdst=0) | 61755641 | audio/mpeg | "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. 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 one 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. 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 I guess producer knowl is over there which makes this stuff you should know. Jerry's on the beach. Good for her. Yeah. I'm Jelly. Yeah. Nice to be on the beach right now. Sure. What? Podcasting on the beach. Yes. Jerry is a beach person for sure, isn't he? Is she okay? She was flipflops, like in the dead of winter. Yeah, that's true. The beach person. Got my feet, though. Can I say that? Fired for saying that? I don't think so. Okay. If you said it, like, alone in a room or something, she didn't feel like she could leave. You'd probably get fired for that. But seeing it on the podcast to everybody, it's probably in the clear. Okay. We'll find out. She edits these, so she'll say, thanks, Chuckers. There you go. So, Chuck yes. Have you ever been interrogated by the police? No. That's good. Way to be. I was shaking down on the street once, but they didn't ask us any questions. Stop and frisk? Yeah. In New York? In Athens. Just walk into the car after being out. Threw us all against the wall. Fristus then left. Sure it was a real cop? Yeah, they were cops, man. I was like, what's going on? I don't even know. I still don't know what happened. Well, I guess they were just stopping and frisking. A little known fact, athens, George, is the real home of stop and frisk. Well, five minutes after it happened, we didn't care. These are college days. Yeah. Now, though, you must be burning with a sense of injustice over the whole thing. Well, I ask you if you've ever been interrogated by the police, because we're about to talk about police interrogation, so it seems appropriate. And before we get started, I have some side reading that I think might interest some people. Okay. There is a New Yorker article called The Interview. Yeah. There's one called Joe Arridy was the happiest man on death row. It's in Westward. There's something called Brooklyn's Baddest, which is in GQ. And then lastly, looking left or right doesn't indicate you're lying in Smithsonian. So all those articles are awesome. And they all have something to do with this police interrogation, which is, it turns out, becoming an increasingly controversial subject. Yeah. And I think this probably brings our police suite to a close or close to it, don't you think? I think so every time. I know. And I didn't even know this existed. And then I saw it and it turned out to be one of the more interesting ones, I think. Yeah. And it kind of falls into this law enforcement category, into the subcategory of largely debunked armchair psychological or armchair psychology techniques. Yes. Like polygraph. Yeah, we did that. Fingerprints. We did that. Truth serum. We did that. Yeah. Like, there's all these episodes that we've done out there about just law enforcement techniques we're doing, and we were like, oh, wow, this should not be the way it is. Yeah. And apparently police interrogation is similar. Yeah. It's a bit of a shakedown. So let's talk about this. In the United States, there is a long and storied history of rather intense interrogation. I think this comes before the United States, too. We did a medieval torture episode as well. There are plenty of interrogations going on. We did the Spanish Inquisition. That was pre United States. Yeah. I would say that falls under the banner, though, of police and crime interrogation. Yeah. Right. So the United States, though, carried on the torch of basically beating suspects up to get confessions. Yeah. This is where the term the third degree comes from, actually. Like, when somebody's like, hey, why give me the third degree? They may or may not know it, but they're speaking about interrogation techniques the cops used to use. Yeah. Those third degree techniques, a lot of them were involved. Deprivation or the one where they shine the bright light in your face. That's old school. Yeah, that's an old movie trope. But no access to food and water. Long periods of isolation. We might beat you up a little bit. We might threaten you. That's the third degree. Right. And then starting in about the public started to say, I don't know if this is such a good idea, because I might end up in a police interrogation one day and I don't want to get beat up. And then I guess the straw that started to break the camel's back came in 1937 in the case Brown versus Mississippi, where Brown said, hey, your thug cops tied me up to a tree. And whipped me more than once. Not just whip me more than once. Strung me up in a tree to whip me more than once. This happened repeatedly. And I don't think that the confession they got should stand. Supreme Court said we agree with you. Yeah. He and his two buddies were accused of murdering they were tenant farmers murdering their boss, basically. And of course, they were black guys and the boss was a white guy, so they were pretty determined. We'll see over and over. A lot of these cases of coerced, false confessions are mainly because someone really wants to tap somebody as the criminal. Well, yeah. For a lot of different reasons. There can be a sense of injustice. There can be a genuine conviction that this person is guilty. Yeah. And then there can be the case clearance percentage that a cop needs to keep up with. There's a lot of reasons why a cop might say, you need to confess. Yeah. I think a lot of them, too, that I've seen documentaries on, at least, are because of the public. Like, hey, man, we really need to finger somebody for this because people are scared. Right. And who better than this person who might not be too smart or might be kind of poor and can't afford and doesn't representation, doesn't know what's going on. So let's just run them up. Run them up. Ring them up, sure. Run them up a flagpole, right. And see if it sticks to the wall. Yeah. But despite the fact that it is not easy to get someone to confess, they estimate between 42 and 55% of suspects do confess, and that's the one thing you don't want to do. And up to 55% still do it. Yeah. So we should say supposedly up to 80% of suspects in the United States waive their right to silence and counsel. Yeah. That's just agreeing to be interrogated. Right. Not necessarily confessing. Right. Yeah. But you can get around the whole idea of a false confession or of being coerced into confessing or whatever just by remaining silent, not being part of that 80%. Demand your lawyer. I mean, we're going to give you some tips not how to get away with the crime, right. But some tips on if you are rounded up and put in a room. There are some things you can do. Right. This is a public service announcement with guitar. By the 1950s, the confessions that were involuntary, they considered involuntary not just if you were beaten and threatened, but all the deprivation. Third degree techniques were no longer allowed. Like, even if you couldn't use the bathroom or if you've been promised something in return for confessing. Sure, we'll go easy on you, buddy. Or if you'd even just been threatened. That counts as coercion, too. Yeah. And so in about the, hey, this kind of gentler interrogation technique thing is starting to work out. Let's put a bow on the whole thing and say that for a confession to be admissible, the confessor has to sign it. Yeah. And say, yeah, I didn't do anything under coercion. This is my own full free confession and here's my signature. Which helped, but certainly didn't stop. False confessions, right? Yeah. So the thing is, law enforcement replaced the physical coercion with what amounts to plainly is psychological manipulation. And it's predicated on the idea that when you are saying you didn't do something and you're guilty, you are going to become stressed out. And that stress is derived from anxiety over knowing you're guilty and having to lie. Because when you're being interrogated and you're denying that you are guilty, the cops don't just say, oh, okay, well, thanks for coming by. Sure. If they think you're guilty or they want to think you're guilty, they're going to keep pressing you. Like, interrogations aren't necessarily brief things. Right. So the more they press you, the more stressed you should get. And the more stressed you get under this idea of interrogation technique, the more obvious it is that you're guilty. Which means the more they press so this feedback loop starts, right? Yeah. I mean, they're basically relying on a few basic human things inherent to humans. Tendencies inherent to humans. One is you're going to probably open up more to someone who is like you. Two, if you start talking, it's going to be hard to stop. And three, if you're telling the truth, it's going to be harder to lie. Right. So they kind of prey on that with some age old techniques, like the good cop, bad cop. Right. If you feel like you're being persecuted but then you're also being rescued by somebody else, you're going to identify with the rescuer, trust them. That's a classic move. And here's the thing. A lot of this stuff, like the good cop part, is predicated on this complete and utter deception. That that cop understands where you're coming from. Sure. And sympathizes with you. Yeah. That cop does not sympathize with you. That cop may understand where you come from, but he or she probably despises that and they are not your friend. But one of the whole points of interrogation is for the cop to pretend like they're right there with you. They understand where you're coming from. They feel for you. Yeah. This is just you're jammed up and I want to help you get out of it. Oh, yeah. If all this sounds super familiar from every TV show or movie you've ever seen is because it's been written so much that it's almost own. Like writers don't even need to do their own research into how this is done because it's just how it is in the movies. How it is in the movies is how it is in real life. When I was reading this, I was like, oh yeah, I've seen that before. I've seen that technique before. It made me actually researching this article made me appreciate that there are some TV cop show writers out there who really do their homework, like The Wire. Sure. It was a little more nuanced, like Law and Order, vincent Dinofrio. Oh, I can't remember what it's called. Criminal Minds, something like that. It's not it it's a little more overt. Right. But all the factors are there. Yeah. Another one of the tried and true techniques is maximization. That's when they try to scare you. If you've ever heard, like, oh, you're pretty Josh, they're going to love you in prison. I hear that almost every day. That is a classic maximization. Or just, they're going to throw the book at you for what you've done. Unless you start playing along, you're going to get the max penalty. Exactly. They may also go the exact opposite route, which is minimization, which is to create the idea that society will commiserate with you, because anybody in your position would have done the same thing. Right. That little old lady was asking for her purse to be taken in this day and age, in this economy, that kind of thing. Polygraph was used for a while, and they still use that, but most times, if you listen to our show on polygraphs, they're not admissible in court. So a man named John Reid, he was a polygraph analyst, said, you know what? There's a lot of things that happen during a polygraph exam that we can use without the machine just to root out the truth or lies. Yeah. Basically, John Reed said, hey, I've noticed through all of my experience, all of these things, that a person who is guilty or who confesses at least goes through. And here are some ways to really make this more efficient, to make them react more strongly, to get them to confess faster, more forcefully. And he came up with what are called the Read Technique. Nine Steps of the read technique. Registered trademark of Johnny Reid Associates. Yeah. Really? Johnny Reid and Associates is, like, this business that's still very much around. Yeah. I don't know if I need to say that, but it is their technique. Yeah. And they train the CIA, the FBI, local law enforcement. They're like in the United States, the Re Technique is the gold standard for police interrogation. The problem is, it is also being increasingly proven to be based on basically armchair psychology and not science. Yeah. It's going through the same thing right now that a lot of the forensic sciences are going through there's, like, based on intuition that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. And I should say the Read Technique has not been across the board debunked. Right. And it makes sense in a lot of ways, but there are studies out there that have said, like, this doesn't really hold up. Yeah. He defends it. He says it's a very sound technique, but false confession comes from improper use and bad police work. Yeah. And it's not necessarily like the Reed. People are treated like they're out to get anybody and everybody. The Reed technique is criticized because the whole foundation that's built on is the presumption of guilt, and it has been shown to produce false confessions. That's right, and we'll get to the re technique in a minute, but after this message, we're going to talk a little bit about some of the earlier parts of the process. 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It's hard to keep up. Trust me. I'm lying when I say I know what LTE means. So let's simplify wireless together. Just fast, reliable, secure at and T. That's more surprising than making the league at 5ft. To reach new heights, you need the type of network that can keep up with you, with no hoops to jump through. Just fast 5G speeds for downloading and reduce lag. Plus 24/7 network protection with automatic fraud call blocking with at and T active armor. So join at and T and discover the power of 5G through our 5G compatible devices. At and T download of apps required. Five G may not be available in your area. For coverage details, see att. Comfivegforyou. Visit www. Dot att. Comcallprotect for details. All right, if you sit down in a room to get interrogated by the cops, one thing that they're probably going to start doing is lying to you and saying, we have evidence that they may not have. We have witnesses that put you at the scene that don't exist. Basically, with a few exceptions, cops can lie and say whatever they want in there, and that is going to make someone nervous. Even though you wore surgical gloves when you broke into the house, if they say your fingers are all over the place, you're going to start second guessing yourself and get nervous. Yes. And even if you weren't in that house ever, and you know that you weren't in that house, you're going to start to wonder if maybe you suffer from blackouts and do horrible things. Like, this cop is saying, wow, you're blacked out. And yeah, the courts have upheld the cops right to deceive. And I read about a study that found that 92% of 630 detectives in the US and Canada that were polled say they use false evidence ploys where they're saying, how many? 92%? Yeah. I'm surprised it's not 100%. Yeah, you would guess. I mean, maybe the other 8% were just like they didn't even look at what they were saying. But yeah, you can. And they do say, we have your fingerprints. We have a witness, we have DNA. They can completely lie about what they have and that they have it on you to get you to confess. That's right. And sign it. It doesn't matter. You can't say, well, that cop said he had evidence. It doesn't matter. And the whole legal basis for this idea, for the cops, letting the cops deceive, is this long standing notion that no innocent person would ever sign a confession even if they were lied to about physical evidence of their guilt being at the scene of the crime because they know they're not guilty. The problem is that long standing idea is coming under. More and more scrutiny is being found to be not the case. It's been shown people will, when lied to in situations like that, they will confess to things that they did not do. I know it seems crazy for people like you and me because I know I would never do that, but I'm not mentally challenged or I'm not poor, and there's a lot of reasons why someone might falsely confess. Yeah. And I think, though, also, it's not just necessarily how you are going into it. Yes. A lot of the mentally ill people make up a decent amount of false confessions. Same with mentally handicapped, cognitively impaired people, people of low socioeconomic status. There are a lot of factors that set you up to be more likely to have a false or give a false confession, not knowing. You're right. But if we took you and ran you through a long enough interrogation with people who knew what they were doing, who knows what you would sign? That would be all right. We'll see. Because I understand this all. I know my rights. I have a very strong mind. Well, you would probably say, I want a lawyer. Well, yeah, I'd just end it all. And then I'd be like, I don't know any lawyers. Do you know a lawyer? I have an entertainment attorney. Does that count? They know lawyers. Yeah, exactly. This is the whole network. So once they bring you in the room, the room itself and this is all from Reed's manual. He wrote a manual 1962 with a Northwestern law professor named Fred in Bow called Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. I imagine every writer in Hollywood has a copy of that on their shelf. But the room that you see on TV, that's what they suggest. Nothing on the walls. A very plain desk, a very uncomfortable chair. On one side, two chairs on the other. For the detectives, that one way mirror that's going to serve a purpose of letting people spy on you and just to make you nervous, even if there's no one on the other side. And put you out of reach from this one, I had never really noticed, but out of reach from just light switches and maybe the AC what do you call those? Thermostat thermostat yeah. Just to make you feel powerless. It's all a mind game to make you feel helpless. Okay. So far seems pretty intuitive, pretty logical. Sure. Like if you can't flip the lights on and off, it's not something I would think that I would want to do right then, but maybe knowing seeing that it was that far away would just give me this reinforced the idea that I couldn't even if I wanted to, because it's all the way over there. That's probably smaller detective in between me and that light. Exactly. But it makes sense. But I point that out because that's the read technique. Right. Stuff like that. Sure. Keep the light switches away from the criminal because it will make them feel helpless. Right. Does it sounds a little hanky, but it makes sense in a way. Sure. That is the re techi encapsulated. So let's continue. Chuck. So that's just the room that they suggest. If you follow the reknown to a T, and this is one of the saving graces of it, you are supposed to do what's? Initial interview. Right. And if you're the detective and you go into an initial interview of an interrogation, the reki tasks you with going in without a presumption of guilt. Yet that's the point of the initial interview is you're supposed to be sizing your guy up and determining for yourself as a seasoned investigator, whether you think initially they're guilty or innocent. I'm sure that happens some. Yeah. There was another study that found that it's often skipped as well, and they just start, like, hammering right away. Yeah. You're throwing out the potential for this person to be treated as possibly innocent. Right. You're not sizing up. You're going in assuming they're guilty. But if you do go through that initial interview, the other point of it is that you're supposed to be creating a baseline, which I think that showed up in the polygraph one, too, which isn't surprising because John Reid was a polygraph expert for a while, too. Yeah. And you've been glaciated yourself in the first few minutes by this point. Like, if you're in Philadelphia and your suspect has, unlike a Philly's cap, you might talk about the game last night. Right, exactly. And that throws back to the suspect being more likely to trust someone that shares the same views that they feel they can identify with. So the detective will do whatever they can to make it seem like, oh, you're a Catholic, I'm a Catholic, too. That kind of thing. Yeah. And so once you've got a little bit of rapport going on is when you're going to set your baseline. And I thought, this is pretty interesting, and I'm going to start looking for this on cop shows to see if they don't overtly talk about it, if they're just how good they are with their acting. Because if they're looking at the eye, then they're going to be accurate. Because that's one of the ways supposedly you can create a baseline. You're going to ask some questions that require memory recall, and you're going to ask other questions that require more creativity, and you're going to look at where their eyes go. Supposedly, if your eyes move to the right, that is just recall because you're, I guess, looking in the direction of your memory center of your brain. If it's more creative, you might look to the left. And then you're going to use these later on to see if your suspect is creatively making up a lie, they might look to the left. Or if they're just truthfully recalling something, they might look to the right. Is that bunk? Yes. All right. It's very dangerous, too, because that is incredibly widespread. It's a popular misconception. If you ask anybody, if you move your eyes a certain way, does it indicate you're lying? Most people are going to say, yes, it totally does. I can't remember if it's right or left, but if you look a certain way, it means you're lying. So that's a long standing thing that's based actually on a self help philosophy from the really, it has nothing to do with science. And actually, Richard Wiseman, who we incorrectly said did some research that proved that ghosts exist in our ghost episode, that guy, he's done some ones to debunk this. He did a couple of studies, and in one of the studies he found he used footage of people who were holding press conferences searching for lost relatives. But the person pleading for their relatives return was later convicted of, like, killing or kidnapping their relatives. So they were obviously lying. Right. They were committing a huge lie in front of the public. And he found that they were just as likely to look to the left or the right. There was no correlation whatsoever. Yes. I'm sure there are facial cues, pantomimes, if you're Christopher Walken, but it all depends on the person, too, right? Yes. You could be really good at lying or really good at throwing people off with facial cues. Yeah. Or the idea that your eyes move in a certain direction at all because you're coming up with a lie or because you're remembering something might not. It doesn't mean anything necessarily. Yeah. We also did one of micro expressions. This is a culmination of a lot of shows, I'm realizing. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. So that was another one. You've got the baseline set. You're watching the eyes even though you really shouldn't be, but for the most part, you're seeing what your suspect appears like when they're stressed. Sure, I'm sorry. When they're relaxed. And the reason you're creating this baseline of what they act like when they're relaxed is because if you ask them questions and they answer them and appear relaxed, then supposedly they're telling the truth. Again, this is predicated on some faulty ideas, because here's the problem. Anxiety is not necessarily linked to lying. Like, yes, you may appear anxious if you're lying, but that doesn't mean that if you're anxious, you're lying. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I would do that. I would do the Chuck technique would be the fast thing. Like, I would set them up. I'll call him and be like, hey, did you watch the game last night? Yeah. Oh, cool. Why? Did you kill an old lady? Yeah. You like the Phillies? Yeah, it was a pretty good game. How do you think they're going to go far? Yeah. Did you kill your wife? And wow. Boom. That was pretty good. You almost said yes. Yeah. Really? And you didn't kill your wife? No. I mean, jeez, that was thrilling. The Chuck technique. I liked the Colombo. What's that? Well, you're just like that's great. I'm glad you liked the Phillies. I just want to thank you for coming by. It was good to meet you. If we need anything, can we call you? And they're like, yeah. And they're so relieved that they get to leave, and then you oh, I'm sorry, one more thing. Why did you kill your wife? That Colombo did? Yeah, he was a little better at it than I was. There's one other thing just not making sense to me. If you didn't kill your wife, why were you found standing over with the knife? Yeah, that's what Colombo we do. Catch them off guard. Like, really? Get them to let their guard down. Yeah, I like that. So you said Colombo? I was about to say he went on and killed his wife, but that was Robert Blake. Yeah, that's beretta yeah. What was his technique? I don't know. I never watched. Barretta check your gun with the matre d. Is that what he did? No. What did he do? I think he left his gun with the matre d. That's what he said he did. Like, I'm here. Table for two. Here's my coat and here's my gun. Will you hang on to that for me? Will you be my alibi? I think we're at the Read Technique now, right? We are. So the other stuff was from the book that's based on the Read Technique, criminal interrogation and confessions. But now we are at the actual Read Technique, the nine point technique that is designed to maximize discomfort, which leads to more frequent confession. Yeah. And it's illegal in a lot of European countries for children, which it should be, because that's another risk factor going in that can produce false confessions. Is. Age, of course. And we'll get to some of those later. Those are kind of maddening when you read about, like, a 14 year old that's interrogated without their parents for like a full day. Yeah. But it happens. So step number one in the re technique is the confrontation. And this is after the initial interview. You're going to present the facts of the case. You're going to tell them about the evidence, what they're faced with, all the evidence against them. Even if you're making some of it up, you might want to invade their personal space at this time. If you're Matthew McConaughey and then you start looking for things like fidgety suspect, they look in their lips or they like muscle with their hair. And then if you're an investigator, you might say, all right, I've got this guy just where I want them. The guy ran his fingers through his hair. He's guilty. Exactly. And that's kind of part of the issue that a lot of critics of the re techique bring up is that basically if you strip nonverbal stuff out, then you've got some sound stuff there. Right. The biggest problem is when you're trying to read nonverbal cues because it's not rooted in science. It's rooted in armchair psychology and pop science. Totally. So the idea that somebody's fidgeting means they're guilty and they're lying not necessarily. They could be fidgeting because any human being would be really uncomfortable when placed in that situation and interrogated by cops who are experts at it. Right. So step number two is theme development. And you're going to be a little more soothing here with a softer voice. And this is when you come up with some theories and a story maybe, of why they committed this crime. Yeah. Like, you just couldn't go on any longer knowing your best friend had sex with your wife. You just couldn't live with that, could you? And if the suspect latches onto that in some verbal or non verbal ways and they'll continue if they don't, then they'll just create another theme. Yeah. And the detective will basically just kind of while they're creating the story for the suspect to latch onto, they're also actively listening to the suspect to see if the suspect will latch onto it in any way, shape or form. And if they don't, they try another one. If they do, then they start to kind of beef that one up, and that leads alternatives, which actually comes later. But in the meantime, one of the main techniques of the read technique is stopping denials. But I didn't do it. Josh, listen. I'm telling you, I was imagine my finger on Chuck's lips right now. Quiet. You would never do that. Now you stop denials because it creates a sense of hopelessness. Yeah. Don't you feel hopeless with my fingers on your lips? So hopeless you have no idea. It makes you feel hopeless that you don't even have the opportunity to reason with this top, you can't defend yourself, not at all. So you have a sense of hopelessness. Plus, the other upside, if you're an interrogator, is that you're keeping the person from talking, meaning they also can't ask for counsel. Then I don't see why people don't just do that the first thing over and over, saying, I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer. I read this article in, I think this stranger, aren't they out of Seattle? I don't know. It wasn't a great article. It was just kind of misleading. Like the author really wanted you to sympathize with the guy who was guilty and really revealed that he really was pretty guilty toward the end. Right, but it had this really great explanation for why people don't ask for a lawyer in this article. They seem guilty. Yes, really? And I've seen it before, but this article really got the point across that this guy was like I mean, he'd done some stuff before. He dabbled in drugs and ran an illegal poker game and stuff like that. Sure. Light malfeasance. Yeah, enough so that he knew he was technically guilty in the eyes of the law, but not for this thing that they wanted him on. Right. So he had that guilt to begin with. And then these cops saying, like, you're going to really look guilty if you ask for a lawyer. Yeah, that's true. And then the other aspect was, if you lawyer up, we can't help you. Oh, yeah, I've seen that one. If you talk to us, that's the only way we can help you get out of this jam. We know we would have done the same thing you did. Yeah, but the cops never want to get you out of a jam. No, that's not what they're trying to do. And so what they were saying was, if you clam up, who knows what's going to happen to you. They were doing all sorts of really effective psychological manipulation, and the guy they were talking to was a lawyer's son. And this guy like 40 years old, a lawyer's son. So he'd known his whole life to ask for a lawyer. And even this guy didn't immediately ask for a lawyer because these cops got him. You know, I probably wouldn't either, actually. If I was arrested today after work and obviously completely innocent of anything, wouldn't that be mind blowing if that happened and I was completely innocent at first, my first instinct would probably be like, I need a lawyer. I didn't do anything. Yes. Like, why that expense? Well, I think that's another aspect of the initial consultation, that initial discussion where it's like, oh, it's all friendly. We're talking about the Phillies. Why would you need a lawyer for that? All right, I retract my statement. I get it now. But you should stick to your original statement no matter what. You have a right to counsel, and there's no reason you should not invoke it. Your punishment is not going to be worse for asking for a lawyer. Yeah, you should open up. You sound like one of those legal commercials call Josh Clark. Oh, that reminds me. We should mention the ACLU episode. That was a pretty good one, too. Yeah. Man, this thing is just so many tangential podcasts. So the stopping denials, that's a big part of the Reed technique. And then there's something that's similar that John Reid noticed, but it's a little nuance. There's a difference. And that's objections to read denials were different than objections, and objections were something to be treated differently as a result. Yeah, an objection. The example they gave here was like, I would never rape somebody because my sister was raped and it destroyed our family, so of course I wouldn't do something like that. Right. So to a cop, that's not a denial. A denial is like, I didn't do that, I didn't do that. That's not me, you got the wrong guy. Those are denials. And the cop would try to stop you from completing those sentences. That objection you just said is a denial, but it's encapsulated with, like, a reason. Yeah, a justification something to it. Do you remember when you used to take multiple choice tests in high school? They always said that if you don't know the answer, usually the one with the most verbiage, the one with the most words is the right one. I never heard that. It's true. That works out. Not good at taking tests either. Well, no wonder we need to get in the way back machine. You can go take some more multiple tests knowing that now. But I think that's kind of the same premise for an objection. It's not just a denial. There's more to it. And the fact that somebody put that much more thought into it means that there's something to that. So a cop will take that and cultivate it and try to turn that around. Right. And they would say, I know you love your sister and you stood by her while she was raped, so of course this wouldn't be like a recurring thing. This is just a one time thing that you did and you were out of your head or whatever, because you care about your sister. So you would never do this all the time or something. Right, exactly. All of a sudden, you're kind of like you're giving the suspect something to latch onto, something for them to basically re enter society to an extent, because at this moment, especially if they're guilty, they are totally on the outs of society. Sure. And the sole representative of society who's speaking with them right now is the cop that's interrogating them. And everybody wants to be included. Yeah, and if you don't, then you're a sociopath and they're going to get you anyway. Yeah, but they're going to have a hard time through interrogation. So number five, is getting the suspect's attention. Are these the real titles, or is this just the liberties of the author of this article? I don't know what we'll call it getting the suspect's attention. And this is when you pretend to be the ally of the suspect, because at this point, they're probably looking for a way out. And that's when you might go, hey, man, I get it. If I caught my best friend having sex with my wife, I'd kill him, too. Yeah. I understand where you're coming from. And maybe a little pat on the shoulder or maybe a pat on the back and just some reassurance. I get to where you're coming from, man. It could happen to any of us. Right. And you're in big trouble at that point. Yeah. And that's probably going on throughout. Yeah. And the themes run these all overlap quite a bit. But if there's an objection that you've noticed that you're working, you've turned around and you're working that objection with an extra layer of compassion and commiseration, can, I guess, really kind of start to ensnare the suspect a lot more. Yes. It's weird, because I'm repulsed by a lot of this, but I'm also very impressed by what I've seen on TV, what you can tell with someone who's really good at it. Oh, yeah. It's effective. It's like an art form. There's, I believe, something like 76% of suspects who are interrogated in this manner. When you take out people who invoke their Miranda rights, confess. Well, like, it has an enormous confession rate. And there's a lot of people who the vast majority the study I saw or the number I saw was 99.6% of those confessions are from guilty people. Something like zero 4% are false confessions. The problem is there's still such thing as false confessions. There's no safeguards. It just so happens that the false confessions are in that small of an amount. Yeah. And that percentage isn't high. But if you think about how many people are interrogated, that's like several hundred per year in the US. Up to several hundred per year. Right. That's a lot of people confessing falsely. Yeah. And it's not like that. Those people just gets found out at trial or somewhere down the road that they're innocent. Like, those people may spend the rest of their lives in jail. At the worst case, they may be executed. Which has probably happened in the history of the US. Although it hasn't been irrefutably proven yet. Yeah. And you can listen to how the Innocence Project works from June 2010. We interviewed. Paul is on. Yeah, that's right. I wish I'd known a lot more about the Innocence Project back when we did that episode. Yeah. I kind of got it and understood it, but just over the last few years, I understand it even more. I wish I would have known better than it's still a good episode. We talked to Paulazon. Yeah. She's a real pro yes, Sister. No, it's not, is it? Okay? That's how rumors get made. Well, I just liked her, like, 50% more after you said that. Yes. I love Steve's on Steve's. Great. All right. And back to the reed technique. At this point, number six, the suspect might lose resolve, and this seemed really obvious to me. If the suspect has his shoulders hunched or has got his head in his hands or is crying, then you've got them just where you want them as an interrogator. Right. You are going to get your confession, whether it's a false confession or not. That's not guaranteed by these outward signs. Again, if you strip away the nonverbal stuff from the read technique, it's pretty good stuff. And apparently this is where you really want to regain their attention. Like, if they start crying, like, force them to look you in the eye. Right? Because I guess that works. That increases the stress level. So remember we talked about that theme development. It's like, here's what happened, and they object to that. And then you take that objection, you turn it around, and they start to latch on to that theme couched in that objection. You take that next. And as you're developing it, it becomes one of two or more alternatives. But basically, you're taking the theme that the person latched on to, and you're making that the minimal example. It's almost like a good cop, bad cop version of reasons why you did it. Exactly. So you shot that lady in the back because she was a horrible person. Nobody is going to think that you did it because you just wanted the insurance money. Exactly. Anybody in your position would have done this, and everyone's going to understand this is why you did it, not this horrible reason. This reason. This reason society can live with. Maybe you'll go to jail for a year or two, who knows? But when you come out, everybody's going to say, hey, that burnie guy is okay. I would have shot that old lady in the back, too. Did you see that movie? Yeah. That's good. It's not, hey, that burnie guy needs to burn in hell for the rest of his life because he killed some poor old lady for her insurance money. So with the cops sitting there saying, here's what we're saying, you're agreeing to, here's this horrible interpretation that I can't control, but this I've created and sculpted with your help. Right. So let's throw this horrible big thing away. And this thing that doesn't seem nearly as bad as what the press will hear. Yeah, we'll start to put it down on paper. Yeah. But here's what you're not thinking about. What you're doing is it's the same in both cases if you're confessing to a murder, and you are just at a point to where you think, man, that sounds way better than a newspaper than this other thing. And also, it's coming out of the mouth of this detective that is appearing to commiserate with you, that has empathized with you, that maybe told you on the side, like, hey, I hated that old lady too, and I'm glad you did it. Top can totally say that. And to win the trust of the suspect. So all of these factors combined, all of a sudden you have a story, you have a narrative, you're working out with the cop. You may not even realize that that's what's going on. And then the cop is going to say, I have a piece of paper and a pen here, and I want you to write down what we just talked about. I want you to write down your confession. Yeah, well, they're going to bring someone else in there first. Well, there's probably already someone else in there. They may bring a new person in there yes. To try and force them to retell their story, which they probably won't want to do. And that's when you can introduce, like, hey, you don't want to tell the story again to this new detective. I know you're tired. Just here, take the spin. Exactly. Don't stab me with it. By this time, the person will likely want to do just about anything to get out of that room. And from writing and signing this confession, there's salvation on the other end. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if it's possibly jail, they can get out of this room. They can get out of this horrible interrogation. They may promise, like, a hot meal. Something as simple as that can get someone to sign a confession at the end of a long day. Right, so you've got the written confession, you have it signed. They probably have to sign an additional waiver that says, I didn't write this under coercion, or else they'll include that in the confession. And then you have basically what amounts to a slam duck conviction in court. Yes. And that is the reki. And we're going to talk about some real cases of interrogation right after this break. 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They treat all their customers like family. All of them. Everyone gets the same deals on every smartphone with a choice of plans. Only at and T. It's pretty easy not to play favorites. And that's just what at and T does best. They give you their best deal. Doesn't matter if you're a new customer or if you signed up when a flip phone was still the future. Who doesn't want a deal? At and T won't make you feel like a middle child. They love all their customers the same. Join at and T for the best deals on every smartphone and with choice of plans. And after you're signed up, give your mother a call. She misses you. Eligible plan required. Offers vary by device. Restrictions may apply. See at and T. Comdealsforditals all right, Chuck, so that's the re technique. You got your perp super effective, and it has been used in plenty of cases. Like we said, the number that I saw is, like, .4% of confessions or false confessions, which is extraordinarily small, which means that a lot of truly bad guys get caught through the read technique. Right? Right. And there's this one in this article on how stuff works, how police interrogation works. And it's with a woman named Nicole. Michelle Frederick. It's between her and a detective named Victor Lauria, and it takes place in Detroit in September of 2003. And Nicole Michelle Frederick was the stepmom to a two year old daughter. And the two year old daughter had shown up in the hospital, I believe, unresponsive, with bruises all over her body, had clearly been physically abused. And the stepmom was saying, she falls down a lot. I don't think anybody hurt her. Yeah. She just gets bruised like that. And it certainly wasn't me. But not only was it not me, I don't think it was anybody. The little girl just falls down. She does it to herself. And with that, Detective Laria took her to be blaming the victim that she was trying to go free. By blaming this little girl for being clumsy. Clumsy and difficult. Yes. Which a detective can then latch onto, as reprehensible as that sounds, by trying to get some empathy going, like, hey, I get it. This is a tough baby. Yes. And I'm sure it's trying, and it's very difficult. So all of a sudden, Detective Larry has this, I guess this theme, this justification that was set up by the suspect. Yeah. And he starts to play it out. He's saying, like, this girl, she was a difficult baby. She's crying. You lose your head for a minute, and you get a little rough. It could happen to anybody. And Ms. Frederick says, no, that's not right at all. Yeah. Nobody hurt this kid. I don't understand why you don't believe me. You seem to be not listening to me, which, from what I understand, you're in the danger zone right there in your interrogation. Sure. If somebody is saying, if they're pressing back their own reality on you, the detective, you are not in control, right? Then yeah, they are. So Lauria started to look for another theme and it was along the same lines, but rather than losing your head for a minute, it was a split second. Something happened in a minute or a flash of a second, and she perked up a little. Yeah, she started to latch on to that one. Yeah. So then he knew he had her in a pretty tough spot and she started nodding her head. He sets up the alternative and said, you know what? If you don't explain this thing, everyone's going to just assume that you're this awful, abusive person. I think people might understand more, though, because everyone's been there. If it was just a split second thing and you lost control, people are going to get that. Those are the alternatives all of a sudden. And then it came out that her daughter had brain damage and was likely not going to die. And then all of a sudden, the suspect started saying, oh, they're going to get me for murder. Yeah, well, he pointed out to her, he's like, by the way, you haven't even asked about the condition of your daughter. Right? And she was like, no, I haven't. Totally have. And he's like, no, you really haven't. And she's like, well, how is she? He's like, she's not going to make it. And that's when she goes, oh, no, I'm going to be tried for murder. And she was and found guilty. She confessed, I believe, right. Yeah. She admitted to shaking the baby and then said out loud, I killed the little girl. I killed her. Right. So she was convicted of killing her two year old stepdaughter. And last I found an appeal in 2005 that was denied. That was the last I saw of her after her conviction. So it does work. And Detective Laurie followed all of these steps and got a bad guy in this case. Yes. And so a lot of times it goes down just like it should. But it is super controversial, which we've talked about some and you mentioned at the beginning. One of the biggest problems is it's guilt presumptive as they go in there thinking, all right, this person the goal of the interrogation is to get a confession, not to find out whether or not someone did something, right. In many cases, they go in there thinking this person is guilty. And if you're going in there thinking you're guilty, even if you don't mean to, you're going to start to filter out any reasons why they might be innocent, even if they are good reasons and valid reasons. And that ain't no good. No, it's not. Well, it's pretty huge flaw, really, even if it does result in only zero 4% of false confessions. Yeah. And you also mentioned that the whole purpose of the interrogation is to make someone stressed and uncomfortable. And then when you notice people behaving stressed and uncomfortable, that's a presumption, an indicator of guilt. Supposedly. It's like you said, what you call a feedback loop. Right. So I want to make you stressed and uncomfortable. You're being stressed and uncomfortable, that means you're guilty. Exactly. Yeah. It's an odd way to approach things. It's coercion. And then there's also been a lot of people to point out that a lot of these techniques are the same thing that are used in brainwashing, which we did a show on July 2009 did a brainwashing show? Invading personal space, not allowing the person to speak, using contrasting alternatives to have them come, to make them feel like they're making a decision or that they have a choice or some sort of power. I think you brainwashed me in that episode too, right? Yeah. We did a little role play. Yeah, it was awesome, man. I turned you into a prep. That's five years ago. Yeah. And then positioning confession as a means of escape, that was like the last step, I think, before resolution, right. Was to say, just denounce your family or whatever and you'll be saved or something. Right. In this case, it's signed, this thing, and then you're going to get that hot meal and that cigarette I promised you. Yeah. The thing is, like we said, it does produce false confessions. And I saw somewhere that 20% to 25% of people who've been exonerated with DNA evidence gave a false confession. Wow. So people go to jail for years for this kind of thing. Well, here's a few of the more famous cases. Peter Riley is an 18 year old whose mother was murdered, I think. No siblings and no father, so like the only parent he'd ever known. And after 8 hours of interrogation by Connecticut police, he confessed to brutally murdering her and was convicted on manslaughter. Based on the confessional loan, there was no evidence, no motive. Medical findings suggested that there were at least two attackers. And the town really got behind him, apparently, and said, this kid didn't do this, he's not that kind of guy, and let's have bake sales and raise money. Oh, nice. Arthur Miller, the famous playwright, lived in the town and he championed it because he did a lot of work with the ACLU. And eventually new evidence came out that exonerated him and he was set free after three years in prison. Three years. Not too bad. It's better than Earl Washington Jr. Who, in 1982, he was described as please, everybody, I'm using scare quotes here. He was described by psychologists as mildly retarded. He had an IQ of 69, which is a whole other kettle of fish that mean anything anyway. Sure, but he confessed to raping and murdering a 19 year old woman under interrogation. He was convicted on the confession alone, right? Yeah, just on the confession. Well, a lot of these are and spent 18 years in prison. Some have been on death row and was apparently rescued from the executioner with, like nine days to go. Yeah, but at the same time, as a jury, what are you to do when someone says, I did this? Hopefully, I don't know, maybe add some other evidence, too. No, I agree. The thing is, Earl Washington thing, somebody else was caught doing it using DNA. Yeah, that's been a huge change to this kind of thing. It's at least exonerated people free and clear. Sure, but that brings up another problem with false confessions. Not only do innocent people go to jail, guilty people stay free, and they accumulate more victims over time. Like, how many more children would that lady in Detroit have abused if she got an off or something? And the guy who created the reki actually had a false confession and wrongful conviction under his belt. If you read the article, The Interview with New Yorker, the first thing it talks about is this guy in the 50s who was in jail for 20 years for murdering his wife, even though he didn't do it, who was interrogated by John Reed himself. Wow. Yeah. So the guy who actually did do it went on to rape pregnant women and commit all these other horrible crimes that he wouldn't have done had he been caught the first time or had the cops still been looking for him. Wow. Yeah, it's a huge point. I mean, like, it's not just innocent people in prison, it's guilty people out still. Yeah. If you really want to see this all firsthand, I highly recommend the documentary from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, the Central Park Five. And this is the famous story in 1989 of five young African American men who were sent up the river for a rape in Central Park and they did not do it. And it's a great documentary and it just summarizes how you can get a false confession very nicely and it all plays out and you see these interviews and get really angry. But that was definitely a case of sort of like with the Atlanta child murders, people are scared to go into Central Park. Now we've got these five youths who aren't so smart and they're poor, and we think they did it. And I don't care what the evidence says, we need to finger them for the crime and put them all over the news so people will feel safe again. But they were eventually exonerated thanks to DNA again, and they spent, depending on which guy, between six years and twelve years in prison. And really great documentary. And I think it's on Netflix. It is, it is. Have you seen it? Yeah, it's a good one. So, Chuck, this we basically been talking mostly about the Reed technique, but there are alternatives. Some law enforcement agencies have lost faith in the re technique, and in Britain, apparently in 1990, There was a bunch of false confessions that came to light and the British government said we need to figure something else out. So they created a blue ribbon task force and said, come up with an alternative to the Re techique, which ironically is a technique in the re techique. But what they came up with was called Peace, which this is the worst acronym of all time, but Preparation and Planning, engage and Explain, Account Closer, evaluate clearly spells peace. So they came up with it after a couple of years and by 2001 it was pretty widespread. But the Peace technique is predicated on the idea that you're not going after a confession. I love this technique. Like you as an investigator, an interrogator, you're going in to just get the whole story out in as much detail as possible and you're not going after a confession, you're not accusing the person of the crime, you're being polite. And here's another thing and a lot of people think that this will cure false confessions almost in and of itself, videotaping the confession from beginning to end. And so what the cops do is they interview the suspect, they say, well, what about this? Here's a discrepancy, what about this? And they're not being accusatory, they're just putting everything out there and letting this person explain it in front of the video tape or in front of the video camera. And then the tape is shown to a jury and the jury apparently decides whether the person is lying or not. Yeah. And this is all built on what I think is a pretty rock solid theory that it is really hard to lie and lie and lie and keep it all straight and keep it all in that congruent line. That's believable. At some point, if you keep talking and you're lying a bunch, you're going to mess up. And that's what they prey on. Especially if you've just spent the last 8 hours, like drinking cruddy coffee and eating a few hohos and being asked questions by interrogators, even if they're being polite. Yeah. You're going to have a really hard time keeping up with what you've already said. Yeah. You've got to be a real skilled sociopath to lie for hours and hours and hours. Yeah. And then they'll bring them in again a week later and say, let's have some more tea and let's sit down and talk. And a week later you might forget some of the things you said. Oh, yeah. And the cops have the video and are writing down all the details. Seems pretty solid to me. Yeah. So good on you, Britain. And there are some people here in the US trying to teach it to cops here, but apparently it's just like word of mouth and the particular jurisdiction has to be done with it and support it and it's just not super widespread here yet. The read technique isn't the force of law, it's just the gold standard. It's the one that everybody uses, and they're like, I want to be like the cops on the shows. Well, yeah, exactly. I don't want to do the piece technique in Canada. I found a completely different technique, too. It's called the Mr. Big technique. Have you heard of it? No. It's extremely involved. Basically, you, the suspect, will meet an undercover cop who is posing as a criminal while you're out and about and free and easy or whatever, or maybe while you're being booked, whatever, and you guys are going to become friends. And over the course of the next several months, this undercover cop is going to gain your trust and get you to ultimately confess. That shows how little crime there is. They're like, So did you cut down your neighbor's tree? Right, exactly. They can spend, like, three months on a single confession. Wow. Yeah. But it's called the Mr. Big Technique. And actually the reason it's called Mr. Big is in its ideal form. You. The suspect. Become. Like. Kind of criminal compatriots this undercover cop who then introduces you to Mr. Big. This crime boss. Who wants you to step up to the next crime level that is going to get you to talk about this murder that you did or whatever. And then you confess it and you're being secretly taped and you don't know it. And you just entrapped yourself. Man, I love Canada. Mr. I might have to move there, man. Yeah. Are you going to stick around after Toronto or Vancouver in this country? So we said earlier we were going to give some tips. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't. They seem a little silly, but they recommend you just don't talk. You don't talk. They said, imagine the words I invoke my rights to remain silent painted on the wall and stare at them. Ask for counsel, asked for a lawyer. And then the number five thing they say to do is cultivate hatred for your interrogator. Who's that from? Peace Help Beagle or something weird like that? Yeah, it's for recommendations for animal rights activists who get arrested. Oh, got you. Yeah, it seems kind of basic to me. It is, but I think it's one of those things where they can easily go out the window when you're in that situation. And again, if you're in the United States and you invoke your right to counsel, that's that like the cops, they have to stop. And if they don't, that's a big problem. I kind of perversely want to know how I would hold up. I know it's no laughing matter, and I shouldn't joke around about it, but I would like to be interrogated just to see. So I guess that's it. If you want to learn some more about police interrogation, check out this article, police Interrogation on howsteporks.com it's a good one. And you can find that by using the search bar, of course. And since I said that it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this jittery, Joe's. Oh, yeah. Coffee. Hey, guys. Hope all as well. My wife Cathy and I are big fans of you, and we've been listening for years. This summer, we took a two month honeymoon to Southeast Asia. It was a blast. Your podcast kept the same. Thanks for that. We sent you a postcard from Angkor Watt in Cambodia. It was bought there, written in Borneo and mailed from Malaysia, I remember, so it was well traveled. Anyway, we live in Athens and love to hear your stories about Athens. We actually live in Five Points on the shortcut road where Chuck told about his mystery creepy old lady ghost story. I drive by there every day and always keep an eye out for her. So scary. But my day job is with Jittery Joe's coffee Roaster is a local Athens institution, and he brought a huge box of coffee, good stuff, and shirts and hats and hand delivered it to the office. And I think he was surprised to know that. I remember when Jittery Joe's first opened, he was like, oh, well, that was before my time. I think he didn't think I was as old as I was, but I remember Jittery Joe's opening up. It was a big deal. It's like the first kind of good indica house in Athens. I didn't know they were the first, but I'm not surprised. The first one I remember, at least. Yeah, but he suggests the Sumatra wahana. He said it's unlike any coffee I've ever had. People either love it or hate it. So that is from Mike Lord. And you can just look up Jittery Joe's online. I'm sure you can order this stuff. Yeah, you definitely can. Thanks for the coffee, Mike. It's good. Yes. And thank you to your wife, Cassidy, for all the support. Yes. If you want to give Chuck and I free stuff, we are happy to accept it. You can get in touch with us to ask for our physical mailing address, and we'll give it to you. Okay. Yeah. I have to say, showing up at the office unannounced is a little weird, but since he had a huge box of coffee, it was all forgiven. Oh, yeah. Come bearing gifts. It's like social lubricant. Gifts are especially good ones. Like Jittery Joe's coffee. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at sciskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheno. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stepdyshano.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.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 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 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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | ||
45b8d17e-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-9f7a2a911a3d | Short Stuff: Aristides de Sousa Mendes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-aristides-de-sousa-mendes | This week we highlight another little known historical hero. In this case, a Portuguese diplomat who rescued people from Nazi Germany, at his own peril. Dig in and spread the word of Aristides de Sousa Mendes. | This week we highlight another little known historical hero. In this case, a Portuguese diplomat who rescued people from Nazi Germany, at his own peril. Dig in and spread the word of Aristides de Sousa Mendes. | Wed, 24 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=205, tm_isdst=0) | 11996736 | audio/mpeg | "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. Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck and there's Josh. The other Josh. And this is short stuff. Did I say that already? I don't know. Enough talk, Chuck. Let's get to it. We're talking today about a man who is shamefully, or was shamefully overlooked by history, starting to get his due. Finally named Aristide D'Souza Mendez do Amaral. Ebancies. I think I came awfully close. My Portuguese is a little rusty, seeing as how I've never spoken a word of it in my life. Not bad. We can call him the Portuguese Oscar Schindler, and that should give you a good idea of where this episode is headed. Okay. Aristide de Sousa Mendez. We're just going to leave it at that. By the time 1938 rolled around, had become a career diplomat for Portugal. He was trained as a lawyer, and by the time he was assigned to Bordeaux, France, in 1938, he had been all over the world. He was definitely a senior diplomat in the diplomatic corps for Portugal. That's right. So in 1938, like you said, he was in France. World War II comes knocking on his door, germany invades Poland, and Portugal was like, we're Portuguese. We're not into this World War stuff. I don't know if you got the memo, but we'd like to remain sort of neutral and happy over here growing olives and drinking wine. We're going to distribute this thing called Circular 14 that basically says all of our consoles all over the world, you need to deny travel into Portugal for refugees. We don't like that you're being persecuted, but we want to stay out of this as much as possible, aka, we don't want to make Hitler mad, so we're not going to take your refugees, including the Jewish people. Right. And this is the Circular 14. It gets sent out to all consulates in Europe. And that was supposed to be that. But this came at, like a time, Chuck, when they were apparently the New York Times estimated something between six and 10 million people moving around Europe because chaos was just starting to brew as Germany invaded Poland and then invaded France. It was pushing and displacing a lot of people around who were trying to get out of here. And I looked up that's a pretty big number, but what is it in today's terms in Germany, 10 million people move around the country a year on their train system in a year. This was like, at once, there were six to 10 million people moving around, and they were moving around chaotically. But again, Portugal said, now, we're not taking part in this. Just stand there motionless, silent, and don't do anything. They're going to have to figure out a different way. If Germany gets them, well, then that's too bad. And this Aristide de Souza Mendez said, I don't think I can do that. Yeah. So he's in southern France. So that was a hotspot for these refugees because they were thinking, we can from there just go into Spain, then right into Portugal. Right. That's what Lauren Bacalle did in Casablanca. She flew to Lisbon. That's right. But I don't think they could fly into Lisbon at the time. Yes, they could. She hops on a plane at the end. Well, she did, right? Sure. Oh, you're saying that people who are seeking help from Susan Mendez that's right. Sure. Got you. So he knows that if he goes directly against his government, this is going to be bad news for him, it's going to be bad news for his family. He would be willfully disobeying a direct order of Circular 14. But he befriended a Polish rabbi named Chime Hurts Krueger. Nice. And he offered visas to this guy and his family. But Kruger was like, you know what? I'm going to turn down this offer, because what you really need to do is save everybody that you can. And it was a really sort of monumental moment for Susan Mendes because he was a devout Catholic and this guy was a rabbi and they had their mind on the same thing, except the rabbi was just saying, like, be bold. And Susan Mendez was in fear of his life, basically. Yeah, because him not listening to the Circular 14, it wasn't like listening or not listening to an order from the Jimmy Carter administration. There was a dictator running the show in Portugal at the time and would continue to run the show until 1970, I believe. So it was a real conundrum that he found himself in. But ultimately, he consulted his own conscience and he said, no, morally, I have to do something. I can't just sit by. And he did. He took the advice of this rabbi. And in Bordeaux, he set up basically an assembly line for stamping and signing any and every visa application into Portugal that was handed to him by anybody. He tried to get as many people safe passage into Portugal as he physically could. Yes. And I think, given what's going to get minor political here, what's going on in this country today, we should read this quote from Susan Mendez. I have it all in my hands now to save the many thousands of persons who have come from everywhere in Europe in the hope of finding sanctuary in portugal. They are all human beings and their status in life, their religion or color are all together immaterial to me. Yeah, so let's dwell on that during the message break and we'll 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 goldmine 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. Incredible story of what seems to be a large military transport plane that's crashed in a remote region south of Ankara, Turkey. Witnesses authorities are on the hunt for a suspect after two men went to blows atop a fireworks bars, wrecked cars and destruction. Witnesses claim an unknown assailant left from the tram and evaded the scene after a high speed carjack. The identity of this man stills unknown. What do you know about the Sierra program? Reckless mystery, man. You guys sent in when you can officially send anyone else. Great man. I got an urgent locate and destroy Sierra. Six stone asset of considerable banking agency. That could be fun. The man's got some street cred. Have something they really want. But 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 boys head that even his most loyal allies won't hesitate to drop a time. Nameless assassin is 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. You want to make an omelet? Gotta 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. I hope that was everybody. Got a 62nd mid roll from the ACLU just now. So they're running a lot of people through this thing. Like you said, it was like an assembly line and they were stamping visas. They were running out of stamps. They were stamping visas so fast. Yeah. There's no way that he didn't get a hand. Cramp on the rig. Tens of thousands of people, many thousands of which were Jewish, were granted these visas under his authority. And it was later said it was perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust. And that includes Oscar Schindler. That's huge. Yeah. Schindler, I think, was responsible for making sure that 1200 people successfully escaped the Holocaust. Susan Mendez was responsible for likely many thousands more than that. They've identified so far at least 3800 recipients from 49 different countries. But there's thousands and thousands more just from this assembly line that they set up from, I believe, the beginning of May until July, when Bordeaux was overrun by the Nazis and the whole operation was broken up. So repercussions, for sure. July 1940, he was recalled from Bordeaux to face trial for insubordination. And he basically says in court, you know what, I answer to God. I would rather stand with God against man than man against God. And he was convinced that he had a moral defense, and he was right. And he was convinced that the actual Constitution of Portugal prohibited persecution based on religion. And he was right there as well. But it didn't matter because like you said, they were living under a dictatorship. In October of 1940, he was found guilty. He was relieved of his duties and blacklisted by the government for the rest of his life and very sadly died in 1954 at the Franciscan Hospital for the Poor in Lisbon. Yes. Not pennyless. I noticed this article said he was broke. Oh, did you know how much you dislike the word pennyless to describe somebody who dies broke? I didn't see that it said pennyless. I think in the Tesla episode we did you're like I hate that word. Oh, really? Yeah, because I'm sure he's got a penny. I didn't know that. He supposedly didn't have any money, but yeah, he was broke. I mean, they broke him. They basically said, you're not going to have any more government work and good luck finding anything but a government work and a bureaucratic dictatorship. So, yeah, he was blacklisted. He was blackballed and he died in poverty with his family also taken down with them, this guy said, and he knew the risk and he said, I'm going to put all these other families in front of my own family. And like, if you're a Utilitarian, that makes a lot of sense because even two families are worth more than one family. But still, this is this guy's own family that he's putting under the gun to help all of these others. Yeah, but he did not regret it. Toward the end of his life, he said, I could not have acted otherwise, and I therefore accept all that is befallen me with love. How's that for a lesson? It is a great lesson. And now he is typically mentioned along with Oscar Schindler, who is no slouch himself, no shade on Schindler, what he did, but I mean, like, susan Mendes also deserves a decent amount of credit as well. And slowly but surely, it started to come around. His daughter, Joanna Susan Mendez, really started to beat the drum to revive her father's standing in the world. In 1966, she got a petition approved so that her father would be named Righteous Among Nations, which is what? The Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. It's an honor that they bestow on non Jews who went to great length and placed themselves at great risk to save people from the Holocaust. So that was a big first step, and that took place in 1966, but they kept going. And then eventually a daughter from one of the people that he saved directly joined this too. Yeah, he was honored a few times. In 87, the US. Congress convinced the Portuguese government to officially apologize. And then after these ancestors of the survivors started coming forward right. And they started digging these people up and compiled of a list so far this foundation, the Susan Mendes Foundation, which is cofounded by his grandchildren and descendants of the people that he saved, which is just an amazing story. They've compiled a list of about 3800 visa recipients in 49 different countries and they are still on the lookout for more people. It's like this big sort of dispersed family all over the world. Yeah, and they make the point too, that not only do you save all these people this minimum of 3800, but probably thousands and thousands and thousands more. He directly saved their lives. He also ensured the lives of their offspring who hadn't even been born yet, who are now born and have managed to live, who otherwise wouldn't have lived, had not been for the direct intervention of this guy. Amazing. Yeah. So hats off. Aristide De. Susan Mendez. That's a great name and you're a great guy. We do a lot of Hats Off in these shorties. I like it. Yeah, it's kind of a celebratory series, isn't it? Yeah. Here and there is for sure. Or we talked about some weird dumb thing that no one knows about or understand. Right. But that's what people like, right? That's right. Okay, well, hopefully you like this one. If not, don't tell us. Okay, see you later. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite you." | |
bcb36760-361e-11ea-822e-6fefd5cd00d9 | Short Stuff: The NY Times Crossword | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-ny-times-crossword | Today Chuck and Josh take a shallow dive in the warm pool that is the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. | Today Chuck and Josh take a shallow dive in the warm pool that is the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. | Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=113, tm_isdst=0) | 13190424 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Just Josh and Chuck. No, Jerry, it's short stuff. Go. New York Times crossword puzzle stumps Americans. That was a good one. Mid Atlantic accent is what they call all that. Yeah. We're talking about The New York Times daily crossword, a crossword puzzle I have never attempted to do in my life, but it is a part of the fabric of America. And there's a great documentary that I have not seen yet that I want to see about this. I think it's about all crosswords. It's good. Yeah, I want to see that. It's called Wordplay. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. Shay. John Stewart's in it. He's a crossword fanatic. Did you know that? Yeah. A lot of people I know are crossword fanatics. Ken Jennings, of course, as you would imagine, is quite good at The New York Times crossword. A little on the nose, if you ask me. Yeah. What is that guy not good at? Right. Podcasting. He's good at that. He's good at everything. Good at talking to strangers the time that I met him. Sure. Anyway, one of the people who's in that documentary, Chuck, is Will Shorts and Will Shorten has kind of become a legendary figure in the crossword community and even beyond, frankly, because he is just a straight up, interesting, neat, kind of I want to say comforting. It doesn't feel like the right word. And when I'm describing a crossword puzzle editor, I feel like I should have exactly the right word. But comforting still works. He's just a cool dude, but he is the current editor of The New York Times crossword puzzle, and he has basically taken it and catapulted it into international fame. It's like the crossword puzzle, thanks in large part to his efforts. Yeah. If you want to go back in time, though, it's pretty interesting. The New York Times was the very last major daily metropolitan newspaper in the United States to start a crossword puzzle. They were really popular all over the country starting in about 1924, and The New York Times even came out and was like, you know what? Here's a quote for you. The latest of the problems presented for solution by psychologists interested in the mental peculiarities of mobs and crowds. That's what a crossword is going to do for you. No idea what they meant by that one. Well, they were just saying it's sort of base entertainment and knowledge. I think I'm going to have to go back and reread it. That's fine, but I'll take it I'll take it on space. You know what I'm reminded of now when I think of crossword puzzles is Rupert Sheldrake's theory that crossword puzzles get easier to solve as the day goes on because of everybody's collective consciousness. Yeah, I'm sure that's the case. So it is pretty surprising that The New York Times poo pooed crosswords as fooey for 20 years, easily about almost 20 years, maybe 15. So that crossword craze starts in 1924. The New York Times didn't finally publish one until the beginning of World War I. Think it was probably World War II. What did I say? He said world War II. The New York Times went back in time to beat everybody. So sorry. It was World War II when they adopted it. So about 15 years after the craze started, they held out. And then finally, as the legend goes, the Times editor Arthur Soldberger, he was tired of buying The New York Herald or no, the Harold Tribune so that he could play their crossword puzzle or do their crossword puzzle. He wanted The Times to have its own. And he finally said, Fine, we'll publish a crossword. Yes. I get the feeling his nickname was Susie. Yeah. Arthur Salzie Sulzberger. Yeah. It's the beginning of World War II. And basically the thought was, besides the fact that he wanted one is that all we're doing is talking about World War II. Maybe a crossword puzzle is finally a good idea to kind of get people's mind off of things. So you over there, Ms. Margaret Ferrar. Why don't you be our very first crossword editor? Because you have been editing all these books, crossword books that Simon and Schuster has been putting out since 1924. Right. And to get everybody's minds off of it, by the way, make sure that the crossword puzzle answers and clues have to do with the news that are in that day's newspaper which all happened to be about the war and the lead up to war and so far was like, all right, you know what? I'm a crossword legend already. I'm going to make this one right. And she really did. She had really great crosswords that she edited and she pushed back, I think, fairly quickly on that idea that it needed to reflect the day's news and said, you know what? I think it needs to do the opposite of that. I think we need to get references from literature, from popular culture, from just about everything but the day's news so that people can use the crossword as an escape and manage to establish The New York Times crossword is basically the preeminent crossword in the world. Yeah. And she did this for 27 years from 42 to 69, which is a very long run. Summer 11th. That's right. It was a big, big hit, like you said. And then in 1969, Mr. Will Wang succeeded her and he, I think, was the head at the Metropolitan desk at the time. Then he took over his crossword editor. He was a little bit more of an old fashioned newsy type but he did love crosswords and he had been writing these crosswords for a long time for The Times and they finally said, bring your great sense of humor over here and become the editor. Yeah, he was apparently like the times. Crosswords were never funnier than when will wang was editor. Lots of pants dropping jokes, just super 70 stuff. Ziggy made an appearance almost every day. Nothing's funnier than ziggy, right? So, will wang kind of had the crossword under his wing for seven years, I think. Under his wing? Yeah. I didn't even mean to do that. That's a great example. So, seven or eight years, he was the editor of the crossword, and then he was succeeded by a guy named Eugene T. Molesca. And if there's ever been a crossword editor who deserved a cliffhanger more than Eugene T. Moleska, I've never met one. 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 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, Chuck. So, how does it end with Eugene team Aleska? So, Gene moleska is running the show now, and the puzzles become a little more varied, a little more sophisticated, more word play, but not as much of a sense of humor. I get the sense from when wang was doing it, he was a school superintendent in the Bronx. Not that funny. No, he was in the opera. Classical music. Not that funny. It was just a little more serious in tone than wang's were. Yeah. I mean, all you have to do is, say, opera and classical music enthusiasts editing a crossword puzzle, and that's polar opposite of Wang. Yeah. So, Eugene tumultsky does a fine job. He did it for many, many years, from 1977 till, I think, 1993. And then will shorts comes along. And from everything I can tell after reading this and seeing will shorts in that documentary word play, he's like a perfect combination of every previous New York times crossword editor that came before him. He's all of them rolled into one. He's very sophisticated. He has a lot of culture. Like molesca, he's got a sense of humor. Like wang. He's really into crosswords and knows how to make them great. Like Ferrar. He's just like the whole package. I didn't realize it until this moment. I'm a Will Shorts fan. I don't even do crosswords all that often. Yeah, the big thing that SHORTZ did and then he has kind of become known for is modernizing it some and bringing a more youthful tone to it. It was kind of seen as like an old person's thing to sit around and do the crossword. Well, that was in large part thanks to Moleska. Oh, for sure. So Shorts comes along and he's like, you know what I'm going to do? And this is something I didn't even know. I didn't know that regular people just write these things out and submit them, which is an amazing fact if you did not know that I knew that. Do you know why? Because a Stuff You Should Know listener does word searches and they submit them. Remember they did a stuff you should know word search. And I think it was in USA Today. Cool. Yeah. Well, Shorts came along and said, we need a younger voice in here. And so I think only six teenagers previous to Shorts had ever gotten puzzles published. In his 25 years, he has published 37 teenagers. And the average age has gone, I think, down. And of course, he still has the oldest person, 101 years old. But the average age of contributor has now come down to has come down 15 years from the early fifty s to about the 30s. Right. That reflects an enormous change. Like, the people who are creating these crossword puzzles are the ones who actually map out the puzzle, figure out the answers, write the clues, and the choices they're going to make are going to reflect their age group a lot more. So just by virtue of selecting puzzles that are written by a slightly younger group of people, they're going to be a lot more modern and current and more accessible to a larger group of people. Yeah. So they get about 75 to 100 submissions a week. If you are building your own crossword puzzle, you probably are not using graph paper like they used to do. You're probably using a computer program to help you out. I'll bet some hipsters who hire artisan pencil sharpeners do craft paper still. Yeah. They're getting their pencils from David Reese. That's right. So this is pretty interesting to me when you're making a puzzle and I guess it kind of makes sense. Kind of like there's one way to build a boat. You put your theme answers in the grid first, and then you put your little black squares and plot it out and divide it into your sections and then you write the clues. Yeah. So you basically reverse engineer the puzzle, starting with the words, then the black spaces, then the clues. I had no idea. I didn't either. I've been doing it wrong. I start with the black spaces, then the clues, then the words. It rarely works out. Have you ever tried to write one? No, I really don't think so. You know that part of your brain that inserts false memories when you want to answer yes to something? That part of my brain, like, was just an operation, and I said, no, no brain, you're wrong. You've never tried to do a crossword. You never tried to make a crossword from scratch. Shut up. Yeah, I enjoy crosswords, but I don't seek them out. I'm not an enthusiast. When I was in college, I would do the one from the red and black every day, and then when I fly on Delta, I will do the one in the sky magazine if it's not filled out. Yeah, you mean. I went on a little kick where we were doing crosswords and we bought a Chicago Tribune book of crosswords, like, pretty much up our alley, supposedly the New York Times. It is well known as a very difficult crossword, but that over the span of the week, it actually gets progressively harder, which I didn't know. Did you know that? Yeah, I did know that. That's one of the few things I knew, because I always thought the Sunday one was the coup de grab. Apparently the Saturday is the most difficult. The Sunday is larger, but it's more like a Wednesday or Thursday on the easy scale. So I guess it's what I thought it was bigger, so it was harder. Not that there was just more to it. But yes, Saturday is the hardest and Monday is the easiest. That's right. And now that they're online, of course you can subscribe only to the Times crossword, and they have close to a half a million people that subscribe just to the crossword. And apparently it's a pretty decent source of income for the paper. Failing New York Times. Those people pay a million dollars a year for that subscription. That's amazing. It's a lot of dough. Way to go, Will. Shorts. Way to go. And by the way, if you're into crossword puzzles at all and you haven't seen Wordplay yet, the documentary, go see it. And since I said that, it's short stuff away. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
2bf669f8-3381-11e8-a342-1f4599799e8e | When Words Take on New Meanings | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/when-words-take-on-new-meanings | Historical words often morph and change to take on new meanings. Today on the podcast, Josh and Chuck sit down and talk about a handful of them, their original meanings, and how they changed over the years... | Historical words often morph and change to take on new meanings. Today on the podcast, Josh and Chuck sit down and talk about a handful of them, their original meanings, and how they changed over the years... | Tue, 03 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=93, tm_isdst=0) | 55103821 | audio/mpeg | "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. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstoughfworkscom hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And let's see. We've got a couple of producers out there. We're in a new studio. We've got Will and Mangeesh from part time genius. We all have our pants on. That's weird. That's the weird part. It's just a big family fest. Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. Welcome, you guys. Thank you, guys. We're in this brand new studio. Isn't this exciting? It is a little woozy from the formaldehyde. It's a lot like a science class. I think that's what happens in here at night, science class. Right. They're making extra money to pay for this new studio to fill everybody in. We're just doing, like, injoke frenzy right now. Stuff you should know, or I'm sorry. How stuff works has expanded. We've got so many podcasts these days and so many coming down the pike that they've built out new studios. And we're using this is our first time. But you guys have used this one before, right? Yeah, it's an awesome studio. So, Chuck, let's introduce these guys. Okay, well, Will is who you've heard Speak Mange is who you've heard laugh. You do have a great laugh mangae. And we should have a laugh off at some point, you and me. I want you to laugh. I've been told I don't know. All right, man, guess you go. So these guys are the hosts of Parttime Genius, and they just let us know that it is your and cofounders of mental floss many years ago, but today is your one year anniversary. We have been at Househof Works for one year. Yes. Congratulations. Hopefully, Jerry will work in some sort of post production sound effect or applause at the fanfare button, right? Yeah. Well, congrats. You guys have been doing part time genius. Has it come out three times a week from the get go? No, it was two times a week at the beginning, and we just decided we didn't have enough work. Right. It was around the time of the eclipse, and we thought, you know what? We should have done an eclipse episode, and let's just share some fun facts. And then the next week, we were like, you know what? There's been some really bad news, as there has been frequently recently. And so we thought, you know what? Let's do an episode on Nine Things to make you smile. And so most of our episodes are big questions where we ask a question like, will we ever be able to live without sleep? Or something like that. And so we decided to start throwing in these bonus episodes where we do nine things about whatever it might be, facts about Mr. Rogers or house Plants. House plants, the usual. But they're still pretty robust. Episodes are like 20 minutes, basically, right? Yeah. So three times a week, my hat is off to you. I'm also vaguely threatened by that because I'm worried that somebody can be like, you guys put out three a week. Yeah. We would run the classic. I don't know if that counts because it's not extra work, you know what I mean? So I'm a little nervous, but still, it's pretty awesome. We're still building up to get the classics wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, right? That's right. So how did you guys end up at Houseworks? Because Chuck said you're the co founders of mental flaws. I feel like it's worth saying a couple more times. Mental Floss magazine? Yeah, like a site we used and still use a lot. Actually, we don't use it anymore now, you guys yeah. Did you that's not true. I emailed them about a bug I found a bug where if you went to go put in easy reader format or whatever on firefox, it would bring up a different article. So I let them know I did, but I was like, one degree separated from the dev team at Mental Health. Yeah. Josh emailed me and of course we reached out to them and they were very much appreciative fixed. It like, that cool. It's a great team there. It's still obviously a great site, and we love all the crew at Mental Floss, and we were just excited about what's happening in the world of podcasting. We've been big fans of you guys for a long time. Thank you. And just knowing how much is happening in this space, we were eager to try something new when we were approached about the idea of coming here. And we've been doing mental floss. We've been talking about Mental Floss since we were 19. It's been a long time, and we've done so many fun projects, so many things, but by the end of it, we're just managing so many people and we weren't getting to do the creative stuff as much. At least that's how I felt when we started thinking about podcasts. It just really felt like how Mental Flaws started, where it was conversations, and it felt like, intimate. And the way you have built such an amazing community of people who care and are so invested. And somewhere along the way, I felt like Minus Loss was with such a massive site that I didn't know the readers anymore. Too many. And somehow, even though podcasts are huge, you guys have millions and millions of listeners. They all feel like they know you. We sort of missed that connection. Well, that is truly in the cradle, guys. Very sad. It's a silver spoon. Well, I'm glad you guys are here. I know. Chuck is, too. So welcome to the family after a year. Well, on our first day here. We talked about this previously, but we went around the house at work's offices. We met everyone. We were in these meetings and stuff. Everyone went home early. Yeah, it's a staple. It's amazing. Everyone works hard, but they also get to spend time with their families. And when we got into Elevator, we're like, where do they keep The Jerks? They don't seem to be any in this company. It was just so nice. Did you say? Are we the jerk? That's what I said. We're here at the Jerks. Yeah, that's one of the really cool things. I think we differ from a lot of podcast companies in that way and that we have all this great talent on the roster, and we're also going out and developing cool stuff. Very cool. Enough about all this. Let's talk about the show some more. All right. You guys have, like, quizzes. Typically, you have lots of guests on what are some of the best questions that you've asked and some of the best guests that you've had so far. I mean, that's been one of the most fun parts about this, is getting to reach out to experts and different things and even experts in areas that we didn't realize they were experts. We got to talk to America's only certified water Somalier. I mean, we always hear about Somalia in the world of wine and that there's an expert in the world of water that these fine restaurants reach out to, and getting to hear the ins and outs of that. Or Antarctica's poet in residence. Right. Wonderful. He or she's not allowed to leave, though, huh? Well, she eventually left, but she didn't get to take a lot of hot showers. I can imagine. She probably swam away, made her get away. We had a guest on recently, an author of a book called Win, and it was about the science of perfect timing. His name is Daniel Pink, and he was teaching us about how much time of day affects all of us, helping us learn the disturbing fact that we're all a little more racist than the afternoons. And it would be just weird things like that where he was talking about staging these court cases where they have these kind of mock jurors and they put them together. This was not on a real trial. That would be an unfortunate way to test this. And they would test their behavior and whether they were more or less likely to convict someone in certain scenarios. And they looked at what happened in the morning and what happened in the afternoon and had people of different races, and they were more likely to come down more hard on someone of a different race in the afternoon. Was there any idea? It really does have to do with our body clocks, our circadian rhythms and post lunch grumpiness. Honestly, that's part of it. But, yeah, the science of that perfect timing. And we learned that we've changed our behavior around this. A different fact that came out of that one was that they've done a statistical analysis on teams that do more high fiving and chest bumping, and it said head slapping. I'm not sure exactly what that is. Head slap is just dangerous. Mango slaps my head before every episode. And they are actually shown to win more frequently. It might be because they're winning. So they're highfiving. Like, if you're winning, it's probably not highfiving. That is a good point. But it's just a lot of fun to have these people on that have studied such fascinating things. We consider them the experts. We're not experts, but it's a selfish thing for us. We get to sit back and learn from people who know so much about so many interesting things. Yeah. We did a show on rudeness and whether there's a rudeness epidemic. And there's this guy, Danny Wallace, who wrote this great book, and one of the facts he was talking about was that this mayor in somewhere in Columbia, I think he fired the corrupt police force and hired a bunch of mimes to mock people as they were jaywalking it basically shamed the city into being more polite. It was amazing. Or annoyed them into being polite either way. But I feel like minds are underused career. They really are. Especially a civil servant. A rise in mind violence in charter. Hania on Facebook. There's another study being done about how that could have happened. Well, everybody out there. If you haven't picked up on the idea that you would love Will and Mangesh's Show, all you have to do is go to their website. It's parttimegenius.com right, parttimegenius show. We decided to get to another level. Right? Yeah. That's really forward thinking of you. or.com wasn't available. Right, Josh? But we were really thinking about it part time. Genius show. We got the podcast archives on there, so everybody go check it out. Yeah. Or of course, itunes or wherever you get your podcast. That's right. Is that what we say? I think we say those things. All right. Fist bumps, guys. That's right. No head slaps. Ow. Ow. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, guys. It was good talking to you. It's always a joy to hang out with those two, huh? I love those guys. They are truly good guys. So, Chuck, we are talking about words today. Yeah. Specific words, historical words that people may or may not be using correctly. Correct. That people may or may not have really defined some of these instances. There's really no problem with them. But they're fun to talk about, right? Sure. It's that whole descriptive, this prescriptivist thing. You remember that whole thing we used to get into. Oh, boy, it's a trip down memory lane, isn't it? I think so. Descriptivists are kind of like language is constantly evolving. Sure, yeah. Go with the flow. Prescriptivists are like, no, language is language. And if you're using it wrong. You're wrong. Right. Like David Foster Wallace was a prescriptivist. Right. Basically, grammar Nazi is another way to put it. Right? Yeah. And I want to go ahead and this is not on our list, but let's go ahead and throw a decimate in there, okay. Because that is a word that we used to hear from a lot when we said something was decimated and we would have prescript. Which one is the prescriptivist? Yes. Email us and say decimate means deca is by ten. So reducing by 10% is what it means, guys. And eventually, I just started writing people back and saying, you know, the modern dictionary even says that it has now come to learn decimate can just mean late away. Yeah, late away. Wiping out. Like this bush mail decimated me last night. Well, it reduced you by probably more than 10%. It depends on how much Bush mails was involved. But anyway, that's always been a gripe for me. Like, even when it's officially changed its definition over time right. And recognized as such, people will still get their hackles up. And I'm like, Dude. It's usually a dude, but that's a prescriptive. It's railing against it. Well, yeah, and it's also like, come on, man. I'm sorry. We're not using the 15th century usage of the word. Right. So yeah, decimate. They got their tunic and a twist. No tunic, technically. So I guess I think this episode is kind of for the prescriptivists, if you think about it. I still don't know who's who prescriptivists are the ones who are who you're talking about. What are we, prescriptivist pedant? So we're not that no. Okay, we go with that. To each their own motto. Yeah. And this is, of course, another we haven't done a top ten in a while. No. But as everyone knows, our top ten are never ten. And it kind of occurred to me that's usually because some of them we just think are dumb and also because of time, because the way we go, these things would be way over an hour long. We decimate the top ten list, actually. Yeah. All right, so let's start, man, we're talking again, I don't know if we got this across yet or not, but we're talking about historic words that come from history that are either used wrong or they don't really get across the original intent, necessarily. They just kind of evolved over time. Right. And the first two kind of pair together quite well, like a nice wine and a shot of Bush Mills. Right. Oh, God, I'm not even on a Bushmill kick. I don't know where this came from. I've been at Bushmails in a long time. Yeah. And it's not something you would normally shoot either. Oh, yeah. Or dropping a glass of cabernet. Right. Yeah. I think people shoot Bush Mills. Yeah. You know who probably shoot anything, you know, who do he miss. Very nice. Thank you very clever. So that's the first word. It's hedonism, right? Yeah. So most people think of the word hedonism, and they do mention in this article that there is a nudist resort in Jamaica called Hedonism, which I and there's Hedonism, too. I think there's more than one. Well, there's a lot of nudists crowded on the island. I remember when we did our nudist episode. Oh, yeah. I ran across an article about, like, a swingers resort. I think it was hedonism, and it was just like it may have been a Men's Health article or BuzzFeed or something like that, but it was like, I went to a nudist swingers resort and basically never want to have sex again. I'm so grossed out with myself and humanity. Yeah. Not to say that that's hedonism because they may eventually be a sponsor one day. That's right. But hedonism is most people used to throw that word around to equate with just the ultimate in, like, sexual party debauchery. Debauchery is a great word for it. Drinking fornicating orgies, fine scented oils and silken linens. Right. Being completely ruined. Yeah. So that's basically what most people think of it's. Hedonism. It's like giving into your every desire, especially carnal desires, even at great personal risk, without much foresight. Right. Apparently, that is not at all the case of what Hedonism meant originally, but you can kind of see how it evolved over time. Sure. Because hedonism stems from the Greek word for pleasure. Yeah. Right. Hedonia. And the idea is that originally the hedonist, it was an umbrella school of philosophy. I think we kind of touched on it in our Stoicism episode, but it was an umbrella philosophy that basically said, there are two things in life that you need to pay attention to, and everything else falls into place if you are maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. Yes. Those are the two things. Pleasure and pain. Maximize one, minimize the other. Yes, but the whole thing is they don't say nowhere in there does it say, and by the way, this involves orgies charcuteri trays, which is weird because we're talking the Greeks here. Well, sure. Well, I'm sure Hedonism it also meant that, but it didn't exclusively mean that. Got you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, like, it could also mean delights of the mind, intellectual pursuits. Right. Stuff like that. It even says altruism, which is kind of funny to think about someone saying, like, I bought groceries for my elderly neighbor, and it was a purely hedonistic sensation came over me. So you're such a hedonist. But technically, back then, that could have been the way you might use that word. Yeah. And even more to the point, that Hedonist said there's something you really want to pay attention to here. Yeah. You want to experience pleasure, but it is really easy for pleasure to turn into pain or degradation or addiction, and you have to bear this stuff in mind or else you're going to pursue pleasure at your own expense and then you're not doing it right. Right. There's actually this guy in, I think, the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham. I can't remember if he was at Cambridge or Oxford. We talked about him before, 5 million emails. Surely we have. But he was a fellow or a dawn or whatever of philosophy at this university that's still around. And every year at one of their annual banquets, they bring his mummified head out and put it at the head of the table, I think, on like a wax dummy. So he's dressed as himself and they've got the guy's mummified head. That's how much of a revered philosopher he was. He came up with this thing called Philosophic calculus. Okay. It's basically an equation right up my alley. An equation. Right. This is pretty dry, but the whole point is to pursue pleasure as much as possible and to avoid pain. And he said you have to consider things like the duration of the pleasurable event, the intensity, how certain it is, the fecundity, like, is it going to spawn more pleasure afterward, the purity, will it actually devolve into pain, the extent of it, which means how many people are affected by it. And if you take all these factors into account, you can run any experience or any decision you have in life through that and decide, I'm not going to do this, or yeah, I'll have that bite of Cool Whip out of the fridge. Does anyone still use that? I'm sure there's a few people out there that do. Yeah. They're very exacting, I imagine. So that's hedonism. Yeah. Right. We took all the pleasure out of that pretty quick. But that leads to another word that's misused frequently. Epicurean. Epicurean, yeah. That's the thing that nowadays you hear people use the word epicurean. There are probably a lot of restaurants that have a name on some derivation of this word. Right. But it's tied into food and drink, like really fine food, top shelf wine and food. If you have epicurian tastes, then you are someone who concerns yourself with the finer things in the dining room, specifically. Right. And it's not quite as much identified with overdoing it as hedonism. But I think more than anything, it's like you said, it's the finer things, but you might overindulge here or there. Yeah. And if you use that word about yourself, then you are probably pretty obnoxious. Yeah. It's people like you who are needed at parties for other people to avoid. But the word, once again, from Greek epicure came from the philosopher Epicurus. And people, if you don't know much about the root of the word, you probably think that his whole deal was about food. Right. And that's not necessarily the case. But he was a hedonist, isn't that right? Yeah. He was like one of the great hedonistic thinkers, but in the ancient Greek sense of the word. Right. So his whole deal was ataraxia, which was inner tranquility, and that you should pursue pleasure by just being content rather than going off and getting, like, wasted or eating a bunch or something like that. And that if you did have desire, it was better to eliminate it than satisfy it. But if you did satisfy it, you should do it thoughtfully or mindfully. So really, he was kind of the opposite of what people who consider themselves epicurians were. Yeah, but also, didn't he have a lot to say about following your own path when it comes to that? It was very centered around the self. Good point. You do whatever is best for you in the moment and not necessarily what someone else thinks might be the best thing for you. Right. But again, the point is virtue like value. Hedonism like doing things that are actually good and that produce good, rather than, I'm going to shoot this heroine even though my significant other doesn't want me to. Yeah. That's not what it was about at all. It was moderation. You have to find what gives you pleasure in life rather than looking to other people, look inward to yourself. Right. But yeah, moderation was a huge part of it. Yeah. And when I couldn't find and that was the case with a few of these, is where it got all wrapped up in food. I couldn't either. I think people like food, so it just sort of yeah, that's all I can think of. I was really hoping that there was, like, a turning point where it was like, this is where it happened, and there are a few places where I couldn't find that kind of thing. It's just not out there. It's lost to history. All right, so we're disappointed. So we're going to take a break, go put our heads together, pull ourselves together, turn our attitude around. We'll be right back with your 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. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, we're back. We're going to stick around ancient Greece for a little while longer. Hey, why not? I mean, they've produced a lot of misused words. Yeah, I got Frankincense all up in here. Do you like frankincense. I don't even know what it is. It's a resin based incense. Yeah. I don't think have you spelled it? Sure, yeah. I mean, I was raised Catholic. Oh, is that a thing? You ever been to a Catholic mass? No. So they'll go through with, like, this big incense burner and just think up the whole church with frankincense. I've seen that in movies. Well, that's what they're doing, is burning frankincense, and it's actually pretty good smell. Now, the only Catholic jams I've been involved in were, sadly, a couple well, wine tasting. No. A funeral and a wedding or two. Maybe four. Well, it seemed like four four weddings. And that was close. So cynic is the word. Did you already say that? No, I didn't. Okay. Cynic is the word, and this is one I kind of like this word as we use it today because I try to abandon cynicism in my own life, and I'm pretty turned off by cynicism as a whole. Okay. Which means, in our usage, is like, a cynic to me is someone who's always suspicious, suspicious of what's going on. What's your goal? Yeah. Like, that person is doing something seemingly pure, but I'm cynical, so I wonder what that's all about. Right. That can't be true. I saw a great definition of cynicism in the modern usage. A cynic is a person whose fated belief or curdled trust had left him unfit for attachment to others. Wow. That's a deep cynic definition. Yeah. That's pretty heavy. But yes, it can be a little lighter than that. It can just be somebody who's not willing to just kind of go with the flow and take things at face value and be happy about things. Trust other people. Yeah. Trust, I think, has a lot to do with it. Right. I agree. So this is one of those words I actually kind of found where this one turns, which we'll get to in a second, but it's based on so cynicism, again, is an ancient Greek philosophy, and the cynics were not like the hedonists at all. They actually thought that pleasure was to be avoided. Yeah. That if you're going to lead a virtuous life, you basically needed to take a vow of poverty, issue any comforts or pleasures, just basically be a bit of a jackass, really. Kind of the idea of, like, you know, the guys who walk around and whip themselves. Yeah. Self flagellation. Right. That would have been a very cynical thing to do in the original sense of the term. Yeah. And our own article brings up this guy. Apparently, he was a pretty notable cynic. Diogeneous, I think. Diogeneous? Diogenes of synopsis. I don't know if it's synopsis or SYNOP. I bet a synopsis. Okay, we'll go with that. Sounds nice. So diogenesis connected. Correct. Dianetics of Velaron Hover, he was one of these guys. The example he's in here, he would go barefoot in the cold weather just to acclimate his body, and his friends would just watch with their arms crossed and shake their heads like, what? Yeah. But he would also bark at them right. And say that, you need to be doing this stuff, like, you and your luxurious things need to be more like me. You like that wine? You're a loser for drinking that wine. You're a loser for enjoying it. That was his thing. Yeah. You should be a cynic. Right. And he was definitely not one of those go along and get along types, right? Doesn't sound like it. So maybe that is a little bit where it evolved from. He certainly seems to have taken cynicism to the extreme. One of the legends of cynicism is that he was at a banquet once, and he was, I think, kind of telling everybody what jerks they were for enjoying themselves. No idea who invited this guy. Yeah. Bought a buzzkill. Yeah. But they threw bones at him like he was a dog. Like. Here, eat these bones. Enjoy yourself for once. Maybe they were saying, I'm just paraphrasing, but he said, all right, I'll show you what I think. Your bones. And he peed on them, which this whole thing is just taking, like, a violent, weird turn. Violent. And we still haven't gotten to the root of where cynicism came to be understood as how we use it today. Do you know, the best I could find was that it lies in the 18th century with Russo, who is a critic of the Enlightenment, who was, from what I understand, the embodiment of modern cynicism. He couldn't just trust that the enlightenment and rationalism were the way to go and that it led to good things. He's a huge vociferous critic of the Enlightenment and I think was either self labeled a cynic or labeled a cynic. And that was the modern use of the word. Haven't seen it everywhere, but that's the closest I've found, man. Ancient Greece. How do you like to hang around there for, like, a week? I don't know that I would. It just seems like such a crazy time, and that all these deep thinkers and philosophers, and then, hey, let's go to 14 people in a room with some farm animals and some feathers and see what kind of party we can have. Yes. I guess I want to take that back if I ever got the opportunity to travel anywhere in time for a week. Since I mentioned the farm animals, you're like, I haven't thought about the farm animals before. It just seems like a really crazy time in our history, for sure, man. Almost like like it's it took place on a different planet. You might as well have been like, Asian Greece is on Pluto, actually. Yeah. But so many things. And that's why I'm thinking about the arts and sciences and mathematics. It's just like, what a weird, amazing time. Yeah. So we're going to fast forward a little bit. In history. Okay. So far we've generally been hanging out in the fourth, 3rd, 2nd century BCE. It would take a few hundred years. Now we're going to go to the 19th century, right? We're going to go to the Annabellum South. Yes. Which is where, surprisingly, the term cakewalk came from. Yeah. And this was remember when we used to blog? Yes. This is a blog post. I don't need to tell you that because you wrote it. Yeah. And then sent it to me yesterday. But I'm telling everyone else out there, we used to blog like everyone else did in the early two thousand s. Yeah. We had a blog, and this is one of Josh's posts, and I had no idea you didn't read the blog posts that I wrote back then. Yeah. Sorry, but this has weird racist roots. When you hear the term cakewalk, everyone uses it now to say something that's super easy to do. Absurdly easy. Yeah, it was a cakewalk. Like, you just basically show up and you win the prize. It's a cakewalk. Right. It turns out that that's actually extremely denigrating to anti bellam slaves in the 19th century, because cakewalks used to be an actual thing. Yeah. This is distressing and weird to me. It really is. And especially that you can trace the evolution of the word for once. Yeah. All right, so here's what would happen on a plantation. How often did this happen? I would guess it was annual. It seems like something like that. So let's just say once a year, every so often at the plantation, the white folks would get together and they would throw a big ball, like they would throw for themselves, but they would have the slaves played the part of the white people, and actually it was a ball for the slaves. Yeah. But it wasn't like, here, let me reward you with something nice. It's, hey, dress up as us, and we'll all sit back and laugh at how you think we are. And you do your best impression of slave master and kind of entertain us right. In a mocking gearing way. Right. Have you heard of I know you have Saturnalia, which is like, again, a Greek, I believe it was Greek, maybe Roman festival, where social conventions were turned upside down and the masters became the servants, and the servants became the masters for, like a day. And the whole point of this was culturally, socially, that it actually reinforced social norms because yes, the slaves in Saturnalia and then the slaves at the cakewalk were mocking the social conventions that they had to live in the other 364 days a year. But they were doing it within a socially prescribed framework that was really overseen by the people in charge. They were forced to do it well, they were allowed to do it, I think is actually in a really weird roundabout, but very real way, reinforced the social norms that kept slavery afloat. Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned the reason cake comes into it to begin with is whichever couple in the cakewalk did the best job and was able to mimic the white people the best, got a cake as a prize. Right. So the cakewalk was an actual thing. And the story actually continues on a little further and it gets even worse, to tell you the truth. Those cakewalks, they happen on plantations in the south. And so if you went to a cakewalk, you were probably one of a very few number of people, especially outside of the south, who had been to one of these things. But the minstrel shows that led to the vaudeville shows in the 19th century, they would actually very frequently perform a cakewalk. But the cakewalks they did were basically making a mockery of even the mockery that the slaves were undertaking. Right. So at the very least, you could say of the cakewalks, the real ones, the slaves were most likely they meant the mockery that they were doing. Right. Even though they were allowed to mock it, they still meant it. The reason the minstrel shows were so horrible is that it was a cakewalk. It was a staged version of a cakewalk, making fun of the cakewalks. So it even removed and robbed from the slaves that little bit of agency that the cakewalks gave them because it was white minstrels in blackface imitating white people. Yes. Right. But the whole premise of the minstrel show version of the cakewalk was not that the black slaves were mocking white society, but that they were actually doing this because they really wanted to emulate white society but were failing miserably at it. So it was a really despicable and disgusting change, conversion or perversion of the original intent, which is already pretty messed up to begin with. Yeah. Just one of the many problems of minstrel shows. Right. So the idea of cakewalk, since more people saw minstrel shows, then actually we're at a cakewalk. Right. This was the idea of the cakewalk. So when people said, this is a cakewalk, the idea was that even if you were just clumsy and inept and could never hope to succeed at what you're trying to do, you could still win the cake. That was the original usage of the word. So what I can't gather is, is this a term now that people just shouldn't use or has it changed such that it's not like a genuinely offensive thing? I don't know. I don't think there's too many people out there that take offense to it. But I wonder if that's because a lot of people don't know what the origins of the world are. Not many people probably know this. Who knows? But you can also make the case that the use of it today is actually a gist because cakewalks are normally found in nursing homes. Really? Yeah. I never heard that. And the couple's promenade is replaced with musical chairs. And even in these competitions and musical chairs, everybody's still basically a winner. I wonder if Piece of Cake comes from cakewalk. Yes, it does. Interesting. I think we just covered it. Maybe I'm going to start saying it was a total piece of pie. Right. There you go. Easy as pie. Well, there you go. Where did that come from? It was probably somebody who knew a cakewalk meant and wanted to change things a little or I wonder if that came from the fact that pie is generally easier than baking a cake. I don't know if that's true. Is it? I think so, because there's not chemistry. Like, you combine some apples and cinnamon and stuff and throw in an oven, you got a pie. There's a pie maker just, like, threw their ipod across the room. Like, a pie is not going to fall because you didn't put just the right amount of that's a good point. Yeah. There's no Lady Baltimore pie, I'll tell you that. I think what I'm saying is pie makers, you need to step up your game. Sure. Try a cake. Try baking a cake. Unite and take over. I love pie. We've had this talk. I like it all. I don't see any reason to choose. No. Have both. Should we move on? Should we do Kafkaesque? Yeah, sure. All right. So. Franz Kafka. Very famous writer. I did not know that most of his works were published after his death. I didn't know that either. But he had a knack for writing books, and I read The Metamorphosis in high school, but it feels like most of his books had a central character that was going through some kind of, like, walking through molasses, some really hard struggle that they have no control over, probably have no hope of solving. Right. And a lot of times it was, I guess, an allegory for an oppressive government. Yeah, almost always. Right. The person is their forward progress of their life or whatever it is they're trying to do is either interrupted or being opposed by some faceless, immutable entity, typically in the form of, like, a government or an office or something like that. Yeah. Like the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil is probably accurately described as Kafka esque. I would guess that's absolutely right. But Kafka wrote he's very well known for the Trial, The Metamorphosis, but he wrote a lot of the different uses of Kafkaesque actually work because they definitely touch upon some of his different work. Right. Yeah. So one of the uses of Kafka esque that came into fashion supposedly in the 1960s in Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain fell. Well, the Iron Curtain fell before that, but as the faceless centralized government bureaucracies really kind of put their stamp on the lives of millions and millions of people. Apparently the word cop gas came into use then to kind of describe having to deal with these absurd bureaucracies that made zero sense, but still could just shuffle you around for days on end if it wanted to. Yeah, and then the article uses a good example that it started getting misused and that somebody might say that they raced to catch a bus and then got to the bus stop and they made this great effort to get there, but then they find out there's a bus driver strike, right, and said that that was kafka esque, when in fact, it's just bad luck. If that's the worst thing that happens to you that day, you're probably doing just life, right? But that's not Kafka esque. No, it's not. But that's not to say that there is a central definition of kafkaesque. It is a pretty widely defined or multiply defined word. This guy does a good job of describing it, I thought. Yeah, he did. There's an author named Frederick Karl with a K. And apparently in the New York Times. He said this what's Kafka esque is when you enter a surreal world which all your control patterns. All your plans. The whole way in which you have configured your own behavior begins to fall to pieces when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world. You don't give up. You don't lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course, you don't stand a chance. That's tough guy and that's Brazil. Especially the last part, too. You don't stand a chance, but you still try. You still try because what are you going to do? Just be like, oh, okay, well, I guess I'll die. You still try to save yourself or to follow your self determination, but you're never going to win. You're doomed from the outset. Yeah. That is super kafka esque. That dude, he was his biographer. I believe it makes sense. So he's kind of an authority on them, right? He knows. So doomed, in other words. You want to take one more break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're doing that right now. 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 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. Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. All right, chuck. Now it's time for one of my favorites on this list. Yes. Luddite. I got called this a few years ago. By who? By my friend Scotty. Oh, Scotty, come on. This is more than a few years ago. But I'm ashamed to say I had never even heard the word when he used it. I can't remember what I was complaining about. Really? You hadn't heard the word Luddite, huh? Had never heard it. This wasn't like, six months ago. It was like, five or six years ago. Right. But he called called me that, or maybe Emily. Did you go, what? I think I was like, well, no, Luddite. And then I raced over and looked it up on my smartphone property. That's awesome. Yeah. So people throw that word around to mean anyone who is anti technology, basically, right? Yeah, a lot of people throw it on. Apparently, Prince Charles railed against GMOs. Famously, he was called the Luddite. I know. Francis just talk mad trash about Twitter, johnny francis yeah, I think on Twitter, even I can't remember. But he was called the Luddite. Come on. I don't remember how it played out, but I'm pretty sure it was on Twitter. But yeah, anybody who is like, I was just getting used to Google Docs and all of a sudden we're using base camp around here. And I think you called me a Luddite, didn't you? Or an old man. One of the two. No, I called you an old man. Okay. But you could have also said you're Luddite. The thing is, this is one of those words that has evolved to basically mean the exact same thing as a technophobe. Right. Somebody who's afraid of technology, either because they don't understand it or they're worried it's going to lead to the end of the world. Right. Whatever the reason, new technology makes you nervous. Correct. Right. That is such a generally accepted definition of this word that for all intents and purposes, it is the definition of Luddite. The thing is, if you dig back in history, totally wrong. Yeah. Luddites were people from ancient Greece. They weren't ancient. I loved farming. They were from Nottinghamshire. I love that word. England. And they were weavers. So what was beginning to happen, and you can see how it got its roots here, is automated looms. Came around the early 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution, and they were like, wait a minute, this puts our jobs at risk, so we're not going to take it. Like twisted sisters will eventually say, right, we're not going to take it. And they would go like, trash, these looms. Yeah. And they named themselves or they took the name, or they were named I'm not sure how it panned out, but they were called bloody's because decades before, I think, 1779, a guy in the same area named Ned Ludd had trashed like a hospital. Ned Ludd. Too many DS and too few other letters. Yes, agreed. He trashed a hospital and became kind of a hero, working class hero, for doing that. And the thing is, you can get the idea that these people were afraid of these automated looms and they were really afraid of technology. No, that has zero to do with it. Yes, it turns out that looms had been in use for hundreds of years already. This is not really new technology. Right. Which is kind of an ironic thing about the whole thing. What they were it was class warfare is what they're engaged in, not anti technology terrorism. Yes. They wanted to keep their jobs. There was a ban on trade unions, so they had no well, they had no choice. They felt like they had no choice rather than to go out and riot and trash these looms. But they used all sorts of technology to do so. Well, I saw that to these people, to the lottites, the looms where they symbolized the concentration of wealth, because they didn't own the looms. Somebody they worked for owned the loom, and they weren't seeing anything. They weren't reaping any benefits from these looms. So when they were destroying a loom, they were striking at the loom owner, this wealthy person, which is why it was such class warfare rather than anti technology rioting. Yeah. And it wasn't, I think, until the 1970s that luddite became kind of the more modern usage. Is that right? So this thing says the 70s. There's actually an article in New Scientist that used the word in 70, but apparently there was a famous essay called The Two Cultures by a scientist named CP. Snow, and he basically said, we have a problem here, because literary intellectuals and scientific intellectuals are beginning to diverge. And you literary intellectuals, you guys are basically nothing more than luddites. Yeah, this is and I think he might have been the first person to use it to mean technophobes. Oh. 53. 53. Or in this case, I think he was saying that you don't understand what the importance of the Industrial Revolution to people sat on that for 17 years. Yes. And then new sciences, like, the time is right. Let's bring it back. Yeah. All right. That's a good one. I like that one. That's my favorite. These are kind of like I think a few of these you could throw around your next dinner party and either make people think you're interesting or that you're an obnoxious jerk. It depends on how you present it. Agreed. Yeah. So what else we got here? I don't know. You want to do two or one? Well, let's definitely do nimrod. How about that Nimrod? This one confuses me because of that Pixie song, Nimrod Son. So Nimrod actually did marry his mother. He had a mother wife for a queen, but that's not what he was known for. No, there was a real Nimrod in the Bible, and Nimrod was if you've ever heard of Noah from the bible. Noah was the great grandfather of Nimrod. Right. So he had quite a pedigree. He was Ham's son. Ham, yeah. We don't use that as a first name enough these days. Yeah, here it is. The last name occasionally, but john Ham. Yeah. With two Ms. But you never hear like, hey, I'm Ham Johnson. Good to meet you. That would be a great name for a sportscaster or a weather person. Ham Johnson. The hamcast with Ham Clark and Ham Bryant. That's not bad. That's good. That's our spin off idea. And we threw around that word a lot in our ham radio podcast because they're called Hams. Right. Maybe that's what our Hamcast could be about. How nice ham radio operators are, as well as bad comedy. Right. And then every once in a while, we review a ham that we eat on air. Dude, just figured it out. Look at that. I mean, you predicted sharknado. All right, the Hamcast coming soon. Itunes, wherever you get your podcast. So Nimrod is Hamsun. He is a biblical figure. He was very well known as the founder of Babylon. Yes. I didn't realize that. I'm not much of a Bible scholar myself. Really? No, not really. But he was the founder of Babylon, and one of the big features of Babylon was the Tower of Babel. Yes. This one I did know about. Yeah. The Tower of Babel is what he was credited with constructing. And that was a structure on top of the temple with the idea that you could reach God ultimately and destroy God. Yeah. And push them around. Yeah. It's not a good thing for ancient Christians. No. God was like, I can kind of see into the future, so I'm not going to let that happen. And he goes, Different languages, shazam. And all of a sudden, the people who are building and constructing this Tower of Babel can no longer speak to one another because they all speak different languages. And this is supposedly the origin story of different languages, foreign languages in the world. So everybody, since they couldn't really communicate with one another, went off their separate ways. And this is another one where they don't know for sure where it made the switch eventually to be like, a dumb dumb. But I think this Bugs Bunny. I think this holds water. It definitely has some legs. It tracks Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny 1940s. Shout out to our friend Jessica oh, yeah. Whose grandfather was Noah was Chuck Jones. That's right. Greater Bugs Bunny Jones. So Bugs Bunny, in one of the Elmerfudd episodes, who was a hunter, called him Nimrod. In an episode, I don't think we said Nimrod was known as a great hunter. Yeah. I guess that the irony was lost then, right? Yeah. They're like hunter I get it. Yeah. So I don't know if they put Nimrod in there because Nimrod was a great hunter. If it just worked out that way, it had to have been. Yeah, had to, because that was the thing. Elmer Fudd's whole thing, he was just terrible at hunting. But that's what he was always doing, was hunting. Right. So we called him an enron. Right. And I saw that it became a use of slang among teenagers in 1983. Yes, that seems about right. Does it really? Oh, it feels like a very eighties. I heard that a lot growing up. Really? To me, it seems really square in, like, fifty s. Oh, no. I'm thinking like yeah, I hear nimrod and I think Gerdy to the max and, like, pop collars and the Cost alligators. Did you ever pop your collar? Sure. I never felt like I could pull it off. I was a bit of a prep. I was, too, but I don't know, I tried it. I looked at myself in the mirror a lot. Well, that's the key. Pop the collar and go out the door. Yes. I didn't have that kind of confidence. You get done with your flobby cut, pop your collar and go. Yeah, it has to do with confidence. It's just foolishness. I was thinking the other day how I haven't touched a hairbrush since like, 1987 or eight. Yeah. Literally have not put a brush or comb in my hair. Did you have one of those goodies tortoise shell brushes from the eighties? Remember those? No, I had a goodies and it wasn't tortoise shell, but I think it's probably the same thing where yeah, it had been. Or the burnout comb where you had it sticking out of your back pocket. I never really used combs. I was a brush guy to get my wings down. Got you. But ever since high school, I've just been a finger comer. Yeah, same here. These five fingers. Yeah. I get out of the shower, just going to spike the hair up and it stays there. Yeah, it's nice. It's very lucky. You don't use product. No, man, that's insane. Are you kidding, man? My hair won't stand up. It's just limp and lifeless. Well, mine is, too. I don't wash my hair much. How often do you wash your hair? Every day. Oh, well, that's your problem. There's your problem. Here's your problem. You got a little funk build up. I need a little funk, I guess. My product is natural funk. Go party with some farm animals. I think that was a George Clinton album. My product is natural funk. Should have been. It definitely should have been. And now, because of the sharknado thing again, that's his new comeback album. You got anything else? No. Well, if you want to know more about George Clinton, you can type his name into the search bar athouseofworks.com and it'll bring up something. And since I said something, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this vaping backlash. Oh, yeah, we're hearing about it. Yeah. It's nice to hear the Vapors stand up and be like, hey, dudes, to heck with you. Yeah. So in retrospect, I think we kind of made fun of them a little too much. Yeah, in retrospecture. So this is from Peter. So this is AMIA culpa, then? Sort of. Hey, guys, usually enjoy your work. That's always a great start. But the vaping episode? Come on, guys. The whole episode reeked of mockery and belittled all vapors, even the ones who are simply using it as a harm reduction method or to quit smoking. I'm 51 and used e cigarettes to quit smoking instantly and permanently. Mind you, about eight years ago, the only thing that worked for me, all I can do all day is puff fat cloud. Your research was seriously lacking in this one. You would have been much more informed if you actually talk to a vaping advocate. I want to interject here. Our research was not at all lacking. We did a ton of research for this episode. Please go on. Well, we tried to get in touch with vapors, but they're all out on the sidewalk going back louds. All right. Or at least someone on the local scene. Guys from this century, preferably. Things have come a long way in the last ten years. Some of the facts he uses in quotes your sightings were based on seriously flawed research. For example, the vaporized metal particles portion was brand new. Nobody nobody, he says, would vape at the temperatures needed to replicate that in the real world. But as usual, people see the headline and don't dig deeper. This guy is starting to really upset me too. Really? Yeah. We researched just as much as we ever do, buddy. What's this guy's name? We'll get to that. Okay. We did get called out, though. A couple of other people said that those temperatures, like you don't invade at those temperatures. No, but you can, and some people do. And if I remember correctly, the leaching metal thing was not about temperatures. It was about the newness of the coil. Okay. I feel like I'm refereeing calling people stupid and dummies for vaping at zero nicotine levels. Smack my head. There's more to cigarette addiction than the nicotine issue. I think vaping could potentially eradicate smokers from our society, the very least, save thousands of lives and millions of dollars in medical and pharma. To paint it all with the idiotic, foolishness brush is plain wrong and real disservice to your audience. I'm pretty pissed off, as you can tell. There are only I'm sorry. Sure, there are people who vape that make us all look silly, but, man, this is the only smoking cessation method that works for many people. You just turned a lot of people away from it who could really benefit, possibly not die disappointed listener here. That is from Peter Joit in Vancouver. Peter. Peter, I will totally agree with you. Our mockery was way over and above and beyond. Yeah, we totally for sure. And I apologize. I want to make a couple of points here. We definitely did our research. We don't just phone episodes in. It doesn't matter what we think of the topic. We still do our research. And then secondly, I really don't feel like we turned people off of vaping and onto tobacco, because if I remember correctly, we definitely made it clear that you were even dumber if you smoked tobacco. The tobacco was far, far worse. I think the whole point of that episode was that vaping was not necessarily as good for you as it's been portrayed in the same media that you railed against earlier. I would agree with that. I don't think we poo pooed all forms of nicotine. Definitely did. There you go. But if you're using it to get off the tobacco, that's great. Step two is getting off of the vaping. Yeah. Well, if you're like Peter and you're poor about something, you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Joshua Clark, chucks at Movie Crush, and we're both at Sys. Chuckson facebookcom stuffyoushhnocharleswchuckbryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. And as always, turn us at home on the Web stuffyoushhno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.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 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/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-12-30-sysk-willpower.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Willpower Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-willpower-works | You use it every day to overcome your lower self (which wants you to eat cake until your vision blurs) in pursuit of the goals of your higher self (which wants you to not develop Type-II diabetes). Yet it was only in the 1990s that researchers began to un | You use it every day to overcome your lower self (which wants you to eat cake until your vision blurs) in pursuit of the goals of your higher self (which wants you to not develop Type-II diabetes). Yet it was only in the 1990s that researchers began to un | Sat, 30 Dec 2017 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=364, tm_isdst=0) | 29495882 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. Welcome to stuff you should know selects this is Chuck here. This week it's my pick, and I'm gonna go with how Willpower Works from February 7, 2013. And frankly, I'm picking this one because I need to listen to this one again because I have no willpower. Something I need to work on. So I'm going to check it out again. I encourage you to do the same. It's a pretty neat episode. So here we go with how willpower works. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarkon sitting across from me, putting on his love, your mama lip Balm. What felt flavored? That is almond, actually. Yummy. Look at that plug right out of the gate. This is Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Hello. Those are nice lips you got there, man. Wow. They're now moistified. Like moist baloney. Yes. Well, the two of us get together as we are right now, and you have yourself Stuff You Should Know. The podcast. No, this is the podcast. It isn't going nowhere. It ain't going to change. Don't worry, folks. Yeah. Same as it ever was. If you love the TV show, we thank you. If you don't like it, hang out with us here online. Yeah. Not to be confused with our online presence, our website. Our new website, the Homeofchuck Stuffyshtnowcom. This is pretty cool. I don't mind saying words about this because we got a new website and it's awesome. It's got video and blogs and photos and all sorts of cool stuff. It's us. It's our house on the web. Yeah. Really cool. I mean, stuffyshow.com. It's our website. Mind blowing. Five years in the making. Yeah. And then not to be confused with our Twitter handle S Yskpodcast. Not to be confused with our Facebook page. facebookcom stuff you should know. Boy, you're front loading this one. Yup. Alright. All that's out of the way. Alright. So, Chuck, you doing good. You feeling well? I'm not feeling great, but yeah. You're ready to be done? No, I'm ready to talk about Willpower, though, because it is a topic that I struggle with, as do most people, I think. So you struggle with the topic or you struggle with Willpower? I think everybody struggles with Willpower. Oh, yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, I think you're absolutely right. There is a very famous guy named Plato, famous Greek philosopher. Plato. Plato. Plato, yes. Not Plato. Right. And Plato decided, well, suggested that the entire human experience, the sum of human existence, could be basically nailed down with just this you have a higher self and a lower self. Yeah. And your purpose for living is to overcome the usually more powerful urges of the lower self in order to fulfill the goals of the higher self. I am down with that 100%. It makes utter, incomplete sense. I don't know about the reason for living, but the struggle, man, struggle, or at least okay. Yeah. If you were born, you are going to face that, but you're going to face it in varying degrees, because, as we found, willpower, which is what you use to get over your lower urges and pursue your higher goals, it comes in differing amounts for different people. Different people, yeah. And Robert Lam wrote the original article from How Stuff Works from Stuff to Bowl Your Mind. And he points out that we're at odds with our own nature as we have evolved here on the planet. Because we craved sugary sweet things. Because sugar gave us lots of energy back in the day. And back in the day. They didn't have Little Debbie cakes within hands reach at all times. So we're sort of at odds with ourselves. And he points out, sexually as well, we evolved to spread the seed and procreate as much as possible to ensure the survival of the species. Right. And nowadays you can't really do that stuff, or if you do, you're a slander or a jerk or you're spreading disease. Right. You're a public health nuisance. Yeah. So we're at odds with ourselves, with our very existence. Yeah. And not only internally, but you make the point as a society as well. I mean, society and evolution tussle, so you can make the case that society represents our higher self and our basic instincts that we've evolved to are lower selves. So that's what's going on, and it's willpower that will get us over the bumps that come along in life. Inevitably. Yeah. And I think most people relate willpower to things like eating or going to the gym or indulging in sexual proclivities and things like that, but I think it's broader than that in general. I think it's the will to, like Plato said, to strive to, I guess, do the right thing. Yeah. By yourself, by others, by society at large. Right. And I guess also how often you come up against that, how often you have to exercise willpower because you just hit it on the head. Willpower is the act of making a decision. You're deciding to do something or not to do something. How often you do that, it does depend on how you define the world around you. Yeah. Like, are these things are you surrounded by temptations that you have to ward off all the time and you're paying attention to it, and they're always closing in? If you like that, then you're going to exercise your willpower a lot. If you don't see the world as temptation, you give in to them all the time. You're not going to if you look at the world as something that you can handle, you're probably not going to have to exercise your willpower too much then, either. Yeah. But those are three different ways of living, and they all are, I guess, described by willpower and how you use it. Yeah. That's a good point. Robert makes a point that is backed up somewhat by science, actually completely by science. And he puts in terms of a video game, which makes sense, that if you were a video game and you have a willpower meter, that willpower meter is replenished and depleted on a daily, probably hourly basis. And the more you use your willpower and say, you know what, I'm not going to have that little Debbie cake, your little willpower meter goes down and it depletes itself. So you're not going to have as much willpower, maybe for the next decision. Right. It's really interesting. Yeah. That's pretty new. Our understanding of willpower like that is very new. The first guy to really kind of put it out like that was Freud, and he basically said, we have this thing called willpower. We have an ego. That's what the Freudians associate with willpower is, the ego. Sure. And your ego is this finite thing. It has a finite energy reserve. It uses energy and therefore it can be sapped. And then Freud fell out of fashion and everybody just kind of stopped looking at willpower that way. And it wasn't until 1996 when a Florida State University psychologist named Roy Bowmeister the Baumer, he figured out through this test using chocolate and radishes, I believe that if you are staving off temptation using willpower, you actually do terribly on like another test of willpower. Yeah, they used persistence tests, basically puzzles that you have to just keep at it and keep at it. It's not something you could complete immediately and offered some people chocolate chip cookies and other chocolate treats of their liking and offered other people radishes instead, which is not a fair fight. No. I mean, he really sucks a day, like maybe a radish, a shaved radish in a salad or something. But if all you're looking at is a plate of radish, then I would take the cookie. So what he found out, though, was the people who ate the radishes had more trouble completing the test, I guess, because I guess the idea is they're using up all their willpower to not eat the cookie, so they don't have time for the test, for the persistence. And there was also another kind of follow up study a few years after that by the University of Iowa professor with the greatest name of all of the faculty there, baba Shiv. Yeah. And Dr. Shiv had basically tested willpower by saying, this group is going to remember a two digit number. Yeah. And this group is going to remember a seven digit number, and then we're going to test their willpower by tempting them with chocolate cake. Right. And Dr. Shiv found that the people who were using their working memory, their cognitive capacity to remember the seven digit number had a harder time resisting. So it basically proves that we use our working memory to resist temptation. And I guess it's something like reminding yourself at the forefront of your mind not to do something until the temptation past. Who knows? Yeah. Maybe I had the cookie yesterday, so, man, I can't eat it today. Or we use our working memory to remind ourselves of our long term goals in the face of a short term reward. Well, that's one of the big keys, I think. Yeah. And that's something Robert hits on, which is, I want that cookie now. And I know bikini season is coming up, and you've seen me in a bikini, Josh. It's not pretty. I will never get that out of my memory, working memory or otherwise. I'll poke at that bikini, please. But that's sort of what we're at odds with, is the short term. I think humans as a group tend to enjoy the short term pleasures, and if you truly learn to conquer that in lieu of long term gain, that's when you're like you're winning, as Charlie Sheen would say. Right, exactly. Although Charlie Sheen is not exactly one who's known to exercise the willpower. No, that was a really odd person to tap for that. Well, I think that's the opposite. He thought winning was the short term game. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. And that is so dated. Yeah. People like when you guys record this, but I think today might be the very day where you could get away with it. Okay. So it was perfect, by the way. So from all these tests, like when Baumeister put his 1996 study, ego depletion colon is the act of self a limited resource? It just basically kicked off the slew of follow up studies from Dr. Shiv and others. And one of the things that they found was that you can kind of watch people exercise willpower on the old Wonder machine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Using MRIs, they put people in and had them think about, I guess, a sweet or health food right. And decide between them and the cal tech. Yeah. And they found that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lights up when you're making that decision when you're considering it, which made sense. I think they kind of expected that. But they were also surprised to find that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is located a little further back sure. That lit up as well. And they think that well, that lit up for the people who made the good decision only. Thank you. Right. And they think that maybe that's part of the working memory where you're like, no, I can't eat that, because that's tapping into that higher self goal pursuit. That's the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Right. You did a nice job there, by the way. Thanks. So the Baumer also went on to say that he compares the willpower, your own willpower, to a muscle or something like a muscle, and you can deplete it. Like you said, if you overwork your muscles, you're just going to deplete your muscles and be worn out at the end of the day. Or you can exercise that muscle in a healthy way and make it stronger in the long term. Right. Do you do this? After reading this, I started to realize that I actually kind of exercise willpower all the time. I think you especially do. So, for example, I have a mail key that I used to go get the mail. Right. We keep it in our car. Got you. And I had to go to the car and get the mail key and then go get the mail. And it was cold out yesterday. And then on the way back, I could have just taken the mail key inside with me and taken it back to the car. The next time I went to the car, it was very cold, but instead, I walked up a flight of stairs, put the mail key into the car, and then went back home. So you made that decision and you struggled with it, even in a minor way. Yes. I did it specifically because there was no reason whatsoever for me to do that rationally. And as far as common sense went, there was no purpose to it. But by doing it, I basically just exercised my willpower. It was something I didn't really want to do, but it wasn't a big deal. But doing that accumulates. Yeah. I think you and I are really different in that way. I see you as someone who actively works that muscle a lot on a daily basis, and I don't enough. And not that I just have no willpower, but I don't give decisions like that enough consideration. Does that make sense? Completely. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I'll just go upstairs and throw the key on the coffee table, which a sane person kind of has that thought. I think that puts you in the same camp. Yeah, but that doesn't ensure that I'm making good decisions for my life. I don't think you're making bad ones, but it's good to self reflect, you know, it's kind of fun. It's like a game. Yeah. It's like, how Ramrod Street can I stand, right? What I'm building towards? So another thing Robert points out from the science side of things is as far as getting into the short term in favor of the long term is glucose plays a big part in that. And I think they found that a quick shot of sugar I don't think a whole lot. Can sometimes stave off or build up that willpower reserve in the short term. Yeah. You were talking about how we have, like, a willpower bar, and every time we resist, temptations depleted a little more and more. They found that a shot of glucose replenishes that willpower bar. So is that in lieu of, like, hey, boy, I really want that cupcake, but let me have the juice box instead. That's the irony of it is giving into that cupcake may help you exercise your willpower with other stuff later on. Isn't that weird? Okay. But yeah, I mean, if you had something healthier, that would be the better choice. But the point is, any kind of shot of glucose has been shown to re up your willpower. Got you. And this is very much poopooed at first, this idea. I think. Bowmeister, there's this really great article by John Tyranny in New York Times Magazine. It's from the August before last. It's called? Do you suffer from decision fatigue. Our buddy Chad loves this. He proselytized this article, remember? Oh, yeah. Okay. This is the one. Okay. So I strongly recommend everybody to read it's a good one, but in it, it talks about biomester thinking that glucose has something to do with this. And it was poopooed at first because everybody knows the brain uses the same amount of energy pretty much all day long. So it didn't make any sense. Like, if your ego depleted and you're suffering from some sort of willpower fatigue, but your brain is still using the same amount of energy, those two don't jibe. Right. Again with the MRI. What they found was somebody suffering from ego depletion, from willpower fatigue, who took a shot of glucose or whatever their brains lit up in areas that had to do with exercising willpower. So while your brain was using the same amount of energy, it was using them in different places when your willpower was fatigued. And that glucose basically was like spinach to Popeye for that part of your brain that's charged with exercising willpower. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. So what are you carrying on a packet of sugar with you at all times? I'm on so much sugar right now. Yeah. Also in that same article, they talk about this kind of landmark study of an Israeli parole board, and they found that if you were a parolee and you came to them after it had been a while since a break or lunch or breakfast, your chances of being paroled dropped by 50 or 60%. Oh. If the parole board had not had breakfast yes or no? If you came to them, like, right after things got started, after breakfast or after lunch, your chances of being paroled were like 50% to 60% greater than people who came to them for identical crimes like a couple of hours later. I'm sure that makes the criminals of the world feel pretty great. Yeah, exactly. So arbitrary. And what they found is it's not laziness, it's not like physical fatigue where you can tell you're tired. What our brains do is they employ the strategy where you become risk averse. Like you don't want to make a decision. So you say, you know what, I'm just going to put this off. You're going to go back to jail. I'm not going to grant you parole because that's risky behavior to let you back out in the world, and I've made too many decisions today. But you're not thinking this. You just say parole denied, and you have no idea why. It just makes sense. To you at the time, but if you had some glucose that same instance, you may be like, well, yeah, I think you're ready to come back out into society. That reminds me of the band Rush yes. That we talked about before. Of course. I remember this from when I was a teenager. You know the lyric, what song is it? If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice pretty well. Oh, yeah, that's from that song, of course. I think on the original album jacket, it says, if you choose not to decide, you cannot have made a choice. Is that right? Yeah. My brother and I used to laugh. I think Neil Pert actually wrote a lot of the lyrics back then that Gettylead just like, etched it out with a pencil. But it's the complete opposite meaning. So it's interesting that at some point, rush, I guess, had maybe a band argument or something. I'm glad. Gettylead won. Yeah. You have made a choice. No, you cannot have made a choice. Right. Just shut up. Play drums. Your voice is weird. I remember hearing that the first time. I was like, oh, man. Yeah, it blew me away. Yeah. Free Will. I can't believe I didn't remember the name. I can't think of the name of the song, but it's about Free Will. Yeah. Was it Red Barcetta? All right, what else do we got? I didn't really fully get the Stanford psychologist Walton and Dweck, and that is Dweck. It sounds like I'm saying direct wrong. I didn't fully get that. They said that people who have willpower fatigue tend to slack off when they felt their resolve wavering. But then people who felt their resolve was limitless pressed on. I don't get the point there. It seems like a no brainer. Yeah, I think it is. You may just be looking too deeply. It's like what I was talking about earlier at the beginning, where depending on how you see the world do you see the world? It's like you have willpower so you can overcome any temptation. You're going to last longer on tests of willpower than somebody who is like, I'm feeling kind of weak today, and then you're just going to give in. Okay, so it is pretty simple. Yeah. I thought it was a dummy. Not only is it simple, I managed to make it more complex and talk about it at length. They do know that people generally there is some genetic component involved. Like if your parents are super self disciplined, then you are more likely to turn out that way. Right. I found that to be true from friends of mine whose parents were super self disciplined and their kids kind of turned out that way, too. Yeah, but I wonder, and Robert makes a point in the article, like, is it genetic or epigenetic? Yeah, I don't know. Probably both. Yeah, I would think so. That would be my guess. We just chose not to decide. We could not have made a choice. And then the old marshmallow experiment, stanford, not the prison experiment, but the marshmallow experiment from the 1960s is a very famous one where they tortured these kids basically by placing a marshmallow in front of them and saying, if you hold off on eating that marshmallow, in 15 minutes, you will have two. And of course, not many of the kids could hold out. But they found that the ones who did hold out for the second marshmallow went on in life to greater successes, at least if you count Sat scores as a measure of success, 210 points higher than the ones who chow down on the marshmallow. And the ones who ate the marshmallow later on had struggles with relationships and stress and attention. Yeah. So I wonder if that has anything to do with OCD. I wonder as well. I wonder how much of our modern problems are really just crises of willpower. Yeah, I wonder. There was a follow up to that 60s experiment. There's been a bunch, but there was one at the University of Rochester that was carried out last year that found we are more willing to exercise willpower if we think that what we're holding out for is actually going to happen. And they did that by this is hilarious. It's funny. Studies with kids are always so cruel and funny. I mean, not the really truly cruel one. Any psychological study that has these kids almost invariably has some cruel aspect to it. And this one was no exception. Basically, they said, here's the control group, here's the experimental group and the control group, we want to give you some extra art supplies. Let us go get them. And they came back with some extra art supplies. Yeah, the experimental group, they said, hey, we're going to get you some more art supplies. We'll be right back. And they came back, they were like, we don't have any more art supplies. We know you are really excited, but sorry, you're going to have to make do with that old red pen. And then they tested them with the marshmallow experiment and found that the ones who had gotten the art supplies, the promise hadn't been broken. Sure. They held out longer than the ones who had been lied to. Yeah. They're like, Screw that. You're not bringing me two marshmallows. I'm in this marshmallow right now. Exactly. I'm going to kick you in the shin afterwards, too. I'll show you. Yeah, that's not cruel on the level. What was that? The one kid, remember, that we talked about that was tested on kept in a closet? No, they tested fear, conditioning and extinction in the kid. Little Albert. Yeah, little Albert, where they would put a bunny in his lap and then bang a bar of metal with a hammer and scare the Jesus out of them. That's right. And then they seem to fear rabbits. There was a search for them. Right. And they eventually found them, they thought. I think so. I don't remember. I wrote a blog post that I'll have to republish or whatever, because it's been a while. I don't remember. But yeah, they figured out who it was, pretty much. So this isn't on that level. No, this is just marshmallows. Yes, it is. There was one other point I wanted to bring up that I thought was pretty interesting and horrible from that John Tierney article, where with decision fatigue, with exercising willpower, it disproportionately affects the poor. And they think that possibly now that poverty exists in a cycle, because if you're a poor person, you have to exercise willpower. You have to make more decisions than somebody who has more resources, more money. Like, say you're walking through the grocery store, I want this soap and this food. If you're poor, you might have to say, I want both, but I have to just buy one. I don't have enough for both. So how much is it going to be? And their willpower, their resources of willpower, of decision making become fatigued a lot faster because they have to exercise it a lot more. And they don't have the resources to get themselves out of poverty, to indulge or to study or do more. They already have the deck stacked against them, resource wise. But then you throw in this idea of willpower, possibly that makes it even more difficult. Yeah, I never really thought about that. It's pretty interesting stuff. You feel for them even more. Yeah. And it makes me feel bad when I say, do I want the peanut butter ganache cupcake or the chocolate? You know what? Just go ahead and give me both. Right, exactly. Well, you can buy both and then just take one to somebody who's struggling in the grocery store trying to figure out if they're going to buy soap for food. It's a good idea. Yeah. You got anything else, man? No, this is a good one. Yeah. I like willpower. It's fun. Go out and exercise it. In little ways, it's fun. Or don't. Either that or strap a car battery to your inner thigh just for fun. Okay, well, if you want to learn more about willpower and read this good article by Robert Lamb, you can type in willpower in the search bar@howstephworks.com and it will bring it up. And I said, search bar. So it's time for listener mail. Yeah. Josh, quickly, before we do that, we need to say a special thank you to a fan of ours who helped us out with our Wikipedia page. Oh, nice. Thank you. And he was very cool in his name, and he's been mentioned on text that evidently too. Oh, wow, this guy's a star. We're not going to hold that against him. And this is how his name is spelled. A-N-T-R-I-K-S-H. Yadav. Yadav. And he says you pronounce it unchecked the T is soft, though, as in math. Sointrich, yeah, there you go. He phonetically spelled it out. He told me what it sounded like, and I still can't quite do it. So we just want to say thanks a lot for helping us with the Wikipedia page. Nice. And now a listener mail that I'm going to call S-Y-S-K can help you get. Ladies, this is from Todd in Oklahoma City. Okay, guys and Jerry, I've come to the conclusion that I may owe you a big thank you. Your podcast has created the impression, whether fiction or reality, that I am somehow a guy who knows about stuff with the ladies. My new girlfriend, in fact, mentions as one of my winning traits that I am often seeing interesting things. This really interested me, so I asked her for some examples of things that I say, and it was notable that every example that she cited was something that I learned listening to your podcast at work. So it is quite possible, sir, that you and your podcast made my baby fall in love with me. Nice. I'd like to shake your hands. Every single guy should listen to your podcast because it may at least get you a second date. And that is Todd from Oklahoma City, who is banking on our knowledge to woo women and guess you got a girlfriend out there. Good going, Todd. Good for you. We're glad we could help, man. We're married, dude, so we live vicariously through these emails. That's not true. No, I think it's great. I'm happy for Todd. Yes. I don't mean I live vicariously. I don't know the details. No, I just mean, like, that's great. I'm glad someone out there is getting a date because of this. Yeah, I love helping people find love connection. Yes. As a matter of fact, we should do a speed dating episode. I wrote an article on it once, and it's pretty neat. Yeah. My friend PJ, he met PJ, he just texted me yesterday and said, hey, this girl, he does a lot of online dating. He said part of her profile is that she's, like, a huge fan of you guys. And I said, date her. Yeah, I don't date with her. Yes. There you go. You're doing it all over the place mantra. Let's see. If we have affected your life positively, we want to hear about it. Not negatively, just positively. You can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffychildo. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com. And you can always find us hanging out at our home, on the web, stuffyoushenknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is@howstuffworks.com." | |
What's the deal with sinkholes? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-sinkholes | Recently, a massive sinkhole opened up in Guatemala City, swallowing a three-story building in the process. In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore sinkholes and the forces that cause them, natural and otherwise. | Recently, a massive sinkhole opened up in Guatemala City, swallowing a three-story building in the process. In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore sinkholes and the forces that cause them, natural and otherwise. | Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:02:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=18, tm_min=2, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=159, tm_isdst=0) | 28246334 | audio/mpeg | "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. There's Chaz Bryan giant that makes this stuff. You should know. S-Y-S-K. You realize if we release every week the five minutes before we podcast, we could make money on that. Especially if you said to the Benny Hill music, that is the gold. This is the silver. Yeah. I would call that the platinum in this the goal. Okay, how about that? Sure. Just to be contrary though, just no bronze. Those guys are losers. Bronze medal winners. Yes. Third place. I don't even know why you'd like bring it home. Just leave it on the plane in that little magazine pocket in front of you. Chuck. Yes. I know that you have been to Guatemala, and I know that you know I've been to Guatemala too. Jerry's been there and we learned pretty quickly that Guatemala has it hard. But we also learned that translated into English from I think Spanish, Guatemala means God's whipping post. Right. I thought you were going to say land of mini sinkholes. That's just one of the many problems facing Guatemala. Okay. Yeah, we talked extensively about mudslides, about civil war, just about all these problems that Guatemala has. And this past week, this past weekend, Guatemala faced even more problems. Last week there was a volcanic eruption. A volcano like 20 clicks south of Guatemala City started raining ash down and then incomes hurricane Agatha from the Pacific, I think to get rid of all the ash, but flood the area, create mudslides, kill 180 people. Awful. And then getting to the point of this podcast hasten a major sinkhole that's almost unbelievable looking in the middle of Guatemala City. Yeah. All our Facebook lit up with fans saying, have you seen this sinkhole picture? Yeah, it does. It looks completely fake. It is 66ft across, 20 meters and almost 100ft deep. But when you look at it, it looks like the very gates of hell have opened up. And considering there's a building in there that you can't even see, it swallowed a three storey apartment building. Yeah, well, no, it was a factory. What was it? Yeah, it was a clothing factory. And they said that the guys who work there, the people who work there left at six in the afternoon, an hour before the earth opened up. Well, so they got out. And then there's some security guard too that had a schedule altered that earlier that day, so he wasn't there. So just like that church group that like everybody in the 50s, everybody showed up late to this church choir practice and for all these different reasons, like all twelve or 15 people were delayed in getting to the practice and the church happen to catch fire. And had they all gotten there on time, they would have burned death. Wow. One imagined at the very least, I had to have gotten out of the church good fortune. Yeah. So, well, I guess maybe God does like Guatemala a little. Maybe. So just maybe he just doesn't overtly hate it like we thought. Yeah. This sinkhole was, like you said, Saturday, and 3 miles from a similar sinkhole from what was that, 2007? Yeah. The residents have been complaining of all of the signs of sinkholes developing. One happening two years earlier. That's a pretty big sign. But then there's also creaking noises. The pavement isn't exactly perfectly flat. There's been slight tremors maybe. Yeah. I think they said in the seven one, which FYI, was 330ft deep, and it appeared almost instantly, killing at least three people and like, swallowed up homes. They said that they felt the ground shaking a month before it appeared. And at the time the government was going to send down like, a robotic camera, but it's Guatemala, so they were like, where do we get a robotic camera? So it never happened. Yes, that is a good point, Chuck. It's kind of an evil point, but it's a good point, right? Yeah. So we're talking about sinkholes here. This one's not about tropical storms, hurricanes, mudslides. Right. We should mention, though, that our friends at Coed in Guatemala are all okay. They sent word and we posted on Facebook that they weren't affected and everyone's doing fine down there. Awesome. Okay, so we're good. So what's the deal with the sinkhole, Josh? Well, it depends on who you ask, Chuckers. One of our fellow colleague coworkers over at Discovery News, guy named Michael Riley had a blog post that interviewed a Guatemalan based geologist who's like, do not call that a sinkhole. That is not a sinkhole. Yes. And he's like, well, what would you call it? And he said, I would call it a piping feature. And I'm pretty sure the guy made that term up. I think he did too. We did a Google search for piping feature and it brought up a description of pajamas, baseball uniform has something to do with email, possibly. And that's it. There's no geological feature. Formation are happening. That's called a piping feature. So this guy was like, don't call a sinkhole. Let's all call it this term that I just made up. Well, that's how you coined a term, my friend. It is, but I don't think you need to be using Michael Riley's blog to do it. At the very least to say, and I just made that up anyway. Man made single is what I think it is. Right. Well, what he was talking about though, was the bedrock under Guatemala is actually old volcanic deposits and usually with st coles. What you're talking about is a different kind of bedrock that's actually bedrock. It's not volcanic. It wasn't just deposited there by something spewing it. And you have things like limestone, dolomite my favorite mineral, basil. Yeah. Wait, how did we ever come up with how to say that. I think it's basalt. One of those two gypsum. Yeah. The carbonate or what's? The other evaporate. Evaporate classes of rocks. Right. Yes. That is typically what is underneath what's called the overburden. And the overburden is just the soil that's on top of all that. Right. So for those of you who've never tried this, if you go out in your backyard and dig a hole, eventually you're going to run out of dirt and you're going to hit rock. And when you run out of dirt, you can say, I have dug through the overburden and have now made contact with the bedrock. Right. Yeah. And the reason we mentioned all this is because that's how sinkhole forms at least this type of sinkhole. You have to go dig it up. Exactly. The bedrock underneath the overburden, it gets whittled away by water that turns acidic from absorbing CO2 and interacting with plants. So it carves out little conduits, little pathways of sort of like an underwater stream, almost. Right. Very much like that. And then it loosens the soil, and then the soil starts to fall down in these cracks. And although the surface and the overbird may look okay up top, that's why they seem to happen, like, overnight. There's just a lot going on underneath that we don't see. Right. For weeks, months, years, that kind of thing. So when the water whittles away, say, a chamber, the future sinkhole, which you can also call a cave when you're going caving, what you're doing is walking through basically a dry conduit sinkhole system. Yeah. Right. So when the sinkholes formed, whittled away by water, and the overburden starts spilling into it, which is called spalling spilling, it's spawning. Right. That means that there is much less of it above it's. Like an hourglass, basically. Yeah. Right. And then when somebody walks on, it drives on, it builds a building on it. Yes. What appeared to be solid is now in the bottom of this hole. Yeah. And oftentimes what I call it, the overburden, is solid enough to hold up even though it might be hollow underneath, it can hold up for a little while if nothing is on it. Right. But like you said, the problem comes when something is planted on top of it, like a car. Right. And that's actually called a cover collapse sinkhole. And that's what we think of for sinkholes, these really dramatic, sudden holy cow sinkholes. Yeah. Right. I would like to call it the coolest sinkhole, but since it might seem people do die. Yeah, exactly. Chuck, there's two other kinds of sinkholes right. That are slightly less dramatic. Yeah. The cover subsidence sinkhole. Yeah. This is possibly the least dramatic sinkhole, basically. It's kind of boring. It is a very similar process happens, except you get the impression it happens much more slowly. Right. Yeah. Chuck was talking about imagine, like a straw coming into, you know, those little nitrous oxide tubes, the little chargers for the little industrial arts cars that you made. Sure. Or making whipped cream or whatever. Right. You got a straw going into one of those and a straw coming out. So it's like narrow, narrow, fat, narrow. Again. That would be like conduit sinkhole or cave, because it's pretty much a cave until the top collapses and then conduit again. These conduits allow water to go in and out, but as spalling occurs, the dirt, the sediment, the overburden, the soil spills into the loose parts. Right, right. And it can clog up the conduit. Right. Yeah. So what you have then, for the cover subsidence sinkhole is basically just a depression in the earth, but a dirt depression. A lot of times they're not very big either. We're talking, like a few feet right across. One of the ways to deal with the sinkhole, a small one, is to fill it with sand and boom, bang, bam. Yeah, that's what the Florida Management District says. And Florida is kind of lousy with sinkholes because of all the sand. Right. But these cover subsidence sinkholes often turn into ponds because rainwater starts collecting. It has nowhere to go because the conduits are blocked, and bam. You get yourself a brand spanking new pond. And that's good fishing. Yes, it is, I imagine. And then the third one chuck, dissolution or solution sinkhole. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Not spilling, spelling, dissolution or solution sinkhole. Right. It's a geology. It's like take your pick. Yeah. These are actually not as dramatic either. And that's usually if you just have, like, a thin overburden that washes away and erodes over time and exposes the bedrock. Yeah. I always want to say Twitch, twitch after you say Bedrock each time from The Flintstones. Remember that? No. You're like Flintstones. I mean, I remember the Flintstones and they lived in Bedrock. But what's the twitch choice was the one episode where they had the movie star singer come to town, tony Kurt Rock or whatever. Yeah. And that was a song in Bedrock. Twitch, twitch. I don't remember that one. Wow. Showing my age. I like the one with Anne Mark rock. She was a hot cartoon. Yes. It's so funny that all the names were, like, rock oriented. I never figured that one out. Because they lived in the Stone Age. Just kidding. Okay. But the big rack of ribs on the car that tipped the car over, that was normal. That was a bronze horse rib rack. Yeah. That's good eating. That's what they ate in the Stone Age. Yes. So, like you said, you can get a new pond when you have a dissolution sinkhole. Is that where we are? Yeah, you can get a pond from that, too. Basically, the difference between a cover subsidence and a dissolution sinkhole is one is possibly grassy. Right. The other is exposed rock. Right. A grassy depression. Both can be ponds. Both of them have their conduit covered. Really? When you think of sinkhole, the one we're talking about is the cover collapse. Oh my God, save me sinkhole. Right. So we need to talk about human beings and what we can do. A lot of those are naturally occurring sinkholes just because of erosion. But humans can actually contribute to sinkholes in a lot of ways. Yeah, I mean, think about it. We talked about reservoir and due seismicity. Yeah, same deal. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Totally. We are really screwing with the geophysical properties of Mother Earth. Yeah. I'm constantly amazed every time I go to New York that New York is still like a standing, functioning city for now. Yeah, well, it's true. Yeah. Let's hope it keeps standing for at least the next week. Yeah, exactly. Drilling, Josh. Mining, foot traffic, vehicle traffic, increased water flow, broken pipes. The other thing that we talked about, humans causing an earthquake, extracting water from the subsurface. That can be a big problem, tossing coals. So that's how man these are just a few ways that man can create one. Basically, yes. And that's what they think happened in Guatemala, right? Yeah, basically with plumbing. We have the same problem here in Atlanta. I'm a little nervous to admit. Yeah. Our sewer system is like 100 years old. Guatemala Cities is not too much older or younger. It's right about the same age. So a sewer pipe bursts. Right. And you think, well, okay, this is very bad. It erodes the soil because of the water movement. Not just that. It provides a double whammy, actually. It erodes the dirt and it actually gives it a place to be carried away through. Is that flow reversal? No, sewer pipe. So imagine sewer pipe and then bam at first and there's a big hole there the spewing water. The water pressure is just eroding soil above it. Right. And it's eroding the overburden. And then it's also this big hole in the pipe is giving a place for the soil to be taken away. Right. So it's eroding, it taking it away, creating a cavern and then bam. And that's exactly what happened in Guatemala City both times. Well, actually, I read today, they said they still aren't sure what happened in this most recent. That's what happened in Guatemala City both times. Okay. They said the guy said we have to descend into it to find out what happened. The guy who called it a piping feature? No, it was some other guy that you like better. Okay. Let's talk about Polk County, Florida. Yeah, I think we should. That was a human Cost sinkhole. And here's what's going on in Florida. You know when you use fertilizer in your yard, which you like to do, it's got phosphate in it. And about 30% of the entire world's phosphate stash comes from Florida. So the problem with this stuff is it's radioactive, mildly radioactive. And so Florida said, well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to stack it up in huge stack. So it's all in one place, and we're talking hundreds of acres, millions of tons. The result, years later, in 1994 in Central Florida, a billion tons of it basically created a sinkhole. The weight crushed the sand underneath it and created a huge sinkhole. Right. Yeah. Florida is already what's known as a CARST region and Karst region. It's a type of topography that features a lot of caverns sinkholes, springs, all this geological features created by the movement of water. Right. Florida is lousy with this stuff. But then, as you were saying, it had this extra added benefit of billions of tons of phosphorgy, so radioactive byproduct, and then bam. Yeah. And then that one collapse in 1994 in Polk County, the stuff collapsed into the water supply. Yeah, that was bad news. And polluted the entire state supply. Yeah. That's not good. Well, it's not good, but I mean, if I'm going to go silver lining here, which I'm not one to do, it did make them all take a hard look at how they dispose of harmful byproducts. Right. They're like, you can't just stack it up until it falls through the earth. They're like, what should we do? Right. And they're still trying to answer that one. Yeah. So it took a lot of money and time, though, to clean up their water supply. Yeah. And Chuck, let's get in our balloon and go over to bears and ski Russia. We haven't been on a balloon in a long time. I know. It's got a little dusty. I need to clean up in here. I know. There's a dead raccoon in the corner. That's creepy. Yeah. Don't look at it. In Berseinsky. Berzniki. Yeah. Yeah. I almost took us to Berzinski. Jeez, that was close. We're going to besniki Russia. In 1986, they had another fertilizer related sinkhole problem. Right. Pot. Ash. Potash. It's actually pot. That's what the lady said on the pronunciation guide. Really? She said potash. She's a robot. That's what we're going with. Yes. 656ft deep, 260ft long, 131ft wide and growing. So for our non American, non librarian and then what? Burma may be sure. That would be 200 meters deep, 80 meters long, and 40 meters wide. That's a huge sinkhole. And the reason was they just removing potash from the ground through mine, and it became flooded, and that was that question. The sinking holes always caused massive destruction and kill people and swallow buildings. Yes. No, not true. They're actually a lot of times they're just kind of like an annoyance. Well, inconvenience. The ones you can fill with sand right. Or ones that aren't around an urban civilized area. Like, if they're out in the boonies, it's kind of cool. Like, really cool. If we're talking about the ones in Venezuela, the Namasteholes. Did you see those things? I saw this picture of them. Yeah. Well, I didn't mean literally have you descended into them. No, but those are really cool because those are in the Tipui region, these really high mesas. Basically it's like at the top of a mountain, you'll just see a forest, dense forest, and then these huge perfectly round holes, 1000ft deep, 305 meters deep. And these crazy and they're right in the center. Yeah, yeah. These crazy dudes like put on parachutes and jump into them. That's awesome. Yeah, very cool. They did on the planet Earth, actually. I don't think it was there, but did you ever watch that, the planet Earth discovery thing? Yeah, they gave us that when they bought us as a gift. It was really cool. But it has the base jumpers jumping into these things. It's crazy. That's awesome. They also have cinotes. Yeah. Did you see those in Tulum? Yes. Because they got a lot of them down there, right? Yes, they do. They're everywhere in Tulum and they're awesome. So basically that is a sinkhole that is now a pool, right? Yeah. And for some reason, I guess, the water collects. It percolates down from the top, so there's always a dripping sound. Okay. And then it collects in the bottom of the sinkhole, usually bedrock or light sediment, but during the percolation process it becomes purified. So it's this incredible bluish water that's totally pure. Big for snorkeling, right? Gorgeous. Yeah, huge for snorkeling, scuba diving, that kind of thing. And they're also very sacred places, I guess, among the Maya, maybe. And there's like a big movement to preserve these Sano Tas because they were believed to be a portal to the next world. Really? So they like sacrifice people and stuff there they are. Wicked cool looking. Yeah. I plan to go one day. Okay. And tread the ground that you tread in Tulum. Also, a lot of the ruins around on the Yucatan will have to say no to well, they have ruins near Tulum. Right. And then Chuck, lastly, probably the biggest sinkhole on the planet is the Qatar depression. Right. In Egypt it's like 300ft deeper, 436 ft, 131 meters deep sides of Lake Erie, basically. Yeah. But it's like 75 miles wide, which is 120. Kind of expect more. Did you see pictures? It just looks like a desert basin. Sort of. Yeah. I thought it's not nearly as cool looking as the ones in Venezuela. No. And if you want to see cool picture of the ones in Venezuela, you can type sync hole inhouseepworks.com there's. Also cool flash animation on page zero. Yeah, that's a good one of how sinkholes form. And really, to sum up, sinkholes form because water moves underground. Erodes the overburden above caban. There you have it. Yes. Okay. And I think I said handysearchbar@housestepworkscom, right? You did. If not, I just did. Which means it's time for listener me. Yes, Josh. Serial killers. I just need to say, judging from the Facebook and fan reaction that we have a sick and twisted audience I thought it was funny that a lot of people felt they needed to be like not to be morbid or anything, but I really love serial killers. Everybody loves serial killers. Very intriguing. It's okay. Just go with it. Before I read this, Josh, I should just point out a quick correction. Ted Bundy did his final sorority house actions at Florida State, not Florida. Okay. And I knew that, too. I don't know why I said us. Yeah, I thought it was Florida the whole time. I'm not a big Florida Gator fan, as you know, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. Thank you. We heard from a bunch of people, josh kind of jokingly said, if you know of any serial killers, turns out a bunch of people have come into contact with these surprising amount. Yes. And so I have a bunch of them I'm going to run down. You want to read some of these, too? Sure. I'll give you that page. Okay. This is from Solomon. My mom told me a story when she was in Washington in the late 70s. She graduated college, moved there to work as a social worker in Seattle. She was supposed to meet up with a friend one day, and co worker and her roommate, and they waited for hours and hours, but they never showed. She spoke to her coworker later and said the reason she never came because her friend was missing turns out, long story short, that she went to help a guy with a sailboat in the parking lot, buffalo Bill style. Help me get this couch in the van. She got there and there was no sailboat. And it turns out that this guy was Ted Bundy, and the friend was Janice OTT, one of his final victims. Wow. It's from Solomon. All right, I've got a good one. This is my favorite. This is from Justin. My grandfather once knew a serial killer. They were in the same fantasy baseball league. I do not know his name. Unfortunately, he was kicked out of the league for cheating and his family left him, so he resorted to shooting people in the head with a pistol. The police had him cornered in a motel, so he covered himself in baseball cards and committed suicide. It's from Justin. I don't know about that one. Justin, at the very least, Justin has a great imagination. Yes. This one comes from Karen. H. Just a tidbit, guys. My aunt's first husband was a coroner on the Manson murders, tate LaBianca. I never met him because they divorced before I was born, but my aunt always talked about him during the murders. Her exhusband also founded the Los Angeles Coroners Gift Shop. I thought that was strange. Strange and awesome. Kind of the gift shop, at least. This one's from Megan. Just wanted to tell you that my stepdad's brother murdered two people. They were my stepdad's friends. My stepdad recounted always feeling a little odd around his brother. He said the hair on his arms and neck would rise when his brother would talk to him. His brother used to catch sparrows as a child and shove firecrackers into their butts and let them go after he lit them, which is pretty awful. Thanks, Megan. Yeah. That's part of the McDonald triad, I would say yes. Two quickens here on Jeffrey Dahmer. Apparently, he had a bunch of neighbors that listened to our show. Joel says around the time of the killings, my mom lived next door to Jeffrey Dahmer. She met him twice, and she said he seemed like a nice guy, but a little weird, I would say. So. Anyway, I just thought I would share my little anecdote with you guys. Joel and from Cole in Cincinnati. He says, my father went to preschool with Jeffrey Dahmer. He doesn't remember him torturing small animals or anything, but one fact sticks out. He liked to walk around with his cheek sucked in. My dad said, Picture someone making a fishy face. My dad's theory was that Jeffy was saving his taste for human flesh, but that's pure speculation. Well, that is pure speculation. Thanks for that, Chuck. I've got a couple more, if that's okay with you. Yes. All right, there's one from Anonymous in Florida who wanted to give the attention to the victim and not take any for herself. I went to high school with a girl who became the victim of a serial killer known as the Gainesville Ripper. Danny Rowling. I wasn't close friends with her, but she was in my freshman English honors class. So that's from Anonymous. Kurtz lived eight minutes away from Dennis Raiders home. The BTK killer. And the house where he murdered one of his victims is across the street from the hardware shop where I shop. And it turns out, BTK dennis Raider murdered more than three people over the course of his career. Still kind of a poopoo serial killer career, in my opinion. Did we just say three? I said three. I was poopooing you. You got any more? I got one more. Go ahead. Back in 1968, my dad's best friend's family was targeted by the Zodiac Killer. We recently met up with her daughter, and she told us the story that one of her relatives, david Arthur Faraday, was killed by Mr. Zodiac, and the fear of someone else being killed caused them to leave California, which meant my dad lost contact with her next to the podcast and fully expect you to release new episodes even after you are dead. Jerry likely disturbing. It was. Especially in relation to the Zodiac Killer, and especially since it was written by our own Jerry. Yeah, it was, wasn't it? I got one more. This is from Leslie. And Leslie. Has Josh known three murderers? Wow. And she's still around. The first person. Robert Bennett, aka. The handcuffed man, who I think was caught in Atlanta. He lived just across the street from me in Tawanda, Pennsylvania. And we used to sneak through the alley beside his house to get to school, and we would sneak into his pool. Yeah. Dangerous business. Yes, it is. Second was Eric Smith, a kid from Sonoma, New York, who murdered a four year old boy. His grandfather was my science teacher and a family friend. And finally, the most recent murderer I've known was Mesec Damas, who murdered his family here in Naples. I worked with him for a while at a restaurant and knew his wife from the grocery store I shop, and that's from Leslie. So she's known three murderers, and good for her. Leslie, keep your eyes peeled. That's what I want to remain on point. I've never known anybody who's known that many murderers before. Chuck tag teaming listener, male makes me feel like Michelle Norris and Robert Siegel. Okay. And it's Thursday evening, so, like, the whole NPR thing is really going on. Wow. Check us out on Facebook. It's Stuff you should Know website in parentheses. We're also on Twitter. S-Y-S Kpodcast. And if you want to send us an email about anything at all, just wrap it up and ship it off to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housedefworks? Check out our blog on the housedufworks.com homepage brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
20ebf2aa-121b-11eb-85ed-7fbb4891d93c | Short Stuff: What's the oldest book? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-whats-the-oldest-book | In order to figure out what the oldest book is, one has to define what a book actually is. Listen in as we discuss this debatable topic. | In order to figure out what the oldest book is, one has to define what a book actually is. Listen in as we discuss this debatable topic. | Wed, 31 Mar 2021 11:18:51 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=11, tm_min=18, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=90, tm_isdst=0) | 11409083 | audio/mpeg | "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 food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com.com. Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry again sitting in for producer Dave C. And this is short stuff, as I've already said. That's right. And we're talking about books. What is the book? What is in the book? Old books. That book in the window? Sure. The one with the waggity tail. That's right. Should we get going? I thought we already had, but yes, let's get going. So there's this book in the National Museum of History in Bulgaria and it is what some people consider the oldest book in the world. Have you seen pictures of it? I have. It's six pages of gold sheet. Like, the pages are gold and not like they took paper and put gold around it or the edges are gilded. It is like a sheet of gold medal. And there's six pages like that. And they're bound together. And it's written in etruscan. And the Etruscans were the direct predecessors to the Romans. They kind of ran the area. I think that Heyday was around 500 BCE. And they're kind of this mysterious group because we haven't deciphered their writing yet. But we know that this is an Etruscan book. And so a lot of people say, there you have it, everybody. The oldest book in the world is called the Gold orphism book. And this is it? Yes. It is actual multiple pages. Like you said, it is bound. There are illustrations. There's a mermaid and a harp and some soldiers and a horse rider. And they say this thing is 2500 years old. They found it along a river, the Struma River in southwestern Bulgaria in a tomb. It was donated this is all kind of mysterious. It was donated by an anonymous person and then authenticated by two anonymous scientists. Yes. A little sketchy. Sounds like aliens to me. But the debate then started. Well, that's not true. There's always been debates about what is the oldest this, what's the oldest that? What's the oldest book? And if you think about oldest book, it becomes a little bit of an esoteric question because you have to ask yourself, what is a book? Could it be a clay tablet or a scroll? Or can it be something that doesn't tell a story? It's just like accounting records. So you really have to sort of define what a book is first. Yeah. So a lot of people would define a book by its physical attributes. Right. Like, it's a certain shape, it's bound together. That's a big one for a lot of people. Some people say it has to be on paper which would discount the gold orphism book. And then other people say, well, no, it's just got to tell a story, say, and it can be on anything, and it doesn't have to be bound together. And this is when everybody goes, oh, boy, here we go, here comes another debate on what constitutes a book. Yeah, but it's not an angry debate, is it? No, it's not angry, but yet I'm angered by it because I think it's largely unnecessary. And there is a person cited in this house, the Works article, who I suspect purposefully obfuscates this and initiates this debate because they don't want this question ever to be answered. Are you talking about? Lawrence Ferry. Yeah, this is a curator of rare books and manuscripts at Cornell and Cornell, and they were actually interviewed for this House of Works article about eleven years ago. And Cornell is in possession of these clay tablets that they maintain the largest in the world. And they're pretty old, and some people might say, well, those are books, but most of those, like I said, about tax records, their financial records, legal proceedings, they don't espouse any world view. So I think there and that means they are not books. Yeah. Laurent Fairy says a book would be something that has a binding and that espouses a worldview. Right. So, yeah, you can discount those clay tablets. They don't count as a book, but to other people, they would count as a book. So they said, okay, Lauren Ferry, what is the oldest book then? And Ferry said either Homer's Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh. The problem is, and this is where I think Lawrence Ferry is purposefully doing this just to keep this debate going, because they like to talk about this kind of stuff. So The Epic of Gilgamesh is a very old book. The British Museum has one, but it's written on clay tablets from the 7th century BCE. Doesn't count. Yeah, it's not bound. So the very example that this curator gave as the oldest book doesn't even fall within their own parameters. And here's where I start to get angry. All right, well, let's take a break then for you. Hulk out in Hulk Smash, and we'll be right back to well, we're not going to settle any debate, but we'll just talk about it more and make you more mad. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? 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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. All right, let's get back to me getting mad. Well, it depends on who you talk to. If you start bringing religion into it and all this stuff, then of course you're going to have people that say, you might have Christians that say, well, the Bible is clearly the oldest book because the world is only a few thousand years old and the Bible was written right after that. So what's older than that? Bub right, exactly. And biblical scholars will say, and scientists will say, actually, the Bible was written over many hundreds of years, and a lot of these stories that were written were hundreds of years after the events that they're talking about, even. Right. But they don't say that to the people who say the world is a few thousand years old and the Bible was written right after the scholars turned to the rest of us and say, well, obviously these things were written over centuries after these events. Here's the thing that's another thing that Lauren Ferry does, is, what about religion? Why would you bring that part into it? That's not fair. They're just trying to do this. And then there was another one, too, that they said too. Well, some books are it's not like the stories were created out of whole cloth. Right. When the books are written, a lot of them are based on oral traditions. And these oral traditions far predate any of the books, these oldest books that are written. And it does not matter. It does not matter if the book is a brand new story, but it's still older than any other book, than a book that was published in the 50s based on an oral tradition from 5000 years ago. That older book is going to be the older book. This Laurence Fairy person is really getting under my skin. Yeah, it can't be. A book isn't a story. A book is a story that has been bound and written. And you know what my definition, it doesn't have to be bound. If you give me a scroll, okay, that's got a good beginning, middle and end to it, then that's a book. So there's papyri that are 4500 years old that would qualify them because, I mean, it's a book, but it's just one long page. All right. That's a book. Okay. All right, so we're hot on the trail here, at least as far as what you consider a book. I mean, Kerwac wrote on rolls of toilet paper, right? He wrote on was it rolls of toilet paper? I know it was a very long roll of paper over, like, 48 or 72 hours or something like that. That was the story in the book. But you can't sell stuff like that, so you have to bind them in the traditional form so you can put them on your shelf. Exactly. But yeah. Was it not a book before when it was just on one long scroll? It's a really great point. Now I'm just getting mad. At us? No, not us. Ferry. Lawrence Ferry. Be mad at them. All right. There's another question. What constitutes a book? What kind of book are you talking about? If you're talking about a printed book in the understanding of printing that we have here in the modern world, well, then that's easy to settle. The Gutenberg Bible or the book printed right before the Gutenberg Bible. Man, I wish I would have looked it up. I just forgot about it. Did a whole episode on that. I know, but whatever book Gutenberg put out first, that would qualify. But then you remember in that episode we talked about china had printers that they didn't use movable type, they used wood block printing, but they were still printing books. Those are books. Okay, but then other people say, well, before printing, before automatic printing, there was handwriting, but they were still writing books. Okay, well, then now you're talking about manuscripts. So actually, you come back to the biblical people and say, well, what you got? And they say, well, we have manuscripts that were written in the fourth century. That's pretty old, isn't it? And you say, that's pretty old, but is it any more of a book than the gold orphism book? Right. I don't even know where we are now in this debate, to be honest, because I think I'm backing myself into a corner that I painted myself into. You can just walk right out of it, just say, this is what I now think. I think it can be handwritten because Jack Carwak was writing with his hand. Okay. I think it can be on a scroll. It can't be an oral story. Okay. I agree. I'm going to say it doesn't have to be bound if you want to sell it. It might have to be bound, but then you're getting into consumerism and that whole argument. But I think it has to be connected in some way. So, like, if it's one long scroll, those pages are still connected? Yeah. So what are you saying? If they slice that scroll up into 100 sheets and just stack them, that's not a book? Yeah, that's the main thing, because there's a truscan gold sheets that are not connected. That would not really qualify as a book. Like the gold orphism book that are actually older than the gold orifice book, but they wouldn't count. They're just pages. You got pages, not a book. Pages are part of a book. All right. I guess it's here that I should reveal to the world that I am Laurent Ferry. Oh, my gosh. He just ripped off his mask. And first he was Bob Euchre and then he was Lawrence Ferry. Bob Euchre. What was that from? I think that was where those Bud Light or the Miller commercials. Right? I thought it was like, Naked Gun or something. Go back and watch some of those sometime on YouTube. Those are fantastic. Yeah, they really it was Miller, wasn't it? Yeah, Millerline. Great bits of nostalgia. Wow. We were raised on TV, weren't we? Dang straight. Well, I'll tell you who was raised on books. Laurent Ferry. And you know who was raised on radio? Journey. That's right. And how could you get any better, as far as endings go than that, Chuck. Agreed. Well, everybody, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio apple Pod tests, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
02821576-3b0e-11eb-947e-7f0e6c9f5ce5 | Muzak: Easy Listening Goodness | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/muzak-easy-listening-goodness | Muzak got a bad reputation as bland garbage music. We aim to set the record straight. | Muzak got a bad reputation as bland garbage music. We aim to set the record straight. | Thu, 08 Apr 2021 19:38:35 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=19, tm_min=38, tm_sec=35, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=98, tm_isdst=0) | 50367089 | audio/mpeg | "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 there's Dave. I said it right this time. It was couston. No, if you're in France is how you would say it, but here in the United States, you say, Cousin, can I start this off by saying something? Oh, boy. I'm worried about what you're going to say, but okay. Well, this episode is on Musac. And I started thinking last night, I was thinking about your love of music, which is not at all ironic, not in the least. But you can't say that kind of thing these days. People don't believe you. I know. It's true. Everyone I know Josh very well, and I was thinking of you. And I like all kinds of music, too, but in my heart, I'm a rock and roll guy. Sure. And I was thinking about your top musical genres that are above rock and roll. In your picking order. Not in order. I counted easy listening music, disco, art rock, crowd rock, and I probably missed a couple. Crowd rock is below rock and roll. I want to like crowd rock. It just doesn't quite drive with me. I like some, but not all of it. And then stuff. I think art rock because it's sort of that avantgarde. You don't love Yoko, but you certainly are a bit of a Yoko apologist. Sure. Grace Jones, stuff like that. I love Grace Jones. For sure. What about Talking Heads? They go in there, too, right? They'd probably be I mean, they literally went to art school together. Yeah. I mean, they kind of span from art rock to new wave to, like, world music by the time they finished. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I certainly love the Talking Heads, but all of those for you are above good old fashioned rock and roll, I think. Yeah. You also left out 90s techno. I've been listening to a lot of that, too, like Alternate and The Prodigy and everything. But you love music. You really do. I do, too, actually. I don't know. I'm so glad. I don't know how much I like I will listen to some of that stuff and we'll talk about Eno in here, of course. Old sour puss. Brian eno. But I love listening to his ambient stuff, which he sort of wrote as an antidote to music. Again, we'll talk about that more later. But I do like, in certain circumstances, that music thing is really great to have on in my house as background music, and it serves that same purpose. One of the big reasons why, too, is because you can get stuff done with it. Lyrics can be so distracting. They just latch onto your brain and say, no, pay attention to me. I'm talking to you. Now. Music does the opposite of that. It says, Go, be free, but also enjoy this. There's like a whole part of your brain that music can tap into that doesn't require your conscious thought, but it still produces, like, good feelings. People just smack music around. Like it's just so bland and it's so soulless. And I totally disagree with that. If you actually stop and listen to music, it's really technically proficient. It's frequently well done, it's often very clever and creative and inventive, which is really saying something because you're doing this in the confines of covering an existing song in a way that makes it familiar and easy to recognize, but also takes away any intrusiveness that it might have. It's tough to do. And I love music. You're absolutely right. I listened to music this whole time, not just when we were researching music today, but also when I was researching the Havana Syndrome and I realized this is my normal thing. This is the same stuff I listen to when I'm researching. Anyway. Yeah. And we can go ahead and dispel a couple of not myths, but clear up a couple of things right off the bat. First of all, Musac is a name brand, and people can kind of collectively use the term music or have collectively use that term for what's called like, potted plant music or elevator music or shopping music. But it is actually a brand name, which we'll get to the history of. And then the second thing is it gets the name elevator music. Part of the myth is that people said, well, they put it on elevators because people were afraid to death of elevators early on, and it calmed people down or covered up the noise of the clanking elevators. I never heard that before. Do you? Yeah. Neither one of those things are true. Total myth. My guess is that it was played on elevators, and because you're in such a closed little box that's usually quiet, it just was way more noticeable than in a big office full of people working. So people call the elevator music. That's my guess. Right? Yeah. There wasn't music on elevators before, but for several decades in the 20th century, there weren't many elevators you could get on because people didn't have elevators in their house. So it was a public building you're in where they weren't playing music of some form very frequently music. That great. Blues brothers scene. Yeah, because they're going up to the Cook County Assessor's Office and the entire Chicago Police Department is after them, but they're forced to get on this elevator, and The Girl from Ipanema is playing. I think my favorite part of that scene is there's just dozens and hundreds of cops and SWAT guys just hut when they're repelling and doing all this stuff. And the one shot of the lone guy repelling down the side of the building, and he's by himself just going, hut, hut, hut, hut. Yeah, that's a good one. So funny. There's another scene, too, from around the era. Few years later from Airplane Two where it's like Rip torn. I believe it's Rip torn already from the Larry Sanders show. Yeah. And I don't know the other guy he's talking to. But anyway, they're walking and talking and they have to get on an elevator. Elevator door opens and it's just blaring, like eardrum shattering, decibel MacArthur Park. And they have to get on. People are coming off the elevator, like, with their hands and their ears with splitting headaches from this. But it's just completely the opposite way. Elevator music is supposed to be, like it's a good little scene, too, as far as elevator music goes. Well, I mean, that's kind of one of the points, too, is music has long been a movie trope and a TV trope and then been lampooned in scenes just like the Blues Brothers scene where there's something chaotic going on and then you cut back to the sound of music playing wherever the other scene is setting. Right. Yeah. Very fun stuff. But that started I guess it started with the Blues Brothers, which came out in 1980, but before that was like music was not really lampoon. I mean, not everybody liked it. It really kind of started to get a little backlash in the late 60s, early 70s, as we'll see. But there was a very significant chunk of the 20th century, again, from maybe 1950 to 1980, we'll say, where everywhere you went in public, including if you took a Greyhound bus or if you were on a plane or you happen to be in Air Force One or you were at the mall, in an elevator, at your office, everywhere music was playing. There was music playing everywhere. It was just a part of life that was inescapable, actually. Yeah. So let's go back in time and talk about the inventor of muzak. And this is sort of a fun fact of Musac. The man's name is George Square. It is spelled Square, but he swears it's pronounced Square. I'm really impressed me. I had not come up with that one. Or he swore it was pronounced Square. Yeah, that's kind of one of the funny jokes. Like the guy who invented music was Square. Yeah. But Major General George Square was born in 1865, if you believe that. And he is just a laundry list of accomplishments as a human being. He earned a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in electrical science. He was an army engineer with a PhD. I think the first one. Yeah. And he was, I believe, the lead Signal Corps officer for the army as well. He was. He also was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, which connects this episode to the other one today. That's right. Because he came up with something called a tree telephone. He figured out how to use any tree, but preferably one with fully leaved, I guess. I don't know what you call that as a receiver and transmitter for radio signals. He figured out how to use a tree, a living tree, for that. Here's another fun fact. He was one of the first airplane passengers ever because he was way into human flight and got together with the Wright Brothers in 19 six, consulted with them, and they said, hey, why don't you take a ride on our new little by plane? You'll probably live, right? I looked at the document for our Wright Brothers episode, and he did not appear I don't think we mentioned him, but he might have been the first airline passenger, from what I saw. Yeah. Where he really made a big name for himself. Premusic was this invention, which is what we call multiplexing, which is he figured out, or maybe wire wireless communications, which is something he worked on with the army. He basically figured out how to get multiple uses out of single telephone lines. Telephone wires were only so many, so you were really limited as to what you could do with them and how many people could use them. So he basically figured out a way to increase their output and efficiency by multiplexing and by sending superimposing high frequency radio signals over those low frequency telegraph signals, basically just allowing you to use the wire at the same time. The same wire? Yeah. I mean, it's like if you think of, like, a wave, if it's low frequency, there's big, wide gaps in between. You can fit a higher frequency that's tighter and squished together in those gaps, but you're still using the same line. And this was the guy who came up with that. That's an enormous advancement in telecommunications that we're still putting use today in some applications, but definitely helped the early Internet along. It was just a huge contribution to humanity. Forget even just music. Like, just that alone would probably warrant, like, an episode for George Square. Yeah. And I think he was like, everyone should be able to use this, so I'm going to open source it, and everyone can use this new multiplexing technology. At and T came along and said, we'll use it, and then, you know what? You've stole it from us, actually. Right. He came up with it, but since he left it open, they decided to just take it from him and sue him for it. I think he sued them, but it didn't work. That's right. You're right. But he still was able to use this wireless technology with multiplexing. And at the time, people were starting to get into radio broadcasts, but wireless radio that you would just have in your house, it's picking up radio waves at a station that was not widespread at the time. So George Square said, you know what? I understand people want music in their house. I'm going to give it to them. I'm going to use that multiplexing technology, and I'm going to run sound waves over the electrical wires that go into the house. It is brilliant. I'm going to sell this service to people's homes for one dollars, $50 a month, about $20 today. And it's just part of your utility bill because it's coming in through your electrical company. And there's actually a section of Cleveland called the, I believe, lakewood area that was the pilot for this wireless radio that George Square invented. The problem was that by the time they deployed it, wireless radio was already a thing. And so we had this really great idea that just no longer had an application. Yeah, he basically invented the first music subscription service. Exactly. Yeah. And he had multiple channels, too. Like when you subscribed, you got news, you got dance music, there was like, I think, three different channels you could choose from. Howard Stern. Yeah, howard Stern was on back then. Bobaboo So he had that technology, though, and he said, you know what? This is a good idea, though. Maybe I can think of how to use this in offices and stores. And in 1934, he looked up at Kodak very successful corporation and said, I love that name and I love music. Let's just call it musac. And history changed and maybe we should take a break. Okay, let's do it. All right, we'll be right back. So, in the parlance of today Chuck, george Square and his Musac corporation pivoted from home consumer markets to business markets. And that just knocked it out of the park because it turned out that there were a lot of companies, hotels, restaurants, clubs. I think the store club was an early customer that said, you know what? It's really going to make our place seem fancy if we've got music piping in all the time. So, yes, we would like to sign up for your service. And that's really where music kind of started to take off. Yeah. So music I mean, we haven't even said what it is. Surely people know, but music are instrumental tracks. And you did mention that there were no vocals, so we kind of hinted that. Big one. Yeah, but they're instrumental tracks that are cover songs of kind of anything you can think of. I mean, I've heard some music of some heavy rock. It can be classical music, it can be old standards. But the point is, they are instrumental versions that are re recorded. They don't just take the vocals out. It's not karaoke style. Right. It is rerecorded arranged and recorded by professional, really good musicians, orchestras sometimes. And that's what it is. And it's great. The end. And very frequently it's made into a much more mellow version of itself. Like any rough edges are taken off since they take the vocals out. It's not like that vocal melody is nonexistent any longer, they just replace it with something else. So if they're trying to go for something like a little more upbeat or uptempo, they'll replace the vocals with, say, like a saxophone. If they're trying to do something a little more mellow. They'll replace the vocals with a string section or harp, perhaps. Yeah. That's one of the things that music is very famous for, is like what's called masses of strings, just strings upon strings. In fact, one of the early, I guess, big name groups that produced music was called 101 Strings. They probably were absolutely accurate in that. Like, there's just tons of strings everywhere. Filings, cellos, violas, every string instrument you can throw at it. They just layer upon layer in these songs. It's one of the hallmarks of music. Yeah. And there are many versions of Antonio, Carlos, Shabim's Girlfriend upon NEMA, but the music version is one of the most popular, and that 101 Strings version is the most ubiquitous from that lot. I do encourage people to go watch the YouTube, though, of Frank Sinatra and Joe Beam singing that song live on TV, because it's great in every way. They're just sitting next to each other and the shot isn't wide at first, and they're just sort of singing back and forth to each other and Frank's doing his thing, and then it cuts to the wide, and Frank is, like, totally kicked back with his legs crossed with a cigarette in his hand, exactly like you would hope. But he looks like he's not rolled out of bed because he's put together but he looks like he rolled from his wicker bag to his wicker chair. Right. For this performance. Can I get some cocaine in here, baby? It's Joe Biscuit. If I was Frank Sinatra. Do you ever listen to Joe Beam stuff? Yeah, I love that old lounge stuff. It's really great Brazilian stuff. Yeah. His record, Stone Flower, is just a masterpiece from beginning to end. Yeah. Good party music. Yeah. That's another thing, though, too, is like it's so mellow that to take that kind of music and then make it into music, it's almost like it takes a certain amount of audacity. I want to point people to two different Musac records that are on YouTube. One is called more than music, period and environment. It's a 1981 Musac record, and it has a version of Sailing Christopher Crosses sailing one of the most all music to sleep to. Exactly. They figured out how to basically make you lose control of your bladder listening to this bed to. Yeah, that's a good one. And then the other one is called the Blue Album, and it is from 1974, I believe. And both of them are really great. That's good introductions to Musac if you're not into it already. All right, so MUSEC is trucking along in the 30s. They get to the they think, you know what? We need a better way to sell this stuff and to pitch this to businesses and corporations. So why don't we hire some people to research music and to figure out what kinds of music keep people happy and working? Because people work hard in the morning and then they sort of lag a bit before lunch and then they really lag sort of a couple of hours after lunch. So why don't we do this? Why don't we study it? Let's call it stimulus progression. It's a bit pseudoscience. It makes sense though it's not been proven. It makes sense to everyone who I feel like knows about it. Sure, music can pick you up and make you work harder, but it's pseudoscience in it. I don't think it's ever been scientifically proven. I got you. Okay. Yeah, because I keep seeing it just like dismissed the pseudoscience. But then there were plenty of early studies that were done by legitimate industrial psychologists and other like, efficiency experts, that kind of thing, that showed that there really was a significant improvement in productivity or less sick days, that kind of stuff, in places that have muzak compared to places that didn't have music pumped into the office. Yeah, I think maybe there are specific claims about a workday. Okay. Might have been a little I mean, everywhere I read said it was basically not a marketing scam, but a marketing tool that they kind of invented. I got you. So one thing to say about this, we're going to talk about it in a second. Stimulus progression is that they did kind of plow money that they were making. They were making a lot of money starting in the late 40s, early 50s, they plowed it back into research to basically come up with scientific evidence to back up their claims, which you can really kind of see the ghost of George Square still looming over the company this decade or so after he died. It's always been this kind of science interested, if not science based company that's also been an early adopter of technology, as we'll see. Yeah, I mean, that is certainly fair. It was never just like, hey, we're just going to play a bunch of what people might consider drool background music. I don't think it was a scam. I think they really did try to study working environments. And what they did with his stimulus progression was they divided the workday into 15 minutes increments and basically set a DJ playlist every 15 minutes and they assigned a stimulus value from one to six, one being really mellow, six being super up. And they basically went through and almost like a Pandora sort of curated playlist type of thing to get people to work hard and efficiently throughout a day. And companies bought in, including the US Army. Yes. I think World War II is basically cited as the moment when music kind of proved itself enough at least to start being adopted by very large companies. And then within a few years after the war, by the very early fifties, they started to spread more and more to even smaller and smaller companies. And it was this idea that if you played Musac and Musac patented stimulus progression model, you're going to avoid that mid morning slump that every worker goes through in productivity. And then the mid afternoon slump, you could avoid that too, and think about how many more widgets you could make if your employees don't slack off productivity wise, from 1030 to lunch and then from like 230 until they go home. Imagine if this very pleasant music is just kind of keeping them humming along what people call a unconscious sense of forward momentum. The tempo in your environment is moving subtly faster and faster. And so to keep people from going insane, part of the stimulus progression was that the songs in a 15 minutes increment would kind of go up in tempo, and then you'd have a 15 minutes break of silence and then the music would come back on again. But then this 15 minutes, their first song, the tempo of their first song would probably start a little faster than the tempo of the first song of the last 15 minutes. Right. And so all of a sudden, the next thing, you're making widgets like a maniac because you're being manipulated by the stimulus progression model, at least. Again, according to museq I get what you're saying. It's not like Harvard came along and said, yes, we've studied this thoroughly and this is exactly what happens. This is company claims. But it is intuitively, sensible, at least. Well, yeah. You need only to host a house party and play music yourself to determine how music can affect the mood of a group of people. Groove is in the heart and you know what's going to happen. Yeah. Everybody's going to shake their groove thing. Everyone's going to shake their group thing. Shake their groove thing. If you put in old sourpuss brian Eno's music for Airports. Not a good party thing. No, it's not. Since you brought him up for the second time, I say we discussed Brian momentarily. Sure. I love that record and I love a lot of his stuff, including his ambient music, experimental records. I think it's really good stuff to have on if it's a nice gray day outside and you're getting work done. I really enjoyed his background music, but it's definitely not up in any way. You know what I found is a really good one for what you just described. You ever listen to Future Sound of London? No. They have an album, like a double album called Life Forms, and it's about as amazing as ambient gets. You should check that one out, Emboli. Emily got me into ambient I call her Emboli when she's listening to that stuff. She really got me she called it ambient groove. She really got me into that stuff over the years. Is that like seven and stuff that's she calls it ambient groovy. Just sort of sort of mellow and groovy and like seven and more chiba. And there was a certain era, I think, where that stuff peaked Massive Attack a little bit. Oh, yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, I think you'd like Life Forms, then. Future Side of London stuff is normally a little more super cerebral and intelligent, but it's also fairly dancy life Forms. It's probably their most ambient stuff around. So, you know, though, let's get back to him. He kind of came up with this as an antidote to music, right? Yes. If you like ambient music, you better thank your lucky stars for music, Zack, because were it not for music, you might not have ambient music, at least not now. Maybe it would be coming 50 years from now, who knows? Yeah, he said. I loved it. In this article, it says, as reported by Red Bull, music enos said this, and this was, I think, for the liner notes, actually the music for airports. Whereas can music's intention is to brighten the environment by adding stimulus to it, ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular. It must be as ignorable as it is interesting. So he hits on something, though, that people would come to really resent about. Music is not even just necessarily the syrupiness of the music itself, but the intent behind the music, that it was always intended to basically manipulate your mood into making you a better worker, a more docile consumer. It was poking at your brain to get you to do things that you may or may not want to do. Maybe you will be less likely to punch some guy on the bus because there's music playing, which is a good thing. We should not be punching other people on the bus. But the point is you're being mind controlled in a certain way and eventually people got kind of resentful of that. Yeah. No, that's true. We're not there yet, though. We're not there yet. There was actually a point in time, though, Chuck, where music and popular music were basically one and the same. Yeah, that was sort of one of the heydays of music. Certainly was in that when the Glenn Miller Orchestra was pop music on the radio, music wasn't a far stretch from some of that stuff. So it was sort of all one and the same. I think it was as styles changed in the start rolling along that music became really sort of a bad word to a lot of people. Right. And one of the reasons I saw that really explained it to me, because things change, society just changed between the 1950s and the 1960s, it just abruptly changed. But that doesn't fully explain why music just was suddenly looked down upon. A good explanation I saw is that lyrics became really important in the late 60s. People had something to say. And Musac does not include lyrics. It completely undermines the point of music if you put lyrics in or don't rearrange the lyrics with strings. So music kind of couldn't keep up with that. It's not like it went away. It doubled down. It kept doing what it was doing. And in fact, it would take some of those pop hits that had really monumentally important lyrics and just take the lyrics out and replace it with a saxophone or something like that. Yeah, they didn't do that. I think it's interesting. They could have had a really mellow singer at a certain point come in and I really respect the fact that they were like, nope, the singer is a violin and I don't want to hear it anymore. Right. But a lot of these songwriters in particular, like, I think JoanBaez Bruce, Springsteen, Boss, Gags, all of them, refused to let their music be covered by music or any of its competitors. But Paul Simon I saw said he always knew he had a hit when he heard a MUSEC version of it, like at the mall or something like that, which is kind of like Weird Al covering Nirvana. Cobain said that he knew that Nirvana had made it when Weird Al covered Smells Like Teen Spirit. I think it's basically the same thing. Oh, I think most musicians, unless you're a Ted Nugent who and we'll get to that, but very famously sort of offered to buy music when they fill up on hard times. So he could basically burn it to the ground. I think most musicians deep down think it's kind of an honor when one of their songs is Musacified. Yeah, you'd have to plenty. Right. I just want to find out what somebody is going to do with it because like I was saying at the beginning, it really takes some creativity to come up with, okay, what can I replace this with? That's not just completely predictable or boring, but also isn't going to grab everybody's attention because that's, again, not the point of music. I don't know if it was a slogan of the Music Corporation or not, but they basically said that they fill in the awkward pauses in life to where you see it. Yeah, it's like you were saying at the party, if you're at a party that doesn't have any music on, you just probably just get smashed out of your skull because you're just trying to lubricate the social situation so much. Whereas if you put on music, it's like it takes a lot of that edge off. That was one of the points, too, with music and then also to kind of get you to linger a little longer when you were shopping in a store. That was part of it as well. Yeah. I mean, music we almost always have music on in our house unless it's night and we're watching a movie or watching something on TV, but at almost all waking hours, we have music playing in our home and it just feels weird and quiet and not full of life when there's no music happening. Right. It's strange. It can be strange, for sure. Should we take a break? Yeah. We have reached basically the early 70s, which is Muzak's first crisis point, and we'll come back to that for this. All right, so I'm born in 1971, and music starts to die a little bit. A little bit. Real rock and roller came into the world. That's right. Born with a jean jacket with the Van Halen logo on marker in the back. It did not go away completely, though. It was just sort of, I guess, the beginning of the end. But that didn't mean there wasn't still a business model for MUSEC, because music was never about its popularity. No, but there was a time where it was popular. Like JFK had it on Air Force One. Eisenhower had it piped into the White House. It was playing on board. Apollo Eleven. It was everywhere. It's really hard to get across how ubiquitous it was, but I found a quote from a guy named Professor Gary Gumpert of Queens College in New York. Nice. He said that at the time, music was just kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us. It never starts us. It is never too loud, it's never too silent. It's always there. And that was what it was like. You were just kind of moving from one placid bucolic field to the next, going from mall to mall, store to store, elevator to elevator, bus ride to bus ride. It was just absolutely everywhere. So compared to that, the idea that it's absolutely everywhere unquestioned. Yeah. It really kind of started to take a bit of a downturn in the 70s, but it just didn't go anywhere yet. It took decades for it to really take a hit. Yeah. I mean, even in the 80s that was syndicated in 19 countries, there were 80 million people listening whether or not they wanted to or not listening to music every day. And the company ended up being bought and sold a couple of times over the years. I think in 72, a company called Teleprompter owned it. Yeah. In 81. Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know if I believe this. The story goes that Westinghouse learned later on when they were buying Teleprompter, that they owned music, and apparently they didn't know that. That's what FundingUniverse.com says. I don't know who does it. Maybe back then they didn't do research into purchasing entire corporations. They were on a lot of scotch at the time, man. Although we've had companies that bought websites, and then they learned that there was a podcast program attached. I think I've heard of that. Things you should do or something like that. Yeah, actually, that could happen now that I think about it. That's right. Yeah. I kind of actually felt a deeper affinity from you back when I learned how many times they've been passed around corporation by corporation. And then I think in the I think when did yes Go come along? Was that the 90s. So Yesco was around from the 60s. Well, when they finally came together though, right? Yeah. But they were early competitor. I guess they're kind of a midlife competitor to music. But by the 80s, Yesco had established a name for itself by doing basically the opposite of what Music did. Rather than making covers of canned music without lyrics, they would just go get the licenses of like the hot new song of the moment and play those. And so rather than background music, which is what Music's whole jam was, these guys were pioneering foreground music and they were just a small little outfit from Seattle that it was kind of like the Little Engine that could. And they changed the entire landscape, the audio landscape of the United States, just by being persistent, by getting that word out that, hey, now, foreground is the way to go, not background. That's old stuff. Yeah. And I think that's why today when you go into publix to do your grocery shopping, you'll hear Christopher Cross singing Sailing instead of the music version of sailing. Yeah. Can't we just get both though? Sure. Do we have to choose? I mean, I'm a big Christopher Cross fan. You're not going to find a bigger fan than me. For real? You like him that much? Great. I got his two big albums I still have on my shelf. Oh, yeah. Well, he's sitting in the other room in my house right now. I guess you're the bigger fan. You're like, no, he's just tied up. Well, I was going to say he's not here on his will, under his own will. In fact, you could make a pretty strong case he's here against his will. So in 1984, those when Yesco got officially involved with Musag, I think Musac was did they actually file for bankruptcy or were they just at that sort of Mount Precipice? Not yet. They were teetering right there on the edge. And it was actually they were bought by the Fields Company, the company that owns Marshall Field. So Chicago makes another appearance and the Fields Company said, we like where this esco group is going, we're going to merge with them. So Musac actually merged with Yesco, the smaller company, but then ended up moving to Seattle right before the Grunge movement hit. So Seattle's big musical contribution before Grunge was music. Exactly. I remember seeing that logo. I mean, you've probably seen the vans around before and really not known it's. That M with a circle around it. Right. I remember when I first saw that, I was like, wait a minute, is that the music? Yeah. And that was a big update. They apparently went with some design group, I can't remember the name of it, that just completely reinvented the brand because they went from being in the background to manipulating your mood, using stimulus progression, to this other thing, this new made up sounding thing called what's it called? Quantum physics mechanics. Keep guessing. What else? Realm Leap. No, those are all the quantums I know. There's got to be another one, Chuck, because I'm still looking. I'm so sorry. It's Quantum Leap. We'll just call it Quantum Leap. Sure. Okay, so with this Quantum Leap thing that they had going on, the Bacula Effect, quantum modulation, the Bachelor Effect, quantum modulation. Okay. Okay. I like Bacula Effect. That's a great one. With quantum modulation, we are evoking an emotion that is now tied forever to the brand that you're shopping, the store you're shopping in. Yeah, sure. They hire people who make playlists, who curate these playlists that are start to finish. They all share this one theme. They all kind of have this one, like, cool, not scary. Super hip beachy, spring break, 2018, whatever the best. So, like, a company will say, this is what our brand is all about. Give us playlists that fit this. And so now you're kind of like you feel cool because of the music of where you're shopping, and so that makes you want to shop and associate yourself with that place even more. That's what Muzak that's what's called neomusic is all about. That's the current state of affairs in the industry. Yes. If you want to use Armani Exchange as an example, what they'll do is they will literally try and make, like, a DJ mix that has beat matches, and it doesn't break the momentum, and it's all cross faded. Whereas if Ann Taylor calls them up, they don't want to cross fade. They want Celine Dion songs. And then a little bit of a small break and then a Sting song coming on, and these gentle fades in and fades out, and it's the same sort of stuff. It's just curated. Foreground music. Right. What I love about music is, in the end, when they were finally acquired, they had 1.5 million commercially recorded songs in their catalog, and they call that The Well. Right. That's amazing. Almost 800 Beatles songs. It is. I think that's why they never fully went under that catalog, kept them commercially viable, for sale. Super valuable. It's got to be. Yeah. So they were bought in, I think, 2009, maybe, by a group called Mood Music 2011, and then two years later, they retired the music name forever. Just couldn't do anything with it. So now it's mood Music is the company that owns The Well. Okay. They're doing that whole foreground music, quantum modulation type thing where you just associate a brand with a certain kind of music. Like you wouldn't walk into that Armani exchange and hear Paul Simon. Yeah. Christopher Cross. You'd be like, Something's off here. What is it? Mood Media. Their job is to make sure that there's nothing off while you're in that store, that it all just kind of fits together and you feel good about where you're shopping. I don't know, though, man. You want to move some Armani gear, put on you can call me Al. Just watch it fly out, man, those kids would freak out. Their frosted tips would stand up on them. They're like, what is this? This is amazing. I've never felt more alive. Why is Chevy Chase in here? Oh, man. A really cool thing, though, is what you're talking about with music being on the tech forefront. Yeah, it's really cool that over the years, they were always early adopters of tech, and it's funny to think about them that way, but they were always on the leading edge, in the forefront of what technology was doing. Yeah. So I don't know if they invented them, but they certainly were early adopters, if not pioneers, in vinyl records. People were not using vinyl at the time. Then they eventually ditched the vinyl records in favor of an electronic brain called Mater M, the number eight and the letter R, which basically was a big deck of real to real tapes. They had a bunch of different songs on it, but they had different inaudible pulses that would trigger a different one to come on next. So you could curate lists on these huge reel to reel. It was just amazing. They were using this thing starting in the 50s, so the whole thing became kind of automated. They launched their own satellite in the 70s. They had a computer database in the 70s. They were very much pioneers and early adopters of a lot of different technology that we take for granted today. Yeah. I mean, that you could make an argument that they were doing the Pandora Spotify thing decades before they were doing it. Absolutely. Yeah. The whole point of it, too, is virtually unchanged. It's not necessarily to make you a docile shopper anymore, but they're trying to make you feel like that brand is part of your identity by evoking memories in you, using songs to unlock them. Totally. Pretty interesting stuff, man. I'm going to go. What were those two records again? I want to write this down. Okay. One is more than music, period and environment record that has not just sailing on. It has Olivia Newtonjohn's Magic Take Your Time, Do It Right, which I don't care if the lyrics are there or not, if you're sitting next to your mom in a doctor's office and baby, you can do it, take your time, do It Right comes on. You both know what that song is about. Yeah. It may even be more uncomfortable in that situation. And then it ends with Funky Town. Nice. It's a good one. The other one is called The Blue Album. It's a complete stimulus progression album and it has a bunch of good songs on it, including Orleans Dance With Me, which is, if you ask me, the music covers way better than the original. So not to be confused with Weezers Blue Album, it's a little different. And then if you're like, oh, this music is floating my boat. Go. Start looking up. Ronnie Aldridge. Frank Checksfield Montevani. And just start there. Yeah. And if eventually you're like, I'm feeling really goosey, how about some actual vocalists going on? And then you'll just go right into Josh's other favorite, which is yacht rock. Easy listing. I like yacht rock a lot, too. I'm super right now into West Coast cool jazz. Stan gets Chet Baker. I can't remember his name, but I just got into him. He's a great jazz pianist from that era. Bill Evans. The Bill Evans Trio. Oh, love Bill Evans. You're just getting into Bill Evans. Yeah, I just started getting into I started with Chuck Baker and just started working my way out. Vince Geraldi is another great one. I know he's known for the Charlie Brown stuff, but all of Vince Geraldi is great. Yeah, you can tell just by the Charlie Brown album that he's an amazing jazz guy. Good stuff, Chuck. I have one more thing. People hate music a lot, so there's some artists who have, like, try to a lot of artists have tried to make hay out of the whole thing, but one guy, David Shafer, had something from back in 2000 or 2002. Something. He had X ten R One and X ten R Two. These two CDs that he released, there were basically his weird, unnerving remixes of music that just turns the whole thing on its head. So much so that you may laugh out loud when you first hear them. And I believe they're on his website, but it's like music, but what you would hear in your nightmares. Okay. It's really good. And I believe he's got it on his website to go listen to. And I think you can buy the CDs, too. So check that out. I'll check it out. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about music, just start listening and loving. Just don't prejudge. How about that? Great. Since I said don't prejudge, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. Before we do listener mail, we want to issue a formal apology to people that suffer from mesophonia. In the Titanic Part Two episode Listener Mail, someone wrote in about our ad that we had where someone was whispering, and it was my fault. Frankly, I started off by sort of teasing and whispering. I joined in. You joined in. But I think I let you down the primrose path. You did. But if Chuck jumped off a bridge, would I jump off a bridge? Apparently the answer is yes, but I'm still responsible for that. Well, we heard from plenty of people. I had a really nice back and forth over email with the original emailer. I misinterpreted their sort of joking tone of the email, and she said, yeah, I was trying to be lighthearted about it. So I get where you're coming from. She was fine. She's going to get tickets to a future stuff you should know. Sure. Which she's very excited about. Yes. That's fair. But we worked it out and she's good. And I didn't know it was a real I'd heard of me, Sophonia I didn't know it could be such a debilitating condition or we never would have made fun of it, certainly. I just sort of thought it was people that are like, I just don't like people when they eat food and listening to that. So now we know. Yes, now we know. So thanks to everybody who wrote in and sorry for being jerks about that. Yeah, and I think we should probably do an episode on Misophonia, too. Probably. Yes, for sure. I've started to do it before Chuck and there's not that much info out there, so we will, for sure. I agree with you, but it might take a little longer. All right, so all apologies, everyone, and I hope this helps make it right. Yeah. And now on the listener mail. Right. All right, I'm going to call this from Lauren. Hey, guys. A man walks down the street and says, why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. What a perfect email for this one. I was reading my forearm tattoo by accident. Hey, guys, been listening to Stuff You Should Know for a few years. I often turn up the volume and play an episode while I cook dinner. My seven year old daughter Lila used to complain, oh, you're listening to this again? But I recently caught her singing the beat to the intro music and she'll casually mention things she's heard from time to time. I suspect she's fond of the animal episodes anyway. You'll jokingly. Sometimes say, Jerry, you're going to have to edit that part out. And it has me curious how often things are cut from an episode and why. Bad jokes too long. Have you ever had to completely redo one? I think it'd be really interesting to know, and I bet Lyla would find it encouraging since she likes to make videos of herself singing and dancing. For the record. You'll make it effortless and seem effortless and it's always a joy to listen to that is Lauren from Montevallo, Alabama. I bet that you say that. Montevallo. Yeah, you're probably right. You put a little too much mustard down there. She says, PS. How cool of a mom would I be if my daughter heard her names on the podcast? Yes. Cool. So there you go. Lauren and Lila, the answer is, very little gets edited out. Just the singing and dancing, like that siren in the background. We'll probably just leave that in to prove to point that in. No, we don't edit a lot out occasionally. We found out when we said this before, early on, we left in the word stumbles and the om's and the and just because it's a conversation and we didn't want to make it seem too scripted because it's not. Or canned, because it's not. And so we just left that stuff in there. And the only time I think today you had to look something up real quick. But that doesn't happen much. Yeah, I had to poke my head out of the studio and look at my record collection that come up with Belle Evans name. That's gone now, but very little is edited out, especially after this many years. We're not one take wonders, but Jerry doesn't have the hardest job in the world. We've taken it easy on her for years. Yeah, that's about it. Chuck. I can't think of anything else we really added out. But that's not to say that shows that are heavily edited and varies kind of scripting and slick like, there's room for those, too. Yeah. We're not the only way to do it. No. We're like the music of podcasts. There's other people who are all like, the Ted Nugent of podcasts, and there's room for both. Yeah, like Roman Mars. The Ted Nugent of podcast. That's right. Man, that guy is always wearing, like, a studded leather wristband and stuff. I keep waiting on Roman to text me and being like, you guys are consistently talking smack about me. He doesn't listen, and no one he knows listen. That's impossible. So who is that? Lila and Lauren. Correct. Nice. Well, thank you very much for writing and hopefully answered your question. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Lila and Lauren did, you can send us an email, send it off to stuart. Podcast@iheartradiocom 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." | |
How Suicide Bombers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-suicide-bombers-work | It 1981 the first modern suicide bomber blew himself up. But this was by no means the first suicide bombing. Israeli psychologists evaluated the motivations of suicide bombers and found a number of commonalities. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more. | It 1981 the first modern suicide bomber blew himself up. But this was by no means the first suicide bombing. Israeli psychologists evaluated the motivations of suicide bombers and found a number of commonalities. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more. | Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:48:38 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=19, tm_min=48, tm_sec=38, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=172, tm_isdst=0) | 24956836 | audio/mpeg | "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 Charlie is W Chuck Bryant looking as spry as ever. Have you ever seen bad Santa? Yeah. Remember the kid? He's like, You're Granny. Is she spry? And he's putting on a ski mask, and they come in the door and he goes, Granny, are you spry? Really? Yeah. She's like, I'll make you some sandwiches. You're looking very spry today, Chuck. You've done something that you've never done to me before. What, man? What's going on? You literally put a video on your laptop and just turned it around and then started the podcast. And I'm waiting to see what happens because I think it might have something to do with the podcast. Did you see it? Did it happen? It happens. Pretty awesome. And it has nothing to do with what we're podcasting, does it? I just wanted you to see it, buddy. General interest. I will be putting that on the Facebook page. Okay. Because ain't no party like our Facebook page is. Party? Yes. You're into people getting flung off of things, apparently, I'm in a little bit of that mood right now. Yeah. How are you doing? I'm great. Well, good. We should probably tone it down a little bit because this is a grim subject we're about to talk about. Yeah, that was the first minute was about all the fun we're going to have here. Yeah. So, Chuck, I got an intro for you. Okay. I was jogging. You, me and I were jogging on treadmills, as is our want, usually. And I prefer treadmills because I can watch TV while I do it and just totally forget that I'm running. Right. That kills me, but it works so well. I'm up to 5 miles each time. Right. You know what? Sobering, though? Go try to run a single mile on pavement. I don't need to. There's no TVs on pavement. Much different. During one of these ventures, I was watching CNN, and it was Wolf Blitzer, and this weird segment came on where one of Wolf Blitzer's journalists was in Libya meeting with the family of a man who had blown himself up in a car full of explosives to gain entry for Libyan rebel fighters into this city. It's a very disputed city. I can't remember which one. And the guy was sitting down with the family. The two daughters and the wife. Who were grieving but holding a picture of the man. Talked to his best friend. Who picked up the pieces of the guy. And I realized it took me a minute. But it was dawning on me that this is exactly what. Say. Afghani or Talibani state television would do with one of their suicide bombers. It was just like the embargo on disgust over suicide bombing, as a general rule, was lifted because someone CNN was rooting for blew himself up, right. And suddenly it was okay. But I mean, like, step for step, it was like a celebration of this man's heroism for blowing himself up. And I just thought it was really nuts. And I guess it's probably as unobjective as I should be throughout this podcast, but it struck me as really strange. I wrote a blog post on it called CNN oddly Celebrate Suicide Bombers, Hero, or something like that, but it was just so weird. And in the blog post, there's video. Somebody found it and posted it. There's video of this weird segment that just sticks out like a sore thumb. And I guess what I learned is that my personal opinion is suicide bombing is wrong no matter what side is doing it. I think I would agree with that. All right, so this is a relatively new thing, right? Suicide bombing? It's new because bombs are fairly new, right? Yeah, but it's far more ancient than that. It is. The concept of killing yourself or dying in the name of religion is pretty ancient. Oh, yeah. You want to go all the way back to martyrdom in general? Might as well. Okay, start at the beginning. Martyrdom is what we're talking about. Obviously, when you talk about suicide bombing, it's forsaking your own life, for a higher cause, for a principle, for your faith, anything that is not for your direct, like, earthly benefit, but maybe benefit later on to elevate your cause, but benefits for you in the afterlife. And so generally, that's what we suspect make suicide bombers tick. That's what is martyrdom. Although there's a deep religious affiliation between martyrdom and suicide, like this suicide bombing, it doesn't necessarily have to be religious. It can be sure your side, your cause, like the 49 year old oil worker who is Libyan, was for the rebel faction, and it had nothing to do with religion. He was just willing to die for his cause, as all suicide bombers are. Yeah. Religion kicks it up a little notch, though, and the reason why is because it's so ingrained. The two are so entangled from such an ancient place. Right? Like our Lamb, who did this article, who did this, he wrote it. He traces martyrdom back to the second or third century BC. Right. With King Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah, the famous story in Bible history, the Book of Daniel. We all know King Nebuchadnezzar gave, as the BC boys called them, shadrack Nebed nico. Yeah, I can't see those three names together without thinking about that, too. Well. These boys were three Jewish guys. That's probably why they called themselves that in the song and in the Bible story. Nebuchadnezzar gave him the choice he can renounce your Jewish faith or you can burn alive. And they said, you know what? We're the Beastie Boys and we don't give in to anybody, and so we're going to not renounce our faith. They were thrown into the fiery furnace and they lived. Right. Which the lesson there was an early lesson in martyrdom, which was, hey, you know what? God's going to protect those who die in his name. Doesn't it make you wonder. Like. Don't you tend to think that in stories like that somewhere eons ago something happened. Possibly with these three people. What happened that eventually got translated into they were thrown into this furnace and they walked out unscathed. Like did somebody lose their grip on them and they skirted across like a campfire and their robes didn't catch and everybody's like. Oh. My God. And then just to make it more easily digestible for the masses, it was transformed into this larger thing. My feeling when it comes to parables like this, where to me it's obvious that someone wasn't unscathed in a burning fire, was that maybe someone was burned, like they were being tortured and saying, renounce your religion, being burned with like fiery torches or something. And they refused and refused and they couldn't be broken and so they were set free. And that becomes a parable in the way of something miraculous like this. That makes sense. It's good analysis. I'll probably get killed for that. But the point is, the idea was that God's got your back if you're willing to die for him, right? Yes. But that eventually transformed into what people still believe today, that toil on this planet leads to bounty in the next life. The big three all believe that. And you can trace that back to the early church, the early Jewish faith, the early Christian faith and the early Muslim faith. And martyrdom goes back just as far and comes from the same tree. The idea that if you sacrifice yourself, you're going to gain reward after this. So what's a few minutes of pain for a lifetime of happiness and pleasure? Right, well, and the non suicide version where you're actually killing other people in the name of your God goes back to maybe not the first time, but one good example Robert used was in 64 Ad. Rather than surrendering to the Roman authorities, a rebel group basically killed their own, themselves and every last man and woman. This one, I think, was probably literal. Yeah, probably so. Think about how that would be treated today, though. Yeah. Like the authorities are coming and you kill every man, woman and child inside. Sounds like a standoff at Waco or something. But your point is? I think the larger point is that people were willing to kill themselves, kill those close to them and kill others eventually in the name of God and expected some sort of reward for it. Right. So you were talking about the rise of Islam. Right. So it was Ad 610 when the Prophet Muhammad received his first vision. Right, yeah. And basically was set about going forth to found Islam and within 14 years he'd amassed something of an army and was taking on other people in the area. Right, right. It was pretty successful at it. Right, yeah. So what I gained from this and I'm certainly not a scholar on Islam at all, I'm not a scholar in any religion, but Islam came out of a place of strife and battle. And so thusly this concept of jihad came about fairly early on. Yeah. There's two parts to jihad. If you've never you've heard that word a lot, used probably for the second part, which was a righteous battle in the physical world. But the first part of jihad means it's an inward struggle of the soul in Arabic. So it's a two pronged thing there. And the Quran basically vindicated defense and combat in the name of protecting the faithful as well as retaliation. So it's traced back to the Quran as far as probably the birth of the notion of something like a suicide bombing, even though it certainly doesn't say that anything about that anywhere in the Quran. Right. So jihad played a big role in the Crusades, which was the Christian version of the Holy War. Right? Yes. And that was taking it to the Muslims doorstep, basically invading the Middle East. Right. Europeans invading the Middle East. That was the Crusades. And so from these conflicts during the Dark Ages, the Medieval Ages, the Crusades, and after the birth of Islam, this idea of taking a single person and going and doing as much damage as you possibly could came about. So do you remember in the sniper podcast we talked about snipers being considered militarily force multipliers? Yes. So our suicide assassins. Absolutely. And the term assassin actually comes out of this era and from the Middle East. From the word hashishin. Yes. Persian word, the name of a radical Shiite sect. I didn't know that. Yeah. So hashish and assassin are one and the same? Hashishin, hashish assassin. Right. Sounds more like it. That way, you may recognize the word hashish as a type of pot residue. So if you find it odd that the word hashish pops up, be advised that the sect, the hashishan, smoked hash as part of their religious ritual. Oh, really? Yeah. They were also the ones, though, who would go out and they were tasked with killing public officials in very public places to basically terrorize the population. If you kill somebody like that, you cut someone's head off in a crowded square, you're going to die. But the leader's head just got cut off in front of me, and now I'm really freaked out. Yeah. It was the first early versions, ancient versions of later become suicide bombings. Right. But that sect was wiped out by Mongols in 1257, and it was kind of a break on this activity for a while, as far as world history goes. And then you get to World War II and the Japanese kamikaze pilots, who are most essentially suicide bombers. Right. Except by way of a plane. Yeah. Through the brucido code. Yeah. But usually think suicide bombing is someone on foot, but it can really there's been boats, there's been cars and trucks. Trucks, humans walking, and then obviously planes flying into aircraft carriers. Really? A mail cart filled with explosives. You're going to get the same you're a suicide bomber. Well, Robert Lam puts the first modern suicide attack in Lebanon in 1981 during war between civil war between Christian and Muslim militants. And there was a lone suicide bomber, a Shiite hit an Iraqi embassy in Beirut, and the US entered the conflict the next year. In 1983, suicide bomber drove into the US embassy. I remember that actually killing 63 people. Yeah. That was in April. And most folks say this is like the beginning of the modern suicide mission. Right. And then in October, 2 truck bombs drove into the Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 299 people, french and American, I think 241 Marines. So, like you said, that's the birth of the modern suicide bomber. And unfortunately it's just basically been gaining momentum ever since. This whole concept of I'm going to strap a bunch of explosives to myself and walk into a crowd and blow myself up and kill as many other people as I possibly can. Yeah. Let's poke around inside the mind because people have been curious what kind of person does this? Because obviously, if you look at just from a straight physical standpoint, they did find between the ages of 18 and 24 is your average age of a suicide bomber. Yeah. Apparently Israel conducted studies in the late ninety s to figure out what they, you know, who suicide bombers were. Right. So the sense of despondency and teens is playing a part here. The whole world is against them. How many teams feel that way? I know I did. Yeah. And it's no different in other countries. Combine these feelings with tyranny, you're oppressed, you're angry. And then the final center here is usually and I think they even have a study that there's some sort of personal loss attached to the person that ends up being picked to carry out the mission. Their parents were killed or wounded or put in prison. Yeah, it will do it. Yes. It wasn't a study, but it said Israeli psychiatrist sifted through the lies is how Robert put it. And they did discover, in almost all cases, connections to like slain or wounded family members or friends, and for the most part they were males. But as time has worn on, women, children, older people have all joined the echelons of suicide bombers. Right? Yes. They're usually very poor. Yeah. Did you hear about the woman from I guess she was a Chechnya extremist in Moscow on New Year's Eve. She had a suicide belt and was getting ready to walk out into Red Square to blow herself up and take just tons of people with her. And she decided it didn't match her purse, she didn't make it out of the apartment because she got a spam text from her cell phone provider saying, Happy New Year, and it blew her up. Really? In her room? Yes, in her apartment. Wow. She didn't have her cell phone off, which apparently is standard procedure. Turn your cell phone off. They went out and bought a cell phone just for that purpose. The provider sent out a spam text to everybody. Because cell phone providers are thinking, like, we're providing service to somebody who's going to blow up a bunch of people as a terrorist. We want to tell everyone happy New Year. Exactly. Wow. I didn't hear about that. It's true. So one other common trait is that they obviously are willing to die for their cause, but they are also willing to kill for their cause. Most terrorists, they have no empathy for the suffering of other people. And it helps that in the case of us versus them, that the theme is very different from themselves, which is certainly the case with the Middle East and the United States couldn't be any more different as far as countries go and people go. Yeah. There's definitely a whole sentiment that occupation and invasion fans the flames of suicide bombing. Oh, yeah. Because you see Americans as an invader and an occupier and a savage and a non believer, which is a big part of that part about jihad in the Quran, right. Says basically, like, this is what happens to non believers. Is this what you do to non believers? Right, to an extent. Robert points out that if suicide bombers were left just completely alone, they might want to back out or think twice. So that's why they surround them toward go time with a social network of supporters to say, you're doing the right thing. They isolate you from your family and friends right. And show you videos, martyrdom videos, to reinforce that what you're doing is well, no, you make a martyrdom video. Oh. You make your own thing. Like, I'm about to blow a bunch of people up and I can't wait to get to the afterlife. And I'm like a true believer. You're right, I read that wrong. And it's not only inspiring, it's also like, you can't back out now. You've made your video. Right. This is your point of no return. Well, because yeah, that'd be probably even more shameful. But I think people that survival instinct is very strong. So these people that are handling them, usually one of them will go with the suicide bomber to the target area, and we'll basically keep them encouraged and on track, and I imagine we'll blow them up if they decide that they want to back out. Yeah, well, and beyond that, sometimes it's planned that way. Sometimes the assistant has the detonator to prevent any kind of back out. I think there's probably a backup deter. Yeah. Okay. It's my suspicion. So we're talking about the nuts and bolts of it all of a sudden. Let's go ahead with that. You mean the shrapnel? Yeah, suicide bomber. It's not a very elaborate, expensive operation. It costs about $150, probably worth of explosives, and one human life willing to do so. And you've got yourself a suicide bomber. Whether it's a duffel bag full of stuff or something, you strap on your chest. Like you said, they've used trucks and boats. Well, duffel bags are apparently out of vogue because you'll get shot in the head if you look like you are driving remotely. Middle Eastern. And you have a duffel bag. Right. At least if you're in London in 2005 and you're Brazilian. Right? Yeah. But you were saying this it's just one person with a duffel bag or a vest or a belt. Yeah. And the attack of a suicide bomber is three fold, right? One, it kills a bunch of people, so it's terroristic. Two, it draws a lot of attention to this cause that at least one person is willing to die for. And then three, it's a force multiplier because it has a huge effect on morale in the psyche of the population. Yes, but it can also go the other way. As pointed out with World War II, it's happened both ways in America, because when 241 Marines were killed in the truck bombing in, president Reagan said in his memoir that had a big deal with his pulling out of that region. Like, he was like, no, you know what? Forget that these people are willing to do this. I'm getting my guys out of there. Or in the case of World War II, with the Japanese, let's drop two bombs on their country that they won't be able to recover from because they're willing to fly their planes into our aircraft carrier. You know, that's not how the Japanese tell it. How do they tell? They tell it like they were starting to make moves that they were willing to surrender. And the Americans had so much money invested in this research that they basically needed and wanted to see what happened. It certainly doesn't surprise me there are two versions of that story. Yeah, that's the way history works. So Chuck? Yes, I guess. What are these things made of? You said you can fill a truck belt, all this stuff, what is it? Well, it varies, of course, between what your resources are. I think in the early days, they would just rejigger landmines and use those, but now it's everything from TNT to something called TATP, triathletone, triple oxide, and then other plastic explosives. So they can do a lot of damage. Right. And they found, too, that the more people around the suicide bomber, the better. Obviously not for those people close in proximity, but if you hear that there's a suicide bomber suspect, and all of a sudden the crowd disperses, it's going to have a blast zone that's much greater and cover much more area because the thick mass of people around that person create basically a human shield. Yeah. Just pretty serious stuff. In London, 2005, I talked about that. Can't remember. Oh, is that what you meant by shot in the head? Yes. He got shot in the head seven times. Yeah. And he's not a suicide bomber. No, he's just some guy from Brazil. Mistaken identity. Yeah. That's a pretty jumpy time, if I remember correctly. Yes, it was. You got anything else? No, I thought the very end had a very interesting thing that Israeli settlers were trying was they proposed burying suicide bombers in pigskin body bags. Yes. As a way of discouraging suicide bombers from because I guess that they think if I'm going to be buried in pigskin, that's not the afterlife that I'm looking for. Right. But the problem is Robert does a good job pointing this out, I think, when suicide bombing is capable of dehumanizing on both levels. Right. Yeah. That would have not only, I guess, dehumanized the suicide bomber, but it dehumanized the Israelis. Right. So part of the whole feedback mechanism for suicide bombings is that one side doesn't see the other achievement any longer. Right. You're willing to die for your cause, so you're crazy, or you are worth dying to kill because I don't see you as a person any longer. And so that would have been counterproductive, I'm sure. Good job. This is a tough one. Yeah, it was. I'm glad we got through it, man. Okay. Yeah. It's a tough topic. I hope he explained how it works in the history. Was it good? Yeah. If you want to learn more about suicide bombers, you can type in suicide bombers. Terrorism. There's another article on how terrorism works. Just type whatever you want in the search bar howstofworks.com? And you will be pleasantly surprised. We virtually guarantee it. I said handy search bar. So what do you want to do? No listener mail today. All right. In lieu of listener mail, because I was just reading listener mail. It's just not enough. I saw that you made a facing kind of, like, way. Not today. And I don't have another one ready, so let's just say how about just a thank you for listening? Is that good? That's what we're doing. Yeah. All right. Thank you for listening, everybody. Yeah, something simple. That was it. Keep it pure. Okay. All right. If you want to say thank you back, we always appreciate that. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join housetofwork 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 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. 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How the Rosetta Stone Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-rosetta-stone-works | Sometimes providence smiles on historians. Thus is the case with the Rosetta stone, an ancient Egyptian tablet that served as the key for unlocking hieroglyphics, lost to time for a millennia. Learn about the international intrigue, rivalry to translate i | Sometimes providence smiles on historians. Thus is the case with the Rosetta stone, an ancient Egyptian tablet that served as the key for unlocking hieroglyphics, lost to time for a millennia. Learn about the international intrigue, rivalry to translate i | Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:34:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=34, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=246, tm_isdst=0) | 35123696 | audio/mpeg | "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. What if you are a gigantic snack food maker who needs to satisfy cravings? From Tokyo to Toledo. So you partner with IBM consultants to manage your supply chain with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseteporkworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. The overly hot studio edition. I have a bit of a chill. No, you don't. I do. I'm not at all hockey. You also said that it hurt when our new coworkers shook your hand. What does that say? That has a strong handshake. Okay. And you're always cold. It's always lamps in here. Well, Jerry's decorated it's nice. It is nice. It's just like an Ikea catalog. That's right. Chuck? Yes. How many times have you been to Egypt? Counting that trip in high school, zero. Same here. Yeah. And yet we know an awful lot about Egypt. Yeah. It's popular, especially ancient Egypt. Sure. Like, I would wager that we probably know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egypt. Most people in the west. Yes. Is there a modern Egypt? There is. And it's undergoing quite a bit of turmoil right now. Yeah, I know. Kidding. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that Egypt was still around. Yes. Okay. Well, the reason that you and I know a lot about Egypt is thanks to a soft science, one of the humanities, you would call it called Egyptology. Pretty on the nose name for the study of ancient Egypt. Yeah. It's a real popular thing, and has been for a while. A while, but not too terribly long, I would say about the beginning of the 19th century. And the reason that all of it was fostered and that all of it came about and that we, you and me, know about Egypt was because of the discovery of a tablet known as the Rosetta Stone. Right. But you can also go back even further and make the case that if it wasn't for Napoleon Bonaparte, we may not understand Egypt to this day. Yeah. That little guy. He wasn't that little, though. Is that right? Right. He was average height. Right. Why do people say that then? Where does that come from? Because some doctor wrote down, I think, upon his death, that he was five foot two. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the doctor was using the French inch, which is longer than the British imperial inch. Really? So when you translate five foot two from the French inch to the imperial, he was about five six. Okay. Which is average height. And the other reason why he was called like, the little emperor by his armies was because compared to most of his bodyguards and the people he had around him sure he was shorter than them. Yeah. I guess when you're five six, he wants some six four dudes around you. Right. But the idea that he was a very short man is not correct. Yeah, I had always heard that, but I didn't know the story. The French inch. There's your band name for the day. Although I typically don't like rhyming names. French inch doesn't rhyme. It sounds similar. I wouldn't call it a rhyme. French an inch. Yeah. French inch. The e and the i. Yes. That's nitpicky. Well, yeah, it's the vowels that rhyme, not the consonants. Yeah, but if you were Steve Malcolm and you put French at the end of a line and an inch at the end of another, it would be rhymey. And you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah. Well, there was a Pavement reference episode that's becoming a daily thing, too. So you want to get on with this? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to be talking Rosetta Stone, not the language software, which neither one of us has ever used. No, we're talking about the real thing, which is actually bigger than I thought. Many things are smaller for me. Like, when you see them in person, mona Lisa. Of course. Mona Lisa is small. Like, I went to England. I was like Big Ben. That ain't so big. Oh, really? Yes. I don't think I had the impression of Big Ben, but okay. I was kind of overwhelmed. It definitely didn't seem big. Whereas the Eiffel Tower, that was bigger than I thought. That is where I developed a fear of heights that still plagues me to this day. It literally happened to me on the Eiffel Tower on the way up. Never had a fear of heights in my entire life. On the way down, I was hanging on to the fence. Really? And it took me forever to get down because I was suddenly deathly afraid of it just hit me. My brain changed. Yeah. How old were you? 17. Wow. Yeah. I didn't go up to the top. I probably missed out. I didn't either. It was the first level that got me. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. All right. Anyway, where was I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought it was. It is black Bassalt, and it weighs about three quarters of a ton. 46 inches high, zero, 530 inches wide and twelve inches deep. And it's large. It's heavy. You didn't write this, did you? No, no. It's about the size of a heavy coffee table. Were you about to make fun of something? No, I was just going to say whoever wrote this referenced an LCD TV. Medium size. Yeah. Medium screen, LCD television. Oh, by the way, thank you to Theresa Dove fan request. Okay. Yeah, that's who requested this one? Yeah. Okay. So it's larger than I thought, and I learned a lot about this. I thought the Rosetta Stone, because I'm a dummy, was literally like, here's what our alphabet is and here's what everything means. And now that you've found it, you can decipher everything. Yeah, I think I had the same impression as well, until I read this. I thought it was, like, created as a key to hire Glyphics. Not at all. Not so it was a government document. Basically, it's a stele is the plural. And it's not just the Egyptians that use Stella. The Mayans have largely been figured out. Their language has from old stele. Yeah. Well, that's it. Those are the two that use dela. Yeah. In this case, it's an inscription carved in three different languages. Greek hieroglyphics and demonic with a t. Not demonic. Yeah, demonic. But since I'm from the South, I soften my teeth, so it might sound like I'm saying demonic. Yeah. And basically it was in the three languages to ensure that everybody could read it because it was an official government degree. Not super exciting, though. No, it wasn't. Basically what the Rosetta Stone says, and like you said, it's in three languages. There's a decree that says essentially that Ptolemy V is a great ruler and he is a righteous worshiper of all the right gods. So he's okay in our book. And this decree was made by some priests who gathered at Memphis. And they inscribed the stone or had it inscribed and dated March 27, 196 BC. Yeah. And it doesn't actually say March 27 in hieroglyphics. It says 18 Mashir, which on the Egyptian calendar translates to something like March 27. And then they got the 196 because somewhere in there it references the 9th year of Ptolemy the fifth Rain, which is about 196. So that's where they got the date from. What we would in the west equate it to yeah. So like we said, it doesn't say anything of particular interest at the time. It was an important message. But it's not the Rosetta Stone because of what is transcribed upon that stone. No, it's the fact that it's in three different languages. Exactly. Yeah. So there's, like you said, hieroglyphics, demonic and Greek and hieroglyphics were a sacred alphabet. They use it for really important stuff. See, I didn't know this either. I thought just any old thing they wanted to write was hieroglyph. No, that's what they had demiotic for or demotic. That was kind of like an abbreviated, shorthand, more vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah. And in between that was higher attic, which was slightly more complicated than demonic, but less complicated and not sacred. Like hieroglyphics. Yeah. It was kind of a transition between demotic and hieroglyphics. Yeah. It's cursive. Right. So you could use hire attic for like a business transaction. But if you were saying the king is a very righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods, you're going to use higher Glyphics. That's right. So to have it written in Greek, demotic, which was an offshoot of hierarchy, which is an offshoot of hieroglyphics and hieroglyphics, these priests that gathered and issued this decree that was written on the Rosetta Stone, they made sure that everyone in Egypt who was literate could read this one way or another. Yeah. And it was sort of not a stroke of luck. I mean, it was just smart thinking at the time, but ended up being a stroke of luck because the three languages without that, I don't think we may have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics. No, agreed. They've been lost forever. Exactly. And that's not the only way that the Rosetta Stone was kind of a bit of fortune. So the reason that it was lost was up until the fourth century Ad, any average Egyptian could have read the Rosetta Stone one way or another. But after that, the Egypt, it left the Pharaonic stage. Cleopatra is the last pharaoh of Egypt, and then it came to be ruled by the Greeks later on, the Romans, the Talmites and a bunch of different foreigners or different groups. And with these groups came the introduction of new gods and the suppression of old gods. And since hieroglyphics were very much religious in nature, they are sacred or holy, but associated with those old gods, hieroglyphics itself came to be cut off, stopped, suppressed. Yeah. Especially Christianity. They tended to want to get rid of other competing gods and languages that are tied to those gods. Right. But luckily, we still had demotic. That's right. And demonic wasn't taboo. That eventually became what's known as Coptic, and Coptic used some Greek and then a little bit of still of the hieroglyphic symbols. So there's still like this, just a little bit, very tenuous link between Coptic and hieroglyphics. But. Then Coptic is lost. It's pushed out by Arabic. Yeah. And then that was way gone. Goodbye, hieroglyphics. That's it. That was like higher glyphos is no longer understood by anyone walking planet Earth. And that means that all of the ancient Egyptian civilization itself was lost. Yeah. 1000 years. Aside from its structures, the thought put into it, the reasoning behind it, all the explanations, all the inscriptions, all the writing all over these ancient buildings are understood by no one now. And then, as a result of that, the buildings themselves, the last vestiges of this ancient civilization, are deconstructed and used for the next wave by new rulers. And so ancient Egyptian culture is lost to the mists of time. Yeah. Wow. Thank you. Very nice. Yeah. There was no love lost. They were basically like, we don't need this language anymore. We don't need these sacred buildings anymore. They're pagan anyway. Yeah. Let's tear them all down, build up new ones. And oddly, the Rosetta Stone was actually used as a buttress in a wall of a new building. Yes. So part of the construction. Right. That's how this is another way that this is all the stroke of luck after stroke of luck. So the first stroke of luck, as you pointed out, is that they just happen to decree that this thing be written in three languages. Same message in three languages. Then it's used for a building a wall. Right. Yeah. Then it happens to be discovered by some French who are marooned in Egypt because they got crushed by the British right. When they tried to invade. Yeah, I guess. Let's talk about that for a second. Okay. The French thought, hey, we need to get a strong hold on India eventually. And Napoleon said, I think a good way to do that is to start a little further away in, let's say, Egypt. Let's cut off the Brits access to the Nile River, and that'll really help our cause. Unfortunately, the Brits had a great navy and pretty much destroyed all their ships and stranded them in Egypt for, what, 19 years. Yeah. And so for the French, whose ships were now at the bottom of Abu Kir Bay, they decided that they really kind of needed to set themselves to creating forts. Yeah. Like, since we're here. Right. And it wasn't just military that was there. Part of this invasion, this strategy that Napoleon had come up with to take over Egypt was kind of a hearts and mind strategy, too. And so he created something called the Institute of Egypt, also known as the Scientific and Artistic Commission. Mineralogist mathematicians, art historians, a lot of engineers, chemists, all of these people from the letters and sciences brought together to understand and study Egypt. Yeah. They were actually given military rank, but they weren't I think that was just more of a here, just so we'll call you military. Right. They weren't for military backgrounds, so they were thinkers, but they were among this invading force that was less stranded in France. So as the real military guys were building the forts, the people from the Institute of Egypt start studying Egypt. Yeah, I guess they were the first Egyptologists. Yeah. Oh, boy. It was close. They definitely were. And it was very covert operation. Like, they weren't really allowed to talk about what they were doing that much, except to just say, hey, we're following Napoleon's orders, acting on behalf of the good of the French Republic. Right. That's what we're doing. Don't ask any questions. Yeah. Don't ask why I have this measuring tape out. Exactly. Or why I'm transcribing things from papyrus. But they did become, I guess, embedded with the local population as well, health, learn as much as they could. And so it's under this climate that French soldier one day finds this very polished black stone that's inscribed, and something about it told him that it was pretty important. So we took it to these early Egyptologists, the French, and said, you guys think this is important? And they said, yes. Yeah, that was lieutenant Pierre Francois Bushard, and he took it to his boss, and they said, okay, this is weird that this is built into a wall, but it's clearly something of note, and maybe we should take a closer look at it. And immediately they started to get to work on trying to transcribe. It super difficult at the time and would prove to be difficult over the years. It eventually ended up in the hands of England, of course, but luckily, the institute of Egypt people made copies of it. Yeah. I think that like etchings or plaster molds and things, I'm sure. Yeah. But they had readable copies of the rosetta stone, so when they did give it up to the British, it wasn't entirely lost to them. That's right. And give it up, as in, not, here, have this. It was more like, here, we're taking this in the treaty of Alexandria. We're going to take this in a bunch of other stuff. So now basically, you have the French and the British both have the rosetta stone. The one group that doesn't are the Egyptians. But we'll get to that later. Yeah. 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 homepage and enter code stuff. And both of them recognize that this is a very important something. They know that it's some sort of decree. They recognize that it's in three different languages. And I think it becomes obvious to them that this could be the key to understanding hieroglyphs, which people have tried to understand. This is not new. No. People going back to a fellow named Horopolo, who was a fifth century scholar. Supposedly, he may not have actually existed. He created basically what was a translation for hieroglyphics. Right. But it was a false translation, as we'll see, but dating back basically from the moment that hieroglyphics were lost to history, people have tried to understand them. So the British and the French were aware of this. Like, this may be the key to these mysterious hieroglyphics, and this is important. So we're going to try to translate it. Yeah. Well, it became a race, really, because they didn't like each other very much, and they both wanted to be the first ones to figure out what these hieroglyphics meant and how to unlock this history. They sent their best and their brightest. On the English side, the British side, it was a scholar named Thomas Young. And then on the French side, we had Jean Francois Champagne, who he was sort of born to do this, apparently. He was way into Egypt as a kid, even, and as a young child said, I'm going to figure out hieroglyphics one day. Yeah. He was even called the Egyptian because he had dark skin and dark hair, and I think a magician, like, foretold his fame one day. Yeah. When he was born, supposedly a magician said, this guy's going to be famous. And he was. And he was a very talented linguist. He studied under a guy named Sylvester de Sasi. Yeah. Antoine Isaac, Sylvester de Sasie who would take a crack at the Rosetta stone. But he trained Champaglion. Is that how we're saying it? Oh, yeah, sure, he trained him. But Shampolio quickly went from student to master. He applied to be a student at an institute in Paris, and they were impressed enough with his application that they said, how about you just skip the school part and come beyond the faculty? That's pretty good. Yeah. That's a talented linguist. Yeah. They said the same thing when I applied to Georgia. Is that right? You just want to go and be an English teacher? Yeah. Oh, really? You turned it down? Sure. I wanted to be a student. Oh, got you. So before all this happens, we have the Greek inscription transcribed, which it was Reverend Steven Watson. And I don't want to say it was no big deal, but there were quite a few people that could have done this. It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics. No. But it was a necessary part of the process. So we want to give them as due. So we have a translation, an accurate translation of what the Grand Stone says. Exactly. So that's step one. And if you have one translated, then if you're linguist, I guess it sounds really difficult to do. I can't imagine the painstaking process of figuring out an alphabet. Yeah. I mean, think about how hard it is to translate a well known language into a language that you speak. Imagine translating a language that's totally lost into something understandable. Yeah. So we had the Greek and then eventually we had the Demotic as well. Yeah. Thanks to Antoine. And that same year, at the same time, a Swedish diplomat named Ocrbalad also translated the demonic and they both went about it two different ways. I thought this is pretty interesting. Yeah. So Desasi figured out that there were two proper names, at least in there, ptolemy and Alexander, and he used those to match up sounds and symbols. Ocrblad probably had the bigger breakthrough. He used a different technique. He recognized that there was something similar between Demotic and Coptic. Yeah, he was well schooled in Coptic. Right. Which helped, obviously. Yeah. That was his big breakthrough. He figured out what words spelled love, temple and Greek, and he used that to form basically this rough structure for demonic based on his awareness of Coptic. Yeah. That's only eleven letters. It's pretty impressive. Yes. But if you've got eleven letters, it's a decent I think they called it a skeletal outline. I guess that's what you'd have. Well, yeah, especially since Coptic was only about 22, plus a couple more from Hieroglyphics. Yeah. It's like a big Wheel of Fortune game after that. Right. So the thing is, though, this established connection now between Coptic and demonic, and then Demotic and Hieroglyphic, since they're side by side, that kind of opened up this mentality that would be needed to finally crack the Hieroglyphics for the Rosetta Stone. And Thomas Young was the first to really try it. He was the British guy and he got somewhat far, but he gave up. Yeah. In 1814, his big breakthrough was figuring out what a cartoosh was. Yeah. And that is they say oval, but it's a little more squared away with round edges, but it's a loop, basically, with Hieroglyphic characters in it. And he figured out that these are not only proper names, but royal names. Anything contained in a cartouch is a royal name, which was a big breakthrough because he identified tolamie the pharaoh's name in one of the cartouches cartouches. And his queen Baronika, was in there as well. So he said, you know what? Again, I've got these two names now to work with. But he was still working on Hieropolo's false premise that Hieroglyphics was not phonetic in nature and then it was based just on symbols. Right. That's what Hiropolo's big contribution was, to confuse centuries worth of scholars. It's not bad for Young because he was onto something, and if he wasn't using that, the fake or not fake, but just the poor system, then he might have figured it out. Right. So this is the thing everyone believed Heropolo, because Hiropolo claimed that his translation was a direct translation from Hieroglyphic. It was written in the fifth century Ad, right around the time we lost Hieroglyphics. So it was considered to be a primary source and basically completely reasonable. Yeah. But it was wrong. It was wrong because it said that hieroglyphics are symbolic. So, like, if you see a cart, a picture that looks like a cart next to a cat and then a lizard, what that should say under hiropolis translation is cart, cat, lizard. This kept throwing everybody off because it didn't make sense. Right. Especially when compared to the Greek translation and the translation of demonic. It didn't make any sense whatsoever. So, like you said, Young gave up, but he published his findings and you can really strongly make a case that, had it not been for Young's breakthrough, champaglion would not have cracked the Rosetta Stone. No. We should mention here that they should just accept each other as coworkers and colleagues and get along. But there was a competition that exists to this day of what country claims that they translated the Rosetta Stone. The French still say that Champagne was really the one. The Brits obviously say, no, it was really Young. And even when they displayed it in 1072, one of the few times it's left England, or maybe the only time they let France display it for, like, a year, they argued about the size of the photos of the two on both sides of it, when in fact, the photos were the same size of Young and champagne. Yeah. Not photos, but portrait portraits. Yeah. But the French were like, well, no, young's is bigger. The Brits were like, no, his is bigger. Right. And they were the same size. So they never came to a common ground on who did it, when in fact, they both did. And there were rumors, apparently, during that time that France is going to just steal the Rosetta Stone and keep it and not return it back to England. And this is in the 1970s, not like a long time ago. Right. So champagne picked up in 1814, where Young left off and started to think, you know what? I need to think more about this symbol thing. That hiropolo. I don't know if he was on base after all. And that was actually the breakthrough. He got some old cartoons and he figured out that the last two letters and one of them were identical. So that's a good thing because it's the same letter. He figured out that it was the letter S and then the first character was a circle and he said, maybe that's the sun. Right. And in ancient Egypt, the Sun God was ran. Captain. Yeah. And so basically figured out that name was Ramsays. Yeah. And that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the identical letters. The last two were s. First one was RA. And since he knew that it was in a cartoon, that it was a royal name from that era, the only person that could have been was Ramsey. So that's how he cracked the code, like you say. Yeah. And cracked it in, like, hey, this is a phonetic thing. He was wrong the whole time. And apparently he fainted on the spot, which is dramatic. Yeah. Kind of cute. He was French. Sure. So out of that moment, Egyptology was fully born. Like, now we had a way to understand all this stuff that hadn't been destroyed and reused as building material. It took a long time, though. It wasn't like they could just read it. It still took a lot of translating. Oh, yeah. But they had the basis. Exactly. Yeah. All they done is transcribe one single stella. They had millennia worth of things to, like, papyrus or papyri and billing inscriptions and sarcophagi and all that love letters. Yeah. Whatever you have. Sure. And so Egyptology is born. And now that it's understood at that moment, there's also a great desire to protect Egypt and all of its treasures. Yeah. And to get things right, because previous to that, Napoleon and Gang did a pretty good job. But they also speculated a lot. Yeah. Because they couldn't read hieroglyphic. Yeah. So they ended up correcting a lot of things about what they thought about Egypt. And like you said, they wanted to protect things because Egypt, at the time, they were selling these things off to collectors left and right because, A, they didn't know their true value, and B, there was a market for it. Sure. Doctors during the Middle Ages who were just big dummies would use mummies from Egypt to grind it up and use it to cure disease, which didn't work. And so there was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians. There was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the British, that we need to get everything out of Egypt and into museums and, like, the hands of us who will preserve them and not sell them to Middle Ages doctors for cures. But to his credit, in my opinion, shampolyon argued very strongly in favor of founding a museum in Egypt to store these and keeping them in Egypt. Yeah. I think he was a little bit of a control freak. Like, he knew that he could care for things in the proper way. And I don't think he trusted even other museums at the time to care for things in the right way. And he was kind of right, because a lot of it was destroyed. Yeah. Like, apparently to preserve an ancient papyrus, you have to store it in a low humidity area, chamber in a bamboo box container. And they didn't know this and they shipped them by sea to the UK. And they all crumbled the nothingness on the way. Dummies. Yeah. So the Rosetta Stone still sits in the museum in London, where it's been since 18? Two, except for the time I went to France briefly and in 2003, Egypt was like, you know what? I want this thing back. Not I. We want this thing back and it's ours. And I don't. Care who found it. It's ours. And England said in 2005, took him two years to build a replica and say, hey, how about this? This is just like it. I guess at least they didn't try to pass it off as the real one. Well, yeah, that's true. You sent them a replica. And they were like, I appreciate this. This is nice, but we really would like the real thing. And England said no. And not just England, but a lot of the big museums, the Louvre and a bunch of the world museums kind of all got together in support of one another and said, you know what repatriotation is? We're not into it. We're just not going to give things back anymore because we can care for it best. It belongs to the world now. And they just sort of banded together and said, we're keeping our stuff crazy. And I think where it's probably going to stay, they are trying to get it for, I think in 2012, they tried to get it for the grand opening of the grand Egypt museum. Sounds like it didn't happen, but even then they said no. They want it for, like, three weeks, and they said no under the guise of I don't know if it's guys, but they said it would be too dangerous to transport it. That's the story they have, at least. Well, yeah. So how museums work? Pillage and deny. You got anything else? No, sir. That is the Rosetta Stone. Everybody. If you want to learn more about it, you should type that word, those words Rosetta Stone in the search bar haste works, and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar means it's time for a 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 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. Now, Chuck, it's time for listing or mail. Oh, no. How about instead? Okay. All right. For those of you who don't know. This is at the point where we read off the people who were nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets and music and letters and all sorts of things. Here we go ahead. All right. Sarah sent us some cool graphic prints, one of which was You Can't Take the Sky From Me from one of my favorite shows, Firefly. No. Yes. Very cool prints. Amy sent us a lovely carved wooden Cicada from Timber green woods. Yeah, very cool. Anne McDonough sent us a Snoopy postcard and a handwritten letter of things. Very nice. Liz from New Zealand sent us a lot of stuff. That's new Zealand candy. New Zealand chocolate. New Zealand chips. Surfboard. Postcard. Really lovely framed photos from her dad, rudy Goldstein photography. It's on Facebook. It's Rgoldstein photography. So check it out. Yeah, it's very cool. I have those on my desk. Sean Antoniac sent us some custom vinyls, some stickers from Eight One One Graphics.com. He and his brother yeah, nice. Have this company. It's cool stuff, like skater style stuff. Right. BuyCostumes.com it's. B U Ycostumes.com. Send us a full size adult gremlin costume which Ben Bowen wore all day yesterday in the office. Yes. Ben Bowen from stuff they don't want you to know. In car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He emailed me and did that. Did you actually see that? I haven't seen a picture of him. Yeah. I put on the hand one day and tried to creep out Strickland, but he was like, that's not the first grimlin hand I've had on my shoulder. Cat teepee. Megan oh, yeah. Sent a cat teepee my way because I have two cats and my big boy Lauren gets in it now. He calls his spirit tent nice. And he just hangs out in there and it's pretty neat. I mean, it's what you think. It's just like a little small TV for your kitty. That's very cute. So if you have a cat, I would suggest you buying one. Let's see. Susan sent you a birthday card. It's a dog drinking beer. Yeah, that was nice. Kelly Clarkson has some T shirts, and he is a handyman in Brooklyn, and he gifted us 2 hours of handyman work oh, nice. To give to someone we know in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn. That's very cool. So I've actually texted our buddy Joe Randazzo, said, hey, you need any work done? We have two free hours of handyman work. So if you're in Brooklyn, you can go to Notjusthandyman.com and give Kellam a call. He'll fix your sink or do whatever you need around the house, I guess. What's he going to do for Joe? I don't know. Joe didn't respond. We'll go to Hodgeman next, I guess, and just work our way down the list. Although Hodgeman four to five people. We should give it to, like, someone else. Okay. All right. I'll figure it out. Clive Fantasy gave us some really cool panama Canal postcards. Yeah, those are neat. Rachel from Uber. Have you heard of Uber? Sort of like a taxi cab service now? Oh, yeah, but it's town cars and they have an app and you can say, just come get me now. Right. Yeah. You me was telling me about that. Yeah, they sent us Uber gift cards. And I will send you your gift card for us. Awesome. Like $100 in free. That's a lot. I know. Somebody is going to be going to the airport for free. Yes. Kristen Kern has been taking us along with her on a tour of Europe. It seems like. We've got postcards from her from Edinburgh, Bruges, Amsterdam, Slovakia, Berlin, all over the place. Yeah, so thanks for that. We also got something from Threadless self designed t shirt, bigfoot cradling and alien Loch Ness monsters in the background. Yeah, there was also, like a Men in Black and an abduction going on, all sorts of stuff. Very cool. And then Kiara Newran sent the wife some jewelry, and you can visit her store. Thank you very much, Kiara, at caribouclassics etsy.com. So that's our administrative details for now, right? Yeah. Part one. We'll have a part two, I guess, on the next episode. Yes, we will. But we'll cover music and books. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshennow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the webstepyshoto.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. 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 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 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. 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. Take 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@halopeet.com." | ||
How Karma Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-karma-works | While it's kind of perverted in the West, the concept of karma is a central tenet of several Eastern religions. Karma isn't just good or bad -- it's a natural law. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about karma in this religiously respectful episode. | While it's kind of perverted in the West, the concept of karma is a central tenet of several Eastern religions. Karma isn't just good or bad -- it's a natural law. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about karma in this religiously respectful episode. | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:47:47 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=16, tm_min=47, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=202, tm_isdst=0) | 31142205 | audio/mpeg | "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 with Charles is W, Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know. Right? Yes. Yeah. Podcast. Have you noticed this carbonated beverage? It's just like, carbonated water. Yeah, the one that rhymes with the boy. Yeah, I've noticed that. I've gotten probably 90% burp year in podcast since I started drinking. Yes. That stuff is dizzy. I'm a fan. You can taste the CO2. Remember we talked about in the taste episode? I don't drink the plain one that much here at work. What do you drink? Well, I drink the green tea here at work, iced. But I drink the lime flavored at home. So you pay for that yourself? Yeah. Wow. Discovery Channel pays for it. What? Well, who pays my bills? Oh, got you. Yeah, but that's an exchange for work. Yeah, they don't send me, like, a stipend for the boy lime soda. They just send you the lime soda. Are we done with that one? Yes, it seems like we should be, yes. Chuck, josh, I'm sure you've heard the word karma bandied about a lot lately. Oh, man, it's all over. You could probably find a pretty recent spike in use on the Internet in association with a person's name. That would be Casey Anthony. Oh, yeah, casey Anthony, the alleged killer of her daughter Kaylee, who was let off, who was found not guilty. Acquitted, I guess you'd say. Yes. She found guilty of something else, though, today, right? She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police. Yes. I didn't follow this case that closely, actually. I didn't either, but I mean, like, people were crazy over it. I saw. And I get the impression that most people don't think that justice was done necessarily. That's the impression I get. So people have gone to their go to recourse when you have no other recourse, and they are giving it over to karma, to the law of the universe. Yes, karma, we'll get you that. Karma is going to come around and get Casey Anthony one day. Yeah, I say that same thing. It's a very New Agey approach to karma. Like, karma is going to get you for wronging me. Right. Or I did a good deed, so karma is going to smile on me. Right. And that you can't really approach karma from a true viewpoint as far as the viewpoint of the people who created this concept are concerned, without the positive and the negative. And for the most part, karma is actually very negative. It's something you want to escape from, and if something bad happens to you or you are born disfigured or whatever, it's because you did something in your past life. Westerners kind of find this distasteful. Right. So we've abandoned it largely and taken this new way to approach your karma. Let's talk about all forms of karma. It's like karma in the Western world. That's exactly right. That's a really great way to pick. You should coin that, chuck. Before we get started, I want to say if you had a problem with Acupuncture podcast or Reincarnation podcast or Voodoo podcast, any podcast where we showed respect to other people's beliefs that are weird or unlike yours and you had a real problem with it, skip this one. We want you to continue to like us. We respect your opinions, and we don't want to bristle you, so just go ahead and skip this one. Just go to the next one. There's like 350 other ones. Just listen to them. Listen to the muppets one. That's a good advice. No dissenters on that one. So let's give everybody a second. Okay. But we explain how stuff works. That's what we do. Yeah. And it's not up to us to assault millennia of beliefs that billions of people across the world hold. So that's not what we're here for. We're here to explain it, like you said. Right. So speaking from the Eastern point of view, we'll get to the Western view and how we got that later, how it got on. My name is Earl. Exactly. Yeah. That's what the basis of the show is, right? Oh, yeah, because he gets hit by a car after winning a lottery. No, he just won the lottery and gets hit by a car, and it gives him pause. I don't remember the car part. I just knew he won the lottery, but he was a bad guy, and getting hit by the car made him think, I don't remember that. And I think there was like a song or something like karma. Karma was on his mind, and he gets hit by a car, and that was the sign from the universe. That must have been in the pilot, so I don't know if I saw that. Yeah. So Eastern eastern philosophy, and we're talking four main organized religions that believe in karma. That would be Jainism, Sikhism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Right? Yes. The word karma itself. We like to point out the roots sometimes of these words. It's Sanskrit. Karman. K-A-R-M-A-N. Which means act. Makes a lot of sense. Right. There's also a poly word. Polly is the original language used for Buddhist texts. I believe it's kama kamma, and it means action. So virtually the same thing. Yeah. Well, it all makes sense because karma is all about the acts that you commit, good or bad. Right. Coming back to bite you or elevate you, mostly to bite you. Where should we start out here with, I guess Hinduism. We should also say the concept of karma is similar in a lot of ways, but among these four, there's a lot of really interesting differences. Yes. If you do remember our reincarnation podcast, you remember us talking about Samsara and that is the eternal cycle of birth and rebirth that Hindus believe that humans go through. Right. And you're tied to that cycle through karma. Yes. Until you shed all your karma, as far as Hindus believe, you will never achieve moksha, which is basically salvation. You're freed from the cycle of rebirth. You don't have to waste any time on Earth any longer. Right, but here's where I get confused. For some reason, this one confused me. Maybe because they're all so similar but slightly different, I thought. In Hinduism, does the karma reset after each rebirth? No, it clings to the soul. Okay, so with Hindus, the soul survives transmutation. Okay. With Buddhist karma, we'll talk about that later, but yes, with Hindus, your soul goes from body to body, and the karma is attached to the soul to it. Yeah. Okay, so Moksha, that you said is the goal of salvation, and that's the ultimate goal. And this is one of those things in Eastern religion a lot of Westerners can't even comprehend. It can only be achieved after it is no longer desired. It blows my mind. I know. It's like, on the one hand, clapping well, and that's why they, I think, ponder that for their lifetime, because it's hard to wrap your head around it. Right. And I wonder, though, like, the best way to not want that is to really enjoy your life on Earth. But then mocha is a bad thing, so I don't think it necessarily happens like that. I think you're just kind of like whatever. So for Hindus, good karma is you generally get good karma if you perform the duties of your social status, your cast, and if you perform those well, then in your next life, you will be born into the next highest, or maybe you'll skip a couple. Right. But like you said, fulfill your duties. Right? Yeah. You have to be a good priest or a good laborer or a good leader or whatever. And one of the, I guess, aspects of Hindu karma is that it's a universal law that's independent of god or any of their gods, they have a pantheon, obviously. Right. But none of their gods can mess with karma. It's its own thing. Right. So a god can't be like, oh, I'm going to smack you down with some karma because you irked me so bad, they can't do it. Right. And I don't know, I didn't notice whether or not the gods are subject to karma, but I would assume probably because it's a natural law, that they are subject to it as well. Possibly. Possibly. Humans definitely are. And gods can't mess with it. Right, that makes sense. Yeah. You're explaining this to me, buddhism. Well, hold on, let me just say there are three types of karma in Hindu. In Hindu, okay. The stuff you do here in this life sure does not affect this life. Right. It goes in store for the next life. Or another life down the way. Right. Okay. So you have three kinds of karma. You have parabda, which is karma that you've experienced during your present life, but it's from a past life. Yes. Okay. But you're going through it right now. Got you. You were born with a club foot. Okay. You did something in another life. Right. This is the idea behind karma. There's sensita, which is the story of karma that you have coming in future lives, but it's not come to fruition, as they say. So you got a safe deposit box chock full of whatever your deeds are. Right. But you hope that through good actions in this life, you can cut down on that store necessarily. Right. And then the present karma that you're sewing that's going to come to fruition and will be added to that store is called auGAME. Okay. That's like the stuff you're doing now. And does that go into the storage when you die? I don't know. Okay. I shouldn't have asked that then. It's all right. Okay. But that's Hindu karma. All right. Buddhist karma believes they believe that the soul accumulates karma and that it carries over to the next life. Right. It makes this very cool. But there's no soul in Buddhism. It's your karma that links one life to the next. Right, right. They don't believe in a soul like we think of a soul no, here in the west. But the karma that you generate, that you have when you die, makes it to your next life and becomes, I think, just the coolest three words ever. Nirvana. No, that's one word. The cool nirvana. No, it's two. Okay. Germ of consciousness. Yes. I think that's really awesome. It informs what you do in this life. Yeah. The vignana, I believe, is what they call it. But it's not your soul transmigrating from one life to the next. Reincarnation. But it is a form of reincarnation. Yes. And the soul consists of the five Scandas body sensations perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. But that's not the same as the germ of consciousness. Right? Right. Okay. Yeah. All of the karma combined becomes the germ of consciousness in the next life. Right. And Buddhist, like Hindus, want to break the cycle of Samsara to ultimately reach Nirvana via the Middle Way or the eight full path, which we already talked about in reincarnation as well, right? Yes. Is this confusing to me? Am I weird because it's confusing? Not really. I mean, if you think about it, you can break all of these beliefs down to this. Your actions have consequences. Well, yeah, I get that part. Right. And good deeds will get you closer to not having these sticky consequences from past lives any longer. Okay. At the very least, you want to generate new stuff. And in most of these beliefs, you can eventually shed all this or get rid of it through either just time, good deeds, or the intervention of God. Depending on what your religion is. Right. Because it's the same in Sikhism. They also want to the whole goal is to exit the chain of reincarnation once again. Right. Basically, everybody thinks Earth is just terrible. Right? Well, Buddha himself came up with some pretty good thoughts on karma. He had this famous quote saying, we are the heirs of our own actions. Right. But he was really big on contradicting. The idea that everything from our past lives informed everything in our current lives, and therefore there is no such thing as free will. Right. That's a big sticky part of karma, is that depending on how you look at it, it's just completely fatalist. Right. To where there's nothing we could do any differently. This is going to happen to us anyway, so there's no reason to stop being a pervert or a thief in this life. And the way that that's kind of, I guess, contradicted is that was one of his teachings. He said pervert, which stuck out to me. The Buddha knew what perverts were. Yeah, but the way you get around that is to say no stuff you're doing now, you can control, and if it's bad, it's going to come back to bite you in your bottom in the next life. Right. And that was Buddha. Yeah. The bite you in the bottom thing, that was I paraphrased him. Are we on the giantism? Did I just kind of briefly go overseas, or should we cover that in more detail? Well, hold on. Let me tell you two more things about Buddhist. Buddhist? Buddhist that I found interesting. One is vapaka is the result of karma. So karma's action, okay. Vapaca is the result of your action. So it's like karma is to vapaca, seed is to fruit is an analogy, I think. Very nice. Right. And then Asana is a type of karma, a good karma. You would hope it would be good. It's an act of karma that you commit on your deathbed. Right. So maybe you will all of your money or your possessions to, like, a local orphanage or something. The Buddhists give great import to Asana because it's so close to the beginning of the next life that it's more potent, I believe. And does that outweigh even the bad deeds that you've done? Like no. Can you store? No. But it would be like if you compared maybe a bad thing you did when you were six to a good thing you did on your deathbed. Right. The Asana is going to just be bigger in scale, I guess. Got you. That's the impression I have. Again, I'm not Buddhist or Hindu or Jain or Sikh, so this is all just outside research. I'm a strong member of the Church of Josh. Okay. Yeah, I am, too. That's weird. Of Josh. Yeah. Wow. My first member. Oh, you've got more than one, my friend. So I mentioned Sikhas. And briefly, do you have anything else on that. Yeah. I thought the Sikhs got kind of a short shrift in this article. Yeah, a little bit. There's plenty of stuff out there. There's actually a very venerable scholar, dr. Gobind Singh Mansokeni. Okay. He's a learned seek scholar. So MonsoonI took on the same idea that your acts in a previous life are having an effect on your current life. And that fatalistic view of, like, well, there's such a thing as free will then. Right. He took that on and said, no, there is such a thing as fate, and it is very strong. So fate will look at like a river. Right. Okay. But man can still make waves in this river. Your actions are like a wave or like a whirlpool. So it's within this flowing river of fate, but you're still having a consequence through your actions. Do good things. And Eddie was one of the ones he used. Oh, really? Yeah. So do good things, do good acts, and you will gain favor with God. That's not unique to Sikhism. I think the Hindus believe that God no, the Hindus believe God can't have anything to do with it. The Sikhs say, no, god can create or destroy karma. Okay. And so if you find favor with God through good acts or through prayer or whatever, there will be an effect of a loss of karmic debt. Well, they do get the short trip. They totally did. They got a sentence. And their view of karma is that it's the accumulation of effects of past deeds on your character. And the character is tied to the soul, so therefore the character survives death. Wow. So you wake up in the next life with the same character that was assembled by your previous life. Right. All right. I like that one. That's a good one. Plus they have the cool turbans. Giantism is where we get a little Star Warsy with the whole thing. This sort of reminds me of the Midichlorians, how they explained the force in which one it was one of the newer ones. They explained the forces mediclorians in the cells, and everyone was kind of like really? Yeah. To explain that. Yes. Anyway, Giantism actually believes that karma is an actual atomic substance with actual particles that attach itself to the jeeva or your soul. And as long as your soul was burdened by karma, once again, you are trapped in that cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Right. But they believe it's a physical thing. Yeah. Like a particular matter thing. It can't be sensed or measured in your words. And I took that. The vibrations of your words, your thoughts and your deeds, they collect it. Right. They attract karma, these particular matters. And Janice have classified, I think, something like 158 subtypes. So there's eight types of karma, two main types, physical and psychic. There are eight types and 158 subtypes. And they do it to, like, a remarkable degree. So if you look at the number four subtype or the body shape. Nom, you're a hunchback if you have that kind of karma. Yeah. So they have it down to that granular level. Wow. But what it reminded me of is epigenetics. What do you mean? Well, they're saying, like, karma, this particular matter is attracted to the soul and it affects its function. Oh, yeah. But it doesn't change the nature of the soul. It's just the same way that these proteins are attached to your genes and they affect its expression. Interesting. But they don't change the gene, they just change its function, how it functions. Isn't that weird? Yeah. And they've been talking about this for a while. Well, Angie believe that the bad deeds are more likely to stick so in their life, like sort of like Hindu and Buddhist, they live very meagerly, don't seek out the material things, obviously live a sober life and don't harm other living things. Yeah, I think they're the ones that have there's a sect of James that have little brooms. That have little brooms and they dust off before they sit down because they don't want to accidentally kill anything. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I've been letting moths out like crazy heavy. Dude, we're under attack. Really? Yeah. You should turn out your lights. Yeah. So now can we move on to karma in the west? This is interesting. Perversion, not a perversion here in the west, it's become half truth. Yeah, half truth a MIT karma. It's become just a buzzword. Meaning how to increase your luck, basically by doing good things. Right. Like tipping. Yeah. Like karma jar is a tip jar. That's kind of off a little bit. Well, have you ever wished bad karma on someone for real? Like, thought that or said that? You mean like shodding fraud? No, I actually said, like, oh, man, you got some bad karma coming your way for that. Oh, yeah, I used to extensively, like really? That was my thing. It's so easy to just relinquish power. Like, oh, well, I don't have to do anything because karma is going to come back or the universe is going to come back and get you. Well, in a way, though, it's kind of good because it means that you're not obsessed with revenge. Exactly. Yeah, it is very good in that sense. Yeah. I had a lady in La that sold us a treadmill. I used treadmill that her name was Joan. And that's all I'll give you. But we remember the first and last name. We still say it la. Yeah. Was it Joan Crawford? No, she wasn't famous. She told us a treadmill that clearly did not work. When we got at home, like, I ran out of place. It was like, okay, this is cool. Turns out after like, six or eight minutes, the thing overheats and stops, and it was just like that. And we called her back and we were like, hey, we're just at your house 45 minutes ago, and we bought this treadmill, and it's not working. It overheats and stops. And you knew this? And we'd like, $200 back or whatever. We like to bring it back, and she said, I'm not a store. That's what she said. Wow. And we were like, really? You kind of know this thing didn't work like you told someone else or whatever. We just want to make this right real quick. We'll be back over there in 30 minutes. And she's like, no. She's like, sorry I'm not a store. I don't accept returns. Yeah. And I wanted to take the treadmill and get some friends and go throw it. She had this big bay window. Throw it through her window in the middle of the night. And Emily said I couldn't do that, and she just said, that's probably good karma will get her one day. It's a way to go, at the very least. You can serve a lot of energy that you can use elsewhere and more productive things than the treadmill. Yeah. And plus, I mean, like, accelerating or hastening karma by burning someone's house down will get you in trouble. Some people think that that generates bad karma for you. Weirdos. Yes. So in the west, it's obviously become well, you call it New Age. It is very new age. And what's interesting is we can trace it back to pretty much one person who introduced the idea of the concept of karma to the west. Helena Blavatsky. Yes. Madame Blavatskywatzky. Yes. She was a Russian. She was very well traveled. She was very well read. She was also something of a huxter during the era in the northeastern United States where you could basically say, hey, I'm a medium. Look at this cheesecloth that I'm pulling out of my throat. It's spirit. Did she do that? She made a teacup and teasauce rep here early on and just performed a few tricks. There were, like, all sorts of spirits or depths that she worked with that were basically gave all these grand pronouncements and lessons that she issued to her cult of followers. Right. But she was very charismatic, too. She was incredibly intelligent and very charming, but she was also something of a fraud. But this lady basically came up with this idea that she was coming down with this divine wisdom that was handed down to her. Theosophy. Right. Yeah. She founded the Theosophical Society, and I thought it was interesting that she was a hugter. She co founded it with Henry Steele Alcott, who was an attorney and a journalist. So if you're going to hook up with something in a huxley way, you're really COA if you have an attorney on one side, and then you can get press for the fact that he's a journalist. So I don't know if this woman if she bought her own hype, from what I understand, I just read an entry on her in the Skeptics Dictionary, but from what I understand, she seemed fairly committed. She was finally run out of the organization, the Theosophs. Oh, she was? Yeah, like in 1885 or six. Don't they still exist today? Yeah, because they accused her of trickery or something like that. But by the time this happened, they were in India. So she seemed very committed to the idea of this Hindu teachings. But basically her idea was that all of this occult scripture of, like, Zoroaster and the Gnostic text, all that could all be reconciled with the idea of Atlantis. And that's where these supreme beings lived and there's astral projections and all the stuff that we take for granted today right. Came from this lady in this era. And one of the things that she introduced was the concept of karma. Right. And it was to prepare us for what she called the Aquarian Age, which was the ultimate enlightenment or time of brotherhood, I guess, aka the. Well, was it sort of like akin to the Rapture? No, I think it was just a change in consciousness among humanity as a whole. It's like the 60s. It's the coming of the Age of Aquarius. Sure. Yeah. What was it from here? Yeah. So there you go. Age of Aquarius meant everybody was on acid. That's right. John Lennon. Instant karma is going to get you. Number three hit. I didn't know it was that big of a hit. I've never heard it before. Oh, yes, you have. I have not. Shut off. I'm not kidding. And we all shine on You've never heard that chorus? Oh, I didn't know that was the name of the song. Well, yeah. Instant karma is going to get you. And then the chorus, we all shine on. I had no idea that was the song. It's also a Nike commercial. Yeah, that's where I've heard it. Of course. My name is Royal, which we've already covered. Eventually it became fodder for television. Mustache guys, who is also a scientologist. Who Jason Lee is. Have you seen that Memphis Beach show? No. He's on that. He stars in it. And apparently when he has a rough day working the Homicide beat, he goes out at night and plays the blues. I saw him at a grandaddy show in La. Yes. And thought, oh, man, I love Jason Lee. Did they play that one song? Did they have a hit, Granddaddy? Yeah, I was in 28 Days Later when they're in the grocery store. Oh, yeah, they played love that song. Yeah, it's a good one. Never heard any other granddaddy songs, but they can't top that one now. Actually, I think they have. I'll have to go listen. Yeah. What else you got, Chuck? I got nothing, man. This one just befalled me for some reason. I apologize. You did great. Thank you. So I guess the lesson here is anytime you're thinking about karma and you sure tipping somebody an extra dollar is a good idea, but don't forget the other aspect of karma, where if something bad has happened to you, somebody was born disfigured or just dismembered somewhere in life or just was killed or abused, people believe that that's karma, too. So do you believe in karma in the very loosest sense of, like, if you do good things, like good things will return your way? I don't even know, to be honest. I think you should do good things. I think it's the right thing to do. But you know what? I do. But I don't believe it's any kind of natural law or cosmic force. I believe it's more like doing good deeds brings out a level of consciousness where you're attuned to goodness. So you notice it in other people in life more. So you open up that door. Very much so, yes. Whereas if you judge other people, you become consumed with the idea of being judged and that you dwell down there. I agree with you there. That's what I think it is. I think I agree with you completely. Church and Josh exactly. Well, if you want to read more about how karma works, type in karma with a K. Don't be dumb. With the K in the handychurchbarhouseofwordsk.com. And that will bring up that article written by Sarah Dowdy. It's stuff he missed in history class. That is right. And Chuck, I said search bar in there somewhere. So listener mail. Listener mail. We ask for calls from people in the First Murderer podcast who might be related to John Billington. And lo and behold, we have one. Yeah. And also, can we mention what Dorcas means? Yes. What does it mean? It means gazelle. And we heard from quite a few people who have family members named Dorcas. Yeah. Grandmothers usually dorcas minorcas. Yeah. All right. This is from Rin in Elbow, Illinois. Hey, Josh and Chuck and Jerry, you said you wanted to hear from people who related to John Billington. Well, here I am. My aunt researched our family history a few years ago, put it all together in a book, and gave it to the family members for Christmas. Great gift. When I first got it, the Billington story was for sure the most intriguing. The Girls from Stuff You Missed in History class did a podcast about it a couple of years ago as well, and I loved that edition and played it for my dad, who thought it was cool. I have played it for almost everyone I know saying at the end of the episode. And that's my family in a nutshell. I'm one of those people who is super excited to say I'm related to the first murderer in the New World and also love to tell the story about his son almost blowing up the Mayflower. I told my sister when she was pregnant that if she was having a girl, she should name the baby Dorcas Dorcas. She didn't find it amusing and had a son anyway and named. It Dorko. Just DORC. I think this is the male merchant Dorca. D-O-R-C. Anyway, I just want to express my excitement for the episode. I really love all the episodes. Keep it up. Ren from Auburn, Illinois. Nice. Well, thanks a lot. Ryn Billington. I don't think that was yeah, I know. If you've got a good deed that you did to somebody that you would consider good karma, right? You think you deserve a little good karma for it? Let's have a karma off. Or how about this and have evidence of that return. Like you did a good deed and you won the lottery. Like a good one. That's a good one. We're holding a little mini contest. Whoever has the best one, in our opinion, will make it to listener mail. That's right. But it's not a real contest. It's unsanctioned. That's right. I didn't even use the word contest just now, did I? No, there's no prize, no nothing. Karma off. Anyway, if you want to let us know about that, you can tweet it to us at syskpodcast. You can also go on to our Facebook facebook. Comstynow. Or you can send it old fashioned email at stuffpodcast@housetuffs.com. 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? 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. 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How Floods Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-floods-work | Floods happen when more water is introduced to an area than can be quickly removed. That's about it, but there's more to floods, what causes them and the havoc they can wreak. Join Josh and Chuck in this super-saturated episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Floods happen when more water is introduced to an area than can be quickly removed. That's about it, but there's more to floods, what causes them and the havoc they can wreak. Join Josh and Chuck in this super-saturated episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:18:08 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=17, tm_min=18, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=26, tm_isdst=0) | 31422656 | audio/mpeg | "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 Clarke. There's Charles, www. Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff? You should know the podcast. The Saturated Podcast. This week super saturated flooding podcast. Yes. I don't know why this came to mind. I didn't see any flood that happened on the news. I think I happened across it searching randomly, and I thought, yeah, it's a good one. Yeah, we covered that one yet. Flooded stuff always creeps me out. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I think it goes back to my days in Toledo as a young boy. Many times growing up in my house on Beverly Drive, the Mami would flood and my basement would flood as a result. And sometimes it would come all the way up to, like, the top step. Really? Yeah. And I just think about all my dad's tools down there, like, underwater. They weren't supposed to be right. It was just really creepy because you just open the door and step on the landing and then there's just water. You can kind of see, like, the top couple of steps that suggested all the other stuff that was down there. I think since then, I've always been fascinated and creeped out by the idea of things that are supposed to be above ground, submerged, like ships when we talked about the Bermuda Triangle. Like upon ships down there in the trench, never to be found. Yeah. That's creepy. Yeah. Same thing with floods, man. It doesn't creep me out like that, but I get it. Okay. So, Chuck yes? I take it you are familiar with flooding. I am. Do you remember the one in 94 down in Albany, the Great Flood? The Flint River Flood? No. Oh, man, it was all over the news in Albany, Georgia. Yeah. I don't remember that. There are caskets, like 400 caskets were loose and were just kind of floating around. They had this weird tendency to congregate toward trees or around trees, and so people started lashing into the that because they had to have a court order to even grab the caskets. But apparently it was the second worst cemetery disaster in the United States. Couldn't find. Oh, I was in Athens at the time. I was not up on it was a big thing. I'm surprised, but it was really creepy. You can see pictures of caskets just kind of floating around. Wow. Yeah. They recently found a human skull that they think was part of the remains that was moved by the flood. Jeez. Yeah. It's amazing how out of the news loop I was while I was in college, because it was pre Internet. I didn't get the paper when I was in college. Who gets the paper and reads it? I knew people who sold the paper. I didn't have TV, so yeah, I knew about the class and working at max Kali grill and sleeping late and all of the kinds of things that I can't talk about. That's awesome. I remember the Gulf War that happened well because of the Internet. That came after your college years, like two decades after your college years. You can see video of the news footage from stepping back in time. I will do so. Well, let's talk about flooding, Chuck. First. I guess to understand floods, we need to give a brief primer of the hydrological cycle. Yes, we do. If you ask me, there's been about the same amount of water on Earth for a long, long time. Yeah. I thought, this is fascinating. Yes. But it hasn't always been in the same place, as we know. And it's not the same water necessarily. Right. There's a constant loss and gain of water. Yeah. Every day you lose water, obviously, to the atmosphere. Yeah. Where, like, the solar rays and other cosmic radiation just blasts water vapors into, like, nothing. You're gone. You're no longer water. Sorry. As that is going on volcanic activity in the core or not the core necessarily, but in the inner Earth is releasing water, and it balances out on a day to day basis. But did you know that volcanoes release water? Sure. After I read this. Yeah. We even did a volcano's work podcast, and I don't remember talking about it releasing water. I don't either. When water is generated are introduced into the upper Earth in the atmosphere, it comes from volcanoes. 60% of volcanic gas is water vapor, so it balances out on a day to day basis, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah. Almost as if it's happening that way for a reason. I know. Are you familiar with the anthropic principle? No, what's that? We'll talk about it sometime. Oh, it's not directly relating to this. No, it's about the concept of why everything is has fallen so perfectly into place that we are able to notice this and say, wait a minute. It almost seems like we're supposed to be here. And the anthropic principle is like, yeah, and there's like 5 million other worlds out there that didn't happen like that. So we aren't there to say, wow, it's almost like everything fell into place. So we're supposed to be here. Interesting. So you just told me about it right now. Done. Trick to you. Water can be all around the Earth in three different forms. As everyone knows. You have liquids, rivers, oceans, lakes, rain, solids we've talked about. And this kind of collects a lot of our podcasts, in a way, like the clouds. And now we're talking about the Antarctica. Lots of frozen water at the falls. The Antarctica. Or it can be gas, which is water vapor in the air. Yes. And it's all moved around by the wind to the sun. And remember I can't remember which podcast we talked about, whether it was the sun or clouds or something, but wind is created by the exchange of air. Warm air is heated at the surface and rises. Cooler air rushes in to fill that vacuum. There's your windpower. Yeah. And then well, once that warm air rises, though, it's also going to get colder and form little droplets of water, which form together to form clouds, which we went over in fluffy little clouds, right? Yeah. Because the sun heats the ocean surface. That evaporates, like you said, it rises, forms clouds, and then eventually those clouds become pregnant with rain. And rain falls down, right? That's right. As the rain falls down, it fills waterways, rivers, streams, that kind of thing. Underground waterways. Yes. But for the most part, some of it does go to fill aquifers and that's storage. But the vast majority of it makes its way back to the oceans, where the process begins again and everything is complete in the circle of life. That's right. The cool thing here is wind is pretty consistent across the globe. Wherever you live, your weather is pretty consistent. You might think, if you live in Atlanta, like, oh, that's crazy in December here at 65 Deg. But by and large, if you look at the big picture, your weather systems are pretty consistent on a day to day basis. Although in the case of flooding, anything can happen on any given day to knock things out of whack. Right. So you have a storm, comes about, a thunderstorm, and you're like, wow, it's a pretty bad storm. Because you are capable, your area is capable of experiencing a storm. Your area is capable of experiencing a freak storm, like a huge thunderstorm that dumps so much precipitation on the ground in such a short amount of time that these normal waterways that have been formed to hold the normal amount of water become overwhelmed. The water fills up, spills over the banks, and there's your flood. Yeah. And that's the key. What you just said there is these waterways, they form over a great period of time. A river doesn't just spring up over the course of a year because there's a lot of rain. It takes like several years. Yeah. It takes a long, long time to sort of get a feel, I guess, of how much rain there is generally. And so this is how big I'm going to be if I'm a river in Georgia. Exactly. This is all I need to be, except for the freak occurrence and, oh, my God, now it's a flood. But then after the flood, it goes right back to where it was before. Rivers don't tend to plan their size for the worst case scenario. There you go. They're very lazy. That's a great way to say it. Lazy, lazy rivers. So, like we said, the most common cause, the one that people are most familiar with, the most common cause of flooding is a large storm that allows an anomalous accumulation of precipitation. Yes. Rain could be melting ice from a mountain or snow. Yeah. But rain is the one we think about most often and like you said, because weather and patterns are pretty stable over time, in a lot of places, depending on the season, you're going to get anomalous normal precipitation. Right. Like monsoon, seasonal flooding. Right. So with the monsoon you have in the wintertime, the air over the land is colder than the air over the ocean. Yes. So the air over the ocean is rising and the air over the land is moving out to fill it up. So that means the wind is blowing out toward the ocean. That's right. In the summertime the opposite is true. And so the wind is blowing in toward the land and that brings with it the monsoon rains. Yeah. Brings with it water. And this annual monsoon flooding, we talked about it, we didn't call it that because we're not that smart, but in the how the Nile River works. Yeah, exactly. It was and still is a very big part of how they thrived over the years was they knew that the Nile would flood each year and extend the water out and when the waters receded, it left a nice fertile banks on which to live and plant foods. Right. And remember we talked about some of the problems from the Aswan Dam and other dams that they built along the Nile to control flooding. Basically say, we're going to release this amount of water so we can go crops year round and people aren't going to lose their houses to the Nile flooding every year. That is actually one of the big causes of flooding too. Dam Breaks yeah. Did you see that damn video I sent you? I didn't have a computer. You didn't see it on your it was flash. It's really neat. I'll look at it later. I can't remember the name of the dam. But it's in Washington State and in October of this year it had like a controlled demolition and they just blew a hole in the bottom and all of a sudden this water search comes pouring out and fills this area up and then it starts to recede and you see the water behind the dam just start to go down as the water in front of the dam starts to go up. It's really neat looking. I have to check that out. Yeah. Or if you're from Pennsylvania or a historian, then of course you know, about May 31, the Johnstown Flood, and it wasn't just Johnstown, by the way. It's known as the Johnstown Flood, I think, because that was the largest town that it flooded. Yeah. But it was, I think, 14 miles upstream from Johnstown was the South Fork Dam and it hit a couple of towns on the way. Finally hit Johnstown. Six to ten inches of rain in 24 hours to the tune of a 60 foot wall of water going 40 mph. Well, rushed through town 20 million tons, not gallons, 20 million tons of water. And it was the first big disaster relief effort by the Red Cross. Oh, really? Yeah. I got a number of 2209 deaths, 17 million in damages, which would be over $400 million today. Wow. Like close to a half a billion in damages. Wow. And Springsteen fans might remember that from the song Highway Patrolman. He sings about the Johnstown flood. Really? Yeah. That guy folk hero, isn't it? He's all over it. We also remember we talked about in the human caused earthquakes episode, the Violent dam in Italy, a landslide caused a wave to go over the dam and killed 2000 people. That seems to be the number. When a dam breaks or breached, 2000 people die. You know what I think is cool is after having done like 400 plus shows, our world is starting to narrow a bit. Yeah. You know what's really crazy is we've already had this discussion and now we've come back to having it again. Really? That's really narrow. Well, I just think it's cool when you do a podcast on flooding, and it's also one about the Nile in clouds and volcanoes. We're still a long way from covering the sun. Yes, the sun. We're a long way from covering everything. But our world view is narrowing in a good way. I know. We're like men and nights. Land plays a big part because you can have a lot of rain, but depending on what kind of land it's falling on, it's going to affect how much it floods, if it floods at all. Like the soil in the middle of the forest, it's going to really soak up a lot of water, hard clay or rock or obviously, concrete and asphalt aren't going to soak up much, if anything. So that's going to lend itself to flooding. Yeah. And agricultural landscape lands that have been tilled, they're more prone to flooding than woodlands. Do you want to know why? Yeah, why? I was wondering. You got that we're about to circle right back again to Earthworms. That's exactly why. That's why woodlands don't flood like farmland. Because there's more little passageways from Earthworms. Yes. And if you till cropland, if you till the land, it has a delicious effect on the Earthworm population. Are you talking that word like that? Yes, the Earthworm population in the area, they basically leave. They take off, or else they're cut in a bunch of pieces. So it does have a very deleterious effect. Deleterious? Deleterious. Is it species? I was wrong, and that was called out big time. It's species. It's delete. It's not delete. Say, talk about species. Species. I was wrong on species because there are two acceptable ways of saying that. No, there's a right way. Species. No, if you look it up, it says species or species. I can't say anything. I can't even keep track of the difference between I and me, concrete and asphalt, which I mentioned. Josh here in the western world. There's a lot of that going on. If you go to a city like La, which I lived in, as you know, they have these concrete flood relief channels built in. Yeah. You don't even have to go to La. You can travel there via the movie Grease, like the La river basin. Is that what that is? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that is in t two. It's in the movie Them and where they have the car race, they call it the La river, which is kind of funny. Yeah. Before they paved it with concrete, they used it for the canoe scenes and a lot of the Tarzan movies in the 30s. Yeah. It's all just smoke and mirrors. Yes, it is. Mash was in Malibu, for God's sake. Yes. Levees, Josh, are another reason it can flood, as we all saw with the disaster with Katrina in New Orleans, when the levee breaks, as Robert Plant said, you got no place to stay. No, you don't. And do you remember earlier this year when they purposely opened the Morganza spillway? Yeah. Basically they sacrificed some local cropland for a lot more downriver. Yeah, and that's one of the points, like the reverse of the thinking, usually, or how it has been historically. Well, that's the point they make about all levies, though, is generally they're great for that area, but generally there's going to be a problem on down the line at some point. Well, the same thing with concrete storm basins. You're basically just saying, all right, let's get the water through here. And then when the tower base runs out at your county line, you handle it and here's your flood county beneath us. Well, what I couldn't find about the Morganza spillway was the effect. I saw 100 articles on the fact that they're going to open it up. And then the only article I found post releasing, like I think it was the first time since 1973 they opened up a lot of these gates was like a week after they said, well, it doesn't look like it's going to be as bad as they thought. And that's all I found. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was a huge cluster that was on the Army Corps of Engineers. They created an incorrect estimate and it really screwed up a lot more land than they thought. Oh, really? If it's the same one I'm thinking of, it was this year or last year. Yeah, it was spring when the rivers were rising and they said, we can't do state New Orleans again. Right. So we're going to open up a lot of these gates, like up in like Missouri or something, right? No, it was in Louisiana. Okay. Well, there was one in Missouri where they let the levy loose and flooded some cropland and it ended up screwing things up all the way down or over to Tennessee. Wow, I can't remember. So I guess those are two different stories. So if you live in Louisiana, I'd like to know the effect, because I know they said it wasn't as bad as they thought, but I couldn't really get a pinpoint of the damage. And I want to know what happened in Missouri. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about the coastline. Yeah. And we didn't mention, by the way, hurricanes, too. Yeah, tsunamis. Yeah, tsunamis, hurricanes. Big problems as far as creating flood conditions. That's right. But yeah, the coastline you're talking about levees and dams, they fall into man made ways of diverting water to other people's problems. And we figured out ways of, I guess, protecting our beautiful coastlines from Mother Nature. That's building walls, basically sea walls. It's like, have your worst waves. You're not going to erode this beach. But the problem is the whole process of erosion is part of creating and keeping beaches healthy. Yeah. And beautiful. Yes. I remember I used to go to Hunting Island, South Carolina, when I was a kid, and my mom went not too long ago, and she said that they have actually, like, the whole coastline is different now from when I was a kid. Really? They had to move a lighthouse inland because it had eroded so much, but they let it happen because it is a natural part of beaches, and it's a natural like, oceans, beaches, rivers, they're all dynamic. Right. Exactly. They're all going to move earth and water, and that's just the way it's supposed to be. And when humans step in to try and prevent that, bad things can happen. Well, and we try to prevent it because we tend to settle near water each transportation. But living on the beach is nice. Yeah, but I mean, even with the river, too, it's like there's your crop land, there's easy access to irrigation, easy transportation, food, water, obviously. So we need to live near water. And then when these natural processes happen and takes our houses away, we're like, okay, let's figure out how to solve this. And sometimes the solution just kind of exacerbates the problem that's right. Or creates a new one. Yeah. So we just got to figure things out. I think we're working on it. Okay. This is one really cool part I thought was you always see how floodwaters will wash a car away or something. Yeah. And it doesn't even look like that much water. Yeah. And you think, I drive my truck, like, through a river in the North Georgia mountains and you just plow right through it. Yeah. And that's like twice as deep and really rushing river. You say, take that, nature. Yeah, take that, nature. But the difference here is I thought this is really interesting, is what water wants to do is level itself out. So when you've got a lot of water from a flood in a place where there's previously no water at all, it's going to want to find its level as soon as possible by rushing really hard. So it's just going to be a lot more force than the steady stream of a river. It's really as easy as that. That's all there is to it. So, like, a couple of feet of water can wash a car away. 2ft 2ft of water in a flood condition where it's rushing from a higher level to a lower level, it can balance out, can wash the car away. That's nutty. And six inches under those conditions can knock a human off his or her feet. And that's how people die in a flood. Well, I think half of the deaths associated with most floods are from people trying to forward a rushing water in their car. In their car. That's the problem because you get carried out and you're in your car and you're trapped. And that's that that's sad. It's very sad. Flash flooding, the most dangerous of all floods. Yeah. This jogged my memory when they was talking about Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado. I think we might have hit on that at some point because it jogged my memory, too. You want to talk about it? Well, yeah. In 1976, July 31, colorado was celebrating its centennial. And at about five or 06:00, it started rain. And it was a really weird thunderstorm that didn't move. It just planted itself for 4 hours over Big Thompson Canyon. Rained twelve inches in 4 hours. And that's how much the area gets in a year? Usually. Yeah. That's crazy. In 4 hours and a 20 foot high rush of river going about 14 miles an hour. By 09:00, P.m. Washed through the canyon and it was so, like, out of nowhere. Which is what a flash flood is. It's not like, hey, with the Johnstown Flood, they had warnings even though people didn't heed them. Right. And most of the times, you know, a flood is coming, but with the flash flood, they were just like, trapped. Plus, there also just happened to be thousands of campers down there celebrating the centennial of Colorado. It was, well, the perfect storm. But the river that feeds the canyon, normally Big Thompson River, is apparently normally pretty slow moving, the old Big city. But because of this flash flood, it was dumping 233,000 gallons, 882,000 liters of water into the canyon per second. Per second. So that's a lot. So basically, a flash flood is like a flood, but it's even more concentrated and the water is moving even more violently. That's crazy. I got the number. Between 139 to 145 dead. Five were never seen again. 400 cars, 420 houses, and 40 million, which would be about 150,000,000 today. Yeah. And interestingly, three years ago, this one guy was found alive in Oklahoma that they thought died. He left town that morning and didn't tell people. And I think he came up in records and he was like, no, I'm out here in Oklahoma. I'm just fine. He didn't even realize that he was on the death list. Weird. Yeah. Wow. But every July 31, they still pay remembrance, obviously, in Colorado. Good for them. Yeah. You think about cars being washed away and people being knocked off their feet and being flooded in canyons, but there's also a lot of problems with flooding after the fact. Like a flood brings with it a lot of silt and mud and nastiness sewage, and when the flood waters recede, once again, all that stuff sticks around. Apparently, Florence, Italy suffered a pretty big flood on the Arnold River, right? Yeah. And Florence, of course, is one of the great repositories of Renaissance art. And a lot of the repositories in that repository were basements for stories, and that stuff got flooded. And apparently they got a lot of the stuff back to at least good quality. A lot of it. But I looked up, there were 600,000 tons of mud and sewage. Oh, my God. After they left, 14,000 works of art and three to 4 million books and manuscripts and records, and I don't know how many out of the 14,000 were restored, but it wasn't 13, 500. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Because a lot of the stuff was completely destroyed. That's awful. It's very sad. At least invading hordes didn't set it on fire on purpose. It also killed about 100 people, which you always hear about the artwork. Like, I had to really research to find the amount of death. Really? Yeah. Well, not that much research, but a few extra clicks, I guess. And then disease is another big problem, too, you said sewage, chemicals, the deceased, all of this is mixed together. It's in Albany. That probably was not a fun soup. No. So if your area is flooded, you want to basically boil any water that you're going to drink, or drink bottled water, or get one of those one water manufacturers that sucks the water vapor out of the ambient air and converts it to bottled water. Oh, yeah. Did you hear about the netti pot deaths recently? No. These two people in Louisiana died, and they believe it was from using the neti pot, which I use on a daily basis. And they got a brain eating amoeba gross into their nasal passage from using contaminated water to netting with. And I've been netting for, like, six years every day. And my friend was like, do you hear about that? I wouldn't do that if I were you. I was like, come on. Did your friend know that he sounds like that when you say I was aping him. He sounded much more intelligent than that. Okay, but I'm not going to stop netting. Well, you have to boil the water at least. Do yourself a favor. I'm not going to do that. Chuck, brainy eating amoeba would not look good on you. I'll take my chances. All right. Okay. I guess that's it. I got nothing else. I got nothing else. Do you want to call out for anything in particular. Yeah, sure, if you live in Big Canyon or Johnstown or any story. Yeah, I bet you got some personal anecdotes with family member, maybe. Yeah. Wait, we haven't done Lyster mail yet. Man, we're about to jump again. I thought you were about doing that. I was about to give our email address. Well, if you want to learn more about floods, you can type in floods in the search bar@housetofworks.com. And I said, search bar. So it's Chuck's turn for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this request from Adam to save birds before this bowl. Your request of what request from Adam to help save birds before the ball. Okay. He has a thing going on and it ends at this bowl. I got you. So we want to get it out. I come to humbly beg a favor, guys, no. He knows how to get our attention. He said he could apply us with beer if his loyalty is not sufficient. In this case, it is sufficient. I don't know. Beer can be mailed. My NGO fundraiser needs a plug. We are the Alamos wildlands alliance. I'm the research director there and we are trying to create a reserve in a rare habitat. We also do research and education in a remote part of northwest Mexico. We run a biological field station called the Navaatia Field Station. You can check us out on Facebook, and our website is www. Dot. Alamos Wildlands.org. That is Alamos Wildlands.org. And it's a US based nonprofit, very small, run by volunteers, mostly he says run by birds. Run by birds. And for the second in a row, they're doing a fundraiser called the Birdathon. And it's like a walkathon, but instead of miles walked, people get pledges for the amount of bird species they see in a given day. My team had 163 last year. Well, one day it's pretty good. It is a fun way to raise money for conservation in a place that is unique and rare, that runs from January 30 to February 5. We often have a superbird Saturday when most people go out the day before the ball football game played here in the United States. American football. Not European football, not soccer or rest of the world football. Yes, more teams are always welcome. We have at least eight now, though some have yet to register. And anyone can start their own team or just donate. It's really easy and it's on our website. The money goes to a good cause. It's tax deductible. And here's something sad. Josh the environment and animals only get about 2% of charitable giving worldwide. I have to be honest, I'm surprised that the environment and animals yes. So humans get the other 98%. Yes. So charitable giving is good no matter what. But forget about our free creatures. It is pretty low. Attached are some pictures of my team, the Luchadors. We wear masks and capes while burning. So. It kind of ties in nicely. Totally. With the podcast we did on Mexican residents. Yeah, which was not this one. Can we post that picture? I don't know. I'll check. Okay. And then his wife's team is called the Boobies, named after the blue footed boobies, a common bird that we have down here. Regardless, guys, thanks to both of you for helping to make being smart cool again. So please go check out www. Dot alamos wildlands.org and sign up and sponsor someone for this Birdathon. Super Bird Saturday. Get a team together, help these guys out. That's awesome. Sweet. Sweet. Did you mention the SBL? Did you use the actual name? Because I think we can get in trouble for that. I don't think you should say it. Really? Yeah. We'll find out. How can we get in trouble? Apparently, they actively sue people who use that word, like, even mentioning it. Like, remember The Simpsons? They never mentioned where they were going when they went to that huge football game. And Dolly Parton, the episode that Dolly Parton is on now I have the half time of my life. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. So we can just beat that out and people be like, bowl. What's? That right. Exactly. Okay, well, if you have an NGO that you think we'd like to plug, we're happy to do that from time to time. You can tweet to us, especially if it's a bird NGO at Syskpodcast. You can send us some sort of message on Facebook@facebook.com, stuff you should know, and you can send us an email. Remember now to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Adios. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseupworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House the Forks 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. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ark 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." | ||
How Family Crests Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-family-crests-work | After 800 years of creating coats and crests, some meaning has been lost to history, but much has been retained and is still in use. Find out what a mullet on field argent with stags rampant means in this Olde English episode of Stuff You Should Know. | After 800 years of creating coats and crests, some meaning has been lost to history, but much has been retained and is still in use. Find out what a mullet on field argent with stags rampant means in this Olde English episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:08:39 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=14, tm_min=8, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=265, tm_isdst=0) | 45980181 | audio/mpeg | "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. The Neogen Device. Developed by Rst Syndnexis is a well established, advanced quantum based 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 Neogenrelievespane.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen system. Come chat with us. That's Neogenreliefspain.com. Your patience will thank you. 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. There's, Charles, of you, Chuck Bryant. And that makes the stuff you should know the podcast, as I just welcome you to henceforth. Yeah, I'm not quite as sick, Chuck. That's good. You've recouped. Yeah, I've been on this orange, lemon, grapefruit juice cleanse and it's helped quite a bit. Helped heal, you think? I think so, yeah. I mean, it's just like a jam packed dose of vitamin C every day. Something on the order of like 9000 mg, I think. Wow, really? It could be up there. I've been drinking a lot of vitamin C, but it has helped. I strongly recommend it. Good ardent garden. I take a lot of vitamin C anyway. Yeah, the recommended amount. B is awesome too. Do you know Margaret Thatcher took a B twelve shot to her bomb every day? Yeah, that's popular. Yeah. So you want to talk family crest? Yeah. Okay. Have you just been waiting for me to ask that? Typically you intro the show somehow, so just stare at me. Do you have a family crest? Yeah, they're all different, but there is a Bryant Shield and I looked up a bunch of them and they're pretty similar. Okay. It's probably something like that. As do you. So if you contacted a service, they would probably be like, here you go, give us $150. Here's your family crest, go do whatever you want with it. Yes. And now that we've researched this article, Chuck, we could be like, huxer scammer. Are they scammers? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say that these services are all scams, but there's a very high degree of potential that these services are all scams. Do you want to know why? Yes. Let me tell you why? Whether you want to hear it or not, Chuck, I'm going to give you the straight facts. The family crest is so individualized and has been so personalized over the last eight centuries that there's virtually no way for you to find the family crest that you rightfully own. Right. So anybody at the mall or whatever is probably taking you for something of a ride. Do they have people at the mall? They really do. I've never seen that. Yeah, they have kiosks at the mall that I'm sure you ran across online. It's lousy. Like it's a kind of a subservice of genealogy sites, like find your family crest or whatever. Maybe I don't go to malls. That's a problem. That is a problem. I would have to go into a mall to see a mall kiosk. This is why the economic stimulus didn't work. You don't go to malls, Chuck. I buy things online. So, Chuck, this is not to say that there is no way to possibly find a family crest that you are linked to or that it just simply doesn't exist. It's just that most likely the one you're going to get back for $100 online is not necessarily legitimate. There are bona fide sources, the very people who keep authority over these things that can help you. And we'll talk about them in a minute. But this article turned out to be cooler than I expected. Yeah, I know nothing about this. Same here. And now I know a lot about it. Same here. That's kind of how it should be. Well, let's talk about the origin of family crests. Right. Well, first, let's talk about the difference. On Twitter last night, I asked people if they had any questions about family crest, and the number one question was definitely, what's the difference between a family crest and a coat of arms? Yes. There's really no difference these days. These days, yes. Pretty interchangeable. It is. But if you go back further and further into history, I found three explanations for the difference. Let's hear. So one is that the coat of arms was actually a coat for your armor, and it basically was a cloth tunic that had your crest on it to keep your armor from heating up in the sun. Okay. That's one. Another one was that the crest is the actual crest on top of your larger coat of arms. That's true. Okay. That's like the college of arms. Definition or distinction? Right? I don't know. And then the third one is that the crest belongs to a family, while a coat of arms as an individual. I didn't see that. So those are possibly the three differences. Got you. But where they come from? Well, they come from a long time ago. Originally in medieval times, in the mid 12th century, they were used to distinguish knights on the battlefield. Once they're all covered with armor, they all looked alike. And then from that, I think they evolved to eventually putting them on the actual shield that they used as protection, as just sort of a feather in their cap, being able to know the enemy from one another. I think the cap with the feather is a crest. It is, actually. Then eventually priest. Well, then it kind of filtered down to people that worked with knights and noblemen, like pages and squires, and then eventually priest started using them, and then eventually commoners and poor people, peasants in the 13th century said, you know what? I want to use the crest. Yeah. Apparently until the Middle Ages, most of the peasantry didn't have surnames, so they eventually started taking the surnames of the people who while they're feudal lords, that's how a lot of people are linked to prominent families that had family crests. Oh, yeah. I did not know that. And then after jousting and tournaments came about, the crests became even more important because that was how your page would announce you. Your herald would announce you. Sorry. Yeah. Haroldry, that's what all this is really called under the big umbrella name. Yeah, it's all heraldry. It's the crest, it's the design of them, it's the registry of them. It's the way you announced it. Like when you were at a joust, your herald would say, like, here is Archduke Ferdinand atop his mighty steed, he's ready to crack some skulls. And his crest is as follows. And then they would describe what was on the crest on the coat of arms. Sorry. And that's called blazing. Yeah, well, we'll get into blazing in a minute. That's a whole different thing. Okay. Yeah. Basically, it became like your corporate logo for your family, and they would put it on everything from swords and banners in your house to burning it into bread for special dinners. That was neat. I would think so, yeah. I couldn't find any examples of that. I don't think that photography in the Middle Ages, but I'd like to see that you can get little brands for your barbecue to sear into steak with your initials now. That's so stupid. It's very cool. There's nothing cool about that. There's a lot of things that is, but it's not cool. It is very cool. You can get anything you want and just brand it into steak when you're done and then eat it yeah. With your initials. Right. It is cool. Are you from Texas? No. Okay. I bet people in Texas do that. Yeah, I'll bet those are big sellers in Texas. So you've got the family crest, you have the coat of arms, and we're going to use these interchangeably. Agreed? Yeah. Okay. From what I saw, the College of Arms that originated all these heralds uses code of arms, the UK version of the United States. UK. Okay. The one in the United States is the American College of Heraldry. Where in the UK it's the College of Arms. Yeah. And those are the best sources on the Internet for stuff like this, by the way. Yeah, but they cost you some coin. Yeah, but they just have good info, period. And I think it's the legit info. There's a lot of other stuff floating around out there. Right. So, Chuck, the College of Arms, these Heralds, they actually became part of the households of these royal families, and they all banded together and formed a corporation and was actually granted a charter in 1484, I think, by Richard III, who said, you guys are now the College of Arms. And they've been around ever since, basically keeping track of arms, registering new arms, linking broken chain of title to people who are alive today. And they've been doing it nonstop since 1484. Wow. Yes. 365. They open on Christmas? No, they're open 11:00 A.m. To 04:00 p.m., I think Monday through Thursday is what it's called. Yeah, but it's self sufficient. They subsist on funds they charge for this research. They don't exist on public funds, they say. Okay. Yes. Well, that's good. Yeah. So checkers. How are these handed down? Well, it gets kind of complicated, but it's a man's world back then. Yeah. And they're generally passed down from mail air to mail air, right. For the most part, yeah. And Cadence, you talked about, every individual, like, siblings can add their own little mark to their shield or to their coat of arms. Right. And that's cadence. That's the whole system they use for each person to have their own individual coat of arms. Right. So you've got your father's coat of arms, and if you have up to nine sons, if you're a 10th son, you're in trouble. I bet they have a system. You take your father's coat of arms as your own, but then you add a certain something, and depending on the order of birth, let's say you're the fifth son, you're going to add an amulet to it, which is a ring. An amulet is a ring, yeah. Amulet. That's what I found. What is an amulet? An amulet is like it's a watch that you swing in front of somebody and say that you're getting sleep. I was getting too confused. An annual I think it has two ends. It's a ring, like a gold ring. So you add that to a family crest, and you can be like, oh, this is the fifth son's family crest. Right. Third son is a mullet. I know. I saw that, too. But you can see very quickly, like, if you're the third son of a fifth son, over the course of several generations, these crests are going to become different very quickly. And if you want to claim title to these things, you have to trace your line back to where this Chris left off. Right. Yeah. And you have to prove it each time, too. Yeah. It gets all hinky, I think the further back you go, probably, yes. Well, that's one of the good things about the College of Arms is you go to them with a wheelbarrow full of money and your birth certificate and your father's birth certificate, if you can get your hands on it and say, Here you go, call me when you're done, and they will do the research for you. Yeah. And the rules get really complicated with the ladies, don't they? Yes, very. Let's hear that. Well, if you are a woman and you were born to a man who had a coat of arms, and by the way, if your family has a coat of arms, it's called an armidrous family. So if you're born into an army family and you're the only child and you're a girl, you can inherit the family coat of arms. But as a woman, it has to be modified. Like, for example, the shield in the coat of arms has to be changed into a lozenge, which is a diamond shape or an oval. Because shields are thought of as a man's implement of war, they're not appropriate for women. Yeah. And this article too, said the shield shape was important, but I didn't find that to be true. I found it to be rare that the shield shape matters. Yeah. And like, in some cases it might, but usually it doesn't. Yeah. And I think also that it may have been important at one point in time, but then it's important was lost to the ages, maybe. Got you. But if you see a circle or a diamond coat of arms, then you're going to say, that's a woman. But this coat of arms changes depending on the course of her life. Like, if she marries a man who is also from an army or a family, they're going to combine them together. And there are strict details on how they're going to combine them. Like, she can take her coat of arms and put them next to his coat of arms on a larger shield. If she's married, she can be on a shield. Right. But hers needs to be sinister, which is the left. If you're wearing the coat of arms, it will be on your left. And then his is dexter, which is right. That's right. Have you ever heard that before? Dexter for right. I haven't heard of any of the stuff. So we researched that. Got you. So that's passing down the coat of arms and in a lot of cases, these things were just kind of lost, they just stopped. And the point is now is to backtrack to find where your coat of arms left off, and if you're allowed to inherit it, then you can pick it up and start over again. Yeah. Well, Kate Middleton just had one done really, for the first time, because she needed one to get married to Prince William, so she had one designed by well, first she had to pass an eminence test, which basically means you have to prove you're important. She's like, I'm marrying this guy. Exactly. So she passed that pretty quick. And she got Mr. Woodcock. Thomas Woodcock designed her new crest, which was, as you can see here, it is a oh, that's nice. The diamond. And they asked for acorns. Middleton did. So they got three acorns, one representing each of the children, kate, Pippa, and Jimmy. Wait, Jimmy James. Okay, we're close. There's a gold chevron in the center, which is sort of like an inverted V, and it represents the mountains. And it's gold because her mother's maiden name was Goldsmith, and it referenced mountains because they're big, they're into skiing. It's a family. So this is what a modern family? There's like a plasma TV in the background. Exactly. There's a blue ribbon tied at the top, which means she's unmarried, and it's red and white because that's the colors of the flag of the UK. Very nice. And they are merging them now is the married army arms. And I think William is losing the unicorn. I would not lose the unicorn. You can't lose the lion. I wouldn't lose either of them. You have to. So what support is she bringing into it, then? Well, I don't know, but it's just tradition. Basically, you're messing with the House of Windsor's coat of arms, so it's a pretty big deal. Yeah, no, that is a big deal. But I'm saying, like, you're bringing her shield in, her elements in, but I didn't see a support on that picture. Well, have we even said what a support is? No. We should probably talk about this. There's some common elements to any coat of arms, hodgepodge as they look as often detailed or are as sparse as they look. If you look closely, you're going to see certain elements about five things that you're going to find on every single European coat of arms. Right. Yeah. Take it, Chuck. Well, you got your shield. That's the main part in the center. Generally in the center, the background of the shield is called the field. Right. It's a color. Yeah, right. It's just the color of the shield. Yeah, right. That's the field. So if you have a red field and it's red. Right. Although they won't say red and the blazing we'll get to that, though. Supporters, if you sketch this out, they have stick figures, as my supporters are nice supporters, and that's like if you look at a common thing, it'll be like the House of Windsor has a lion on one side holding it up, and then a unicorn, for some reason, on the other side holding it up. It's a cool unicorn. I know, and I'm sure there's a great reason for it, which we will find out. But yeah, usually it's a human or an animal or something that's on two legs and then has the front two legs or arms holding up the shield. They're called the supporters, and that means if they're on two legs, it means they're rampant, which is another part of the blazing process. Yeah. And did you notice when they describe them, you have a description to read, right? Yeah. Okay, good, because this is going to be that's my favorite part of this whole thing is the blazing. Is it? Yes, I think so. I like the pictures. So atop the shield, you probably have a coronet, which is a small crown. Sitting on top of that, you have the helm, which is a helmet, like a night's helmet right. With mantling coming off of the helmet, which is sort of just flowery little stuff. It could be like ribbons or something like that. Some adornment. Yes. And then you have a small wreath called a torse on top of the helmet and then the crest on top of that. Right. And the crest is the topmost thing. It can be anything. It can be like a shaft of wheat or a lion or a dude with his tongue sticking out. A lot of lions. Yeah, because lions are courageous and you don't mess with lions. And then a lot of times you got a motto on the top or the bottom, and that's on the scroll, and the scroll is on top of the compartment, which the whole thing sits on. So there's a lot of physics involved in this, even though unicorns show up in it. They all follow the laws of Newtonian physics, like everything's resting on something else. Actually, I didn't notice this. This is a belt. That's a belt around the shield on the House of Windsor. Now, that Chuck. It's one of those cheesy old braided belts, too. That is looped. Right. It goes in and tucked in. That is actually Scottish in origin. That means that they are followers of a clan leader. Okay. They're members of a clan. Scotland has their own set of crests and they have their own authority. The Lord Lion King of Arms is responsible for registering them in Scotland. But that means they're members of a clan and followers not even leaders. The belt looped in like that means you're a follower, a clan member. It is. The shield we also should mention is many times divided into different compartments or panels. Yeah. Many times it's quartered. In the case of the House of Windsor, you've got panels representing Ireland, Scotland, two for England. I think there used to be one for France that they replaced. It's changed a lot over the years, and a lot of times when it changes, it's because of marriage. That's bringing in elements from the wife's family crest and adding it in. Right? Yeah. So I guess the House of Windsor will have acorns. I guess. So maybe that will be the support of giant acorn instead of a unicorn. Right. But a mutant one that's like growling or something like that. So those are the elements. Those are the aspects that you're going to find in any European shield. Right. Or coat of arms. Yeah. And by the way, mr. Woodcock, who designed the Middleton, he does this a lot, and he said he had a surgeon contact him one time that wanted a colon on his that's awesome. And he said it looked rather like a red worm, but he did it. Good for him. Yeah, I guess we'll do anything for a buck. I was going to say the same exact thing. Old Mr. Woodcock. So there are certain rules that these things have to follow. Like you said, there has to be a helmet. There has to be a crown, the helmet that's showing. If you are a knight, then you can have the helmet a certain way. Like, usually the visor is open and it's facing forward. If you are royalty, your helmet is gold. It's golden helmet. All right? And so if you are designing your own, which we'll get to in a minute, there's a certain element you can't use. You can't be like, Well, I want a gold helmet. It's like, well, you're not royal, so you can't have that. This is if you want to be bona fide. Right. I'm going to make my own. And it's going to have a gold helmet. Yeah. And it's also going to be colored in with crayons. That's right. 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. 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 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. Speaking of the colors, one that kind of transcends all nobility or commoners have, and I went and double checked this, but this is true. You can't have color on color in a field or metal in a field. Do you see your coat of arms right there? See how it's yellow on the shield? Yellow and blue? Yes. I guarantee you that originally that yellow was gold. It's supposed to be golden. You think? Yeah. If you look at every single one, there can be white on the color, there can be black on the color, but there can't be, like, red on blue. Got you. But there can be metal, like silver, gold or bronze on blue or yellow or whatever. But there also can't be, like, silver on gold. And if you go look closely, you're not going to find a crest that has metal on metal color or color on color. An authentic one, at least. Yeah, right. Did you know yours has ducks? Was it ducks? I thought it was geese. I don't know. Are those geese? I think they're geese. Yeah, that's a goose for sure. And it's fun when you just look up the generic Google Image image search for your own. Yeah. If you find the case that a lot of them look pretty similar, then that's probably a good idea. That's what yours may have looked like, but I wouldn't necessarily print it out on a T shirt and say, this is mine for sure. My family has a long history of mistreating geese for foie grass. Got three geese right now. This is the English version of it. There's a Scottish version and an Irish version. All of Clark. Yeah, probably same with me. And the English version is the one that has the geese on it every time. I was O'Brien at some point. Probably that's Irish. Well, now it's because I come from Ireland. Oh, yeah. But the bright ones all look about the same. Yellow cross, kind of classy. I wish I had an animal, though. I got no animals on mine. I got three geese. I know. I'm so jealous on the English one, at least. But mine is missing a crown. Is it? Yes, it's missing a crown. And it doesn't have a reef. It just has the what is the mantling? The mantling? It has mantling coming off of a helmet turned to the side with the visor down. Actually, I don't have a crown either, but look, my helmet goes straightforward left and right. It's almost as if the Brians are always looking in all directions. Facing forward usually indicates some sort of title or nobility or something. Well, this is facing left, right and forward. That's awesome. And what's the flag sticking out of the top of the crest? Mine also doesn't have a crest. I think that was a cadence. I think someone added that. Like one of my relatives from Arkansas or something stuck a flag in the top of it. Got a rebel flag at the top. So I was looking online, and there are different registries for just about every European country. Portugal has one. The Scandinavia has the best ones, the Scandinavian Registry, which is like all these Nordic countries, except for the Netherlands, by the way. They don't need it, but they have, in my opinion, the coolest ones. You can go check it out. It's the Socias heraldica Scandinavica is going to take you to this registry. And a lot of them were created in the guess there was a resurgence and interest in heraldry in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Oh in Scandinavia or Period? In Scandinavia. Okay. If you're Irish, you want to contact the office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, scotland again, the Lord Lion, King of Arms. That guy is in charge of not just registering crest, but also tartans. And you have to trace your lineage back to claim a tartan. What's a tartan? Like plaid. I've never heard that one. Well, yeah, kilts are different types of plaid, like Malcolm and black wash and all that stuff. Those are clan, just like a crest. That pattern is associated with a specific clan. Yeah. And like, you or I can't just go put on some kilt. We shouldn't be doing that anyway. But if we did and we went to Scotland, they'd be like, oh, you're Malcolm. And I'd be like, well, that's my middle name, but I don't think that's my and then they just started beating me up. I wouldn't understand what they were saying, but they would be beating me up at the time. You just can't just like, we can't wear a T shirt that's like, check out my family crest. Right. Even if we haven't made an official claim to it. In the US. It's kind of willy nilly, and we'll talk about that in Great Britain. You can get in trouble. It's basically like misusing a copyrighted piece of material or trademark or something like that. Oh, really? Yeah, there's laws to it. It's called bearing arms. You have to register to bear these arms, the coat of arms. I did not know that. In America, it means you can wave a gun around. Yeah, exactly. So can we talk about where are we? Systems all over the map. It really was this thing had strange flow, I guess you would say it. Well, you want to keep talking about how you can will them to people in some countries. Oh, really? You can? I didn't know that. You can will them to people. So let's say you are an American and you want to register your new family crest in England. Can you do that? I couldn't get a definitive answer. Possibly, if you're a fairly recent British descent. But your best bet is to go to the American College of Heraldry, which was founded in 1972. Something went on in the 70s yes. In New Orleans, and is now a registered corporation in Alabama somehow. But at any rate, this is the official organization for registering in America. And all of them are new. All the ones that register are new. Yeah. They don't track back because that's just not how it's done in America. Got you. There's no nobility. There's nothing like that. Right. So it's like you create your own and register it and start it. There. That sounds like something that's worthwhile. Yeah, if you're into that. I'm into it now. Are you going to do it? I think so. Good. All right, let's talk about blazing, which we mentioned earlier. Yes. Blazing is the description of the coat of arms, and it's really specific, and it's got its own language and syntax. Which is all over the map. Well, not really. It's actually really like if you can read it, then that's the point, is it's not all over the map. Because what you want to do is you want to be able to hand your blazing over to an artist and not say, what I'm looking for is this. You just hand it over, and they look at that and they know exactly where everything goes. Got you. So it is the description of what it looks like without having to put I'd like this line to be this color. And move them over here a little bit. And put him on the left. On the right. Dexter and sinister. Exactly. So the rules are sort of an overview. You begin by describing the field, which you said was the background. It's usually just a color that you're going to say. And this is of the shield. Right. This is of the whole coat of arms. Okay. So you begin by describing the field, which is of the shield. Okay. And if it's a complex field, though, you got to describe the variation after the color, like red checkered red and white. And you can't just say that it's like in different language, too, which we'll go over. Yeah. If the shield is divided, you got to describe how it's divided, whether it's quartered or halved, and if it's horizontal or vertical, you got to describe the colors of each subfield and use words like dexter and chief, which means the top, and sinister. And they know what all this means because they're really smart. The principal charge, which is anything you see on your coat of arms, like a tree or a flower, is a charge. Basically any emblem, you got to describe that next and the color, then the charge. Anything that's around the charge, like if your lion is holding a thing of arrows or a thing of daisies, you got to describe that. Or spinning those arrows out of his mouth. Exactly. Then you have to describe you do the panels one panel at a time. If your shield has many panels, you got to go from left, top to bottom and left to right as if you're reading. And all this is done basically so they know exactly what to do. And you have license after that to draw it however you want. Yeah, exactly. Got you. And as long as you get all the components right, then that's legit. It can be drawn a number of ways, and it doesn't matter. What about, like, anime? You could do anime, I guess, and a lot of it's in French because a lot of the English clerks wrote in French at the time that this was big. And we did mention the animals. And I said rampant means standing on their legs. Rampant garden is when you're standing on your legs and facing the person or whoever's looking at it. Patent means you're walking. Sagent means you're sitting in couchant means you're lying down. I thought that was kind of funny because you're on the couch, right. You're just hanging out. So here's one example. I'm looking at a shield that has a tree. It's split down the middle. Green on one side, white on the other. And then against the white background, the tree is green. Against the green background, the tree is white. And it's uprooted. You see the roots of the tree. Right. So the way this is described is party purpose. Argent invert a tree eradicated counter changed. Yes. So whoever does this reads that and they say, oh, I know. That means parted means it's divided in half. Pale means it's split vertically. Argent invert means silver and green. And then eradicated means the tree is pulled up by the roots. And counter changed is when it's the white color on the green and the green color on the white. Somehow that makes sense. I mean, it's just like learning another language. That's exactly what it is. And once you do, then, yeah, that's pretty cool. I tried to speak in that. Not speak. I was kind of hoping you were going to do it in, like, a British accent. No, but once you know enough of these words, if you see a sentence like that, you can kind of suss it out a little bit. So what you just did, that's not just a description for the artist. It's also blazing is what the Herald like Paul Betty would have said. Is that what happens? Yeah. I didn't see anything about that. Yeah, that was what they did. That's how they described. So if the knight pulled up with the lance, he would say, party, prepare urgent invert, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Wearing this. Okay. Basically, it's almost like in this corner, wearing the black trunks with the white trim is Tyson. I wonder if they followed it up. A tree eradicated counter changed, aka Ricky. Right. Just to make it easier. Yeah, the widowmaker. Exactly. Ricky the widowmaker. And did we say where they came from, where they started? Europe. No. Well, Europe, yeah. Rome. No, it's definitely Western European. Either it started in England in maybe the 12th century, early 13th century, or it came from Northern Europe, like Scandinavia, and was brought down by William the Conqueror in about the 12th century and really took root in England and then just kind of spread from there. Got you. But you think of England as the heart of this for good reason. Yeah, it started there really started to spread to the rest of Western Europe from England. Well, you can get beaten severely if you do it wrong there by Scotts, whereas we don't care by begbie. Governments a lot of times will have like each state has a seal. The United States has the seal of the United States. The Great Seal of the United States. Yeah. Not quite the same, but sort of the same as a coat of arms, like a lot of states have them. I'm sorry. Only a few states have a coat of arms. They all have a seal. Right. But a few of them have both. But there's a difference. Yeah. Seal is what they use on documents. Like the state seal, the heraldic device, which is the code of arms, represents the state itself. I don't know technically what the difference is, although they look different. Well, yeah, I guess the seal of Ohio that has a bunch of wheat with the sun on some farmland. Right. That doesn't follow the heraldic rules. Yes. Well, some of them, like Vermont, has a seal and a coat of arms. But both contain a pine tree, a cow and cheese of grain. So there can be similarities. I don't know. And Ronald Reagan, a lot of presidents, most presidents have had their coat of arms done up nicely because they're presidents. Well, yeah, it's a big deal for them. And Ronald Reagan has a black stallion atop his shield with an actor's mask. The little drama mask on the horse's chest. You know what that kind of looks like? It looks like the logo that Rocky Balboa wore on the back of his roof. Totally does. Because it's yellow and black, too. Yeah, that's totally rocky. And then his shield is divided I wish I could speak it in blazing terms, but his shield is divided horizontally. Black on top, yellow on the bottom, with an eagle and a bear representing, I think, California. Yeah. And then factor nonverbal is his motto, which is deeds, not words. That bear. Do you notice his tongue sticking out? Yeah. And he's holding what's called that's the mullet. Oh, the star. Party in the front or business in the front, party in the rear. What else you got? Actually, I could read Reagan's if you want a bear. Rampant sable armed in languid gills, holding between its forepalls a mullet argent silver star on a chief sable standing on a ducal coronet or a falcon, argent armed and language ghouls wings displayed and inverted. It's pretty interesting. It is. 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. 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. We now know that a Silver Star is a Mullet argent. Yeah, exactly. Oh, tell him about the Japanese thing. That was kind of neat. Well, Japan has its own set of family crisis, and actually there's about 10,000 of them. They estimate they don't have nearly as strict standards. I read that supposedly they were originally given out to people of samurai class or higher. Remember samurai? We're pretty high up in the Estrada, but apparently that has been relaxed and over time. Lots of families have a crest called a Moncho. Or is it Monsho? Or come on. Or mon. Poor, poor, poor. And like, a number of different families can have the same crest. Got you. Right. And they use theirs on their tombstones, too, right? Yeah. That's a good way of Japanese. Relatively recent Japanese descent. If you can get a picture of your grandparents tombstone or ask your grandparents if they're still living, they should be able to tell you what your family crest is. But usually they're circular, compact, kind of geometrical representations of things like flowers or leaves or bells or something like that. I looked up lists of coats of arms and it's like every country and even cities and states and people, and had no idea people were that into it, to be honest. You mean I are going to make ours, I think Haroldy. Yeah. Harold Rie. Harold. Haroldy, yeah. I wonder. Emily's Cinnabon. Boy, that'd be German. Big time. German. Or Dutch. It sounds Dutch to me. Oh, no, she's German. Okay. But I mean, I don't know, maybe further back it was Dutch. Who knows? You know, who knows? The College of Haroldry. Yeah, or the German version of it, too. What do you got to plunk down for that? Any idea? I don't. I know. To find your family's moncho is $100. I found a place called I think it was like $100 to do the research. So you mean would have a man show? Yeah. Interesting. Yes. But again, be wary of there are legitimate authorities that deal directly with the public for money that will give you the real deal info. And they may say there is no crest that you have any kind of claim to whatsoever. Right. And if you're American, you can turn to the American registry and be like, all right, I want to start new. Right, yeah. And then register your own. And it even says on the document that they give you, like, you have to name your heir, because through that document, they legally are entitled to the family crest, and then they can create a document saying, this is who I'm leaving it to, as well. So you can start if you're American. If you're British, you can start, too. I believe all of the different countries let you start registering your own. Right. Like Kate Middleton got you. But they're also the places where you want to go to find if there's one already in existence that you can claim. Right. Or that you could add a cadence to. Right? Yes. And put your own little plasma screen teeth. Exactly. I think a lot of the family pride thing is I don't know, it didn't seem to be as big of a thing these days. Yeah. It's kind of sad. Yeah, I guess it is. These kids these days. It's emblematic of the breakdown of society. Agreed. Okay, so that's it for family crests, aka. Coats of arms, aka heraldry? Yes. If you want to know more about it, you can, well, just type in familycrest on howtofworks.com, and that will give you some pretty good background and then do a lot more research. Yeah. You should also, if you want to look for your family crest, the real thing, type in France or registering family crest in France or registering coat of arms in France or Germany or whatever, and you should be able to find, like, the official government version for that country. Got you. That's a good place to start. Cool. So what else you got? You got ducks? You got geese? I got nothing. Well, at least you don't have geese. That's worse than nothing. I think it's kind of fun. When I saw that, I definitely thought it was pretty funny. And also, my last name, Clark, is a variation of clerk, which means I come from a long line of pencil pushers. And look at you. My family thrives in cubicles. You probably had an E on the end of that at some point, too, right? Yes. Or it meant cleric, which I find doubtful. You think? Yeah. Well, at some point in the last minute and a half, I said, Handy search bar. Which means it's time, Chuck, for listener mail. That's right. You know, my dad claims he traced our family back to the Vikings. He told me that, like, a month ago. Because I remember he traced our family tree back pretty well. I said, how far did you get? And he went to the Vikings. I went, really? He meant, like, I wish I knew some Viking football players. Randy Moss. Yeah, sure. He traced me. Victor. Randy Moss. All right. Listener mail today. This is actually Facebook gaming with Chuck and Josh. I don't know if you saw last week. I do these little fun games from time to time, like this one, which was, I give the fans a synopsis for a movie, and you title it and people go wild for this stuff. And so here was the movie I came up with. Natural Disaster sweeps through a rural small town, destroying the only school with no funding and little help. A young Buck Carpenter rebuilds it as an old timey one room schoolhouse. Along the way, the project becomes a national sensation and he wins the heart of a beautiful young teacher. So we got lots of good titles. Okay. Brian Day lessons of the Heart. Samantha Smith. Back to basics. Todd Estep Homeroom. Dave Bingham back to basics. Enad Kumar, The Education. Cuba like a merchant ivory. Kubes. Don Kuby lecture of love. Not bad. Rusvick Russ. Yeah. Making love out of nothing at all. Andrew Neil winswept. Mona. Our buddy Mona. Hot for Teacher. There was a few hot for teachers, by the way. Rich Marmara, Learning Curves. That sounds almost like two moon junctiony. Or Picasso Triggery. David Robinson learning to Live Chris Crawford gave us erecting hope. That's probably what they would call it in Hollywood. Maybe. Key aladdin are foundations. Tammyou. Saved by the Bell. B-E-L-L-E. Michael Needle. Measure twice. Kind of clever. Yeah. Measure twice, cut once, as the Carpenter's saying, although I usually cut once and then cut two or three more times, and then measure, and then measure. JJ. Bryce. Four Walls, One Roof. Endless Hope. And then there were some funny ones. Drew Chandler. His title is this one Room Schoolhouse is a metaphor. Jimmy Raby Coulford. Hers was Smiggy. What Smiggy? Okay. Like Betsy Carpenter's name. I don't know. Okay. Kyle Bets. Captain Squabbare and the house that God built. Jason Carpenter, the hokiest movie ever, starring Tom Hanks. Terry Eckmeyer the One Roomed House the Story of a One Roomed House. And then our own rob chef, son of Twister. Nice. It's fun. That's rob chef from stuff to make you smarter. Yeah. Which you can find on the Zoom Network. Zoom Marketplace. Zoom Marketplace, yeah. You know what else you can find out there? I don't know if it's on Zoom, but out there on the Internet, say, I don't know. Itunes Audiobook. A specific audio book. Number two in an ongoing kind of sputtery series, long running and sporadic series. The Super Stuff Guide. This one is the stuff you should know. Super Stuff guide to Happiness. Yeah, that's right. Starring my niece, Isabella that's right. Who kicks the whole thing off with a quote from the Dalai Lama. And then we have about an hour and 15 minutes of really cool investigation into happiness. And here's the clincher. It's not that happy. Of an audiobook. We uncover a lot of really sad stuff about happiness. Right. We talked to all sorts of experts. We talked to one of the founders of the transhuman movement, David Pierce. Yeah, we interviewed folks. Yeah, we had a lot of interviews gussied up. Sound design. Jerry just pulled out all the stuff. All the stuff. It's 399 on itunes. Yeah. Apparently it's a little more in other places. Like, the Aussies are having to pay 699, which is crazy because the dollar is weak right now. That's what they said, but we're not happy. I remember in 2008, Canada went crazy because they're like, we're not paying more for this book. Our dollars worth the same as a dollar. And book sellers up there were like, okay, take it up with itunes, man. No, they said okay. Oh, they did? Yeah, in England, I think they said it was 249. Two quid, 49 pins. No, I don't even know how they say this. I think you just nailed it. Is that right? Yeah. 249 pounds, \u00a32. Yeah, I think that's about right. So you can get it on itunes right now. Just search go to the itunes store and search Superstuffguide the Happiness. And it will bring it up. And if you don't have our economics, there Super Stuff guide it's right there, too. Is that evergreen? Yes. Somebody asked and yeah, it's about how economics work. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it was framed through the collapse, the recession. Right. But, buddy, anybody who tells you they're leftover, you punch them in the stomach. That's true. All right. And then also, if you want more SYSK, you can listen to us on WFMU. What is it? 911 in the New York New Jersey Connecticut metropolitan area. And what is it for the Hudson Valley? 90.1 Hudson Valley. Okay. And then coming soon, if everything goes right, you'll be able to hear us in Alaska, right? Yeah. College radio station. And was it Anchorage? You have, like, a 33% chance of what yeah. That's coming down the pike. Yeah, we're excited about that. Yeah. And then if you want to play fun Facebook games, visit facebook. Comstuffynow. You can tweet to us. We are at syskpodcast and you can send us good oldfashioned electronic mail to stuff. Podcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofwork 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 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." | ||
445214b0-53a3-11e8-bdec-2fa0fb84c583 | SYSK’s Scare Your Pants Off (and Back On) Halloween Spooktacular | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-s-scare-your-pants-off-and-back-on-halloween | It’s that time of year again! So turn down the lights, pull the sheets over your eyes and prepare to be thrilled and frightened with two great Halloween stories from Philip K. Dick and M.R. James. | It’s that time of year again! So turn down the lights, pull the sheets over your eyes and prepare to be thrilled and frightened with two great Halloween stories from Philip K. Dick and M.R. James. | Thu, 29 Oct 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=303, tm_isdst=0) | 40279402 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm, Josh, scare the pants off of you. Clark. And there's Charles Ghastly. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's, floating out there somewhere in the ether, which makes this Stuff You Should know. I thought you were going to say Chuck scared the pants back on You Bryant. Oh, that's even better. Maybe we should edit that and say it again, but with feeling. That's as much feeling as I can muster these days, man. I'm with you, buddy, I'm with you. But we're not here to talk about anything in the world except scaring the pants off and then back on people with our annual Halloween episode. Correct, sir. So, Chuck, we come up with a couple of pretty good ones, I would say. This year I'm in love with yours. I think these are both really good. And I was surprised to see Philip K. Dick had stuff in the public domain. Well, we read one of his last year. Did we? Yes, the Hanging Man, I think is what it was called. It was very scary, very creepy. But I think it was just last year that the stuff first came in, which goes to show you how old we are. I think it's not an age thing. Right. I think just certain ones were put in the public domain. I feel like if they don't copyright it after X number of decades, it automatically goes into the public domain. So, yeah, I think it's because we're old. Well, hats off to Phil Dick for his great work. That's right. Hats off and pants off. That's right, mike's on. So you want to get started with the beyond the door? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. I'll take the first part. How about that? Sounds wonderful. Ladies and gentlemen, please dim your lights. Please arouse your sympathetic nervous systems and prepare to hear beyond the Door by Philip K. Dick. Larry Thomas bought a cuckoo clock for his wife. Without knowing the price he would have to pay that night at the dinner table, he brought it out and set it down beside her plate. Doris stared at it, her hand to her mouth. My God. What is it? She looked up at him, bright eyed. Well, open it. Doris tore the ribbon and paper from the square package with her sharp nails, her bosom rising and falling. Larry stood watching her as she lifted the lid. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall. A cuckoo clock. Doris cried. A real old cuckoo clock, like my mother had. She turned the clock over and over, just like my mother had when Pete was still alive. Her eyes sparkled with tears. It's made in Germany, Larry said. After a moment, he added, carl got it for me wholesale. He knows some guy in the clock business. Otherwise I wouldn't have stopped. Doors made a funny little sound. I mean, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford it. He scowled. What's the matter with you? You got your clock, haven't you? Isn't that what you want? Doris sat holding on to the clock, her fingers pressed against the brown wood. Well, Larry said, what's the matter? He watched in amazement as she leaped up and ran from the room, still clutching the clock. He shook his head, never satisfied. They're all that way. Never get enough. He sat down at the table and finished his meal. So I think we have a putt on our hands, Chuck. Yeah, and I got to say, I've seen you with Yuumi and you're a wonderful husband. But you played part of your husband very well. Thank you very much. I think from time to time you might say I'm a natural. No, that was well done. I wonder what this guy's problem is already. I'm guessing he's like a mid 50s average dude. Not a very good gift giver. No. I mean, here's a great gift and let me just urinate all over. Hold it still so I don't miss. All right. You ready? I'm ready. All right. Here we go. The cuckoo clock was not very large. It was handmade, however, and there were countless threats on it. Little indentations and ornaments scored in the soft wood. Doris sat on the bed, drying her eyes and winding the clock. She set the hands by her wristwatch. Presently, she carefully moved the hands to two minutes of ten. She carried the clock over to the dresser and propped it up. Then she sat waiting, her hands twisted together in her lap waiting for the cuckoo to come out, for the hour to strike. As she sat, she thought about Larry and what he had said and what she had said, too, for that matter. Not that she could be blamed for any of it. After all, she couldn't keep listening to him forever without defending herself. You had to blow your own trumpet in the world. She touched her handkerchief to her eyes suddenly. Why did he have to say that about getting it wholesale? Why did he have to spoil it all? If he felt that way, he needn't have got it in the first place. She clenched her fists. He was so mean, so dang mean. But she was glad of the little clock sitting there ticking to itself with its funny grilled edges in the door. Inside the door was the cuckoo waiting to come out. Was he listening, his head cocked on one side listening to hear the clock strike so that he would know to come out? Did he sleep between hours? Well, she would soon see him. She could ask him. And she would show the clock to Bob. He would love it. Bob loved old things, even old stamps and buttons. He liked to go with her to the stores. Of course, it was a little awkward, but Larry had been staying at the office so much and that helped. Only Larry didn't call up. Sometimes, too, there was a whirr. The clock shuddered, and all at once the door opened. The cuckoo came out, sliding swiftly. He paused and looked around solemnly, scrutinizing her, the room, the furniture. It was the first time he had seen her, she realized, smiling to herself in pleasure. She stood up, coming toward him shyly. Go on, she said. I'm waiting. The cuckoo opened his bill he worded and chirped quickly, rhythmically. Then, after a moment of contemplation, he retired, and the door snapped shut. She was delighted. She clapped her hands and spun in a little circle. She five years old, I guess. She's a ted daffy. I love it. He was marvelous, perfect in the way he had looked around, studying her, sizing her up. He liked her, she was certain of it. And she, of course, loved him at once, completely. He was just what she had hoped would come out of the little door. Doris went to the clock. She bent over the little door, her lips close to the woods. Do you hear me? She whispered. I think you're the most wonderful cuckoo in the world. She paused, embarrassed. I hope you like it here. Then she went downstairs again, slowly, her head high. Very nice, Chuck. That was a great doris. I think I know where Doris is coming from. She's very likable at this point. Sure. She's delighted by simple things. Right. She does little twirls and spins and stuff. How can you dislike that? I know. I love it. Okay. Picking up again with moi. Larry and the cuckoo clock really never got along well from the start. Doris said it was because he didn't wind it right and it didn't like being only half wound all the time. Larry turned the job of winding over to her. The cuckoo came out every quarter hour and ran the spring down without remorse, and someone had to be ever after it, winding it up again. Doris did her best, but she forgot a good deal of the time. Then Larry would throw his newspaper down with an elaborate, weary motion and stand up. He would go into the dining room where the clock was mounted on the wall over the fireplace. He would take the clock down and, making sure that he had his thumb over the little door, he would wind it up. Why do you put your thumb over the door? Doris asked once. You're supposed to. She raised an eyebrow. Are you sure? I wonder if it isn't that you don't want him to come out while you're standing so close. Why not? Maybe you're afraid of him. Larry laughed. He put the clock back on the wall and gingerly removed his thumb. When Doris wasn't looking, he examined his thumb. There is still a trace of the nick cut out of the soft part of it. Who or what had pecked him? I think it's your turn again. All right. It's getting eerie. A little eerie. What's in the clock? What's in the clock? Death. All right, here we go. Okay. One Saturday morning, when Larry was down at the office working over some important special accounts bob Chambers came to the front porch and rang the bell. Doris was taking a quick shower. She dried herself and slipped into her robe. When she opened the door, Bob stepped inside, grinning. Hi, he said, looking around. It's all right. Larry's at the office. Fine. Bob gazed at her slim legs below the hem of the robe. How nice you look today. She laughed. Be careful. Maybe I shouldn't let you in after all. It's getting naughty. Very naughty. They looked at one another, half amused, half frightened. Presently, Bob said, if you want, I'll know, for God's sake. She caught hold of his sleeve. Just get out of the doorway so I can close it. Mrs. Peters across the street, you know. She closed the door. And I want to show you something, she said. You haven't seen it. He was interested. An antique or what? She did. Of course. What else would it be? She took his arm, leading him toward the dining room. You'll love it, Bobby. She stopped wideeyed. I hope you will. You must. You must love it. It means so much to me. He means so much. He bob frowned. Who is he? Doris laughed. You're jealous. Come on. A moment later, they stood before the clock, looking up at it. He'll come out in a few minutes. Wait until you see him. I know you two will get along just fine. What does Larry think of them? They don't like each other. Sometimes when Larry's here, he won't come out. Larry gets mad if he doesn't come out on time. He says what? Doris looked down. He always says he's been robbed, even if he did get it wholesale. She brightened. But I know he won't come out because he doesn't like Larry. When I'm here alone, he comes right out for me every 15 minutes even though he really only has to come out on the hour. She gazed up at the clock. He comes out for me because he wants to. We talk. I tell him things. Of course, I'd like to have him upstairs in my room, but it wouldn't be right. There was a sound of footsteps on the porch. They looked at each other, horrified. Larry pushed the front door open. Grunting, he set his briefcase down and took off his hat. Then he saw Bob for the first time. Chambers. I'll be darned. His eyes narrowed. What are you doing here? He came into the dining room. Doris drew her robe around her, helplessly backing away. Bob began. That is, we he broke off, glancing at Doris. Suddenly, the clock began to whirr. The cuckoo came rushing out, bursting into sounds. Larry moved toward him. Shut that den off, he said. He raised his fist for the clock cuckoo snapped into silence and retreated. The door closed. That's better. Larry studied Doris and Bob, standing mutely together. I came over to look at the clock, Bob said. Doris told me that it's a rare antique, and that nuts. I bought it myself. Larry walked up to him. Get out of here. He turned to Doris. You two take that dang clock with you. He paused, rubbing his chin. No, leave the clock here. It's mine. I bought it and paid for it. It's such a classic Larry move. I know. And if I had a dime for every time one of Emily's boyfriends came over to look at our antique clocks right. Actually, they're new and wholesale. It's making sense to you, I think. Yeah, I know the story. Well, in the weeks that followed after Doris left, larry and the cuckoo clock got along even worse than before. For one thing, the cuckoo stayed inside most of the time, sometimes even at 12:00, when he should have been busiest. And if he did come out at all, he usually spoke only once or twice, never the correct number of times. And there was a sullen, uncooperative tone in his voice, a jarring sound that made Larry uneasy and a little angry. But he kept the clock wound because the house was very still and quiet, and it got on his nerves not to hear someone running around talking and dropping things. And even the worry of a clock sounded good to him. But he didn't like the cuckoo at all, and sometimes he spoke to him. Listen, he said late one night to the closed little door. I know you can hear me. I ought to give you back to the Germans, back to the Black Forest. He paced back and forth. I wonder what they're doing now, the two of them. Young punk with his books and his antiques. A man shouldn't be interested in antiques. That's for women, he said, his jaw. Isn't that right? The clock said nothing. Larry walked up in front of it. Isn't that right? He demanded. Don't you have anything to say? He looked at the face of the clock. It was almost eleven, just a few seconds before the hour. All right. I'll wait until eleven. Then I want to hear what you have to say. You've been pretty quiet the last few weeks since you left. He grinned. Riley. Maybe you don't like it here since she's gone. He scowled. Well, I paid for you, and you're coming out whether you like it or not. You hear me? 11:00 came far off at the end of town. The great tower clock boomed sleepily to itself, but the little door remained shut. Nothing moved. The minute hand passed on, and the cuckoo did not stir. It was someplace inside the clock, beyond the door, silent and remote. All right, if that's the way you feel, Larry murmured, his lips twisting. But it isn't fair. It's your job to come out. We all have to do things we don't like. He went unhappily into the kitchen and opened the great, gleaming refrigerator. As he poured himself a drink, he thought about the clock. There was no doubt about it. The cuckoo should come out, doris or no Doris. He had always liked her from the very start. They had got along well, the two of them. Probably he liked Bob, too. Probably he had seen enough of Bob to get to know him. They would be quite happy together, bob and Doris and the cuckoo. Larry finished his drink. He opened the drawer at the sink and took out the hammer and carried it carefully into the dining room. The clock was ticking gently to itself on the wall. Look, he said, waving the hammer. You know what I have here? You know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to start on you first. Smile. Birds of a feather, that's what you are, the three of you. Larry's losing it, I think. Chuck? Yeah. Did she split? Yeah. He kicked her out with Chambers when he caught them. And now he's just alone with his thoughts drunk and a hammer and the cuckoo clock. That's really ticking them off. Like so many Germans. The room was silent. Are you coming out, or do I have to come in and get you? The clock word a little. I hear you in there. You've got a lot of talking to do. Enough for the last three weeks, as I figure it. You owe me. The door open. The cuckoo came out fast, straight at him. Larry was looking down, his brow wrinkled and thought. He glanced up and the cuckoo caught him squarely in the eye. Down he went, hammer and chair and everything, hitting the floor with a tremendous crash. For a moment the cuckoo paused, its small body poised rigidly. Then it went back inside his house. The door snapped tight shut after it. The man lay on the floor, stretched out grotesquely, his head bent over to one side. Nothing moved or stirred. The room was completely silent, except, of course, for the ticking of the clock. Did this clock kill him? Did you read the story? No. I like to be surprised. Well, then, wait for the rest, Chuck, and you take it from here. Do you read them ahead of time? Oh, man. I don't like to go in fresh like castanza's, dad. I see, Dora said, her face tight. Bob put his arm around her, steadying her. Doctor, Bob said, can I ask you something? Of course, the doctor said. Is it very easy to break your neck falling from so low a chair? It wasn't very far to fall. I wonder if it might not have been an accident. Is there any chance it might have been suicide? The doctor rubbed his jaw. I never heard of anyone committing suicide that way. It was an accident. I'm positive. I don't mean suicide, Bob murmured under his breath, looking up at the clock on the wall. I meant something else, but now I wondered. Beautiful, Chuck. Bravo. Cucco killed that man. It did. It didn't like that guff. I think the threat with the hammer is what really pushed the cuckoo over the edge so straight into the brain through the orbital socket there, I guess. Or else it caught him so surprised that he threw himself back off the chair and broke his neck on the floor. Who knows the doctor is ever going to find out? He's clearly lazy. Yeah, this doctor doesn't care. The big question is, did Doris do a little twirl when she found out that Larry had died and that the cuckoo had killed him? Oh, I think so. And I think Bob should be afraid, too. Quite honestly, I think Bob is going to be okay because the cuckoo is clearly a demon servant of Doris. And if Doris is happy with Bob, then Bob's in the clear, right? Bob needs to stay on Doris good side, then. Yeah, he's in trouble. If not. All right. Good pick. Nice. Oh, yeah, that was my pick. Thanks, I appreciate it. And we're going to do your pick. Which, I've got to say, of the two, this is just straight up great horror fiction. Yes, this is good stuff. This is from an author named Mr James. Not Mr James. No, M r. James. M r. James. And it's called Rats. And I hope everyone is joining this ad free episode per tradition. Yeah, per Halloween, scare the pants off and then back on you. Tradition. That's right. We're not even going to plug our book. That's available for preorder. No, I can't see us plugging stuff. You should know. Colon and Incomplete Companion. Mostly interesting things in an ad free episode, right. No. Or the audiobook, since people are listening to us reading. Yeah, that makes sense. But we would never say something along the lines of, like, it's available for pre order now everywhere you buy books. It will be out in November. Right, okay. I think we've killed the spooky mood enough. Oh, it was dead from the beginning when we were laughing at Larry being such a jerk. All right, gather the kids around, everyone. And here we go with the rats by. Shall I start this one? I think so. Man all right. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged mouldy bedcloth. A heaving and a heaving like seas. And a heaving and a heaving with what? He says why, with the rats under him? It's a good start, huh? It is. It's a great start. But was it with the rats I asked, because in another case it was not. I cannot put a date to the story, but I was young when I heard it and the teller was old. It is an ill proportion tale, but that is my fault, not his. It happened in Suffolk near the coast, or however you pronounce. Suffolk in a place where the road makes a sudden dip and then a sudden rise as you go northward. At the top of the rise stands a house on the left of the road. It is a tall, red brick house, narrow for its height. Perhaps it was built about 1770. The top of the front has a low triangular pediment with a round window in the center. Behind it are stables and offices, and such garden as it has, is behind them. Scraggy Scotch FIRs are near it. An expanse of gorse covered land stretches away from it. It commands a view of the distant sea from the upper windows of the front. A sign on the post stands before the door, or did so stand, for though it was an inn of repute once, I believe it is so no longer. To this end came my acquaintance, Mr. Thompson, when he was a young man on a fine spring day coming from the University of Cambridge in desirous of solitude intolerable quarters and time for reading. These he found, for the landlord, and his wife had been in service and could make a visitor comfortable. And there was no one else staying in the inn. He had a large room on the first floor commanding the road and the view. And if it faced east, why, that could not be helped. The house was well built and warm. Very nice. Thank you. Mr. James knows how to set things, doesn't he? Yeah. He spent very tranquil and uneventful days working all the morning and afternoon perambulation of the country round. A little conversation with country company or the people of the inn in the evening over the then fashionable drink of brandy and water. A little more reading and writing and bed, and he would have been content that this should continue for the full month he had at his disposal. So well was his work progressing, and so fine was the April of that year, which I have reason to believe was that which Orlando Whistlecraft chronicles in his weather record as the charming year which, by the way, I looked that up, and that would be 1846. Oh, very nice. One of his walks took him along the northern road, which stands high and traverses a wide common called a heath. On the bright afternoon when he first chose this direction, his eye caught a white object some hundreds of yards to the left of the road, and he felt it necessary to make sure what this might be. It was not long before he was standing by it, and he found himself looking at a square block of white stone fashioned somewhat like the base of a pillar, with a square hole in the upper surface. Just such another, you might see this day on Fetford Heath. After taking stock of it, he contemplated for a few minutes the view, which offered a church tower or two. Some red roofs of cottages and windows winking in the sun and the expanse of sea also with an occasional wink and gleam upon it, and so pursued his way. You want me to keep going? Keep going. In the desultory evening talk in the bar he asked why the white stone was there on the common. An old fashioned thing that is, said the landlord, Mr. Betts. We were none of us alive when that was put there. That's right, said another. It stands pretty high, said Mr. Thompson. I dare say a sea mark was on it some time back. Yes, Mr. Betzigree, I have heard. They could see it from the boats. But whatever there was, it fell to bits this long time. Good job, too, said a third point. Lucky mark by what the old man used to say. Not lucky for the fishing, I mean to say. Why ever not? Said Thompson. Well, I never say it myself, was the answer. But they had some funny ideas. I mean peculiar. Some old chaps, I shouldn't wonder, but what they made away with it themselves. Vincent Thompson said can everyone stop eating beef stew while they're talking? How do you have beef stew in my mouth right now. Oh boy. Busted, man. You're kind of a funny bunch. Let me finish this one part. Yeah. It was impossible to get anything clearer than this, I guess cause the beefs, too. The company, never very voluble, fell silent and when next someone spoke, it was a village affairs and crops. Mr. Betz was the speaker. All right. I love this story, man. Mr. James draws you into it, I know. Plus also that sounds like a very nice way to spend a month in fine weather. Reading, writing, walking around the countryside bed. That just sounds nice. Eating beef stew? Yes, great accents. I've been waiting years for that. I wonder if that was a Suffolk one. Sure like a dead on Suffolk. I think so. Folks do not every day did Thompson consult his health by taking a country walk one very fine afternoon. Found him busily riding at 03:00. Then he stretched himself and rose and walked out of his room into the passage. Facing him was another room, then the staircase, then two more rooms and one looking out to the back, the other to the south. At the south end of the passage was a window to which he went, considering with himself that it was rather a shame to waste such a fine afternoon. However, work was paramount just at the moment. He thought he would just take five minutes off and go back to it. And those five minutes he would employ the Betses could not possibly object to looking at the other rooms in the passage which he had never seen. Nobody at all, that seemed, was indoors. Probably as it was market day. They were all gone to the town except perhaps a maid in the bar very still the house was, and the sun shone really hot. Early flies buzzed in the window panes, so he explored. The room facing his own was undistinguished, except for an old print of Bury Saint Edmunds. The two next to him on his side of the passage were gay and clean, with one window apiece, whereas his had two remain to the southwest room, opposite to the last, which he had entered. This was locked. But Thompson was in a mood of quite indefensible curiosity and feeling confident that there could be no damaging secrets in a place so easily got at, he proceeded to fetch the key of his own room and when that did not answer, to collect the keys of the other three. Sounds like he's doing a lot of work to get in there. To me, he really wants to see what's in that room. One of them fitted and he opened the door. The room had two windows, looking south and west, so it was as bright and the sun as hot upon it as could be here. There was no carpet but bare boards, no pictures, no washing stand, only a bed in the farther corner, an iron bed with mattress and bolster covered with a bluish check counterpane, as featureless a room as you can well imagine. And yet there was something that made Thompson close the door very quickly and yet quietly behind him and lean against the window sill in the passage, actually quivering all over. It was this that under the counterpane someone lay, and not only lay, but stirred. That it was someone and not some thing was certain, because the shape of a head was unmistakable on the bolster. And yet it was all covered. And no one lies with covered head but a dead person. And this was not dead, not truly dead, for it heaved and shivered. I know. Counterpane, by the way, is a bedspread. So he saw something laying covered under a bedspread on the bed. Do you guys not have a counterpane? No. You know what a counterpane was? Sure, we got counterpanes in all of our beds. Well, we do, too, but we don't call them counterpanes because we're not 19th century Brits. Weird. What do you call them? Bed spreads. Blankets? Bedspread. Yeah, bed spread. Interesting. You've never heard bedspread or you don't call them bed spreads? No. I call them counterparts. Yeah, but bed spread is a lot funner to say because it rhymes. Bedspread spread. What's that? Counter paint. Do you want me to start? Yeah, go ahead. Where'd you leave off? I left off at Shiverd. Heaven. Shiverd. This dead thing under the counterpane. If he had seen these things in dusk or by the light of a flickering candle, thompson could have comforted himself and talked of fancy on this bright day. That was impossible. What was to be done first, lock the door at all cost. Very gingerly he approached it and bending. Down, listen, holding his breath. Perhaps there might be a sound of heavy breathing and a prosaic explanation. There is absolute silence. But as with a rather tremulous hand, he put the key into the hole and turned it. It rattled, and on the instant a stumbling padding tread was heard coming toward the door. Thompson fled like a rabbit to his room and locked himself in. Futile enough, he knew it was. Would doors and locks be any obstacle to what he suspected? But it was all he could think of at the moment, and in fact, nothing happened. Only there was a time of acute suspense followed by a misery of doubt as to what to do. The impulse, of course, was to slip away as soon as possible from a house which contained such an inmate. But only the day before he had said he should be staying for at least a week more. And how, if he changed his plans, could he avoid the suspicion of having pride into places where he certainly had no business? Moreover, either the Betsy knew all about the inmate and yet did not leave the house or knew nothing. Which equally meant that there was nothing to be afraid of or knew just enough to make them shut up the room, but not enough to weigh on their spirits. In any of these cases, it seemed that not much was to be feared. And certainly, so far as he had no sort of ugly experience on the whole, the line of least resistance was to stay. All this guy had to do is go downstairs and say, hey, you know what? Change your plans. I'm going to be moving on. Great house. Yeah. So long. Three stars of memory. Three star. Or maybe two now. Yeah. Or he could have just run right out of the place and down to the sea and swam away. Yes, that's a good point, too. You want to keep going or shall I pick up? I think it's your turn. All right. Well, he stayed out as weak because he was so dumb he couldn't think of a good excuse to leave. Nothing took him past that door, and often he would pause in a quiet hour of the day or night in the passage and listen and listen. No sound whatsoever issued from that direction. You might have thought that Thompson would have made some attempt at ferreting out stories connected with the end, hardly perhaps from Bets, but from the parson of the parish or old people in the village or the stew eaters at the bar. But no, the reticence which commonly falls on people who have strange experiences and believe in them was upon him. Nevertheless, as the end of his day drew near his yearning after some kind of explanation grew more and more acute. On his solitary walks, he persisted in planning out some way the least obtrusive of getting another daylight glimpse into that room and eventually arrived at this scheme. He would leave by an afternoon train about 04:00 when his fly was waiting and his luggage on it he would make one last expedition upstairs to look around his own room and see if anything was left unpacked. And then with that key, which he had contrived to oil as if that made any difference the door should once more be opened for a moment and shut. So it worked out. The bill was paid, the consequence, small talk gone through while the fly was loaded. And it flies like an Uber, is that right? Basically. Or a Lyft, sure. Or a black taxi. Sure. A black cast. All driven by legal employees, regardless of how you feel about that. Yes. Well compensated legal employees. Pleasant part of the country being very comfortable, thanks to you and Miss Bits. Hope to come back soon. Sometime on one side, on the other. Very glad you found satisfaction, sir. Done our best. Always glad to have your good word. Very much favored. We've been with the weather, to be sure. This accent is all over the place. That was maybe a little Irish in there, I think. I'm not sure what happened. I think you just slipped into Oscar Wild. Then I'll just take a look upstairs in case I've left a book or something out. No, don't trouble. I'll be back in a minute. And as noiselessly as possible, he stole to the door and opened it. The shattering of the illusion. He almost laughed out loud. He lol. Nearly propped, or you might say sitting on the edge of the bed was nothing in the round world but a scarecrow. A scarecrow out of the garden, of course, dumped into the deserted room, yes. But here, amusement ceased. Has scarecrows bare, bony feet? Do their heads lull onto their shoulders? Have they iron collars and links of chain about their necks? Can they get up and move if never so stiffly across the floor with wagging head and arms close at their sides and shiver? All right, bring us home. The answer to that is no, by the way. Scarecrow can't do that. It'd be a haunted scarecrow. But still, you don't want to mess with one of those, either. No. The slam of the door, the dashed of a staircase the leap downstairs were followed by a fake awakening. Thompson saw a Bet standing over him with the brandy bottle and a very reproachful face. You shouldn't have done so. Really, you shouldn't. It ain't no kind of way to act by persons. Has done the best they could for you. Thompson heard words of this kind, but Whitney said in reply he did not know Mr. Betts. And perhaps even more, Mrs. Betts found it hard to accept his apologies and his assurances that he would say no word that could damage the good name of the house. However, they were accepted. Since the train could not now be caught it was arranged that Thompson should be driven to the town to sleep there which, personally, I find a highly sensible plan. Sure. Should have done it a week ago. That's right. Before he went the betzos. Told him what little they knew. They say he was a landlord here a long time back and was in with the highway men that had their beat around the east. That's how he came by his end. Hunging chains, they say. Up where you see that stone where the gallows stood in. Yes. The fishermen made away with that, I believe, because they see it out at sea and it keep the fish off, according to their idea. Yes. We add the account from the people that had the house before we come. You keep that room shut up, they says, but don't move the bed out and you'll find there won't be no trouble and no more. There has been. Not once he ever come out into the house. Though what he may do now there ain't no saying. Anyway. You're the first I know on that, seeing him. Since we've been here, I never set eyes on myself, nor do not want. And ever since we made the servants rooms in the stapling we ain't had no difficulty that way. Only I do hope, sir, as you'll keep a close tone considering our house do get talked about with more to this effect and mine. That Yelp review, right? That's right. That's what he's saying, basically. Pretty much. I think you should take your time, since it's your story. The promise of silence was kept for many years. The occasion of my hearing the story at last was this that when Mr. Thompson came to stay with my father it fell to me to show him to his room and instead of letting me open the door for him he stepped forward and threw it open himself. And then for some moments stood in the doorway holding up his candle and looking narrowly into the interior. Then he seemed to recollect himself and said I beg your pardon. Very absurd, but I can't help doing that for a particular reason. But that reason was, I heard, some days afterwards, and you have heard now beautiful. So this guy scarred for life. He just can't walk into a room anymore like a normal person? Yeah, of course not. He's seen like a long, undead former owner of a house he was staying in who's now chained by the neck to a bed and still, I guess, moving around, hiding under bed spreads. And they bought it knowing this, right, because they were like, don't worry about it. It's not a problem. Basically, yeah, that's what they were saying, is that the former owner said as long as you keep the room shut and don't move to bed you won't have any trouble. From the undead former owner who was hung for being a highway robber. Yeah. And for God's sake, don't put a couple of deadbolt locks on this thing. Or a padlock. Yeah, just a little tiny key that anybody can come by. I love the story stuff. Yeah. And if you like either of these stories, but you hated our accents or whatever, go read them yourself. They're both online. Both are public domain. There's, beyond the door by Philip K. Dick and Rats by Mr. James. And both of them have a bunch of great little stories, don't they, Chuck? Yeah, and in fact, there are far superior readings on YouTube of these as well, if you want to check those out. Yeah, they don't have our accent, so I'll tell you that. No, they're stew free. Well, everybody, hopefully the pants have been scared back on to you so you're decent when Trigger Treaters come to your house. If we're even doing that this year, who knows? But regardless of how Halloween goes, have a safe and happy and super great frightful Halloween. Right, Chuck? That's right. Happy Halloween, everybody. 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 show." | |
How Broken Bones Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-broken-bones-work | It's a pretty miserable thing to break a bone. There's the initial blinding pain, all of the medical procedures during a trip to the hospital and then, in the best case example, you have to wear a cast for four months. Beneath all of this misery, though, | It's a pretty miserable thing to break a bone. There's the initial blinding pain, all of the medical procedures during a trip to the hospital and then, in the best case example, you have to wear a cast for four months. Beneath all of this misery, though, | Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:31:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=16, tm_min=31, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=239, tm_isdst=0) | 37711694 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. 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 this is stuff you should know. The Podcast audio adventure power. That's a great subtitle. Chuck? Yes? Have you ever broken a bone? I have not. You better knock on wood right this instant. Yeah, I could say the same thing, except I'm pretty certain that I've broken my small toe several times over the course of my life. Yeah, there's not a whole lot you can do about that, though, right? No. I mean, like, I didn't go see a doctor or anything like that, which is why I'm not certain I broke it, but I'm pretty certain just based on the amount of pain involved in it. But other than that, I've never had, like, a sling or anything like that. I always got cuts. Oh, yeah. I was always stitched up and things never broken. But you had stitches? Leg, foot, head, tongue. I almost bit my tongue off. I've never had stitches. Really? Yeah. Well, you've lived a relatively healthy life, my friend. I guess so. And it's not like I haven't been Adventure Boy or anything like that. I've gotten in all sorts of wrecks accidents. I've had a brick fall on my head. I put my arm through a storm window when I was a little baby. I once was riding my awesome blue and yellow mag wheel BMX bike and went to go up a curb, but my brain misfired, and rather than pull up on the handlebars, I pressed down and went right over the handlebars, hard. Yeah, I've done that on a mountain bike. I played football. I got hit in the head with the baseball, playing baseball. It's not like I was like a milk toast or anything like that. Unbreakable, like Bruce Willis. I wouldn't say that just because I'm just too superstitious for that kind of thing. But I have not had stitches or a broken bone. But now I know all about broken bones and how they heal, because they do heal. And it's not just your saw bones that's healing them. Like, they heal on themselves. And it turns out medical science is basically just there to assist a beautiful, elegant, natural process that's already in place. Yeah, I think I'm just amazed at the body's natural healing capabilities. I think it's really neat. I am, too. Like, you can regenerate your own tail. Your vestigial tail is true if you make it out of the womb with one of those. Right. If you lost your third nipple, it might just grow right back. You're super fluid third nipple. Yeah. So I guess I am a few years away from being more susceptible. Apparently men after 45 are more susceptible to breaking bones. I'm sorry, pre 45. Right. So I'm almost in the clear. Yeah. And I suspect that that is due to them being more active. Yeah, because that's in men, if you're 45 or under, you're more susceptible to breaking a bone, and then women are more susceptible to breaking a bone after that age. Menopausal, yeah. When they reach menopause. And the most commonly broken bone is what? The wrist. Right. Yeah. The radius bone of the wrist, I guess, from all the tennis people play. I think my theory on that is a lot of that comes from trying to break your fall by putting your hand out. But that just happens a lot. It makes you wonder what bones we would break or how many more bones we break if we didn't have wrist bones to break. Well, or if you didn't try to break your fall. You just break your face over and over. I guess so. And then in the elderly age 75 or over, according to this article by Robert Lamb, hip fractures are the most common. Yeah. And those are painful. Yes. I'm sure that's, like, you hear about that a lot. Very sad. Like, fall in the bathtub, break the old hip. Sure. So there's different types of fractures that can take place. Right. There's the simple fracture, which is the most like, if you're going to break a bone, this is the one you hope for. And it may even be the most common. I don't know. What's the most common? It's just a clean, simple break in one place only. Right. And there's not like a bunch of other trauma or associated pain or well, there's probably a lot of pain, but problems that come out of it just like, snap. And then there's a clean break. Yeah. That's a simple fracture. That's definitely not the only kind of fracture. No. The dreaded compound fracture, which I think strikes fear into the hearts of everybody, is when your bone is poking through your skin. Yes. Like Joe Thief or the guy in the March Madness recently. I don't think I saw that one. Oh, man. It is bad. Yes. Mirror neurons kicking so hard when that stuff happens. There's this animated GIF of the footage of the guy. He just fell down wrong. And he fell down right in front of his own bench. And there's, like, the reaction of the guys on the bench. It's like, oh, they all look like they're about to faint, because they're, like, 2ft away from one of the worst things you could possibly see in a live human. It's awful. Yeah, but that's a compound fraction. Those are kind of dangerous because they can lead to infection pretty easily. By the way, you know Joe Thien? I don't know if this is true. Supposedly his name was pronounced Thiezmann until college, and he changed it to rhyme with heisman in a push for the trophy. No way. I've heard that. I'm not sure. I need to look that up to verify it. That might be an urban legend. It could be, but I always call him Jeff Seisman as a joke, but either way, the compound fracture came out of his thigh, didn't it? I can't remember. I thought it was more like at the knee. It was gruesome, though. I remember, like, seeing it live. I never saw it. Yeah. All right. So there's also the impacted fracture. When one end of the fracture, one end of the bone is driven into the other. That sounds pretty gnarly, too. Yeah, that sounds really awful. A communed fracture, that's when the bone shatters into fragments. That's pretty bad. Yeah, I'm sure it's fresh, quite problematic. And as we'll find out, you probably end up a tad bit shorter if you have one of those in your tibia, because you have to get rid of that stuff. The bone fragments there's the super cute green stick fracture. Yeah. This one, to me, was, like, the same as imagining pulling back a fingernail, but then it retracting back. Yeah. This is among children. It's a type of fracture specific to children where the bone, like, bends and snaps, but it doesn't fully break. Yeah, it cracks, but it's like a green twig. Imagine that, like, if you bend it, you can't really snap it into that's why they call it that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, green stick. That makes sense. The old timber toe and then an evolution fracture. Robert describes it as a powerful muscle contraction, and it wrenches bone and tendon, forcing a fracture. That sounds pretty awful. Yeah. I looked this up. So basically what this is, the muscles around your bone, in some instances, in very unusual instances, can contract so powerfully that it snaps the bone. Under what circumstance? So, normally our muscles aren't powerful enough to snap bone because we have neurological control over the muscles. Apparently, athletes can train beyond this point and can be at risk for an evolution and fracture by pushing their muscles so hard that they can make them powerful enough to snap their own bones. And in a very strong high jump, the tibia, the shin bone, is particularly at risk for an evolutions fracture among highly trained athletes. Man so imagine jumping so hard that you snap your own bones with your muscles. That's crazy. Well, we learned when you get shocked, like, our body has that reserve, like, when you get shocked and then blown across the room, that's actually not the power blowing you across the room, that's your muscles are so strong and capable of doing that under the right circumstance. Exactly. Like, the potential is there. But we have a neurological filter that keeps us from doing that. And I look that up, too, to see if there was, like, an association of evolution fractures and electrocutions. I couldn't find anything now, but it seems intuitive, doesn't it? Yeah, I think so. And then finally, the pathological fracture, which is the most dastardly of fractures. It's when the bones are weakened by disease and really break pretty easily. They're brittle osteoporosis. Can we do that? Unbreakable. But Sam Jackson's character. Yes. Mr. What's his name? F. Mr. Brittle. Mr. F like that. I can't remember. But he was remember his bones broken very easily. The premise of that, at least, was a great movie. I really enjoyed, actually. I thought that was, like, his only good movie. He didn't like the 6th sense. I guess that was okay. That was a great movie. It's hard to remember, though, because he's sucked so much since then. I felt bad for that guy. And mine. He's got a great imagination, but yeah, I guess it's just I don't know what the problem is because he's made some great movies. The Village. That was a really good movie. I didn't care for it. Are you kidding me? No, I didn't care for it. I thought that twist was amazing. Enough with the twist with that guy. Oh, well, that's the whole thing. One trick pony. No, he's not. It's like calling O'Henry a one trick pony. There's twists like just having a twist. Alfred Hitchcock, master of the twist. Master of the twist. I have a few other bone facts, just since we're talking about bones. We know. I think we said it on our TV show, even you're born with about 350 bones, and when you die, you have 206 because a lot of your bones fused together from when you're a little BB. Yeah. 27 in the hand, 26 in the foot, 25 in the thorax, 24 in the vertebral crom. The what? I just spaced out vertebral column. Yeah. And only one in the throat. We have a bone in the throat? Apparently so. Where? Right there. You're touching it. Bony thing. That's my Adam's apple. By 20 years old, we've acquired 98% of our skeletal mass and our bone density peaks at 30 and then starts going downhill after that. Right? It does. But there's a lot of confusion out there. I assume that our skeleton stops growing. Yeah, and it does. We do reach a point where'd you say 30. 30 is where it peaks. So our skeleton has reached the it's full size. But that doesn't mean that it stops producing skeleton. New skeleton. Apparently, every year, a full 10% of our skeleton is totally regenerated. Yeah. Which will get to that process. Okay. And then alcohol and smoking are no good for your bones. You lose density and osteopenia, which is sort of like a pre osteoporosis. I guess. I've said that before, I think when I was a smoker, I knew that it was bad for bones. It's definitely bad for teeth. And I'm sure the two are associated because I'll bet it's bone loss that makes your teeth fall out from smoking. Totally is. And then I guess I've got some stuff on how to support your bones and good foods and stuff, but maybe we should do that at the end. Oh, yeah. Happy ending. Okay. Yeah. So, Chuck yes? Well, we know virtually everything there is to know about bones, but we don't know how they work yet. We're about to. Okay. All right. Yeah. So like I said, we regenerate about 10% of our skeleton every year. And not the same 10%. It's just a constant process called bone remodeling. Yeah. Our bones aren't just like dead sticks that our flesh and muscle are wrapped around. It's living matter, just like the rest of your body. Right. And in addition to the support and structure for your body that the musculoskeletal system provides, it's also your skeleton as a source for storing minerals. Sure. Hard minerals. The marrow. There's two types of marrow. There's red marrow, where we create blood cells. Red blood cells, yes. And then there's also yellow marrow where we store fat. Yeah, that just sounds gross. Fatty bones, fatty yellow marrow in our bones. Sounds gross to me. Have you ever eaten bone marrow? I know, it's like the butter of the gods, but have you ever tried it? No, I guess I should taste it, but yeah, you're going to taste it one day. Yeah, I will see to it there's places that you can find bone marrow. Sure. And I urge you to go there. You can get on your burger at Farm burger indicator. Oh, yeah. They do have Mero, don't they? Yeah, I think you actually ate one with Mero. I'm sure I did. Yeah. I very rarely turn down marrow. Yeah, because you can't find it everywhere. It's very tough to screw up marrow. Okay, well, that's good to know. Anyway, in my opinion, fatty bone marrow sounds awesome in my o. It does not, but I'll try. Did you pick that up at the folk festival? What, in my o? I don't think so. Why? Because you've never said it before and you said it twice today. I don't think that was like, the phrase that was sweeping the it was on a banner in the back behind back in my o tour. Imo. Yeah, imo. I thought you're saying in my o. I was I'm just old and I don't know how these but I like the variation. Okay. All right, so hold on, hold on. I haven't lost my train thought yet. I've got it in reserve. Okay. Marrow. Well, we're past the marrow. Bone remo. The point is, the bone is a living structure, right? Yes, it is. The thing is, it can mineralize it's the store of hard minerals. The bone can become a little too hard because it needs to stay living as well as rigid. And so we do bone remodeling. So this process is basically a three step process, right? Yeah. So you've got the old bone that's become too hard. Ossified is what it's called. And it's basically broken down by a type of bone cell called osteoclast. Yeah. They go around and chomp it up right. And absorb it. This part of the process is called resorption. Yes. And I guess they leave behind new cells. And these new cells, I think they attract something called osteoblasts, which are a different type of bone cell, and they generate new bone tissue. That's right. And that is bone remodeling. And then there's cartilage involved, too, and that's where Condro blasts come in form the new cartilage. And between those three types of cells, you are regenerating your bone every day. Basically, yes. Okay. So in the fact that we have this constantly going on, it's not that big of a deal to your bones to undertake this process of healing. Those are the reasons why the reasons why we can regenerate new bone once we break it. Yeah. And like, from the moment you break your bone, it kind of starts to begin this process of healing itself, which is pretty great. And if you were, like, trapped in the woods and you could get it set sort of right, you're going to probably be okay. Well, you need a doctor in many cases, but before there were doctors, people still healed broken bones. Yeah. The body does. Yeah. And depending on how well the whole thing went, you might be totally fine. Yeah. Or you might walk with a little hitch in your giddy. Right. Yeah. If it's in the Middle Ages, you never know. So when a bone breaks, your body undertakes this process of regeneration. There's three phases. That's right, three phases. All right. And the first phase is the actual break. And remember, there's blood vessels in your bones yeah. Surrounding the bone. So those break, too. Yes. Which sounds bad, but it's kind of good. It is. The body says, I'm going to make lemons. Lemonade out of the lemons that's been dealt. I'm bleeding profusely, but I'm going to go ahead and take that blood, let it build up in the fissure, in the crack and create a clock. Yeah. Which helps. It's called the fracture hematoma. And that's the beginning of the healing process. It stabilizes everything, keeps it as lined up as possible and cuts off the flow of blood to those jagged edges there. Right. And since the jagged edges lose blood flow, they start to die. And so I guess the parts of the fracture that are going to be the roughest just fall away and are reabsorbed. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's going to cause some swelling and inflammation oh, yeah. Because it's like everything's hard at work. All these cells are hard at work trying to get all the dead tissue out of there, and then little tiny blood vessels are going to start to grow again. They grow in the hematoma, in the clot. So that now, all of a sudden, there's a transport system to this area. That's right. And that takes place over about three or four days as hematoma develops. Right. That's right. So that will develop into it gets tougher as it goes, and it forms something called soft callus, which is sort of the beginning of I liken it to like, an internal cast, almost right. Like the beginnings of it. And it gets harder and harder as this process goes on. Yeah. And this actually replaces the clock. Like, the clock kind of turns into the soft callus. Right. And the soft callus is the result of these things called fibroblasts, which start producing collagen, and this collagen builds up, and that's what develops your soft callus. That's right. It's kind of like your skin is made of collagen. Yeah. It's a protein. Your bones apparently made of collagen, too. Essentially, it's the base protein for bone and skin. Where would we be without collagen? We would just be a heaping mess on the floor. We'd be in zerosville. So you've got the soft callus, and then the soft callus is eventually replaced with something called the fibrocartilage callus. Yeah. Kind of blasts are the cells that help produce that. And again, this is just a process of hardening and strengthening as the bones are lined up. Right. And all of it started with that hematoma, that clot, and it's become replaced. And then now it's getting a little harder, it's getting a little tougher. And I guess you have the fibro cartilagenous callus that remains, and rather than being replaced by the bonecallus, the bone callus builds around it. Yeah. And that's the actual linking device that links the two pieces of the bone together. That's the bridge. Right. And those osteoblasts that are responsible for the bone remodeling that constantly goes on, they're the ones producing the bone callus. And the bone callus, if the soft callus is the beginning of that initial cast, this is like the cast that your body builds for your bone, and it covers the area and allows that bone regeneration to take place in this completely protected area. Yeah. So the fibrocartilous callus is a few days I'm sorry, a few weeks. And then the hard bone callus is three or four months. Right. That's why when you have a cast on, you have to have your cast for several months or at least a couple of months, usually long enough for it to stink. Yeah. And it's get ants inside. Yeah. I remember being a kid and being jealous of kids who got their cast signed and things, because it was always the kid would show up, they get a lot of attention, and everyone would sign their cast, and it was just a big thing. And I never broke my bone, and I was just like, I want to break a bone. Do you remember the Simpsons where Bart has a cast for the summer? Man, it is season two, three, four, something like that. It's one of the best ones ever, because simultaneously, I think, I guess the Simpsons get a pool, too, and everybody's having so much fun in the pool, but Bart can't get in, and there's like a rear window, like, hitchhike rear window thing going on with him. Oh, you're right. Because Jimmy Stewart was in a wheelchair. Right. Yeah. But Millhouse comes over and Bart's like, mill House, my trusted friend. You won't leave me, William. He's signing Bart's cash. He's like, I got to go, bart. And they show his signature. It says Mill Pool. Anyway, that's the census episode. That's good. It's a good one. And when I was a kid, too, early on, they still had the plaster cast that were really easy to sign. Right. And then they kind of I don't even know what they're made of now, but it looks more like fibrous whatever. Gauze. Yeah. Like, it's harder to sign, though. Yeah. It's not like the old days. No, but don't they have, like, designs and colors and stuff? Oh, do they? So kids can get funky with their cast? I'm sure they do, actually. I've never seen it, but that makes total sense. Make broken bones fun, like Band AIDS and stuff. Right. All right. So we've got our bone callus. That is when the healing is really going on. That is the stable protection, the interior cast, as it is, or as it could be. Right. And you could leave that alone. Yeah. And like you said, risk dying or having a limp or something like that. You could take a chance if you wanted. Right. But if medical science is anything, it's interventionist. So they come in and they say, we're going to help this process along as best as we can. And a lot of times it's as simple as creating a cast, which basically forms that protective layer and keeps kids from doing stuff that's fun while their bone is reproducing itself. Yeah. They're going to diagnose you. They're going to immobilize it with that cast and make sure it's all in proper alignment. Maybe a splint, maybe a swing, maybe a brace, whatever it takes, depending on where the break is, how bad it is, how old you are, and horrifically. It's probably painful. Yeah. Because your bone, if it's not in alignment, when you go to see the doctor, they have to make sure that it is in alignment, which means that they're going to physically force it back into alignment, which means you're going to pass out from the pain if they don't give you something beforehand. Yes. I should look this up that if it's not healing right, they'll rebreak it sometimes. Is that true? I imagine, yeah. I've heard that. It seems like I knew someone that had that happen. Surgical break? Yeah, I think so. Or a medical break. I bet that's happened. You might need traction, which I never really knew what traction was. I thought traction was just, hey, I need to keep my leg elevated for a period of time. But it's not just that. It's actually weights and ropes and pulleys, like pushing and pulling constantly to make sure it stays in alignment and maintains that alignment. Right. So, like, if you have a leg where the brake is trying to go, the lower part is trying to go up, and the upper part is trying to go down. You would have pulley pulling on the lower part and the upper part pushing on the upper part, pulling each way so that it's constantly in alignment. Right. That's got to be painful, I would imagine. I can't imagine. Traction is fun. There is a kind of traction that bears your last name, bryant Traction. Oh, really? Yes, and as cute as possible. It's for little kids only who suffered femur or hip breaks. Oh, man. And their tiny little legs have to both be up in the air at a 90 degree angle of their pelvis. And it's heartbreakingly. Adorably sad to see a little kid in Bryant Traction because they're all, like, four, and I've seen pictures because I've looked up traction. And if you want to see a really disturbing PDF that's not intended to be disturbing. It's just forthright medical photos, go on to Lancastergeneralcollege.edu and look up traction and orthopedic care by a guy named Rothicker. And it's just basically a how to and, like, different types of traction. And traction has kind of become abandoned largely by the medical profession. Oh, yeah. It was kind of big in the 20th century, and I think we've kind of outgrown it largely. But there are some old timey torturific looking traction devices out there. Like the head tongs, you know, like an ice tongue. They used to deliver, like, three Stooges delivered ice. Yeah. They have those for your head to hold your head in alignment with your spinal column for however long it needs to be if you break your back. Wow. It's just really kind of weird to see. But there's little kids in Bryant traction in the PDF, I bet. Our friends for my brother and my brother and me, Justin McElroy, he and his wife now Sydney, who's a doctor, have a new podcast called Saw Bones. Oh, yeah, I saw that. It's really good. It's basically Sydney and Justin are both just fascinated by antiquated medical practices. Awesome. And that's like the entire podcast. And I guess you could probably get that on Bullseye, right? Bullseye website, yeah, or itunes. It's really good. And they sweetly said that they were inspired by us as far as delivering, like, educationalfunnypodcast. That's very sweet. Yeah. So it's pretty cool. Cell bones. Yeah. Okay. Surgery. Surgery. Oh, that's another thing. If you are in traction, there's two kinds of traction. There's skin traction, which is basically like they attach the ropes and the pulleys and stuff to using medical tape or like a boot or a sling or something. Then there's skeletal traction, where they go in and attach pins, rods, needles to your bone. Yeah, that's pretty severe. Brakes require this. Usually you don't need surgery to repair a bone, but if you do, that means you're going to be getting, like, bolts and pins and things started to keep everything properly aligned. Yeah. And while you're in traction, your muscles are doing jack, which means the atrophy, which means you're going to have to go through rehab. Yeah. Which is good. And rehab, they specialize in just enough work to build up your muscle and cartilage and tendons again, but you still have to respect the brake. So it's a very delicate line they're walking here with what kind of rehab you can do. Sure. So broken bones can lead to it's not always. Just as easy as your bone is broken, let's heal it. There can be complications. You can die. Yeah. You can. From, like, a broken hip. Sadly, apparently one third of hip break related deaths come from that hematoma. Wow. That's sad. And I think probably what happens when you have that fractured hematoma and the hip, you're still moving around a little bit. So what that's called, though, is a pulmonary embolism. That's when that clot moves up and blocks, like, arteries to your lungs. Right. And that's where the death results from. Yeah. Obviously, if you have a compound fracture, infection is pretty big risk. If you break ribs, they can puncture organs, or if they're not properly set or not healing right. They can squeeze out organs and lead to tissue damage and things like that. Yes. That's no good. And then there's something called fibrodysplasia ossapochan progressive or FOP. Right. It's a genetic condition with a life expectancy of about 40 years of age. And basically, Chuck, that bone remodeling process goes haywire. There's a genetic mutation to where any kind of trauma to your tissue triggers bone regeneration at the site. So, like, your muscle is turning into bone. Your muscle, your skin, your fat. Those pictures, man, like, it showed a skeleton, bare skeleton that had this disease, and it's like, skeleton plus what you're used to looking to, plus a lot more. Yeah. And it's a very sad condition. I think they believe only about 700 people in the world have FOP and most of them are incorrectly diagnosed with things like cancer. Yeah. Because cancer can do all sorts of wacky stuff to bones as a secondary condition, and so they get all sorts of unnecessary treatments, like chemotherapy and things like that. Even when I'm having cancer. Right. Wow. Even when it is correctly diagnosed, it's basically like parents are forced to choose, like, am I going to try to keep you alive as much as possible and make you live in a bubble? Or am I going to say, I want you to live your life and you can go out and get a bruise and inoculation get punched in the arm and all of those things, those sites are going to turn to bone. Wow. A bruise creates bone there at the site. Unbelievable. Your joints lock up and then you lose use of that limb. Yeah. I saw the one guy interviewed, it was just like, he can't walk around, you can't lay down. Comfortably. It just really just locks you up. Yeah. And it's a really terrible, horrific condition. But now that they've discovered the gene mutation associated with it, they really feel like the next generation of FOP patients are going to have a lot better quality of life than the ones alive today. Oh, really? Yeah. And there's a girl in Peach Tree City who has it who's just kind of a plucky survivor. That's here in Georgia, by the way. Yeah. In case people didn't know. How do you not know it's in Georgia called Peach Tree City? Very true. That's where everybody drives golf carts around. Oh, really? Yeah. You didn't know that? No. That's the home of Club Car, the golf cart company. Is it really? Yeah, and for some reason, like Peach Tree City, I guess to celebrate, club Car built a bunch of paths, like, all over the city. That's how you get around down there, from what I understand. Well, that's neat. Yeah. So she has it in Peachtree Cities because it's, like, super rare, right? Yeah, like 700 people worldwide. How's she doing? She's doing okay. Like I said, she's plucky. From what I understand, she was the centerpiece of the article on it that I read on ABC News called Turn to Bone. Air Conditioned Lock Victims in Second Skeleton. It's pretty interesting. Well, I've seen the attitude of people that have things like this happen. That's the inspiration. Right. I don't know if you saw the email a guy wrote in yesterday that cut off four of his fingers with a table saw and had medical leeches used as part of the thing and, like, sending pictures. It was really gnarly. No, I missed that. But this guy was, like, smiling in the picture, and he's like, you know what? A lot worse things can happen. He's like, they weren't able to reattach the fingers. I got a knob I can still play bass guitar with. And he's got this really rad artificial finger that he sent a picture of, like a robotic finger. That's very cool. And again, just like, the attitude. Emily and I always make jokes about the living will and what do you want to do in case these situations? I'm like, if I break a few bones and I'm in traction, I was like, just go ahead and put me out. Is that right? I'm just the biggest complainer and worse, like, with that stuff, I need to work on my attitude. In case of bad situations like that, you should probably specify on record, put you out means kill you or give you a bunch of drugs. Oh, right. Because that could lead to a lot of disagreement later on. It could lead to some good times. Right. That will change your attitude. You got anything else? That's it, man. Oh, by the way, evil can evil did not break every bone in his body. Look that up. That's not true. Really? Yeah, he broke, apparently. 35 bones over the course of his career. It's not that much. That's a lot. He also used to punch out like reporters he didn't like, apparently. And break bones in his hand doing so. I guess McConaughey was going to play him in a biopic at one point. I thought that was pretty good casting. Who else? Yeah. Biopic. Maybe Josh Lucas. What's wrong with biopic? Biopic. We've had this conversation before, whether it's biopic or biopic. Yeah. And what have we settled on? I say biopic and I said biopic. Yeah, but I think I just said biopic. Maybe you no, you said biopic. Oh, I did? Jerry, can we get a ruling? Jerry says no. I wasn't paying attention. I got nothing else then. Okay. Well, that's a broken bones. That was a good one. Yeah, I think so. I never really knew. I mean, I knew they healed themselves, but it's a pretty fascinating stuff. Yeah. And if you want to learn more about it, you can check out this article by Robert Lam on howstep works.com. Just type in broken bones and it will bring it up. And since I said Robert Lamb, that means it's time for message break. Now, how's about some listener mail? Chuck? Yeah. This is from a female rugby player, so it probably fits with broken bones. I bet she's broken a bone. Sure. And I didn't know that ladies played rugby, so I was happy to learn this. Hey, guys. I want to say first off, that I think you all are incredible. Love the podcast, dig the show thoroughly, enjoy all the fun newsletter emails I get from you to help break up the day at work. Oh, yeah, we should tell people you can subscribe to our newsletter. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's just kind of like a rundown of stuff we've come up with that week. Articles, links to the podcast, video. Good way to stay in the loop. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how you sign up for that, though. Really? Hold on. Actually, I do know where it is. Chuck, you can go to our Facebook page and sign up. I should know that there's a link on the Facebook page for our newsletter, so just click that and add your information. And I believe there's a no spam guarantee. And of course, it's not a legally binding guarantee, but I think there's no spam associated with it. Oh, cool. Yeah. All right. All you get is the newsletter. Nice. Well, thank you, Jamie, for pointing that out. Thank you for enjoying the newsletters. Yeah. So she continues, I am writing to ask for a favor on something I know you guys hate to do. But I figure I have nothing to lose. I play for a women's rugby team in Chicago called the Chicago Sirens. Rugby is a newest sport for me, but I have to say, it's one of the most fun things I've done since moving here. Anyway, our team has been invited to play in the 2014 Safari Sevens tournament in Nairobi, Kenya wow. Which is an extreme privilege. The Safari Sevens is Africa's premiere rugby tournament and is open only to teams that receive formal invitations and draw crowds of over 20,000 people. Wow. We are currently the only US team that's been invited to play in the 2014 tournament, which is awesome. Yeah. In addition, we are the first women's team outside of Africa to ever receive an invitation to play, and it's a really cool opportunity for us. That is an extreme what did you say? An extreme what? Privilege. Yeah. Okay. The only problem is, guys, we are a self funded team, and we have a ton of fundraising to do in order to get ourselves there. Did you think she was just bragging? No, I knew. Would you guys be willing to mention our tour website on your Facebook page or on Twitter for sure. Or better yet, on the podcast? For sure. So you got it. She says, I know it's a total long shot, but this trip would be like a dream come true, and a girl's got to try. Your Kenyan bound fan. Jamie. So, Jamie, here's your plug. If you guys want to help support women's rugby and get them to Africa, they participate in Team USA for this. Yeah, pretty much. You can go to Sirens Safari number seven S. It's seven S, but it's the number seven instead of spelling it out. Okay, so S-I-R-E-N-S-S-A-F-A-R-I. Number seven at Safari. Seven? Webbscom. So, once again, that is sirensafari. Sevens. Seven webs.com. Man, they should have made that easier to make. No kidding. We earn that. So that's the URL. And boy, I hope you raise your funds. That'd be really neat. USA support women's rugby. Go help them, everybody. Yeah. Donate a few shekels, as Mark Marin would say. That's very nice. Yes. Way to quote Mary. Sure, I like the word sheckles. Yeah, that's a good one. Let's see if you, as always, have a charity, a group that needs help that we can try to rally everybody for. We're always out to hear that kind of thing. Yeah, no promises, because we get a lot of them. But, yeah, like she said, girls got a try. We'll do what we can. And if you have a broken bone story, you might as well send it to us. Why not? You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. Yes. You can join us on Facebook.com and sign up for our newsletter@facebook.com, stuffychino. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@discovery.com, and you can check out our home on thewebstepuseanow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. 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're you know it. 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4199f4e0-53a3-11e8-bdec-a7b29c48200a | Michael Dillon: Trans Pioneer | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/michael-dillon-trans-pioneer | Michael Dillon was a lot of things - author, doctor, and most importantly, trans pioneer. Learn all about his story in today's episode. | Michael Dillon was a lot of things - author, doctor, and most importantly, trans pioneer. Learn all about his story in today's episode. | Tue, 30 Apr 2019 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=120, tm_isdst=0) | 52831375 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Nurse Charles. Chuck Bryan over there looking all stern and serious with his glasses on. Oh, no, he took them all on. She's all good. And there's Jerry over there. He's not sure where she is. Jerry always has her glasses on. I know, she looks weird with her glasses off. She is a four eyes. That's what they call them in 6th grade. That's right. Well, that's what they used to. I don't know, 6th grades are probably way more mature than they were when we were young or way more advanced in their digs and insults. Right. Just a lot smarter than four eyes. Right. Like your mom gives you no screen time each week. Chew on that. That's a good one. Is it? Sure. So, Chuck, I'm glad we're here in the hot box. This was a really good pick on your part. Thanks. You basically yanked an unsung, or probably sung now, but for many years unsung hero of the trans community. Yeah, give all the credit to me. You really did a great job here, Chuck. You did a good job finding this one because I hadn't heard of Michael Dylan yet. But that's who we're talking about today. That's right. And it's just the most macro view. So you know, what we're talking about is Michael Dylan very much overlooked over the years as a trailblazer in the trans community, period. Yeah. That's enough of an overview. Okay, sure. Like one of the first people to undergo surgery, one of the first people to write about it and write books. Yes, but not necessarily even just one of them. They believe that Michael Dylan was the first female to male gender confirmation surgery ever. Yeah. And there are different terms in this article. We should say they call that gender confirmation surgery now. They used to call it sexual reassignment. Before that it was sex change. Yeah, for sure. And the pronouns in this are going to shift too, because I think we're just going to follow the timeline of the story pronoun wise. Right, yeah. That kind of makes sense. Yeah. Because for a significant portion of the first several years, I'm trying to think I don't know how old he was, but he spent a lot of his formative life as a girl and the waters are a bit muddied, but they were kind of purposely muddied historically. And it's not entirely clear whether Michael Dylan born Laura Dylan, laura Maud, whether Laura Maud Dylan was born intersex or if that was just kind of draped over the public presentation of this gender confirmation journey in order to kind of gain public sympathy, which is something you had to do back then, for sure. Yeah. The waters were very throughout history and still are very much muddied. You can go back and look at examples in history of people that we don't know because the world wasn't set up for recognition or acceptance of any kind of alternative lifestyle or anything on the gender spectrum. And so we don't know about Joan of Arc or we don't know for sure about Emperor what is his name? Alagabolis. He tried to get I guess I don't even know what they call that surgery beck in, like, Roman times, who knows? But he tried to have the surgery way back then, even. Oh, I didn't find anything like that. Okay. Yeah. All right. But we just don't know, like you said, because history didn't acknowledge this kind of thing, so it's hard to sort of categorize it today. Yeah, absolutely right. It actually wasn't until about the early 20th century, like the first fifth of the 20th century, that the medical establishment just tiny little pieces and dots here there, of the medical establishment, especially in the kind of newly burgeoning discipline of plastic surgery, began to see, like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. There are people out there who feel like that they were born the wrong gender. Like, their sense of self, their identity of their gender doesn't match their biology, and we can do something about that. And at first, it was extremely radical. For the first several decades, it was extremely radical. I mean, now even it's definitely gained much more acceptance. This idea that some people are born, they identify with a different gender than what they were born with in the 1920s. It was very radical, but it did exist in some parts of the medical community. Yeah. And I also get the feeling that plastic surgeons, especially some of them, were probably out to assist people, but I think a lot of them were just like, it was such a new discipline period. They liked the challenge. They were like nip tucking it. Do you remember those renegades on that show? I forgot about that show. It was a good show at first. Yes, but I never saw it. Oh, it was a good show at first. It went off the rails, maybe even more than Dexter did. But anyway, it was a good show at first. For the first several seasons. No, but I get the feeling that plastic surgeons back then were just like, oh, well, this is probably the ultimate challenge. Right? Yeah, I have that feeling too, for sure. So this is just a means of setting up the world that Laura Maudon found herself born into in Ireland in 1950. And I'd never heard this term, but his family had a title of baronet okay. Which is apparently the lowest hereditary titled order. It's a teeny baron, so you're a commoner, but you are required to be called sir. Really? Yeah. Okay. And even if it wasn't, like, kind of the teensy version of the Baron, the Dylan's were not wealthy. They had an estate, but it was kind of an old, kind of crumbling estate. Yeah. They weren't poor, anything, but they were certainly not well off. Right. And then by Downton Abbey times, the Shin Fein came along and burned the place to the ground, the estate to the ground, because it was kind of a reminder of English intrusion into Ireland, like landed gentry kind of thing. I'm re watching Doubt and Abbey, by the way. Are you? Yeah. How is it? It's comfort food, which is what I need right now. So that's why we're watching it. Is it better the first time or the second time around? Well, I don't know. Right now, it's just, like, kind of what the doctor ordered, so it's kind of great. Okay. Just like All My Old Pals plus, the movie is coming out this fall. That's so neat. So maybe this is a primer. I don't know. They're making a movie. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Sorry, everybody. Has there ever been a movie version of a TV show that was better than the TV show? I'll have to get back to you on that. Okay. I can't think of one. A movie version of a TV show? I cannot think of one. I think the Fresh Prince movie was pretty great. I was like, we have to stop for 2 hours. It's called Independence Day, right? Yeah, I guess it kind of was. All right, so, Laura Maudillon, the family, like you said, the state was burned down. He had gotten or I guess she there we go. At the time, she had gotten an inheritance a little bit. Not a ton. Yeah. Because she was young when she would have gotten this inheritance. Yeah. But her brother got the actual estate, which, as it turned out, wasn't that great of a get. So he was burned down. Robert, her brother, became the 8th baronet of Liz Muellen. And I guess when he was handed the title, he was like, thanks, I guess. But young Laura knew very early on that she was different, especially when she got to puberty. She didn't like wearing girls'clothing. She never thought of herself as a female. Yes, I think that's a good point that comes through. And everything I've read about her for him that he never identified as female, like, basically his entire life. Yeah. And apparently there was even an incident when she was a teenager where, like, a boy held open the door for her, and that just sort of was a symbol, I think, of all the confusion that she was feeling and really kind of wrecked her identity in a lot of ways. Yeah. I think it was the first time she was really confronted with what people saw her as. It was a girl. And she was like, I don't feel like a girl. That's not me. I'm a man. I didn't grow up that way. But I can't imagine how rough it is to feel out of sync like that, and especially at a time where what do you do you don't even have words for it, let alone procedures to follow or people whose footsteps who pioneered the way, which is one reason why Michael Dylan was a pioneer. So she gets that inheritance, which allows her to go to Oxford, and this sort of begins a trend of going somewhere else to try and find herself and figure herself out. Yeah, she tried at Oxford. She joined the rowing team. She was an award winner for the Women's Boat Club and was successful. And then I guess it's not too hard to believe, but there was a photo of her in a tabloid as a student rower that was titled man or Woman. Yeah, because she had, like, a boyish haircut. Yeah. I just can't imagine back then. I mean, now it's awful, too. But they were doing this kind of thing back then, like outing college students. Yeah. I think it was more like the commoners poking at the title people. Oh, really? Any chance they got. Okay, that's the impression I have, correct me if I'm wrong. Great Britain. And this is about the time where we should mention a novel published in 1928 by Marguerite Radcliffe Hall called The Well of Loneliness, which was a radical book because it depicted a lesbian, and there wasn't even a name for that at the time, like he said. Yeah, I looked that up, and I was like there really wasn't like, the word lesbian wasn't in use yet, and there was no word whatsoever. And from what I saw on etymology online, it just says, with zero explanation, lesbian 25. Oh, really? Yeah, but I can't find any other thing. I find no other date or whatever. So it's possible it was in use right around this time that it had spread. But from what I saw, I think the point is there wasn't a concept, not just a word, there wasn't a concept for women who were interested or who were sexually oriented toward other women. That kind of fell under an umbrella term as far as society went. For women who were sexually uninhibited. They would do that, but then they would also have sex with guys, and they would walk around parties naked or whatever. It was all one big personality. There wasn't the idea that there was a sexual orientation of women who were oriented toward women. That was, I think, what really didn't exist. And that what the well of Loneliness really kind of put out there, like, hey, this does exist. And you could say that it wasn't well received by British society. Yeah. In a lot of ways, it was a great thing because it gave people like young Laura something to look at and identify with, but it also put forward ideas about lesbians being very manish, and they want to be men and look like men and dress like men, which is, of course, not the case, but it was also right. And so the British government decided that this book was obscene and had a huge trial over it and banned the book, and it had a complete strike. In effect. Everybody's like, Wait, what book is this? What are you talking about? Right. Exactly. And so everybody wanted to know about it, and it made this huge impact. It just totally backfired. By banning it and going to the trouble of taking it to trial and everything, it became kind of a big deal. And so it kind of informed how a lot of British lesbians viewed themselves. It gave them like, okay, I'm not the only one. This is a real thing. Yeah. It was helpful in a lot of ways, too. Well, I mean, one way it was helpful to young Laura Dylan was realizing, well, wait a minute, I'm not a lesbian, right, either. So I have no idea how to think about myself other than the fact that I was born into the wrong gendered body. Right. Because at first she was like, okay, maybe this is it. And supposedly she fell in love as a teenager. So air quotes with two women who were straight, and they rejected her, and it had a big impact on her. But from that experience, and I think, having been guided by this book, like you said, she realized, I'm not a lesbian. That's not what this is about. Right. She was a man. And what superseded all other desires and what drove her more than anything else was to be the man that she felt she was physically, so that she could be accepted into male society. That was her goal. It wasn't to have sex with women. If she could have had a kid with a woman, she would have loved that, but in as much as it would confirm her identity as a man. And so that's what drove her to undertake hormone procedures, surgery, and basically everything that pushed her toward confirming her identity as a man. It was the desire to be accepted as a man. Yeah. And that process kind of started at Oxford when she started dressing as a man, kind of presenting outwardly as a man, going to events as a man. And it was sort of a double edged sword. There was a little bit of freedom to that and a little bit of work towards self realization. But she graduated as a woman, still had a female name on her birth certificate, still had to get a job, and had to wear skirts and dress as a woman at work. Right. So it's sort of just still trapped between two worlds when she comes in contact with a man named Doctor George Voss. I think we should take a break. I agree. Okay, raise your mind. All right, Chuck, you're setting everybody up for the Dr. Fawce bomb drop. Let's hear about false. It's not a bad band name. The doctor foss bomb drop. It's like a doctor teeth in the Electric what? Electric Mayhem. That's right? Is that right? Nice work. I would have never thought about foss was speaking of double edged swords. He was a doctor who was experimenting with testosterone on patients. Like one of the first yeah. And injections. This is in the 1930s, and this was to help reduce unpleasant heavy periods for women, but it had the side effect, the obvious side effects that would happen when a woman takes testosterone. And Laura Dylan gets word of this and volunteers and says, I'm kind of interested in the side effect, if you know what I mean. Right. He's like, that I don't know what you mean. Yeah, this is 1930. I have no idea what you're talking about. Right. So he's like, okay, all right, well, you'll be the absolute first, as far as anybody knows. Since synthetic hormones were very new, laura Dylan was the first to try to undergo hormone therapy for gender confirmation. No one had ever tried that before. I didn't even call it hormone therapy, but false is like, all right, I'm not quite sure about this. How about, I've heard of people like you, you go see a shrink and talk to a shrink first and then come back afterwards, and then I'll talk about treating you or whatever. Yeah, so Laura went to a shrink and they didn't call him shrinks back then either. No, they call them no words for anything. Psychotherapist. That guy over there and then came back and said, hey, the shrink said, whatever, and how about we do this hormone therapy? Foss said. You know what? I've changed my mind, but here's a bottle of testosterone tablets. Good luck. I'm just going to leave them on the table and walk out of the room. I was thinking we should Foley in the sound effect of a bottle of pills being tossed from one person to another. What does that sound like? It's kind of a silent act. These are really good Mics, though. And we should also point out that that psychiatrist or psychologist who spoke with Laura then gossiped about this to other people. And that got back to the research facility where Laura worked. So just one of many betrayals in her life, and such a betrayal that she said, I'm out of here. She had to actually leave work this research lab because the heat has been turned up on her. And, yeah, there are a string of betrayals that popped up throughout Michael Dylan's life, and this is one of the first significant ones. But also, he was also a very lonely person just because of his situation and because there was no community for him. And he had some real friends here or there, but they were kind of random, surprising people. One of the big influences on his life was the town vicar from where he grew up as a girl. Really kind of connected and understood him and his family was not very supportive. His brother Robert disowned him at one point, his Aunt Toto. Have you ever seen a picture of Aunt Toto? No. If there's ever been a woman named Aunt Toto that looks like an Aunt Toto, it's this lady. She was obviously supportive because in the picture she's walking around with Michael Dylan, full dress, beard and everything. Antono was supportive. She was not as much as she would be out in public pictured with him. Interesting. But I don't have the impression that she was supportive. Okay. I think maybe she tolerated it. That's the impression that I have got. You probably chided him, who knows? But he didn't have a lot of friends. But the ones that he did have really helped him in some profound ways and help kind of he did have this kind of mountain chain of support throughout his life, but never a bunch of people at once got you, you know what I mean? So mediocre support, dabbled here and there throughout his life, I guess. So he had to do it on his own, I guess so. This is where the pronoun definitely shifts at this point because Laura fully starts using testosterone, fully starts living life as a man. Took on the name Michael, became Michael, grew a beard because the hormone treatments worked. Like, his voice dropped and became lower pitched. He got a job as a mechanic. Of course, he got made fun of there some, but it was working well enough to where, like, customers started. He started to kind of pass as a man among people that didn't know who he was very much. So as long as he was clothed, he was a man. That's just what he looked like to everybody. Like you said, the voice, the beard, the demeanor. He was a large man, very well built, from all those years of rowing. Sure. And then a decade of testosterone pills are coming. Half a decade by this point had really taken effect. Yes. And this is in Bristol. I don't think we mentioned another move to try and start over. Right. Because of that gossipy headshrinker who basically got him driven out of his job at the research lab. Right. So he's working at the garage and there is a certain bittersweet confirmation or affirmation from interacting with customers who leave thinking that they just interacted with the man, making him feel like himself, the person he's always wanted to be. But like you said, he's getting mocked by coworkers. But one of the things that he does is he takes on extra work as a fire watcher because this is during the Second World War and Britain was getting bombed during the Blitz by the Germans. And Michael Dylan would sit up and watch for fires that broke out and would call the fire brigade, tell them where to go because a bomb had just set some building on fire, which meant very long hours awake in the dark, sitting around doing nothing. And he took this time to write a book called Self, and Self was a really interesting tome, from what I can tell, where there was kind of a scientific treatise on endocrinology, psychological treatise on basically what would come to later be known as trans identity. Well, and everything gender identity, homosexuality. He was kind of tackling it all, except not saying, like, this is who I am. Right. He was approaching it like, I am a scientist, and this is what's what. Yeah. And it got published in 1946. It was obviously not some huge bestseller because it was 1946. I would say it was probably tucked away in certain corners of certain bookstores, but not widely acknowledged and available at the time right now, looked upon as a landmark piece of work. But at the people who were in this scattered trans community at the time, who were lucky enough to find it, found a lot of solace in it because it argued on their behalf. At the time, the medical community was like, if you're born intersex, where it's unclear what your gender is, you're morally in the clear. Like, we can feel bad for you. There's things we can do. We'll do surgeries. No one's going to really judge you if you're born biologically one gender, but you want to be the other gender. Everybody considered back then a freak, like, that was the word they tossed around, was freak. And you deserve scorn and plenty of it. Whatever anybody wanted to do to you, that's what you deserved at the time. And it was up to the medical community to dole out judgment of who deserved what right. And Michael, in this book, Self argued, no, it's up to the person to decide. If that person decides that it's their head that they want change to match their body or their body, they want change to match their head, it's up to them to decide. And this was the complete opposite of what the medical community held at the time. Oh, yeah. And also, the point was, there needs to be a physical change. Like, we can't be, quote unquote, fixed psychologically. This is real, so we need to be able to physically change our bodies. Right. And that was radical at the time. Well, it was. And it was also a time where it's important to point out that transitioning from male to female, believe me, nothing was super accepted, but that was slightly more accepted in England and the west, at least. And there were famous cases. There was one transgender person named Christine Jorgensen. And ironically, too, if you're transitioning male to female and you transition into this beautiful woman right, then it's more accepted and written about as like, well, but look what happens. Like, the chrysalis turns into a butterfly. Right? Like, everybody's like, why can't you be more like Caitlyn Jenner? Yeah, exactly. But this is, why can't you be more like Christine Jorgenson? Yeah. So the whole point of all that is Michael Dylan was sort of in one of the roughest positions to be transitioning the other way, which was not accepted at all, and the least sort of like understood, even. But ironically, at least legally, it was easier for Michael Dylan to undergo an actual surgical transition going from female to male than it was for somebody who wanted to go male to female, at least in Great Britain, because in the UK at the time, there were laws against surgical castration of healthy male genitalia. Right. It was illegal to do I don't know if this is confirmed, but one of the thoughts is to get out of the army. Right. They didn't want men having the surgery to get out of the army. But also at the time, homosexuality was outlawed and had been since 1885. Yeah. That little fact as well. Right. Which we talked about. Yeah. So here we are with Michael Dylan, still very much in between worlds, still very much in pain and not living like a full true life as his true self, but much happier than, say, during the time when he was working at the research lab. Right. At the very least, the hormones have given him a certain amount of confirmed his male identity much more than it had before. That's true. So we should add here that Dylan had diabetes, which turned out to be an interesting sort of good thing in some ways, because he's at the doctor, because he has diabetes. He really loved his cake in Bristol and I couldn't tell if it was type two or type one. I never saw that either. So at the hospital in Bristol, Dylan's seeing by a plastic surgeon who says, wait a minute, here's a diabetic man from the doctor's point of view who has breasts. And I bet you probably want those removed. So let me put you in touch with this plastic surgeon. His name is Dr. Harold Gillies. I think that guy actually performed a mastectomy first. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, he put him in touch with Gillies because this guy is the real deal. Like, if you want a penis, this is your man. Do you remember that's what it said on his card. Do you remember Gillies from the War Masks episode? Yeah. He was like the hero surgeon from that episode. Yeah. His specialty was helping physically repair people who were mangled in a factory or burned or blasted up at war. Yeah, and he got a reputation. Like I said, if you were in battle and you lost your penis, go to Dr. Gillies because he can make you a new one. Do you remember that part in Big Red One where I think Mark Hamill gets his penis blown off? How do you remember that? It's Mark Hamill. Right. That was my first R rated movie. And Lee Marvin, we have had the same conversation, but years ago. Yeah, many years ago. So weird. Anyway, Gilly could have helped him probably put it back on. All right, so that's where we are. Met Doctor Gillies and said, you know what? I can make you a penis. It's an interesting procedure. What I do is I cut a flap of skin, allow that skin to grow, and I'm rolling this thing and forming it into a tube shape the whole time. Right. And then effectively, I can take that tube of skin, and we can talk about what you want out of it. What do you want? You got a tube of skin. It's up to you. Go crazy with whatever you want to do with it. Yeah, but I mean, those are some of the questions, like, do you want to urinate out of this? Do you want to have sex and have sex? That actually feels good, right? And this was, believe it or not, all possible thanks to Gillies. At the time, I don't think it was like, 100%, like, success rates, but for the time inventing Falloplasty, at least, there was a glimmer of hope. I believe Gillies did invent Falloplasty, and Michael Dylan was the first recipient of Falloplasty in the world. So that's not to say that there weren't gender confirmation surgeries that had happened prior, but by the time Gillies had come along, he really managed to standardize these and figure out the best practices for them before the first ones they started to take place. Back in, I think, 1919, in Berlin, there was a guy named Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld who ran the Institute for Sexual Vicenshaft or Sexual Sciences. And under Dr. Hirschfeld's watch, some of the earliest gender confirmation surgeries took place, including a radical surgery for the Danish painter Lily Elby. Yeah, they made the movie in the book. Is this a Dutch girl? The Danish girl? The Danish girl, yeah. Okay. All right. I got to see that then. Is it sad or bet? It's sad. I never saw it. Well, I can tell you Lily Elby's story is sad, but in a very bittersweet way. She transitioned into a woman, and all she wanted was to be able to have a baby and actually got a uterine transplant. Oh, that's how she died. And a vaginoplasty. Yeah, right. But she didn't die for, like, I think, 14 or 18 months later. Yeah. It was an infection that eventually led to cardiac arrest. But she wrote like she knew she was dying. She wrote toward the end, she said, some people would say that 14 months isn't a very long life to live as the person you were born to be, but to me, it was a whole lifetime. So it was like, she got what she wanted finally. She got to be the woman that she'd always felt she was and live that way for 14 months. Yeah, I got to check that out. But that was the idea that she died from the surgery. Like, they were just practicing basically, at this point, but they. Were practicing on live patients. And in their defense at the Institute, they weren't doing this because they were mad scientists. They were doing this because these were people coming to them saying, like, if you don't do this, I'm going to do this myself. Right. Because that was kind of your option, do it yourself or go totally nuts banging your head against the wall trying to find some other alternative for it. So by the time Gillies came along in the 40s actually, World War One, and then onward into the 40s, he really figured out how to do this. And he was the guy who laid the groundwork for everything that came after. Yeah. And he was actually he was not only a talented surgeon, but he could provide a medical reason that would be acceptable to the bureaucrats, which was there's a condition called hypospatia that's when a man's urethra exists further down the penis rather than at the tip of the penis, and so a boy might be misgendered at birth. Mislabeled. And so this surgery would, I guess, correct that. So he had sort of a legal standing no. For sure. To stand on. Remember, like, the surgeons. And so the community at large, it said, okay, if you're born intersex, hypospatia qualifies as intersex. Right. You deserve to be taken care of. Like, it's fine. Legally, you can do it, all that stuff. So if you have a surgeon who's saying this patient has hypospadia, you're in. All right, should we take a break? Oh, yeah, I think we should. All right. So where we left off was dr. Gillies has been introduced to Michael Dylan. Michael Dylan hormone therapy has worked. Michael Dylan has been living pretty successfully for the time as a man and said, all right, I'd like to have this surgery. And Dr. Gilly said, that's great, but get in line, pal, because I got a lot of war masks now. I got a lot of injured men in the war that I have to treat that in my mind take priority over you. And so it took a little while to actually go under the knife for Dylan. Yeah. It wasn't like, this is just one surgery. Oh, no. Series. Sure. So Gilly's, in his notes later on, said that he performed 13 surgeries on Michael Dillon. Dylan, in his autobiography, said that it was 17. But it was a lot either way, a lot of surgeries over, like, a three year period, during which time Michael Dylan goes to medical school. Yeah. Trinity in Dublin. Yeah. So he's kind of taking his life into his own hands in a big way by saying, like, I want to go be a doctor and potentially a surgeon even. Right. But he's going and doing his studies during the term. And then after the term, he's going to England to visit Gillies at Gilly's Hospital, the one we talked about in the Warmasks episode. And remember how we said this hospital is kind of like a refuge for people who had trouble existing in the outside world. Well, Michael Dylan was finally, for the first time in his life, he felt like accepted there and he could thrive and he did thrive in this hospital with all these other patients. It was like a really happy time for him actually, when he would go spend time there getting surgeries and recuperating while he was out of school. He felt good, like he called it the country club is where he was going. Yeah. And weirdly though, it was also a time where Michael Dylan developed this, I guess sort of a defense mechanism and survival technique relationship wise, where he was sort of in the article here it was labeled misogynistic. I don't know, that's a tough word, but at the very least it was sort of like, well, who needs women? Women belong in the kitchen. Which is all clearly a defense of self preservation. I even wrote later on that it was to keep women at arms league then it was purposeful. They didn't really actually mean it. Well. Absolutely. Because even if this surgery. And we're going to get to that in a second. Even if it went off without a hitch. When push comes to shove. If he got in a relationship with a woman. While he may have a functioning penis. It's still not one that's like. They would be able to tell and he would have to have some sort of conversation which he did not want to have. Right, but it's even more nuanced than that, Chuck, because remember how Laura Dylan was befriended by the town vicar as a young kid? Well, that vicar is credited by Michael Dylan as really instilling like the set of ethics and values into them. And one of the things that he said is if I can't give a woman a baby, I have no business leading her on. So it wasn't just self defense. It was also in a very strange way, looking out for other women. He didn't want anyone to fall in love with them or expect something from him that he couldn't give. Right. And I can't get whether he actually was okay with being denied love like that or if that in itself was the defense mechanism. Not talking about it, but from what I gather, what he was really interested in, he would much prefer have just been hanging out with the guys. He wasn't after love or a baby or a wife, he was after hanging out with the guys. That's what he wanted and that to him is what Gillies gave him by creating this penis for him. That was it. That was the key. That was the final ticket into the mail world. Now he could be anywhere men were, including a dressing room or a locker room and still be accepted as a man. That was it. And so finally, by 1950, after these years of surgery after more than a decade of testosterone therapy, michael Dylan was Michael Dylan the man. He had been confirmed in his gender identity. Yeah. So this is where someone named Roberta Cowell comes into Dylan's life. I don't even think we talked about Roberta earlier on, did we? No, we didn't. Mentioned her yet. No. She really does just kind of come in now, so I think it's okay. So, Robert Cal, we should go back and start over. Roberta Cal was born male, but began that hormone treatment. And when it was in that transition period that's so difficult, when Roberta read Dylan's book Self, which, again, not some huge book, but got a copy of it and said, I would like to meet you and talk to you. Yeah. Because she wanted info on how to get a surgeon to do this. That might as well have been magic at the time. Well, and he was a doctor at this point too, dylan was. So Roberta thinks like, I'm meeting with this doctor. Yeah. Which was true, but it was all a ruse. I'm no doctor, I'm a mechanic. Well, he was all those things. So at the very first meeting, Dylan just sort of spills it. And this was something that Dylan didn't talk about openly with people. I always kept it very guarded and just basically says, here's my whole life history. Here's who I am, and at last I found someone who understands me. And by all accounts, they sort of felt like they were meant to be together in some way. He felt they were meant to be together. She did not feel that way. Well, not in that way, no. But she was very close to him. It's not like she shunned him or anything like that. No, she didn't. I have a feeling that he well, actually, I know he has a little more of a future in mind for them than she did. Like romantic future. Right. And he also, at the very least, he served as her guide to transitioning. He knew Gilly's, he knew how to do this, and just was a really great resource for her as well. Well, and not just emotionally helped with the transition, but literally with a scalpel. Oh, yeah. That's a big one. Dylan, as a doctor, actually performed an orchidctomy on Cowell right. Which is the removal of the testicles. That's right. Which is illegal at the time. And so they found I know he went to medical school, but was he a I'm not sure if he graduated yet. He had definitely performed an appendectomy by that point. He did that in medical school for sure. You and I could do that tomorrow, probably, right. We actually are scheduled for surgery tomorrow. But he did it illegally. And they found out about this because they meaning historians. Right. In either Michael's letters or Roberta's letters, there is a document that was found that said, i, Roberta Cal, understand that Michael dylan is a doctor, but is not an experienced surgeon. I also know that there are a lot of risks involved in this and that it's illegal. But I hereby remove any responsibility should I not survive this orchidectomy that Michael Dylan's about to perform on me. And so with Roberta Kyle's testicles removed, now all of a sudden she is a candidate for gender confirmation surgery from Gillies, who can do it legally now because there's no testicle removal, which again, is illegal. And so Gillies, who's been introduced to Roberta by Michael, performs is it a panectomy, I believe? Not a pennectomy, but a vaginoplasty. The very first one. The very first one in Great Britain, remember, I think, happened to Lily Elbow was the first vaginoplasty recipient. Yes, but this is the first one in Great Britain. It's not like they were a dime a dozen by this time. It was groundbreaking surgery, for sure. And it was successful, too. That's right. So he did get his medical degree? Dylan did didn't get a job for a little while, but eventually got a job as a ships doctor. And this is in the Merchant Navy. We didn't say he asked Roberta to marry him. And Roberto is like he said, Fine, I'm done with relationships. I'm going to join the Merchant Marine. That's right. Anne was a doctor and very much living as Doctor Michael Dylan on these ships. Bearded, pipe smoking doctor. Yeah. You can find pictures on Google Images and all that stuff. Like all kinds of good pictures. Look up Michael Dylan and Aunt Toto. Seriously. Ant Toto looks like Aunt Toto. I don't even know what that means. You will know what it means when you see Aunt Toto. I can't stress this enough. So if you go back to the beginning of the show, remember where we talked about the inheritance and the lineage and all that? This is where Michael Dillon says, you know what? I want to get back in the family lineage as a man for my birthright. And there are two ways that this is done in Britain, which this is also fascinating to me. The Brett's peerage and Burke's peerage. They're the two books that track the thoroughbreds that's right. Of British aristocracy. You should have used their quotes. So Dylan makes this change in one of them in Debretz doesn't make the change in Burkes because Debretz assured him that if the change was made in Debretz, burke's would follow suit automatically. Just about to say that. So that didn't happen. And this is when things go, really. You think, what a journey this man has been on to this point. This sends him to down the philosophical spiral. Or maybe up the philosophical spiral. Can you spiral up? Sure. It's like a corkscrew. All right. An inverted corkscrew. So starts getting into Buddhism, specifically a book called The Third Eye, which is, I think, about Tibetan Buddhism, but how they can fly around and do stuff. Yeah. Supernatural. That book is definitely one that's been taking issue with over the years. Sure. So he goes back to Britain. He's very much in this mindset of Buddhism and philosophical introspection. This is when he's basically exposed in the press as this scandalous person who had a sex change and is trying to get the family fortune, when he's not even in titles, or they probably use the she pronouns, I imagine, back then. And he basically finally comes out, does an interview, fully outing himself in the press, even though he did say he suffered from hypospatia in order to gain sympathy. Which was not true. No, apparently it wasn't true. Yes, that's what we were saying at the beginning. Like, the historical record has been muddied by stuff like that during that interview, but it doesn't seem to be true. But he's exposed. He's basically like, I can't go anywhere in England, I can't go to America. All the press is going to follow me wherever I go, except probably to India. I want to go meet some of these Tibetan monks. Yeah. So he headed off to India after one of the voyages in the merchant navy and started studying Buddhism. He sought out a guy, another Britain, who had been transformed under the Buddhism, the Theraveda tradition, who had become known as let me see if I can get this right, Chuck, right out of the gate. Sangharakshita. Yeah. Pretty good, right? I think so. Sangharaqshida was a British guy, I can't remember what his born name was, but he had become like a pretty well respected, renowned, therapeutic Buddhist teacher in India. And so Michael Dylan sought him out and started studying under him. Well, gave him his whole story and said, this is who I am. Right, by the way. So at this point, not only has he become a man, now he's becoming a Buddhist. And so to kind of undergo this further transition from Michael Dylan to this new Buddhist practitioner, he takes a name, Romanera Javaka. Javaca was Buddha's doctor. He throws his pipe off the mountain, he shaves his beard, shaves his head and starts learning Buddhism. And Sangharaqshida takes him on and says, I will let you be a novice. You can study under me. And so Michael had, or I should say Sarah Manera at this point, had this sudden idea that he was going to become a Buddhist monk, that this is in the cards for him in the future. And he dared to dream. Yeah. This was to me, maybe the saddest thing of all this. Toward the end of this man's journey, finally says, you know, what is going to bring me peace is to become a Buddhist monk. And they're accepting me in my story. And that's when they said, actually, you can't really become a monk. Sorry about that. But it falls under one of these bands and you can't be ordained as a monk because only men can be monks. And it was just like I can't imagine how crushing that was. There was also a prohibition against the third sex becoming monks, and apparently nobody knew exactly what third Sex meant, but everybody was like, it's probably you there's, probably referring to you. So if you were born a woman, you can't be a monk. If you're a Third Sex, you can't be a monk either. So Michael had these things going against him, but he still kept that. He still kept trying. He left the therapeutic tradition, and he found acceptance with Tibetan monks. Right. And it was the Tibetan monks that he felt most at home with. He was accepted on as a novice, and he was a novice who, at age like, 45, I think, was at the same level as ten year old boys living in this Buddhist monastery up in the Himalayas, but was happier than he's ever been in his life, just for this period of three months. And so he's found where he thinks he belongs, but he has to leave because his visa runs out. So he goes back to India to wait the prescribed amount of time and fully believes that he's going to be able to go back to become a confirmed monk. He would be ordained and start to become a monk under the Tibetan tradition, which probably would have happened had Sangharakshita not intervened again. Yeah. And at this point, he had fully was living this monastic lifestyle. He wrote home and said, Give away all my possessions. And Aunt Toto was like, you know that there's more money coming your way, like, \u00a320,000. He's like, I don't want it. Just give it away, give it away. And I guess Ant Todo did. So thanks for the \u00a320,000. So, like I said, he thinks he's going to be ordained because the Tibetan monks had said, we're going to ordain you when you come back. But Sangharakshita, the original guy from the therapeutic tradition, found out about this and sent a letter in triplicate to Michael, to the Tibetan monks in the Buddhist central Office, I guess, and basically said, here's everything that Michael Dylan told me about himself. He was born a woman, he underwent surgery. He is in no way a candidate for the monastery, for monkhood, and just shot down his chances. And I read a Tricycle magazine article, it's like the Buddhist magazine where they interviewed Sangharakshi two years later. This is, like, in 2007, and he said, I still stand by it. He's like, I don't think he had any business in my mind being a Buddhist monk, which is pretty rough, man. Even all these years later, he has zero regrets over it. Sad. Yeah. So the sad, sad ending for Michael Dylan is he died at a very young age. He had no money because he gave it all away, was traveling, and malnutrition sets in, and they're not really sure what sickness originated, sort of the downward slide, but he ended up in a hospital in India and died the age of 47 and 1962, and had written an autobiography called out of the Ordinary, which did not get published until two years ago. Yeah, he sent it off to his publisher, who he'd written a couple of other books for just right before he died, and his brother found out about it and wanted to get his hands on the manuscript so he could burn it. And his publisher hired lawyers to keep the family off of the manuscript and was successful. Amazing. And finally, in 2017, it was published. And now the world knows about Michael Dylan and his contribution. There's got to be a movie in the works. It's coming. Yeah, it is coming, for sure. So that's Michael Dylan. Chuck, good pick. Thanks. I'm glad we know more about this guy, because he deserves to be known about. And if you want to know more about Michael Dylan, well, go check him out. He has an autobiography out there and I'm sure he would be very happy. From Nirvana smiling down on you for reading it. That's right. Okay, I said that. So it's time for listener MailChimp. I'm going to call this a roboater. Hey, guys. My name is Jacob, riding from a rowboat on the Pacific Ocean. Oh, yeah. I've been alone at sea for 270 days on an attempted record setting journey. My horse keep talking to me. You know what's funny is I just watched that there's a documentary about obituary writers called Obit, and in it they kind of talk about some of their favorite obituaries over the years. And one of them was about the initial guy who rode the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean, which I never heard of. I was like, man, we got to do one on this guy. Sure. And then we get this email from Jacob all these years later, who's doing it again. Okay. Crazy. Did that set on everyone rowing a boat across the ocean. That's big. No sales, no rowing. All right. I hadn't listened to your podcast prior to departing, but luckily, I guess he was just like, jeez, who has 1000 episodes of something? We're the only ones. Yeah. I hope it's good. I hadn't listened to your podcast prior to departing, but luckily chose your show in an audio entertainment download frenzy before leaving. I've now been through many episodes that sometimes drift away, staring at oncoming waves and have to rewind, which is more difficult than it should be since Saltwater has destroyed most of my electronics about 75% of the way there, hoping to reach Australia from Washington State. Wow, man. I just want to say thanks for all you guys do appreciate your show, and I value you. The next 25% for me are far from certain, but you'll be with me all the way till the end, wherever that may be. And that is from Jacob, from somewhere over the Melanesian Basin. Okay, Jacob, we need weekly dispatches from you, please. Just at the very least, to say, hey, still alive, still rowing toward Australia. Well, he won't hear that. I don't think he's able to download stuff from the Milonesian basis. That's true. Maybe he'll hear this at the end of his journey. There's satellite internet out there, so maybe well, Jacob, if you hear this and you're still on your journey, it doesn't even matter. Whenever you hear this, email us back, okay? Yeah. If it's in 20 years. Everybody cross your fingers and your toes for Jacob. That's right. Okay. If you want to be like Jacob and get in touch with us from a robot somewhere in some ocean, you can do that. You can go to our website, staffordheno.com, and look up our social links. And you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is 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. Summer school's out. 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How much money do I really need to live? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-much-money-do-i-really-need-to-live | How much money does a person or a family need to live? Josh and Chuck are curious to find out, too. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to discover how needs, wants and peer pressure affect the amount of money we need to live. | How much money does a person or a family need to live? Josh and Chuck are curious to find out, too. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to discover how needs, wants and peer pressure affect the amount of money we need to live. | Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:51:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=15, tm_min=51, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=111, tm_isdst=0) | 21906244 | audio/mpeg | "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. 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseworkscom. Join Josh and Chuck, the guys who bring you stuff you should know as they take a trip around the world to help you get smarter in a topsyturvy economy. Check out the Allnew Superstuff guide to the economy from Houseupworks.com, available now exclusively on itunes. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Chuck is cracking up. What is going on? Chuck? I just can't believe I said that. They're so gross. Yeah, we can't repeat what Chuck just said. He's a dirty, dirty boy. They're all going to wonder. His name is Charles W. Bryant. My name is Joshua M. Clark. I go by Josh. He goes by Chuck or Compass Head and Chucker's. And this is stuff you should know. Thanks for tuning into our podcast. Are you on uppers? Yeah. Okay. I did a bunch of amyl nitrate. Man, everything is weird. Well, good for you. Thanks. So, Chuck, times are tough right now. Indeed, as you know, they're particularly tough for me. I am broke all the time. Right, I know that. Actually, we have this cool monthly yeah, you know, that because I like to bum money off the Chuck with it a while. We have this monthly expenses calculator on the site. Have you been on it? No, it's unnerving. Really. It's got all this great stuff, how much you estimate, how much you spend on gas a month, cable, your phone, insurance, all this. And then you put in at the top your monthly gross income somehow I'm living on negative $254 a month. That's awesome. I have no idea how I'm still alive, but Uncle Sam has well, Uncle Sam is in trouble too, but they take quite a bite. Well, imagine if I put my net income in here. I'd be in the hole like a grand every morning when I wake up. But, yeah, like I said, times are tough. We're all very happy to be here@howstuffworks.com. Housetepworks.com. We love this place. Love it. Seriously, please don't fire us. Very fortunate to have jobs. Exactly as we know. Remember we met that guy Chris in our podcast? Yes, I'm sorry, our spoken word album. I just got the Cockeye from our producer, Jerry. She's like, don't even say audiobook, kid. But yeah. So it's a little rough right now. One of the things I've learned is that as long as I have gas in the car, beer and cigarettes, I'm set. Because, really, honestly, I have virtually discontinued eating. Like I don't eat breakfast. I rarely ate breakfast anyway. I don't eat lunch. And dinner is usually kind of small, that kind of thing. And it's amazing how quick your stomach shrinks. Right? Yeah, I'm not hungry. I'm rarely hungry. Usually by about seven, which is when I'll eat dinner. If I do right, I'll be kind of hungry, but if I just say, no, I'm not really hungry, it goes away. Sure. And drink some coffee. That helps. But the problem is there's an arc where it's like hepatitis suppressed. Hepatitis suppressed. And then all of a sudden, the caffeine just screams into your stomach and it really points out how empty your stomach is. So you have to know where the cut off point is. Right. But no. I've been writing a lot of health articles lately, and it turns out that there is a well known fact in the medical establishment this isn't crackpot friend stuff that you're really unhealthy because you don't eat. No, that I will probably live longer than I normally would have because of a calorie restricted diet. Right. Which we've talked about before. We have. And I have found out quite happily that I accidentally fell backwards. Thank you. Backwards. I'm, like, hung up on profanity into a calorie restricted diet, and I will live longer, even smoking cigarettes. Well, good luck with that, my friend. Thanks. But the point is, I found that you can get by very little money. Right. And that just so happens to be what we're talking about right now. That was the longest setup in the history of stuff you Should Know, which is good. A new record. Thanks. I wasn't knocking it. Do I get a medal of any kind? Because I would totally pawn it right now. Yeah. To buy cigarettes. Yeah. So, yeah, Josh, you can get by, I think. What's the name of the article? How much money do I really need to live? Yes. Written by Jane, our colleague, Jane McGrath, who is our financial and money writer. And she also has her own podcast, stuff You Missed in History Class with Candice Gibson, editor extraordinaire. Actually, no, it's not Candice Gibson any longer. Our dear Candace got married. Candice Keener. Candice Keener now. C k. So, Chuck, how much money do we need to I don't know how much I need to live, but I mean, as far as the government is concerned, don't they have some sort of estimate that I may have heard of? I think you're talking about the poverty threshold. Yes. Which, again, reading this article, that's very little money that the government considers the poverty line. Right. I looked it up in 2009. For a single person, the government thinks you can get by in $10,830 a year. Yeah. You actually live below the poverty line one year. No, you didn't. I did not too long ago. Wow. Chuck this is when I was in the film business and I was working as a PA. And I made very little money. But like with this article, I had very cheap apartment in La. Yeah. Is there such a thing? There was at the time. I had a really good deal going, and you know how it works, dude. I didn't buy much food. I bought really cheap food, and I was able to do it. I was shocked when I got my statement at the end of the year. I was like, you got to be kidding me. I lived on that, and I didn't feel like I really missed out on mine. Well, it's because you're hanging out with Matthew McConaughey the whole time. Yeah, true. Maddie so that's for one person, ten grand, $830. Right. That's absolute poverty. Which they've been looking at this kind of stuff since the 19th 60s. Right. Well, let me say also, a family of four, as far as in 2009, supposedly can get by on $22,050. A family of four? Wow. That's insane. To me, this all comes from the 60s. There's an analyst named Mollyo Shansky, and he came up with the poverty line. Right? Yes. Basically, what he did was he estimated the total annual cost of a healthy diet in America, and then he multiplied it by three because he'd read a 1955 USDA report that said that Americans spend about one third of their income on food. So that would make sense. You figure out how much food you need and then multiply it by three, and then you have the poverty line. That's the least amount of money you need to make. Right. And the bureau adopted that. They're like, this is a great job. True. And unfortunately, they've been using it ever since with very little adjustment. They adjust for inflation, the inflation of increases in the price for food, that kind of thing. But really it's still based on the original formula right. With the one third number. I think that's what's causing a lot of issues. Some people think, say that one 7th of your income is what you actually spend on food now. And also you have to take into account, like back in the early sixty s, you didn't have to get a loan to buy a car. Right. They become exponentially more expensive. You also didn't have cable TV. You also didn't have wireless Internet. You also didn't have cell phones, any Internet, for that matter. That is true. Thanks for that one. We have so many more bills today that the formula should have been changed years and years ago. Right. But the bills, I think this is the crux of the matter, is want versus need. And that's kind of the crux of the article, is do you need wireless Internet? People think they can't live without their cell phone, but not too long ago, all of us lived without a cell phone, and it wasn't that big of a deal. Well, there's this thing called relative needs. Do you remember when we talked about the five day weekend? We talked about relative needs. Like, say your neighbor gets a really big TV and all of a sudden you need a TV, but you need a really big TV. Right. That's a relative need. Absolutely. But not all relative needs are kind of wanting, grabbing needs. Like, I need to beat my neighbor. Right. They also reflect the competitiveness that we have in the marketplace, in the labor force. Right, right. Like, if you have a cellphone and the guy who's up for a job next to you has only a landline and has to go home or use a payphone to stay connected, who's going to really come out on top. Right. Or you might just miss the one call that you need. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, there are certain things that you can say, yeah, that's kind of frivolous we did without them. But the fact is, everybody else has them. You kind of have to have them to stay competitive. Right. Right. I've been trying to find any way I can to cut down on monthly expenses, and one clear way is to just get rid of my cable. I'm not going to get rid of my cable entirely because I still need wireless Internet because I work at home a lot. Sure. And we have a research based job, so we need the Internet. Exactly. And the cell phone. Yeah. You can pare it down. Like, I could have a pretty bare bones cell phone plan and it would save a few bucks. But if you really look at it, it's like, oh, I'm saving like, 30, $40 a month. Right. Which technically adds up over the course of a year. But really, you're like, I just went through that in gas. Right. So it's kind of a frustrating balancing act, trying to pare down monthly expenses, right? Yes, absolutely. So what are some of the things you can do there, Chuck, if you want to really look at how to live on the least amount of money? Well, Josh, I was raised by my mother and father, but namely, my mother raised our family of five on an elementary school principal salary. In the 19th. It was just your dad working. Just my dad. My mom quit teaching to raise the kids, and I went back to teaching later once I was older. And she did a sterling job, by the way. Thank you. Thanks, mom. But my mom is a master economist. Micro economist. She clipped coupons, which is one of the things that we highly recommend. Yeah, I mean, she had a box filed with coupons alpha ties. It's all very organized. We shopped at the discount to clothiers, like a Marshall. Too much like that. My mom was pretty good like that, too. And she could never understand why I just refused to wear nights of the round table clothing. She's like, it looks exactly the same. Now, see, that's a little flag. Was it supposed to be the polo? Polo, okay. It looks just like the polo thing, except instead of a polo mallet, the top of the mallet, it was a flag. Right? And I got to tell you, when you're eleven, every kid around you sees that flag. Zero in on that flag. Well, try me, buddy. Not only that, but my family, we shopped at the store that had the flaws in the clothing. Oh, an outlet store? Yeah, it wasn't an outlet store. I can't remember what it's called. But factory store? No. Liquidator. No, but it's basically like it'll be the name brand and be like, hey, look at those Converse shoes, but they're missing two eye holes, or your jeans are missing a zipper, that kind of thing. Well, what's funny is, as I've grown older, I've come to see the value and stuff like that. Absolutely, man. Who pays full price? Who pays retail? Not me. And that goes back to my point, is, growing up, I always felt like I was maybe missing out here and there. And not that we were poor by any means. I always felt like I had everything I needed, but I didn't get the members only jacket, and I didn't get the parachute pants, which is actually good. Yes. For my mom not getting me those things. And the end result is, as an adult, I have a natural inclination toward being a little more frugal and watching my money in some ways. But I'm also my father's son, who is notorious for blowing money on flights of fancy. So I also have that. So it's a nice balance. It is a good balance. Like, I'll walk around behind my wife turning out lights, and I'll try and recycle everything under the sun and reuse it. But I'll go out and blow $500 on a guitar without even thinking. And he will people I have been there with him when he did. It was a great guitar. What was it? Well, it's a nice guitar. Okay. Chuck is afraid you're going to break into his house and take his guitar, so coupons, wait. Let me also say that I want to give a shout out to my mom, who was a very great woman at being thrifty, but also making her kids feel like we were rich. As I've grown older, I've realized, yes, not everybody ate turkey loaf and drank green koolaid for dinner. You know what I mean, right? Yeah. So now I'm kind of like, hats off, the moms. Mother stays approaching. Yeah. Here's two moms. Great. So clipping coupons is a good way. Josh buying generic. I know. I go there's a great grocery store in Atlanta called Kroger. I don't know if they're nationwide kruger. Yeah, they're pretty big. But, man, I buy the Kroger brands. It's always cheaper. It's just as good. Especially their delicious private stock brand. Right. Chuck, do you remember the generic, like the generic brand? There was a brand that was like it was a white box and it would say in black block letters, brand flakes. And then there was a UPC code and that was it. Did you ever see the beer? No. Oh, it was great. This is my brother, lived in Los Angeles. My first visit ever to La. Me and some friends from UGA went and stayed with my brother. We went to the store to get some beer and literally the first thing I went to was the six pack of white cans that said, beer nice. And we load it up. It was awful. Was it bad? It was terrible. Can you stomach it? Did you finish it? Well, of course. I was in college. Okay. Yeah, it was back then. I have never seen that. I'm going on ebay after this to see if I can find well, it's not around anymore. Somebody's got it in their garage somewhere. Yeah, probably some 2012. Yeah, we could probably find some Billy beer on there. Oh, yeah. From Billy Carter. Sure. Some 2012. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. 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With weekly episodes covering a wide range of the sharkiest. Current topics. Listen to Shark Week, the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, so check. We've got coupons. Coupons. Generic. We've got generic. There's also a cooking at home is huge. Number one, if you're, like, out and about and you're not cooking but you're poor, say goodbye to vegetables in your diet, because no fast food place sells vegetables. And if they do, they're no longer nutritious. They have been slathered in fat and deep fried so long that you might as well just eat blocks of cheese. Right? That's it. If you can cook at home, number one, it's cheaper. Number two, it's healthier. And in the article, Jane sites a source that says that if you bring your own lunch to work every day, you can save about $960 a year. Yeah. Struck me as very low, because around here, you can't get lunch for less than $10. Yeah, eight to ten. Let's go with ten, because the math's a lot easier. But that comes, too, if you go out every day, which there's a lot of people who work with us that do, and that's like $2,500 a year. I know. That's a lot of cheese. I feel guilty when I eat out lunch. Yeah, I do. I feel like it's a complete waste of money if I don't, like, bring my sandwich or something and I'm forced to eat out. I'll try and skip lunch, but yeah, it makes me like I don't want to go home and say I spent $12 on lunch. Yeah. No, I don't either. I know what you mean. I value a buck. I'll treat myself sometimes. Generally, I don't eat lunch. I'm a Gordon Gecko adherent. But let me give you a little tip, and I know you already know this. If you ever happened to be hanging around the courtyard downstairs around 1230 and you see Roxanne Reed, strike up a conversation with her because she has a policy of buying lunch for whoever she runs into while she's down there. She bought me lunch one day. She bought me lunch twice. Well, we just need to time this better. Okay. Alternate. Yeah. We can both just be there with big doe eyes like, hey, Roxanne. So, yeah, need versus want, Josh. That's what it comes down to. If you're suffering in these tough times, I think what you need to do is take a good, hard look at your finances, break it down, line it out item by item, and really think about it. Do I need a cable, or can I get rid of it for the next six or eight months? Especially with the new digital transmissions? Apparently that opened up. If it works, it open up a lot more channels than was available with just ravage. And it's a lot clearer, too, so that's fine. I went without cable a couple of times in my life for extended periods and I thought I was going to miss it, man. But after a little while, you just kind of forget it's. Like not eating. Yeah, I've done it once or twice before and you get used to it really quickly. Right. Although we're not saying that you should not eat people. That's Josh's bag. Nice. Thanks, Chuck. Not healthy. We're not encouraging that. Okay. So, yeah, I think the irony is in this article, we never really say how much it takes. It's more like a relative thing. Yeah. It's all personal. Yeah. So, as you were saying, I think it is time for us to take a good long look at our finances. It seems like we're coming out of a phase where just conspicuous consumption is a thing of the past. Somebody riding around in a Hummer. It's like, did you miss the memo? Right. Like, I realize you can't sell that thing to anybody or give it away for free, but it seems like at least the US. Is kind of taking this new tack where we're getting a little more frugal. There's a big difference between being wealthy and rich and being able to take care of yourself and your family. Right. And it's good that it's in. I feel good about that. And the other thing is, don't forget to save. Save money. Saving is huge. It's an important thing. We are not a nation of savers. And apparently we're becoming more and more of a nation of savers, which is heartening is a good thing. Yeah. You know what I hope, dude, is that this whole recession blows over and that we're all better for it in the end. Ultimately we will. But, you know, like the Great Depression era grandparents that everybody gripes about, it's like, okay, yes, I understand. You can use this coffee can for 80 different things. And you have been we're that generation, dude. We're in the making. Right. We're going to annoy the kids that come behind us badly. That's how it always works. Yeah. So I look forward to you whipper snappers to hear from Chuck and I because we're going to tell you all about how bad it was in all nine. I'd like to also say if you want to learn more about how much money you need to live, you can type that into householdworks.com in our handy search bar. And there's a monthly income or monthly expenses calculators. And there's a bunch of really great personal finance links in that article. It's a good one. Again by Jay McGrath. So let's do the blog thing, Chuck. Right. Speedy Plug. We have a blog now. We've been writing on it. We have people posting comments and it's a lot of fun and we encourage you to check it out on the right side of the homepage. And also, I'm glad you said that because you just gave me my new hotel. What is it? Speedy Plug. That's pretty good. Thanks. We actually had a bunch of people write in with suggestions for yeah, we need to do that for listener mailing. I need to compile those because there are a lot of them that were French. Did you notice that? No. Quickly, our audio spoken word record album our spoken word album called The Stuff You Should Know, super Stuff Guide to the Economy. It's up on itunes 399, whereas every penny we're coming to realize and you can type in super stuffed in the search bar of your itunes while you're searching the itunes store. And it should be the first thing that comes up. And if you want to buy it, great for you. Right. Help support Josh and Jerry and Chuck so we're not begging for nickels anytime soon. Is it time? It's time for listening. Okay. Josh, I just have one today. This is from Patrick. Patrick was writing in about the dejavu episode. He wanted to respond because we talked about biological deja vu, and he has some insight. He has an affliction, and this is really odd. He's had it since he was twelve. He's now 25. Okay. Occasionally I'll experience an intense sensation of deja vu, almost like a dream. I remember some scene or dialogue that feels incredibly familiar. Sounds like normal deja vu so far, right? Yeah. However, during this episode, I feel dizzy, start to mumble, and I usually need to brace myself against something for about 20 to 30 seconds. I recover. I have a slight headache, and the dizzy spells occur in clusters. So I'll have five or six of these in a given day and then not experience them for a month or so. However, I'll just have one really intense deja vu episode that will cause me to completely lose consciousness for about 30 seconds. Okay. Can I interject here? What is this person's name? Patrick. Patrick, I would like to strongly urge you to go see a neurologist immediately. I'm not done. Okay. Pay attention. Thanks. Some other weird traits. These happen once a month, almost to the day, which is interesting. After the episode is over, he can't remember anything about it. No memories of it. He attempts to write things down or describe them while they're happening, but it's just gibberish. It usually happens in the morning, but in all kinds of situations standing, sitting, running, stress, calm, whatever he's gone to the doctor. No one can explain it. He said two EEGs and an MRI. And various theories have included seizures, inner ear problems, salt, deficiencies and low blood pressure. Luckily, it doesn't interfere too much with my daily life, aside from interrupted conversation every now and then. Patrick, long story short, Patrick is his SIGMATA, is he? I think so. That's my theory. He's very open. I appreciate Patrick. Yeah. Thanks, Patrick. And I hope you go see the doctor. I hope you don't have anything really wrong with you. No. As long as you're not going bonkers or you're not hurting yourself. That's cool, right? So, yeah, that's my professional medical opinion. Of course, my formal training is in pediatrics. Right. He did actually ask us to posit an opinion on it, but we can't do that. I did. No idea. I already did. Yeah, but that's bunk. Okay, so that was that was Patrick. We appreciate you, Patrick. The stigmata. And if you're a stigmata or you suffer from some sort of religious affliction or you just want to say hi, you can send us an email to stuff podcast@housetuffworks.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, 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 Pepco Petsupplied Plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1216235069209sysk-shark-favorite-meal.mp3 | Are Dogs a Shark's Favorite Meal? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-dogs-a-sharks-favorite-meal | In 2005, The Sun reported that dogs were being used as live bait in the Indian Ocean. Is it possible that dogs are a delicacy to sharks? Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the diet of sharks. | In 2005, The Sun reported that dogs were being used as live bait in the Indian Ocean. Is it possible that dogs are a delicacy to sharks? Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the diet of sharks. | Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:23:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=20, tm_min=23, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=199, tm_isdst=0) | 5499325 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Brought to you by Consumer Guide Automotive. We make car buying easier. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer. Here@housetepworks.com with me is arguably at least my equal, if not better, fellow staff writer Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm good. I'll take that any day, Josh. Fantastic. Yeah. Good to be here. Chuck, you got any dogs? I do. I have two very sweet and bad dogs. Lucy. Lucy and Buckley. Yeah, I have three dogs. Abby, Bow and Mabel. They're all related and super cute. And I love my dogs, as I'm sure you love your dogs. Sometimes. Well, every once in a while, I wake up from a deep sleep and I'm covered in sweat and panicking just a little bit at the thought or dream of my dogs being eaten by sharks. Has that ever happened to you? No. That's really weird. It is weird, but it's awful. It's a terrible way to live. Well, you've told me there's a reason behind this. Yeah, actually. And there was an article in 2005 that came out in 2005 in the British tabloid The Sun, and basically it was a photo of a dog with a huge fish hook through its nose. And apparently the dog had been used on this small island in the Indian Ocean as shark bait. So ever since I saw that, I'm thinking, are dogs something that sharks like to eat? True? Is that like bat boy or no, it is true. I'm not sure if the photo is true. Still a disturbing photo, but apparently it is true. Right. And frankly, I went on Snopes to double check and snaps. It looks like it's true. Wow, that's terrific. But ever since then, I haven't been able to get that image out of my head, or at least the image of my dogs being eaten. Right. Can you help me put this to rest? Yeah, a little bit. I think one of the reasons that you have this fear is because there's something called gallophobia, which is an irrational fear of being eaten by a shark yourself. Sure. And I'm projecting or transferring onto my dog, probably. So that sounds like me. Yeah. Young might say that. But one of the reasons, I think, is because being attacked by shark is probably one of the most terrifying things, even though it doesn't happen often. You can't imagine, thanks to Stephen Spielberg, anything worse than being dragged under and bitten by something three times your size. The jaws effect. The jaws effect, which is very real. It definitely is real. But like I said, there's not a lot of shark attacks, really, for as many people who are walking around very concerned by being attacked by a shark, there's not that many. There's like 71 shark attacks across all species of sharks in 2007, and only one of those related in fatality. Right, right. And I've got a couple of more stats for you, Josh, that might help put this into perspective. They're kind of silly, but they're true. Between 19, 92,000 and 612 people in the United States were killed by sharks, and 16 people died from sand hole collapses. Wow. That's true. Boom. Yeah. And in 1987, there were 13 injuries all across the country from shark attacks, and there were more than 1500 injuries from humans biting other humans in New York City alone. I know that was a terrible year for human bites. It was. 87 was a bad year for that. A lot of people who were bitten by someone else. Right. But you don't walk around the streets of New York afraid that someone's going to bite you, yet every time you're in the ocean, you're probably afraid that a shark is going to bite you. Definitely. Sure. But, I mean, let's put this to rest. Right. I'm not so much worried about myself. My concern is really over my dog. Right. Even though you live nowhere near an ocean. Precisely. We're pretty much landlocked here. But although there are some sharks that can swim upstream right. Yeah, bull sharks. And how far has one ever made it? They swim in rivers to get to other bodies of water, and they can survive in freshwater. They've been spotted as far north as Illinois at the Mississippi River, which is crazy. That's really crazy. Actually, the Chattahoochee is pretty filthy, but I don't know, maybe a bull shark would try it. Who knows? Maybe so. I actually have to confess, I do know whether or not dogs are a shark's favorite meal. Right. And the answer is no. Although that's not to say that a shark won't eat a dog if the moment is right. The heat of the moment, mistaken identity, most likely, yeah. Who are you? And I'm going to eat you to find out. I think. Is it the bull shark or the tiger shark that does the bump and bite? The bull shark mainly does the bump and bite, which is just kind of investigate and see if something is edible or has enough blubber, which is really their favorite thing to eat. But a bull shark, too, will also eat, like, license plates and shoes. So will a tiger shark, I think bull sharks have been known to eat hippopotami under the right condition. Right. And tiger sharks are the vacuum cleaners of the sea, they call them, so they'll eat anything. Now, a great white actually tests out whether or not it's prey. Something is its prey by kind of biting down gently. Because all sharks prefer blubber, whales have been found that we're relatively intact but eviscerated, but missing all their blubber, and sharks love seals. If you're attacked by a great white and it's chomping down on you, it's basically just testing to see how much blubber you have. Dogs don't have much flubber, but like you said mistaken identity can lead to a bad day for a dog, yes, anything could happen. There's plenty more information where this came from. Our dogs is sharks favorite meal, and you can read it on howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Let us know what's to sing. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you." | |
Thanks, Easter Bunny! Bock Bock! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/thanks-easter-bunny-bock-bock | Happy Easter from Stuff You Should Know! Learn all about Easter, from its humble beginnings as a pagan holiday to the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. We'll cover the Biblical and religious aspects, along with the origins of some of Easter's gre | Happy Easter from Stuff You Should Know! Learn all about Easter, from its humble beginnings as a pagan holiday to the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. We'll cover the Biblical and religious aspects, along with the origins of some of Easter's gre | Thu, 02 Apr 2015 13:43:27 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=13, tm_min=43, tm_sec=27, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=92, tm_isdst=0) | 40648704 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Ahoy. Ahoy. And Fiddled. Welcome to the podcast. Wow. I was given the traditional Easter greeting. That's it. Isn't that how Mr. Burns answered his phone? Oh, he got hoy hoy. Yeah, because that was what they did when the phone was first administered. Right. I said that for actually, my first cell phone said on it when it was super advanced and you could program something on your home screen so that would flash when somebody was calling you. Yeah, that's how I picked yes, at the time. My little sprint flip phone. Brick phone. Yeah. Well, like I was saying, happy Easter, Chuck. Thanks. Do you do anything for Easter these days? Not really. Yeah, we got, like, a basket, the traditional Easter basket. Oh, really? Yeah, we do that. It's not like we just don't observe it at all. Like me. Have you noticed, though, that a lot more stores close on Easter now than they used to? I have not noticed. That seems to have been a recent occurrence, like, the last couple of years. Oh, yeah. I haven't noticed. Yeah, it's weird, I think. Is it offputting? It's not off putting unless you're, like, trying to buy something. But when did this start? That's my whole thing. Right? When did this start? Yeah. But you didn't get the memo? No one asked you? No. Usually there's a national conversation about whether to close stores or not. We'll do an episode on it sometimes, that kind of thing. But this one just slipped past me. So Easter is caught me by surprise or at least closing the stores on it. Yeah. I don't do anything. I used to do the whole spiel. When you were a little kid? Yeah, of course, growing up. And then the sunrise services. As a young Baptist, we climb Stone Mountain. Pretty. Yeah, it was very pretty. Actually. Climbing Stone Mountain in the dark wasn't so much fun. I was always, like, kind of dangerous. Well, there are flashlights and plenty of people around. Okay. All right. That's a good thing about being in the church. They would pick you up and carry you if you broke your leg. That's why there's only one set of footsteps. That's right. Oh, yeah. Well, back when I was a kid, we get the Easter basket with one or two maybe a little presents in there. Sure. Yeah. I got the break in two electric Boogaloo soundtrack on cassette. Did you really? For Easter? Probably my best Easter present of all time. Yeah. And we also observe the tradition of dressing up even more than you would normally for Sunday church. Like your special Easter clothes. I put on a tuxedo and rub lobster on it or something like that. Now, it would usually be like, I got some new pink suspenders. Well, that's actually an old tradition. Pink suspenders. Well, no, but like a new alpha. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. Did you realize that you're following, like, an ancient Anglo tradition. Yeah, my mom taught me all about ancient Anglo traditions. No, it was just easter was just a little more special. So you would dress up a little more? Basically, yeah. I got you I got my new paisley tie that I have to bust out for Easter, go with my mullet. Yeah. I'm not allowed to buy anything new, but Yummy makes me comb my hair before I'm allowed to search for the Easter basket. That's nice. Let's talk stuff. Yeah. I mean, in researching this, it came down to a couple of conclusions. One is that, like everything else that we hold dear, it had its roots in pagan rituals. Right. And two is the Easter. So, like, it's all over the map, man. We could do ten episodes on Easter. Let's do it in different traditions. And, like, when it falls according to who you are, and it's just crazy in its variety. Agreed. Even, like, when Jerry asked when she first came in, she said, when is Easter? And we're like, who knows? Could be in March, could be in April. The ecclesiastical council knows. Yeah, because they're crunching the numbers. Yeah. So go ahead and drop the Dope there. Okay, so the Dope is that Easter can conceivably fall anytime between March 21, the vernal equinox, and April 25. That's right. And it follows after the Pascal moon, which is a full moon. But if you think you're following along so far, prepared to be thrown from the horse because the Pascal full moon isn't necessarily an actual full moon that you can see. Yeah. It's not necessarily the astronomical full moon. No. It was at one point in time based on astronomical lunar cycles. Yes. But they have since been decoupled from what we currently understand. And so now Easter supposedly falls on the first Sunday after the Pascal moon, which is the first full moon after the vernal equinox. That's right. But there may not be a full moon anywhere in sight, as far as you can tell. Right. But if you're a churchy type who's in charge of crunching these numbers, you know, when the Pascal moon comes and goes, and that's when there will be. Is that the same as the ecclesiastical moon? Is that just another name for it? Yeah, the Pascal moon is a type of ecclesiastical moon. Ecclesiasical moon is this church based lunar cycle that in the Pascal moon in particular, is the full moon that comes after the vernal equinox, and Pascal comes from the Greek for Passover, so it's the Passover moon. And that makes sense because Easter was originally tied to Passover. It was the first Sunday after Passover. Right? Yeah. And then in 1582, as part of the Gregorian calendar, pope Gregory laid down the decree. But still it gets more confusing, because if you are Eastern Orthodox, you might follow the Julianne Julianne calendar. It's the calendar that sliced in a thin little strip what is wrong with me? The Julianne calendar. And that can be like, a month later you'll be celebrating Easter if you follow the Julianne calendar. Right. That was the one that predated the Gregorian calendar. That's right. And there's actually some really interesting stuff about those. We should do one on calendars sometime. Oh, man. It's so vast. Yeah. And weird. Yeah. And I like to keep my calendar simple. Well, yeah, who doesn't? I mean, that's the .7 days month. Twelve months. What else do you need? Boom. You go further out than that, it gets murky. Yeah. So, again, we have no idea when Easter falls this year, but we can tell you for certain it will fall between March 21 and April 25. Okay. For all the reasons we just said March 22. March 21. March 21, which is the vernal equinox. Okay. So there you go. All right. So all of this is to say that Easter, if you're not getting the idea yet that we're using words like ecclesiastical and a word that's derived from the Greek for Passover. Easter is a very ancient tradition and custom in Christianity. Sure. But it's not mentioned in the Bible. The whole crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, which is what the Easter season is meant to commemorate. It's all in there, but they don't go and then go forth and celebrate this. That's not in there. Right. And that is because it was coopted and absorbed by the Christian church from ancient, even more ancient pagan holidays and rituals. Well, I think initially was kind of like they celebrated it right around Passover. Yeah. I think it was kind of one of those things where, like, hey, we've got this thing we're commemorating at about the same time you're used to commemorating Passover. Right. So I know you're born Jewish and you're always going to be disappointed, but come over to the Christian side. And then later on, when it spread out into Europe, it kind of took on all of the other stuff as well. Yeah. But even biblical scholars and most historians will agree that it was originally a pagan festival. And the word Easter is from Saxon to Saxon in origin. E-A-S-T-R-A Eastra. The goddess of spring. And sacrifices were made in her honor around the same time as Passover, like you were saying. Yeah. So by the 8th century, anglo Saxons basically co opted this name to coincide with the celebration of Christ resurrection. Yeah. Boom. And there was this article in The Guardian about the pagan roots of Easter. And the author, I don't remember her name, but she basically says, like, you can take it even further back than that to Egypt and Mesopotamia. And if you've seen Zeitgeist, which I realize is not the most credible movie on the planet, but it's interesting, and there are some interesting conclusions and comparisons drawn between resurrection myths of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians and others, and the ones that celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Christ. And this author makes the case that you can take the origins of Easter that far back, even. Right. But then as it kind of went along and along, it just picked up local traditions or absorbed or folded in local traditions until we have this Easter that we understand today, which includes the Easter Bunny. And the Easter Bunny apparently is born out of that pagan ritual, the Vernal equinox ritual, spring ritual for how do you pronounce her name? The goddess of fertility and renewal? Esther. Esther. Esther. Esther. Her symbol was the hair, which became the rabbit, I guess, which are two different things, by the way. Yes, they are. And so nowadays we have the Easter Bunny, which is a magical bunny that can lay eggs. Yeah. In Germanic, of course, the Germans always have their finger and everything, like Christmas and all these holidays. Sure. They always have their finger and everything. What does that even mean? It is said that Ostara healed a wounded bird she found in the woods by changing it to a hair. And it was still partially burned, though, and the hair showed its gratitude and return to the goddess by laying eggs as gifts. That's nice, also. And like we said, while people agree that it is pagan in origins, there are many stories, and no one can settle on the one saying, no, it was Ishtar. Right. But Ishtar is one of them that they think could have been the original had its roots there. Yeah. Now, if you're a Christian and you don't have, like, your hands clamped to your ears and are stumping your feet and, like, go really loud right now, you're probably saying, Hold on, fellas. Yes. The easter bunny. Not Christian in origin. The Easter egg, not necessarily Christian in origin. Yes. There's a lot of pagan land rituals, nature rituals that are incorporated in. But if you take the whole thing back to the original, as far as Christianity goes, what the whole thing is celebrating or observing is the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. That's right. And so specific days over the Easter holiday have been set aside to commemorate this process that took place about 30 Ce. Yeah. And even historians that say, no, it's pagan in origin, and it was maybe Ishtar. They're not saying that Christ wasn't a person who was crucified, and they're saying that they have there were so many parallels that all these things kind of became crunched together at one point. It was co opted. I'm trying to be respectful here. Does that make sense? Sure. They're not saying that it doesn't exist, but it was a widespread pattern, and Christians just kind of absorbed it. Well, yeah. In the celebration part in this Guardian article again. And I think it's also in Zeitgeist. You can take it back even further before Mesopotamians and Egyptians ever existed and say that there's legends of the sun S-O-N. Dying and then being resurrected. And that you could connect those things to the sun S-U-N. Dying as winter sets in. And then being resurrected in the spring and connecting that with being crucified on the cross to the Southern Cross constellation. So these are possibly very ancient conceptions. Yeah. And there are many stories of important people dying and being resurrected, and some were born on December 25, too. Right. So if we have offended you, we apologize. We weren't trying to. As a matter of fact, we just did a lot of tap dancing, if you ask me. Yeah. I mean, it's history. Sure. So we'll get back to Easter and the Christian observance of Easter right after this. So Chuck, we are back. And like I said a little while ago, easter in the Christian tradition, commemorates the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ. Right. And so days are set aside to commemorate specific dates and specific events in Christ's life. And they're actually believed, at least by Christians, and I think some historians as well, to kind of closely resemble the days of the week that these things happened. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole Easter season. Right. You know? Yeah. So the Easter season is technically 46 days long, and most people think, well, Lent is the Easter season, and it's 40 days long. True. But there are six Sundays in the Easter season, easter Sunday being the 6th one. Yes. And those are considered special days where Lent doesn't apply. They exist outside of Lent because they're meant to be celebratory masses. That's right. So you technically don't have to observe your Lenton fast on these days. Yeah. And Linton was the original Middle English, which is where Lint came from. It's spring. I thought it meant I'm not eating chocolate right now. Well, it might for some people. So let's talk about the season, Lint. We mentioned six weeks. Well, let's back up a little bit. Should we talk about Shrove Tuesday first? Yes. Okay. You might know it is Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. Yeah. Which and I think Fat Tuesday came from France, when they would eat all the fatty foods ahead of basically, when you go through Lint, what you're supposed to do is sacrifice something or maybe many things. Right. Because you're commemorating Jesus's fast 40 days after being baptized. That's right. And practically speaking, back in the day, I guess, thomas Aquinas and some of his buds decided that when you are fasting for Lent, you're abstaining from animals or food that is killed. Right. So you're not eating chicken or duck or pig or any animal, cow, anything that you kill to eat. Yes. They decide fish, too. So get me started on fish. And they decided that after thinking about this and talking about it and discussing it and having counsels, and finally they came to a decree that not only is the food that you have to kill forbidden food during Lent. The products from those food are as well. So basically they're saying, like, if you're an observant Christian, you go vegan for the 46 days or 40 days of land. That's right. Many people, though, just choose symbolically to, like you said, I'm going to give up chocolate, just something that they love. I'm going to make a sacrifice. I'm going to give it up for Lent. Right. But the point of Trove Tuesday is this is the last day before Lint. You don't want all this food to go to waste. Yeah. So you make a bunch of stuff, and you eat all of your supply, and you get fat, and then you go into the Lent season and Lent fast. Right, yeah. The UK. I'd never heard of Stroke Tuesday, but it's big in the UK. Pancakes are the traditional meal because it contains fatty milk and eggs and things like that. Yeah. And eggs are forbidden because they're a product of those animals you kill and stuff that would go bad over the next 40 days. Right. So it's also a way to not waste your food. Exactly. And it's the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which is next. So Ash Wednesday is the first day of the lantern fast. That's right. And basically, you're going into this fast, and you're just kind of becoming uber Christian at that moment. Like, you're taking on this super Christian persona, and you're like it's very solemn. And to commemorate it, you get a cross of ashes placed on your forehead. And the cross is made from the Palm France. From last year's Palm Sunday service. Yes, it should be, which we'll talk about later, but they save them, they burn them, and they use the ash of these blessed fronds to put crosses on the foreheads of the penitents the next Wednesday. Yeah. And the Palm Franz are significant as what they use to fan Jesus. When he was resurrected. Correct. No, when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. I thought it was after the resurrection. No. Okay. It was when he rode into Jerusalem triumphantly to take his title as the King of kings. Got you. So they wave palm frond. Yes. They were like, Jesus is here. That's the impression I have of the palm. Franz. Man, I was really paying attention in Confirmation class. You sure were. So, quickly, if you see someone if you're not very religious, if you see someone with ashes on their head anytime in the spring, don't say, hey, you've got something on your head. You get a little yeah. Don't do that because it's there for a reason. Yeah. All right, where are we now? We are at Lent. Yeah. So we're in the middle of Lent. You're starting to think, wow, some eggs would be great. I wish I had some Shrove Cakes, or anything made from an animal or animal itself or you're not saying that maybe you're just fine with it. Yeah. There's a lot of people who don't necessarily follow that traditional vegan fast. Sure. But will give up something for Lent chocolate candy. I always tried homework. It never worked. Did you really? Yeah. Just jokingly. I'd be like, I'm going to give up homework. Okay. Even growing up in the church, I never observed maybe it was Baptist, didn't observe it as much, but I never observed went it was big time Catholic. Oh, sure. Especially with my family. It was like, you got to give up something. So typically you'll give up chocolate and you give up chocolate, and then when Easter Sunday comes along and Lin is over make yourself sick. Yeah. You get chocolate all over your face. Which is actually following in a pretty old tradition, because that's where Easter eggs came from, the giving of Easter eggs. It was a forbidden food that you couldn't have during Lent. So then when Easter Sunday came, people would give each other eggs as gifts, like, hey, enjoy the heck out of this egg. Right. Because you haven't had one in 40 days. Yeah. And the egg obviously also being a symbol of birth. New life. New life. Spring pagan vernal rituals, perhaps. So now we are at Palm Sunday. That's right. And then, like we said, this commemorates Jesus triumphantly coming into Jerusalem to claim his title, and people wave palms to welcome him in. And then so people have palm fronds at Palm Sunday services, and remember, they hang on to those and burn them and use them for the next Easter Ash Wednesday. That's right. So this is the last Sunday before Easter. I have palm fronds in my yard. You should sell them to some Christians. Well, it's going to give them away. I guess you could do that, too. Yeah. But last year's palm fronds are now hanging dead on my palm tree. Well, they don't have to be a year old. It's just the ones that were used during the Palm Sunday service and were blessed last year, so they probably wouldn't want my palms. I don't want your old palms. You want, like, fresh ones for Palm Sunday, but you want them to be old for the following Ash Wednesday. Got you a year later. That's right. And holy water, don't think we mentioned, is used with the ashes to put on the forehead. Oh, yeah. Makes a little very important. Like a paste, charcoaly paste. Okay, then. We're at Maundy Thursday. Yeah. The wildly underrated mondi Thursday. Why is it wildly underrated? Because you never hear about it. It's true. I didn't know anything about it until we researched this. Yeah. Monday spelling. M-A-U-N-D-Y. Not Monday, Thursday. That'd be weird. Right. And Amanda or mand is a basket they were used by fishermen to put their fish in so many years ago. There was a fair held in Norwich or Norfolk today, and basically a big just sale where, like a flea market and the fisherman would carry their what it is? Flea market associated with Easter is hilarious. Yeah, it is. People would sell their wares. Right. Or let's call it a not a flea market, but what do you call it when they have the farmers market? Yes, like a farmer's market. Sure. There you go. Or like a market. Yeah, but they were selling stuff from the farm. Yeah, but they also had, like, clothing and stuff, too. Hey, good point. Supermarket. Okay. It's a supermarket. The fishermen, obviously, would put the fish in their mons, and that's basically where the name came from. It's kind of that simple. Yeah. Everybody would just come together and you buy new clothes. You would buy new clothes. And that's where that ancient tradition that your mom had you follow with your pink suspenders, something new. The Easter bonnet, they believe came from that, too. New little Easter dress or Easter shoes or something like that. Having something new on Easter customarily. You'll buy that on Monday, Thursday, or at the very least, it came out of the Maundy Thursday market from the old English. That's right. And the other tradition we had was to sneer at all the people who would show up for church who we never saw the rest of the year. Oh, yeah. You'd be like, oh, I remember that guy. Easter and Christmas. Yeah, I saw him a few months ago. There's a whole subset of Christians that are like Easter Christmas Christians. That's right. They just go for the two big ones. I remember them. So you judge, huh? I did. It was so wrong. I cast them out. Are we a good Friday yet? Finally? Please tell me we're a good Friday. That day, back in the ancient times, the first two centuries, good and God were sort of synonymous, and I guess is that where the word good comes from? I would guess as a descriptor of God. Yes. They couldn't be bothered to keep that second O N. That's right. But Good Friday is the commemoration of the crucifixion on the cross, actually day of Crucifixion, and it is somber, but they want to observe the peace and not necessarily the sadness. Right. It's not supposed to be a day of mourning. No, but it's still somber. I don't know how you put it. I remember good Friday masses. I can't quite describe the tone of them, but yeah, you're not celebrating. Right. But you're also not crying. It's a little more serious, though, maybe. Yeah, okay. It's just so interesting these days, these holy days during the Easter season, you learn so much because the whole thing is like, this happened this day on a Friday. They're pretty sure that Christ was crucified on a Friday because, remember, the Romans were in charge of actually executing they kept excellent records. So we have a pretty good idea of all this stuff. You just learned so much like the Stations of the Cross. Did you guys do that? I don't think so. Any Catholic church has different places. They can be really elaborate. They can be in stained glass. They can be just a little number or something like that. It's the station of the Cross, and it follows Christ's path while he's carrying the crucifix and being tortured along the way up to cavalry and is placed on the cross. And it's all just steeping this ancient tradition into you, this young ankle. Kate yes. But at the same time, if you're just paying attention, it's really interesting, historically. Sure. And you learn it over and over again because you hear the same thing every Easter. Yeah. I think that's part of the idea is you get it ingrained and you so deeply, you know? Yes. We should have just called this former Baptist and former Catholic hang on by the skin of their teeth. Well, let's keep everybody else hanging and let's break before Easter. Yes. All right, Chuck, we're back. Let's get to the fun stuff. It's Easter. That's right, Easter. So we said, Good Friday, isn't it's? Not a day of mourning, but it's a somber day. Easter is the exact opposite of that. First of all, we should say yes. Saturday off. Now it's Sunday, Easter Sunday, and it's a day of celebration. Yeah. A lot of fun. You and your family, you might have Easter egg hunts. I looked up the origin of the hunt itself, and I couldn't find for sure, because I don't think they know for sure, but there are some historians who think they can trace it to Martin Luther, the Protestant Christian reformer. He's supposedly the guy who invented the Christmas tree, too. Wow. Man, look at that. Got a long legacy. Christmas tree and the Easter egg hunt. Yeah. How about that? So Easter egg, he supposedly definitely had Easter egg hunts. Supposedly. Definitely. Where he hid eggs. Men hid eggs, and women and children would look for the eggs. And they think it may be tied with people looking and hunting for Jesus tomb. But that isn't verified because some of these traditions, no one can trace back the exact origin. Well, yeah, but if it was Martin Luther, I mean, that wasn't too terribly long ago. No, that's a good point. You mentioned eggs. We talked about eggs being a symbol of newness and fertility and rebirth. And this goes back to dying eggs, goes back to ancient Egypt and the Persians, who would dye eggs and exchange them with friends, like you said, as a reminder of the resurrection. And I guess just to make a plain white or brown egg look a little more fancy, they dyed them colorful. Yeah. And so eggs are also customarily dyed red to symbolize the blood of Christ. They also died green in Germany and Austria. I looked all over for this. The only reason I could find is that they're meant to symbolize the bitter herbs that Christ was forced to eat while he was on the cross. Interesting. Pretty melancholy, huh? Yeah. But I think in Germany, they still do that on Wednesday. Monday. Thursday. Oh, Monday, Thursday. Yeah. Green Egg Day. I should also give a shout out, Chuck, to our slideshow on awesome Easter eggs. Yeah, we'll definitely post that on the podcast page. Yeah. And scary Easter bunnies. Yes, we had a couple of good Easter ones. We'll put those both up. Those are good. There are some scary Easter bunnies out there. Hot cross buns. Again, not a part of my Baptist upbringing. No. Did you guys have hot cross buns? No. That's pretty British. And they had them in New Zealand. I had never seen them before in person until New Zealand. Yeah, I haven't either. But, yeah, apparently they're sweet buns. Yeah. Custom merely baked and eaten Easter. What's funny is, apparently, again, an ancient, pagan Anglo tradition to bake sweet buns as an offering to the gods around the vernal equinox for the spring festival. And I guess the Christian church said, let's stop doing that again and again. And it didn't take. And finally put a cross on there. Okay. Will it kill you to put a cross on? So they put a cross on, and now you have hot crossbones. Well, supposedly the cross was there before, but it didn't symbolize that because they baked the cake in the form of a bowl for Zeus, and there was a cross to represent the horns. Yeah, but again, let's make some changes to that. Yeah. And so hot cross buns are still a thing. I've never eaten one, though. I haven't either, but apparently they're sweet. Are they? Well, yeah. Are they sticky buns? I don't think they're cinnabon sticky buns, but I think they're sweet. Okay, we'll go get some. And I think what I thought was pretty interesting was some of the weird traditions around the world. They're weird because they're different. Yeah. I mean, when I say weird, I just mean unusual to me here. It's a big, dummy peculiar. Yeah. Nothing inherently is weird about any of this. In Bulgaria, they had a little thing called egg tapping, but they still do. Yeah. And it's basically like the old pencil game used to play in elementary school. You'll stab your buddy in the arm with a pencil. No, when you would play the pencil popper game, where you would try and break the other guy's pencil and they would try to break yours. It's basically what you do with eggs. You take hard boiled eggs and you tap the other person's egg, hoping to crack their egg, but not your own. I got you. And you keep doing this until you get your egg cracked, and then you're out. And the last person in Bulgaria who has an uncracked egg is said to have good luck throughout the year prosperity. We get a $50 gift card to Longhorn Steaks. That's right. There's another cute Bulgarian tradition, too. Chuck. Where the grandmother, while she's coloring eggs with the kids, will color one red and have the kids come over and she rubs it on their cheeks in order to bestow health and robustness to them. Like rosy cheeks. Yeah. Isn't that the cutest thing you've ever heard? It's adorable. Especially if they're wearing pink suspenders at the time. That's right. And especially if the dye is made from a nontoxic. It's got lead and mercury. Their teeth just immediately fall out. That would be no good. In Mexico, they have another egg game. And the way I see it is they empty the egg of the yolk and the white. You know how you can poke the little holes in either end of an egg and blow it out? And then they put, I guess, confetti in there, and then they smash them on each other's heads. They blow the egg out and blow the confetti in. And I got a one liner for everything. You do? All right. How about the US, where we just have parades? Yeah. I got nothing. You put me on the spot. Yeah. Parades here in the US. In Atlantic City. They've had one for about close to 150 years now. Did you know that? No, I had no idea. There's an Easter Parade. I'd want to see that. I know. I've heard about the New York One. There's a New York Easter Parade. Yeah, I think Fifth Avenue has an Easter parade. Oh, yeah, I see that. And Irving Berlin has a song called Easter Parade. Yeah. And, of course, the big White House Easter Roll. I knew about this. I always thought it was just the Easter egg hunt, though. I didn't know about the Easter Egg Roll. Yeah, I think it's part of it. Were you rolling Easter egg across the south lawn of the White House? It's kind of like track and field day. No, that's the egg toss field day. Well, the whole thing altogether, there's like a hunt. There's like an egg roll. There's an egg toss. There's celebrities. Sure. On the USO tour that stopped by. It's like Field Day. Yeah. George Clooney is there giving out eggs. You get your commemorative egg, too. Yeah. And apparently it started out congress had it on the Capitol, and the President well, a specific president, rather, for B. Hayes said, no, this is the President's thing now. We're moving this to the White House. And he did. Yeah. And now it's just one of those things sort of like the sparing the turkey on Thanksgiving. Big press off is what it is. Well, let's be honest. It's funny that you mentioned sparing the turkey on Thanksgiving because there's this other tradition in where is it? Hallaton lestersre. Right. In England. Well, this is crazy. And it's the opposite of sparing the turkey. Yeah. So there's a tradition in this little town that a wealthy woman was spared from being gored to death by a bowl when a hair ran across its path and I guess distracted the bowl or something. Yeah, that's why I took it. So for some reason to thank the hair, she deeded some of her land to the local church and said, you can have this land, but you have to make sure that all of the parishioners and everyone in the town get some hair pie. Like pie made from one of these rabbit type things that saved her life. That's still a way to thank something for saving your life. To cook it and eat it. Yeah. You and your ancestors are going to end up in a meat pie that we're going to make every year for everybody. Yeah. \u00a34 of flour, \u00a32 of lard, two hairs, \u00a33 of onions, \u00a37 of potatoes and seasoning, and you have yourself a deliciously, disgusting hair pie. I think it sounds good. Yes. Well, I don't eat rabbit and stuff, or meat pies, really. This ticks a lot of boxes for me, you mean? I tried I can't remember what it's called. It was a type of meat pie again in New Zealand at McDonald's, and it was like this cut up meat and gravy and cheese. Oh, my God. Like pop pie, basically, is what you call it. It was so disgustingly good. Oh, really? Yes. It tastes good, though. Yeah, but I felt in that McDonald's really bad about myself with every bite. Yeah, but it still tasted good. Do you know what meat it was? They claim beef. Okay, so it's a beefy gravy pie. Yes. With cheese in it. Yeah. So it's delicious, actually. But then here's where it gets really odd to me to go along with the hair pie. They have something called the bottle kicking, which is basically rugby with a beer keg. Yeah, three beer kegs. Two of them are full of a gallon of beer each. This is part of that wealthy lady who deeded the lands request that not only did you have to serve a meat pie to everybody, you also had to give them as much ale as they wanted. So all this is commemorated in the making of a hair pie by the people of this little town. They carry it through the town up to St Mark's, I believe it's St Marks. St Michael's Church. Yes, St Michael's. And I guess the priest, the local priest cuts the pie up, hands it out to the crowd, they take some of that pie over to another place that's called hairpie Bank, which is not a bank, but an embankment. Yes. It's like a procession that ends there. And that's where this bottle kicking match starts. Yeah. And it's a couple of neighboring villages that basically battle it out. And like we said, they're basically barrels of ale. I think he said to have ale. One does not. And there's all the ceremony that goes into the actual starting of the match. And then when the match starts, it's a game of sort of rugby or football, if you're American, where you're carrying this thing around. Running with it, trying to get it. Kicking it. Yeah, kicking it, running with it, doing whatever you can to get it, handing it off to your friends to advance it forward with obstacles along the way. And this is another clear example of Christianity co opting a pagan ritual, because Harpie Bank is an old pagan place of worship. And if this whole thing doesn't smack of pagan tradition, like pagan festival games, I don't know what does. Plus, the chairman, the guy who's running the bottle kicking competition, is called the Master of the Stowe. Stowe? Oh, I thought he was called the Wicker Man. Pretty much, yeah. All this started is stonehenge, basically. But now it's an Easter tradition, and the Master of the Stowe stowe means a place of worship among Anglo pagans. Yeah. So they still even call them the Master of the Stowe. It's been dressed up that little yeah. But they have a good time and it's bizarre. And they advanced the barrel over to their best, I can see, is that to the line of their village. The property line of their village is like the end zone, I guess. Then they drink it, right? Well, the winners drink it in front of the losers, but just to kind of make them sore and rub it in. If I know my friends over there, there's plenty of beer, aside from those two barrels to go around. And then the one sober person is in charge of collecting all of the palm fronds from Palm Sunday and storing them until next year in that giant Wicker Man. Yes. In my backyard. Well, that's Easter, Chuck. That's Easter. If you want to know more about Easter, you can type in that word in the search bar of houseworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for Listener man. Thank you, Easter Bunny. Bach. Bach. Remember that? Yeah, that's a good one. I'm going to call this a little more on tea. I got a couple of these, actually, in the coming weeks, because, boy, we got some good feedback. People love their tea. Greetings from Kyoto, fellows. I'm a longtime listener. I actually started listening when I just moved to Japan in 2010 and didn't know anyone yet, so you guys kept me company. It was really great to hear you talking about matcha on your latest podcast about tea, because I had no idea it was catching on state side here in Kyoto, matcha flavored. Everything is given. There's even a drink made of woolong tea and matcha lakour, apparently. I don't think she likes the Lakor, though. She says, I live down the street from where one of the three main schools of T ceremony used to be. And while I'm here, I thought I'd add my two cent about pronouncing Japanese words. They're basically just five foul sounds in Japanese. A is a long A like ball rather than apple. I sounds like E. E. Sounds like E. O. Sounds like O as in rainbow. U sound like U as in goo, and Y as in a vowel. It will always be connected to another vowel. AO for you. How about that? Okay, this is Nikki. She's gearing up for Cherry Blossom Festival in Kyoto, which I bet is gorgeous. Oh, yeah. And she said, Josh, that if you ever venture out to Kyoto again, that she would love to let you know some things that you can do. Thank you very much. She says, I love the podcast. I can't wait to the next one. And that is Nikki Mahler. Thanks a lot, Nicky. Yeah, I can't wait to see the cherry blossoms there. DC has got an amazing one, too. Yeah, it's beautiful. Lovely trees, Chuck. I got to tell you, it makes a lovely coffee, too. Starbucks over in Okinawa had a cherry blossom flavored coffee. Really? Which is kind of a made up, sweet flavor, but it is so it's not derived from the tree. I don't see how it could be. Yeah. Interesting. But it fits perfectly. Like, yes, this is what an ideal, cartoonish Japanese version of the taste of the Cherry Blossom would be. Wow. Perfect. Nice. Anyway, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Facebook.com stuffiesheaw. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And, as always, train us at our home on the Web stuff You Should Know. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
Chiggers: The Phantom Menace | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/chiggers-the-phantom-menace | Chiggers are tiny little mites capable of making your life miserable. Worse than mosquitoes? Maybe. But they aren't insects - mites are actually part of the arachnid family and behave a little like ticks. Learn all about these nearly invisible pests in to | Chiggers are tiny little mites capable of making your life miserable. Worse than mosquitoes? Maybe. But they aren't insects - mites are actually part of the arachnid family and behave a little like ticks. Learn all about these nearly invisible pests in to | Mon, 23 May 2016 18:20:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=18, tm_min=20, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=144, tm_isdst=0) | 31726107 | audio/mpeg | "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 stuff you should know. Jerry's head chicks. Yeah, me, too. I have not. I'm really glad I was, like, triggered. It seems like Tracy is making a pretty big deal out of this in this article. Yeah. Tracy Wilson of stuff you missed in history class wrote this. Who recently got married. Congratulations, Tracy. Yeah. And she wrote, if you've ever heard of, say the word mouth parts in the show. Tracy wrote it. Chances are she wrote it. She wrote ticks and mosquitoes. What else did she write? Bees, I think so. She did a whole insect. Sweet. She spent a lot of time knee deep in insects. Yeah. And this isn't even an insect. Spoiler. You just removed the fact of the podcast? I think so. I don't think you did. I'm just teasing. It okay. I'll bet I know what you think it is, because I think the same thing. All right, well, we'll see. Okay, I challenge you. I challenge you back. We throw down the gauntlet, which is glove. So Tracy did make a big deal out of chicks, but apparently it's a big deal, right? Well, sure, if you ever had them. They're no fun. No, the deeper I got into the article, the more I was like, oh, yeah, this does sound really kind of awful. Yes. And just warn everyone this is another itch inducing episode. And speaking of, I got my first little bow to poison ivy. Congratulations. Thanks. That's great. Yeah. I was clearing out stuff over the weekend, and I was in poison ivy, and I knew it. I was like, I've never had it before. This sounds very familiar, but I'm no dummy. I know how Murphy's Law works. Okay, so I just said that out loud. You just said that out loud, or you just said? I said I'm not allergic to Emily. I thought you were saying, like, I'm no dummy. No, I said that too. And I said, so you know what? I'm going to be careful, and then I'm going to go take a shower pretty soon afterward. And so it's not bad, but there are probably five or six little tiny little sets of bumps on each leg. Pustules. Yeah. They're not bad, though. Then I looked at them. I said, you know what? That's frigging poison ivy, after all these years, finally got you. Yes, but not too bad. Like my dad always said, poison Iville gets everybody one day this big thing. So, anyway, speaking of itching, that's my itch story of the day. And this will make you itch, because it made me itch while reading it. I think you're right, actually. That's funny. It didn't make me itch. Maybe because I've never had it. You're scratching yourself around. No, I'm pointing to myself. Okay. No. Weird place. I'm pointing my finger to my skin. And moving it around, but I'm not scratigiously. So everybody knows that triggers are insects that burrow into your skin and suck your blood. I'm sorry. You're being coy, my friend. I am? Because you just lied three times. Burrowing. Oh, insects that burrow into your skin, that suck your blood. That's right. There's three lies in there. This is like a highlights. We have to go pick out what's wrong with this picture. Chiggers are not insects. They are arachnids. They are the larvae of the harvest mite. They do not burrow into your skin and suck your blood. No, but then so what are the bumps? Well, you're being coy again, but what they are actually doing is maybe even grosser than sucking your blood. They are liquefying your cells into a slurry that they can drink from a straw made of your body. It's pretty amazing. Is that the fact for you? Yeah. All right, buddy, we'll get there. We have the same one. High five. First one. First what? First time we've ever high five to end an episode. Is that right? Sure. I would have imagined that you could make, like, a video montage of us, like, high firing during episodes. No. Guess not. So you said that these things are the larvae of harvest mites, right? Yeah. And harvest mites are arachnids. They're related to spiders. They're not insects. But you can understand why people would think that are insects, because the larvae of the harvest might have six legs. So you'd be like, well, it's an insect. No, they haven't grown their adult legs yet, apparently. Yeah, I guess they get those two more legs at some point. Yeah. The adults are red and the little larvae are red, but you're not going to see that's. One of the problems with triggers is you're not going to see, like, a mosquito landing on you or a flea. Even if you think a flea is small, the trigger is like a tiny little dot that you would never notice. No. And you may not even be able to see it all with your eyeballs. All right. But sometimes you can see several of them together, basically forming a clump. Yeah, like the smart together. Yeah. One of them has kid from Kitten plays haircut or Aman Shumperts. More contemporaneously. Yeah. That is a total kitten play haircut. Did you know that Aman Shumpert delivered his own child in his apartment? Oh, wow. On purpose? Accidentally. The kids just came very quickly, and the 911 dispatcher had to talk him through how to do it. But he delivered his own child, he and his wife or girlfriend right there in their apartment. Everything was good. Totally great. Wow, that's great news. He's a basketball player, by the way. People oh, yeah. People are like, who's a mont jumper? He plays for the boo, for the calves. So if you're an adult harvest mite and you've grown up from a sugar into an adult, you're going to eat. It's actually a beneficial little arachnid to have around, because they're going to eat the eggs of other pests, like mosquitoes. Right. So you want the adults around as an adult or as the second step, the nymphs. Right. After the larvae. Yeah, it's the larvae that suck. But they don't suck. Well, yeah, but the larvae, you got to have them. Hopefully, they just stay in the yard. Although these things are holy terrors to see if you are on their scale, like, if that thing is coming after you and your eggs, I'll bet it's just really terrifying. They are parasitic, though, the larvae are. Yeah. They don't eat the blood, though, like we pointed out, like the fleas and the ticks and the mosquitoes. No, they eat your skin cells. Right. So here's what happens. Larva hatch. Apparently, an adult female harvest mite will go into the dirt and be like, there's a bunch of eggs. Yes. And Iman jumper is there to welcome them, for them to hatch so we can hasten their birth. And then the eggs do hatch, and the harvest mite female tends to layer eggs all in one place. Sure. So if you are familiar with triggers, if you've ever had them in your yard, like, one little patch of grass can be totally overrun with triggers, but then you just turn a few degrees to your left, there's another patch of grass that is totally devoid of them. Yeah, I get the feeling they don't get around too quickly either. No, they don't. They're pretty stupid, low level animals, if you ask me. So the eggs are laid in one place, they hatch, and the little larvae come out, and they're like, Blood meal. Give me a blood meal that's not actually made of blood. That's basically what they say. Okay. They hatch pretty much anytime during the year, except for the hard winters. And like you said, they want that first meal. And the reason they want that first meal is not just because they're ravenous little jerks. They actually cannot progress to that nip stage and then grow up to be adults unless they have a complete first meal. They can have half a first meal. They have three quarters, seven, eight, and get scratched off the body or brushed off the body, and that's pretty much it. They generally will not go back and finish that meal. So there's no starting over. They're just like, well, that's it. That's the end of millhouse. I had my one chance. And so it's like a complete lose lose situation when a trigger bites a person, because once you start itching as a person, you go to scratch the area, and there goes the trigger. They don't latch onto your skin. They don't burrow into your skin. So the moment your finger makes contact with them, they're gone. The welt they leave behind is there and persist for a while, but they didn't finish their meal, and they die. But you still get the scratch or the horrible itch. It's loose. Loose. It is loose. They need to stay away from humans. Well, they do, because there are a lot of animals that don't mind the sugar on their body, so they can get their full meal deal there and go on to live a great and healthy life without getting scratched off. Right. So they don't want to be on a human. You would think, like, how long could their meal possibly last? We're talking like buffet level, length of time? Four days. Four days? Either four days meal and think about it. That's time for us. Like, how long is four days to harvest mite larvae? You could probably do the math. It's like seven or eight days figuring out trigger years, probably most of their life. Yeah. So there's a bunch of different kinds of triggers around the world. They are pests, they are parasites, but there's only like at least one, as far as this article says, that is really probably chromatic for humans. The lipotrobidium diligence might it's common to Asia and it can carry typhus, a form of typhus which can kill you if it's untreated. Yeah, it's cured with antibiotics pretty easily, but if you're out in the middle of nowhere, it can kill you. But don't worry, unless you are in certain parts of Asia, not a problem. Right. Chiggers will just annoy you. Yeah, that's it. They're basically just a total annoyance. And by annoying humans, they die. It's stupid. All right, well, let's take a little break here and we will come back and talk about some of the wonders of the trigger. All right? Do we cover fleas? Yeah, I want to say yes. They definitely need a blood meal. We've covered fleas, ticks, mosquitoes. Yes. Spiders, scabies. Did we? Oh, yeah, man. It's really getting a little too much to try to remember now. Yeah, I mean, there's like, lost episodes just because we forgot them. It's officially, officially getting out of hand. I guess we should stop. No, we keep going, my friend. My brain hurts so bad. Chuck all right, so what I was talking about was the wonders of the trigger. They have a lot of little things that they have about them that make them able to perform this surgery on your skin. Well put. It is kind of like surgery. It is. But again, they aren't latching on, they're just kind of hanging around. And when you get a trigger on your skin, it actually will spend usually hours looking for a good place to go try to get a meal because they have these little tiny mouth parts. There's the word that makes the appearance, which lets you know it's a Tracy Wilson joint. Right. But they don't pure skin very easily, at least not human skin. Tough skin that you would find in most places of your body trigger can't bite through, which is why you will get sugar bites in places like the back of your knee or like in your armpit. Oh, man. Places where the trigger can get its mouth parts. What are they called? Explains it all. That's why you'll get those bites in those areas, because that's where they can get their clisserai into. That's right. They are light sensitive, which means they're going to hang out in the shade, mostly. If it was up to them, at least the sun is going to dry out their body. So that's why they head toward the shade. It can kill them, basically. Sure. And so also when a host comes near, there's like your dog casting a shadow, the triggers go, look over there. I think it's pretty clever. There's a shadow that means something is alive with skin. That means that in some weird way, triggers are aware of shadows. That's right. I mean, like some dogs aren't aware of shadows or don't understand them. I think probably most dogs. Have you ever seen that baby? Two, three year old toddler who sees her shadow for the first time and just starts reeking out, trying to get away from it. Oh, really? Cute. So it was a possessed baby. Kind of. That's sad. It's cute. I saw that movie. That was The Exorcist. Right. That's what I'm talking about. They are very temperature sensitive as well. So when they come into contact with a host and the host is the thing that it's going to feed on, it's not infrared, but it's going to detect that body heat. Right. And say, all right, there's something I can try and latch onto. So it's like Predator in that respect. Yeah, a little bit, kind of. No dreadlocks. No. These are a nice addition, if you ask me. What else? I think it's hilarious. Tracy called it upward mobility. They like to climb to the tops of stuff. And I remember this one from Ticks. Yeah. Remember that the ticks would just like grasp at things like little tiny lobsters. Yeah. Just stand there and wait for something to pass by. And as it does, they grab it. Yeah. They don't stand there with their arms out stretched the whole time. No, that's a stress position. There's something called the questing response, which is another hilarious term. They're questing. Yeah. They get up on their tippy toes. They're standing up with their arms raised up toward the heavens. I'm waiting for a meal of human cells. Imagine John Cusack can say anything but take away the boom box. Right. That's a questing position. Yeah. The triggers are there. They're a little overcoat, and they're spiky hair, and they're bad attitudes. I just saw John Roderick, a friend of the show. John Roderick? Yeah, great Seattle musician. He tweeted the other day about silver fish, the little insect. Sure. He said, Why don't we call silver fish what they were clearly meant to be called sink lobsters? It really struck me as funny. Yeah. They don't look fishy at all. Silver. Sure. Sink lobster. That's a great one. Yeah. Right. And finally, they are touch sensitive. They have these little hair, like, sensory organs on their body, basically to help them find everything from host to each other. Yeah. They're like, let's get together and really do some damage on this guy's armpit. Yeah. Or you see that waistband? It's a great place to hide underpants band. Yeah. An underpants band. Yeah. That would have said in here. No, that's what I said. Okay. But that is a great place to hide because, like we said a few times, you'll easily scratch them off. So they want to go somewhere where you may not be thinking about scratching. Yeah, I was surprised they go. I could see kind of the outside of the armpit, back of the knee, the waistband, underpants band, they're protected. There they are. But at the same time, it's warm there and they're temperature sensitive. So I would think since they're seeking shade, they would go to a cooler spot. But there's probably not too many cool spots on the human body that are protected. Yeah, good point. Not really. I just said a bunch of contradictory stuff. So all these things help the triggers find their host, but as Tracy points out, that's half the battle. Yeah. And when you find a trigger on you, it's probably sorry that it chose you as it's one four day meal. Because they don't like humans. They'll climb onto anything, just about any vertebrate animal. Snakes. Yeah. Turtles, birds. Poor little birds. Chipmunks. Yeah. They don't like us because we take hot showers every day. That's right. And a lot of these animals don't have any kind of response to being bitten by a sugar. So the likelihood of the trigger being undisturbed for four days while it's having its meal fourth meal, is what we're going to call it, like Taco Bell. Do you remember that? They tried to invent another meal, so they're not going to get brushed off on these things. Humans almost invariably brush triggers off because when we start scratching again, it removes the trigger so they don't seek us out as prey. It's just total circumstance. Yeah. And like you said, since they need that thin skin, little kids are more likely to get bitten by a trigger than an old leathery, old sea captain, let's say. Yeah. And little kids who can't take being teased really are vulnerable to thin skinned. Very nice. You know, the ones who wear, like, shorts with knee socks pull all the way up through those kids. Yeah. And their nose are always running because they're crying or they just stopped crying, those kind of kids. So, like I said, a hot shower is a great way to kill. It's great for a lot of reasons. Great way to kill triggers. It's a great way to keep your body clean. It's a great way to unwind at the end of a long day, working in the yard. Right? Because that's where you're going to get your Chicker bites. Most likely, yeah. In the yard. Especially if you are the type who gets, like, letters from the neighborhood association saying, mow your lawn, you might have Chickers. I will never live where there is a neighborhood association. Yeah. No way. No way. Yeah. You know, in some places it's not my thing. In some places, a neighborhood covenant supersedes local law. Yeah. Unbelievable. Like, your mailbox has got to be like this. You can't paint your house that color. Not for me. And you got to pay us a certain amount of money to boss you around every month. No. That's why I have a stack of car batteries outside my house with old wood that I haven't used still. And it's like Sanford and sun out there. And then, like, in paint with a brush that says, welcome, children, on the side of your crop. All right, so should we take another break and talk a little bit more about that weird fact of the day? Yes. All right, buddy. We talked about the mouth parts. So what they do is they get that callyceride and they make a hole in your skin. Normal enough. They inject saliva, which contains digestive enzymes that make a slurry of your skin cells. We talked about other insects that do similar things like this, so it's still pretty like, all right, no big deal. Then it gets weird. It does. And I don't know if it's because they have specific enzymes or something, but I didn't see this happening with anything else, did you? No. You drop it on them? No. You refuse? I refuse. All right. So what happens is in these secretions what happens is they break they break your skin cells down, which makes that slurry, which is good, makes sense, slurp it up, but then the surrounding tissue hardens, and it actually creates a tube, a little hard straw in your skin. In the wound. Yeah. Called a stylusome. Right. What do they do with that? They drink out of it. They use a crazy straw to slurp up your wrecked cells. Yeah. And the longer they're in there, the longer the straw is. The style of stone. The style of stone, yeah. I saw a paper from 2004, and in the abstract that said something like, it seems that styles domes form as a reaction to triggers. So I don't know if they thought, like, maybe this is part of a chigger or something like that, but I guess it's a recent finding oh, really? That styles don't form, and that's how chiggers actually eat, because they don't have any Probiscis or anything like that. Now they're pretty much really weak proboscis. One of those. They're just not great insects or arachnids at all. They're not they can't bite very easily. They can't suck anything out. They're useless. Yeah, but your body just happens to help the mouth. Well, they have that magic juice. I guess so it's pretty cool. So with that magic juice, that's going to be one of the two reasons you're going to be itching a lot. Some people react quite adversely to that juice. Right. Other people, it's not that bad, but it's still going to itch no matter what. And it's not just the juice you're reacting to. I think that's probably what first gets your attention. But the thing that causes the persistent itch is that stylus dome your body's own reaction, which seems to be forming basically a hollow tube of temporary scar tissue in this wound area. Crazy. And then that actually causes some sort of itch reaction as your skin heals. And that can take a very long time to heal. This is the point where I was like, oh, having triggers actually does suck terribly. Yeah. I think if you had a chigor that was able to complete its full four day meal, your toast mean you haven't showered for four days. Yeah. That's when your style of stone is going to be at its peak of hardness and length. Right. And it's going to have the worst reaction. Right. So what can you do? There are home remedies, you've heard maybe like painting over trigger bites with a clear nail polish, right. Or any kind of nail polish, really, I think. Yeah, sure. If you got flair, some sparkly gold, I could have put some dots on my armpit, and then why not? I'll put some around my eye as well. So what's the deal there? You just choking it out? A lot of people would say, yes, you're covering up the sugar that's burrowed into your skin, and it is now suffocating to death. It's like choke on your meal. But that's wrong because, again, sugars don't burrow into your skin. Right. And Tracy points out very acutely, by the time you even notice it, it's very likely the sugar is not there any longer. Right. So if you're painting something over your skin, really what you're doing is protecting the wound area from the air contact with the air, which can aggravate it. So it does help. But Tracy says just use anti. Itch cream it's way better. Yeah. Like cortisone or something. Is that what it is? Yeah. I don't know why she felt the need to put this in here, but we might as well say it. Don't try to remove the stylus dome. I can see people doing that. Trying to dig it out. Yes. No, you don't need to know. I can definitely see people doing that. I think that was worth it. She also says don't use turpentine. Yeah. I've never heard that. Yes. People do all sorts of dumb stuff. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you could soak in a tub of gasoline and that would probably kill. Light it on fire. Problem. Yeah. Most of these home remedies you should just shy away from, I think. Yes. Only use remedies approved by modern Western medicine. Modern Western medicine the only treatment you need the name trigger, they believe. You ever heard of sand fleas? Like in Florida or anywhere. Yeah, they're like tiny crabs. Yeah, those are chico fleas. Chigoe. And another name for that is the jigger flea. And they think that sugar came from just sort of matching those two names together even though it's not the same thing. No, it's not. Those actually do burrow into your skin and they lay eggs there, and then the eggs like to feast on you. So not good. But I guess there's just nothing but confusion surrounding triggers. Yeah, nothing. So, Chuck, if you want to protect yourself against sugar invasions in your armpits and your underpants bands, what do you do? Well, if you work in your yard and your garden a lot, you wear long sleeves, wear pants to cover up as much body as you can physically. You can wear DEET if you want or any other kind of insect repellent. You can also use sulfur. I've never heard of that. I haven't either. I wonder if you just burn incense near you or something. I don't know. It would smell like bathe and egg water. Yeah. God, I will never, ever try because I hate pickled things anyway. But pickled eggs, they're not bad. They're usually a little too sweet. There's those things floating in a jar and it's like I feel like I'm in a hospital. Like where you found the head? Yeah. I think it's the Chinese. Probably Japanese and Korean, too. There's a type of pickle eggs where they soak them in a brine and it's the saltiest thing you will ever eat. And they're mucky and brown. Yeah, those are not good. The other ones are fine. They don't taste that great. I think. I don't want food soaked in liquid. I think pickled stuff is really good for you. I mean, I hate pickled things, but just love pickled everyday period. Like, soaking something in a solution, I just don't want. I don't even like marinades. I'm a dry rub guy. Are you really? Oh, yeah. You know, I didn't know that about you. Yeah. Do you know, like, sauces of any kind? Or is it the pre soaking? Like pre cooking soaking that pre marinating, I don't like. Okay. If you have a quality French sauce yet at your disposal sure, I'll take a little, but put it on the side in a plastic cup. Like, there was this place near Emily shop that it's now closed. I kind of feel bad for saying this, but I think I know why. Because they use too much sauce. Dude. They had this delicious crispy, crispy fried chicken that they dumped this gravy sauce on top. They never just put it on the side now. And by the time it got to the table, it wasn't crispy fried chicken anymore. No. That's terrible. I just don't get it. But, yeah, I'll eat a sauce. Yes. You're describing a smothered chicken. It's totally different. But it was fried. Fried and smothered can't do that. Those two things are never supposed to come together. If you want to see if you have triggers on your property, tracy says you can take a piece of black paper, black construction paper maybe from your child, right? Give me that stupid kid. And go out and lay it on the ground near where you think there might be triggers and you might see little tiny, tiny red things. She doesn't just say that. She says to take a piece of paper and defy physics by standing it up on its edge. Is that what she says? And then the triggers will follow their natural urges and climb to the top of the paper. Like, what world does Tracy live in? Well, you're in the grass. You can stand a piece of paper up in the grass. Maybe not if you take care of your grass. This isn't like that Twilight Zone episode where daring from the witch, like, flips the coin and it lands on its side. Oh, man. You know what happened in PE. In college? One time, my PE. Teacher, a basketball teacher through a pen. Remember the paper mate pins that had the cap with the sort of flat top? He just flipped it up in the air, meant to catch it, didn't it? Hit the ground and bounced and landed completely straight up and down on its cap. That's exactly like that Twilight Zone episode. He could hear everyone's thoughts after that point now. Well, I dropped that class immediately. That's smart. I was going to come out of here. Very smart. Were you like, which and ran out the door and you're doing Satan's work. Oh, man. All right, well, that's triggers. Oh, we didn't say if you really want to control triggers in your yard, just take care of your yard. They will go away. They won't want to hang out there. There won't be long stocks of grass for them to climb up to inquest from. That's right. If you want to know more about triggers, horrible, horrible little things, you can type that word into the search bar athousepforks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. Hey, before I read the listener mail, actually I started a fitness club for stuff you should know, listeners, because I have my weight struggles and so I needed some help and it's always better to do this with other people. So I started looking into some different apps, and MyFitnessPal was what I went with. So if you want to join MyFitnessPal, or if you're already on it, just go to search groups. And SYSK Fitness Club is one of the groups, and we've already got like 350 people there and we're just going to band together, man. It's really neat. And there's group discussions and we're going to have group goals and it's just going to. Be a very cool, supportive community for people that feel like they need to make some positive health changes in their life. So anyway, s y SK foot club at MyFitnessPal and now here's my listener mail. Hey, guys, I'm a new fan. I must admit, I'm getting addicted. Recently listened to the Anesthesia podcast, and I heard the listener mail. The Harvard student needed five numbing injections to the nasal cavity for breaking her nose. That was terrible. She thinks she can run up it here. It's not bad. Oh, man. I know. I'm sorry. In college, one of my molars became infected. I need a root canal. The day of the procedure, the dentist gave me shots and the gum, which Chuck said was the worst thing ever in life. After a few numbing shots, he got to work drilling into the infected tooth. Unfortunately, he didn't give me enough. Once he got down to the root, I spelt it and it felt awful. So I said to the dentist, hey. I alerted the dentist. He then pulled out what must have been the largest needle in existence and gave me a shot directly into the infected root of my tube. Man thinks it has the nose deep. She's said that she takes pain. Well, she said, but this made me sob uncontrollably. It was ten years ago, and I can still vividly recall the flash of blinding pain when the middle made contact. To make matters worse, that evening my gum swelled, dislodged the temporary crown. I had to go back the next day to have it refitted. So that's my injection story. Like I said, I'm not sure if it's worse than the five and the nose, but I'd say both were pretty terrible. Hope you enjoyed the read. Julie Yeast from Honolulu, Hawaii. It's a lot for that Julie man. I'm making air quotes when I say thank, that's like scarring, right? But she'll remember that for the rest of her life. Way to go. If you want to try to gross us out, it's going to be tough to top that one, but let's keep it going, shall we? You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffitinov. You can hang out with us on Instagram at fyskpodcast. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff works.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshirenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | ||
How the Cannonball Run Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-cannonball-run-worked | The Cannon Ball Run is a cross-country car race famously portrayed in the campy 1981 movie "Cannon Ball Run." But it isn't fictional. Tune in as Josh and Chuck take you on a wild ride through the real (and colorful) history of this infamous race. | The Cannon Ball Run is a cross-country car race famously portrayed in the campy 1981 movie "Cannon Ball Run." But it isn't fictional. Tune in as Josh and Chuck take you on a wild ride through the real (and colorful) history of this infamous race. | Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:57:34 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=15, tm_min=57, tm_sec=34, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=295, tm_isdst=0) | 29654019 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as our our good friend Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How are you, Chuck? Thank you, good friend. How are you feeling right now? I'm fine. A little hot. I'm Switzerland. Yeah. Chuck is bright red right now, everybody. It's kind of weird looking. Yeah. Thank you, Martin, for that. Our super fans. Yes, thank you. He's not a super fan. He's a buddy. He has been. He was such a fan that he actually became a friend. He's a friend that we haven't met yet. So, Chuck, take us back to the time machine. Yes, the way back machine. You ready? Here we go. Okay. All right, Josh. I'm ten years old, knee high to a grasshopper. Disco is dead. Margaret Thatcher is the Prime Minister of England. I take issue with the disco being deadline. I don't know that disco ever died, man. You cannot make the argument that all modern RMB is all disco. Disco is alive. Okay? Margaret Thatcher is the Prime Minister of England. Ronald Reagan is in office just as Jimmy Carter has exited. Walter Cronkite resigned from the CBS Evening news desk. That was a sad day. The first AIDS case was made public in California. Have you ever seen him? The band played on. My brother worked on that. That was a great made for TV movie. It really was. It was really good. And he had a great experience working on that. Fine people in that movie. Oh, wow. Great. Major League Baseball has just gone on strike in the summer for what will be the first of 80 times over the next five years. All right, so America's depressed, but not for long. No, because one Mr. Burt Reynolds is about to dash across the silver screen that's right. In a little movie called Cannonball Run. Great movie. It was a great movie. I haven't seen it in forever. I think I probably saw it in, like, 1987, right? It was one of the first movies we rented. Sure. Along with Beverly Hills cop. Yeah. Very hokey and corny, but still beloved. Yeah. Everyone takes it as a comedy because it is a comedy, clearly. But this is not to say that it started out as a comedy. Actually, it was supposed to be serious and burnt. Reynolds part was originally written for Steve McQueen, who died before he could film the movie. Sadly. It was supposed to be a serious movie, and it didn't turn out that way. Why would anybody want The Cannonball Run to be a serious movie? Well, because it was, in fact, based on a real race. What? True. Based on a real race, as you know. Yeah, I do know. After reading this article, I think I'd heard that before, but I had no idea the details. I didn't either until I wrote it. This was really amazing. I'm just going to come out and say I have a man crush on a 70 year old Mr. Brock Gates. Yeah, he's a cool dude who I would have loved to have hung out with. I bet he's still a very cool dude and hung out with in a strictly platonic sense. Sure. Yeah. Maybe a little making out. But aside from that, yes. I bet he's still a way cool guy. I get that impression. He is. This is kind of what I gathered about Brock Gates from researching this and reading your article. Go and say who he is. He was pretty much the premier automotive journalist of his age. 60s, eventually. Yeah. But I think he started out as a journalist and something of a gonzo journalist, I take it. But yeah, he was very well known and respected in the field. And in the early 1970s, America was at a fork in the road, if you will, so to speak. And Brock Yates represented one direction, and that was the out, just go and if you die, your number was up kind of mentality behind the wheel, that is. Yeah. Damn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead. Right. On the other side of the road, on the other side of the fork, was a guy named Ralph Nader who was still there on that other fork. He is for those of you who don't know who Ralph Nader is, he's run for president a couple of times. Sure. He got George Bush elected in 2004. Thanks for that, Ralph. Yeah. But he's also a very dedicated consumer watchdog. He has for many years, lived in a tiny little one room apartment. He uses a hot plate. He lives this very meager life. So no one can say you're corrupt. Right. Because he goes after everybody else. And in the early 1970s, he was going after the automotive industry. Right, right. He wrote this book called Unsafe at Any Speed. Great. And it was basically about have you read it? I've read parts of it through research and stuff. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, then it was basically about how the automotive industry was producing these incredibly dangerous vehicles. Death machines. Right. And at the time, we didn't really have much of a speed limit. Sure. So as a result of his book, seat belts became mandatory. New safety designs had to be instituted by car manufacturers. It's a big deal. So America is at this fork in the road, brock Yates down one end and Ralph Nader on the other, and America went down the Ralph Nader fork. Right. I think what you're referring to is the national speed limit. That's part of it, definitely. But I think even more than that, it's more of a, you know, the way you and I were raised, where we could do anything, we put our minds to it. We were special. I think that came out of that collective decision to go towards safety rather than fun at any cost. Reckless abandon. Exactly. Devil may care. Sure. But yeah, the national speed limit was definitely one part of that. Yeah. That was 55 miles an hour, which was in 1974. Yeah. That has since gone up quite a bit in certain areas. Of course it has. But even more than safety, do you know why they set the speed limit at 55? Gas consumption. Yes. Really? Yeah. The Arab oil embargo has just taken place. Okay. OPEC was like, hey, US, we're not real happy with you for siding with Israel during the Yom Kippur war, so we're going to cut off your oil. And they did, and prices spiked and the US said, okay, we need to rethink our dependence on foreign oil. Right. It had a huge rippling effect, but one of them was setting the speed limit at 55 mph, which is too slow. It is too slow. Especially in the opinion of somebody like brockets. I thought you're going to say, Sammy Hagar, he can't drive 55. He's tried, he has. He's made a concerted effort, but it didn't pan out. He tried. I loved that song. It wasn't I don't like to drive 55 or I would prefer to drive faster. It was, I can't drive 55. Exactly. I tried and it just doesn't happen. It was very explicit. Yes. So, Chuck, this is Brock Yates. Saw the writing on the wall that the speed limit was going to be reduced. America is becoming something of a manbypamby. Yes. Okay. And what did he do as a result? In 1971, he took a trip across the country in a Dodge van with three travel mates, and he drove from New York to Los Angeles as a way of proving, protesting, I believe this quote said something like this, good drivers and good automobiles could employ the American interstate system the same way that the Germans were using their auto bond. Right. So he wanted to prove that you can drive fast if you're safe. If you're a good driver, you can get to point A to point B in a car and it's safe. Yeah. And you said reckless abandoned. There was definitely a certain level of professionalism or the people who he considered good drivers were actually good drivers. He had to be a good driver to drive fast, in his opinion. It wasn't just like, everybody go as fast as you can. That wasn't the point. Sure, right. So he did. So he drove 2858 miles from New York to La in 40 hours and 51 minutes, which is an average of 70 mph. Yeah. Which is pretty fast if you're talking about an average speed. Yeah. Because that included stops, I think. Right. Stops, you name it. Right. So after that happened, I think it got a little bit of publicity by word of mouth there maybe the racing world. And there was a famous telegram that came, I guess, a month or so later. I'll love this. Can I read it? Yeah, it's awesome. It says, this constitutes formal entry by the Polish racing drivers of America in the next official Cannonball Baker's, seat of Shining Sea Memorial Trophy dash. The drivers are Oscar Kovaleski, Brad nametzek and Tony Adama Wicks. If we can find California, we'll beat you fair and square. So, basically, the gauntlet was laid and the Cannonball Run was born. Although, like you said, the official name has always been Cannonball Baker sea to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy. Right. So who's Cannonball Baker? Cannonball Baker. Irwin G cannonball Baker. He was famous for pushing the limits on a motorcycle. Yeah. So he would drive from Canada to Mexico, from New York to La. On an old Indian motorcycle. And we're talking starting in 1914. Right. So, like, the old Indian motorcycle was basically a bike with a motor. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. He actually had a pretty well deserved reputation for his nickname and just the stuff he was doing, his endurance level. Apparently, on one ride, he came around a curve and was about to barrel into a herd of cattle that was in the middle of the road because it's 1914. Sure. And he swerved to miss him, hit a pothole, flew off of his bike onto the back of a cow, which bucked him off and eventually landed in a ditch. Wow. Got up and drove away. That is the stuff of legends. That's how you get a race named after you, my friend. Exactly. And he went on to become the first commissioner of NASCAR, which I thought was pretty interesting. So there you have that. Yeah. Nothing to do with moonshine, though. Or did he? I don't know. Maybe. Yes. Curious. So, yeah. Yates wanted to pay homage to Cannonball Baker, so he named it after him, although he did shorten the name. Cannonball was two words. Originally for Baker. Yeah, for Baker. But he shortened it to Cannonball to avoid any illegal meaning. Right. His lawyers advised him to do that. Yeah. I thought it's kind of weird. Yeah. Well, anyway, so you have the Cannonball, originally called the Cannonball Dash, and then it finally became the Cannonball Run, which is how we know it today. Right. And thanks to the Polish drivers of America who laid down the gauntlet, it was a real thing. They didn't they weren't the only ones to participate in the first official Cannonball. That first run he made in the van was considered like a preliminary test run. It wasn't the first Cannonball because there was nobody competing with them. Right. So the second one there was the Polish Racing Drivers of America and seven other groups, including three vans. There was a huge motor home. There was an American Motors AMX, an MGB GT and a Cadillac sedan. De Ville. And this is probably the coolest part of this entire story. Yeah. I love it. Tell them. This Cadillac was owned by an old gentleman in New York. In Boston. In Boston, and he wanted to and this happened back then, it may still happen now, where you would contract someone to drive your car from one place to the other because you can't get it there. Richard Pryor contracted Dana carvey and moving. Really great movie. I didn't see that one. I thought it was a stinker. No, it was good. So this old man put out an ad in the paper and I need to get my car to Los Angeles, and these guys answered it and said, we'll get your car to Los Angeles. And unbeknownst to him, it was one of the entries, and I think one of the stipulations was the car not be driven faster than 75 mph anytime we're in the dark. Oh, is that the other one? Yeah. And clearly they broke both of these because the Cadillac averaged 79 mph. Right. Which means they were driving a heck of a lot faster than that. I think they came in third, too. Yeah, third place. Yeah, not too bad. But I think they got the car there in one piece and safely. Yeah, good for them, right? They're like, Here are the keys, pal. So go ahead and start with the first race. Where did it start? Where did it end? Well, it started in New York at the Red Ball garage at midnight, I believe is when all of them started. Yeah. And this is what, november 15, I believe. And the ending place was a hotel in Redondo Beach. Yeah. What is it? The Portofino Inn. Right, okay. From pictures I saw was a pretty luxe little hotel. I think so. And you didn't have to follow any specific route. You just got there anyway you could. Right. Basically the only rules were you could have as many drivers as long as it was only one car, and you could leave at any point within the 24 hours window. It wasn't like everyone started at the start line, like a typical race, just like in the movie, you would punch a time clock for when your starting time was right, and then punch it again for when you arrived. Yeah. And whoever won one, and I believe there was no trophy at the time, it was only a $50 entry fee. And then they donated $200 apiece to charity. Yes. I thought that was pretty cool. Sure, why not? So apparently, two days before the race, brock Yates had managed to finagle a Ferrari Daytona, a brand new Ferrari Daytona, a loaner out of an auto dealer. And he had the car, but he only had himself. He didn't have a copilot or a driver. Right. And apparently he sent out all these invitations and a lot of race car drivers, like legitimate race car drivers, and they were like, if somebody dies or something to look really bad for the sport of racing, and I don't want to do that. And then one guy he had invited, Dan Gurney, who is a professional race car driver, had declined initially, but he apparently was told by his wife that his dying father in law said, you should go do this. Life is short. Right. So Gurney contacts Yates the day before the race and says, hey, can I still come? And Yates said, Heck, yeah. And that proved to be fortuitous because they won. They did. Yeah, they did. Their winning time, Josh, was 35 hours and 54 minutes. Not bad cross country. Not bad at all. And not Atlanta. To La. New York to La. Which is further. Yeah, because I've made it in 33 hours from Atlanta to La. Have you? Yes. That's the way I've always done it. 311 hours, days is how I schedule it out. I never time myself, but I went and drove around the west for several weeks and lived in a van with the dogs and all that. Sure. And I would drive like I think the longest I drove is a twelve hour stretch. That's about all I can muster. Yeah, that's enough for me. Yeah. Depending on how much coffee I drank or whatever, right. Then I could drive 6 hours or 12 hours or whatever. But it's amazing the toll that just sitting in a car with your foot on the gas has on you. Sure. Especially when you're driving that fast. Should we talk about some of the things they preferred to do on the first race, please? One of the common tactics, it seemed like, was to keep it slow in the Eastern seaboard. I think New Jersey and Connecticut and Ohio and Pennsylvania, these states are notorious for having some pretty hardcore highway patrolman. Still do. Yeah. Like you'll get pulled over for doing 65. Right. Isn't that nuts to you? That is nuts. I can't imagine for getting pulled over for anything less than 72. 75 in Georgia, by the way. Everyone flies as fast as you can get away with that's. How fast you drive generally. Yeah. Even my friend Derek used to say that the deal with Atlanta rush hour is everyone drives as fast as they can until somebody wrecks. Right. And then there's a big trend that stops. Yeah. It's pretty funny to think about that. So the trick was to kind of keep it slow on the Eastern seaboard and then the Midwest, and then once you got to the Great Plains is when you really opened up. Yeah. And made up some serious series time. Yeah. They got it up to 172, I think is how fast they found out the Ferrari would go. Yeah. I think twelve speeding tickets total. Between all of the competitors. Yeah, between four of the competitors. Four of them didn't get a ticket at all. Okay. So four of them split twelve tickets. And the famous quote la. Times, it was kind of a blurb of an article from Dan Gurney. Right? Yeah. Dan Gurney famously said, at no time did we exceed 175 miles an hour. They came close, which is pretty cool. Yeah. So, Chuck, that was the first one. And as with all cool things, that also began its co opion. Sure. News got out. Word got out, little by little. Yeah. Sports Illustrated covered it, and so did the Los Angeles Times. And so when there was a second one, I think the following year, there were a lot more competitors. Right. Yeah. They had 25 entries a second year. And Brock Yates finished second place, this time in a Cadillac. The third race, they skipped a couple of years, and it was 1975, and they moved it to springtime this time, and a Ferrari won the third race with Yates and Gurney behind the wheel once again. Oh, I didn't know they won the third one. Yes. Oh, no. I'm sorry. They beat Yates and Gurney's record time the third year. Yeah. By 1 minute. Right. Yeah. But it was not them. You're correct. So by 1975, which is what, the third one? Fourth one. Third one was in 75. Okay. By 1975, it's officially co opted. There's actually corporate sponsorship. Right. The Right Bra Company placed three ladies in pink in a limousine, and apparently the driver fell asleep in Texas and rolled the thing and I guess rolled into a Porta Potty. Right. Which tipped over and drenched the ladies inside with its contents. Exactly. So by this time now, you can see why Burt Reynolds would have chosen more of a comedic route than a Sharky's machine route. Yeah, well, it wouldn't Burt's choice. Should we move to the final year? Yeah. What happened was Brock Yates was pretty much finished with it. He said it's run its course. He said he was worried that somebody was going to die. Sure. Although no one ever got hurt. No, but the roads in the last eight years have become much more congested. Right. He was ready to scrap the whole thing, but he had a friend, director stuntman Hal Needham. Halned him. Or is it Needlem? No, it's need. Him. Okay. And he was famous for a lot of the early Burt Reynolds movies. He Hooper, which is a great movie. I haven't seen that one. Are you kidding me? I kid you not, dude. Got to get Hooper. Okay. That was the one about stuntman. You have to see my Blue Heaven, though. All right, we'll get to that later. Okay, so he did Hooper and he did The Cannonball Run and a couple of other Bert Reynolds films. Yeah. He did a Smoky and the Bandit, too. Rocky H wrote that. I'm sorry. Okay. We're all over the place today, aren't we, too? We are. How? Natham says. You know what, Brock? I want to make a movie about the Cannonball Run. And so I think the best way to do this is if we stage another one, and I participate with you as my partner. Yeah. They did that in 79 and they had a record 46 entries this time. And a lot of what happened in this race actually ended up in the movie. Yeah, there's some Zany Magcap stuff that was going on. Let's hear it. Well, Brock Yates and Hal Needham actually had an ambulance. And Yates'wife, Pamela, posed as a woman suffering from a lung condition sure. And as a result couldn't fly because of the pressurized cabin. So she had to be zoomed across the country at 100 mph in the back of an ambulance. That was their vehicle of choice. They modified the engine and it killed the transmission. Right. So it had to be eventually towed across the finish line, which I thought was pretty cool. Right. And in the film that actually happened, bert Reynolds and Don Deleys were the Needham Yates characters and Farah Fawcett was the wife. What else happened that was real? Three drivers actually did pose as priests. Remember in the movie? It was awesomely. It was Sammy Davis Jr. And Dean Martin. Yeah, Dean Martino, drunk priest in the movie. I don't know that they were posing. They really weren't a drunk part. Oh, sure. They were probably hammered. Sure. What else, Josh? I don't know. I haven't seen the movie in a really long time. All right, well, I got it for you. Then. There were in fact scantily clad, skin tight jumpsuits on a couple of ladies in a sports car. I read the opposite. I read that that was the right bra company that inspired that part. I read the opposite. We'll have to check that. All right, we'll do it. And then there was a wealthy entrant that had his chauffeur drive him in a Rolls Royce. Nice. And in the movie that was Jamie Farr played a Middle Eastern chic. That's right. Clinger. Yeah. You know, he and I are from the same hometown toledo. Toledo. Is that why he always wore the Toledo Mud hinsat in Mash? Yeah. And why he talked about it incessantly. He really was not Toledo. Yeah. And Tony Paco's hot dogs that he talks about all the time real place, best hot dogs on the planet. Really? Had no idea. So those are just a few of the things that actually happened in the final Cannonball Run that ended up in the film. And a Jaguar driven by Dave Hinds. And Dave Yarborough won that year. And they obliterated the time period with 32 hours and 50 1 minute, 87 miles per hour average. Wow. 50 speeding tickets that year. Wow. Well, there are 42 contestants. Oh, sure. Yeah. So that was the last one. And it has spawned imitators over the years. Before Cannonball Run, the movie came out, there were already imitators. Oh, really? Yeah. There was one movie that came out in 75 and two that came out in 76. You want to hear the weird thing about it? What's that? David Carring was in two of them. Really? He was in, let's see, Death Match 2000, death Rates 2000, which is set in the future, but he was also in Cannonball Exclamation Point. Right. Which is a farcical take on the Cannonball Run. Apparent. Then there was a second one that had Gary Busey in it, or third one that had Gary Busey in it, called the Gumball Rally. Right. And that's a real one. The Gumball 3000 is still in existence? Yeah. Is that European or in America? Well, they do both and they're quick to say that it's not a race, it's more like an adventurous road trip. And then the lame tell them about the European version of the Cannonball Run. You know why? Because they call it the Cannonball Run. They use that name. And this thing is not even a race. The goal of the Cannonball Run, Europe is to stay as close to a 60 1 mph average as you can. And in 2008, a frigging Smart Car one. Talk about a slap in the face where Brockade steady would have rolled over in his grave. Yeah, he's rolling over in his grave. Instead he rolled over a Smart Car with his bare hands. He did. If anybody could do it, Mr. Brocket could. My friend. I think so. I think can't be all running. How fast have you driven? What's the fastest you've ever driven? Oh, I don't know, 110? I actually once got a speeding ticket. Now, you want to hear a weird story? I don't know if this will make the final cut or not because it's kind of long, but get this. So my friend and I were driving from Atlanta to Charleston in my old Toyota Corolla. It was an 86 champagne colored Toyota Corolla. Nice. And I was doing 110 on I 20 during a stretch where the speed limit was 55. I was doing twice the speed limit. I get pulled over by this guy in this car with a little dash headlight on it, spinning around. And I pull over and this guy is dressed like a paramilitary cop. And he's like, you're so dead, you're going to jail forever. Right? And he goes back to his car and calls somebody. This other guy comes out and he comes back. He's like, you're at least going to lose your license. And he goes back and talks to the guy who he said later was the sergeant on duty. And he comes back and he goes, you're going to get a ticket of some sort. And he goes back and talks to the guy again and he goes, here's your license back. You guys drive safely now and lets us go. You're free to go. Exactly. So what? My friend and I are looking at each other like, what just happened? It was so surreal. And to this day I wonder, have you seen Pulp Fiction? Of course you have. Sure. Remember Zed? Yeah. I have the distinct impression that these guys were into Zed. Like affairs. And something else was took precedent. My friend, he's not a good looking guy. So I'm thinking maybe they're like, we'll pass on these two, and we headed on to Charles. I got you. Yeah. So they were going to get you back to the police station? I don't think they were cops. Okay. What cop would not give you a ticket when you're driving twice the speed limit? I got you. Yeah. I got a story. Let's hear. About four years ago, me and my buddy Scotty were doing it was actually the last TV commercial job ever did. It was a Six Flags job. And Six Flags, Massachusetts, whatever that one's called. Six Flags over Massachusetts. Is it? I think it's great. America. Anyway, so we go up there to do this job and what kind of job? It was New Jersey. But we have to drive. Yeah, we drive. At one point, we had, like, two days off while we were up there, and I had a friend in Vermont, and the third Star Wars prequel was being released that Friday. So I said, hey, man, let's go up and see Johnny Pindel and rent a car and drive up there, because we had a camera truck. He said, sure, let's do it. So we rented, like, a little geometry, whatever, the cheapest little four stroke engine car you could get. And we have a time limit because we have to make the movie. It's like a 06:00 PM. Showing. And so we're speeding through Vermont like the hills are Vermont. Lovely. And this little engine is like and we top this hill, we see one of those signs that say your current speed. And it said, your current speed, and it blinked and went, 102. Wow. And I'd never seen a triple digit on one of those signs. Yeah. So we just laughed and blazed right through it and made the movie. Laughed and you call the police. And we literally we made it right as the movie was starting. And the engine was like it was like ticking. It was red hot. And that's my fast story. Well, if you have a fast story, we'd actually like to hear it. Here's the caveat. Don't go out and commit any kind of crime or act that includes fastness. No. If it's already happened, then we'll hear about it. We'll tell you the email right after we get the listener mail, right, chuck yes. Josh all right, let's go. Josh I'm going to call this the only time we've ever read a listener mail from the same dude. Oh, I don't know about this, Chuck. We have to. This is the Hackster. Ryan Hack, my buddy. All right. Listen to the House History podcast, and I have a creepy story. One of the houses I grew up in as a kid had a hidden door. As you go to the basement, it's more or less just blended into the wood paneling as you walk through. The door. You came to an open area with some shelving and a workbench. There are a couple of old bike tires and some random parts still lying around and a guy named Zeit and a guy named It. Every once in a while, we'd hear what sounded like people working on their bikes and chitchatting pounding, metal gears dropping, laughing, chains turning every time we go into the room. There was nothing weird. Later on, we found out the history of the house. Turns out one of the previous owners was a couple that enjoyed biking, and they died in a biking accident and forgot to get the memo. So just thinking about it gives me chills. And this is from Ryan, and I'm going to just go ahead and say that Ryan Hack has inspired me to exercise because he has a blog called Hacksfirst Five K Blogspot.com, where he started running and lost weight and is into it now. And he got me listening to another podcast called Two Gomers Run a Marathon. I don't know that I am entirely okay with you leading this extra life that I'm unaware of until you read a listener mail. I know, but Two Gummers Run a Marathon is actually a really funny podcast. You see two guys that say they're gomers kind of nerdy and they're completely unathletic, yet they want to run a marathon, so their podcast goes through their trials and travails, and it's really funny to get a website called Twogomers.com Cool. Well, Ryan Hack, since you got all those plugs, and because you had two listener mails read on air, you have to go contribute $25 to Kiva.org on Stuff You Should Know Team. Chuck, do you want to tell everybody else about that? Kivaorg go to the click on community and search stuff you should Know team. Join our team. Loan $25 to someone in need. You can now donate to Americans. Yes, I've heard if you're a nationalistic or an isolationist, you can still donate. But right now, as a press time, we have raised more than $4,500 in about ten days. And who has $7,100? Chuck? The lousy, cheap fans of the Colbert quote unquote nation. You know what, Sam? That guy's got way more fans than we do, right? Way more. 110 members on his team. We got 180 so far already. Yeah. So where to go? For those of you and the Stuff You Should Know nation who supported Kiva.org so far, for those of you who want to get on the trolley, you can go to www.kiva.org teamstuckynow and you can become a member. And like Chuck said, you can contribute as little as $25. And you actually get that back if you want. Sure. You can roll it over again or whatever. Yeah. So chuck. That's it, right? That's it. If you have a cool, high speed story, chuck and I want to hear about it. If you have a great unicorn story, we always want to hear about that, send in an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want morehouseafworks? 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. 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How Coffins Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-coffins-work | Sure, you've probably laid in one at the store or a funeral home, but how much do you know about receptacles used to bury the dead? We'll bet you'll learn plenty - like the difference between a coffin and a casket - in this episode. | Sure, you've probably laid in one at the store or a funeral home, but how much do you know about receptacles used to bury the dead? We'll bet you'll learn plenty - like the difference between a coffin and a casket - in this episode. | Tue, 28 May 2013 17:45:07 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=17, tm_min=45, tm_sec=7, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=148, tm_isdst=0) | 38485749 | audio/mpeg | "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 this is stuff you should know. The podcast. That's right. This is part of of our ongoing death suite, which is sweet. Yeah. We've covered death a lot because death is multifaceted. Sure. You know what this reminded me of the I guess we covered Green Burial, not in its own podcast, but in different ways to what to do with the dead body. There you go. That's what I thought it was into. But I'm surprised we didn't do a podcast dedicated just for that. Maybe we should. Yeah, I looked up because I'm interested in that for myself, and there are some lovely places right outside Atlanta to be buried greenly, where you can just be wrapped in a shroud and buried in a field, which ripped to death by coyotes left in a field. They don't leave you in a field. No. Well, they bury you in a shallow grave okay. For the coyotes to come get you. No, they said they don't have a problem with that. But I'm not one of those people that cares about that. Yeah. About what happens to your body. Like, I would do a sky burial that wouldn't bother me, for vultures to pick me apart, use the body if it would feed an animal, great. Why not donate it to science? Yeah, maybe I'll do that. I'm not precious about my body after death. I'm not precious about my body in life. Why start then? Exactly. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. So, anyway, well, a shroud does kind of technically count as a coffin. Chuck. Yes. Back in the day, I didn't have a lot of money. Right. Or if you're into being picked apart by coyotes. But the whole point of a coffin, or what constitutes a coffin, is it provides a barrier between the body and the ground. And technically, a shroud does that. It's a really poor coffin. But that's the whole point. It's that the body is encapsulated in something that just dropping a body into a grave is undignified, you might say. Even cremating a body without some form or fashion of a coffin is considered undignified. And you'll be hard pressed to find a crematorium that will let you just put your loved one on the conveyor belt and let them just kind of flop lifelessly toward the flames. If they're jostled, they're going to flop. Okay. Yeah. Especially after rigor is done, the word coffin. We're not going to do any Marian Webster stuff, because who would start an article like that? Or do it six times in an article? But we will say we'd like to give root words. And of course, Greek and Latin are involved here with the Greek kofinos and Latin kofi nuts. They're always like, oh, yeah, right. I'll change that K to a C and that O to a U, and no one will ever even remember the Greeks happen. Exactly. So that's where the word coffin came from. But here in the United States, we generally refer to that vessel as a casket. Whereas in places like England and Australia I'm sorry, Great Britain and Australia, they might say coffin, even though a lot of people here think that's like a word you shouldn't use. Well, yeah. Their casket still means a place to keep your valuables. Right. Your bubbles. Right, yeah. Here in the US, if you go to a funeral Directorium, also called a funeral home, you're going to find that they'd never use the word coffin. No. It's pretty subtle, but the language is definitely they don't say, we'd love to pick out a coffin for your husband's dead body, and then we'll dig a grave over there and put it in the ground. That will say things like, we would like you to pick out a casket for your husband. And from our display area. From the display area. And we will take you there in the casket coach, not a hearse, and place them in the internment space, which is not the grave opened. And then we'll close afterward, rather than filling or digging the grave. They don't say digging and ground. Basically anything that brings to mind the guy from Phantasm. Does the funeral industry avoid those words? Yeah, and of course, we've ruined 6ft under and the Fisher and Sons boys. Such a great michael always did such a great job of being the proper funeral director and using all the words that you should use, like casket. He's good at it. And then he turned into a serial killer. Well, on Dexter. Yeah. So there actually is a distinction beyond where you live with the word casket and coffin. Sure. There's a slight difference. Shape. Yeah. It's basically shape. A casket is a long rectangle and the top is usually split, so you can no, that's a coffin. That's a casket. Oh, yeah, that's a casket. Coffin is the hexagonal. Right. A hexagonal box. Yeah. And back in the day, you had the old pine box. Actually, a lot of those were just rectangular, but some were had that familiar sort of keyhole shape. Well, back in the day, in the 19th century, the person who is responsible for carrying out your funeral services and building your coffin was usually the local carpenter and he undertook your funeral service, hence the word undertaker, from what I understand. Yeah. But it was usually somebody who built wagons and kitchens and whatever. They also built coffins, too, and they built them to suit that sounded to me like our first casket fact. Well done, Chuck. Wow. Yeah. Thank you, Jerry, for going the extra mile there. And if you like that, you're going to love this episode because this place is lousy with casket back. Yeah. We won't play the sound effect on this one, but I thought another interesting fact, because I like origins of phrases and things. If someone cast a Paul over a room, a Paul was actually a dark cloth that they would put over the casket to, I guess, cover block out the bad juju of having the dead body in there. Right. So you would cast the Paul over the casket. Yeah. Or if you're me, you cast a Paul over any room you enter. That's fun. No fun anymore. Everybody, can we talk a little bit about the funeral industry for a second? Yeah. About the casket industry, I should say specifically, there's still some furniture companies that make caskets on the side. Like Lazy Boy. Yeah. I don't know if Lazy Boy does, but they represent a very small thing of the casket that's the ultimate Lazy Boy, you're forever chair. Right, exactly. Well, they actually have caskets for those people. It's called goliath casket.com. Anyway, of course there's someone that does that because that's a common thing. Caskets aren't some people of girth. Sure. That's pretty embarrassing when you can't fit in your casket. Right. And I went and looked and these are very dignified caskets. These are just larger. They're for the larger person. Double wide. Wow. There's also one of the largest casket makers. Baseville originally started out as a furniture company. So there's like this whole origin of yeah, I'll build your chair and I'll build your coffin for your uncle, too. That makes sense. It's carpentry. Yeah. And then that's kind of the way it went. There were some groups that started to consolidate and just make caskets around the late the turn of the 20th century, the beginning of the 20th century. And that was fine. They kind of created the industry. And then it was like the 50s after the Korean War when metal caskets became like all our age. Yeah. Because that was mod looking and that was popular at the time. It was. And you'll also find in the funeral industry, it was easy to subtly exploit the grieving out of their money. It was very cheap to mass produce metal caskets. And so they were sold. Sold. There was a huge profit margin with them. And I think by the all caskets were metal. Yeah. Well, because what better way to protect your loved one from the elements and the harsh afterlife that they may encounter than with a good old solid metal encasing. Yes, exactly. Which also happens to have greater profit margins. And it's cheaper to produce. It is. It's cheaper to mass produce the other aspect of a metal coffin and the rise of the metal coffin, it changed the casket making industry because it's really expensive to get into metal coffin making. Apparently it costs about a million dollars just for the dyes to make a standard metal coffin just for the dyes alone. So this kind of consolidated the industry down to fewer and fewer companies that were making metal caskets. So it became a real industry at that point. Yeah. And then ultimately the casket industry started to suffer and decline. Thanks to advances in medicine, there are fewer deaths. So their profits dropped and their revenue dropped. And then starting in the 80s, people said, you know what, maybe cremation isn't so bad. Right. And so in 1985, I think 15% of people opted for cremation. And then by, I think, 2011, it's like 45%. Oh, really? Yeah. And every time somebody gets cremated, the coffin industry dies a little bit. Yeah. Although, like you said, you can still have a casket to be cremated in. I know. We covered this in the Cremation podcast. Yeah, well, you have to like you can't find somebody who just let you. But that can be super cheap. Like, sometimes it's even cardboard. Well, it's supposed to be because it's got to burn. Yeah, but I mean, at the very least, wood will also burn. But you can spend a little bit more money or you can get a temporary encasing, an outer encasing that is more attractive to show the family. And then when push comes to shove, they shove they remove the outer casket and shove you in. It's like a rental casket just for the service. Yeah. And you can actually rent caskets, period, even if you aren't being cremated, just for a more showy experience. And then you get the pine box treatment. Right, because nobody loves you. Yeah, it's expensive, man. A lot of people don't have the money to pay for a big funeral, and a lot of people really believe in that kind of thing. It's really sad for them. It is. Luckily, there's such thing as Walmart and Costco. Both of them sell caskets. Walmart has a casket for 1199 $1,199. It's Our Lady of Guadalupe casket model. And then Costco has the same model for $100 more. Really? Yeah. I was surprised that it's not exactly the same, but it's nice to see that the big box retailers aren't price fixing coffins. Yeah, it's great to see Walmart selling coffins, but I mean, it's like if you need a coffin and they're attractive looking coffins, I think they're fiberglass. Have you ever laid down a coffin? Probably not. I haven't. I haven't either. I would just to see what it felt like. They look comfy. Did you see the thing about the 6ft under club in San Francisco? No. There is a club where it's like, hey, you and your partner, life swinging partner, partner, whatever your sex partner, let's just call it what it is. We're grown up, right, can come lay down in our coffin and we'll bury you and you guys can do it. And we are going to watch you on a night vision webcam that's going to be projected on the walls of the club above. Where's the san Francisco. San Francisco. That's wacky 16 under club. And you can email and reserve a space in their coffin. Is there any room in the coffin? I'd imagine it would have to be a larger, but maybe a goliath coffin double wide. Well, I will never do that, but it's interesting to know it's out there. It is out there in San Francisco. That's one of my options. Let's talk about the anatomy of a coffin, Chuckers. Well, the most important thing, of course, is that it is a barrier from the body to the elements. Actually, I don't care, like I already said. But most people, most normal people don't want to think about their loved ones bodies, like decaying and being eaten by being warm dirt. Right. But one thing they cannot tell you is that it's illegal to say that we have a casket that will permanently seal the body. It's against the law to claim any sort of permanent, even if it's one of these new gasket coffins. What are those called? It's called a protective coffin. Yeah. Which actually has a rubber gasket, so it's sealed much tighter. But they still legally can't say, like, it will protect them forever. Right, because it will protect them from the elements. But there is such a thing as decay. Like your body is going to decay into nothingness. And apparently, I guess the funeral industry was selling coffins based on the idea that the body was going to survive forever. And with this impermeable seal that the protective coffins had, it wasn't letting anything in, but it also wasn't letting anything out, which is a problem. And in an airtight environment, anaerobic bacteria gets to work and as they start putrefying the flesh, they expel methane gas as a byproduct. And there's this thing called exploding coughing syndrome, which was most apparent in mausoleums where a coffin would just blow up. And sometimes they would blow up so much that it would blow the mausoleum door open, like a huge methane explosion from the gas built up from the decaying corpse in this protective coffin. So now they have ones that don't let anything in, but they burp gas out. Yeah. They're called burping coffins, which is a great name for a coffin. Yeah. But so is exploding casket syndrome. Yeah. Boy. Do you imagine being a cemetery worker and seeing a mausoleum door explode wide open? Yeah. You're just like seeing it all. I would quit my job that day. So it depends on where you are in the world, what you're going to get with your coffin and with regulations. Unless developed countries, obviously, they're less regulated, you could still be wrapped in a shroud in some parts of the world, right here in the US. In the west, they're basically public health regulations, which is why that place for the green burial is designated a green burial place. I'm sure the body won't come in contact with the groundwater, I think is what they're trying to keep from happening. Yeah. That was in their FAQ. Yeah. So that's pretty much the whole public health regulation. And it's gotten to the point where most people are buried with cement encasement around them, right? Oh, is that what they do these days? I think so, yeah. I think I knew that, actually. It's so funny. Like, we're all still six year olds right at our court. It's like, you're dead body. Gross. I can't let that get into the water. And there's stuff that bother me. Drinking dead bodies? No, I wouldn't want to drink a dead body now, but seeing one, I mean, I'm the guy who poked a head floating in a bucket in the hospital. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that story. I didn't poke it, but I mentally poked it. It didn't bother me. If you are in the Western world, you're probably going to be dealing with wood or metal or fiberglass. If you live out in the desert, they may use things like local products like clay or stone, which is kind of interesting. I guess. We got a lot of wood here in the United States, though. Particle board. Yeah. And as we mentioned, the sad, sad cardboard cremation vessel. Right. Which, again, if you're being cremated, you probably don't care. Yeah, it's all set for cremation. And then I thought, I don't know, is there anything that's in the green burial seems like a good option. Sure. Just become one with the dirt, maybe. But I like the idea of being scattered as well. Or, again, helping somebody. Helping other people. Yeah, but they'll still, like if you donate your body to science, did they not give you any sort of like no, you can't be involved or anything? I guess you probably could if, say, you're going to the body farm, you wouldn't be able to be involved. Sure. And I'm sure there's, like, memorial services, but as I understand it, that's another thing that's eating into the casket industry profits is body donation. Hey, man, I think this is the perfect time to have a message break from our sponsor. Agreed. Which means our jingle all right. So I think this is actually a great time for a second casket fact. Oh, I like these already. All right. Back in the day, in the early 19th century, that was sort of they called it body snatching, period. And people were into snatching up bodies, digging up graves, exhuming people, if you will, and basically selling bodies for money, for medical research. It was a way to make a buck. Or doing research on your own. Medical College of Georgia, they found dozens of skeletons. I was like, I don't think it was hundreds, dozens of skeletons of people who were dismembered, and they figured out that all of them had been stolen from graves. I remember that. Yeah. Of course, that wasn't in the early 19th century, was it? It was in the 19th century, not early, but it was in the 19th century. So they developed something, well, various things to protect bodies, like locked mausoleums and vaults and then something. I think it's kind of neat called a mort safe, which is basically an iron cage put over the coffin. It's, like, sunk in the concrete. It's like what people use to protect their air conditioners today. Yeah, exactly. But over, like, a grave. So that was a more safe. And that kept people out. They had guards, sometimes staff guards. I think the caretaker doubles as a guard, but they had people who they hired as guards to protect a specific grave. I think if you had enough dough wow. You could have, like, the mausoleum with a guard. That's pretty cool. And that's if you're rich and wealthy. Also if you weren't wealthy. Other ways to thwart grave robbers is to put heavy planks to backfill the grave with rocks instead of dirt, which might not have kept somebody out, but they would have made quite a bit of noise digging you up. Sure. Have you ever been to Oakland Cemetery? Yeah, I go all the time. Well, not all the time, but I go. It is beautiful. A couple of times a year. Yeah. You mean I went and just walked around? There's some mausoleums there that there's no way you could have gotten into. Yeah. For those people that haven't been to Atlanta, that is our probably oldest in cemetery. It is our parade. De la Shea. Yes. It's our Nicola Che. I've been to that one, too, actually. The one in Paris. What? Parade de la C? Oh, is it the one with Jim Morrison? Yeah, of course. Nice. And I think Oscar Wild is there and choppa. But Morrison is the one that you go by and there's like, joints on the ground and, like, tabs of acid and stuff. And then you always see, like, the random guy kind of hanging out, like, waiting for everyone to turn their back. That's funny. Bunch of dirty hippies, basically. Jean jackets. Give me a break. In Ghana and other parts of Africa, it is kind of cool because they have a very sort of a joyous way of celebrating death with their bright colored coffins and even odd shapes that would pay honor to what this person loved in life. I saw one that was like a giant shoe in this guy. It must have been his relative. And he was just so proud to show that they were burying him in a giant shoe. So it's like, to the dead in Ghana what a pinata is to, like, a kid in Mexico. Really? Yeah. They have, like, pinatas that are shaped for they're, like, different no. Okay. There's like, lots of hello, kitties and, like really? Yeah, there's some great pinatas out there. And then the other example they gave in here is like, if it was a businessman, he might be buried in something that resembled his luxury car or a fisherman. It might be a fish shaped coffin. The fish finally got him back. He's in the belly of it. So, Chuck, you mentioned things that coffins may be made out of. Yeah. You mentioned, like, wood fiberglass, elm, oak, hardy woods. Bronze is still used on occasion. Yeah, sure. And that's the shell of the coffin. Yeah. Inside you'll find the lining usually some sort of rich fabric, like taffeta or velvet or something that looks like that. Maybe Volure, if they like juicy clothes, that kind of thing. Yeah. Silk, maybe. Yeah. And it's stuffed with batting to keep the corpse nice and comfortable. Sure. And that's pretty much it. You've got hardware on the outside, and that's a casket. Yes. It's probably going to be warm colors here in the Western world. It's not Ghana. You're not going to see a lot of, like, brightly painted coffins and stuff like that. No, but also they kind of avoid, like you're probably not going to see a black coffin anywhere. Yeah. Those are called receding colors. They're dismal of desperation and despair. I feel like I've seen a lot of light gray and things like that. Or just wood color. If you get, like a really nice wood, like, cherry, sometimes it will just be in. That'll be the outer shell. Right. And those are pricey. Yes, they are. As a matter of fact, the average cost of a funeral in the US in 2009 was 6560, which is less than I thought. I think a green barrel is about half that. Yes, I can see that. I think they're like, two or three grand. Because the coffin in the average funeral was $2,295. The average cost of a metal coffin in 2009, which in 2007, funeral Homes and crematories pulled in. Eleven point $95 billion. And one of the ways they pulled in that much was from casket sales. Yeah. And I don't know if we even should say this out loud, because it sounds like an unfounded accusation that cheap coffins are purposely made ugly so they can upsell. Yeah. Do you think that's true? It's probably true, yeah. Well, I've read that the funeral home industry marks up caskets that they buy. They resell them for up to 500% more than they paid for them. Well, it's a business, and that's their product. It is. It's a business. And the customers are in a really easily exploited place. Yeah. I don't know, though. I just think it is a business, and because it deals with death, it's very easy for someone to say, like, you're exploiting these people are taking advantage of them. I just don't think that's true. No, I think that you can't cast that net across the entire agreement. So there's some shysters. Sure. But they're all doing it for everybody. Yeah. Bad apples. Josh well, we have a lot of opulence here in the United States. Some people get into that, but apparently in Australia and Great Britain, they're a little more reserved with what they'll spend on a casket. In some cultures, like the Jewish faith, it's very common to not have any sort of garish thing. They want you to be buried something very plain so you're not distinguished as to your place in life. Yeah. Apparently the hardware that they used to carry is removable. So, like, when you're buried, you're buried in a plain box. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, that's cool. You want to talk about the bow people? The hanging coffins of the bow, not to be confused with the hell of the upside down centers in big trouble in Little China. Right. Although this is in Sichuan province of China, the Bo people are an ethnic group that populated the area, and they had this really neat tradition of putting the coffins of their deceased up on, like, 300 foot cliffs, just craigs little caves. And for centuries, no one has had any idea how they got them up there. Yeah. At one point, they had close to 300. Now it's only about 100 and 350 to 400ft. And did you see pictures? Yeah, it's crazy. I don't see how they did it. They think now they might have lowered them down, but they still it looks like they're on wood planks that are sticking out of the cliff. How they do that? Yeah, I can't figure it out. It's pretty neat. It's like a little village of coffins. It's kind of clustered on this cliffside. Yeah. With the idea that having your relatives higher up is a place of greater respect to be looking up at them, because that's where the deities were, at the tops of mountains, and that would place them closer to the deities. Yes. You go up here now because you're dead. Yeah. It's very interesting. What about the Egyptians? They had the money coffins, if you ask me. Yeah. We covered this with Tut, obviously, the big sarkova guy. But didn't they believe that you would just be sent to your all this stuff would go with you. Yeah. You need it in your afterlife for your journey to the after world, the underworld, and I guess the whole it was the opposite of what the Jews think. The more socioeconomic status you can bestow upon a grave, the better off the person is going to be in the next life. They'll be like, oh, you have a beduole casket. Right. You're okay in our book bedazzled. Yeah. But they actually had texts. What we now call the Egyptian Book of the Dead was originally it grew out of what are called the Egyptian coffin texts. Yeah. And there were two. The Book of the Dead, the coffin text that became the Book of the Dead was for everybody, regardless of your socioeconomic status. And it told you how to be buried. And we've done how mummies work, so we got into that a lot. Yeah. And that's basically what we relied on. But there's also one for the pharaohs, the kings, the elite, and those are the Pyramid texts. Yes. And that's the one that later evolved through the Book of the Dead. Right. The pyramid text, I think the coffin text I know you have the pyramid text. Yeah. The pyramid text is separate. That's the one for the elite. Right. And that's what evolved to the book of the dead. Oh, it did. Okay. Yeah. But I think what was in the coffin text was contained within the pyramid text. Right. Yeah. I think the coffin text was an umbrella that gave birth to both. It was the original one, and it actually had the first described cosmology ever recorded. Yes. The book of two A's within the Egyptian coffin text was the first time they basically said, here's what happens to you after death. Yeah. Pretty cool what could happen to you. And it's basically you cross from one part of the sky into a lake of fire and then across into another part of the sky. Yeah. And the coffin texts have spells and things to help you out as well in your journey, like, check out my bejeweled casket. I'm okay. In your book, Chuck, we couldn't talk about coffins if we didn't talk about a really interesting and neat trend of the 18th and 19th century, maybe even 17th, but I think 18th and 19th century called safety coffins. Yeah. It's a common fear for people, too. It's called tapa phobia. That's a fear of being buried alive. Yeah. And it's a real thing. And people had it then and they have it now. Well, they had good reason to have it back then, because it happened. Yeah. There was a book called Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented. It's an 1896 book by a social reformer named William Tab and a couple of co authors. And actually, one of the co authors was a doctor who himself had been prematurely buried. Oh, really? Yeah. They went over, like, account after account, and they even had a chapter called Dubious Accounts, but they basically came up with 219 instances of narrow escape from premature burial. 149 cases of actual premature burial, ten cases of vivisection before death. So the person they thought was dead, they started to cut open and they weren't dead. Yeah. And then 6ft under club and then two cases of embalming before death. Wow. So it happened before embalming. It was like there was no way to tell you were dead. Yeah. I mean, I guess that was the problem is medical science had advanced to the point where you could always tell if someone was dead. Exactly. And there was such thing as cholera, which apparently gives you the appearance of being dead even when you're not. So there is good reason to fear being buried alive. And as a result, this thing called the safety coffin came up. Yeah. And I'm sure you've done some other research on this. There were all different sorts of methods that they had from a vault that had, like, a little window and a wheel. You could turn on the inside to let yourself out. Which would be nice sometimes. It was just a breathing tube. Yeah, the one that was patented in 1896 by a guy named Count Carnese. Carnicky, which is awesome. He had something there was a tube with a spring going all the way to 6ft down, and there was a little glass ball at the end of the tube, and it rested on the deceased chest. And if any movement of the chest happen, like you took one breath, anything like that, it would trip the spring and this passageway would fly open to air in, and a flag would rise up above your grade. We're still alive. So that one was one of the most well known safety coffins and actually in premature burial and how it may be prevented. There's a whole little chapter dedicated to it. And actually you can find the full text of that online. Really? For free. It's really interesting. There are also things that would trigger like a bell ringing, one that even had a long fuse firecracker that I guess you could set off. Yeah. That'll get the attention to somebody, I guess. So in that book, Ted and his friends, they endorse to prevent premature burial, either safety coughing or cremation, where they're like, even if you are dead, or even if you're not dead, you're going to be dead afterwards. We guarantee you won't be buried alive. Exactly. Because you'll be creepy. We're not even going to bury you. The ultimate safety coffin. And there's this guy named Dr. Timothy Clark Smith. In 1893, he died in Middlebury, Vermont, and he's buried to this day, which is customary in Evergreen Cemetery. And if you go to his burial mound, there's a 14 x 14 inch of plate glass that opens up onto what was once his face 6ft down. Wow. So that people could come check on him and make sure he was dead because he had taffophobia and was very much afraid of that fate. That's got to be tied to claustrophobia somehow. Well, yeah, they think the APA being they think that you had some sort of early childhood encounter with an enclosed space and either you develop tappophobia or you become the Batman. Oh, that's their judgment. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like a casket fact. Let's hear it. Sweet nectar. Let's see what else? I got a couple more things. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Go ahead. We said that the average coughing is like $22,300. You can also shell out $30,000. Of course you can. Batesville casket company makes the promethean, and it is the coffin that Michael Jackson and James Brown were buried in separately. They have their own coffin. What's the deal with is it just like it is? Nice looking, rich, luxurious, like navy velvet interior lining. It must be gold, but polished to this high shine. It's a beautiful casket. I have to say. There's no reason in the world for anyone ever to be buried in a casket like this. But it's out there, right? If you want to go the other way, you can go to diycoffin.com. And there are schematics to build your own very plain coffin. I saw that. I thought about that. Might be a nice thing to do. Build your own coffin. That king of the hill. There's a king of the hill where hank builds his own coffin. He's talking about how he started. He's like, Well, I looked into it, and long story short, I got the bug. His first try was terrible, so he gave that to peggy. And then his second try Is really nice. He's gotten it down pat, and peggy gets the one where the top doesn't close all the way. Right? That's what mine would look like. It's a good episode. I'm not a skilled craftsman, but I enjoy it. Yeah. And then lastly you mean I saw Mike tyson do his little did you go to that? His little spoken word thing was that good? But we saw it in DC. It was great. And he talked about it was really sweet because I'm really ambivalent about him, because there's a lot to him. You know what I'm saying? But one of the things that he said he did was his mother was buried in a potter's field with an unmarked grave and, like, just a cheap box. And he said the first time he made money, he had her exhumed and bought, like, the most expensive headstone and the most expensive casket he could find and had her buried in, like, this other nice cemetery. Sweet. Yeah. You know, there's a poppers grave over by the drive in movie theater here in atlanta. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah, it's a poppers grave. And lots of bad stuff goes on there now, apparently. What? Oh, like teen and stuff like that. It's way worth dragging. Yes, I'm sure some teens are drinking. That's probably not a good safe place to do that. No, I wouldn't think so. Yeah. And there's also potters field, poppers grave in oakland cemetery. Yeah. Basically, like a big expanse of grass. There are a bunch of people who were poor, were barren. Yeah. I did Mount vernon when I was up there. George washington's place. Is it cool? Yeah, it's really neat because they still do stuff the old fashioned way. Like, if they need a room painted, they grind up dye and mix it with water and all that stuff. Wow. But he and martha are buried in this beautiful mausoleum. And then there's also, like, the slave grave sites, and it's just definitely like he freed all his slaves in his will, which was a good thing to do, I guess. But anytime you go to one of those plantation type things, and you see, like, the opulence of his thing, and then this other little side area where the slaves are buried, it's just sort of like yeah, all that happened. That's a sad reminder. It is. And no one was visiting the slave area as much even. And I was just sort of like that kind of rubbed me a little bit. Did you go over there and visit it? Yeah, absolutely. Good for you. Yeah. Nice. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. That's coffins. That's coffin. I was going to write this article a couple of years ago because it didn't exist, because I wanted to do this. Oh, good. I'm glad it came along. I think that's just a lesson, kids. If you wait around long enough, somebody else might do that. Well then since Chuck gave wait, I think Chuck that might be a casket backed. Is that the last casket backed? Okay, well, since we had our last casket backed oh, yeah. I got to say, if you want to read this article on coffin, you can go to housetopworks.com and you can type in that word C-O-F-F-I-N in the search bar. And that means it's time now for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this very manipulative email from a Georgia Tech fan. Here we go. Peter in Virginia. He knows it's coming. I wanted to tell you guys how your podcast made a difference in my life. I recently found out that I have diffused large B cell lymphoma as a part of the testing process to determine what stage you are. They shoot you full of barium and then perform a CT scan. Cancer cells divide rapidly so based on how much the barium glows during the CT will tell them how much your cancer has spread. As part of the process, you have to remain as still as possible for an hour prior to the CT so there's as little circulation in the blood and bury them as possible. Then you sit for another hour, also as still as possible getting the body scan. Needless to say, you feel very woozy after the burial and it's a very anxious time. Your mind wants to wander into numerous worst case scenarios while you were alone in a cold, dark room. However, I was overjoyed when the nurses said I could listen to my MP3 player. I am glad you replaced that. I spent both of those hours listening to your podcast. Actually, I even got one of the nurses to tape my phone next to my head during the scanning process to ensure I would hear. It. Provided a great distraction and really took my mind off what certainly would have been very gruesome. 2 hours. Also, the doctor said that beating cancer certainly is partly mental and the attitude and response from the treatment have a large part to do with your response. And I'm a graduate from Georgia Tech and if I could hear a go jackets on the air seriously make my week and increase my odds of survival. Oh my goodness. I know you both went to UGA. However, I'm hopeful that we can put aside our differences and come together to rally behind something like cancer. And I emailed Peter back and said, you're very manipulative human beings. Yeah. And he laughed and thought that was really funny and gave me and you a go, dogs in the email. Okay. And he thought that might be like a carbon offset. Okay, so Peter, obviously go jackets. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Go, Jackets. Go. Jamblin. Rec from Georgia Tech, et cetera. And that's where it ends, my friend. Yeah. And we wish you all the best, obviously, in your treatment, and let us know how it's going. We'll be thinking about you. Thank you, Peter. Hang in there, buddy. Good luck and keep us posted. And we're never going to say go jackets again. That's right. That's your one shot. Yes. If you want to try to manipulate me and Chuck into doing something we don't want to, you can give it a shot. You can tweet to us at skodcast. That was a why, by the way. You can go to facebook. comStuff. You know that. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the web, that is STUFFYou. Shouldhko.com jack threads has quickly become the online shopping destination for guy. Here's why everything on the site is up to 80% off. As a listener of Stuff, you should know you can skip the membership wait list and get instant access@jackthreds.com. Know stuff that's jackthreds. Comnostuff." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-08-15-sysk-stuttering-final.mp3 | How Stuttering Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-stuttering-works | Despite as much as one percent of the adult population having the condition, science doesn't actually know how stuttering works. The best it's come up with so far: there seems to be an issue between the physical process of speaking and the thought process | Despite as much as one percent of the adult population having the condition, science doesn't actually know how stuttering works. The best it's come up with so far: there seems to be an issue between the physical process of speaking and the thought process | Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:28:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=14, tm_min=28, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=227, tm_isdst=0) | 48633384 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and there's Noel, our guest producer today, which means it's still Stuff you should know that's. Right. The Jerry Free Edition. Yeah. Feels weird. She's like, I can't do this today. I'm going to the mall. She's always leaving us for the mall. I know. That's weird. Ever since we did that mall episode and she learned it was a thing. Right. She's like, this sounds like my kind of place. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. I've been wanting to do this one for a long time. Yeah. And I think I started to research it, and I was like, oh, man. Maybe we went on tour or something like that. I got pulled away from it and never went back to it. So I'm glad we're doing it, finally. So, Stuttering if you're in North America or Australia, and Stammering if you're in the UK, perhaps, is that how it works? I don't know. I know that stammering is what they call it in the UK. Do they call it Stuttering in Australia as well? Yeah. This thing I pulled up just said, in general, it's North American. Australia say, Stutter got you UK. They say stammer. But it's the same thing, right? Basically, I think the way that they get around that is calling it disfluency. No one calls it that. The scientists do. I never heard that word. Sure. dysfluency. So I think that's actually the clinical name for what we call stuttering or stammering, depending on where you are. Yes. And wasn't that Colin Firth movie called the Disfluent Prince who would be king? Yes, I think that was the working title, what they call it The King Speech. Yeah. Pretty good movie. That was cute. Cute. It was. Anytime you get Jeffrey Wright in there in an inspirational role, it's going to be a cute movie. No, not Jeffrey Wright. Jeffrey Rush. Yeah, agreed. Jeffrey Wright always plays, like, the super smart, kind of deep state guy. Jeffrey Wright. He was Basquiat, right? Am I thinking of the right guy? Did he play Basquette? I think so. I don't think so. In the movie Basquette. Yeah. Isn't that Jeffrey Wright? I don't think so. Who's Jeffrey Wright? Jeffrey Wright has been in tons of stuff. Just look them up. You'll be like, oh, that's Jeffrey. Right? Okay. This is going terribly already. No, it's great. This is basically like the podcast equivalent of Stuttering because Chuck Stuttering, also known as Samaring, better known as Disfluency, is an interrupted flow of speech. Okay. But when it starts to qualify for what we would call, like, stuttering or stammering, it's really noticeable. It has an interrupting effect, typically on the conversation or the communication that's meant to be going on. The speaking that's going on, that's on the far end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, apparently, just about everybody engages in disfluent speech. I'm particularly guilty because I say a lot, and that's a form of disfluency. And dis fluency, Chuck, comes from the idea that when you speak fluently, you're speaking in a flowing manner that is easy to follow typically and is uninterrupted. But when you start adding things like pauses or that kind of thing like that, that's dis fluency. And again, dis fluency is a normal part of communication if it occurs about less than 10% of the time. After that, you start to get into the stutteringsammering spectrum or side of the dislimant spectrum. Yeah. And one thing I learned, you and I both QA quality assure each episode, which means it's a little behind the curtain peak, but Jerry will send them back to us, and you listen to it once and then give her any edit notes or whatever and thoughts, and then I will listen to it. And generally I have no edit notes. I know we're both going to be so self conscious about that. Well, that's where I was getting to, though. I found early on, when listening to these episodes of ourselves, that it doesn't pay to focus on dis fluency in our own language because it can drive you nuts. It really can. And so we have a conversational podcast. So we're not Churchill or Henry or was it Henry the 6th? No. Who was that? Yeah, I don't remember. Just calling first. How about that? Yeah, we're not calling forth addressing the country on the airwaves, where it was very important that he come across as had a certain fluency. But when it comes to stuff like this, I think people are used to the fact occasionally we'll get emails that go, you go, Shoot. If they like and I'm a lot. Right. We're just like, our response is, better luck finding a different podcast. Yeah. This is not for you. No. Anyway, I learned to not drive myself crazy with that stuff. No, but it's funny you bring that up because I was just yesterday listening to the Stockholm Syndrome episode for Stuff You Should Know Select. Right. And I must have said like five times over the span of ten words, you can't even listen to that. But even I noticed it. I'm pretty good about tuning it out, but even I noticed at that time, and it really kind of raises this issue that the whole thing about stuttering, your stammering is not that it's a disorder or disease or the sign of an unintelligent person, or that the person can't think of what they mean to say. Sure, it's absolutely none of those things. It is strictly an interruption in what we would consider normal communication. And so attention is drawn to it, and it turns out that that just makes the problem worse and worse. So it turns into this vicious cycle to where but that's all it is. That's it. That's really it. And I mean, there are different theories about what's behind it or what could make it worse and what could possibly make it better. But really all it is is just interrupted communication between two people, because it's not like the person who's stuttering stutters in their head. It's strictly when they're speaking and communicating with other people. So it's a unique condition. Yeah. And there are generally three ways in which that flow can be interrupted. One is repetition. So if you say the first few, like the beginning of a word, if you repeat it a few times in a row and then say the word, another would be prolongation. So if the word is, like, you would roll that L out by itself for a long time. Right. And then the last would be an abnormal stoppage, which is just no sound at all coming out. Yeah. A block. Yeah, a complete block. You know anyone with a severe stutter? Sure. Yeah, I've known people with stutters before. Yeah, I know somebody with a very severe stutter. And it's always interesting because I think and we'll get to what you should and shouldn't do as a participant in a conversation with someone who stutters. Right. But before I read this, I knew that just as a courtesy, what you probably shouldn't do, which is correct, is try and complete someone's sentence for them, even though that urge is there. It's just a natural instinct, because people do that when speaking all the time. Someone can't think of a word or something. But like you said, that's not what's going on. No, I think that urge also comes from a good place. Typically, you're not saying, like, pitch is the word stupid. That's not what you're saying. When you finish their sentence, you're helping them along to keep the conversation on track. Right. But what you're also doing is saying you're not communicating effectively. I'm jumping in and taking over on your behalf. Just sit there and be quiet. So, yeah, we'll talk more about what to do or what not to do when you're in a conversation with somebody with a stutter. I know what you mean. You're trying to help. You're not trying to be a jerk. Yeah, but it's not a help. No, it's not. But I imagine they also understand to a certain degree, too. Well, it's probably just from being exposed to it so much for so long. And some people feel like with anything like this, some people might be used to it and have been like, well, this is how I talk. I've tried to correct it, and I've kind of learned to live with it. And other people might still feel really bad about it. Yeah. I read, I guess, an essay, a blog post, basically, by a guy named man. I can't find it anywhere. Great blog post where he said, I recognize and accept my stutter. And it was on say.org his name is Danny Litwack. L-I-T-W-A-C-K Litwack. Maybe I embraced and accept my stutter. It's great. He talks about his experience with growing up with a stutter his whole life and just what a negative impact it had on him for a very long time. And I saw this elsewhere. But the first step toward either getting past your stutter or just getting over the fact that you have a stutter is accepting that you have a stutter. And from what I can gather, a really big first step because I think people recognize that they have a stutter to themselves, but there's also they take measures to protect against sharing that with other people. Right. So I read a story about another person who grew up with a stutter, and when they got to, I think, college or something, on the first day of this one class, everybody went around and said where they were from. And this person said that they forgot where they were from rather than having to say wilmington, Delaware because of the W and the D. So instead they told the class they forgot where they were born and grew up because in that case, there were certain triggers. Yeah. The W in the D. The W in Wellington and the D in Delaware. So there's like a lot of obfuscation that people with stutters, engaging people with stutters, are not to be trusted, in other words. But they have to basically just take steps to make it seem like they don't have a stutter. And I think what this guy Danny Litwack was saying and then, like I said, I saw elsewhere people saying, like, I have a stutter. Like, this is how I talk. You're going to have to, like, either just walk away during the conversation or just let me finish on my own time. But this is me, and this is how I talk, and I'm accepting it or learning to. And you're going to have to as well. That's the first step, as I understand it, once you're an adult, I should say. I think there are so many things in life where that's the case. Oh, yeah. Instead of like, at a certain point at a certain age, I think at least I got to a point where, well, I can really continue to work to try and change this thing, or I can just accept that this is kind of who I am. Right. And be happy. Yeah. Don't worry. Be happy now. So don't ever strive to be better people. Just accept how messed up you are and force everyone else around you to accept it. Should we take a little break here? All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back and get into some of the stats and how stutters can develop right after this. 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 builtin 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 fast in 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 at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. 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.com stuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. All right, so we're back. Probably the stats. You shall receive 1%, roughly, of adults in the world stutter. Yeah. But that is not 1% of children, because many times, in fact, about 75% of the time, while 5% of children stutter, and about 75% of time, they will lose that disfluence as they grow older. Right. Leaving that at a 1% number as adults. Yeah. And so in the US. That means there's about 3 million or so, maybe three and a half million people, adults. That stutter, right? More women. Is it more women, more men? More men? Four to five to one. It's like four to five in childhood, and then it goes to, like, three or four in adulthood. Okay, so by far, men stutter more than women. And although, strangely, boys tend to naturally lose their stutter if they're going to lose their stuttering. Childhood more than girls. Yeah, and I don't think they found any rhyme or reason to that at all. Right. No, man. There's, like, a lot of lack of understanding as far as stuttering goes, scientifically, socially. We just don't know that much about it. Which is surprising because apparently as far back as Moses, people have been stuttering on record. Yes, we'll tell that story later. Okay. There could be a genetic basis because about 60% of people who stutter have a family member who stutters. Yeah. And I also saw that among monozygotic, also known as identical twins, if one twin stutters, there's a 90% chance that the other one does as well. Oh, interesting. But for die zygotic like fraternal twins, there's only a 20% chance. So there's clearly a genetic basis to stuttering somehow. Right. But it's also one of those things where it can be genetic. Doesn't have to be. Sometimes if you suffer a head trauma, you might develop a stutter. Right. Sometimes it's developmental. Sometimes it could be, obviously with something like Parkinson's disease. That could be a symptom. But those are, to me, I think, probably different kinds of stuttering. Butter right. So there are basically two main categories developmental, which is by far the more the one that accounts for the most cases of stuttering, and then the other is acquired, like you said, say from Parkinson's. Or they put you on a prescription that suddenly is making you stutter. There's also psychogenic, which is supposedly an emotional trauma, can give you a stutter. I don't know if that's just leftover lore, because apparently they used to think all stutters were the result of some psychology, and they just say, well, no, it's possible, or some people have it and just haven't figured out that it's not the case at all. Or if there really is a small section of people who do have psychogenic stutters, but all of those would fall under acquired, and then the other one is developmental. Boy, how about that guy that took mushrooms and quit stuttering? Yeah, so interesting. I saw a Ted Talk at his once. Oh, really? Yeah, he's like all about mushrooms, saving the world. Paul David. Yes. He leads off our article on how stuff works. And he had a sphere stutter, was very affected by it. Kind of withdrew socially, went camping one time, took a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and climbed a tree, got up there, decided he could not climb down. And then the storm came in and got really intense. And he said he sort of felt one with the world, which sounds about right. And eventually the storm passed. He came down, and while he was up there during this intense experience, he was like, I will not stutter anymore. And he just kept saying that came down and he had lost his stutter. Yes. And apparently he didn't relapse, which is pretty unusual, I think. So he started studying mushrooms for a living. Yeah, he became a mycologist. Man. I said this before, I'll say it again. One of the best articles I've ever read in my life is called blood Spore. And I think it was in Harper's, and it was about a murder in the world of mycologists. It was just so interesting blood sport coming soon to a theater near you. I hope so. You should write the script. Yeah. So Stamen was remarkably lucky in that he just basically decided not to stutter anymore and stop stuttering. Apparently the fact that he didn't relapse is probably what's most remarkable, because I think relapsing among stuttering treatments is actually pretty common. But again, this is once you get out of childhood, it's fairly common to develop a stutter as your child as you're learning to talk, and then it's equally common to lose that stutter as you age, usually within 18 months of developing the onset of the stutter. But then as you acquire this or develop this stutter as you get older, it apparently becomes more and more set in. And that seems to be because of the plasticity of your brain when you're a kid. It's almost like, from what I can gather, it's like if you have a stutter past a certain point, it almost gets locked into your brain as your neural pathways solidify and cement. Yeah, that makes sense. Like, you learned to have a stutter after a while. Yeah. And I think they say to wait. I think they wait, like, three months before they even start looking into it, because that's how fleeting a stutter can be when you're a little kid. Right. After three months, they'll say, all right, maybe we should start looking into that. Right. You'd want to go to a speech pathologist who will be able to diagnose it. Yeah. And usually what they're looking for when you take your child who's developed a stutter to a speech pathologist is how pronounced it is. There's a guy in, I think, the late 90s named Barry guitar. He sounds like he played guitar for the band Boston. He knows all the chords. No, wait. That's guitar. George. Right. Sorry. What's that from? Oh, come on. Guitar George. Is that a race? Stevens song. No, it's from Dire Straits of Swing. I got you. That's a good song. Yeah, it is a good song. I love it. So Barry Guitar came with five levels of stuttering development, and I already referenced the first I know his name is off. I already referenced the first level, which is you have less than 10% of your speech is dysfluent that's anybody walking around like that. Right? Yeah. Unless you're, like, the king of England or something. And then, ironically, unless you're that one king who had a stutter, and then it goes on from there and just gets worse and worse. But one of the things that's attendant with these different stages of development of a stutter are, like, emotional problems or symptoms, like comorbid symptoms along with the stutter. So there can be things like blinking, like pursuing your lips, where you're frustrated, where you're angry, where you're fearful, where you're anxious in conjunction with stuttering. And so this is the kind of thing that the speech pathologist will be looking for to kind of diagnose your kid, like, now this is just normal kid stuff. Or actually this starter is developing faster than we'd like it to, so we need to start treating it now. Well, that makes sense because dopamine, we talked a lot about dopamine on the show, the neurotransmitter. If you have an overabundance of dopamine, we talked about in the Tourette's episode. Right. Is that one of the things that can be comorbid with stuttering? Because I know too much dopamine can lead to a stutter as well. Yeah, supposedly. So dopamine controls movement, right? Yeah. And if you have too much, it makes you have ticks like Tourette, you're saying, well, it can. I notice that Parkinson's and dopamine are I think Parkinson's has to do with too much dopamine. Yeah. And Parkinson's is one of the ways that you could acquire neurogenically, a stutter. So that makes total sense that there's something in your brain with dopamine transmission to where you have maybe too much of it. And so you're having trouble getting the thoughts in your head into the movements that it takes to create the speech. Yeah, I mean, it's a little clumsy the way the brain does this. It would be a lot easier if it was streamlined in one part of the brain. But there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal with language processing, and one is the one that processes it, and one articulates it in a motor skill way. And when those two things have done brain imaging, mapping, and they found that there's some sort of discontinuity between those two processes going on right there stutter. That's stuttering. Right. So it could be too much dopamine. That's one thing. Again, the research into stuttering is so basic at the moment, it's really surprising. What they're trying to figure out, though, is are you born with the stutter? Like, when you're born, you're going to have this problem because your brain isn't using dopamine properly or over producing dopamine, or as your brain is developing, something goes a little off to the side, to the left, and your brain has trouble with dopamine from that point on. So they're trying to figure out the etiology of it. In other words, did you look into this? The genes, the four genes? Yeah, a little bit. Did you find names for those? I did not. That is how basic the research is right now. They're not even saying what genes they're finding. Yeah, apparently they did discover four different genes that are linked to these proteins. And these proteins are sort of like they're responsible for what's called cellular trafficking. So they kind of make sure that the elements of the cell end up where they need to be within that cell. Right. And they said that more than one neurological disorder can be linked to this trafficking process. So I guess it's related to those proteins and those genes. Yeah, but they're like, who knows? They've gotten to the point where they have identified there's something up with these proteins in the cells and it's linked to Stuttering somehow. Now, just give us like ten years to go figure out how. Right. But yeah, they're starting to realize there's some sort of genetic basis to this to Stuttering. Well, I think the twin study, that says a lot right there. For sure. Can we talk about Moses? I think it's high time we talked about Moses. We've been dancing around the burning bush for a while now. I can't believe that guy that laughed. Well, I was laughing because every time I think of Bernie Bush, I think of Three Amigos and how funny that singing bush was. I never saw that one. Three Amigos. Yeah, I could do the Three Amigo salute, but I never saw it. Oh, man, that's a classic. Really? Yeah, really? Oh, sure. Why is it surprising? I don't know. I feel like I would have seen it three times. It's icons. Right. Funny movies. Oh, I know why I never saw it. Because Chevy Chase is in it. No, I remember my dad raised me a really disliked that's right. So I probably wasn't allowed to see it. That's right, because you didn't see Fletch. Right. I think I stopped watching Fletch, like, partway through. My dad had a real influence on me. Why didn't he like Chevy Chase, though? I have no idea. He said a bone to pick, I guess. I think he thought he was a jerk or something. Well, he was all right. Turns out dad was right. All right. So, Moses, I know a lot about the Bible because as listeners know, I was raised in the church, but I didn't know this. I don't remember this story at all. Yeah, I hadn't heard it either. So apparently Moses was a little baby at one point, and the Pharaoh was warned that Moses was going to not be his friend when he grew up. So he said, all right, let me try something out. I'm going to give this little baby Moses a choice between a bowl full of gold sure. And a bowl full of hot coals. It's what you do with baby Jesus the gold. Then I'm going to kill him. Yeah. Typical Egyptian stuff. Yeah. So of course with a baby, Moses is going to reach for the gold. And then apparently an angel intervened. Todd. Todd the angel. And directed little Moses hand to the hot coals instead. A little gruffly, if you ask Moses. Moses grabbed a hot coal, put it in his mouth, and that's how he got to the Stutter. And he's blamed Todd ever since. And here's what I don't get, is that Moses went to God and was like, hey, man, I'm supposed to lead the people out of Egypt. I have a bad stutter. Can you do something for me to God? And God said, no sweat. Yeah. He said, God, Mr. Ed, you didn't know that god said, yeah, sure, I can help you out. Just have your brother Aaron take the mic. Right. And Moses is like, I was more thinking like, you'd perform a miracle on me. But, yeah, I probably could have thought of having Aaron speak for me as well. God, thanks for that, though I don't know how I missed that story. Apparently there's a quote, I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. And I saw some Bible site where they were debating whether or not what they were talking about was a stutter. Apparently some later hebraic text said that Moses had trouble pronouncing THS thornsounds. Okay, it sounds more like he had a list than a stutter. Who knows? Let's go with stuttering, though, because a lot of people do say that Moses had a stutter tongue. Yeah, it's pretty thick. I've gotten used to it. But I remember at first when we first started doing this, like, man, I should not be speaking for a living. I have a speech impediment. No, you don't. Pure and simple. No, it's just everyone now just thinks, hey, that's Josh's voice. Yes, it's so grating, smooth and silky. Who else in history? Josh. Let's see. The Emperor Justinian, apparently. Edwin. No, I'm sorry. I was wrong. It was Demosthenes. He was a Greek statesman. He apparently was smart enough to say, who could help me with a stutter? How about an actor? Anybody who speaks broadcast their voice for a living. So he hired an actor to help him, and the actor had him do things like chew on pebbles and try to talk. Yeah, smart. He did his speeches while he was walking uphill, I guess, to control his breathing. This is actually pretty sharp stuff. I think out of all the historical treatments that we're going to cover, this one might most closely resemble, aside from the mouthful of pebbles, modern treatment for stuttering. Yeah. Which is to say speaking exercises. Right. Well, you did say Justinian. I don't know if Justinian had the stutter, but at the very least, his position at Amita was one of the first people to say, hey, maybe that the frenulum, that little flap of skin under your tongue, right. The connector to the bottom of your mouth. He was the first one that said, why don't we start slicing that thing up? And just the tongue in general. Over the years, there have been all kinds of surgeons that try variations of slicing the frenzy and or cutting down of the tongue itself. Now, I could probably use that one by HD shaguine shigoine. I'm sure that's how you say it the second way. Yeah. He basically said stuttering as a result of an oversized tongue, which I have. Let's just slice and dice a little off the sides. But none of the pieces work. I know, of course it didn't work. It's just horrific. Apparently, though, at the same time, there were these surgeons who get all the press. Because their stuff is so horrific. But there are also other people who were kind of on the right track, a little more like Moses Mendelsohn in the 18th century. He thought that there were too many ideas or thoughts that were flowing at once and that it was blocking speech. There's too much trying to get out. Basically like the Three Stooges model of stuttering, remember, they're all trying to go through the door. Yeah. So you've got too much to say and you want to just get it all out. Right. Interesting. That makes a little sense. Erasmus Darwin, he said that it was bashfulness emotions like bashfulness that messed up the process of speaking. Right? Yeah. Definitely on to something there as well. And then a psychologist named Sandalwell said that it was brought on by either a dread of speaking or an over eagerness to speak, kind of like what Moses Mendelson was saying in the latter example. So it can be brought out by two completely opposite things. Yeah. So a lot of this actually is kind of in step with our current thought about stuttering. And so either that means that these guys in the 18th century were pressing it, or our understanding of stuttering is stuck in the 18th century. Right. I'm very curious to know which one it is. Shall we take a break? Yes. All right, we're going to come back after this final break and talk about therapies that don't involve cutting your tongue apart. 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 at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. 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. All right, so now we're in the modern days, and we're not taking scalpels to the frenzy of any longer because they realize that it's not a physical affliction of the tongue, it's somewhere inside the brain. Most likely. They have a lot of recommendations for when a child starts to stutter and it sticks. And you found some other tips, too, which are great for parents. And kind of one of the main ones is give your kids plenty of room to talk. Plenty of time to talk. Make sure they express themselves fully, because one of the side effects of having a stutter is your child may just end up retreating and being super quiet. Yeah, I got from these tips for parents that there's kind of this maybe not fully spoken idea that you can actually cement your child's stutter if you handle it poorly when they start to develop it, which knowing that just makes you even more tense about dealing with it correctly, I would guess, which could make the whole process even harder. But there are some pretty brainless things to do. This one almost killed me when I saw it chuck the site. I think kids health is where I got this one, but it said, maintain natural eye contact with your child. Try not to look away or show signs of being upset. Just break the arrow off in my heart. Yeah, that's pretty sad. Don't look away and discuss when your child is stuttering, you monster. Go look in the mirror and take a bamboo shoot and put it underneath your fingernail and think about what you've done. Another good one is and this feels like something that would be easy to do because it seems well intentioned to say, like, slow down, son. Take your time, take your breath. They say to not do that because it might make things worse. Yeah, because what you're doing then is you're drawing attention to the idea that your child is not speaking correctly rather than just apparently letting them communicate at their own pace. Right. Yes. There's also seems to be a suggestion that the child has learned the child, your kid has learned to speak to stutter because they're trying to get too much out at once. And they may have picked that up from you if you have, like, a rush, rush, rush pace in your household. One of the things that they suggest is to just kind of slow things down at home and in addition to schedule wise and just taking time and just letting everybody breathe maybe a little more than you guys are also speaking more slowly, not just to your kid, but also to other people when your kids around, speaking slowly, setting an example. It's called modeling your own speech so that your kid feels like they don't have to blurt everything out at once to get their point across. They're going to be heard no matter how long it takes. You're going to sit there and just listen to them speak. Yeah, and really listen. Another thing that seems like a no brainer, but really just try and focus on what they're saying and not the fact that they're stuttering those words out. But when your kid tells you a story about something that happened at school, right, don't concentrate or even paying attention to the fact that it's being said with a stutter. Right. But just take in their story and it takes a little while longer than just respond accordingly. Yes. And in that same vein, like, don't tell your kid to stop and start over. When they start stuttering, they have to get the sentence just perfect or else you're not going to hear them out. And don't tell them to think before speaking. That's not helping anything at all. Be honest. Yeah, like don't try and mask it and say that you don't have a stutter. Like this is just, you know, you're just in a hurry or something. Like they just say to be really honest and say, you know what, you have a stutter and it's a disfluence and nothing to worry about. And if you'd like, maybe we can talk to someone that can do some exercises with you. And all this sounds like no brainer not being a monster parent. Yeah, but again, some of it does like telling your kids, okay, slow down, take a breath now what are you saying? Like you think you're helping your kid? You're not, right? Some of it is monstrosity. Others is just like, this is what people would naturally do and it seems intuitive, but you're wrong. Your intuition is dead wrong. Just let your kid talk and listen to what they're saying, not how they're saying it. Right. And apparently this is good advice. Wow, it took me a second to get out. Thank you though, Chuck, for patiently hearing it then. Sure. This is good advice to helping your kids just naturally shed the stutter, the developmental stutter, we should say. All of this we've been talking about is dealing with the developmental stutter. Although a lot of it just applies to people with adult stutters out in the real world as well. Like you can take just about all of this and apply it to a business conversation. If you have a coworker who has a stutter, like, don't look away in disgust. There's good advice right there. All throughout your life. When you're watching or listening to somebody with a stutter. Yes. I mean, maybe don't do that at all unless a real jerk. Yeah, life advice. But it's a good point. If you're sitting there and you don't look like you're hurrying somebody with the stutter along you're into the conversation no matter how long it takes, I can't imagine how much that must help. And one thing that we didn't really, I think, point out that bears pointing out is that people who stutter do not necessarily stutter in the same frequency throughout their day. Right? Yeah. There's definitely situations that are going to make the stutter way more pronounced. They're almost exclusively associated with higher anxiety situations. I think the National Stuttering Association says that the number one situation where a stutter is going to be about as bad as it gets is during a job interview. And so employers please don't think that this is how this person talks. This is probably as bad as their stutter gets. However, they're stuttering in the job interview, so if they're at home and they're just talking to their wife or their kid or something, the starter is probably going to be far less pronounced than it would be if they were having to give a speech at their friend's wedding. Yeah. And I found that with this person, Emily, and I know that it can vary a lot within a conversation. It's a very severe stutter. And then they will say like a couple of sentences straight through with nothing. And then I think, oh, man, it catches me off guard because I'm so used to the stutter. And I think, well, that's super interesting to me. You just, like blurted out a couple of two or three long sentences with zero stutter or stammer on the same thing. I know, but they're fun to sing together, aren't they? They are. I don't know. I just find it really fascinating. Speech pathology can come a long way. I know that there are well, it's funny. I looked up online about curing stuttering. Of course there is no patented cure, but after listening to our recording, our motivational speaker thing, I saw a video. I didn't watch it. I just saw the title. It said, Tony Robbins cures a man of a stutter in seven minutes. All right. So I was like, oh, come on. Yeah. I didn't see anything that said stuttering cures. There's basically none. Yeah. I didn't have time to look into this new device, though. Did you? Yeah, a little bit. It seems pretty untested as far as real world application goes, but it makes sense intuitively. And apparently it does help in a clinical setting. So basically it's like a hearing aid. Right. But it changes the person who is speaking to voice and a little bit. Does it replay it out loud for everybody? No, just for the person in their ear. Right. Because one of the ways that somebody who stutters will be able to talk perfectly well is speaking in unison or singing. Okay. So, like, you can be sitting there talking to somebody just one on one, and your stutter can be quite severe. But then if you and the person agree to sing together, you may not stutter at all the whole time you're singing. And no one has any idea why that's the case. They just know. And this device is based on that that when we're talking in unison or someone who has a stutter is talking in unison with somebody else, their stutter tends to go away. So what this does is it creates an echo. There's a bit of a lag with their own voice, so they feel like they're talking in units themselves. So it helps the stutter again, at least in a clinical setting. I don't know if it would just be too distracting in a conversation or what, but I got the impression that they haven't tested it fully or proven it fully outside of the land. Well, the singing makes sense because remember Mel teles? The name sounds familiar. He was a country singer who had a really pronounced stutter kind of around like when he was biggest, but yeah, but he was on like he haw and stuff. Grand old Oprie sound like a bird. And then had a tough stutter when he was talking to the audience. And that's what he was known for. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It looks like obviously when an act but it was a shtick. Speaking of so another famous stutterer. Chuck, are we there? Yeah. Porcupig. Yeah. So I was looking at porcupig. Right. Because that's an unusual choice to have a cartoon character who stutters. And it turns out that porky pig has a stutter because the guy who originally did porky pig, joe doherty, had a stutter in real life. Oh, really? Yeah. Pretty sweet. Pretty heartwarming. Well, wait, there's more. Yeah, he did porky pig for the first two years and then they fired him because he kept missing the queues because of his stutter. And they brought in a guy who didn't have a stutter to do porky pig from that point on. But he did it with a stutter. Yeah, because it was established. Right. Well, that's cruddy. Isn't that sad? That is sad. Except porky pig's trick was to go to a different word. Yes. Which is a fairly common technique, though. Yeah, I imagine. So if you get hung up on something, just say something else that means the same thing. Yeah, that's a good one. Or I think people say, oh, I can't remember, and just act like they can't remember the word. When they know full well what word they're going for, they can't say it. So they just pretend like they forgot what they were talking about. So we name off some of these other famous stutters because I think if you're an adult stutterer, you probably know these people. Sure. You may have looked it up to feel a kinship, but maybe if you're a little kid out there, it might make you feel better to know that Darth Vader himself, james Earl Jones, was a stutterer. Yeah. Big time. Emily Blunt. Yes. She's terrific. Samuel Jackson. Surprising right there. Yeah, because the F bombs flow from his mouth. He was born with that talent. Right. Who else? From Pulp Fiction? Harvey. Caitlin. Yeah. I can't see Harvey kitel starting. No. And I guess all of these people just went through speech therapy. I would guess so, or else they all took mushrooms, because it doesn't say whether or not they studied as a child or when they overcame it. Yeah, but nicole Kidman, albert Einstein. Oh, really? Carly Simon. And you said Winston Churchill earlier, too. He had a stutter as well. Yeah. Bruce Willis. Yeah. That's your feeling too? Shack. I can see I think I've actually seen Shaq stutter before on TV. Really? Bill Walton, tiger woods. Charles Darwin. Jane Seymour. Dr. Quinn herself. Yeah. Joe Biden, who will hopefully run for president. Right. He overcame his stutter. Well, all of them did, which is great. But at the same time, there are people out there who have accepted that they have a stutter. They probably spent a lot of time and money trying to get rid of it, and it hasn't gone anywhere, so they've kind of embraced it. So, I mean, if you've gotten rid of your stutter and you've overcome it, that's great. But if you've also embraced it, good for you as well. Oh, boy. How about this one? You want to talk about overcoming a stutter? Kendrick Lamar. Oh, yeah. Wow. If you can overcome a stutter and then become Kendrick Lamar right. Then that should be a shining example, people, that you can do anything. Yeah. Or if you embrace your stutter, good for you as well. Agreed. Because you could email Tillis, who is the Kendrick Lamar of country music or Porky Pig, the Kendrick Lamar of cartoon? You got anything else about stuttering? I got nothing else. We'd love to hear from people, though. Yeah, for sure. Get in touch with us. And in the meantime, you can find more stuff about stuttering, including a lot of support and resources for parents all over the Web. And there's things like, say.org, and the National Stuttering Association and all sorts of great resources if you are looking for some information. And since I said it's time for the listener mail. All right. I'll call this coming to see you in Chicago, but by this point will be, I went to see you in Chicago right, and was disappointed. You guys want to write in and say, what a great show I just saw. No kidding. I want to write in and say thank you for putting together really great podcasts, longtime listener and fan, and I even mentioned you in my work bio. I checked it out. That's awesome. I really appreciate that stuff. You should know, is informative, funny, and family friendly, all at the same time. This was especially valuable when my fiance and I took his ten year old brother on a road trip from Chicago to Wisconsin Dells. In the car, we listened to a playlist of SYSK episodes that I put together to suit his ten year old taste how spiders work, how ice cream works, and most importantly, because we were going to Wisconsin Dells, self proclaimed water park capital of the world, how Water Slides Work, which, oddly, is one of our highest performing shows ever. People love water slides, man. They love hearing about them. They love looking at pictures of them. It got shared or something. It was so weird, I can't remember. But I went to look at our download numbers one time and I was like, water slides is the top. Huh? Higher than marijuana. Well, higher than marijuana. Hilarious. Those episodes really entertained them and introduced them to the concept of podcast for the very first time. Thanks for everything you do. And she said, they're going to see the fiance and Mara, or Mara are going to see the Chicago show. So I hope you had a good time. Yeah, and thank you very much for supporting us in our live shows. We appreciate that tremendously. For sure. If you want to get in touch with us like Mara did, or Mara, we're going to go with Mara. You can tweet to us. I'm for real at Joshmclark and at Syskpodcast, you can hang out with Chuck on Facebook. Comstuffyutknow or Charleswich Bryant. Appropriately enough, you can send us all an email, including Noel, and including Jerry and Frank the chair to stuffpodcast athouseuffworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffysheno.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'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 pet. At Halo, we get 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@halopeet.com." | |
How The Louvre Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-louvre-works | The most famous museum in the world, France's Louvre, has been the seat of high art and culture for several centuries. Its history goes back farther than that, beginning in the 1200s as a fort and prison. Tour the Louvre and its collections in this episod | The most famous museum in the world, France's Louvre, has been the seat of high art and culture for several centuries. Its history goes back farther than that, beginning in the 1200s as a fort and prison. Tour the Louvre and its collections in this episod | Tue, 01 Jul 2014 14:15:23 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=14, tm_min=15, tm_sec=23, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=182, tm_isdst=0) | 40074416 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles de B, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. And it's stuff you should know. Okay, already. Eddie. Yeah. This was the Josh Clark article, correct? It was from a while ago. Yeah. How the loot work? Yeah. I already apologize in advance for the French pronunciations. I'm going to try my best. I am, too, but it makes you sound obnoxious for some reason. Not you, but no, I know it's me. If you really go French with everything, it makes you sound like a church luva. Is it louvre or is it Lou? You say it like that. I'm going to try as well. We're paying homage to the mother tongue of the museum. We're talking about the seat of culture and art yeah. For centuries now. Busiest museum in the world. Yes. And apparently it's gotten much busier in the last couple of decades. Yes. I saw 8.8 million visitors a year at this .9.8 in 2009. Really? 2010, it was 9.8. That was the high mark. 2013, it was 9.3 million. Okay. So it's cracked in nine. Yeah. But back in 1989, it was 3 million. Wow. So they're up, like, almost 7 million people a year. Yeah. And I've seen 70,000 works of art and 35,000. So I think they have 35,000 on display, and 70, they got a whole other half that they just sit on and swap out. Yeah, they're whimsy. Exactly. They're French whimsy. And the French whimsy, or the French whim that directs that now is a guy named Jean Luke Martinez. He's a French whim. Yeah. He's in charge of the whim. Right? Yeah. And he's got his work cut out for him because that whole recession hit everybody, including the Louvre. Yes. It costs \u20ac12 for the permanent collection, 13 for the Hall Napoleon. Right. Closed Tuesdays, but it's open free to the public on Sundays for half the year. Yeah. And then on Bastille Day, which, if you're listening to this when it comes out, it's coming up, you can get into the Loop for free. Yeah. I think up until March, and then from April through September, it's not free because those are, like, the big summer travel months. Oh, yeah. And they stick it to you. And I think it's free if you're 18 to 25 under 18, and then 18 to 25 from the EU, I think you can get in for free. And if you're an artist or student, come right in. Yeah. For free. All right. So that's the podcast. We should probably say what we're talking about to the ten people out there who don't know what the Louvre is. Please. The Louvre is a world famous art museum situated in Paris, and it's had a very long life. It was actually first built in, I believe, the capacity ruler of France, Philippe Goose. Frenchie. Nice work. Philippe said I was on the edge of town at the time. Yeah. He said, I need to protect my stuff, so I'm going to build a medieval fortress, and so I'm going to build a museum. These are the medieval times. I'll build a fortress and later on, people will call it a medieval fortress. That's right. It was just your standard fortress. Had a moat, had a keep, which will figure in later. Yeah. Because they ended up finding that junk, which is kind of neat. It's very neat. I haven't seen it. I don't remember if I saw it while writing this article. Like, I found pictures of it and came to think that I saw it. I sadly went to the front door and did not go inside. You didn't go in the loop? No. Pretty neat. I told you. My whole backpacking trip, we literally couldn't afford. We were eating, like, apples for lunch, so we did not pay to go into almost anything. Right. Oh, you're blowing all your money on dinner. Yeah. Pretty much. Uninsured for dinner. Apples for lunch and insure for dinner. Yeah. Holland put a dent in our finances. Yeah. You didn't go in, but at least you wanted to, right? I did. So, like you said, it was a fortress for many years. Right. And about 150 years later, it was not on the edge of the city, which is not a good place for fortress to be in the middle of a city. Right. Because Paris grew around it, and they said, you can't really have a fortress in the middle of the city. It doesn't do us much good. So let's build a big wall around everything, around all of Paris. Yeah. So now the Louvre was a wall within walls. Yeah. It stopped kind of serving its purpose, like you said. I think it served as, like, a prison for a while, that kind of thing. Yeah. But then it was ultimately abandoned for a number of years. Yes. A few times throughout history, it's been loved and neglected, like, time and time again. Actually fell into pretty bad disrepair at one point. Yeah. In the 14th century. I had it wrong in the article, but I went in and corrected it. Good. In the 14th century, after the Louvre has been neglected for a while and unused, the ruler, Charles the Fifth, said, hey, this would make a pretty good palatial residence for me, a good crash pad. So yeah. So I'm going to take this ancient medieval fortress and turn it into the royal residence. And he did it. Charles VI did it. And then it fell out of fashion for another 100 years. Yeah. The Louvre just went back into a state of neglect, but it had taken a first step toward becoming the Louvre Museum. Going from fortress to residence had to have helped. Not just a residence, a residence fit for a king, surely. Yeah. They tricked it out right. Then, like you said, it fell into disrepair and neglect for another century. Then it became fashionable again. It's like people just kept forgetting about the Louvre, and then every couple of generations, the new king would be like, oh, the loo. I guess I'll move in there. Yeah. That's kind of how it happened. Chase out the goats, bring in my tapestry. So after that 100 years, francois Juan fixes it up even more. Right. He brings in his decorator. All right. And they got some architects and said, let's expand it, actually make it bigger and build new wings and remodel the old stuff. He flipped this fortress. What's the name of the show? Yeah. And he did a great job with that. And Louis the 13th and 14th said, this is fantastic. I think we're going to let's keep this up. Yeah. We're going to kick it up even higher until Versailles built, and that's actually way more awesome. So we're going to live there now. Yeah. And wherever the king went, that's where all of the aristocrats went as well. Like, they hung out with the court, hung out with the king. And so if the king was hanging out in Versailles, it was terribly unfashionable to be sticking around Paris. Yeah. That's what happened to Lou? It just fell out of fashion with the kings. Yeah. And when they went to Versailles, it was unfinished, and they kind of left it that way, and then that was when it got kind of beat up. It was basically abandoning a construction project in the middle. They didn't have roofs over some of these rooms, but a lot of the loop had been built out, have been well appointed. Yeah. And even though, like, by the time Versailles was built, it was left again in neglect the foundation for the building itself, the house had been built. I wonder when they're going to neglect it next. I don't know if it's going to happen again. It might take the collapse of society for that to happen again. Yeah, well, maybe that will happen. Here's hoping. Oh, yeah. Are you pulling for the collapse? Yes, why not? You're looking for a road like situation? Yeah, I'd like to see how I do, how I fare. You want to meet Robert Duvall, is what it is. Yeah, pretty much. Is he dead? No, it's Dennis Hopper. No, he's alive. Duvall is doing just fine. Yeah, man. He's married to a young lady dancing to salsa. He's salsas? Yeah. He made a movie or tango. I think he made a movie about it, even. That's Antonio Banders thinking. No, you made a movie called Assassination Tango, which I have. What? Where he was like I think he was a hired killer. No, don't say it to me. Yeah. No, man. Because of his love of the tango. Oh, my goodness. You call that a passion project? Box office poison. Wow, man alive. I'm going to delete that from my memory bank. I wonder if he's like, you know what? Hasn't been done yet, and no one around him said, and it hasn't been done for a reason. Right. God bless them. All right, so let's flash forward a little bit to the mid 17th century. Did you get that date right? I did. It was just the 15th century. Man. And this is when the loop really made the initial transition toward the seat of culture in paris. Yeah, because they housed the three academies there that were formed. The academy. You take it since you're all oh, okay. I see. There is the academy descriptor okay, so academy of painting and sculpture. Yeah. Visual arts. Yeah, the academy. Frances it's pretty easy. That's the official body of the french language. Yeah. Which kind of holds the french language hostage. Like, the french language doesn't change unless this governing body says it does. Oh, really? Yes, it's all prescriptivist. It's very prescriptivist language. Whereas here in the states, you can just make up a word and put on the internet, and if enough people use it in urban dictionary and it's a thing, and they're definitely prescriptionist to drive crazy, but TS. I wonder if they have a dictionary bell or french slang, maybe. Yeah, I'll bet. But I'll bet the academy francis hates it. Oh, I'm sure you're ready for the third one. I'm so ready. This is the academy days inscription a bell letter, and apparently that deals with humanity's, history, and philosophy. So they founded these in the mid 17th century to basically make france as culturally significant and snooty as they could. Well, they're trying to protect their culture. France had become very, like, this seed of culture around europe especially, but also around the world, thanks to the age of exploration. And they were like, let's codify. This makes sense. Let's cement it. And they did. But they moved those three academies into the louvre. No one's over there. Awesome building. Right? Exactly. So almost as literal as figurative language can get, they moved the seat of world culture into the loof. Yeah. So that, combined with the fact that the louvre was pretty awesome and decked out, really laid the groundwork for the modern period to come along. Yeah. And I didn't realize this, but once the academy moved in, they started what would end up being sort of like an art exhibition with the salon. And they basically would have an exhibition, a salon, and they would try out these cultural artifacts, and people would come see them. And I guess someone said, hey, this is kind of like a museum. And they said, that's a great idea, and it should be free. Yeah. And these were all really huge ideas. These were from the kings collection. And the reason that these academies were able to get their hands on it and put them on exhibit for the public for free was because the monarchy was like, yeah, please don't depose me. Right. It's cool. We're a democracy now. But I'm just here being rich. So, everybody, whatever you want to do, if you want to show people, that's cool. And that's how the Louvre as a museum was born, was from this French Revolution coexisting with the Monarch's art collection and showing it to people for free. That's right. Louis 26. So, like a Super Bowl? He said he wanted to be a place for gathering together all the monuments of the sciences and arts. Just don't cut my head off. That's right. And so at that point, it was like we said, it was free for all. They wanted it to. That was the people to gather there. Yeah. And this is what 1793 is, when it was officially established as the French National Museum. Yes. And they did cut Louis head off. So it didn't work. No. I had a couple of names. It was the muse Francis at first, and the Muse Central de Arts. And then the Muse de Antichrist Muse. Napoleon. Yeah. He came along after the French Revolution, deposed the monarchy and said, let's try something different. How about I'll be the emperor, not the king, the emperor. And I'll try to conquer as much of the world as I can. And he's pretty successful at it. Yeah. But being French and coming from a France where the Louvre existed already, now all these different academies, and the idea of France owning art, when he would go conquer a land and we're talking substantial lands here, like Austria, Spain, Italy I think Italy was where I got a lot of the art, he would say, Sign this treaty. And buried in the treaty was we give France control of all the art. And so Napoleon would go in and conquer. And then the director of the Louvre at the time, a guy named his last name was Denan. Yeah. He was the curator, basically, that he would send around and he would be like, I'd like this, and I'd like this. Yeah. After Napoleon's army's conquered a place, the treaty was signed. Dinone would go in and just grab stuff for the loof. Yeah. This would look great on the south wall, don't you think? Right. And Napoleon said Demon Alisa would look great in my bedroom. Which is where you put it. Yeah. What a punk. I know. Yeah. We'll get more into the Mona Lisa, more later on, because it has a pretty interesting history, too. Well, before we keep going on any of this, Chuck, I think we should take a message break. I'm starting to steam up. All right. This is so good. All right. Steamy. Yeah. Wipe off those glasses. I'm not wearing glasses. Your contacts are fogging up. I've never seen that happen. So we're in the modern history now, right? I would guess so. We should say that Napoleon was eventually exiled and his museum, Muse de Napoleon, was changed, finally, officially, to the Muse de Louvre. Yes. Which has been since. And I think 1815 is when that happened. Yeah. And then yeah. In modern times, we should say that Napoleon gives a good example of one of the ways that the Louis acquired, amassed so many pieces in its collection. Yeah. Ponder. Sure. We talked about Egypt Ology a lot. A lot of that stuff ended up at the Louvre until Egypt said, I'd like that back. Yeah. And even then, the Lou said, how about some of it? Right. And remember the Frenchman who cracked the Rosetta Stone. We did the Rosetta Stone episode. Tom Hanks Campion. Oh, yeah. Campion or Shempion. Yeah, he was the Louis director of the Egypt collection. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. It really does, because very few people knew more about it than that guy. Yeah. So along the way, in the 19th century, the Louisville was not just a museum, but it was also a kind of a working studio where people with great artists would go and study and practice and paint and sculpt, which is pretty neat. Impressionists especially, have still have a lot of work there, and all the old stuff is still there. And it wasn't until 1986 when they said, let's split this up, because there's a fancy new museum across the river, the Muse days, or say, and they said, Why don't we just do it chronogically and said, Anything after 1848, you guys can have. I guess that's the modern collection. Yeah. And anything else old, we're going to hang on to. Right. And so the Louvre kind of said, we're going to keep all the Hellenic Roman Renaissance yeah, renaissance is huge, all that stuff. And we should say these collections that the Louvre got its hands on wasn't just from plunder. A lot of it was from the kings that had amassed their royal collections that were basically taken from them for the French people during the French Revolution, most notably Francois I. He was the French king during the height of the Renaissance, and he used to accept donations to his collection from artists themselves. Yeah. So like the Michelangelo's, the slave, the sculpture. Michelangelo gave that to Francois. I see a lot of these pieces in the Louis collection. They belong there. Some were plundered from Egypt, some were plundered during the Holocaust, and then some were bought, too. Like Napoleon bought a collection from the Italians for, like, 12 million francs. Yes, which is a lot of dough. But that was the Borgeous collection, close to 700 pieces from Greece and Rome. I guess it was worth the money. It wasn't his money anyway. He didn't care. Right. Yeah. He stole all this money. Just give it to you for that stuff from Italy. Ironically enough, World War II came along, which posed a real challenge to art in general. I haven't seen the monuments. Have you seen that? No, I haven't. I heard it's not very good. Despite the fact that it should be. Right. I've heard the same thing. Yeah. Like all these great people are in it, and it's still not very good. But supposedly The Rape of Europa, the documentary that it's based on, is supposed to be very good. Yeah. Unsurprisingly. Yeah, that's usually the case, but not always. And I also have to say this has nothing to do with The Loop, but have you seen The Art of the Steel? Yes. Such a good documentary. Super good. About Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? Philadelphia, yeah. How the city stole an art collection. Yeah. I mean, it's super interesting. Just go see it. Yeah. I think it's on Netflix. You can get it anywhere. It's just a really good documentary. Yes, agreed. Our documentaries, man, there's nothing sizzly or there's a lot of good ones, actually. And I'm not even, like, super art guy. I'm not either. I'm just trying to pronounce French here. Well, I say I'm not super art guy. I love museums, and I just don't have the schooling to talk about it. I just know what I like to look at. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know who is good at that? If you don't know what you're doing but you want to learn, there's an old PBS series called Sister Wendy. Oh, yeah. And she was this nun, bride of Christ lifelong right, who was one of the foremost experts in art criticism and understanding art and was also exceptionally good at explaining it in lay terms. And you just watch this lady's, like shows, and she's pointing out stuff in paintings that you're like, I didn't even realize that there was there visually, let alone what it meant. And she's just so good at explaining. So if you want to know more about art, especially classic art yeah, but don't know what you're doing, she's a great place to start, and I guarantee it's all over the YouTube and stuff for free. Well, that's me. I'm excited now. Sister Wendy, all right. You'll love her. Sweet. And PBS, they just get it right, don't they? Yes, they do. God bless them. All right, so where were we? World War II. Nazis. Yeah, the Nazis. They invaded Paris, of course, and they emptied out the Louvre. I'm sorry? Before they invaded, the French people said, we need to get rid of this stuff. So they gave it to a bunch of rich people who hid them at their various vacation homes, and it worked pretty well. They couldn't take everything, obviously, but they moved all the stuff out of the Louvre. The French did. Yeah. And then when the Nazis came and found an empty Louvre, they said, well, we're plundering a lot of art around the world, so let's just use the Louvre as our repository. Yeah, and they literally like, six massive rooms in the Louvre were, like, packing and shipping of art. It became a warehouse, essentially. Right. And they called that the Louvre. Sequestration. Wait. That's just English sequestration. And, yeah, that was a pretty dark time, I would say, for the Loop. It was the darkest. It was also a very shady time, too, because in the was a Puerto Rican journalist. I don't remember his name, but I read a good interview with him. It's in the last more information section of this article who basically started doing some sniffing around. He heard at some party that, like, 20% of Nazi art that was looted had never been returned. Oh, wow. And he's like, what that's astounding? It's a terrible number. So we started looking in more and more and more, and a lot of that art that had been brought into the Louvre by the Nazis hadn't made its way back out after the Nazis were defeated. Oops. So the Louvre's collection had a substantial amount of Nazi looted art from Jewish families that had been killed in the Holocaust and might still have some survivors. And the museum and it's not just to lose, but it's a dark spot on a lot of European museums history in the art world in general, that a lot of art that was stolen by the Nazis was nobody made any attempts to return it after the war. They just kind of held onto it. That's despicable. Well, this journalist from Puerto Rico got to the bottom of it called the Louvre in the Louis, started being like, oh, crazy. Yeah, we do have some here. Let's find the owners the rightful heir. So they started giving them back. But there's still apparently plenty of pieces in the Louvre among many other museums. Again, Holocaust art is what they call it. Yeah. Or looted Nazi art. Yeah. That's weird that it took this guy from it took Jimmy San Juan beat reporter from Puerto Rico. Well, you know, it seems like museums what did we talk about recently? What museum? We talked about repatriation. Yeah, it was archaeology. It seems like museums are rightfully taking a beating, in popular opinion, because from the 19th to the 20th century, in the middle of the 20th century, with Nazi looting, there are a lot of shady things that museums did, and just no one talked about it, and they got away with it. And I think taking them to task now and getting things right is a good thing. I think that there's a right way to acquire artifacts and pieces of art, and stealing them from war is not one of them. No war plundering. That's not on your list. All right, I agree. Yeah. Another dark part of the loose history. In 1871, the Paris Commune, they're a socialist group and basically staged a revolt. And did they burn down part of the Louvre? They burned down the palace. Okay. The Tuileries, one of those two. And in it was a lot of furniture, some art, and it was part of the Louvre. But apparently it was just by sheer miracle that the Louvre itself didn't also burn to the ground, and they rebuilt part of the jewelries. It was apparently like more of an attack on the vestiges of the monarchy, which the tilleries Palace still smacked of. Got you. So they weren't necessarily trying to get at the art. No, not as far as I understand. But it was a big deal because the Louis was very close by, and I think they did lose a decent amount of art and stuff. All right. The Mona Lisa has had a bit of a history. It wasn't always on display at the Louvre. One time it was stolen. Oh, you said it was in Napoleon's room for a while. It was in his bedroom for a little while. A poster. Jordan Dunking. That's right. And then in 1911, it was stolen. Apparently, the security at the Loop back then sucked. Yeah. Well, you were saying it was almost like an art studio. Some parts of it, yeah. I think that there was a lot of access. Yeah, there was a lot of, like, a lack of basic attitude towards security. Yeah. And so there was a big fat body or a security guard named Maximilian papal dean. He left work, came back two days later. Because he left them before that, they closed, and he said when he came back, there were four iron hooks and rectangular shapes several shades deeper than the surrounding area. And no Mona Lisa. No. For a while, they thought it was Picasso and Apollonier, and they had a group of young artists who just thumb their nose at things like the Louvre. They were toughs. They were toughs. And they didn't like the establishment, the art establishment. Yeah. So they thought they might have actually stolen the Mona Lisa as an act of protest. What's crazy is, when they went to search these guys apartments, they found two stolen pieces from the Louvre in Picasso's apartment. So they weren't too far off, but no more. And Lisa, it turned out to be an Italian custodian at the place. Yeah. Vincenzo Perugia. And he was a repatriate. He repatriated the old fashioned way, pretty much. He's like, this belongs in Italy, so I'm going to steal it and take it there. He got caught trying to sell it in Florence, but for a little while after he was caught and before it went back to Italy, they actually did display it at the Enthusia Gallery in Florence and took it on a little tour of Italy. Little victory lap. Yeah, exactly. So he was fairly successful, and then he did get it displayed in its home country. But supposedly they got the Mona Lisa, like, directly from DaVinci, is what they said. I don't know if that's true. And it's not painted on canvas, so you can't roll it up and stick it up your shirt sleeve. It's, like, painted on a wood block. Right. Birch. Yeah. I didn't realize that. I haven't seen it. It's really small. White poplar. Is that a birch? No, it's white poplar. Yeah, I got it right in the article wrong just now. Got you. So yeah, it was custodian you stole it and tried to sell it. That was where it aired. Right. Trying to get money for it. But the problem is well, it's not a problem, it's just a weird thing. The Mona Lisa has attracted all sorts of strange attention. Sure. As recently as, I think, 2009 or ten, a Russian woman who was touring Paris bought a coffee mug from the Louvre gift shop and threw it at the Mona Lisa. Where it shattered. Yeah, because it's behind glass. Yeah, the Mona Lisa is behind bulletproof glass. So that mug wasn't going to do anything mug proof. But it's like even if you know that it's not going to do anything, that's a weird thing to do. People have thrown acid at it. People have thrown red paint at it. Stones. I don't get it. One guy shot himself in the head, committed suicide in front of it. Yeah, I tried to find more on that, but I couldn't. It's a weird thing. There's this thing called Stendall Syndrome. Did you see that? No. Stendall Syndrome is this idea where you are confronted with so much great art. Like supposedly if you travel to Florence, some people are so overwhelmed by the beauty of the art surrounding them that they faint. Other people are so overwhelmed that they act irrationally and want to destroy it or something like that. Some people have been known to copulate when confronted with great art in some of these cities, like at least the next morning, apparently. But there's this thing called Stendall Syndrome. I don't know the veracity of it, but it is a thing. I wonder what that thing is. I just got back from Max funcon, which is there's a drive up to go to Lake Arrowhead, which is where it is, where you drive up the side of a mountain for like 5000ft straight up windy roads. Not straight up. Okay, but I had that thing where like you're driving and you're like, I could just drive right off this thing, off this cliff. Oh yeah. And I talked to a bunch of people here and a bunch of people said, yeah, me too. What is that? I don't know. Not everybody has it though. We talked a lot about it actually, because a lot of people identified with it and we were trying to figure it out as a group what that is. And I don't know, I think I ended up it may be like a power thing. Like I know that I could do this. So you have that urge because it's not suicidal. No, it's strictly an urge. And you are aware, maybe I shouldn't drive too close to this because part of me is saying what would happen? It always has to do with death though, because when I see a cop with a gun, I could grab that thing right now. I can just grab it and shoot. Something. That's how I feel about ice cream sandwiches. You can just grab it and eat it. I don't think it's related to send off syndrome. I think some people will identify them and have some more information, though. But there are people out there. Remember Chris, the programmer who used to work here? Yeah. I asked him the same thing because I used to smoke. I would smoke out on that deck and every once in while, a just lean over the side, the railing jump. Yeah. And then I have to get back away from it, like, whoa. I don't want some part of my brain to go and throw me over. That's the fear. It's like some part of your brain is going to take control and maybe that's jump. Right. And I mentioned it to him and he looked at me like I was totally crazy. Oh, really? He's like, no, I've never felt that way. I think that was in Louie boring. Parker Posey talked about jumping off the building when he was on a date with her and Louie. It's interesting, but that ties back into to bring it full circle, when the Mona Lisa was stolen, there was a professor at the Sorbonne that worried that it was a sexual psychopath who would defile the Mona Lisa in various ways sexually. So I guess that ties back into the syndrome you were talking about spindol. Yes. They thought he could take pleasure in mutilating, stabbing or defiling her and then return her when he was, quote, through with her. Right. That's disturbing on many levels. So the Mona Lisa is pretty much inarguably the most famous resident of the Louvre, but there's plenty of other ones, too. There's the Venus de Mila. Yeah, she's not bad. The winged victory of Samathrace, coat of Hamurabi. Yeah. They're about as historically significant as it gets. Right. And there it is, just sitting there in the Louvre. Oh. We didn't really ever get around to it. Like the pyramid by Im Pay. Oh, yeah. When was that? The this glass pyramid that's basically like now the symbol for the Louvre. It's an entrance, but it goes all the way down to the foundations of the Louvre. And when they were excavating for it, they uncovered the moat and the medieval keep from 1230. So cool. And they preserved it. It's on display. You can check it out. Yeah. Really beautiful. I like it when the building itself is a part of the part of the art. Like the Guggenheim. Same deal. And then at the end of this thing, I said you have to see the artwork and the Louvre yourself to really experience it. Yeah. And it comes off as kind of flip, I think. But I really mean it. That is a bucket list thing. I feel silly for going up to the front door and leaving. You can always go back. I was a kid. Go back. I will. Okay. I will. All right. Okay. All right, kid, you ready? Yes. You're done? I'm done. Okay. If you want to learn more about the Louvre, you can type that word L-O-U-V-R-E in the search barhouseofworks.com. And I said search bar, which means Chuck is time for Facebook questions. This is when I have no good listener mail. And so I go to Facebook, burn on everybody sending an email recently, and I tell folks to ask us questions and we go through. And we're going to do this for the next couple of episodes and we'll just read as many as we can get to just a buckle in. I'm going to go first year Jonathan Harrop says, whatever happened to the TV show? I enjoyed it. Is it a sore subject? We had one season of a show and episodes that was it. It was not renewed. But we hope to do TV again one day and so wish us luck. And it's not a sort of subject, it's a hilarious subject. It is pretty funny. I mean, have you seen how much makeup I'm wearing in it? And it was just awesome. But a bunch of people asked about the TV show. We appreciate that. We had fun making it. Yeah, we still hear from people who are like, it's great, I finally bought one on itunes. Bring it back. We're like, we're totally powerless to bring it back. Exactly. Yeah. Here's one from Sarah Angelica Pawanski. That sounds made up. Chicken or beef? I was going to say both, but I say all three now. All right. All three wrapped up in some sort of role. I love it. Patrick Scott says, what happened to the message break music written by a listener. Patrick, we're just mixing things up. It might come back again one day. It has come back, remember? Oh, is it back now? Yeah. Here. There. Jerry is hitting it. Sometimes it came back like a few episodes back. All right, hit it, Jerry. Did we just play that? I think so. Okay, how do we pick the topics? Chuck this from Dino. Isildock. It's close to that, but with I's and KS instead of the normal. Okay, go ahead, take it. Well, every once in a while, if we have the time, we might tackle a subject that is not on how stuff works. But for the most part, the vast majority of the articles that form the basis of the podcast episodes are from how stuff works. So we'll either somebody will write in and say, why don't you guys do one on this? Yes. Sometimes there's suggestions. Yeah. And then we'll do those more frequently. There's this awesome little random article button. That's your go to, isn't it? Yeah, that's what I do. I'll just sit there and click and click. It's never failed me yet. Yeah, I keep a running list. Basically anything that seems interesting that's not just like what we've been doing. We try to mix it up. Yeah, we do try to mix it up. All right. This is from Esther Ilona. She wants to hear about childhood aspirations. I kind of always wanted to write. Me, too. And ended up doing that. Me, too. For a while there, I wanted to teach. So for the follow up question, what would you do if you weren't doing this? I could be a teacher. For me, it was always writing, ever since I was a little kid. As a matter of fact, I don't feel like I'm writing enough. Yeah, but we are both professional writers, which is pretty cool. Pros, baby. Let's see. Here's one from Stephen Gardner Jr. Haven't heard this one before. Chuck, do we like each other off of the air? Yes, of course we do. Of course we do. Clearly, if you seen our TV show, you know we're not actors. He says that the mythbusters. Don't apparently we've heard that before, too. I don't know if that's true. I don't think that's necessarily true either. I think that to work that closely with somebody or this closely with somebody for this many years to plot and plan and contrive, it's not like we just come into work and are like, what do we have to do today? Somebody hands us, like, the syllabus, and then we do it and leave. We manage this brand, and we do it together. We have to like each other. Respect. Mutual respect, I think, too. Respect. Respect. Ryan Mitchell are there any podcasts one of you wants to do, the other refuses week to week? There might be a I don't want to do that one, but I don't think anyone said I refuse to do, because we're kind of ideologically on the same page. Right. So I don't think there's anything that one of us would really want to do, the other would just refuse to do. I can't think of one. Yeah, I think you're right. I can think of something we wouldn't do, but none that one of us that there would be conflicts over. Yeah. Except for that one. I still can't believe it. Yeah. Sorry. Chuck. What vegetable do you refuse to eat? This is from Christina Flores. I don't eat mushrooms. Oh, yeah. I'll eat them, and then, like, halfway through whatever mushrooms I'm eating, I'm like, that's a bad idea. Yeah, it's texture. It's all texture. Yeah, for me, too. There's some delicious mushrooms out there, I'm sure. And I used to eat them as a kid raw. It's like, lick them and put a little salt on them and just eat them. Really? Yeah. It's still good. So what's your answer for me? I know you hate Brussels sprouts. No, I like Brussels. You do? Yeah. I like Brussels sprouts. I hate peas. Okay. And I've always hated peas. Mushy? I hate broccoli. I think peas is bad. That's what I was thinking. Broccoli tastes terrible, too. Yeah. It's like Dr. Hibert said, it's poison to humans, and it tries to warn us with its terrible taste. I love broccoli. Loves broccoli. I'll make it for you anytime. Right. Don't let me hold you back. All right, I got one more. This is from Paul Parmley. Which one of your episodes should I have the DJ play at my wedding this Saturday? Thinking maglev or fecal transplants. But I defer to your Sage guidance. Maglev. Yeah, don't bore people with that one. I would go with cannibalism. That's a good one. Good wedding material. My standby is always, is it legal to sterilize addicts? Do that one. Play that for everybody. Make sure everybody sits down and is quiet throughout the whole thing. Yeah, no toast, no nothing. I do. Chuck, what is that smell? Is that from Michelle? Morgan, mazu. All these people have made up names, I think. Yeah, that smell is Josh. That's the good smell. Okay, what's the bad smell, then? It's me. No, it's the fecal transplant episode. That's what that is. If you want to give us some questions to answer on Facebook, we like to troll for them every once in a while. Not trolling the bad way. Troll like, hey, anybody have some questions? Yeah, that's what I like. Fishing trolling. Yeah. You can hang out with us on Facebook.com at facebook. Comstuffynow. You can tweet to us, too, at syskpodcast. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. That's our new old email that works again, so please make note of it. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.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 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 and listen today." | ||
c4012bfc-5460-11e8-b38c-b33cb8a0395a | SYSK Selects: A Podcast on Zoot Suits? Yes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-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. in this classic episode. | 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. in this classic episode. | Sat, 15 Feb 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=46, tm_isdst=0) | 33331920 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, your old pal. And for this week's SYSK selects I've chosen our episode on zoot suits. It is a fascinating overlooked piece of history about how clothes can mean so much more than just what's keeping the elements off of you or keeping your modesty intact. Plus, listen up for a surprise appearance by Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It is quite surprising. Enjoy. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W. Chucker's Bryant. And since two of us are sitting together again and it's not lunchtime, it's not leg wrestling time. That's true. This means it's stuff you should know, right? Yeah. What's up to you? 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 Postmaster 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. Some previous cuts. Yeah, he was the first person to record Stuff You Should Know song, like in 2008. Do 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? Yes. 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. Meet. 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 he give a reason for that one? No. There are some. This is from, I think, Dumblaws.com, and they have like 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? Next couple of days. I dare you to put a coin in your ear and walk around eating out of a cab. I don't own a boat. I don't own a boat. Right, chumps. Back in our fair state of Georgia, to legally use 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 loss. They have tons and tons of wacky dumb laws. Animals are banned from dating publicly within fifteen hundred feet of a tavern, school or place of worship. I agree. Women may not drive in a housecoat. I agree with that too. In Fresno, getting drunk in a playground is against the law. That is sound. I don't agree with that one. It's sensible. And then in Los Angeles, it's illegal to wear a zoot suit. Yes. Still. Still. Wow. So I bring that up and I knew Chuck would like that last one because I'm sure there are 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. Well, 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, in African American communities. Coast to coast, though. Yeah. Seems like Caesar Chavez, Malcolm X, cab Calloway, big band leaders, the jazz scene in New York, all very much associated with zoot suits. Tom cat from Tom and Jerry. Yeah. He was going after a girl and she said he was a square and was corny. And he goes out and gets him a suit. Suit. And becomes a cool cat. Cool cat, yeah. 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 longwaisted coats. Suit pants were worn really, really high, like up over the belly and were very tight at the top, then ballooned out like MC Hammer style and then tapered back down again at the ankle or were pegged, of course. Yeah, that's how 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 a feather, and it was pointed 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 it was a predecessor of that. And in fact, you mention Malcolm X favorite suit suits. I didn't realize this today, but in researching suit suits, 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? Shabaz. Yes, I believe so. Malcolm Shabaz. So once he became Malcolm X and got serious about civil rights, he ditched the zoosuit and stuff. And it's 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. Pacho, Pacho, pachuco Patuko. I like slang on top of slang. So it was kind of the uniform of a 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 calloway slang. Well, you mentioned cab calloway was one of the people who love zoot suits, and he wrote a dictionary of slang, a drive of 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. It turns out that there's a whole lot of mystery surrounding the origins of zoosuit. But if I may, in cab calloway'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 hepcat from the jive jumpsuitsuit 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 that it's the same as if you saw a bunch of rave kids wearing, like, the stupid pants yes. In the whatever. Or hip hop kids today. It was the same thing, except this was much more upscale than that. But it was the chance today that people have trouble walking in, but they still got to have that look. Right. Because that's what the cool kids do. Exactly. So you could argue the original American version of counterculture dress. Right? Agreed. And it grew out of Harlem and was later adopted by Mexican Americans or Latino Americans in Los Angeles. Yeah. What's this one bit? That it could have originated in Gainesville, Georgia. How about that? So, 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? Yes. 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 this thing. I'd like to go with that story. Well, the New York times put that story for it, 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. 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. 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 Zoot suits 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. Yes. 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. Right. 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 used in the state 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 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's telling you to dress like this, and everybody dressed like that. So tutsuits 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 suit suit 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. 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 forty, s 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 homogeneous people of who wore zoos, who 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 United States, but just, hey, I'm independent. I'm Latino. I'm living in Los Angeles. It's 1940s, and this is our look. So the pachos, the pachucos, the chuos the Pachos. I'm seeing pachos right here. Octavio Paz said pachos. 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 Pads. Can I read that? Yeah. He said, the zoot suit 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 thumbing 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. 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 ticked 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 suitSuits were associated with things like, let me see, quote, the record already revealed killing, stabbings in cases of innocent women having been molested by zoosuit gangsters. That'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 that fast. Yeah, 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 gathered, 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 300 to 400 Mexican American youths, had a corrupt trial where they basically denied them any 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 total. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And a few of them approached some girls. One of them kept walking, and the one that kept walking past a group of pouchos who were wearing suitSuits, the chukkas. 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. And get him out there. 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's basically 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. I'm going to say 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? 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. 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. In a caravan? Yeah, 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 zoosas, 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. An African American guy on the streetcar, I think it was in 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 cart 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. It is. It's pretty sad and strange story. Yeah. Is there anything else to this? No. The aftermath is I 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. Like 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? Sure. The Wild Ones, and if I may, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael Landon, who was a character settled 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. Yeah, 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 of 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 look kind of werewolfy right 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. Yeah. We like to point this out. If you want to learn more about all the stuff we talked about, like Cabcallaway Job Dictionary, you should search for that on your favorite search engine. It's pretty cool. Yeah. You could also search for Zoosuit Smithsonian. That'll 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 zoot suits. Z-O-O Tspits 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@housetoforce.com. And since I said search bar friends, neighbors, it is time for listener mail. 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 cool 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. Moo 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 ghee. Okay. Crumb crushers for Keith. Nice. Freebie, no charge. Really? Give me some skin. Shake hands. It all came out of this era. Pretty cool. Yeah. And we would not have one of the better parts of the movie airplane Cab Calloway and his crony's head, and they 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, many of 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 dies. And that's why the song ends with poor man, poor man pool. 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? Yeah. Okay. That's right. Now just listen to the 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 positives more than false negatives, though it's probably a biased source. Although science usually yeah. Also, they ask you to keep your feet flat on the ground through the test, so the tact trick wouldn't be possible. And 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 listener mail throughout the whole time. Just 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. 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 a moment's notice. 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. Comstuffychildo. We also have a couple of spoken word albums up on itunes under Stuff You Should Know. Super Stuff Guide. They'll cost you, but they're worth it. And you can reach us by email. Tuck that's right at stuffpodcast@howtofworks.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 show. 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. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
422838d6-53a3-11e8-bdec-0feffc0b25ed | Nuclear Semiotics: How to Talk to Future Humans | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/nuclear-semiotics-how-to-talk-to-future-humans | The nuclear waste we produce will be dangerous for a very long time. We’ve figured out how to safely store it in the earth until it’s no longer a biohazard. Now we just have to figure out how to warn humans 10,000 years in the future to stay away from it. | The nuclear waste we produce will be dangerous for a very long time. We’ve figured out how to safely store it in the earth until it’s no longer a biohazard. Now we just have to figure out how to warn humans 10,000 years in the future to stay away from it. | Tue, 20 Aug 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=232, tm_isdst=0) | 51406988 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, Maine in Greater New England. Hello. We're coming to see you guys in Portland, and we can't wait. We would love to see you there. Yep, we'll be at the State Theater on August thirtyTH, and if you're interested, you can get tickets and information@sysclive.com.com. Throw some lobster at us. 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 Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast you're about to say, the blank edition. Yeah, I was, but I couldn't think of anything. It was literally the blank edition. Was it? I mean, you couldn't think of anything. You were blank. No, that's right. It was the blank edition. Oh, gosh, that's a terrible start, Chuck. So how about this, just to divert ourselves from that disaster? What was not a disaster were our live shows we just did. Oh, yeah. We finally got up on stage, everyone, since first time since January, kicked the rust off in Chicago and Toronto. And both of them, we just killed. They were great. Yeah, audiences were great. Everyone had a really great time. They told us so. They seemed to be legitimately, meaning what they were saying. Yeah. It was really great to get back on stage with you, my friend. And also, hats off to Chicago for showing up. They showed up like, we called you guys out and you responded. Thank you very much, and thank you, Toronto, for not making us call you out. But there are still tickets remaining for August 29 in Boston at the Wilbur and Portland, Maine. We're venturing up into the hinterlands of America. Right? Tell me what's next after that. But Canada, August 30, there are still plenty of great tickets left there. And then the same can be said in October and Orlando and October 10. I think I said October 9, right? In Orlando. October 10 in New Orleans. Yes, that's right. Brooklyn. I'm not worried about that. It's already all sold out. The whole thing. All three nights. Man. Should we add a fourth? Jeez, I don't know. We'll talk about it. Anyway, thanks to everyone who came out. It was a lot of fun, and this is a good one, so you don't want to miss it. Yeah, so come on out. Especially you, Portland, Maine. Let's get with it. All right. Now, nuclear symbiotics, which I didn't know I loved, but I do. Really? Do you remember 99% Invisible did a very famous episode on this very topic. Oh, I didn't hear that. I specifically avoided going back and listening to it because I don't want to be stunk upon by its taint. Does that make sense? You don't want Roman. Mars taint I'm thinking on you. It's just such a classic episode that I don't want it to leak in. I don't want to accidentally rip it off. Yeah, well, we certainly can't 99 invisible, this thing, because that is the show that exists at the top echelon of this industry. Sure do. We sure we're up there. All right. But if you like this one, if this stuff floats your boat and you're like, I want to know more, go listen to the 99% visible episode. Yeah, this thing really triggered a lot of, like, synapses firing for me. And I think I really enjoy this kind of thought experiment, problem solving stuff. Oh, yeah. I think I would really dig, like, that part of the zombie apocalypse is figuring this stuff out as a team. Right? Because the whole time I was reading this, I was like, great idea. Terrible idea. They should do this, they shouldn't do that. Go sit down. Yeah. I like the cut of your jib. It's really cool. I dug this. I'd never heard of it, so thank you. Oh, you're very welcome. I actually heard of it before Roman Mars made the episode, so I can't really thank him. Well, not before he heard of it, because I think it's well known that Roman's first words were nuclear symbiotics. It's true. Even before Mama. That's right. I could totally believe that, actually. Yeah. So what we're talking about is Chuck said a couple of times, for those of you who don't know, is nuclear semiotics. And that is a very specialized branch, interdisciplinary branch of, I guess, science that involves basically any field of research that you can throw at the wall would probably have some function to play in the field of nuclear semiotics. And to make a long story short, to do the too long, didn't read version of this TL semicolon dr is nuclear semiotics seeks to figure out how to warn the future humans to come, or whatever is here. Sure. Let's be honest. Good point. I mean, why discriminate, right? To warn the future humans or the future superintelligent jellyfish, whatever to come? Hey, this is a very dangerous radioactive dump site that we've put here. Stay away. Yeah, it's that easy. It sounds easy. The problem is, if you presume that it's easy, you're making a lot of assumptions that aren't necessarily going to hold up. Oh, yeah. A lot of times they should just do. And I would even stop halfway through my thought because no, that wouldn't work. It's true. Because our languages might be gone by then. Our symbols don't necessarily make sense outside of the context that we understand them in. Civilization might be ridiculously advanced by them. Civilization might be in a state of collapse by then. We have no idea. But the point of nuclear semiotics is to figure out how to come up with a message that is understandable to everybody in any situation in the future. And the current state of the art is let's figure out how to speak as far as 10,000 years into the future. Yeah. And that's like being generous. It needs to go beyond that. It does because the whole point of nuclear symbiotic, the whole point of warning the future is this stuff, this nuclear waste that we're putting into the ground now is going to be dangerous for tens and tens of thousands of years. Plutonium 239 has a half life of 24,000 years. There's something called Technetium 99 has a half life of 211,000 years. So another one is like 1.7 million year half life. This is the nuclear waste that we're creating now and are putting in the ground. Yeah. And Julia Layton, who is one of our writers who does great work for us, she made a lot of great points, which is like the history of human evolution is 200,000 years and we've only been reading and writing for how long? About 5000 less than 6000 years. Yeah. So it's, it sounds like you said it sounds simple. And so many times I thought I had it cracked. Right. Only to think like I was like, why don't they just do something purely visual and stage a play of people at that site digging in and then dying? And I was like, well what do you do with it? Well, just put it on a DVD. Sure. That just plays on a loop. Right? It's like, well how are you going to power that thing? What happens when everybody's converted to bluray? Yeah, exactly. Well then solar put a solar panel up because that will last forever. But what if it doesn't? What if there's like a forever nuclear storm or whatever? But if the sun never shines again on Earth in 8000 years, that could happen. That's the cool thing about thinking into the deep future is all the things that will go wrong. Yeah. It makes you realize how specific everything you think and know and understand really is to your current time. Yeah, it's very cool. She brings up the point about an apple. Like when you see the word apple, you don't see the word apple, you see visualize. The symbol of that is an apple. Right. So it's almost like the words very much, the words will just not have meaning anymore at some point. Right. Man, let's dig into this stuff. Are you ready? Let's do it. So to start we should talk about where this all came from. It came from a new type of nuclear storage solution. Nuclear waste storage solution called long term geological repositories. And it is basically digging into the earth, a couple of miles into the Earth, putting our nuclear waste there again. Waste that's going to be harmful to health for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years and sealing it up and then covering over the site and then putting a warning on there. And right now the general consensus is that salt beds are the best place to put that nuclear waste. And there's actually some pretty good reasons why. Yes, we could do an episode on nuclear storage. I think I really want to in and of itself. Yeah. I don't know if that's a shorty or a longie. It's probably a longie. Yeah. But just briefly, the reason salt beds are preferable is because the fact that they're even there suggests that there's no water. If there was water, they would have been dissolved long ago. It's really relatively easy to mine into them. And then what's awesome about salt is that when you mine a shaft into a salt bed and you put your deposit there and then you pull back out, the salt bed actually heals itself over just a few decades. Heals itself back up. Right? Yes. So you put a container that's been engineered to hold the nuclear waste inside for 10,000 years. Yeah. It's also in a container. I should point that out. Right. You're putting it into a borehole in the salt. The salt is going to grow back around it and intuit, perhaps permanently in the salt. It's very strong, too, right? Yeah, it is fairly strong. I mean, like, if you're mining using modern mining equipment, it's really easy to mine into. Right. But if you just have, like, a pickaxe or something it's rock, too. Salt rock is what it's called. Right? Yeah. So there's a lot of reasons why people have figured out this is not a bad idea to entomb nuclear waste. But here's the thing. We can't just entomb it and walk away. We have a responsibility for those of us generating this waste today to warn the future. And it's on the future if they listen to us or not. That's on them. Right. But we have to make them able to listen to us. Exactly. We have a responsibility to do that because some people have proposed, like, hey, let's just bury and forget about it. The chances of somebody actually finding it are pretty slim. Just bury and forget about it. And that's probably the best way to go. And people said it's not a bad idea, but it's actually a pretty bad idea. I thought that one wasn't the worst idea. It's not. That was the behavioral psychologist. He was like and he wasn't like, Just forget about it. He was like, maybe the smartest thing to do is to leave it unmarked. Right. Because, as we'll see, attracting attention to something like that exactly. Attracts attention. I know. It's an interesting thought experiment. Right. That psychologist, by the way, was Dr. Percy Tenenbaum. Really? No wonder I liked it. Of the East Hampton tennis balm. So we should point out that there's a couple of big times that this has been commissioned. Like, hey, we need to think of something. One for a site that never happened and one for a site that has happened. The one that has happened. It's the only one in the United States right now. Only one in the world, as far as I know. No, it's number three. Oh, really? It's the third largest. Okay. I didn't see what the other two were it must have been the first in the world then. Yeah, probably the first in the world. Okay. Yeah. Which makes sense because the other two are bigger. But this is in New Mexico. It's called the Whip. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. And this one they're actively guarding. They've committed the Department of Energy is committed to guarding it with people for 100 years. They have hired Barney Fife into a 100 year contract to look over this nuclear weapon for at least 100 years. It's not like at the end of the 100 years, they're going to just, like, put a padlock on it and walk away. I imagine they will keep guarding it as long as they feel like it needs guarding. I don't know if that's true. I don't know, man. I mean, we're talking about a government run program here, at least 100 years. We can at least say that. Yes, they agreed to that. So the whole idea arose before that, though. What was the other one in Nevada? That's the Yucca Mountain one. That was the first one. Right? That's the first one. That never happened. Right. But that's when in the 70s is when this idea sort of came about, and I think it was 1982, when it was sort of codified as an official, I guess, science. Yeah, it's an interdisciplinary branch of science. Nuclear, semiotics. And it's because the EPA came up with a rule in law. Really? 81. I got that wrong, by the way. So it's 81 that they came up with the law. Well, it became a discipline in 1981 with that Yucca Mountain Repository Project, and I think from that Yucca Mountain Repository Project, because we were starting to figure out how to deposit this stuff for a long time. The EPA came up with a rule, I think it was 1982, that said, if you're going to create these kind of repositories for nuclear waste, you also have to figure out how to come up with a permanent warning sign. And everybody was like, that's no problem, of course. And then the EPS think about it, it's harder than you think. They said, Just slap that nuclear waste logo that everyone knows. Sure. And everyone was like, Everyone doesn't know that. But it's been around forever. Everyone doesn't know that now, much less in 200,000 years. Yes. Did you see how that was created? Yeah, it was a group doodle. I don't know how that happens. I think that means they can't ascribe it to one person. No, there's like, five people on one of those giant, like, silver spoons pencils or crayola. Crayons. Yeah. This is at Berkeley. Yeah. And it was a group doodle in the science class. Is that an album name or a band name? Group Doodle. It's like the Wiggles or something. Yeah, I think it's an album title, for sure. So the wiggles group doodle. Absolutely. Okay, good. That's probably a real thing. That's our gift to you, wiggles. But I saw this was interesting. In 1948, the symbol came under consideration for wider use because at first it was just a group doodle. And then the Brookhaven National Laboratory requested a standardized symbol of standardized colors for their radiation safety program. And there was more argument about the colors than the actual symbol because at first they were like, you can't use yellow because we use yellow for a lot of stuff. Yeah, they wanted to make sure that it didn't get overused. So people just become kind of blind to it because they saw it so much. And they were like, have you heard of striper use yellow and black? They're like? No, I haven't heard them. They're like, Give us 40 years. You'll have heard of them, believe me. And then in 42 years, no one will have heard of them. So I think the original design was I saw them in concert, we won't even talk. Oh, I believe it. It was magenta blades on a blue background was the original design. And it was chosen because it was uncommon. But then in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they went with the yellow background in 1948. Later on in 1948, and I guess it stuck. That's where the Oak Ridge boys were all scientists. That's right. So it was originally magenta on blue, right? Yes. And the logo we're talking about, for those of you know, it's called the nuclear trefoil. You know, it's a circle and then three partial circles around a blade. And from what I saw, one of the original group doodlers explained it as it's supposed to be an atom with activity around it. Yeah, that's it. Which I never saw it before, but now that I've read that, I can't unsee it. And that is really what it looks like. It's a pretty great little doodle. But it's like you said, that is not a universally accepted symbol, which is a big problem. And it doesn't evoke like, oh, an atom. Of course I know what an atom looks like. I just saw one go down the street a second ago and this looks like an atom. It's a symbolic representation of an atom, which means that after people stop thinking about what atoms look like, maybe 10 years or 5000 years down the road, if something happens, no one's going to look at that and be like, oh, it's an atom. Activity around an atom. That must mean there's radiation here. Hence this is a danger sign. That's not going to happen. Right. The other thing you would think is just put up in a bunch of languages. Done. Yeah. Here's the thing. Languages are disappearing. I'm going to ask you, actually, what is your best guess? A language dies out every 14 days. I'm pretty sure that's 9 million. Isn't that staggering? God, what if it was? Are you about to do that? Yeah. You keep talking. So that's about 25 languages per year that die out, and that's really sad. It is. And it is very sad. And granted, these aren't major languages, but they're important to the people who speak them. Sure, but that's just sort of to get across the point that throwing it up in a bunch of languages. There's no guarantee. And in fact, in all likelihood, in 50,000 years, there won't be English or German or French. There may not even be humans. What's the calculation? 446 days? That was a little off. Okay, we may all be like postbiological humans uploaded our consciousness onto the Internet or something, in which point that really won't matter, to tell you the truth, where the nuclear waste is buried. But who knows? It could be an intelligent species. It could be humans who don't know how to read or write. The fact is, the stuff that we take for granted changes a lot faster than you think. And even if it doesn't necessarily die out, the changes that come along are pretty alarming. I've been watching a lot of Silicon Valley lately. I told you. Yeah, great show. My vocal delivery sounds a lot like Jared's it's occurring. Oh, you think a lot? I never really put those two together. Well, keep an ear out for it now and see what you think. Tell me I'm wrong. I mean, I would have to disassociate so much because I like you, and Jared is like, such a pedantic bureaucrat. Oh, I love him. I mean, he's fun to watch, but I wouldn't say that he's, like, the most likable character. Maybe he is. I don't know. I would say pedantic bureaucrat is not entirely off for me. No. Jared needs a girlfriend. That's his deal. Okay, so I do not because I have a fine wife. That's right. So let me give you an example of how English has changed. This is a quote from Sir Gawain in The Green Knight. It was written in 1375 oh, boy. 650 years ago. All right. This is in English. The steel of a stiff staff, the stern hit be gripped that was wounded with iron into the wands end and albegraven with green and gravius works. And you should see it spelled. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was an English major. We had to go through this stuff. It was a slog. Do you have a guess at what I just said? Yeah, you said that the green knight sat down and watched some Silicon Valley. That's right. It's that the grim man gripped it by its strong handle, which was wound with iron all the way to the end and graven and green with graceful designs. That's English 650 years ago. English is still around 650 years. We're talking about thousands, tens of thousands of years. Exactly. So that's a problem. Languages evolve. Languages die. Symbols don't quite make sense out of context. So there's a lot of challenges that face the people who try to explain this stuff or figure out how to explain it to future people, I think is a better way to put it. That's right. They have looked in semioticians for people who really want on this stuff. Sure. I think I'm an amateur semiotician after reading this, that's great. But one thing that they're looking for, because what you want is ideally, is instant recognition and not something I mean, yeah, maybe if you have to figure it out. But what you want is something that conveys danger. Right. When you look at it, like, just steer clear this place, not come closer and start poking around. Just go away. That's right. So she makes a great point, though, that it's a double edged sword, like you were talking about earlier. Human beings, if you show an extreme skier or a sign, this is danger, don't ski this way, he's going to say, Bra, let's do it. Give me some homicide power drink. So there's a very fine line between warning people and enticing people. Yeah. Even inadvertently. Exactly. She points out haunted houses because I'm like, yeah, not everybody's like a Red Bull extreme sports person. But people do like haunted houses, too, so that abandoned. Like scary places. So creepy. Let's go there for Halloween. Right. Because maybe Halloween survived, but the English language didn't. Who knows? So, yeah, you really walk a fine line here between warning people away and saying, I dare you. Right? Yeah. My whole jam is, I think what will survive, if there are humans at all, is emotion. So I think they need to appeal to human emotions like fear more than words and symbols. Okay, well, let's take a break and we'll get back into this, all right? Because this is fun. Yes. All right, Chuck. So we've kind of talked about how things go away. Languages fall away, symbols don't make sense anymore. It's ephemera. It is. It really is. Right. So what will last? What have nuclear semiauticians come up with? And should we explain what semiotics is in general? What is it? I don't even know. Just kind of in shorthand, semiotics is basically the study of how and why signs have meaning. Okay, right. Like you were saying earlier, how the word apple doesn't evoke thoughts of the word apple. It evokes thoughts of the round, shiny, tasty fruit that grows on a tree. That's a sign in semiotics that's specifically a cursive sign because it uses language. So what they've done in many cases is and this is a great idea for stuff like this, is to have a competition. They had one at UCLA, I think in 2001 called the Desert Space Competition. And what won that year was a cactus, a yucca cacti, glowing blue. And then the idea was plant a field of these regular green cacti and then over the place where the waste is the repository. And then if you see the sign of a glowing blue one, I didn't see the rest of them, but I didn't think this one was that great. I'm sorry. To the person who came up with it, though. I know. I think something they should do is go even further back to younger children, because sometimes go to an elementary school and ask kids or a high school. Right. Or you just take each kid out and rub their face in the sand and be like, you see this? You stay out of here. No, I mean have the kids throw out ideas. Because I think oh, I see. Yeah. I like my idea. I think a lot of times children can cut through to the simplicity of something much better than adults can easily. So that's my idea. Throw it out as a science fair project. Well, I think that's one of the cool things about nuclear semiotics is it's so inviting to like anybody can come up with a great idea. It's just so confounding. But it's also so accessible. Yeah, we'll get ideas. In fact, we want to hear from you if you think you have a cool idea. Like, I guarantee you we're going to get some good ones. We're not going to pass them along or anything. So rather than just like poopooing the glowing yucca one, here's the problem with the glowing yucca idea. It requires explanation, right. So part of the glowing yucca is to say these things have been genetically engineered so that when there's radiation present, they glow. So if you see this yucca glowing, it means that there's radiation here. Stay away. Right. If you lose that additional story that has to go along with the glowing yucca, then you just have glowing yucca. And I can't think of a more attractive thing that's going to draw people to a site than the legendary glowing yucca that only glows in this one spot on Earth. That's kind of the problem with it. I like this other idea from that same year a little better, that did not win fields of asphalt, which is a Eurasian lily. They said, let's just cover the site with metal blades that screech when the wind blows, it makes a horrible noise. Right. Not bad. Here's the problem with that. Okay. Moving parts. Okay, sure. It's been pretty well established that if you're trying to convey something to the people into the distant future, you need to have something that's monolithic and made of one piece. Because if you have multiple parts, that's an opportunity for weathering to occur through the place where the two parts meet. Or three parts, or five parts. And if it's a moving part, just kiss the movement goodbye. What about this? I've had the thought earlier today about just a mountain of razor wire. Okay, here's the problem with that, okay. And this is the same problem also with the what is the problem? The steel stuff that move and everything. I know, but you want to use stuff that has no value whatsoever, not just financially, but usefulness. Like if someone will say, I can harvest that razor wire, yeah, I can go use that to keep the cows in and my house next door. Yeah, but if you have so much of it over time, over 10,000 years, people like wireless. I mean, that's why the pyramids are stripped of like they're more attractive outer. They used to have like a white, I think, limestone shell encasement it's gone. Because the locals were like, oh, I can use that to build a fine Pizza Hut. Exactly. That's what people will do. If you place something of any kind of useful in South Afar, that is the beauty of it. Every idea is wrong as a whole. It's so great. It's pretty great. I love it. So one of the most often cited bodies of work is from 1982 83, and this was a call for ideas from the German Journal of Semiotics that basically said the same thing. It's like, what are your ideas? This one got a little goofy, to say the least. Someone suggested an artificial moon as a storage vessel. There's just a huge flaw in that one, if you ask me. I don't even get that. Well, it was like, how do you make sure that the information about this site stays protected? Put it into an artificial moon in orbit around Earth. But it's like, how do you get to the artificial that's what they meant. That doesn't make any sense. That's what I think it said. Were they beaming it down to a TV that won't play? That's a different one. Yeah. And I just don't understand this at all. I don't understand the Radioactive cats either, even though that's a decent band name. So that was a big part of the 99% invisible episode on nuclear semiotics. They talked about the Ray Cat and I think they actually hired a musician to create a song because just like with the glowing yucca, you have to explain what's going on. When the cats glow, you need to stay away. So they had somebody come up with a Ray Cat song, I believe, for the episode. Was it Hootie and the blowfish? Yes, it was. That was a good guess. Now this one, I thought it was interesting, at least. This semiautician named Thomas Sibiotic, he said this what has survived more than anything else? Religion. Right. Religious texts that date back a couple of thousand years in the Catholic Church. Not a bad start. Yeah. The ideas that you hear at Catholic Mass today are a couple of thousand years old in some instances. And if you go back to the original text, which we can still read, fortunately, you can say, yes, this is what they're talking about. Like those ideas have survived that long because of the practices they use. So interesting idea, but it gets a little goofy because he thought, why don't we almost create a fake religion around this thing? A fearful. Myth that you can generate, appointing an atomic priesthood to tell people and tell them to tell future generations. But I guess the idea is that it's all false and it's just a big made up story. Yeah, the atomic priesthood would know the truth and they would indoctrinate people, but out in society around them, it would be a closely guarded secret because everybody else thinks that whatever this fake myth about why you have to stay away from this haunted evil area is true, when really the atomic priests are the ones who know actually there's radioactive stuff here. They just came up with this 3000 years ago to scare everybody away. But initially a decent idea as far as trying to make it or incorporate like what religion does. But it's definitely strange. It is to me, though, it is at its base, despicable. It's a despicable idea because it is purposely introducing fearful false superstition into the future. Like we're going to purposely introduce fearful false superstition into the future just to scare people off from radioactivity. Like what kind of sweeping side effects, what kind of wars might start over? People will die to defend this fake thing that they don't realize is fake. Because Thomas CBI came up with this idea to keep people away from a single site in New Mexico. That's crazy. It didn't fare too well either among his colleagues. No. And rightfully so, because again, it's a despicable idea. So he was on the human interference task force. We mentioned the Nevada site. That was what was launched for that Yuka Mountain site back in from 81 to 83. So whatever CBI's original idea was, he had some other closely related ideas that were great, though. Yeah, like he's not like a total nut job. I think it was just a misfire in an otherwise illustrious career, I think. I don't know that much about him, but one of his other ideas was, okay, well, let's take the atomic priesthood away. Let's take the religion and all that stuff away and let's just give them the facts. But let's figure out a way to make sure that those facts get passed down. And what he came up with was called a meta message, where it's a message that says, this place has nuclear radiation. It can kill you, you need to stay away from it. And we invite you to take this message and translate it into whatever language you guys have on Earth at the time. Assuming you can read this right. But if you do that often enough, there will always be somebody who can translate it. Oh, sure. And then that way you form a bridge between now and as far into the future as people are around to read and add their own interpretation or their own translation of it. But then you want to leave the original so that if there's ever like a disagreement about what word meant, hopefully somebody can go back language language. Language and connect them so that they can see the original version. Yeah, but what if a society develops an isolation that knows none of these languages? You just totally toast. Yeah. That's when the symbols come in. Right. So what they settled on as a panel, though, from 81 to 83 was what's called long term communication was going to be the most effective thing. Like kind of what you were just talking about. Right. And they said a system that combines physical markers and archives that cover the two major forms of this long term communicate, direct and successive. Direct utilizes markers and successive is humans, like you were talking about, I guess with this meta message. I guess you could write it down, but it's still humans carrying a message through time. Well, it's more like a direct one. You can write an inscription on a monument and that monument is going to deliver that message directly to people 10,000 years from now. Yeah. I mean, it's a physical thing. Right. Whereas with successive, it's kind of passed along like a game of telephone. Exactly. And you know how that goes, right. It can get a little hanky. That's right. But it's always fun at a slumber party. Sure. So they came up with multiple ones, like you were saying, they settled on a monument that had massive stone structures. Remember? You want monoliths. They're engraved with warnings in all currently known languages. It's a lot of languages. You want a buried vault that has all the info you need about radioactivity, about the site, all that stuff. Sure. You want a bunch of barriers around the site, not necessarily to definitely keep people out, but enough to basically say, hey, we're trying to impede progress here. Yeah. I mean, to me, that's one of the most obvious ones. If you see a huge wall, again, it might entice you, but it for sure indicates to any culture that you're not meant to come beyond this. Right. And then the last one is a network of archives, basically the same information you would have in that buried vault. Right. But elsewhere, scattered around the world. So if something happens to the buried vault, somebody can come across the archive somewhere and be like, oh, wait, we want to stay out of there. Right. And along with that, they said, while we're at it, can we at least all agree around the world on a nuclear warning symbol? If it's the trophyl or whatever, let's just all codify that as the thing. Which is not the case right now. No. There was a triangle with an arrow pointing down and then in the head of the arrow was the biohazard symbol, which is not great because you want something that's going to be so simple that even as people, excuse me, I need to see it, I guess. Yeah, even when you see it, you're like, wait, what? But you want something simple enough so that as people kind of create a shorthand version of it, it still retains its meaning or visually. All right, so that stuff was the Yucca Project in the early 80s. They decided not to do that. They just packed it up, put it away, and then it all came back again with this New Mexico plant when the Department of Energy said once again, hey, we need to think of a sign and a symbol, or whatever you can come up with, and we need the best and the brightest thinking of this. So call up Carl Sagan. Give me Sagan. Give me Percy Tannenbaum. Stat. And this guy named John Lomberg, who is a science writer and space illustrator, and he had worked in semiotics before for NASA on their mission to Mars. Sagan was in ill health, so he declined to come. Yeah, but he sent a message from the present, I guess, that said skull and crossbones, dude, done. Yeah. Universal. Everyone knows it. He gave a really good example. He said it's marked the lintels of cannibal dwellings, the flags of pirates, the insignia of SS divisions and motorcycle gangs. He makes a pretty good point. A lot of people out there see a skull and crossbones and know it means, like, danger, problem. Yes, it means this will be you. Yes, you'll be a skull. And so the working group for the Whip Project, they said, no, that doesn't work. It's a YoungI, an archetype. It doesn't really exist outside of the west. To me. I'm like, no, Sagan was definitely onto something, I think. So tell me, if you go to China and hold up a sign with the skull on crossbones, there you go. I would think so, wouldn't they? I mean, that's a dire warning, isn't it? Or not. I think their point is that the skull used to be like a memento Morriso, where it meant, like, rebirth and prepare for death. So they could be like, oh, wonderful, a skull and cross. Sure. But to me, that is the one enduring symbol that's always going to be around as long as they're humans. Yeah, because what happens when you die and rot? What's left? Your skull? Every human knows that. Even humans in the future are going to know that. Even ones that are in post collapse tribes who are running around and have lost all of the languages that are around today, they're going to know what a skull looks like or what a skull means, or at least one of them is going to be like, wait, I don't think this is saying that the rainbow is coming. I think it means, like, death or danger. All right, let's take another break. Yeah, sure. And we'll come back and talk about the approach that the whip panel took and what they came up with right after this. You know, I got to defend Sagan. It's my boy. Sure. Love that guy. Someone should ask Neil degrasse Tyson. Sure. Why not. I bet he's got a good idea or two. I'll bet they have asked oh, no. Atlanta. For a show. Oh, yeah. Where? Fox, I think. Cobb Energy Center. Oh, yeah. I think it's even more seats than the font. No, it's less sorry. It's like 3000 people, which is nothing to put up a stink about. That's a lot of folks. We have not hit that. No, we're not. No, we haven't. Did you hear the Star talk I was on? Oh, no. Was it good? It was pretty good, yeah. If I do say so myself. It was supposed to be like rapid, fast responses. We got to like four questions in an hour. You're like, Rapid, fast response is not my specialty meal. Let me just do a little distracting here. I'm more deliberate. All right. So speaking of deliberate, the whip panel was very deliberate and methodical. They divided it into teams and approached it from the two things we were talking about. Direct and successive forms of communication. Debated a lot, deliberated a lot. The recommendations, they had two proposals and they did overlap a little bit. What I thought was pretty smart is they both had a multi leveled approach from the surface down that got more specific and intense as you went down. Yeah. The first one was basically like, you Ding Dong, this is dangerous, go away. Exactly. That's like level one. And then level two is like, OK, Ding Dong and your kind of smart friend explain to Ding Dong that the reason this is dangerous because there's something buried here and it's going to hurt you. All right. Should we talk about the real things? Sure. I thought I was so group A, this was theirs. They studded the surface of the site with what they called menacing earthworks. So a field of spikes and then a big massive disk painted to look like a black hole. I didn't quite get that part. That's so dumb. I get the spikes. Yeah, of course. But the black hole, I think it's supposed to just mean like avoid or chaos. I don't know. I'm not sure. I could see how you would think that that was kind of universal. Like nobody wants to fall into a hole or something and maybe it evokes that kind of like stay away. All right, then they have large markers all around the site which, like you said, are the really basic messages and the warnings, including and I thought this is so interesting faces that invoke Edward Munches The Scream, the ones I saw were the screen. Yeah. Like it was a line drawing of the guy from the screen. Yeah. Like in great agony and pain. That, to me not bad. It isn't bad. I don't know though. Is that more universally understood than a skull and crossbones? I don't know. Or if art survives or people like, oh, I wonder if that painting is down there. Well, I think what they're saying is and semiauticians kind of feel this way, is that Edward Monk so perfectly nailed the screen that even without the art, if you see that, you understand that that person you're seeing is in agony. Did I say Munch? No, I think you said monk. Did I say Munch? You said Monk. I might have said munch. No, I think you said monk. Is it Munch? I think it's probably Monk. There's no way his name is Munch. I'm almost positive you said Monk. Jerry, can you rewind for a second? Munch. Oh, you did say munch. I would have sworn you said Monk. So group A below the surface. This is when they actually start talking about nuclear waste to what it does to you, the details about the structure and all that stuff, right? Not yet. Where they teach you a little bit about radioactivity? So group B, they went super informative. And really what they relied on was that people had a little bit of knowledge in the future about stuff like this, but they also trusted that people didn't have to just be spooked or scared or something like that. It's like, here's the facts and information. Here's why you want to stay away from that. Yeah. Their big above ground work was these big earthen walls in the shape of the nuclear turf. Oil not bad. I imagine you'd have to see it from above to even know, though, what it was. But that's part of one of the requirements was that you want it to be easily visible, not just with human condition, but, like, remote sensing, too. So, like magnetic surveys, they said we should put some magnets in here. Not just from when you walk up to it. Right. And you also have to be able to see it from your flying saucer. Exactly. And then inside the walls at various steps have these big markers. And here's where these, like, symbols and pictographs all kinds of languages writing in different languages. And then more human faces increasingly contorted in agony as you go down. Yeah, it looks to me like the guy's getting drunker and drunk. That's what it looks like. Well, maybe that means there's a happiness bar. Exactly. That's how I would take it if I were a future human. Post collapse. Got to go down here. There were also pictograms that you're just, like, digging through the sand to get there. Also pictograms that showed under the ground, like, real easy to understand drawings of the radioactive waste, the groundwater flowing through it, taking the radioactive waste up to the plants, which are then eaten by the humans in the picture, one of whom dies, which makes sense. You don't need to understand anything about radioactivity. You don't need to be able to read anything. Like, it makes sense, especially if some people are sitting there thinking about it. Was the final image of skull and crossbones or pile of bones? No, it was like a person three people standing, and one of them, the last one, is, like, dead. And I think he might even have X's for I i was about to say, though, I mean, if you think about 200 years from now, maybe they're like, oh, this induces a nice nap. Maybe. But to your point, though, like, the bones is where you need to end up, right? Yeah. Maybe somebody will be like, oh, these veggies here gives you a great buzz if you grow them on the ground. Yeah. Excess for eyes, right? Yeah. The bones do make a lot more sense. I think Sagan was right. That should be a T shirt still. You should know T shirt. Sagan was right. Don't even need to have any contacts. We're going to make an email in a few days from the guy from the estate, Carl Sagan, saying, do not make that T shirt. So what did they go with in the end, though? They went with an Earth and berm basically to provide an obstacle and to block easy access. Some granite slabs, monoliths that have warnings written in seven languages. Yeah. Navajo. And then the six languages of the UN. So Arabic, Chinese, English, Spanish, French and Russian. Correct. Which makes a lot of sense. But then they took Thomas CBACH up on his idea. They kind of built on the earlier religion. Right? Exactly. And they left blank spaces or in their plan, they leave blank spaces on these labs for future generations to add their own translations of the inscription. That's a good idea. It's a great idea. And the faces of humans in pain and anguish. Right. That did survive in the end. So that was the final report on this width panel. It's a pretty good idea. Makes a lot of sense because it not only so, there are two groups that they're trying to say, stay away. Not really, like urban explorers or thrillseekers or whatever. They can die. They would have virtually no chance of getting down to the actual radioactive material. Two and a half miles. The people they were worried about were technological advanced civilizations that were drilling for resources. Right. Like an accident. Like, God help this waste disposal site if salt becomes incredibly important in the future. And then less advanced civilizations that could accidentally change the flow of groundwater to go through the salt bed, through massive, like, irrigation projects. It covers all of it. Yeah. My whole thing is just make it inaccessible. Why is it in New Mexico? Why is it out? Well, that's pretty inaccessible. It's not as inaccessible as Siberia. No. One of the recommendations for nuclear waste disposal is shooting it into space. Just send it out in the outer space and forget about it. And if you believe in the Fermi paradox that it says we're the only intelligent life in the universe, more power to you. That's actually not that bad of an idea. It's a horrific idea, but it's actually kind of a good idea. Yes, but then I wonder about the danger and the risk involved. I mean, we've seen rockets blow up and space shuttles blow up. That would be bad. Like, what if the thing that they're shooting it out there malfunctioned or something? That'd be really bad. That'd be really bad. That's a great point. It's like all of our nuclear waste has just been released into the atmosphere. Yeah, that's a great point, Chuck. So here's the thing, is all of this just wasted effort because I was getting so into this stuff, and then the end of this article was a real sad trombone because it seems like nobody really even cares. The people that matter, well, the first group, their whole thing will probably never be implemented because the Yucca Mountain Project got shut down. Right. But the Whip group may actually have their plan come to fruition because it is an EPA rule that you have to create this kind of marker. And they've got until about 2040, until they estimate the place is going to shut down. So it's entirely possible that in 2040 or sometime in 100 years after 2040, when the Doe stops protecting the site or the DoD, right, they may implement this Earthen Works and the 16 granite slabs, and we may live to see something like this. Well, outside of the US, it seems like no one is super concerned. Sweden in 2011 had an application to build a repository in forcemark. And in their literal application, they basically said, you know what, we're going to worry about that later in 70 years when this thing is finished. They said, See this? Can we just kick this 70 years down the road? And the Swedish National Archives, they consulted on their application, they said, that's really insufficient. It said, it gives the impression that one intends to postpone important documentation efforts until the closure of the repository in 70 years. And it's like it doesn't give the impression. It literally said that. Right. I think they're being ultra polite. Yeah, I think. Well, Sweden, right? Good people in the US, though, don't tell ASAP Rocky, then. Don't even know what that means. That's the singer, right? Yeah, he's a rapper. He's in prison in Sweden right now. I did not know that. Oh, man. What did he do? He got into a fight with some Swedish kids and it may or may not have been their fault. It looks on video like they definitely provoked it. Really? But the King of Sweden is like, sorry, rule of law applies to everybody, including super famous Americans. Well, true. Donald Trump called him to try to get the thing resolved at the behest of Kanye West. Oh, God. And apparently it just made everything worse. And now the King of Sweden is like, there's no chance he's getting released early. Wow, man, where have I been? This is reality. What I just said is actual fact. It actually happened here in 2019, everybody. Humans of the far future. Can you believe it? Humans of the near. John Lamberg, the guy we were talking about earlier, who was on that original 1091 whip panel, he told Vice just a couple of years ago. A lot of us had been around the block a few times before because he was back then doing the same thing and knew this is going to be a report the government only did, and this is the US. And we're putting more thought toward this than anyone. Yeah, which is really surprising. He said they only did this because they needed to show compliance. They didn't really care what we said. And then from the 1981 Human Interference Task Force, during the competition, they basically said the most effective sign will be the dead bodies of those foolish enough to ignore. Which makes sense, whatever sign. So basically, who cares? Someone will get in there and they'll all buy, and then that'll be the big morning. Right. Which makes sense if humans are in communication around the globe, and you've got the same warning around, but if they're not, then it's catastrophe, catastrophe, catastrophe. But at least we fulfilled our part of the bargain where we really tried to warn everybody. Agreed. You got anything else? No. If you will indulge me, I would like to plug The End of the World with Josh Clark. The what? The end of the world with Josh Clarke. If thinking about things in far, deep time in the future of humanity and all that stuff kind of floated your boat, I would recommend my little podcast series, the End of the World. Josh Clark, for sure. This is right up your alley. Thank you, Chuck. And since Chuck said right up your alley, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. We are strangers, but we aren't. You've been with me during the most challenging times of my life. I've listened to your show for about seven years. I'm an English teacher. My students are tired and making fun of me because I always start lessons with. So I was listening to stuff you should know. I went through a huge life change recently. I was in a relationship for five years, engaged with four of them, and moved from Phoenix to Charlotte. After ending that relationship, which was incredibly difficult to do during the drive, I listened to you guys for the entire 34 hours. Wow. Can you imagine? No, I honestly can't. No music, just you guys. My heart was so broken. I didn't think I would ever be able to recover from that trauma. The trauma of listening to us for 34 hours. But you didn't know that. You were able to comfort me and calm me down. My brother, who helped me move, asked me what I needed to listen to during the drive. I told him I wanted to listen to stuff you should know. He had never heard of it. But now my brother Nick is also a fan, whether he likes it or not. And we almost always start our conversations now with did you listen to the last step? You should know that's cool. So I just want to give you guys kudos for being incredible. Please give a shout out to Justin, a fan that learned about you guys from me, in case he didn't hear it the first time. Hello, Justin Potter. Wow. Thanks for giving me calm in times of adversity. I know we are strangers, but we are not actually, because you have been with me during struggles in my life. 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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 Kilgarref 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. Episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How Gene Patents Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-gene-patents-work | Should a company be able to own the rights to something found inside your own body? In this episode, Chuck and Josh delve into the complicated, controversial world of gene patents. Tune in to learn more about the history -- and future -- of gene patents. | Should a company be able to own the rights to something found inside your own body? In this episode, Chuck and Josh delve into the complicated, controversial world of gene patents. Tune in to learn more about the history -- and future -- of gene patents. | Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:27:27 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=18, tm_min=27, tm_sec=27, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=312, tm_isdst=0) | 39971599 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. This is William Shatner. You have the sound of a man who sounds like he's leaving town. I do. It comes up a lot right now. They think about it. It is a weekend. Yeah. I'm leaving town, too. Nice. Where are you going? I'm going to see my sister. Cool. And my two nieces. Yeah. My brother in law is not there, but in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Very nice. At the US. Marine Corps base. Very nice. You're going to go to the PX camp of June, I think. Sure. I'll go to the PX. You should get some stuff there. It's all at a military discount. Yeah. Ammo and ammo. Just walk like you're supposed to be in there. Maybe make eye contact with everybody, try to wither them, and they'll be like, oh, he's a soldier. I always stand out like a sore thumb. On the military basis, you're like, this is a bad hairy guy. Yeah. Why is he here, and should I kill him? So you're excited? Yeah, I haven't seen my sister in a while. That's good. What about you? What you got going on? We are going to New York. You mean I for friends wedding. Two friends wedding. Two male friends wedding. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. And it's official now. Congratulations to those guys. Yes. Mitchell Patrick, our friends on the Facebook page tried to help them out. They were, like, in a contest for Crate and Barrel wedding. That's right. A lot of people showed up and bumped them from number 20 something like number one for a little while, and then they just got crushed. So hats off to everybody on our Facebook page who helped them out. They are very grateful and hazards to them. Yes. Hazaweed. Best wishes from stuff you should know from Mitchell Patrick. A absolutely. Okay, so, Chuck, you want to get down to this? Yes. How Jean Simmons works. Or Gene shallot. Gene Ween. Jean Siskal. Okay. Gene patents really is what we're talking about, right? Yes. Very interesting. I agree. Interesting and terrifying. And by the way, I just want to go ahead and say that there is a documentary, companion documentary that's required viewing for this one. It's called The Corporation. If you have Netflix, it's streaming on Netflix. You can also order the DVD or whatever, but you could watch it literally right this second. It's probably all over YouTube, too. It's like one of those docs, very well made, good stuff. I still haven't seen that. It touches on a lot of stuff in here and just goes into greater depth. So I say, check out the corporation. It's a good documentary either way. But let me give you a little story here, all right? There is a condition. It can be congenital. It can actually be acquired, strangely enough, although I didn't find out how. But it's called growth hormone deficiency. Right, okay. And basically it just means that you are short, you are smaller in stature than is average. Right, sure. Maybe you're smaller than the rest of your family members, who knows? But the point is your pituitary glands aren't producing enough growth hormone. Is that like a manual? Lewis, I imagine that he has some sort of growth hormone deficiency. I think it's an umbrella term, but yes. The good thing is it's treatable. And it's been treatable for a while and we knew for a very long time where to get the treatment, where to get human growth hormone. Okay. And that was extracting it from the pituitary glands of cadavers. Cool. Up until the 70s, if you had growth hormone deficiency and you were given injections, the stuff they were injecting you with was extracted from cadavers pituitary glands. But it was still good to go. It was it worked. Yeah. Wow. But it was very expensive. I mean, the extraction process, getting your hands on a dead body, and there's a lot of factors involved. And then until the 1980s when a company called Novo Nordisk got a patent for a product called Nano this is a mouthful that it had created in 1973, but it didn't get a patent until 1982. Couldn't they just call it go juice? Yeah. Or grow juice. That would be much more appropriate. Right, okay. We'll figure that out later. So the history to me is one of the most interesting parts here. And we'll get to 1982, which was a landmark year in this field. But let's back up. Josh. Yes. Let's use the wayback machine because we haven't done that now. Wow, it has been a lot, right? There's a cobweb in here. It's musty somebody's been eating cheese too. Yeah, there's like wrappers here. Processed cheese. Interesting. So let's go back in time. There are three rulings over the years, starting in 1853 that sort of led to what we're talking about, but they weren't consistent. They sort of flip flopped on the subject. In 1853, Robert Morris of the Telegraph fame was initially denied his patent because part of it involved electromagnetism, a key part of it. And they said, you can't patent electromagnetism. No. Why? Silly boy. Because it's principle of nature. Right. It's like my device uses that cloud right there. So I'm going to patent that cloud. Right. Like you can't patent a cloud. Well, what about the process that makes clouds? No, you can't. It's nature. That's natural. You can't patent nature. And this was back when the US patent Office was the God fearing US. Patent Office, and they knew what to issue patents for and what to not do. Not the crazy, cuckoo, mixed up patent Office of today. That's right. Where you can patent thoughts and dreams. Might as well. I'm patenting you, Chuck. I actually owned that already. Oh, okay. And you owe me $10 for even saying that. So following that, the second ruling, in 1912, another court ruled that you could patent adrenaline because it's a distilled type of adrenaline that was treated in a lab outside the body, and it was different than the natural adrenaline inside the body. Right. Then after World War II, another ruling reversed it again in the Supreme Court said, I'm sorry, you cannot patent this mixture of bacteria that you're making in your lab. Right. Even though everything doesn't exist in nature. Yeah. And this would later become a real touchstone in this argument. Like, does this exist in nature? Like that cloud right there? Sure, it's natural. You can't patent it. Right. But could you patent a process or a cloud that you can create in the lab that nature doesn't produce and maybe isn't capable of producing? That's where it gets hairy. Yeah. Another big step forward was the Plant Patent Act of 1030, thanks to a dude named Luther Burbank, which is a pretty rocking name. I think that's my new hotel name, luther Burbank. Yeah. It's pretty cool for an early 20th century white dude. He was a botanist, and he created more than 800 strains and varieties of plants, including the Shasta Daisy, the Fire Poppy, and the White BlackBerry. I'm a fan of the Shasta Daisy Luther burger. I see him wearing four finger drinks oh, yeah. That says LUTH. Yeah. Or Shasta. So he was obviously pretty inspired to create plants. And they said, you know what? That's pretty neato that you can do all this stuff, so you should be allowed to. We're going to pass this Plant Act, but don't even try to patent bacteria again. There is a problem with bacteria that the Court has always traditionally disallowed. Apparently, they consider bacteria more natural life than a hybrid plant. That's true. Because of the next case. And that Plant Patent Act. Really? That is a big deal, even just beyond what we're talking about. And we'll get to that later what effects that has had. Yeah. And then there's also a Plant Protection Act of 1970 that also allowed patents as well. But again, this allowed bacteria. Bacteria keeps getting kicked around, kicked around, kicked around. Until diamond v. Shakrabarti. Yes. Yes. Ananda Chakrabarti worked for GE, developed a bacterium that could break down crude oil and said, hey, we should use this for oil spills. Yeah, very useful. Great idea. The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals I'm sorry, it was initially rejected, and then the Customs and Patent Appeals Office overturned that, saying that the fact that it's alive has no significant purpose in our patent office. Right. And also, you left out that Chakrabodi created a bacteria that didn't exist in nature. Oh, it was brand new. It was recombinant. He made it himself. It's pretty cool. Yes. But then the Supreme Court will god to the spectacular. The Supreme Court then argued the case, and in 1980, Warren burger wrote that whoever invents and this is very key moving forward, whoever inventor discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacturer or and this is the key composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof may obtain a patent, therefore, subject to the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go ipsum facto. But composition matters. The key three words there. Right? There's a big difference between a product of nature or a principle of nature and the composition of matter, which could be anything from using two types of metal to create an alloy, or insulin, creating two types of DNA to create something like insulin. And by the way, diamond, in diamond v. Chakrabati, diamond was the head of the STATIN's office. He fought against it. Yeah. He sued him to be like, no, this is wrong. When did you feel like you're in trouble if the head of the patent's office was suing you? It just seems worse. But he won. Sydney diamond and that changed everything. Within two years, the first gene patent, what we would call a gene patent, was issued to the University of California. Go Bears. Yeah. For a hormone engineered, I guess, for milk production, I'm not sure. And I was involved in breast cancer treatment, but I don't know exactly what it did. I got you. And then the same year insulin was patented, recombinant insulin, which was huge also. So that was the same year that Novo Nordisk got its patent for Mon. So Clunky, the human growth hormone product. Yeah. So that really just kind of opened up the floodgate. Chakrabodi changed everything, and that shows up in the corporation, too. It's pretty interesting how they talk about that. Oh, really? But really, I guess, as far as gene patents go, the real moment when everything changed was in the late 90s, when this little known group at the time popped up in the media and said, hey, we're almost finished entirely mapping the human genome. And the US Patent Office workers went and there was a flood of patent requests. Right. One was for Pandora radio, right? Yeah. Wasn't that based on that, the Music Genome Project, was it? I think so. I would imagine, if that's what they called it or inspired by it. Right. But, yeah, everyone lined up all of a sudden. It's like, oh, patent this, patent. That. Right. They'd be like, I heard about this gene. I want to patent it. I want to patent this one. And so they were inundated with it. And so in 2001, the US patent and Trademark Office, the USPTO, issued new guidelines saying, okay, yes, anybody can apply for a patent, but you have to know what you're talking about. You have to know you have to know what the gene does, or you have to come up with some process using this gene. There has to be criteria. Everybody credible use. Yeah, there has to be criteria. Sure. And that definitely allowed some of the there was a high watermark and the tide ebbed a little bit. A little bit. But currently, I believe, which was the initial stat, there are 30 00 50 00 human gene patents right now in the US. Alone. Yes, 47,000. Involving inventions like equipment involving genetic material or insulin is another example. Yeah, true. It's an invention using genetic material, but there are more than 3 million on file as applicants. Yeah, like that and pending. Sure. And that's with the tide ebbing. I hope it's ebbing. And that count. Right. Just in the United States again, isn't it? Yeah. In the United States. There's plenty in Europe and Japan. Basically. Europe, Japan and the US. Are the leaders in issuing patents for this kind of stuff. Like, basically, if you want to push the rest of the world around, you go get a patent at one of one of these areas. Patent Offices. Right. So let's talk specifically about the US. Right? Let's talk patent. Yeah. If you want to get a patent, you have to meet some criteria. It doesn't matter what the patents for, whether it's for the dippy bird or for human growth hormone. And so for any invention to get a patent to be approved for a patent, it has to meet four criteria. Right. It has to be useful, it has to be non obvious. Right. Like, it can't be a shoestring. I don't know. What is the obvious one being Helen? An obvious invention would be man, I don't know. I'm just curious. Maybe using peppermint to fight bad breath, maybe. So obvious. Yeah, it's obvious. Sure. Anybody can do that. You can't patent that. There you go. There's a non obvious example. It has to be novel, right? Yeah, sure. And it has to meet the enablement criterion, which is a big deal. And this is pretty much the whole reason patents exist. One of the big reasons. Yeah. It's got to have detail. It can't be just a big, broad, esoteric thing. It's got to be detailed enough where someone in that field can figure it out and use it. Right. And this is one of the major reasons the Patent Office exists. It's to say, okay, thank you for sharing your findings with the rest of the world. We're going to give you 20 years of exclusivity, but in return, you're being totally transparent here's all of the processes here's, all the notes here's, anything that anybody working in your field can look at and use to build upon your research, or they have to pay you well. But can they gank it and change it enough to where it doesn't? You can. Those are called patent trolls, and apparently they're a big problem right now. They're thwarting technology. I think techstep did something on patent trolls recently. Interesting. Yeah. So if you are issued a patent, you get 20 years of exclusivity. Nobody can use it, market it, sell it, anything has to do with your invention. Or process unless they pay you. They have to go through you and you license it and reap the benefits. Right. Yeah. And the reason it was such a mad rush when the genome project was first completed because obviously, the first person to invent something gets the patent. So if you can prove that, then that's yours for 20 years. Well, that's based on the first to invent principle. Yeah, right. Exactly. So you have to prove that. And then after that, you've got it for 20 years. And everyone was in a big rush to be the first with these gene patents. Have you heard the story of Alexander Graham Bell and Elijah what was his name? You mean the real guy who invented the telephone? Yeah. What's his name? Oh, is that the case? I knew there was some stink there, but I wasn't sure. Elijah Gray. Apparently, Elijah Gray invented a telephone that looked and worked way more like the ones we use today. It was a cell phone, actually. Say the ones we used in the exactly right. It wasn't a cell phone, but the kind the rotary dial, all that. But Alexander Graham Bell beat him to the Patent office. Now, did he steal his ideas, or was it just confirmed he was independent? Okay, I can't remember what that's called, but there's an idea that the Zeitgeist were all ideas kind of float out there for anybody to latch onto, and sometimes people do independently. I wonder how far apart they were from each other and being completed. And I wonder if it was literally like, my horse fell sick that day and I couldn't make it to the office, but fell did. I don't remember how close it was, but it wasn't that close. It was pretty close. So the Patent Office has this first two event principle where it's not necessarily like, who to the Patent office, if you have a situation like that, who's been working on this longer or who reached a landmark longer, and then that's who gets the patent. That's why there was, like you said, that mad rush, because it's like, I noticed this first, so let me go ahead and get my patent in. Well, and with the case of, like, insulin or any of these gene patents, really, you can't just say, like, oh, I got this thing. They have to have it on file. Which is something I never knew. There are 26 culture depositories around the world thanks to this is such a mouthful. Thanks to the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the purpose of pet and procedure. So basically, it's like a repository where you send in your sample, right? Yeah. Is that the way I understand it? Right. And there's 26 of them worldwide, right? Yeah. And if it is a product of if it's something you remove from the body and process, the patent only applies to the very end result that you send in. Right. Not like the little stages along the way. Although you can patent those stages. Yeah, but they just have to be independent of one another. Right. So you've submitted your sample to a depository, you have applied for the patent, it's been issued, you're good to go. What are you patenting? I think there's a huge misunderstanding among the public that you're walking around and there's some company owns the rights to your genes. True or false? False. That is false. Okay. I mean a gene patent is kind of a misnomer. It's a pretty big misnomer actually, because there are certain criteria that have to be met. Like you have natural what is it? Natural matter. Is that what it's called? Something of nature. Composition of nature, yeah. Genes or composition of nature in your body? To patent something you have to extract genes and get them to do like jump through a flaming hoop outside of the body. Then you have something called composition of matter. Right. So what are some of the things that people are getting gene patents for? Well, it breaks down, my friend, into four categories pretty much. You want to go one at a time. Yeah. For a change. Diagnostics. That means they're looking to patent a method. Basically. Generally it tests for genetic differences, abnormalities, spotting, genetic markers and cancer, Alzheimer's, stuff like that. Right. Pretty nice way to use your time. I think it is, but it's also very controversial as we'll see in a little bit. Well, not all of it is, but three of the four are. Right. And with diagnostics what you're patenting is in fact the gene that you're looking at or the genes involved. Yeah. And the mutations. Right. So you have a bunch of different possible mutations. That's Hampshire. Right. But a very sharp company. And by the way, by saying you need to know what you're talking about or you need to have put some sort of research into this. Basically excluded Schmo's like you and I from getting gene patents and just said huge laboratories, huge corporations are the only ones who can possibly get gene patents now. So if you have a very sharp laboratory or very sharp corporation, they're going to have a patent for every possible mutation for a specific gene. And then ultimately what they're patenting is the screening process, the test exactly. Used to evaluate these mutations. So that's number one, functional use is the second. That is pretty much just discovering roles played by genes. They're usually issued for drugs that affect the functioning of the genes. Yeah. So I guess insulin would be that. No, insulin is composition of matter. Okay. So functional used to be like we understand that this mutation on this gene causes this to happen. So we're going to create a drug that makes the gene act normally, express normally, something like that. And that's the future of pharmaceuticals is genetically tailored drugs. Because right now when you take a drug, a tylenol or something, you're just throwing something in the wind and hoping it works. Right. Genetically tailored drugs, it's like they'll look at your genetic composition and then say, well, this is the drug you need, and it will work 98% of the time. Right. And it will work 100% effectively. And then 98%. $100,000, please make a check out. To merge process is the third type of patent in this category. And that's pretty easy. That's basically protecting a method by which the genes are extracted or manipulated. And that's the least controversial out of all these because it's a more traditional kind of path. Right. This is like science. Yes. And then you have composition of matter. That's a big one. Yeah. Composition of matter and diagnostics are the two most controversial. Composition of matter is like human growth hormone, insulin, stuff that saves lives. But it's an invention, quote, unquote, it is creating human growth hormone, using E. Coli to string together amino acids. That's an invention. It hats off to you. Sure. So what's the controversy? What's the problem with gene patents with issuing 20 years of exclusivity to somebody who teaches E. Coli to string together amino acids? Well, there's a couple of different controversies. One the ethical and social and economic. The other is the legal. As far as legal goes, if you're against it, you're going to argue that, dude, these are your genes. There is nothing more natural than the genes in your body. Right. So of course you can't patent them. And it doesn't matter what you do to them, it's still based on this product of nature that just leave it alone. Like, this is the heritage of humankind. It's us, and so it makes us us. Of course we shouldn't be issuing patents to corporations on genes. Yeah. Say the critics of gene patent. Proponents would say, hey, dude, if we can extract this from the body and manipulate it many times to the point where it's not even the same as before, then of course you should be able to patent that. Right. That's one of the reasons why we have patents, is to reward innovation, to reward very smart people, and to encourage more innovation and research and things that save lives so you don't have to extract growth hormone from the pituitary glands of the dead. Myriad genetics, should we talk about that? Good example. This is a big one. They filed seven patents relating to RCA One and BRCA Two. Basically what they developed was a test kit for breast and ovarian cancer. Right. And these two genes account for, I think, like 15% of breast zero ovarian cancer, I think. Breast cancer. Right. So it's pretty substantial. And Myriad got a patent on the screening kit that they created and they promptly turned around and sent letters to just about every cancer screening laboratory in the world. Right. And said, hey, we hear that you guys are saving people's lives. It's awesome. Keep up the good work. Just make sure that you send all of your cancer screening when it relates to these two genes, to us, and we'll do it, and we're going to charge you for it. Right. And throughout the world, people in laboratories threw these letters up in the air and cluck their tongues and stroke their beards in anger and strutted about their flasks. And in Canada, it was just overtly ignored. The Canadian government itself stepped in and was like, you don't need to listen to these crackpots in Europe. It was very controversial. I think it's largely ignored. So it's upheld, I think, in the US because this is the country that issued the patent, but elsewhere, they're like, we're not listening to you. And for a long time, Myriad didn't do anything. There wasn't any lawsuits. Right. And then there was one. And in 2010, the company turned down. Yeah, well, the US District Court said, no, we're not going to support this. And then in 2011, Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit overturned that lower courts decision. So it went up one step higher. And Myriad got satisfaction. They got Myriad satisfaction. Yeah. Do you know that means $30,000? It's an actual number. Myriad. Yeah. Just like decimate is 10%. Right. But this is one that I'm on the side of people using it correctly because I can't stand it when someone says, like, I had a myriad of when it's supposed to be just myriad. I had 30,000 costs. See, that's where I disagree with the 30,000 part. Like, say it correctly, but come on. Or you could just say, like, I had a myriad of costs, and then wink after we're like, I know what I'm talking about. Pull my finger. Yeah. So the Myriad case continues. I did like, when it was initially ruled against the ruling judge, he sounded sort of like, who is Andy Griffith's? Judge character or no, lawyer character. Matlock matt Lock. That's a lawyer's trick is what he called it. The Supreme Court said no, it's not a trick. They modified it. Your Honor, I don't know spit about lawyering, but I do know the human heart. I never saw that show. I didn't either, but there was a good sign at live send up of it. Of course, Phil Hartman did. R-I-P. Phil Hartman. Yeah. So, ethical, social challenges and controversies. This is where it gets hot. Yes. And I guess we should say we just kind of left it like myriads up in the air. That's the standard for what's going on in the US right now as far as gene patents go. And that was just a few months ago. The Patent Office is honoring its obligations and then the courts are people are suing people and the courts are just going all over the place. So it's just totally up in the air whether or not this is going to be allowed or what kind of standards will eventually adopt. We're in the heat of this. Yeah, we are. So yeah, let's talk about ethical the ethics of this, right? Yeah. I mean it's sort of along the same lines in a way as the legal challenges because proponents are going to say this is great for research. If you don't allow this then companies aren't going to be able to make a profit from this. So there's going to be no incentive to continue this kind of research. Research is going to stop and this research is important. Like you can say what you will about Myriad, but their screening test saves lives. Absolutely. And if they invented it then this sort of breaks down almost into private sector capitalism because if the private sector dried up because they couldn't make any money off this stuff, all the research would be left to government funded laboratories. Right? Yeah. It's very much divided among capitalist socialist lines and I think that the people who normally wouldn't consider themselves socialist are falling into the critics camp. Just the idea of having Jean patents out there. It is something that I think a lot of people think should just belong to all humankind. But the free market proponents do make a pretty good case that if you don't reward innovation and invention in clever monetarily techniques monetarily, then you have a problem. On the other side though, you can say, well, you're also issuing monopolies on things that are life saving that a company can charge whatever they want. Like what will you pay to find out whether you have cancer? Right. Or what will you pay for a drug that will get rid of your cancer? Chuck Bryant because we know your genetic makeup and we know that this will work perfectly with your genetic makeup. How much will you pay for that and we're the only company you can get it from. I'd pay everything I had. Yes you would. And so would every other person had the same similar genetic makeup as you. It's problematic. Yeah, it is. And also if it cures your cancer but then three weeks later your head explodes but it doesn't happen in everybody. That company has zero incentive to make its product so that it doesn't make 30% of people's heads explode because it has a monopoly. What are you going to do? You're still going to buy this thing, right? Another argument for is that at least what this process does is creates transparency and research. It's all out there. Everybody knows people might not be wasting their time duplicating research. A big one. B, people can build on your research and it will propel it further into the future. Should pretty good argument there. Yeah. But you can understand why this is not a cut and dried argument. Well, the AMA says we know liiki. Yeah. The AMA is saying like, that this won't help support research. The American Medical Association. It's saying that it will inhibit. Research on genetic disease. And basically, even worse than that, it will inhibit access for the average person. So I want to give an example of what is at stake here. Okay? Yes. So we've kind of seen like, this kind of reward does propel innovation and research, right? Yes. But there's this with the Plant Act of 1030 that allowed people to genetically modify plants. Luther Burbank yeah. And then get patents for those. There's a company called Monsanto and Monsanto came up with this idea called Genetic Use Restriction Technology. It's also known as terminator technology, where they have figured out how to insert a gene, basically a suicide gene, into its seeds. It's genetically modified seeds. Right. For second gen seeds, yes. So for the first generation seed, your plant will just grow like normal like a normal genetically modified organism. Right? Yeah. It will produce seeds, but the seeds it produces are sterile because it has a gene in it that won't allow it to produce seeds that can be used. Again, this means that you have to go to Montana to buy their seeds. You can't hoard their seeds and replant next year. Every year, you have to go and buy their seeds. Right. This is fine and dandy for very wealthy farmers in the west, but no matter where you are in the world, if you want to grow this cricket resistant type of wheat that Monsanto owns a patent on, you got to buy it from Monsanto and you have to buy it every year, no matter what you can afford or can't. And basically, there's a really good argument that you should not be allowed to own a pet and a license on a process as natural as a plant producing offspring producing seeds. Right. So that's one example that a lot of people point to is like a cautionary tale against gene patents. They did not Monsanto. They still hold us. They didn't release it and say, this is what we're doing. No, they actually vowed to not do that. Yes. They said, we won't do it, but you got to sign this agreement if you do business with us or we'll start releasing this. Right. And the agreement says that you won't reuse seeds that you get from their genetically modified plants. And didn't they buy up the company that was originally Delta and Pineland company? They ended up buying them up, didn't they? Yes. And this company has vowed the opposite, that they're going to start using that terminator gene commercially. Oh, they have? Yeah. So a lot of people are very nervous about whether or not that genetic use restriction technology will come into play. But, I mean, it's already effectively in play. We should do a Monsanto podcast. That would be explosive. Very explosive. Yeah, we will. So that's jean Patton we haven't done one of these in a while. I'm quite sure we're going to hear from people on both sides of this issue, and we want to. Yeah, I think we did a good job this time of keeping our own dirty laundry out of it. Yes, we did. Kudos to you, buddy. And you. So we have a bunch of stuff on jeans and gene patents, on how stuff works.com. Just type in gene patents. It will bring up a lot of stuff, including a quiz, which you could say is maybe a compendium to this episode. Who wrote this one? Michael Franco. Really? I don't know the name. Yeah, he does everything he does. But, yeah, it was a pretty good article. Just type in jeanpatton said the search bar athousofworks.com also, don't forget, check out the corporation. It's just a really interesting documentary. And I said, search bar in there somewhere. So that means it's time for listener mail. And this is the winning listener mail. Is it the first one? Really? Yeah. The author of this email will receive a free copy, hardcover copy, of John Hodgman's incredible book about the end of the world, the third in this trilogy of knowledge world knowledge called that Is All, which just came out on November 1. Hot off the pink. And you really should buy it. Yeah. Except for this person. John's a buddy and stuff. But it's very funny book. Yeah, it is. All right. I kind of forgot that when I picked this, but I think this Turkish listener, he deserves it. So, yeah, we'll go with him. The Lucky Turk. The Lucky Turk. Hey, guys. Listening to you from Turkey, I guess I gave that away. I really love the podcast. Thanks a lot for what you're doing. This might sound a bit like complaining, though. Oh, wait. I prefer that. I don't come across as complaining. And I don't know if you even have any more listeners from Turkey, but in various episodes, every time you mention Turkey, like when somebody was stuck in Turkey on the last episode where you were wondering if people can surf on the bosphorus phosphorus. Phosphorus. It always kind of sounds like you look down on Turkey a bit, to be honest. Untrue. We talked about being stuck in Turkey and how awful that would be. I don't recall that because I would love to go to Turkey sometime. I have a friend who played bass in the second most popular Turkish rock band in the late 90s. Really? Yeah. I don't remember the name of it, but Pepsi did a poll of Turks and my friend's band came in second and most popular. Was your friend Turkish? No, he went to Turkey just for the heck of it and ended up in the number two most popular rock band in Turkey. That's probably not the hardest to do. See, that's what this guy is talking about right now. I know that's you Chuck. I'm getting wrapped up in your problem. All right, sorry to drag you down. You guys seem to be a couple of people who would like to know the facts. So I just wanted to suggest you check out things like Olu Deniz turkey or maybe Feta turkey or Bodrum turkey in Google Images. I'm just saying I don't think anyone would not mind being stuck in Turkey really, if you really know what Turkey was like. And I did look these places up. Are they amazing? Oh dude, you know, gorgeous. Turkey also arguably has the world's first city. I can't remember what it's called, but it's old. Just because I felt like I have to say this since I'm already writing an email. There is no surfing on the Bosphorus, not even swimming on the Bosphorus. It's kind of dangerous. Usually it's just bigger ships crossing country that use that. And there are no beaches there. But Turkey is surrounded on three sides by the sea. It's basically a peninsula, so there's windsurfing, every kind of water sport you can think of on the seaside cities. In the media, Turkey comes across as if it was a dusty, hot and primitive country, which I think is what I have been saying and I should say when I worked for my last company, which was a chicken software company, one of our clients was in Turkey. And some of our guys would go over there to the chicken farm. It was awful too. They would come back saying, please God, don't ever send me to Turkey again. They were in the awful parts of Turkey. They were raising chickens in Turkey. Yes. I have to say that though only some small cities on the eastern edges are like that. Guys, the people in different clothes are more interesting than people to look at, who look like most of us, who look like every other European country. So the media only reflects the different part. Kind of like only showing rednecks grilling steak on a shopping cart, which I've never seen. Is that a new thing? I guess so. I would like to see that. The rest of Turkey is pretty much like California. Great climate, people social and culturally even, especially Istanbul. It resembles a very crowded San Francisco, not Constantinople, what with all the hills and the bridges and the hipsters. So that is from Ghozda Gozde and dude, you're getting a book. And I am sorry for bad mouthing Turkey because I did look at pictures and it's nothing at all like I thought, I'm not sorry for bad mouthing Turkey because I didn't. And if I did, I was totally joking then I feel like I owe this guy book. Yeah. The only place in the world I would never go is Detroit. I totally go to Turkey. Detroit is awesome. So what's his name? GHOSTA. You get a book so you're going to have to write back in. Yeah, we need your mailing address, GHOSTA. Yeah. And we should probably make them pay the difference for international shipping. Well, and it's Turkey. It probably just says GHOSTA turkey. That's the thing. Yeah, because there's so many, they even have it in there. We'll just put a bunch of stamps on it and throw it in the water. Exactly. Go. So send us an email with your mailing address because we really think there probably are more than one of you in Turkey. And to all the rest of you, please send an emails. Thank you. We'll try to read them, but you get notebooks. If you want to get in touch with us, you can on Twitter, syskpodcast on Facebook, facebook. Comstuffynow and via email at stuffpodcast@howtoffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join Housetop 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? 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 Kilgarif 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." | ||
How Chocolate Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-chocolate-works | People have been consuming chocolate for at least a couple thousand years, but it's only been in the last hundred that humanity has arrived at its crowning achievement: the smooth, creamy milk chocolate bar. Find out about the history of chocolate, how it | People have been consuming chocolate for at least a couple thousand years, but it's only been in the last hundred that humanity has arrived at its crowning achievement: the smooth, creamy milk chocolate bar. Find out about the history of chocolate, how it | Tue, 19 Nov 2013 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=323, tm_isdst=0) | 39044564 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and I'm with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's with me right now. Right now drinking the coffee. That's right. And Jerry's over there. Fresh back from San Francisco. Everything's coming up aces in this room right now. Just because we're here. Yeah, just because it's stuff you shouldn't. That's right. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. Hey, I'd like to shout out a Little Bit Sweets for no reason other than they make awesome candy. Send it to us from time to time. It's been a little while. Well, we're doing chocolate today and Little Bit Sweets in Brooklyn, New York now has a retail space. Oh, yeah. Congratulations. At Chelsea Market. You ever been there? That's awesome. I have not. Oh, wait, is that the one that's relatively new and awesome? Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if they're rubbing elbows with, like Mario Batali and all that. Doesn't he have a place there? I don't know. I think he does. I've been through there, though. It's a cool place. That's neat. So congratulations to Liz and Jen. Of Lizuz. Congrats. You guys go see them at Chelsea Market. They make great chocolate. And I'm going to ask Liz after this is released, if we screwed it up really bad or if we got it pretty good. Oh, the chocolate thing? Yeah, because she'll know. Well, sure. She's a chocolate tour. That's right. Okay. That was nice of you, Chuck. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. Well, you just kind of screwed up my intro question. Oh, really? What was it? Have you ever had chocolate? Do you know about chocolate? Yeah, I know a little bit about chocolate. I do too, now. And I was surprised at reading this article how closely this episode will probably resemble our coffee episode. I know you're going to say that it's just like they're almost like two beans in the same pod. Yeah. And some of the processes are similar and yes, I totally thought the same thing. Yeah. People are exploited in much the same way. There's child slavery involved. Sure. Fair Trade swoops in and tries to correct that. There's beans, there's roasting, there's drying. Yeah. All sorts of similar processes. And there's aficionados who I imagine can tell the difference between being grown one place and being grown another place because it makes a difference as we'll find. True. I think we should finish out. Maybe we could make a suite and do wine and then those would be kind of three similar well, no, we got to put it in with our, like, beer and cheese, too. That's right. We'll call it the good Life. Sweet. Let's add yachts at the end, just to cap it off. Beer, wine, cheese, chocolate, yachts. I never realized how ugly that word is until just now. Yachts. The way I said it, even if you say it like it's spelled. You come up with yachts. Stupid word. So, chuck. Yes. Chocolate, it turns out, is actually a pretty ancient thing, like eating chocolate. It grows from the cacao tree. Well, consuming chocolate. Right. Okay. Yes. Nice catch. They found a bowl from somewhere in Mesoamerica that dates back to, I think, 1300 BCE. And it has chocolate residue in it still. Yeah, traces of it. We know that people have been consuming chocolate since at least 1300 BCE. It's highly unlikely that we just happened to find the first bowl that was ever used to consume chocolate for the first time. Right. And we know that the first record of somebody mentioning chocolate came about 300 Ad. The Maya. We're drinking it back then. That's right. Yeah. They offered it to the gods. Yes. It was highly cherished. It was. But it was a beverage. And for 90% of chocolate's life, it has been a beverage. Gritty, frothy, kind of bitter beverage. And then sometimes they would add cinnamon. Hot pepper. Yeah. I like hot pepper. And chocolate, by the way. I do too. Like the chili chocolates. So good. A nice sipping chocolate. Well, no, I mean the hard variety I got you. It's good in, like, a sipping chocolate too. Oh, really? You can come across that. Okay. Yeah. So the Maya were the ones who really kind of founded chocolate consumption, as we understand it. And then it was adopted by the Aztecs, who had a pretty short memory span, apparently, because the Aztecs, the Triple Alliance, conquered the Maya at some point and said, hey, we like this chocolate, but we're going to forget that we got it from the Maya. We're going to say we got it from the god Ketzakotal. Right. And he was a god who was kicked out of the dominion of gods for giving chocolate to the Aztecs, as the Aztecs tell it, which is not nice. What? Getting kicked out? Yeah. For sharing your chocolate. Yeah. Because you're out chocolate and you got kicked out of the pantheon. That's right. And the Aztecs called chocolate. I'm going to pronounce that Wakata. I think that's probably right. And it's thought to mean bitter water. And like you said, they would add certain spices to it to make it more palatable, but the gods and the kings and everyone thought it was, like a super drink, so they would drink, like, tons of it. Well, yeah. Montezuma was apparently fond enough of it that he drank like, 50 cups of it a day. That's crazy. I think we said that in another one. That sounded familiar. It did to me too. Yeah. Or maybe he drank lots of coffee too. I wonder what it was. I don't know. It was a currency. Yeah. There was actually a 16th century Aztec document that is basically a currency exchange for cacao pods, beans. For chocolate beans. There's like 100 of them. Buys a turkey. Yes. And it's a one for one exchange for a good tamale. Yeah, that's a pretty good deal. Yeah, I take that. Yeah. But the point is, this chocolate, it was sacred to the Mesoamericans. It was currency. It was a big deal. And then the Spaniards came along and they said, what are you guys drinking? And they took a sip and they spit it out. And then they tried it again. They're like. Maybe it's okay. And there's some pretty good quotes about what the Spaniard thought of chocolate and how it tasted. Yeah. One of them comes from a Jesuit missionary and he said, It is as loathsome to such as they're not acquainted with it having a scum or froth. That is very unpleasant taste. Yeah. I also saw another quote that said it was a Spaniard who referred to chocolate as a bitter drink for pigs. I mean, really bitter chocolate I can't stomach. No. And that's what they were drinking. The concept of sweet chocolate came thanks to Europe, and it came about this time. So who was it that conquered the Aztecs? Cortes Cortez. The killer. Cortez basically said, all right, I'm going to take this chocolate and we're going to see what Europe does to it. And Europe went crazy for it. They sweetened it. Right. That was Europe's big addition to chocolate. Adding sugar cane or honey or molasses or something to the chocolate to sweeten. And all of a sudden, Europe is like, we like this. Let's enslave the people to grow it. Cortez comes back and says, Good news. They love the chocolate. And Montezuma and the rest of the triple lines were like, that's great. We don't care. He's like, no, this does pertain to you. Yeah. This is good news and bad news. Right? Exactly. Bad news is you have a new great father. Meet my thunder stick. Sure. The boomstick. So what the Europeans did, they enslaved them for a while and then the demand rose. So they said, hey, why don't we just start growing this stuff in territories that we have conquered? Which is you can only grow the cacao tree within about 20 degrees north or south of the equator. The tropics. Yeah. And it likes very wet conditions. And it's also apparently the cacao tree is really finicky, which we'll talk about. But when they did figure out that they could plant it along the tropics, the cost of chocolate dropped tremendously in Europe. Yeah. Which was necessary to make it something that wasn't just for royalty. Right. And then still at this time, people were consuming it as a drink, even in Europe as well. But they were sweetening it. And then so you would have a person who got a hold of the beans, roasted them and then made their own chocolate and then sold it all in one place. Then the Industrial Revolution happened and everybody applied the principles of industry to everything. You basically smash everything. Right? Exactly. And see what happens. Use a machine and smash it. Unless you're a luddite. And then you smash the machine itself. That's right. In 1828, there was a Dutch entrepreneur named Conrad johannes Van Houten. Do you think in a mill house. Yeah. And he was the first one to press the cacao bean, which separates and we'll get into all this later. But essentially it separated the cacao into the butter and the powder, the dry part. Right. And he figured out if you add a little more butter back into it, which is strange, you can make a bar. Yes. Or if you add a little alkali, be a little less bitter, a little more palatable. And then Joseph Ryan, Englishman, said, hey, why don't we add a little sugar, maybe a little more cocoa butter? And now we have the first chocolate bar. Okay, so I have it wrong. Joseph Fry invented the chocolate bar. Van Houten invented Dutch cocoa, which is a sweeter cocoa powder. And Rodolf Lint, if you might recognize that still, how do you not like Lint? He invented conking in 1879. And we'll get into what that is later. But it's a pretty important process. But it's conk like the shell. Yeah, because the first machine like the shell. Right. But we'll get into what that means. But it basically makes it smoother and more affordable. You can mass produce it as like, the chocolate bars we know and love. And then in the early 1009 hundreds, all this is going on within a few decades. There's like all these sudden quick advances in chocolate that takes chocolate from this frothy, gritty, bitter drink to chocolate as we understand it today, starting in the 19th century. And then, I think in the early 1000 and a guy with the last name of Nestle thought to add milk powder. And then we had milk chocolate and humanity achieved its pinnacle. That's right. Henry Nestle and Milton Hershey. Very important dudes. Sure. And that was for milk chocolate. But you can also make dark chocolate less bitter by some of the same processes. Because when you buy the dark chocolate, it has a percentage of cacao. Right. And the higher the percentage, the more bitter it is. Right. I can't go above like, 70 is my max. Do your mouth just start catching on fire? Your teeth fall out like that bitter chocolate taste some people love tastes super bittery. I'm a super taster with bitter? Yes. You remember in our taste episode, we talked about super tasters since that episode, I've noticed that with bitter, I taste it way more than most people. Interesting. Yeah. How do you like your chocolate? I can handle dark chocolate, but it tastes really bitter to me. I can barely handle grapefruit. I had to train myself to enjoy grapefruit. I don't like grapefruit. Yeah. Maybe you're a bitter super tasty, too. Maybe. But I can tell you that just practice makes perfect with drinking grapefruit, too. Well, for me, eating chocolate. Right. And I like a sprinkle. A little sea salt on it now, too. You like that? Yeah, that's pretty good. All right, so let's get into the seed or the bean a little bit. The growing pods on a tree and the tree itself, they grow taller than 25ft, but for cultivation, they trim them so they don't grow above 25ft. About ten or twelve is the height that they try to keep them at. Yeah. Because people climb up and pick them. Yeah. This is something I find very interesting about climb. I think they use a long tool, like a telescopic knife. Yeah. But the cacao trees are so fickle that they actually have kept chocolate production as like a family business. Yeah. You can't mass produce these things. You can't mass harvest these things. It's still got to be done by hand because the pods and the seeds don't all ripen at the same time. So you can't just drive a machine in there and be like, get all those pods out. And so you have to do them individually, one by one, when they're ready to come off the tree. Plus the harvesting a seed pod, which is about the shape of a long orange football, about twelve inches long. The way you harvest it is really important because if you break off the bloom that it's growing out of, you will damage it so that no other pods grow out of that. So it's a really finicky tree. Kind of cool. It is cool. 90% of the world's cacao is grown by just two and a half million farmers, all of them working five to ten acre plots. Family plots. Like a family farming business, for sure. Yeah. Like we said earlier. Earlier it was mesoamerica, but now most of the farms are in Africa. In West Africa, yeah. Coat of War is like the cacao producing was that ibreakos? Yeah. Okay. They prefer coat duvoir. Really? I think so. Okay. Yeah. They produce more than a million metric tons just on the per year. There are only three varieties of bean. Right. And they are the Forestaro. And it's the most common because it yields the most beans. It has the most chocolatey taste, too. Yeah. And it's the heartiest, so they do better. And then on the other side of the coin, you have the Criolo, which is very complex, but very difficult to grow, very delicate, and a small percentage of all the cacao beans that are harvested. Right. And then there's the Trinitario, which is a hybrid of the Criolo. Is that how we're saying it? Yeah. And the Forestaro that somebody took a forest arrow to Trinidad, where they were growing criollo, and they hybridized. So you have, basically this full spectrum of finicky and then different tastes of chocolate. Yeah. And as we said earlier, like, with coffee and like with grapes for wine. If you're in a fishingado, you know what geographical location will produce different flavors and taste right. And companies, when they make chocolate, are very picky and secretive about exactly where they get their beans. Some it's all one farm. Some, they like to do a nice blend. But that's a trade secret. Right. But just because you have a Forestaro bean in one part of the country doesn't mean it tastes the same as in the other part. Right. So not only do these different varieties produce different tastes, like depending on where you grew a specific variety, it'll taste different from that same variety grown elsewhere. That's right. And those trees, we should say, are called Theodoroma Cacao. They were named by Linnaeus, and it translates to Cacao, food of the gods. And those three varieties aren't the only three, but they're the three dominant varieties grown worldwide. Oh, they're more than that. Okay. So I guess we should get into a little bit about the process. Yeah. Because what interested me is all those European additions to the process of producing chocolate are still based on the original ancient means of growing producing chocolate. So it's like when you go through the process of producing chocolate, then you just take it through these additional steps to make chocolate as we understand it, which is pretty cool because they're doing this ancient method still. You've heard there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's only one way to make chocolate machinery. He's improved. But you're right, it's still the same, which is really neat. Right. So you have these ripe and pods like we talked about. They change color from green to orange, and then it's time to cut them down. And then the beans and pulp are removed and left to ferment, which is exactly what you think. They cover it up with banana leaves and stuff and let the moisture seep out of it slowly. Yes. And this is one of the few things where alcohol is just a byproduct of the fermentation process rather than the goal. Right. Because I'm sure some people drink this chocolate alcohol, but it's discarded. Is it? Yeah, as far as I know. I don't think Nestle is bottling it or anything. Yeah. But I bet the farm workers might have a nap. I wonder what that tastes like. I'll bet it's awful. I'm sure it is. So in the Cacao bean, there's things like bacteria and yeast that produce acids and gases, and they break down some of those sugars over the course of the fermentation process, and they're going to end up dark brown in the end. Right. After about a week of fermenting. Yes. And then they pack them in the juke bags, take them to the buyers, they grade the beans because it's very specific, like the quality of the bean. You'll get a certain price depending on how good they are. Right. And then it goes on to the next step, which is where the companies who produce chocolate buy the seeds from the buyers. That's right. And those sugars being broken down in the fermentation process become very important at this step, because the first thing you do is you take all of your cacao beans and roast them. And when you're roasting in this article, it says that sometimes you just roast the nibs first. I found that pretty much everybody roasts the bean and then roast the NIB separately later on. Yeah. The NIB is actually the meat, actually what becomes chocolate. Right. A cacao bean has a shell that you take off, and the meat inside is a cocoa NIB. So you roast the bean first, and then later on, you roast the NIB itself. And as you're roasting it, what you're doing is creating something called the Mayard reaction. Yeah, man, which is basically the sugars that were broken down and exposed during fermentation are combined with amino acids that are also present in the cacao. And when placed together in the presence of heat, you have something called flavor compounds that are produced. And depending on the amino acid present, whether it's cheese or whether it's beer, whatever it is bread, the sugars and the amino acids are going to react differently to create different flavors. And with chocolate specifically, these different amino acids produce chocolate flavor. Yeah, it's non enzymatic browning. And it's not just chocolate. I mean, if you like pretzels or if you like if you like the flavor of anything. Well, no, that's not true. It's only certain things that have this reaction. Oh, really? Yeah, like bread when it's toasted or baked, a steak when it's brown. Anything important? French fries. Right. And so the roasting process is anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours at about 250 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. And every company has their own methods for this. Everyone's going to have their own specific roasting process. But that's a general thing. Right. So the next thing that happened is you need to get that NIB extracted, and so they quickly cool the beans and send them through what's called a cracker and a fanner that splits the shell and blows off the shell, and you're left with a NIB. And then at that point, the NIB is ready to go to the mill to be ground, or it's roasted and then ground into chocolate liquor. So it's roasted again before it's ground. Yes. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Like, if anything, the nibs the thing you want to roast, for sure. This article insinuates that you might not roast the bean. You're just going to roast the NIB. Got you. Definitely roast the NIB first. Okay. Because that's where the flavor compounds come from. But you can roast the NIB inside the bean, too, right? Yeah. Okay. Like, it's a two step process. Got you. Okay. So now it goes to the grinder, a melancheur, which is French. And there are these big granite rollers that basically mash up those nibs into a pace. They called the mass. Then that goes into a press at about \u00a36000 per square inch. That's a lot, man. It's a whole lot that'll crush you flat so much that it actually melts the cocoa butter into a liquid called chocolate liquor. Pressure from pressure? Just from pressure and friction. Okay. Well, that produces heat. Yeah. So that's your chocolate liquor, even though it's not alcoholic at all. And that was Van Houten that came up with the process you just described. Right. He's the one who figured out how to separate powder from butter. Hey, Bart. Yeah? Milk. So then you've got your two components. It basically separates them. You've got your liquid cocoa butter at this point, right. And your powder, it's called a press cake. Your dried powder is or cocoa cake coco cake. I like that better, actually. I do, too. So depending on what your purpose is from here, you might go in some different directions. If you're just going to make, like, Nestle Quick chocolate milk mix, you're going to pulverize that powder into a finer powder. So that's another thing I saw on the Garrettelli site when they were describing how they make chocolate, it sounds like you would pulverize that cocoa cake no matter what. And then the harder or the more you pulverize it, the smaller the micron of the cocoa powder. And so the finer that is, the less grainy your end result chocolate will be. Right. So, like, Gary Deli says that they grind theirs down to 19 microns because they want a very smooth product. Exactly. Because they're garadelli. Right. And then the butter or whatever you introduce back into whether it's cocoa butter or say, like canola oil or something, is going to also have an impact on the quality of the chocolate made. Yeah. And if you're reintroducing cocoa butter, it's a better quality, obviously, than vegetable oil. All right. This is also where you add in sugar, some other flavorings. Lectifin. Yeah. What is that? I was hoping you don't it's an emulsifier. Okay. So it makes it a fluffier lighter. All right. That to me is like the fact of the podcast. Like, how many times have you looked at an ingredients list and been like, how is it lacked up then? Yeah, it's an emulsifier, friends. That's the fact of the podcast. Yeah, strangely. All right, I haven't picked mine yet. Maybe cocoa cake. Next up, we have the process that Lint figured out early on that we talked about conking, and some people say this is an accident because he forgot and left it in a mile an hour or two long. Right. Which may be true, who knows? But basically what you get is a smooth liquid, which makes it easier to mold into chocolate bars. So I looked again on the Garadelli site. Basically, the conquer or the conking machine is just like a huge VAT with two paddles constantly going around. Yeah, I've seen other ones, too. It was just bizarre how this article reads. I think they literally call it a magic process that people don't fully understand. Basically, to me, it was like, no, you're just kind of mixing these ingredients together for a very long time. And it's such that the cocoa powder, every grain, every micron of cocoa powder becomes coated with cocoa butter. Yes. Just really intense mixing. Exactly. It's not magic. Right. I just thought that was really strange. The host article agreed. It was really insane. Clown posse conking his magic. Yeah. That's funny. So it's not magic. It's just really thorough. Thorough mixing evenly distributes that cocoa butter. It polishes the particles, makes everything super smooth and delicious. Generates a little bit of heat. Yeah. Which helps create more flavor compounds, because in this time, it's with the sugars and the amino acids in the milk combining with those things in the chocolate, too, which takes you to flavor country, and it's where that Malliard that's what I'm talking about. Reaction happens. Yeah. Because it happens again, because it's producing heat. And then finally it introduces air, which removes even more bitterness. So that's the purpose of the magic of conking. Then we have to temper it. Tempering. They don't even really say what it is either. So you know how, like, if you make candy, you have to have a candy thermometer also, it's going to just be completely screwed up and like, a candy recipe will be like, do not go past this temperature. So they figured out that there are six stages of crystal formation. Well, we got to say what tempering is first. I thought I was well, it's stirring. It's magic stirring. It's stirring. Heating and cooling and reheating while you're stirring. Yeah. That's what tempering is. Exactly. But what you're doing on a chemical level yes. Is that you're forming cocoa crystals, and there are six types of cocoa crystals that can possibly form in chocolate. And they figured out that type five crystals are the ones that make the best chocolate. So you want to heat the chocolate up to the point where all these type one through four crystals turn into type five crystals, but not so much that your type five crystals turn into type six crystals, because at that point, you're fired. If you work in a chocolate factory, man, you make type six crystals, you're in big trouble. Well, they have machines that do this now. Right, but before they fire you on the spot for making type six crystals yeah. Or if you set the machine wrong, they can fire you. Right. I'm sure you're going to get fired one way or another. Yeah. Someone's getting fired. But you also don't want it. So you don't want the temperature to go to stop before it hits 93 degrees Fahrenheit, which is apparently the magic temperature for type five crystal springs. You'll just have type four crystals. Yeah. Which apparently aren't any good. So think about this process that's been undergone that started with picking seed pods by hand fermenting them under banana leaf. Well, how do they figure that out, though? Like, who first looked at these disgusting looking things said, hey, I bet that would be good? Haven't you wondered how many people had to die to figure out what we can and can't eat as human beings? Sure. Like, along the way, there had to be a lot of, like, well, so we stay away from that. Let's try this weird looking thing next. Who's up? Well, the first people to eat anything, the first person that looked at a cow and said, that furry creature inside that lies some pretty nice meat. Yeah. The cow went, yeah, I agree. I like that stuff, like, going back to the beginnings. But this process is just mind boggling just to make chocolate. And I'm really glad that all these people came together to contribute to chocolate, to the creation of chocolate as we understand it and love it today. Great sir. I love chocolate. So the tempering process in the end, besides the chemical gabbie cook, is going to define how hard and shiny and glossy that chocolate is going to end up being. Yeah. So have we made the chocolate? Yes, we have. I think you just cool it and then you press it into bars or whatever and chuck. That seems like a fantastic place to put a message break. What do you think? Yes. Okay, so we're back to chocolate. Yeah. So back to chocolate. We should talk about a guy named Milton Hershey, who was a great guy because he made chocolate inexpensive and able to get it into the hands of children for just a few pennies a bar back in the day. And now people love it worldwide. They do. And now they can love it in all sorts of weird ways, too. I love the chocolate covered potato chips. Yeah, those are good. Chocolate covered bacon. I don't know if I've ever had that or not. Yes, it's good. Yeah, pretty much chocolate. And everything is fine. Yes. I like the salt. I like the heat. Along with chocolate. You can get chocolate facials these days. I don't know about that, though. Why not? Yeah, I don't know. Give me a mud mask. But made of chocolate. No, made of mud. We should probably say. Who eats the most chocolate in the world? The Americans, probably. No, the Americans eat about half as much chocolate as the Brits, the Germans and the Swiss. Yeah, of course. The Swiss. They each eat about \u00a324 a year. The average Swiss person eats \u00a324 of chocolate of toblerone. Oh, man. I'm sure they're like toblerone see, I don't like chocolate snobs, because I like a variety of chocolate people that turn their nose up at, like, a milk chocolate bar. It still tastes good. I like milk chocolate, but also like the nice dark chocolate. Your equal opportunity chocolate eaters love chocolate, too. It's so good. But Americans eat about \u00a312 a. Year, by the way. Ten to twelve. It's still a lot of chocolate. It is me chocolate. So we talked earlier, I guess. Let's talk a little bit about the health properties of chocolate. Yes. Because it's a big deal. They have things called flavonoids and phenolics antioxidants that help protect your heart. Same stuff that's found in wine. If you're eating the dark chocolate, milk, chocolate is not good for you. No, but it is in some ways, which I will mention in a second. Okay. But it can help prevent bad cholesterol or your risk of heart disease. That's if you're eating dark chocolate and not a ton of it, like an ounce and a half or so. Right. And I think the pure chocolate, the better it is for you, the more flavonoids present. Yeah. There's also been long suspected that chocolate has an effect on your mood and that it improves your mood. Yeah. And I saw a study from 2007 that finally was like, okay, I think we all agree that chocolate improves the mood. How long does it last? And they figured out that if you're in a bad mood or in any kind of mood, chocolate will improve your mood. It has a noticeable effect, but it only lasts for three minutes. Really? Yeah. And it's almost instantaneous, too. So the researchers were like, well, it's not possible that it's all these cannabinoids, which are also found in pot. There are other compounds that have an effect on our neurotransmitters, but it's not possible to eat chocolate and have your mood improved via that because it takes about an hour for those compounds to get to our brain, and then it lasts for three minutes. Yes. And it's immediate. Okay. So it's not those. I think that it's the flavor and the taste and the pleasure that comes from chocolate hitting the tongue. That's like a good pan fried steak is good for my mood, too. Exactly. Right. So you should eat steak and chocolate a lot because it's good for your mood. Every three minutes at least. I wonder how long steak lasts, though. I don't know. But the other exceptional thing about chocolate hitting your tongue and having probably an effect on your mood is that remember that point that they bake chocolate crystals too? Is 93 degrees. Well, your tongue is 90 something and change. It's usually more than that. So the chocolate melts and those flavor crystals melt just perfectly. Just touching your tongue, too. Yeah. Just because it's close to our own body temperature. Right. That's pretty nice. That would have some sort of effect on you. That would explain why it happens immediately. Got you with good chocolate, too. We should talk about theobromine for a second. It's a chemical compound. It's an alkaloid that's in chocolate and some other foods, plant based foods. And it has a similar effect as caffeine. And they do use it just like caffeine to help treat heart conditions. Some heart conditions, like narrowing of the blood vessels or stimulating the heart. And that's also the thing in it that is bad for your dogs. Oh, yeah. The oberomine. Which is why you don't want to feed your dog chocolate. No. You don't think most everyone knows it's fun? A little bit. It will make them just kind of sick. But if they eat too much, it can kill them, make them dead, which is the worst kind of sick. And we mentioned earlier the child labor. Sort of like with coffee. Exploiting kids to mine these coffee beans. And as many as 200,000 children work in the cacao fields and coor alone, I think. Yeah. And that's just an Irish coast. And some of them are child slaves. So if you want to not do that, you search out fair trade or organic. Apparently organic chocolate isn't grown from those farms. Supposedly, but technically has nothing to do with it being organic. No, but I think they just said that the organic farms aren't slave farms. Got you. So fair trade, as always, might cost you a little more. What else is there? You got anything else? I don't think I have anything else. The Japanese apparently have two days for chocolate exchange exclusively. There's Valentine's Day, where women give men chocolate. And then there's White Day a month later, which is apparently invented by a candy maker, of course, where men give women chocolate. And even if you don't like the woman who gave you chocolate, you're still obligated to give her chocolate. It's Gary Choco, which means obligation. Chocolate. Yes. See, ignore all those. Clearly. Corporate sponsored, right? Do you call your mom on Mother's Day and just go, go to hell so you don't and she appreciates the call. I'm so glad you remember. No, mother's Day. That's different. Mother's Day and Father's Day. I'll endorse those. Those are completely blatantly made up holidays. Yeah, but I don't buy them anything. It's not like there's a well, you figured out a way to stick it to the man. It's not a gift behind that that I have to get. I believe a woman invented Mother's Day and by the end of her life was like, actively vocally protesting against the celebration of it because it had been hijacked by really, the greeting card companies. Yeah. I'll usually do a go to lunch or something like that. Nice. That's all my mom wants, his time. Oh, sure. Good for you, Chuck. You're a good son. I'll try to be. Okay, well, that's it for us. Talking about Chuck's relationship with his mom, right? I think so. Okay. Well, I mean, chocolate. There's a whole other list of things we could get into, but that's not for this room. Chuck is a good son. If you want to learn more about chocolate. Right? Yeah. You can type that word into the search bar athowstepworks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one from a teacher because you put out the call to teachers, how can we fix the system? I feel like we did that together and we got a lot of calls and emails from teachers. Not calls, just emails. And there were a lot of great emails and I can only pick one. So this is from Colin. Hey guys. Have been a history teacher for the past seven years. It is my profession of choice and I look forward to being an old fossil teacher one day. You're asking about problems with the educational system and possible solutions. I come from an interesting angle. I'm a public school teacher and spent the past six years at an inner city middle school. There I experienced the following challenges, one through three. One, parents essentially being absent, therefore having the teachers do the parenting. Number two, lack of accountability for students while everything is pushed onto the teachers. And number three, unrealistic demands by the federal government that is not supported by sufficient funding or resources. Can you see that list written on a chalkboard? Yeah. Like that is a teacher list right there. And lastly, probably most unfortunately, a lack of respect for my profession. My people have been called parasites and lazy by certain politicians and are accused of doing next to nothing and just enjoying summer vacations. In reality, we are often underpaid and overworked. There are teachers who do make a good wage, but that is often after 20 plus years in the school system. My wife and I, due to the economy, have received just one raise in seven years. So after three quarters of a decade, we're still almost making the same as a first year teacher. And then he went on to talk about charter schools sort of at length, which I won't get into, but I think we should do a podcast on charter schools at some point. We need to do a podcast on education and education system. Yeah, sweet. So anyways, guys, sorry for the book. I'm sure an email this long would never be read on the show. That was a reverse psychology and it worked. But you guys rock and thanks for taking the time to even read it. Have a great day, Colin. Thanks, Mr. C. We appreciate you writing. We appreciate everybody writing in. I mean, if you put all of them together, you start to get a clear picture. Because he named just three. We've gotten all sorts of different suggestions. Test, standardized testing is a big one that's coming up. Yeah, there's a lot wrong we found out. I think we're kind of hoping to fix things, but right now I'm just realizing what a daunting task is facing the US education system. Yeah, we'll do our part by podcasting and running our mouths about it. Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know anything, how to fix anything, a toaster oven, the education system, what have you. You can tweet to us at scisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comsteffychnow. You can send us an email, which probably works best to stuffpoadcast@discovery.com that's right, right? That's right. And then, of course, you should always visit our home on the web. Make it your homepage stuffyache.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.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." | ||
d94385d6-361e-11ea-91dc-4be9a6bf0b26 | Short Stuff: Disappearing Dirty Dancing Lake | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-disappearing-dirty-dancing-lake | The lake from one of the all-time great movies (search your feelings, you’ll find that it’s true) is turning into a dried up mudhole. Turns out it has some unusual features. | The lake from one of the all-time great movies (search your feelings, you’ll find that it’s true) is turning into a dried up mudhole. Turns out it has some unusual features. | Wed, 03 Jun 2020 12:13:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=12, tm_min=13, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=155, tm_isdst=0) | 11517761 | audio/mpeg | "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 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. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's. Chuck jerry's over there. This is Short Stuff. Giddy up now. I had the time of our lives that's pretty good. I can't even sing that without thinking of the great Simpsons joke. Yeah, same here. The half time of our life. Yes, great. But Dolly Parton is snoopy. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that was a good one. So we're talking about Dirty dancing and specifically Mountain Lake outside of Blacksburg, Virginia, where that was the location of Kellerman's Lodge. Mountain Lake Lodge doubled as Kellerman's for the 87 classic film Dirty Dancing. It did. And that lake actually was a character in the film because they practiced in a little bit of foreshadowing, johnny Castle and Baby practice their dance move where he lifts her up over his head, which is basically the thing that brings the whole house down in the movie. It's like the climax of the movie is this dance move and they practice it in the lake. That's right. Quick shout out. Jennifer Gray is still around and great. She was in that TV show that I've binged. Red Oaks. That is so fantastic. Oh, really? That our buddy John Hodgman is in. She plays the mom, and she's wonderful. That's great. I got to check that show out. Patrick Swayze has left us. Rip. Yes. He was wonderful, man. Hell of a dancer. Great fighter, pretty good actor, great singer. She's like the wind. Okay. I thought it was good. I get chills every time I hear it still. Well, I say, I know this is short stuff, but I'll rank it as dancer, fighter, actor, singer in order of his talents. I won't dispute that order, but it's just a spectrum of greatness. Okay. Loved him and he's great. So that's what I say. The actual name of that lake, like you said, is Mountain Lake. And the actual name of the resort that was supposedly Kellerman's Resort, which I think it was supposed to be in, like, the Poconos, wasn't it? Yeah, not Virginia. But the resort is actually, in reality called Mountain Lake Lodge. And the people who own Mountain Lake Lodge and the people who are investors in Mountain Lake Lodge, they're not very happy about things these days because Mountain Lake keeps draining and it keeps draining. And what was once a lodge and a resort that was based on fun in the sun on this lake in Virginia, is now turning to things like archery and horseback rides and telling guests exactly why the lake is about at 35% of its normal capacity. Yeah, if you just google Dirty Dancing Lake today, or Gazebo or boardwalk, and you will see that that gazebo and dock boardwalk are in the middle of a field. Yeah, it's really creepy. Yeah, it's very weird. And we're going to tell you why. Right now, Mountain Lake is one of only two natural lakes in Virginia. Georgia has zero. They have two in the Southern Appalachian mountains. And over the years, and we're talking every few hundred years, this lake empties and fills back up again naturally. Yeah, which is kind of weird. And over the course of the 6000 years that this lake has been around, which I just find that so fascinating, don't you? That a lake has only been around for 6000 years. Yeah, I love that. But anyway, the 6000 years that's been around, it's actually emptied three different times, Chuck. Like completely emptied. Yeah. So there's two guys that figure heavily in sort of why this mountain bike is like it is. There's this one guy, what is the name? Chester Watts. Chester. Skip Watts. Right. Skip is derivative of Chester, obviously, so he's a geologist and he knows a lot about it. And there's this other guy, John Collie. C-A-W-L-E-Y that wrote his doctoral thesis on Mountain Lake in 1999. And they have explained that Mountain Lake has holes. They have little holes on the bottom, a lot of them, that continually drain this water out. And they've done die test. I think Watts did the die test and found that this water is coming out about a mile from here. And it's been doing this for 6000 years. They literally got to the bottom of it. So that's it. That's the mystery holes. But the thing is, the people over at Mountain Lake Lodge want to know why is it getting worse? Like, why would this if these holes have been here for all 6000 years? First of all, why didn't we start to notice this until 2002? And secondly, why isn't it filling back up? Why is it just keep going down and down and down? And so how I think was it Cali who explained it as a water budget? Yes. He said if you think of it like a bank account, you got money coming in, you got money coming out, you want more money coming in. So that bank account gets bigger. And it's the same with this lake. You have inflow and outflow. And at various times throughout the history of this lake, there's been more outflow than inflow. Right. And so there was a drought that actually started in the 90s that led to this lower inflow, which meant that there was more outflow. Which explains it partially, but it doesn't fully explain it we'll really reveal what's going on with this mystery after these messages. 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 realtime data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. 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. 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.com stuff 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. Okay, Chuck. So there was a drought. Sure. Which means that there's more water going out than it's coming in. That's great because the drought ended, but the people at Mountain Lake Lodge said, well, the drought ended, everybody, and this lake is still not filling up. What is the deal? They actually were so upset about this, they paid Jerry Seinfeld to come get on the phone and ask what the deal was about it. That was a lot of money, too, but it got everyone's attention. So he said there's a few reasons. He said it's not just one thing you can't say. It's even these two things. It's sort of multifaceted. He said he's three. Yes, it's only three. So you've got the drought, which did not help when Mountain Lake Lodge built a conference center above the lake. And to comply with building this thing, they had to construct stormwater management basins. And they said, you know what? What will probably happen is I don't know if they said that, but what they assumed, I guess, what happened was that water would still get to the lake as groundwater. But they found out that wasn't happening. It was going to a creek. Yeah. Is that what you say? You call it a crick? No, it's a creek. Boy, you just threw me off. Some people say crick, though, right? Sure. I think country folk who say Warshick. Exactly. So that was kind of a big surprise that that water wasn't going where they thought it would because I guess these things are fairly close to the lake and since it's above it, they just assumed to trickle down. So that's a big problem. Right. And so the geologists are saying, well, I guess one thing you could do is plug the holes if you want, and then hopefully the rainfall will kind of raise the levels. But you want to plug these holes one at a time and Mountain Lake lodged it too late and they plugged them all at once and scared the bejesus out of the geologist. Well, and the reason they did this was because they knew that one of the other facets of why it was draining was the sediment cycle. And it's just like if something gets stuck in your sink drain, it's going to drain slower. And at various times throughout the history of this lake, there might be things either stuck in or not stuck in. So it just happened that after Dirty Dancing, there was not much stuck and so it was draining out a lot quicker than it normally might have. Yeah. Jennifer Gray was like, thank God Patrick Swazie wasn't alive to see this shameful thing. So how did they plug these holes? Well, at first, apparently they were aware. I don't know if they lost memory of it or thought it was an anomaly or thought it would just go away. But in the first half of the 20th century, at some point, the Mountain Lake Lodge used mattresses to stuff into the holes. How big are these? I tried to find it. I don't know. I'm not sure how big they are. But from what I understand, there's more there than they thought. Yeah. So one few mattresses are going to help. But also, what poor bellhop did they send down there to drag a mattress down to the bottom of a lake and try to stuff it in a hole. Okay. Because you know that's who did it. Of course, that was their first attempt. And the second attempt was much more technologically advanced. They stuffed dirt and clay into it. Yeah, dirt, clay. Is that what the Bentonite is? Yeah, it's like expanding clay. Yeah, that makes sense. They should have got some of that foam stuff that you spray in mouse holes. They basically just sped up the great stuff. Yeah, they basically just sped up the sentiment cycle. But they overdid it because this lake said, nature will find a way, and just started popping new holes. Yeah. It's crazy. This reminds me of the Exploding Lakes episode way back when. But yes, the water level never got to full pond or full pool is what you can call it. Yeah, I like that more. Full pool. Yes. And there is water there. There's more than there was in 2008. Like if you look at pictures from 2008, that's when it was literally a field. There is a little bit of water, but you can't canoe or anything. You can't swim. It's kind of sad, to be honest, to look at it. But there's something to be said for archery and horseback riding. Sure. Yeah. Especially archery on horseback. Oh, wow. Yeah, you can level up. You do that stuff. Yeah, they comp your room for the night. But Watt said that, you know what? They could redirect water from another local watershed. Just gravity feed it down in there. He said that would probably do it. But you got to be really careful, because, like, we've seen, like, the domino effect when you start messing with nature like that. But he said that would probably work if they want to explore that. I don't know if they are or not. Who knows? But we'll see. I don't know. The Mountain Lake Lodge board clearly does not bow before nature. No, it does not. No. Well, that's it. I guess we'll have to revisit this in a few years to see what happens to Mountain Lake. Hopefully, it'll come back not just for Mountain Lake Lodge, but for the culture as a whole. The culture that loves Dirty Dancing. That's right. That means everybody that short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is 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." | |
02e8a9da-3b0e-11eb-947e-cb95ba95463a | How Faraday Cages Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-faraday-cages-work | Faraday cages are one of those peculiar miracles of nature that we can actually explain – not to mention, they save us from potentially fatal electrocutions and electronic eavesdropping which are bonuses. Learn about this amazing hidden technology here. | Faraday cages are one of those peculiar miracles of nature that we can actually explain – not to mention, they save us from potentially fatal electrocutions and electronic eavesdropping which are bonuses. Learn about this amazing hidden technology here. | Thu, 24 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=175, tm_isdst=0) | 40908664 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles w chuck Bryan over there. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. I am have nothing more to comment other than that. All right. How are you, Chuck? Good. I'm great. I'm glad. What are you drinking? I'm drinking a period. It's Frenchy. I'm drinking just regular old dumb American water. Is that tap water? Don't drink that. Well, I mean, it's water. It's not out of the tap. I have a death wish on my hand. Right. You know what I love? If you're going fizzy drinks, best fizzy drink of all time. I would say San Pellegrino. Well, any San Pellegrino. Pretty flavored kind. Yeah, that's good. Jerry's nodding with emphasis. I've had one before. Yes. The Topic. You know, I just like the plain. It is the fizziest of fizz. Is it? And here's a little drink for you. Tequila and Topicico and about a half a lime. That's it. Wow. Low calorie. Clean, simple, refreshing. Simple. Meager delicious. Meager. Disgusting. It's like what a Quaker or what a Quaker would drink. Tequila. A nice repetado tequila. Who am I thinking of? I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, who goes on Rum Springer? Oh, Amish. The Amish. That's what the Amish would drink. Very plain, straightforward boozy drink. Oh, I think when the Amish go on Rum Springer, they probably go straight for the hard stuff. Straight for the Harvey Wallbangers. Well, I think they just say, we don't need that topegico. Just pour that tequila. Got you into my stomach quickly, man. So today, of course, we're talking about fair day cages. Chuck, have you ever been in a car that was struck by lightning? No. Have you? No. I would talk about it every day. But you know what? If you were, you'd probably walk around saying everything was cool because the tires are grounded, man. Not me. I wouldn't have said that. You would have said that yesterday. Two days ago, I would have said it before. Sure. That's not true, though. It's not the tires, right? No, tires are made of rubber or something like it, which is an insulator. It doesn't conduct electricity very well. But if a bolt of lightning hit your car, those tires are not nearly insulated enough to protect you. It's actually because your car is essentially what's called a Faraday cage. That's right. Which is why it jibes with the topic today. That's right. Name for Michael Faraday, the 19th century scientist. I don't have a dude. Yeah, this guy was just amazing. He deserves his own episode, for sure. Yeah. I was trying to think of a funny name for a Faraday fan. Faradayan, faradayne. Faradadi. Oh, that's a good one. Fair daddy. But that implies that you have kids. But you can be a fair daddy. You can be whatever. Sure. You can be Daddy. Do all sorts of stuff. That's right. We have stuff you should know, army. You're the Farad Abby of the stuff you should know. Army. Movie Crushers. The Movie Crushers. And I just learned today what DAX Shepherd has. Armchair expert. You know what his people are called? Armchairians close. Is it really? Armchairries. C-H-E-R-R-I-E-S. Yeah, like cherry. You got the murder reno with my favorite Murder. Sure. What else? I think this American Life fans are called middle aged liberals. Very nice. And that's all. No one else has a nickname? No, that's it. I'm sure someone else has any name but Faraday, and the Faradaddies, which is us. And no one else developed something called a Faraday cage on the heels of the work of someone named Ben Franklin? Should we say what a Faraday cage is first or no? I think a little bit, yeah. All right. Well, a Faraday cage can be any conductor of electricity that's important, that surrounds something that you would like to protect from an electrical charge. Right. Or it turns out, also electromagnetic radiation, which is not the same thing. No, they're based on the same stuff. But electricity is a current of electrons moving through an object, an electromagnetic radiation or type of it is just energy flowing through the air. Like it doesn't need a conductor. That's really the big differentiator between the two. Yeah, but it can be chain link. It can be wired mesh, like you said. It can be your car. It can be solid metal. We'll talk about planes later on. Planes, technically, are kind of faraday cage, thank goodness, basically is there to protect what's inside and has a range of applications now that has kind of grown over the years. And the thing about Faraday cage is that it's really weird. It's based on observations, like you said, by Ben Franklin and then really investigated by Faraday, which we'll get into in a second, but it doesn't quite make sense because if you happen to come along and there's a down power line and it's laying on an aluminum fence post, like The Ice Storm, the movie. Does that happen in that movie? Oh, I got to see that. Then you've never seen The Ice Storm, one of the great movies. I know. Yes, I know. But then I go through periods where I'm like, I want something like Dumb and thoughtless, well, that's not the Ice Storm. Right. And you also have to wait till the winter. I see. You can't plop down on the summertime in your backyard. No, I know. That's true, too. That would be weird. I'm trying to think I saw something just the other day that was worth watching. Oh, man. This is podcast gold right here. I'll try to think of it. I'll keep this little region of my brain right here going, trying to figure out what movie I just saw sometimes. All right. And then the rest over here is going to focus on ferry day cages. I can't do that. Mine is like Homer Simpson. My thought bubble just has a donut in it. Oh, this is this part right here. Okay. That's your donut. Hold on. What are we talking about, though? Before that, we were talking about movies. Yes. So Faraday cage is weird in that if you normally go up to a conductor that has an electrical current running through it and you touch it, it's going to knock you out of your shoes. Like the kid and Stand by me, basically. Right. That was a train. The metaphor works. Or the kid in the ice storm. Well, now I don't have to see the ice storm. There's a lot more that happens. So a Faraday cage is special in that it actually protects you from doing that, but it uses conductors. It's not some special insulator. It actually uses the very thing that should electrocute you to prevent you from being electrocuted. Yeah. The cage itself is a hollow conductor, and that charge stays on the exterior. It's like, here, let me take that electrical load for you. Whatever's inside of me, that was it insane. Okay. Yeah. So I think that's actually the level of Ben Franklin's understanding of it, from what I gather. Ben Franklin? Franklin. Okay, great. He was on the case. He was sniffing all over. He sniffed off the case. In 1755, he started doing a lot of these electrical experiments. Obviously, everyone knows about the kite one. That has to do with the Faraday cages. He electrified ran a current through a pint can. A silver pint can. Yeah. He was always drinking pints. Sure. And then he lowered a cork, which obviously has no charge, like a little cork ball attached to a silk string, which has no can't. Run a current through that either. Right. And he lowered it down into that pint glass, and it just sat there. It was like, what? What do you want? Yes. This is so stupid. This is dope. It was a teenage cork ball. It was very much a teenage cork ball, and it didn't do anything. But he pulled that cork ball out and then dangled it beside that charge can, and it went hatcha. Mama, let me get a piece of that can plus tax. So it latched onto the outside of it. Right. I just demonstrated everybody. That's why I took laughed. And Ben Franklin was like, I have no idea what's going on here. I've only just preliminarily started experimenting with electricity. This is weird. And he wrote to a friend. He said, I can't explain this. Maybe someday you'll be able to investigate it. If you do, let me know what the deal is. But he was, at least on paper, the first person to really kind of notice this. It took Michael Faraday a few decades later, probably about 40, maybe even 50 years later, to say, I really want to know what's going on here. So he investigated it himself. Yeah, but if you really think about what Franklin did, nine people out of 100 back then would have been like, who cares? What are you doing? That stupid cork ball. I got like, why does this matter? Right? Like, you're hanging inside there. It doesn't do anything. You're hanging on the outside and it moves a little bit. But Franklin knew. He's like, this is important. This will have an application. Right. Therein lies the brilliance, I think, and the beauty of Ben Franklin. Yeah, sure. That and his hairdo. Yeah, of course. So Michael Faraday, when he investigated it, he recreated the same experiment very famously a couple of ways. One, he lined a room. He built a room, basically, and then lined it with foil and then apply to charge to the outside and put a small child in there. Well, he put himself in there. Did he really? And he hung out, basically, I saw for a couple of days in this Faraday cage with an electrical current being applied to the outside of it. That was good for the time, because I made that joke. But usually at the time it's like, how about that kitten? Right? You have no right. Yeah, that cute bunny. Let me just exploit you. He actually did it himself. He was remember we did that episode of famous scientists who were their own guinea pigs? Wow. That's right. He could have qualified in that respect, for sure. But he demonstrated okay, there's no charge in here. I'm fine. There's something going on where this conductor itself is preventing the charge from coming in here. That was the first one. Then they followed up again with an ice panel, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a bucket. And he's very famous for his ice pale experiment, which basically recreated Franklin's thing. And he said, I think I can explain this now. Yeah, it wasn't full of ice, though, just to be clear. No, and actually there's still Faraday ice panels today, and they're made of wire mesh. Oh, really? Yeah, you got to check them out. Is that what you towed your ice in? Yeah, they work for like a couple of days. They don't work too good. So I say we take a break and then come back and try to explain what Faraday figured out. That sounds great. Okay, so Michael Faraday was a brilliant man, chuck in that he took Franklin's findings and said, here's what's going on. Yeah. So if you listen to our March 20, 2014 episode, how Electricity Works that was a good one. It was pretty intense. I relistened to a lot of it. We got into the weeds because that's a tough one. It is. Electricity. It's not like a slouchy subject. No, but this is a Josh written, simplified overview that is so much better than that episode, I think. Thanks, man. And it goes a little something like this. Alright, man electricity. You've got metal objects and let's say it's that tin can or whatever. It's a Coke can. The pine can. We'll go stick with the pine can? I don't know why I changed the Coke can cause we're in the south, OK, we're in Atlanta, but alright, it's a pint can. Okay. They don't make Coke and Pints or they should, or at least the cans. What's your favorite beer? I mean, I like tropicalia these days. It comes with a can. Right. Okay. There you go. All right, so I got a tall boy of tropicalia. Changed my mind. We got younger listeners that listen. Oh yeah. I also don't want to necessarily push Coke on them. How about Art filter? Yeah, it's a white claw can. Does the topo chico come in a can? Let's say it does. Okay. I always have money in the bottle, but let's say it comes in a can. All right? Just for the sake of moving on. There you go. All right. So you got that topo chico can and it is a conductor of electricity, which basically means that these things have electrons and protons in them. Sure. And they can be both positively and negatively charged. If it was always electric, you'd go to pick up that topocheo and just get shocked. Right. But it's not itself doesn't carry a charge. And an electrical charge is the force. It's the force of electricity when it's on the move that's a current. And a conductor allows electricity to move through it. That's right. Like those car tires right now, that's the insulator. That's the opposite of it. They can be positive or negative. It really just depends on the count of how many electrons to how many protons. It has an equal number. It's going to be neutral. Obviously. It has more protons, it's going to have a positive charge, more electrons, it's going to be negatively charged. And then if you're a conductor like that can, there are lots of loose electrons flying around inside that they are free to move about and do their business. Right. So one way to look at an electrical current is it goes from one thing through the next thing that it's applied to and it does that by exciting those free electrons that are able to move. They start moving and they basically carry the electrical charge through the current, through the conductor. But under normal circumstances, you just got all the positively charged stuff and the negatively charged stuff hanging out, not doing anything. And so that's why, like you're saying you can pick up that topo chico can and it's not going to electrocute you, it's just a conductor. Right. But let's say that I was a superhero with electricity. I was electronman, okay? And my hand carried a charge current. The fans of electron man would be the electroniacs. Yeah, sure. Electronic. There you go. And let's say I reach for that topo chico can with my electrically charged hand. Okay. Then you're in business, because what happens then is you're going to have an opposite thing going on. All of those particles will separate those electrons and those protons that are normally just commingling out. Normally they're all fine under normal circumstances, but all of a sudden, they separate. And all of the charge coming toward me would be the opposite, which would be protons. So it depends on oh, you're electron man. Yes. You'll be negatively charged, for sure. Yeah. Or else it would just be a total misnomer. That's right. So the protons are going to be attracted to the electrons in this case, or holes. That's all. Electron holes is another thing that starts flowing toward a negative charge. I've never heard of them before. I hadn't, either. And this is called electrostatic induction. When you separate out the positive for negative charge in a conductor that's right. And they're on the opposite side of that topo chico can. As soon as my hand touches that thing. Exactly. Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. That's basically what Ben Franklin was observing, and he couldn't quite figure it out. And this is what Michael Faraday recreated and was able to explain that when you take a charged and electrically charged external object and apply it to a conductor, the opposite of whatever that charge is is going to go toward it. The particles that are the same charge are going to move away from it. Yeah. They're repelled by it. And you have a good point in here. We used to talk a lot about homeostasis, and that's kind of what's going on here, is that those negative electrons want to cancel out that charge coming at them with my electrified hand and just get back to neutral. They want to hang out with the protons again. Exactly. So they're trying to offset that positive charge with their own charge. The negative electrons in the positive holes, I guess, create an electrical field on the outside, but it keeps that electrical charge to the outside. This is what Faraday found. It stays outside on the inside. There is no electrical charge, which doesn't quite make sense until you start to dig into it a little more. And it has to do with that electrostatic induction, where the positively charged stuff moves to the inside, the negative stuff moves to the outside. And because the inside is positively charged and the positive charge is also on the outside, they cancel one another out. So there is no charge on the inside. Right. And that's why Ben Franklin's cork ball just sat there. Yeah. Didn't do anything when he put it down in there. And that's why, I guess, topochico is a bad example, because that would have a liquid in there. Well, we drank it already. All right. We drank it all. We opened up that can. It's a giant topo chico can that we are standing in totally unharmed because the electrostatic current is kept outside. Because there are a couple of things that Faraday figured out that a conductor does in this sense, that creates what we understand as a Faraday cage, in that it keeps a charge from developing on the inside. Because it distributes the electrostatic charge just to the outside, it keeps it outside, and so it acts as a shield. It actually shields a charge from coming inside. So when you're inside a Faraday cage, whether it's a giant topo, Chico can or your car, or an airplane, you're actually protected from being shocked or electrocuted by the electrical field that is distributed strictly to the outside of the conductor. Yeah. And it's this shield. That's where the application of this really comes into play. Right. Otherwise, it would just be kind of a fun experiment. But then humans were like, Wait, this is actually pretty important because we can use this stuff. How effective that shield is is really dependent on what kind of Faraday cage you have. It can be depends on the metal that you're using and how conductive it is. It depends on the size of, like, if it's a mesh, it depends on how big the holes are. If it's like your old plaster and lath walls in your house, you might realize that you don't get as good of an Internet signal in one room of your home that might still have that plaster and laugh. Yes. Because there's a second thing that Faraday cages do. They're magic. I said they're really weird. It doesn't make any sense, but this is just what they figured out happens. The second thing that it does is remember I said that electromagnetic waves, like radio waves, gamma waves, Xrays microwaves. Yeah, microwaves. They're basically from the same family as an electrical current. And so the Faraday cage actually prevents their intrusion as well. Right. So the second thing it does is prevent these kind of waves from coming in. And it all depends on what it's made from and what the size and shape of the Faraday cage is. Right. Or getting out. In the case of a microwave, if you look at that door of your microwave and you see a little grid pattern, that's a Faraday cage. Yeah. I say we take another break and then come back and talk about some real life applications in addition to microwaves of ferry date cages. What do you think? Let's do it. I don't know. You know, it's stuck tonight. That's the name of it. It's a great name. All right, you got your Faraday cage, your Faraday shield, your RF cage, radio frequency. All these are just different names for the same thing. Your EMF cage. Electromotive force cage. Your KLF cage. Sure. KMFDM cage. What was the first one you said? KLF. KL? Yeah. What was that? Was that a group? The KLF? Yeah. But they had, like, one song. They had a one hit wonder, basically. I think they were the ones that set a million pounds on fire. I bet they regret that. They did. They actually held a very unsuccessful Kickstarter. Did they get that million pounds back years later? I was about to make a joke and say Kickstarter. But they really did. Yes, they did. Maybe they'll write us. I think it was KLF, not KMFDM. I can't remember. It might have been KMFDM. Who was it that we thought was writing us at one point? But it was a fake. Louisa. Yeah, that's right. They got us good. Only now am I okay to talk about that. The Lubega incident? Yeah, it's a good band name. Jerry's over here laughing. She remembers Luca or the Lubega incident. He even uses his picture on his Twitter handle. We're like, oh, well, that checks out. Yeah, that's Lubaga. He's verified the Mama Number Five guy. He wasn't even verified that was the dopes. Such dopes. So we have been talking a lot about the Faraday cage and what they can be used for. And one of the things that can be used for is, like, let's say you're in a lab, in a science lab, and you want to conduct an experiment in a truly neutral setting with no electromagnetic field at all because nothing going on. We said these are energy waves that are just flowing through the air. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. But yeah, so it can affect a lot of experiments. So you might want to have a Faraday cage built for your science lab. That's a big one. If you are at a university that's more than a two bit university. They're probably going to have Faraday cages here. There around some of their labs, for sure. Yeah, of course. You want to go to a hospital and look for a Faraday cage. Go, take me to the MRI lab. They'll say, yes, sir, click their heels together and take you to see a Faraday cage. Because either the MRI machine or possibly the room that the MRI machine is in, maybe even both, are outfitted with Faraday cages. Because for the same reason as when you're protecting your lab, you don't want the electromagnetic radiation interfering with the data that the MRI is taking in and screwing up the picture. And they'd be like, Good Lord, this guy's got a tumor in the size of a watermelon on his side. Oh, wait, we forgot to build this in a fairy day cage. Yeah, it's not to protect it's not like an X ray. It's not to protect MRI juice from spreading through the hospital. I don't know. I think it's to protect the date. It definitely is, but I wonder if it's twofold or two. But then you'd have to have two fair day cages working in opposite directions, and then the universe might fold in on itself in that situation. I mentioned airplanes earlier as a teaser. Cars don't get struck by lightning a lot, but you'll be very scared to know that airplanes do get struck by lightning a lot. Quite a bit. I don't think I've been in a plane that was trucked by lightning, but I've been in situations where it's possible. But this is probably a really dumb question. Like, would it make a big thunderboom right then? I don't know. I don't think that's a dumb question. That's a great question because I would say then you would probably know if the whole plane just went kaboom. The other way that you can tell is if you end up in an alternate universe that the languolars are eating, that's the other way to know your plane was struck by lightning. But the airplane is fine. All the equipment, all the people inside are fine. With balky, no less. Did you ever see that? No. Okay. It was pretty bad. What was it? It was a Stephen King made for TV movie starring balky. Really? Yeah. And it was bad. What was it called? The Languallers. All right. I mean, just bad. I was just laughing because you were saying funny words. Okay, that's good enough for me. As long as I'm getting laughs out of you, that's all I care about. So, yeah, that plane is a faraday cage. Buildings can probably not purposely be built as a faraday cage, but they can act as that well, it's like that wire mesh last that you apply the plaster to. You're talking about also with poured concrete, reinforced concrete. Right. Rebar the rebar in there. If you build a large enough structure, the rebar can accidentally act as a faraday cage. Right. And we said depending on what electromagnetic radiation you're trying to keep out, you actually want to attune that attenuate, I guess, the size of the mesh or the grid pattern, whatever, the chain link fence, it'll keep some stuff out. Depending on the size of the hole, based on the wavelength of the wave. If the wavelength is bigger than the hole, it can actually be kept out. If the wave length is smaller than the hole, then it's going to pass through fairly easily. And even if you do make it just right, it's still probably not going to be a perfect faraday cage. As evidenced in the case of a microwave. Right, yeah. Like if you put your phone, your cell phone in a microwave and shut the door, don't turn it on. No, but if you just put it in there and called it, it would probably ring. Yeah, probably. Even though your phone operates on microwave, but your microwave just isn't 100% perfect. I've seen everywhere where this is explained, follows up with, don't worry, you're not going to be affected by the microwave radiation. There's like, certain standards for leakage that have to be met in the developed world if you're selling a microwave or buying a microwave. I still don't stand in front of a microwave, though. You probably shouldn't, you know, just in case. But then now, Chuck, we've kind of trapped into the territory where Faraday cages have really kind of made a big appearance in the consumer market, which is things like protecting from EMF allergies. Oh, right. Like, better call Saul's brother on the show. I haven't seen that. Well, Michael McKean is a character. He plays a character. He plays Saul's Brother, and he has an allergy to electromagnetic radiation. Electro allergy, or is it in his head? I mean, they explore it like it's in his head, but they also explore it like, from his viewpoint. It's happened, it's real, and it's basically the nosebo effect is how I've seen it explained. But there are a lot of people out there, and you'll see in the show where he's wearing, like, a solar blanket, like a metallic blanket that he believes is blocking electromagnetic radiation. Everything from visible light to radio waves to gamma rays to X rays, all of this energy flying through the air. Some people believe that it has a pernicious effect on your health. For everything I've seen, scientific wise, that is not the case. Right. But there's still obviously there's people who are like, no, there's this one study once they found this, and it says that your cells are not happy when they're exposed radio waves, which is why I wear a foil line suit whenever I leave the house, kind of thing. And it's sad. It's very sad, especially if it's not true. It's just as sad if it is correct. These people are suffering and nobody can help them. Right. Just like with the morglons who said it was it Fauchy? Oh, man. Was it that rat? Yeah. I got to know anything. Should we leave that in there? It's a joke. We'll find out. Okay. We'll see. We'll test our own temperature in the edit. They do power, utility lines, workers, sometimes they'll have these special suits, and if you have an EMF allergy, you probably want to get your hands on one. That's right. You know, that's how one of my granddad's died. I think I've told that story before. He was a power lineman. Wichita Lineman. Not Wichita. I'll bet he needs to see. Man. I didn't know that. Yeah, he got zapped in the top of a telephone pole and knocked him out 25ft to the ground. And it didn't immediately kill him? It is essentially what killed him, yeah. How long did he linger? I don't know. He died when I was, like, five ish. So I only remember meeting him, like, once, and he had a hospital bed in his house, and my grandmother was a nurse, so she basically just kind of cared for him for the rest of his life. Okay, so this wasn't like, a couple of days later? No. He lived for years after with, like, brain damage. I wonder how much of it was from hitting his head and how much of it was from the juice. Well, I think most of it was from the fall, but technically that's what caused the fall. It was a poor guy. Yeah, he wasn't a very good guy. I'm not saying he deserved that. He didn't deserve that. But yeah, he wasn't a good person. I got you. So feel Badish. No. You don't want bad things to happen to anyone, right? Maybe Hilter. Yeah. Did Hilter do these paintings? All time. Great, man. The government, they're also obviously going to protect sensitive equipment. They're going to build special rooms. Yes. Because here's the thing. If you are afraid of electromagnetic radiation going through you and you're trying to keep it out, you can also keep electromagnetic radiation from escaping. Yeah. Like if you want to tell sensitive secrets or send sensitive documents, you're going to have a special room in the White House or the Pentagon that is tricked out to shield to keep anyone from listening in. Basically, it has essentially a reverse Faraday cage. It keeps the electromagnetic radiation from leaking out, which sounds like, who cares if electromagnetic radiation leaks out from a computer screen or an Ethernet cable or something like that? It turns out you can gain information from capturing this leakage and converting it into data. Yeah. This is a little scary considering what's going on in this country right now, but was it in Holland? It is. I'm not really scared by this. I think it kind of goes to show just how far fetched yeah, far fetched. It's excellent, Chuck. Far fetched. The guy named Rob Gungrip, who is a Dutch computer expert that's how you say Dutch names, by the way. Like you have no idea what you're talking about. He figured out that you can electronically eavesdrop or electromagnetically eavesdrop on the voting machines that they were using in the Netherlands. Right. And he showed that he could gather the refresh rate or he could determine that the refresh rate on the computer screen slowed down when a name that had an accent or a special character was being displayed. And he was able to take this leakage from like 25ft or something like that from these voting machines, convert it into a sound. And when somebody from the Christian Democratic Appel Party and the E has an accent over it was voted for, the tone actually changed. Yeah, that's interesting. So he could say they got one vote or something like that, but not manipulate that vote. No, but I could see in this country that story being dug up and used, right, by Dummies. Yeah, for sure. But the point is this guy can do something like that. You can bet that like a very well to do state that wanted to electromagnetically ease job could probably glean some pretty important stuff. So yes, you probably do want to put your most sensitive conversations, government state secrets in a Faraday cage enclosed room, but the average person's vote is not going to be in jeopardy by rope golden grip. I read about this guy from Holland or the Netherlands or someplace like that. Who's that? Alec Baldwin? Yeah, it was Alec Baldwin. Good job. I tell you who else might have some. Faraday cages are like preppers survivalists. They probably have some reason, a Faraday cage or two that may be homemade heat rope gone. Grip. Yeah. Can't stand that guy. No, but they worry that of electromagnetic pulses, which we talked a lot about in the space weather episode. Oh, yeah. We said like, if one of these things really did happen from space weather or from a bad actor, one of the other ball weather, you can really lose all of your electronics. Which is another reason people build Faraday cage. It's not just keep out or keep their own electronics from leaking information, from keeping electronic noise, from coming in and disrupting their own stuff. If a big one hit, it could just blow your circuits right out. The human body, your electronics, they're designed to use and run on electricity, but only a certain amount. When you overload that amount, the system tends to fail. And that's why survivalists and preppers believe in things like ferry day cages to protect their equipment. Right. The problem is when you take it out and use it. If space weather actually happened, right, then your Faraday cage is useless because you're outside of it. Yeah, and I guess if you're really sort of paranoid and have a lot of money, you can have your home. There's this place called Holland Shielding that makes a wallpaper with copper woven into it to prevent someone from eavesdropping on you. I also saw there's something called mu metal, and it's like an iron nickel alloy that works really well for that too. I got it got to come on over next week. That's awesome. They put that all over my house. Are you prepping these days? No, I'm prepping for a nap. Fluffing that pillow. Yeah. What else? A little warm milk. I've been able to nap a little bit these days. Is good. I still can't. Still can't? No. Do you try every once in a great while? No. Can you mean nap? No, we're not nappers. Yeah, I enjoy nap. I've kind of embraced the true siesta. Like, I get up really early, I stay up really late, party all night. I don't get a lot of sleep at night, but I'll try and get a 30 minutes nap in at some point and it's working pretty well. What do you do at night? I mean, that's my time. When you got a little kid, once they go to bed, you're like, that's your time. How late do you stay up in bed nodding? I'll stay up I mean, it depends. I'll go through phases where I'm in bed at 1030, but usually I'm a midnight man is what I like to call myself. And then on the weekends that stretches into like 01:00 a.m. What time do you get up? I usually get up around 630 or seven. Yeah, that sounds right. Wake up. 630 or seven. Yeah, I'm about a six hour a night guy. Maybe a 30 minutes all you need. Yeah, I think we talked about it. You get up early these days. I get crazy emails from you. What are you doing? Jackie? It's so early in all caps. Yes, I know. I actually try very hard to be cognizant of what I'm emailing you early in the morning, because I know it might be some of the first stuff you see, and I don't want it to be like, hey, we got to do this. The sky is falling. I've been good about not opening my email, though, till work hours and then shutting it down. No, that's the way I do five. Jerry had a talk with me once where she's like, I don't know if you should email people on the weekends or in the evenings or whatever. I'm like, what do you mean? And then I stopped and thought I was like, totally. So I've adopted that as well as best I can. Yeah, you do. You just make a note. Email the dumb dumb at 09:00 a.m. On Monday. Sure. So I use the drafts folder now. Okay. There you go. Just don't send it. Yeah, or do that. Don't even make a note. I don't even need to know. There's, like, an extra superfluous step. I write the email, I just don't send it. I leave it in the draft. That is very smart. So you want to wrap this up? Yeah, let's wrap it up. Well, if you want to know more about ferry day cages, go check your car out. And since I said that, it's time for listener man. Oh, wait, there's one other thing, Chuck. If you have a car and it's a convertible, look out. It doesn't have a ferry day cage. You're very susceptible to lightning, which is another explanation for why your tires don't actually save you. Because if you're in a convertible car, it's not a faraday cage, so you're toast. All right, now listen or mail. Now listen or mail. I'm going to call this the next email in my inbox. And this is actually good because rarely do we read suggestions for episodes on the air. But this is a good one, and I think we're going to want to do this because it also ties in with today's episode. Okay, today's special. Hey, guys. Writing in with the topic proposition. I think it would fit perfectly to what you're doing. Eels. Oh, that's a great idea. Electrical eels. I don't know if I ever would have thought about that. I probably wouldn't. Let me see what this is. This is Michael. Thanks. Michael from Poland. Michael says that was it. No. Michael goes on to say, they're just incredible creatures. And it was mind blowing to me when I discovered that we still do not know much about them. Have you ever eaten, Neil? Like sushi unagi, of course. Yeah, I buy that at the Japanese market and cook it at home. Oh, you do yourself, huh? Yeah, he's baked in the oven. It's delicious. They're not much to look at, but boy, are they tasty. Good Freud. Before going into psychoanalysis study deals trying to find their reproductive system. Wow. A feat not yet achieved for thousands of years. All European eels come from one place. The Sargasso Sea. Eels travel thousands of miles after they're born. I didn't want to read. The parenthetical eels travel thousands of miles after they were born to the lakes, wells in Europe, and then come back when they feel they are ready to undergo metamorphosis and reproduce. Let me see what else? For many years, people thought they were observing different species of eels, but in fact they were the same eels at just different stages of their life. So we basically just did a mini episode on eels with special guest Michael. Sort of. Michael also sends a New Yorker article, a book called The Book of Eels. PS. I love what you're doing and how you're making interesting topics approachable with your great needs and going attitude. Keep it up. All the best from Poland. I hope I can see you live one day. And that's from Mikal. I would definitely go to Poland for a show. I would, too. Yeah. Cool. Never been to Poland. I haven't either. Let's do it. Closest I've been is Hungary. Yeah, same here. You've been to Hungary? Sure. Great. Yeah. Which side did you stay on? We stayed on the pest side, but we went back and forth. Sure. We also went to that Turkish bath that the beginning of Red Heat was filmed in. Okay. It's really awesome. I don't remember which side I stayed on, to be honest. It was so many years ago. So the left or the right? I don't remember. You don't remember? No. I mean, this was 30 years ago. Okay. 27 years ago. This was 2015, I think, for me. Yeah. I was drunk on bold blood wine. I remember that you're talking about. Yeah, very cheap. Yeah. Either you told me about that before, or else I saw it myself. I don't think I tried it. Well, thanks a lot, Michael Mikael, and that was a great idea. And an eel episode will be forthcoming one day. If you want to suggest a really great topic, we'd love that kind of thing. You can wrap it up and send it off to us at 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." | |
How the Moon Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-moon-works | Did you know that science still doesn't know the exact origin of the moon? Do you know how the moon creates high and low tides? Do you know the difference between a waxing crescent and a waning gibbous? You will after listening to this riveting episode. | Did you know that science still doesn't know the exact origin of the moon? Do you know how the moon creates high and low tides? Do you know the difference between a waxing crescent and a waning gibbous? You will after listening to this riveting episode. | Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:40:35 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=17, tm_min=40, tm_sec=35, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=258, tm_isdst=0) | 36530538 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as is a very reluctant Charles W. Chucker's Bryant. Not always reluctant. No. Always here with me, as always, sometimes reluctant as a reluctant Chuck. Brian. How's it going, Josh? It's going fine for me. That's great, dude. I'm going to see Bob Dylan tonight. Are you really living legend with Leon Redbone or Russell? Yeah, Leon Russell, right. Yeah. He's opening up, I think. I really care about that. I was confused him with Edgar Winter. Yeah. They kind of look alike. Yeah. Well, that's all I have to say about that. Okay, Chuck, are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, so back in November 1966 okay, are you ready for this? We should probably say first, let me tell you, Chuck, we're going to make it through this. Okay. I have PTSD from the sun podcast. We need to do PTSD. I always forget that. Let me just write that down. PTSD. Yes. And now we're doing the Moon podcast, which really, aside from the orbital dynamics, has almost no physics to it whatsoever. Yeah. It'll be better than the sun. Okay. So still a little mind numbing for me. It'll be okay. We'll make it interesting. All right. So back in November 1966, there was a lunar orbiter called the Orbiter Two, because it was the second one and it was flying around the Moon, taking pictures of it. For the impending Moon landing at the Apollo program was leading up toward right. Yeah. Exciting. And it had taken its last bit of film, last picture, and it actually took what's called the picture of the century, where it was at the time. It was this kind of side shot of the Moon rather than from above. It was almost like from the side, so you could see the elevation and everything, and it just looked like a new view of the Moon. So, anyway, the NASA controllers tell Orbiter Two, go ahead and crash land. And it did, on the dark side of the Moon, never to be heard from again. Until, like, a week ago, when another lunar orbiter, which was taking pictures for the Moon based program, it's not around anymore. It got canceled. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Caught this kind of crater, butterfly shaped crater that's characteristic of a low trajectory landing. Was that it? And it's exactly where NASA thought it would be. Wow. So there you go. One of the mysteries of the Moon. Saw that's kind of cool. Yeah. This thing has been sitting there for 40 years. Is there a chimp or anything? No, an old chimp. But I mean, just to think of this, like, lunar orbiter crashed by itself, sitting on the dark side of the Moon for 40 years. This lonely is chilling, isn't it? It is. Have you seen the movie moon. Yes. Enjoyed that very much. You know the guy who directs that, duncan Jones? That's David Bowie's son. Yeah. Bowie son, yeah. Imagine David Bowie being your dad. I want to see him perform live more than anything else ever, and I don't think he'll ever do it. Oh, he doesn't perform any longer? No, he hadn't played. I think his last tour was, like, ten years ago or something, and he kind of said, this is it. Come see me. I'll be on my Hawaiian island with him. On he lives in an island? Well, he has a place in Kauai. Nice. I'm sure he'd spend some time there. Very nice. Sorry. Good movie, though. Can you see we're, like, really trying to put this on. Yeah. Anyway, yes, the moon is a good movie, and the moon is a good planetary satellite to Earth. It does all sorts of cool, beneficial things for Earth. Did you know that? I did. It has an influence on Earth. That's true. Let's talk about the moon, chuck she would go all the way back, Josh, to the times of Aristotle. Why not Aristotle? Josh, as we all know, believed in the geocentric model of the universe. Galileo said no. You're wrong. It's heliocentric. And apparently he came to that conclusion by studying the moon. Yeah. Basically, he's like, the sun is the center of the universe, jerk, not the Earth. Right. And they said, you know what? That's heresy, and you're going to be under house arrest for the rest of your life. Yeah. And he's like, wow, I have a lot of wine and cheese in my house, so it's not so bad. And I don't need much anyway. I don't like the outside world. But at first, I guess he had a better telescope or something, because Galileo saw a lot more detail, it sounds like, than Aristotle did. I don't think Aristotle had a telescope. Was that the deal? I think that was he was just looking at it. I think Copernicus was the first one to look through a telescope. Okay. Or Galileo was before Copernicus and Copernicus had a nicer telescope. I think Galileo came after Copernicus. All right, well, then that's the way it went. We're going to get this wrong. We totally are, but continue. Tough. But the point is, Aristotle thought the Earth was the center of the universe, and the moon had dark spots and light spots they thought were C's. Right. Maria yes. I looked up a bunch of pronunciations on this one, by the way. Maria yeah. No, that sounds right. Yeah. And the lighter spots were correctly perceived to be land or terry yeah, but it's all land, as it turns out. It does turn out. The moon is kind of boring place. Yeah. You think? I think, as a destination, yes, I think it's incredibly boring. Not a lot to do there. No, it'd be cool to go there. I'm sure it's the most thrilling thing in the world to do or beyond the world to do to go to the moon and beyond the moon. But just being back here on Earth and discussing parts of it, the moon as a destination is kind of boring. What the moon does, where the moon came from, I think is fascinating. I do, too. And despite the fact that they were not seized, they still call the Maria Seas. Yes. Sea Tranquility. Yeah. Mar Tranquility or Mart Tranquilium, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And the Sea of Tranquility is where the first moon landing took place. Yes. They thought it looks like a nice place to land, and that was 43 years ago. This month, when we're recording, when this comes out, it'll be last month. But that Buzz Aldrin, right? Who never gets mentioned first. Yeah. Neil Armstrong second. How about that? Landed on the moon. Apparently, Buzz Aldrin was the first person to urinate on the moon. Oh, really? Yeah. Neil Armstrong didn't. Buzz did. While they were there. Not on the moon, but while on the moon. While on the moon. Okay. Yeah. And you always have to church it up. Well, I mean, that's disrespectful literally on the surface of the moon. I think something probably really bad would happen to his physiology if he tried to pee on the moon. Well, it would float away anyway. Right? Yeah. But, I mean, he just implode. Right? Okay. Yeah. Vacuum. And since those guys since Buzz album first Pete on the moon in 1969, for the following three years, twelve other Americans set foot on the moon. Yeah. And you don't hear a lot about that, supposedly. And as far as we know, the only people to set foot on the moon so far, and they brought back about \u00a3842, which is 382 moon rock, moon dust. And it was studied, and then that's about it. That was all they had. They were like, Well, I guess we can bring back some of these rocks. And that's all over. Yeah. I told everybody on Earth I'd bring them something, but there is nothing here. I wonder if they got a little piece of rock. I'm sure they did. Surely you should be able to ask for that. Right? Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, if you're the guy who went and got it, the kind of papers yeah, exactly. And so since then, since they brought back this moon rock, a lot of these questions that have been around since ancient times were settled. Just really in the last 40 years or so, we now know, okay, for sure, that there isn't water on the moon. Supposedly, there could be, but we now have a good idea, thanks to the moon rocks, how the moon was formed, which settled a longstanding debate. That's right. And just being there, they found out a lot of stuff. Like, they were like, hey, this isn't a sea. It's all land. Right. About 15% of it is the dark spots that you see the Maria. Maria. The Maria. And 85% of it is the Terra. Is that Terra? And that's the lighter parts of the Moon that you see. And that's like mountainous. It's crazy. Steep mountains, craters, all kinds of things there on the terrace. Well, yeah, because the Earth was about 4 billion years ago, there were a lot of meteorites bombarding this neck of the solar system. Right. And the Earth took as many as the Moon, if not more. It still happens today. Every day, meteorites hit the Earth, but our atmosphere burns most of them up. And the ones that made it through the atmosphere and made a substantial impact on the Earth have been largely covered over by the biogeochemical processes that take place on Earth. The Moon is utterly devoid of these things these days. So they're just craters and has been for about the last 3 billion years. So just about anything that's happened over the last 3 billion years right. Is just a few meteorites, some impacts here and there. But for the most part, the Moon's surface was shaped in about 4 billion to 3 billion years ago. And it's remained the same ever since then. Yeah. In addition, they think there were volcanoes at one point on the Moon because they noticed reels like these channel like depressions that they think was from lava. They found old lava flows and lava tubes. He said, hey, looks like there were some volcanoes here at one point. Yes. And that accounts for a lot of stuff on the Moon, but also some of its composition as well. No soil. No, it has something called regolith, and regolith means basically like blanket over solid rock. Right. So it's really just kind of fine particulate dust, Moon dust mixed with volcanic glass and larger rocks, and it just covers the surface of the Moon. It doesn't have soil because it doesn't have any living organisms that are required to make soil. Yeah. Nothing organic on the moon. Correct. Yeah. So they brought back these rocks. They found out that the Maria, which is what we said was only 15% the dark spots was primarily that one word that we said over and over on the show. What? Basalt buzzled, and that is igneous rock from cooled lava. So, again, with the volcanoes and the highland regions, the mountain regions we talked about was mainly enorthy site and Bretcia. Yeah. Did you look that one up? I did. When there's a CI CA in Italian that makes a ch sound, but it's ch make a K sound. So it's backwards from what we might think is Americans. Pretty neat, but correct if you're an Italian. That's 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 long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. What else, Chuck? The lunar rocks have very little water and volatile compounds, so they resemble the Earth's mantle. They have very little volatile compounds or water, and then Tracy puts in as if they've been baked. Little bit of, like, foreshadowing. That's true. Yeah, that's true. And also, Chuck, they found that the highland areas are much older the rocks and the highland areas are much older than the maria areas. Right. Yeah. And so now with all of this information, we have a pretty good idea of how the moon formed. Yeah. They also had some seismometers, and they found that there's no shifting of the plates going on right. Tectonic activity in the moon. There are no moon quakes, and they also use magnetometers, and they did not detect any substantial magnetic field around the moon, which means that it doesn't have a substantial iron core. Right. So they're basically just trying to figure out how much is it like the Earth in some ways? I mean, they want to find out what it was, but they're kind of comparing because some of the old previously thought reasons why the Moon was there had to do with it literally spinning off of the Earth. Well, it's significant that moon rocks are similar in composition to mantle rocks found on Earth. Pretty close. Which means to a lot of people that the moon has always been connected to the Earth in a lot of people's minds. Right. So there are different ways that it formed, but it's always in relation to the Earth almost, except for one. Yeah. So previously to the lunar landing, they had a few ideas. They thought maybe there was the double planet hypothesis, which was the Earth and moon formed together. Yeah. Because remember in the asteroid mining podcast, we talked about the formation of planets, it starts spinning and then everything just kind of comes together. That's a good, easy way to say it. Yeah. The capture hypothesis was the Earth's gravity captured the moon as it was just cruising by. Right. That's the only one where they weren't related. Yeah. But the Earth said, hey, we're going to hold you captive now because we like your gentle light that you cast upon us at nighttime. And then the fission hypothesis, which was the Earth spun so much and so rapidly that a blob of molten Earth spun off and that was the Moon. Right. That sounds a little even in the would have been like really? Well, I mean, think about it. If it's forming and everything is kind of loose still. Yes. I guess we didn't know as much back then. So all of these have been kind of shot down, right? That's right. The fact that the Moon and the Earth compositions are not the same means that they probably didn't form right alongside one another because they should be pretty much the same material. Yeah. The Earth can't possibly capture something as large as the Moon and keep it there. And then lastly, Chuck, the Earth has never been known to be able to spin fast enough to spin any part of it off. If it were, we would be the first things off of the Earth if it could spin that past anybody, let alone a sizable chunk. Right. So what they think now is after the 70s, they came up with this thing called the giant impact or theory. Yeah. And that's standing up fairly well, right? Yeah. It's this idea that another planet or planetoid or something about the size of Mars early in the Earth's formation came along and collided with the Earth with such force that it was absorbed into the Earth. Well, it broke off a chunk and then that part filled in. The part that was chunked off. Right. What are those twins where one eats the other in the womb called? Oh, yeah. It's kind of like that mean twins. So it's like the Earth has another planet that really just looks like a teratoma with fingernails or teeth inside of it. Yes. And that one is actually held up. They've done computer simulations and they said this could have happened. Well, we left off the most important part from that impact. It shot out a bunch of stuff that formed into the Moon. Yes. And that was very hot, obviously. And it cooled eventually. But that's why the rocks appear to have been baked. Right. That was the foreshadowing. Right. So the idea behind this, like you said, it stood up. That enjoys the majority opinion. Right. Agreed. So after this impact, as the Moon spinning and forming itself into a spheroid, it's covered in this ocean of magma. Right. And this ocean of magma starts to cool. And inside the core is solid. Outside magma, it starts to cool and everything kind of switches. The outside becomes solid, the inside magma. Right. And then after a while, there's this period of bombardment that I talked about of meteorites in the neighborhood. It forms all of the highlands, the craters. Almost every feature on the surface of the Moon is formed during this bombardment period. Now, that's when the lava is eating out through the cracks from the center. It came after that. Okay. So at this point, the Moon has a molten core, a solid exterior. Yes. And it's being bombarded with meteorites. So we're seeing the stuff that we see today happens 3.9 billion years ago. Then after that period, there's a period of volcanic activity all over the so that's when it's leaking up through the cracks. And it leaks up through the cracks in the maria areas. Right. Which explains why there's more craters in the highlands than in the maria. Because the craters were covered over by this basalt, which is so prevalent in these areas. Right. That makes a lot of sense, actually. And then lastly, the volcanic activity expelled all of the heat in the Moon, turning it into a dead, lifeless hulk that we know and love today. Well, that sounds sad, but I love it in its current state, so I'm actually happy about it. Okay, so let's talk about it in its current state, Chuck. There's the Moon. It's right there. That's how it got there. Right. That's kind of cool. You didn't know that before? I didn't until we researched this stuff. All right. So in its current state, Chuck, it's in this orbit around Earth. It doesn't spin on its axis, and it's basically dragged along like, you know, a wheel that's stuck. You can still drag it across the ground. It's just not spinning. Sure, this is much the same way, but rather than in a vertical orientation, this is horizontal. But the Moon is not spinning on a horizontal axis. It's being dragged around. That's right. And so that's why we only see the one side of the Moon, the same side of the Moon all the time. The happy side with the cheese. Well, we wouldn't know if the other side is happier. Well, that's the dark side. This is scary side. Yeah. Ask that crashed lunar rover or not rover, but orbiter yeah, orbiter two. Orbiter two. So you're talking about the 29. Is it 29.5 days or is it just 29? It's my understanding that it's 29.5. Okay. That's what I thought. Sometimes it is between the Earth and the sun. Sometimes it's behind us. So what we're talking about here is the Moon phases. That's why you'll see the crescent Moon or the half Moon or the full Moon. Different parts of the Moon are lit up by the sun, depending on where it is in relation to the Earth. It's pretty simple. Yeah. And Needo. Yeah. And when it's lit up and when it's not lit up, there's a huge difference in temperature. What was that? Was it a future drama? It was a futurama where they had to get back to their transport before the horizon line. The point where the sun was hitting. The moon got to them. Where else is going to vaporize them? Wow. Because the difference in temperature, the mean temperature in the shadow of the moon, if I may. I know you like stats. Please. The mean temperature in the shadow of the moon is negative 292 degree. That is one mean temperature. Negative 180 degrees Celsius in the sunlight. Chuck, the mean this is the one that's the average. Right. Or is the median average? You couldn't say that. The mean surface temperature and the sunlight is 266 deg. It's 130 degrees Celsius. Wow. So quite a difference. Yeah, there's like a 600 degree difference. That's the power of the sun, my friend. Right. Which we've gone over in detail. So over these billions of years, a couple of changes have happened to the moon. It's moved a little further away from the Earth and its rotation has slowed some over the years. Yes. Which that doesn't mean anything to me right now, but it's worth pointing out. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Did you talk about the different phases like the waning and the waxing and all that? Well, I didn't go over it in that much detail now. Well, I've always just enjoyed this. Do you know what they call a moon that's growing toward full moon and is almost full? That's waxing give us yes. So remember that one? It's going on its way toward a full moon and there's more moon present than there isn't there's a waxing gibbon and then do you know what it's called when it's going toward a new moon and it's a thin little sliver? The waning crescent. Yes, if you remember waning crescent and waxing give us you can name any phase of the moon just by looking at it and impress your friends. That's true because you also have the waxing crescent. First quarter, a waning give us last quarter. And everyone's favorite the full moon. Yeah, the full moon. That's the money moon. Sure. And you know, people say that things go wacky at full moon, but I think that we found that that is largely just stories and it's not necessarily been proven like emergency medical emergency rooms are supposed to be like wacky and people go crazy in the full moon and werewolves covered. Is that backed up, though, by numbers? Tracy said it's not. Where did you see that? It was somewhere in here. I didn't see it. Well, it's in there. Weird. Or maybe I saw it somewhere else. Yeah, but they said it's pretty much anecdotal. But I thought I had seen that too, where it was backed up by numbers. Well, there is another, I guess if you're a skeptic, it's a crackpot theory, but there's a bunch of people who believe in the concept of the super moon. You heard about that? That sounds familiar. So the moon travels, it's orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle, it's an ellipse. So that means that there are points where it's as far as it can be away from the Earth and as close as it can be. So as close as it can be is called perigee and as far away as it's called apogee. And it hits these once a month each. Right? Right. So it's not unusual for the moon to be impaired to your apogee. And normally when it is, it just means that the tides are higher and lower. And we'll talk about tides in a minute. That's right. But if it's in a full moon and it's at paragy, which means that there's more exposed right, to the sunlight, which really doesn't mean anything, but it's closer. Okay. Supposedly what this happens, like, once every 19 years, supposedly that's linked to all sorts of destructive stuff on earth, like earthquakes and floods and things like that. And you can go back and say, oh, well, there was a super moon in 1954. The last one was March 19, 2011. March 11, 2011 was the Japan quake. So people who believe in the superman say, there, see, we can go back and find this all the time. And then people who poopoo it say, if you're linking, you're linking to unrelated phenomena. That is very interesting, but that's the super moon at the very least. It sounds very cool. Super anything sounds cool. 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 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 said that we were going to talk about tides, and I deliver on my promises. Well, you can't talk about the moon without talking about tides. That's true. Bill O'Reilly, you mentioned him. Oh, yeah, right. The moon has a gravitational force. We all know that. And it pulls on water in the oceans. It stretches the water out and forms what's called a tidal bulge on the sides of the planet that are in line with the moon. That's the first part. The moon water obviously pulls on the side closest to it, which causes the bulge toward the moon. Pulls on the earth a little bit and drags the Earth away from the water from the opposite side. And there's another tidal bulge. And the bulge, the areas of the Earth under the bulge are high tide. The areas on the thin sides are low tide. Just like clockwork. That's mind boggling to me. 6 hours. 12 hours. The Moon pulls tugs on the ocean. It does. Tugs on the ocean toward it. Right. And it even moves the Earth a little bit into the ocean. A little more. Set another way. The Moon actually pulls water already. Impressive. Yeah. And then on the other side, it pulls it away from the water. It pulls the Earth away from where the water is. So it's low tide and yes, like you said, that happens every 6 hours. Right. Yeah. And the other cool thing is that also the Moon stabilizes the Earth's rotation. If it wasn't for the Moon, we might end up looking like a wobbly top that's starting to slow down. Yes. Like Inception. Yeah. Your favorite movie. So that top wobbling Tracy talks about precession, where, because of that skew to its axis, the angle of its axis, the Polar star changes every, like, 140 years, I think. 260 years. So right now, Polaris is the North Star. The North Star in 3000 BC. Was called Subin. Did you know that? No. So we're going to get another one. And Ad 14,000 Vega will be the poll star. Isn't that cool? That is pretty cool. I hope I'm around to see it. I don't know. There's going to have to be some significant advances in longevity research yeah. In the next 20 years. So what else do we have, Chuck? Well, we've got eclipses. If you want to dive into that, take it. When the Moon passes between the sun and the Earth right. Occasionally you're going to get that exact alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and that's a solar eclipse. And I don't know if a lot of people know this. When you have a solar eclipse, let's say month, you're going to have a lunar eclipse as well. Yeah, it's like in the bag in the back. But the Moon has to be full, correct? Yeah. When the Moon is full, a lunar eclipse will occur in the same month as the solar eclipse. Yes, you're right. Okay. But for the solar eclipse, it's got to be a new Moon. Yes. Josh new phase only. So when you have a lunar eclipse, the Moon is new and it's in line between the sun and the Earth. And then when it's full, 15 days later, 14 days later, it's on the other side of the Earth, you're going to have a lunar still lined up. Lined up again. And depending on where it goes into the Earth's shadow, either the pen umbra, which is like an angled part of the shadow, it's not the full shadow or the umbrella, which is the full on shadow. It'll either be. A partial or a full eclipse. That's right. And kids, remember, never stare into a solar eclipse. Right. You can stare at a lunar eclipse all night long if you want to. So we talked about will the moon save humanity? We talked about lunar bases, and we talked about mining asteroids and fake moon landing. It's like our fourth moonie. But I think that should be required listening because there's an idea that there's possibly ice that was missed on the moon. There's been a couple of the Clementine probe in 1994 found evidence of it, and then a more recent one said, yeah, that's probably ice right there, which is a big deal. Well, yeah, it probably got there from, like, comets or something else. But there's ice on the moon. And if there is, then that means that we have water and fuel on the moon for a moon base, which is very exciting news. It's a lot cheaper, apparently, if you had a moon base to send off a rocket from the moon than it would be from the Earth. Plus, you can be like, I got a moon base. And that's just cool. Yeah, way cool. It sounds so 60s. Unless you see the movie Moon, and that wasn't very cool at all. Good moon movies. What you got? Well, moon. Okay. Me too. What else is there? Moonraker. Yeah. Paper moon. Moon river. It's a song. Yeah, sure. I bet there's been a movie called Moon River breakfast at Tiffany's. Do you think you remember the film Breakfast at Tiffany's? I love that movie. Well, that's one thing we've got. Okay. Wow. What song is that? Breakfast at Tiffany. Is that the name of it? By that awful band who I hope doesn't listen to the show. Sorry. That was a sidetrack. So the reason we mentioned that they found what they think might be ice is because that's pretty important because President Bush was GungHo to go find out and potentially get on the moon again. Obama came in 2010, in February and canceled the Constellation program. Right. Which I looked into because my first thought was, I'm a big fan of our president. And I thought, well, that stinks. I wanted to go back to the moon. Right. And I think it's worthy to do so. Oh, we will. It will just be private companies that get there. Exactly. That's what he says. At least as he ordered a review and found it to be behind schedule and over budget and just not a very lean program. And so, hey, let's extend the International Space Station for about five years, give NASA about $6 billion, and then see if we can get some private companies to start shuttling astronauts up there into the private sector. Yes. So we'll see what happens. Neil Armstrong is against that, but Buzz Aldrin is for it. Really? Yes. I don't know if they're duking it out or what. How do you feel about it? I don't know, I think the private sector could get involved, and that's good. That's companies making money. It is. But I tend to think of the moon as part of the commonwealth of humanity. It just seems like you shouldn't apply capitalism to the moon. Yeah, maybe not, but China might get there and set up camp and be like, no, China will get there. They are spending a significant amount of money. They're building their own international space station. Actually, it's just a national space station because it's just theirs. Yeah. So, yeah, they'll be on the moon. The National Space Station. Yes. Do we have an article on who owns space? I know we have who owns the oceans? We did that. But I mean, that's a valid thing. Let's find out. What if China got up there and they're like, this is ours now. Yeah, we got it. You can see the moon base. All right. We got through that. All right. Let's the moon if you want to learn more about the moon. And seriously, there's some really handy graphs and illustrations in this. Type in moon in the search bar athouseaufworks.com and that brings up listener mail. Hold on there, partner. We are going to plug our new audiobook that is available on itunesuff. It's called the Super Stuff Guide to Happiness. Features, interviews and Josh's niece. Very cute niece. And what else? Great sound design. Yeah. We talked to Eric Wilson, who wrote the book against happiness. Awesome. Wake Forest Professor. Yeah. Great interviews on this one. Yeah. And we talked to a bunch of great people and just really got into what is happiness, what makes us happy, how can we possibly study happiness? And just came up with some pretty good answers. It's worth it. 399. It is. Or more in Australia. Or if it makes you feel better, divide that 399 over the 340 something shows. Oh, yeah. Nothing. That's almost just like a penny a show. Yeah. Not even except in Australia, where it's going to be more like a tough and show. Yeah. We're going to work that off over the next couple of years to our Aussie friends. So it's on itunes. The stuff you should know super Stuff guide to Happiness And when you search that on itunes, it'll probably bring up the Super Stuff Guide to the Economy, which is pretty good listen to, if you ask me. Agreed. And now that we've done this and we did it shamelessly. That's right. It's time for listener mail again. Josh, we called for a karma off. Send us your karma stories. I'm going to read one. And this is from a dude in a band that I'm actually a fan of. Okay. Their name is Fang Island, and they're awesome. And they're based in Brooklyn, New York. Now. Although they're originally from Rhode Island. And Jason Bartel of Fang Island wrote in and said this I've been enjoying the podcast for a while. I'm in a touring band it's been way too much time in the van, so I welcome the opportunity to keep my brain occupied. So thanks. And if people wrote in with lots of karma stories, and if you think I'm just reading this because I'm a fan of this guy's band, then you're right, so I apologize if you think your story was better. He went to college in Providence, Rhode Island, was driving home to New Hampshire one holiday weekend and nearing the end of the trip. There's a toll there, and I had zero money in my wallet, and I was stuck in line, and it was too late. In hindsight, I was probably overly panicked. As a penalty for not having enough money at its hole in New Hampshire is probably pretty minuscule. Like they probably would have said, don't worry about it. They're really nice up there. Yeah. I have not been in New Hampshire, but I assume they're very yeah, Vermont. They're all just, like, super nice old nevertheless, I started sweating. My heart was racing. I began scrounging for loose change to no avail. One long shot scenario that crossed my mind was maybe the car in front of me would pay for me for some reason, but I dismissed it, so I barely knew that I had even thought it. But when it came time for me to face the music, it turns out this is exactly what happened. The operator said the car in front of me covered my fare and said to have a nice day. I was stunned. I have no idea still why they paid for me. I even sped up alongside them to give them a thank you and wave my gun at him, tell them to pull over because I wanted to ask them, but they never acknowledge me. Normally it would be Stone Cold case of luck, except that I've actually done this before for other people in the past, when I felt randomly charitable, I realized this is probably the very definition of the simplified New Age interpretation of karma that you were talking about. But I was just struck by the almost cute one to one ratio of this particular Karmic transaction. That is Jason Bartel of Fang Island, who is a great band. They got a 8.3 review on their debut album on Pitchfork, which is really high. Pitchfork? They're not kind to bands, usually. Well, that's not true. They review how they review. Right. But an 8.3 is good. They're not sick of fans. They are not. They will trash your record if they don't like it. So they're awesome and go see them. They're on tour. I think they might be. Come to Atlanta's. Fall to me. Do you want to say their name again? Bang island. Okay. They opened up for Flaming Lips a lot on this last tour, so that should tell you something about their sound. Very cool. Do they sound like a Flaming Lips, then? No. I mean, a lot of it's instrumental. They're just insanely talented. And their self described sound is, quote, everyone high fiving, everyone nice. And he's kind of right. It sounds like how I would describe the Go team. Yes, they have been compared to them. Although this is like a three guitar onslaught. But it's like happy music. It's not like explosions in the sky type of instrumental stuff. I got you. And they got words, too. It's just not like first course type of song. Are they like lions and scissors? Very unique. Goodness me. That was a plug and a half. Well, if you have a band that you think Chuck likes, he wants to hear about it. I really do, actually. What if one of my heroes listens to the show and I'll never know? Or what if it's a new band that you've never heard of yet? Well, that too. Okay. You should contact Chuck. Like David Bowie. What if he listened? David Bowie does not listen. All right, you can contact Chuck and me. We're both on the same email address. You just need to direct it toward us at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofork 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. 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a2eaad69-e7ef-4ba2-8798-aed000eca01f | Mangroves: Nature's Best Tree? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/mangroves-natures-best-tree | Mangroves are incredible survivors and adapters. They're also amazing at lessening the impact of tropical storms and climate change. And heck, they're cool looking. So jump into the brackish waters and have a listen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Mangroves are incredible survivors and adapters. They're also amazing at lessening the impact of tropical storms and climate change. And heck, they're cool looking. So jump into the brackish waters and have a listen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 12 Jul 2022 14:27:53 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=14, tm_min=27, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=193, tm_isdst=0) | 42379053 | audio/mpeg | "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 over there. So let's get to it. While we're talking about mangroves, everybody. Mangroves. Gather around while we talk about mangroves, my new favorite tree. It's a great tree. It's a good favorite tree to have. It is. And this is one of those. I think this is the second and probably final that was inspired by my recent trip to Mexico, because we were surrounded by mangroves, literally surrounded by mangroves, and we couldn't get enough of them. And, like, riding the bikes around and looking in these mangrove forests and considering what it must be like to try and navigate through them, nearly impossible, I would say, because you've seen them in person, I'm sure like just how dense these things are. And we're going to be talking about different kinds, but really sort of the money. Mangroves sure are the ones that we're going to focus on. And I was knocked out just by how they looked, and I could tell that they were a remarkable wonder of nature and evolution. And then after this stuff, Dave Rus helped us put this together after learning everything that they're capable of, it's just like, what kind of tree is this? It's amazing. It's an amazing tree. Like I said, it's maybe one of the best trees to have as your favorite tree, because there are very few trees that are this amazing. Chuck man and we're talking mangroves, and we should say mangroves aren't necessarily like a species or even a family of tree. One of the other things that makes them such a cool tree to have as a favorite is that there's something like 80 or 90 species of them, and they're not genetically related in every case. Instead, biologists classify them by their ability to survive and even thrive in salty water, in soil that has little to no oxygen, which are two things that most trees can't do, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. And what makes mangrove so amazing. Yeah, but like I said, we're talking mainly about those amazing trees that sit up above the water with this network of look like fingers just sort of propping up the tree, which are the roots. They are a woodland tree. Also could be called a shrub. And they grow in a pretty narrow area between well, they're subtropical along the coastlines, first of all, but they grow between, literally between the terrestrial and the marine environment in salty, brackish water. Yeah, and I want to say a lot of them, it's really not, though. I think they make up like 1% of the forests of the world mangrove forests are, but it's still 85,000 sq mi, which is a pretty decent amount of area for one kind of tree. It's about the size of the state of Arkansas, and the largest mangrove forest in the world is at the mouth of the Ganges near the Bay of Bengal. It's called the Sundarbans, and that's where the Bengal tiger live, which is pretty cool. Agreed. They exist in 118 countries and here in the United States, in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. And I thought, oh, surely the Georgia coast so close to Florida. Surely they've got some mangroves. Don't even try. Not quite. I did see some people that were like, oh, so mangroves. But it's not true. It looks like the closest mangroves are about 40 miles from the Georgia border, near the Georgia coastline. So it was really sad that we don't have our mangroves. That is bad. But they do have them in Florida and Louisiana and Texas and Mexico. That's right. And again, you said that they grow subtropically. And Chuck, I want to share that it was just today that I finally stopped and was like, this subtropical thing is driving me crazy. It's above the tropics on either side. It's either above or below, depending on where your perspective but it's not below. It's not below the equator. And then I realized, if you're on the equator from the perspective of the equator, it's below the equator on either side, so it's subtropical. You've never stood on the equator? I never have. And I think I can't be a blame. I've never been to Ecuador. Well, we should go somewhere. We should do a podcast live from the equator. Yeah. And see if we melt. I know I will. I would, too. I'm melting this week. As far as the money mangroves that I was talking about, we're talking about red, black, and white. And for my money, I love those red mangroves. Those are the ones that grow along the water's edge. They have those prop routes. And if you've never seen a mangrove, please just look up red mangrove. And they're called prop routes because they prop that tree up off the ground. They are fully well, not fully exposed, because they also go into the water, into the soil, but they are largely exposed, and they are just tangled, gnarly, beautiful roots that, again, I can't imagine trying to navigate through a mangrove forest. You probably had to go around. Yeah, it can be really thick, both above water and below water because of those roots. So those roots, if you see them, that means that it's low tide. At high tide, they're usually covered up with water. But it's like you said, they prop the tree up. And so for that reason, because at low tide, you can see the bottom of the tree, and it's above ground. They're sometimes called walking trees, but they're pretty neat. And the red mangroves, I think anyone who knows about mangroves or seen a mangrove probably is what they're thinking of as a red mangrove, because those roots are just so characteristic and unusual. Yeah, the black mangroves are still really cool looking because they have these protrusions coming up out of the water called pneumatophores, and just put a pin in this. But they allow the plant to basically breathe, and we'll talk about that later. But if you look at a picture of these, it looks sort of like almost like little just spiky roots sticking up out of the ground all around the tree. Yeah, almost like stalagmites. Yeah, and I got that right, too, by the way. That's right. White Mangroves. It's weird. I don't understand fully why they're considered mangroves, aside from the fact that they must still thrive in brackish or salty water and poor oxygen soil. That's it. I guess so. But they grow inland, and they have normal shallow root systems like any other terrestrial tree, but they're still considered mangroves. Yeah. And I don't think I mention the Black Mangroves to grow a little bit further inland than the Reds. Yeah. So if you are looking at a cross section of the ocean hitting the land and going inland. You would see at the ocean or at the bay or wherever. Red Mangroves on the shoreline actually growing into the ocean. Depending on where the tide is behind them. You would have the Black Mangroves on slightly higher ground. And then behind those on the highest ground. You would have the White Mangroves. And that's what it would look like. You put it all together. What you have is a mangrove forest, also known as a mangal. A mangal, which is one of the more amazing we're talking about a lot of amazing things about mangroves and Mangal's, but it's the only species of tree that can grow in salt water. And big time, it's not like they love the salt. We'll see in a minute. They have some great ways of getting rid of it, but they figured all that stuff out. But they can grow in salinity levels of 75 parts per thousand, which is about twice as salty as ocean water. Yeah, that's pretty impressive, because where are they growing that's twice as salty as ocean water? I think it's just kind of showing off at that point. Well, I didn't know if, like, that inland water just accumulates salt or something. Yeah, you might be right. Yeah, I think you fit upon it. Okay, so they're not show off. They're just doing what they've got to do. They're making lemonade out of the lemons that they were handed by natural selection for where they grow. So what about the salt? How do they get rid of it? So you would think, like, they can drink salt water and use it like terrestrial trees use water. Not true. There are actually two techniques where they can either keep salt from entering their roots, or they can take the salt in and then get rid of it in certain ways. And so that means that there's two types, secreters and non secreters, and Black Mangroves are secreters, I believe, right? That's right. Those are the ones with the little nubby they look like sticks almost sticking out of the water. They filter it out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that means if you see a black mangrove and you see some kind of chalky white stuff on the leaf, that is salt. I don't know if I should say go lick it, because I don't know if that's dangerous, but it's salty. Just trust me, it tastes like salt. And DDT red mangroves, they're non secretors, so they actually just don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots. Now, that's easier said than done, because their roots are planted in the water. Right. They're taking up water from the ocean, from salt water. And what they do is they have cell walls that actually act through reverse osmosis. It lets water through, but it doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean, that's something that humans have only recently figured out how to do. Mangroves have been doing it for who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years. But they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic lipophilic material called subarin that really serves them well. That's right. It allows them to get rid of more than 90% of the salts in the water, which also means, which I didn't really think about until just now, that they can literally tolerate, I guess, about 10% salt content. Yeah, I saw 90% to 95%. But yeah, that's still a lot of salt for a plant. Totally. Yeah. So they have at least adapted in some ways to tolerate salt more than other plants. But for the most part, they're just really good at keeping salt from being taken up by their roots. I just find that fascinating. And I love how Dave puts these sections are labeled either Mangrove Magic Tricks or what was the other one? Mangrove Superpowers. Yeah, and they're pretty fun. They're both apt. They are. So this is magic trick number two is I mentioned earlier that they actually breathe through these roots. I think typically you might like to think about plants as just eating up that CO2, which they definitely do. But plants need oxygen, and they need to get oxygen from the roots. And with a regular tree and a regular forest, they're getting that, like, through the soil and these little gaps between the soil in mangal, I guess you would say, they can't do that because the tidal sediments come in and it's all waterlog and compacted, so they don't have those air gaps that you have in a normal forest. So they kind of came up with a brilliant little trick to get around that. Right, yeah. So the pneumatophores that black mangroves have, those stalagmites that are coming up in spikes around them, those act as snorkels. So they stick up out of the water, and they're covered in these little cells called leno cells, and that's where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through these Snorkels. They get taken into the Snorkel underground, into the other roots of the tree and used for aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy, which is pretty nuts. And pneumatichor actually is Greek for air carrier. So makes sense. Pretty on the nose. Yes. Some of those pneumatichors can reach up to 10ft tall. Did you see that? Yeah, I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any that tall with my eyeballs, but I looked because I wanted to see that. Yeah, I didn't see it either. It could be made up. So then you've got this I don't think so. Then you've got these red mangroves that we talked about for my money, like the money mangrove. And those proper roots serve the same purpose as the new metaphors. Like I said, they sit up on those long sort of curvy stilts, and they stay above water. Like a lot of it stays above water, even at high tide at times. And they are also covered with those lenozils, and they do the same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place. Yeah. So that explains also why there's so many roots and so many pneumatophores that spread around these trees. It's like if you dug up a tree of roughly the same size, it would probably have a similar sized root structure, maybe a little less. But you don't see it. It's all underground. This is above ground. So it looks like a lot of roots. And it is a lot of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial tree would have. We just don't see them. Yeah, it's like a tree that has dropped trial. That's exactly right. It's. Porky Pig in it. Should we take a break at mangrove? Magic trick number two? Yeah, we'll come back with number three right after this. So, Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind? Well, I think I've been clear. I know you're teasing me because me and my red mangrove tirades, to me, this is the best part of the episode and the most amazing thing that we'll get to carbon sequestration, because that's amazing, too. But to me, this just knocked my socks off. That mangroves kind of give birth to baby mangroves. I think the only reason you want to qualify it with kind of is because our mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on. But that is what's going on, for all intents and purposes, that some mangroves are vivaparis, meaning that it means live bearing to where they have seeds on their plants that they develop. They're about acorn sized, but then, rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind blowing happens with mangroves. That's right. The seedling is actually produced on the tree itself. And that's sort of I keep qualifying it. They self plant themselves. Eventually, this thing is going to fall off. You've got to look up the video on the Internet. There are many out there where it shows these acorn like things. They grow down to these sort of long arrow like green arrows that are pointing down and eventually they just go and they snap off and they go straight down and they either stick into the ground at low tide or I saw them in 2ft of ocean water just going straight through and sticking into the sand. And they plant themselves. They do. They plant themselves in that sandy bottom and then they sprout roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing roots within hours, which means that also, if they don't fall straight down, if they fall and they land on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by growing roots on the ground facing side and then grow roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing. But what's even more amazing is that if they fall, they happen to fall at like high tide and it's pretty deep and they never touch the bottom in any way. They'll float along, they'll go out to sea, and as they're out to sea, there are a little tree growing, like growing leaves, getting water from the ocean and doing photosynthesis in the sunlight, and they can float around for up to a year before they make land and stand themselves up and grow roots wherever they land. It's just unbelievable because this was an evolutionary adaptation, because my first thought was, well, why doesn't the acorn like seed just fall into the water and float around? But it must have just not been able to survive and got water logged and died and adapted to grow on the tree itself and get that little seedling started. Yeah, because think about this, Chuck. A seedling is a small, viable tree. It has everything it needs to grow. So it's an individual organism. And when the mangrove is growing, the seedling on its tree, on itself, that's gestation, because when it drops, pops off, it's like a giraffe dropping a baby out, like three or 4ft above the ground. It's the same thing. It's gestation. It's a live birth of a plant. It's nuts, man. I love it. And the baby giraffe sticks its nose into the ground and grows from there for months and months, plants some roots out of its head and there you go. Let's talk about the mangal a little bit. We've talked about the fact that these forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem that is dense in more ways than one. It's not just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that exist in these Mangal's. Yeah, one of the reason why these root systems and why the above water parts of the trees are all just so thick, like you were saying, it's so hard to get through is because of the way that they drop seedlings right off of their tree right around them. So these mangles develop into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs above water and below water, because they grow so closely together. And as they grow, they migrate one way or another, or they just spread out one way or another, sometimes towards the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side of the shore. But that's how they grow, and that's why they're so dense, too. And that provides a lot of protection for these habitats. They are all manner of fish. If you're in Florida, you're going to see graysnapper in there, or you probably won't see them snook tarpon. This is pretty remarkable. The Goliath grouper, which is actually endangered, spends their first six years in that mangal before it goes to open water. Yeah, and it's not just like a few kinds of fish, like things like octopi, sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds of fish. This is their nursery ground because these roots, this tangle of roots provide a place for juveniles to hide out of reach of predators and get bigger and bigger, because it's also a very nourishing place for them to eat, too. So they're really important as nurseries for all kinds of sea life. Yeah. And if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry, and this just sort of shows you how important these mangals are. 1 sq. Mi loss of mangroves forest would lose about \u00a3275,000 of fish every year. And then that's not even to speak of all the indigenous communities that rely on these fish to provide their sustenance. Right. And so that's just the below water part of the mangal. The above water part of the mangal basically does the same thing. But for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds, they make their home and their nurseries in those mangals, too. The branches, the leaves, the trunks, those are really just as important for aboveground animals as they are for below water animals. Yeah. And you mentioned that Bengal tiger. This was also in the Sum Darbins, right? Yes. And this is the largest single population of Bengal tigers on planet Earth, and it's only about 100 of them. But they live in these Mangal's. Yes. And also attention. Kristen Bell. If you are ambivalent about mangrove forests, prepare to care, because in Panama, the Pygmy three toad sloth, critically endangered, by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests down there. That's right. So you got to care. Now, I still watch that video of her and that sloth about once every two years. Yes. It's just one of the great human reactions to something. Yes. And I remember how hardened we were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even though she clearly wanted to, more than she's ever wanted to do anything in life, but she didn't do it, so good for her. It's pretty great. I think we can move on to some superpowers, right? Yeah, mangrove superpower number one, which is coastline protection, which is pretty important if you live along the coast. Yes, this is a big one, one great benefit of all those above ground, gnarly mess of roots that are everywhere. And it just makes perfect common sense when you look at them, is they make great wave breaks, any kind of wave, even like a tsunami. Is that a word? It is now, I think it's a great word. Tsunami's wave is going to be cut down big time when it hits this stuff. It's just going to just cut through and disperse it in a really profound way. Yeah, because there's so many different roots and individual things to bump into on the way to the shore that it's going to reduce its energy, which means that it reduces one of the pernicious effects that waves have onshore, which is erosion. And not only does it reduce erosion because the waves don't have enough energy to take stuff back out to sea, it actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you combine that, I should say, with the really low oxygen environments that make up the mucky bottom in a mangrove mangal, I guess you can kind of flash back to our Mystery of Coal episode, where we talked about how swamps work like that. So mangrove swamps are very much like that as well. But then in addition to that. They have ocean sediments being brought. All this organic stuff being brought from the oceans layering. With the mucky sediment from the mangroves falling into the muck. Which means that they're holding on to a lot of stuff and building up soil. As a matter of fact. So much so that they outpaces sea level rises in some areas. Yeah. I mean. This kind of falls under one of their other superpowers is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But I think that they add about and we'll get to that in more detail in a minute. But in Australia. Some mangrove or some mangal in Australia and Belize. At about 10 mm or more of coastal soil each year. 100 of a meter. Yeah. I mean. It doesn't sound like that much. But sea level rise is coming in at about 3.2 meters a year. So in parts of Australia and Belize, it is actually outpacing climate change. Yeah, that's pretty cool, and that's really important because the sea levels rise, if the soil level is rising, we don't have to worry quite as much about sea level rise there, but that's only in some spots as we'll see. Yeah, and as far as the waves go and we're talking about tsunamis, well, with just regular waves, for every 100 meters of a mangrove forest that a wave will hit, its height can decrease by as much as 66%. Wow. And if you're looking at storm surges, which is one of the big dangers it's not just the wave, it's that water surge. If you've listened to our tsunami episode, there was a study that found that surge deaths were reduced about little over a foot and a half for every little more than a half a mile, 50 CM over every kilometer. And that doesn't sound like a ton. But if you've got a mangrove forest that's several miles deep, then we're talking six or 7ft of less storm surge happening. And that can make a really big difference in flooding. Oh, yeah, because the storm surges would get you I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It carries all sorts of debris with it. It has so much energy, it can just rip buildings down. It's a real problem from hurricanes, it's that flooding from the storm surge. But because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to come nearly as far as. So mangrove forests, especially thick ones, save human lives and you would guess, animal lives too. Yeah, and we've seen that sort of this bear out in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. I think it was in the IndoPacific region in the 1950s. They used to have about 5 miles, like, deep of mangrove forest. By the 1990s, they were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that later as well. But basically human cause depletion. And in 91, there was a cyclone that hit the coast of Bangladesh where there were no longer any mangrove forests to cut down on that impact. And there was no buffer, and there was a big 20 foot storm surge and almost 140,000 people died. Right. I saw that a lot of those people died because they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove buffer being gone, and that they had built the storms shelters truck after a 1970 cyclone that killed 5000 people in Bangladesh. Wow. Can you believe that? Can you imagine a storm killing half a million people in your country or your little area? That's insane. It is. That's devastating. It's biblical. Yeah. They did some studies too with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, and they found that the mangroves there were about 100 meters deep, and they at least helped reduce those waves between five and 30%. So that's a big deal. 6ft of storm surge up to 30% of wave height. And the initial rush in from the ocean is you're saving a lot of lives in that case. Yeah. And I mean, you saw how bad the Indian Ocean tsunami was too. It just makes you wonder, like, how much worse it could have been without mangroves. So I say we take our second break and we come back and talk about carbon sequestration. That's right. Aka superpower number two. All right. We had promise of superpower number two, and we teased a little bit early earlier I did, about carbon sequestration. So we need to talk a little bit about what people are calling a blue carbon ecosystem. Blue sort of referencing the ocean. Yeah. It's basically the same thing, like trees inland, capturing carbon and storing them in their bits and parts. This is just coastal vegetation doing the same thing. And the thing is, trees, they're really efficient at capturing carbon and storing it. But because of our friends fungi and rot, when the tree dies, that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even possibly back into the atmosphere if, say, like a wildfire happens. Right. Atmosphere. Hot Wheels. That is right. But you know how we mentioned before that with that soil, that the water is basically that ocean water is just sitting on top of it's, just building up to that salty peat, and that carbon is not being released like it does in a terrestrial forest, and it's not breaking down. So it is a champion at storing carbon. Not only good at it, but really good at it. Yeah. It's like the Judah Freed lander of forests as far as carbon sequestration goes. I love Judah Friedlander. We actually met him once, but I don't get the joke. Oh, he always wore a hat that said World Champion. Okay. And he was always boasting about stuff like that. Yes. I love that guy. When we met him at an event with Jesse Thornton Hodgman many years ago, and this is kind of during his run on 30 Rock. 30 Rock. And this is when I was also wearing my Last Chance garage hat all the time, which I haven't put on in a couple of years. I hate to say so, probably a few years, but I remember when I met him, he went into that face of his, he kind of peered up at my hat and that patch, and he went, all right. Okay, cool. That was a great dude of Sweden. I was like, I got the stamp of approval from the hat guy. Yeah, definitely the hat guy first. Cool. But yeah. So mangroves are the champion of carbon sequestration. So much so that they are four times more efficient than terrestrial vegetation at storing carbon, which makes them like a bona fide carbon sink. Mangrove forests are and again, it's because there's just no decay, there's no fungus, there's no rot. All the vegetation that dies and falls down into the muck just gets stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance to break down. So as long as you don't dig up or destroy a mangrove forest and cut up the peak to use it as cheap fuel, you've got a really good carbon sink on your hands. Yes. To the tune of worldwide, Mangal's account for about 6.4 billion tons of carbon that's being held in check. That means when you do do something like you hinted at, it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise. If you cut down a mangrove for us, That carbon is going to be released, that sequestered carbon is slowly going to creep back into the atmosphere. From 2000 to 2015, roughly 122,000,000 tons of carbon, extra carbon, were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of mangrove forests, and between 82,030% of the Mangal's of the world have been stripped away. And it is outpacing like the tropical rainforest construction, that's mind boggling, because if you just hear the figures on how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down, the idea that mangrove forest is outpacing is pretty nuts. But apparently Myanmar is the current hotspot for mangrove deforestation. Between 1996 and 2016, Myanmar cut down 60% of its mangal just gone. Part of the problem is you can restore mangrove forests. Fortunately, we'll talk about some people who do that, but it can take a while, and sometimes when you restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in and typhoon or cyclone or hurricane comes along and just washes them all away. So if your timing is wrong, it might take a very long time for you to restore a mangrove forest, so it's not something you want to cut down. Willynilly basically, no. Shrimp farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing, but they are the biggest culprit responsible for 35% of mangrove forest loss, and people love shrimp all around the world, and in Thailand, in the other places as well, but especially Thailand, they cut down a lot of mangrove for us to make the shrimp farms along the coastline. And then you've also got the sea level rise that's causing destruction. We mention parts of Australia and Belize that those soil deposits are outpacing it, but that's only in a couple of those places. It is not doing that in other areas, no, so that means that sea level rises outpacing, soil deposition there. I want to say one more thing about shrimp farming, too. I looked a little bit into it, I cannot decide. Maybe it deserves its own episode, who knows? Okay, one of the other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to a shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a mangrove forest, the land occupies being desirable for a shrimp farm. So you cut down mangrove forest to build a shrimp farm is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just basically open a dam and let all the water out, and that water is filled with tons of nutrients that overwhelm the carrying capacity of the ecosystems, the mangrove forests around the shrimp farm, and you get what's called an algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off all the fish, and has just this devastating effect on the ecosystem surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard on the areas where it takes place, not just from the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many basic, good, best practices that could be followed that just aren't followed, that there's almost like a general, like, coming out of the shrimp farming industry, as far as I can tell, that really needs to be fixed. It's almost as if they just want to continue to make as much money as they can before they're regulated in some way. But what are you going to do if you tried to regulate them at all? You've got a nanny state on your hands, and who wants that? Yeah, and swim farming is just one tiny fraction of the great amounts of harm that are happening to the ocean because of lots of things, but commercial fishing is certainly one of them. I will say, though, it's really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza. Is that your head or something? No, that was from years back. I used to love shrimp on pizza. All right, talk to me more about this. What are we talking? You throw some shrimp on a regular cheese, or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing? No regular pizza. But you don't want to use just any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp, and you want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because they cook just enough with the pizza. A bigger shrimp might still be partially raw. It's going to be too big to eat. You put on the raw? Yes. You just throw some of those. Well, now, I think they usually come already cooked, now that I think about it. But you just throw a couple of handfuls on your pizza, put it in the oven, and they thank me later, basically. Oh, man, I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza. Well, now I feel bad about eating shrimp, knowing how bad shrimp farming is. I know, yeah. It's another wake up call, isn't it? Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm now farming my own shrimp here at home in a very sustainable manner so that I can have it on my pizza. Bathtub shrimp? That's right. Delicious. We don't take baths anyway. Yeah. You mean like, why do you have an out of order sign on our bathroom door? Right. I'm still trying to figure out how to break the news to Yummy. We don't really have a working bathtub anymore, so there are also invasive species that can totally wreck the health of a man. Gaul. In the 70s in China, they were trying to do the right thing. I think there were conservationists that transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United States there to try and slow erosion, but it crowded out mangroves. And then in Texas, they weren't trying to do the right thing. The fish and game officials there, they said, hey, people like hunting this exotic Asian antelope. It's called a new guy, I guess. N-I-L-G-A-I. So let's put them in Texas so people can hunt them. And it turns out they love to eat mangroves. Yeah. So they're being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas to hunt, which means I'm sure there's huge bounties on these things now, too. Yeah. Isn't that funny how that all works out? So there are people who are like, we really need to work on this. We need to get mangroves back. And there are places where this is the good news. Mangrove deforestation, globally speaking, on average, has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline. The deforestation is people are kind of getting hipped to the idea that we really need these things. They provide countless services for us humans. So even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right? Yeah. I think there's about 42% of the worldwide mangals are protected now. You need that number at 100. But I would feel much better if it was, like, in the 80s or 90s. Yeah. And not only that, areas that have been developed closely need to replant the mangroves that they cut down to build because they need them really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we found. Whatever you can get is helpful. That's right. But there's another kind of clever financial instrument, as they call it, called blue bonds. It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds came around a while ago, and these are basically, if you have money and you want to invest responsibly in a way that not only doesn't impact the environment, but can help the environment, you invest in a green bond or if you're really into the ocean, the subset of blue bonds, which were first introduced in 2018. Right. And so you want to offset your emissions. You buy a blue bond, and all of a sudden you've just paid somebody to go plant some mango. Or not mango. Maybe mango, too. But mangrove forest, right? Yeah, mango forest. That sounds delicious. I'd be, like, playing it in my backyard. That's where I want you to plan it with my blue bond. So look into blue bonds and green bonds. I saw something depressing the other day when they were I don't know what they were talking about on the news, but they basically said, if you have an IRA, you are supporting all kinds of companies that you would probably never support in real life. Oh, yeah, definitely. Mutual funds. Yeah, mutual funds. Just everything is all lumped in. So they were trying to encourage people, if they're able to, to be a little more selective in what they choose to invest in. Well, there's a lot of sustainable mutual funds too. That's right. Where they're very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fee is going to be higher, but if you care, it doesn't really matter. Oh, is it really a higher management fee? Yeah, anytime it requires any additional thought or effort, the management fee just automatically goes up. I had to click on three extra things. Right. I had to find out what these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual fund manager. Yeah. Financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor, you go to the wrong person. I meet him at Burger King every couple of weeks in the back. Yeah. Where else did you meet? You got anything else? Yes. Nothing else. Up with mangroves. Up with mangroves. And since we both set up with mangroves, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. This is a thank you from a Satanist. We had a great podcast. We must have put this on a select recently, I guess. Yeah, like two weeks ago. Okay. Hey, guys, discovered your podcast in 2011. Have been hooked ever since. Your informative, banter filled episodes remained a welcome constant in my life throughout college, adult years and now parenthood was helping me stay sane during sleepless nights with my newborns. When I saw the episode on Satanism, I guess I hadn't listened to it previously. I was simultaneously excited and nervous. I would hope you'd give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment, and I was not disappointed. Over the years, I've been given a lot of grief being a Satanist. People often assume that I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look and often go from praising me to threatening my family. Upon learning that, I followed the tenants set forth by the Satanic temple by shedding some light on the true nature of Satanism, I feel that you have given many people a look into the practice in a nonthreatening way, and hopefully this will help people choose kindness over fear based hatred when interacting with Satanist in the future. And thank you for being bold enough to put this episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy, but this long time listener, appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist, Donna. Thanks a lot, Donna. Donna Satanist. Yeah, that was a good one because I went back and listened to it to QA before it was a selection, I was like, this is a really good episode. But there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now I wish we had back, because a couple of people wrote in, and it was that we COVID at the beginning saying, like, if you're a Christian, you probably don't want to listen to this. And people wrote in and said, no, you should. Honestly, that because there's plenty of people out there who should hear this and change their views on people who hold these views. So if you go back and listen to that, just plug your ears for that first part and then listen to it through again. Yeah, that was 40 year old Chuck talking, right? Not 51 year old Chuck. That's right. That's a weird number to say. It is, Chuck. 51 is a weird number. And it's going to be a weird time in your life. I'm sure of it. Sure. That's the one thing I'll always hate is you'll always be younger than me. No matter how much I want you to speed up the aging process, you'll always be younger. You would have to travel to Mars in suspended animation, and I stay here on Earth for me to catch up. All right, I'm going to look into that. Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate that big time. And if you want to be like Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You can send it in 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, you." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1232116387639hsw-sysk-recycling-reality.mp3 | Recycling and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/recycling-and-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch | Recycling has come a long way since its debut -- and so have landfills. In this twofer HowStuffWorks podcast, discover the realities of modern recycling and find out why the world's largest landfill might be more aptly described as an "oceanfill." | Recycling has come a long way since its debut -- and so have landfills. In this twofer HowStuffWorks podcast, discover the realities of modern recycling and find out why the world's largest landfill might be more aptly described as an "oceanfill." | Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=20, tm_isdst=0) | 23526677 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from houseopeworkscom. This episode is sponsored by GoDaddy.com, the world's largest web host and domain name registration registrar, with domains as low as one dollars 99 and hosting for less than $5 a month. Enter promo code Stuff Ten at checkout and save 10% off your entire order. Get your piece of the Internet@godaddy.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. It's called stuff you should know. Appropriately enough. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, it's Chuck. That's right, Chuck. It's good to be back, Josh. I know it feels like it's been a while. Well, Christmas holidays. Right. I know that listeners think through the magic of itunes, that we never leave the studio at all, but in fact, we've been off for a couple of weeks and now we're back. Yeah. Do you know we've actually gotten offers to be rescued from a couple of our listeners? Oh, really? Because from studio one a yeah. On our Facebook page, I think I said that we're not allowed to leave. I got a pretty good response. Nice. Yeah. Okay. You should ask for pizza or cash. Oh, it's coming. Yeah, I'm buttering them up. Or shrimp cocktail. Your favorite. Shrimp cocktail. Exactly. I can finally get the shrimp cocktail. Chuck? Yes? Do you remember back in the 90s, maybe a haze for you? No. You don't remember the 90s? No, it's not a haze. I do. That was a weird response. I was studying and such. Okay, so you do remember the okay, so, Chuck, you are a child of the recycling generation. Yes. Do you remember when that thing just blew up? It came out of nowhere. I do. My brother and I were talking about this the other day with the initial yeah, we were with the Crying Indian in the 70s, which was just about littering. Right. When the good old days when you would just throw trash, an anchorman, they're walking through the park there's. So nuts. Do you ever see anybody in their car just throwing something out occasionally and it's just boil your blood? It's like, what are you doing? How can I be that unaware? I hit them with my car. Okay, so you're talking about a mere Indian who is crying because of the trash. Right. And then later on, recycling became like newspapers. Kind of where I remember it starting. It did. As a matter of fact, the first curbside newspaper recycling program started in University City, Missouri, I believe, or Missouri, as my mom would say. But it took a little while for it to take off from 1973 to the 90s. But in the really gained traction and gained ground. It did. And if you remember correctly, you used to have to have all these different bins for this colored glass, this kind of plastic or paper, and then all of a sudden it just went away. They're like just throw it all in one bin because recycling seems so important. I know. I always wondered, is this stuff really getting recycled? Right. And then when they went to this whole single bin hodge podge of everything, I was like, well, that's it. I mean, they're not even trying to keep the pretense that they're not dumping this stuff. Right. So it turns out that they actually are. That you can pretty much guarantee that almost all of what you are putting in your recycling bin is getting recycled. Correct. The thing that threw us off, where all of a sudden we're just throwing everything in one bin is called single stream recycling. That's a result of recycling technology, which is awesome because it made it a lot easier for people that maybe wouldn't be prone to recycle because they didn't want to separate everything. So yeah, it was awesome. It was a pain. It was definite pain. And now you just throw it all in one bin. They come and get it. And back in the day, there used to be a lot of human contact with your garbage that was being recycled. Right. But these technological advances imagine this, okay? There's like this conveyor belt that your recyclables are dumped onto and they go through this weird gauntlet where there's like magnets that attract like tin cans sure. And then drop them into bins. Lasers. Lasers, always a personal favorite of mine. They're infrared lasers that are used to scan the wavelength that's emitted by different types of plastic. Right. And then they're appropriately taken off the conveyor belt. That's awesome. So crazy. And then there's others that have pus of air that can only get like cardboard, like a toilet paper, paper towel roll. Right. Just puffs it off. So all your stuff is going to is being assaulted. And the way it reacts to these assaults, they're going to end up in the right kind of bin. So you need very little human contact or much less than you did before. Right. So that should put the single stream fear to rest, right? Sure. I've heard people do you feel calmer now? Well, I never really doubted it too much, but I do know people that think it's a liberal conspiracy and that nothing is being recycled. Well, actually, there's an economist, I can't remember his name, but he went to the trouble of proving that recycling is actually more harmful than good. Really? Yeah. As far as like an environmental cost benefit, it's actually more harmful because I think it took into account like all the gas that the trucks burned and that kind of thing, and the electricity used in the recycling plant. And he came to the conclusion that's actually more harmful than good. I don't necessarily subscribe to that. Right. I'm sure he was contradicted by more than one person. Yeah, but he was a respected economist. He wasn't just some crackpot or Joe Schmoe. Right. No fly by night economist. No right, exactly. But he may have very well been a conservative economist, because, as you said, recycling is a big liberal conspiracy in some people's eyes. Exactly. Few, I would say probably a lot of people are on board now in the 2000s. Exactly. But I was having a conversation with my father the other day, and he is the herbal Elvis. Exactly. He was down, actually. He was kind of at the equilibrium point, which is good. So he's very lucid. And he and I were talking. He said that the people at his recycling center, they don't have curbside pickup where he lives out in the sticks. They take their stuff to the center, and they were told by one of the employees that works there that they don't recycle anymore. They just take all the stuff to the dump. Really? Yes. And I told him that the man at the recycling center is a total idiot. Right. And basically dad wanted to know why as is his want, and I told him that it's just an awful business model. Right. So think about this. There's this thing called a tipping fee, Chuck, and in 2008, the tipping fee is what you pay to dump your stuff at a landfill. Right. And it's usually per ton. In the US. In 2008, it was about $42 on average per ton of everything. Anything you wanted to come dump. They weigh it by ton, and then you pay $42 a ton. Have you ever been to a landfill? Yeah, I know. Actually, I've been to some that are kind of tranquil, quite nice. Yeah, they have, like, ponds and stuff, so you never ever want to swim in. But there's like rolling hills filled with garbage. It's grass over it. The smells I've been to somewhere, they're actually going to the effort to make it look decent, but yeah, and then you turn around, there's like some rusty refrigerator with a corpse in it or something. So they can be depressing places. Yeah, they stink. Okay. But there's that tipping fee. Right. You drive up and there's a scale that's embedded into the ground. It weighs you and you pay appropriately. Some states are more than others, I think. Vermont's tipping fee, the average tipping fee in the state is $96 a ton. Wow. And I think Oklahoma is on the low end. It's like 14 or $17 a ton. Right. So clearly, the more you charge the tipping fees, the more people are going to recycle. Exactly. But the point is that because you have to pay to dump this stuff. Sure. And you're not charging anybody money to come drop off the recycle. All you're doing is throwing your money out the window. You might as well empty out your bank account into a dump truck and back it into a landfill. Right. Did you explain this to your father? I did, yeah. Actually, you don't know this, but you are trapped right in the middle of a recreation of this conversation we had. So that's number one. The other thing is that you can actually get money from recyclables. They are commodity. Yeah. So what happens when you take your recyclables to a recycling center and they're diverted from the dump, thank God, to a recycling plant? What happens? I mean, what do they get turned into? Well, they get turned eventually back into the original raw material, which is a commodity. It's worth money, like you said. So they have every incentive to recycle. So like that mixed office paper is being turned into cardboard. Maybe old newspapers actually are really very commonly used for cardboard, stuff like that. Or plastic bottles are being turned into like a fleece jacket. Did you know that? Yeah. And actually there's a plastic bottle you want to avoid. If you ever tip it upside down and you look, that's where you're going to find your recycling symbol, right, in the number, correct? Yes. So if you see a triangular recycling symbol with a three inside, you should actually do this while you're at the store, look at the bottle and if you see a three, put it back. Keep looking until you find the laundry detergent or whatever you're looking for that doesn't have a three and it has a one or a two or something like that. And then all of a sudden that one with the three will go away eventually. Right. Like PVC. PVC, that's one of the big evils. Because is it impossible to recycle or it's not really hard to it's very the ways you can recycle or the things you can recycle into a very limited, like maybe a plastic park bench or something like that. Right, because all the additives, there's so many additives. And plus there's whole websites and organizations dedicated to getting rid of PVC. Number one, it's impossible to recycle. So that does generally end up in the dump unless you take it to a specialty recycling plant. And number two, it contains thalamytes. And thalamytes, it depends on the plastic. Thalamytes are like a softener to soften plastic, like your vinyl shower curtain that has thalamytes in it when you put it in and it starts smelling weird, that's the thalamytes. And they're actually really harmful carcinogens children's toys, like the kind of malleable ones that they chew on. Yeah. Bad news, right? PVC thalamites, not good stuff. So if you start doing this at the store, if you stop buying things that are made in or delivered in PVC containers, PVC is going to go the way the dinosaur pretty quick. Yeah, but okay, so you want to look out for PVC, right? Right. Oh, I know what we're talking about. Raw materials. Back to raw materials. Back to raw materials. So recyclables are commodity because they're broken back down into their original composition, basically. Right, exactly. Okay. And then they're sold for big dough. It can be big dough. Actually, I was reading an MPR article and the price per ton that wholesale purchasers of recycled mixed office paper were paying this past summer, it was like $90 a ton. Really big money. And these are companies that are buying hundreds of thousands of tons a month. So it was big business to recycle, and by the fall, it had dropped to nothing because even recycling is subject to inflation and gas fuel prices. Well, not just that, but the economy. People stopped buying goods. True. So less goods were manufactured, but it's also because it's subject to economic whims, it's also subject to consumers. Right. So if you only buy products that are sold in recyclable or recycled materials that are made from recycled materials exactly. Correct. The people who make these things are going to start buying more and more recycled stuff. Sure. Okay. Because that's what the consumers want. And if you stop buying stuff that's made with virgin raw materials, all of a sudden these trees are being saved or more plastic isn't being made. Right. And so it's kind of cool to know that you can have this. Yeah. Each person can have an effect. Yeah. You can also have an effect by making sure, or doing your best to make sure that everything that you put in your recycling bin gets recycled. And one of the ways you can do that is by cleaning the stuff. I know you referenced Minnesota in the article, and I believe it's the same here in Georgia about pizza boxes. I've heard that pizza boxes, they won't recycle because they have cheese and grease and stuff on it. I actually just throw mine away now. Do you? Yeah, it's probably a good idea. And I do a really good job about cleaning out all my glass products just because it stinks. Yeah. And you don't want the barbecue sauce smelling after a few days, so that's the reason I do it. But it turns out it has a better chance of getting recycled. It does. And if you kind of look at it like your bottle of barbecue sauce, if you look at it, you'll see that it's not just a bottle of barbecue sauce. There are several components to it. The lid, maybe that little ring that held the lid in place. The safety seal. Right. That's not just kind of dangling around the neck of the bottle, the label. If you break this thing down into its parts, you're increasing its chances of being resolved as well. Sure. Yeah. Because if you think about the label's paper, but the bottle is glass and the cap is plastic. True. So you separate it. You're making it easier for the people at the recycling plant, or I should say the magnets and lasers at the recycling plant. Right. And it's going to be likelier to be recycled. Right. It won't become a residual, which I believe is what the refuse is called, that they cannot recycle. Correct. Right. And any recycling company would want to cut down on residual. Right? Yeah. Because it's just lost money. So they're going to do a lot to kind of get as much money as possible by recycling as much stuff as possible. But you can definitely help, right? Yeah. That's great. I agree. So does that take us to plastic and where that might end up? Yeah, plastic is kind of a big problem. Right. And not just PVC, but there's some plastic that's a lot easier to recycle than others, but it doesn't always get recycled. And when it doesn't get recycled, it can end up in some really screwed up places, right. Most specifically the ocean. Yeah. A lot of this stuff ends up in the ocean. Yes, it does. And I have a stat for you if you're into that. You know, I'm into your stats. Chuck, the UN did a little study, their environmental program, and they said in 2006, every square mile of the ocean has 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it. Awful. 46,000 pieces it is per square mile. And of the more than \u00a3200 billion of plastic that we produce each year all over the world, this is not the United States. About 10% of that ends up in the ocean. And a lot of that ends up on the floor of the ocean. Well, not just a lot of it. 70% of it ends up on the floor of the ocean. So if every square mile has 46,000 pieces floating sure. That's 30% of what's actually in the ocean. The rest is on the ocean floor. Right. So plastic is well, it's plastic. Right. It breaks down super wonderful material is so useful. But yes, it doesn't biodegrade. Right. It does break down. It photo degrades, but it doesn't break down molecularly into smaller compounds that can be absorbed by nature. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of the same thing, conveniently bite sized pieces, which is one of the big problems. Yeah. They're called mermaids tears or nerds. Yes, mermaids are one of them. That's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life. It is. It's almost as bad as the American Indian crying. Yeah. Some mermaids here. So, yeah, what happens is this stuff ends up in the ocean, and filter feeders like our friend the whale shark and small catfish. Catfish, they take this stuff in because they think it's food. Seagulls, albatross, they eat the stuff and it ends up killing a large shell of yeah, but wait, there's more. Aside from the choking hazard or any problems, digestive problems that can occur, these little mermaids tiers actually have this added property of attracting toxins. Like a sponge. This one freaks me out. So, like any toxin it comes in contact with in the ocean, it can actually draw stuff to it. It soaks it up, absorbs it, hangs onto it, and then when it's eaten, little poison pills, basically pretty much sitting and sinking in the ocean. And this is all over the place. But actually there's a place in the Pacific Ocean. This is startling to me. It is. There's a place in the Pacific in between Japan and California. Right. And it is called the North Pacific Subtropic Gyre Right. Okay. And basically a gyre. It's a circulating area of water. Yeah. But this isn't like a funnel. It's much more wide than that. Actually, one of these gyres is twice the size of Texas. I know this subtropic gyre, the one in the North Pacific is actually there's two and they're connected by a 6000 long Subtropical Convergence Zone. Right. It's basically trash and other things making its way from one to the other. This is where the garbage goes. The garbage that if you have a cigarette lighter and it goes out or it comes out of your pocket because you had it in your bathing suit when you jumped in right. It will likely end up in this huge garbage patch. There is a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean that's twice the size of Texas. And it's just kind of slowly sitting there turning well, there's two actually. There's two versions. There's the Western and the eastern. Right. And just one of them is twice as exactly. And they're connected by the little trash trail on the 6000 miles trash trail. And this is having, you could say, something of an impact on some of the island chains in the area. Right. Hawaiian island, some of the hayne islands. Some of them have beaches that feature five to 10ft of trash. Five to 10ft deep in the plastic sand is what they call it. Yeah. The little tiny face tears I know. That turn into these really tiny, tiny bits that you just can't do anything about. And it can't come mixed in with the beach. I know. So sad. It's bad news. There is one heartening thing to all this, to the great Pacific Garbage Patch. It can be reduced. And the reason it can be reduced is because I think 80% of the trash in the ocean starts on land. It isn't like ocean going vessels going out and dumping in this gyre or anything like it's pulled there. And it's usually from land. That was good to hear. I mean, it's sad in a way because it's coming from us. But it is good to know that something can change about that. Right. Because it's everyday people who are doing this. It's not some faceless corporation. It's not the people who are duping us into thinking that we're our stuff is being recycled and they're actually taking it and dumping it in the Pacific. Right. There's something you can do. Like you cannot use plastic grocery bags anymore. Sure. It's a great idea. It's very popular nowadays. You can recycle absolutely everything. If you have eco anxiety, which we've talked about, you can walk up and down the street and pull the aquafina water bottles out of the trash and you can do that. Sure. Or you could charter a helicopter and have them fly out to the gym and get to work. Yeah, that's true. So that's just the tip of the iceberg, right. On recycling and the world's biggest landfill, which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is. And we've got a couple of articles on them. Coincidentally, this is a dual podcast. This is on the street. It was, yeah. It's our first time ever. We hope you liked it. You can read both of these articles by going to our handy search bar and typing in world's biggest landfill or recyclingreality. And you can do that at how stuff workscom. And Chuck, we have a little listener mail. We do. My favorite part of the show, listener mail. So today, Josh, I'm going to start off with some corrections. Actually, I'm going to start off and end with corrections. Great. I have a few. We had a recent podcast on body armor, which was a special request from soldier Donald Anderson and Iraq. And first correction is Donald actually wrote us back because we didn't have his we found out his rank. Yes. Sergeant. Part of the Fourth Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. And he works on the Ah 64 D turbine engine, which I did a little googling. And that's in the Apache helicopter. Sweet. He's got a very cool job. Yeah. And he thanked us for the podcast. And some people wrote in because we're talking about the spider silk being made from a goat. We couldn't conceive of how that would happen exactly. We thought of it coming out of its derriere. Right. What was it we said? Let's listen. 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. So we did not know. We put the call out to our listeners, and because they're really smart and awesome, we had a bunch of people right in, and it turns out that the spider silk is actually created in their milk, in the goat's milk. That is so weird. And it's very strong, and apparently it's compatible with the human body. So it can also be used for artificial limbs and stuff like that. So I just have a few names just to give people their due. Nick McCracken of Waynesville, North Carolina. Kimberly Fletcher of Campbell, California. Jeff Bull of the earth. Wow. Not say where he was from. Eileen Ford Holste from California. Michael Barrisich. Matt Jensen of New York. Sean Cashin, who just wrote in like, literally ten minutes before he went on here. And one final person was unnamed. He's my favorite because the email simply said the One. So it may have been from God himself. Wow. Well, thank you, God, and all the rest of you for that correction. You got some work. Well, just one more small, quick correction. We did have a viewer I'm sorry, listener mail on a recent podcast, and we butchered the name, and ginger of this person said something like, bitch tall of Wisconsin, and it's actually a female. I think we said cost. Yeah, we're really sorry about that. Cost. I don't know why we just automatically assumed you were made. Right? And so it's actually costaw. She's a girl, and we're very happy for her. Okay. And we apologize. Yes. Thanks for letting us know. Coffee. And if you want to let us know how to pronounce your name and tell us your gender or talk about goat's milk, whatever, you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
3dccef88-1de7-11ea-9386-cb98a891962a | Short Stuff: Obituaries | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-obituaries | Learn everything we know about obituaries in 12 minutes! | Learn everything we know about obituaries in 12 minutes! | Wed, 18 Dec 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=352, tm_isdst=0) | 12682174 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, and welcome to Short Stuff. This is Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. We're going to talk about death, the natural super hip thing to do. There's Dave Ruth, who's in a bottle with a cork on top screaming, Let me out. Right. That was weird, but I loved it. Yeah, Dave helped us out with the longer form stuff, but this is one of the old I don't know how old, but one of the old house stuff works shorties that he put together. Yeah. I don't think it was old, I think it was new. Is it new? One of the new houses? I just mean the old website. Oh, got. You like, e. Old. You got to say it like that. It's an E. The old with an E? Yeah, sure. E. Old e. We sure wasted a lot of time. Good. So, Chuck, we're talking obituaries, like I said. That's right. Do you read these? Probably not, because you're under 80. Yes. But people do love them. Yeah, it's interesting. I read that I think beyond the Dash is what it was called, which is great, because, you know the dash between the date of birth and the date of death, there's a dash between them. There's a website, an obituary website, called beyond the Dash. And they said an obituary is like your final gift to a loved one. You're celebrating their life for all to see and read. Or if you're one of those weirdos who reads obituaries for those people to read and see. Yeah. I think it's long been like elderly people read obituaries. The joke is sort of because they're not in them. When ageism becomes a real thing, in, like, ten years, this episode is not going to have aged well. It's already a thing. A real thing. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. But they have always well, they've changed a lot over the years, which is sort of interesting. We're going to plug the genealogy website. No. Okay. There's a genealogy website, though, that has apparently you can learn a lot about your genealogy just from researching obituaries because they list so many people in the family. It's like a family tree there. Yeah. And then even obituary websites and genealogy websites, they've unleashed AI on these things. And the Bots have really had a field day coming up with Obed stating back, as far as I can see, to the 1750s, at least in the United States. Yeah. This one genealogy website has 262,000,000 published obituaries. That's a lot online. Yeah. See if you can figure out which one it is. Yeah, I guess so. The Bots, they've said okay, well, from what we've been able to ascertain, at least from digitized newspaper records going back to the mid 18th century, obits weren't a very big thing unless you were famous. Yeah, that's a really good point. The deaths of famous, well known, successful people have always intrigued us. Yeah. I don't think you might have told me that obituaries were prewritten for a lot of people. Yeah. Like the New York Times. O bits. Like the real deal ones. Yeah. I think you told me that a couple of years ago or something, and I was just astonished. I definitely knew that. It sounds like something I would tell you, probably, and it's not made up or afternoon tea. Right. But they'll just have an obit going on somebody, and then when they finally die, they can get it out the door really quick just by kind of summing up at the end. Just fill in that last beyond the dash, and maybe if they did anything noteworthy in the last eight months of their life. Right. Yes. They didn't. What I wonder is it just for old people or people that they think are risky? Oh, I wonder. We'll have to ask Jeremy Pivot. I don't get that. Right. He played an obituary writer in one in some movie. Was he an obituary writer who was a big jerk? Probably, because he specializes in those roles. He does. Interesting. So, mid 19th century, you started seeing this change from just famous types to regular old people getting their local paper, usually to publish sort of stripped down obituaries. Yeah, it's called the death notice, basically super stripped down. Yeah. This person died, and that's that there's still death notices around today. And apparently, if you're into obituary so much that you will publish a death notice, what you're saying is it's basically like a hold the date for more information about the funeral. Right. They still do those today. But that was what obituaries were originally. It's just the person's name. They died maybe who they were survived by, maybe a little bit about the funeral. But the reason obits were so thin originally was because back in the day, before the linatype was invented in, I think, the 1880s, when you put a newspaper together, every page, every letter of every word of every sentence of every line of every page of every graph paper, to use some lingo thank you. Was set by hand. By hand. Yeah. Every letter. So that's why certain obituaries just had a name and died. Right, exactly. With a date, maybe. And you felt lucky to even mention. Probably so. Yeah. But then linatype came along, and they said, hey, we've got a lot it's a lot easier to make a newspaper now. Let's make more newspaper every day. Yeah. So maybe we'll take a quick break, and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about obituaries, if you want to know. Just listen. Hey, Chuck, let's talk a little bit more about obituary. Yes. I mean, certain things like the Civil War obviously, would ramp up the death notices, like, tens of thousands of these going out every year. Yeah. And this was even before the linatype, too. Right. I think because there were soldiers, they felt like they needed to do so even though it was a pain. Plus, also, there seems to have been a real increase in fascination with death among the Victorians. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's when they were taking bereavement photography. That's true. They were holding funerals at home, but they became much more elaborate over time. Yeah. Well, what really changed was newspapers discovered that they could charge people money to get a loved one listed in an obituary column, and they could make some dough on it, and then it became a real thing. They made fat stacks. Everyone called it in 2011. These stats are pretty amazing, though, from 400,000 obituaries in 1900, and then that's from 2 million total newspapers. By the 1009, they were 1.25 million obituaries and about two and a half million total pages. Yeah. So obituaries themselves in number exploded because they were making dough. Right. But also the amount of the newspaper that they represented exploded to from a fifth to a half of all pages were obituary. Really? Yeah. Well, I get that. I yes. It's usually wrong, but I'll bet it's close. 1.25 million obituaries and two and a half million pages. That's half right down the middle. Right on the middle, yeah. And this is where in the is where you start to see that sort of classic obituary notice that we know today. Not just Died, sorry, but stuff. It's a four part thing, the death announcement, a little bit of a bio, who they're survived by, and then a little bit of the funeral info. Right. And it didn't have to be, like, one paragraph each, but, I mean, it was in those segments. Sometimes the middle bio part was extensive, depending on what they'd done. Sometimes the survive by was bigger than other times. Like that sweet story about that veteran who died in Florida, I think, a couple of months ago, and he outlived all of his family, and somebody got word of it, and it became like a viral thing. And I think, like, 10,000 people showed up for his funeral to make sure that he was seen off, that he wasn't forgotten. What is your obituary saying? I assume you have prewritten it. First of all, it just says died. Yeah, I've pre written it. I'm on draft, like, six or seven. Yeah, I got you. No, I have not. Have you done yours? Of course not. I haven't even thought of mine. I'm still livin. All right, so this is where the genealogy comes in, that now you've got spouse's name, children's names, married names of daughters, grandchildren. I mean, you might see cousins if it's noteworthy, or even if it's not, if that's what the family wants in there. Right. Because the obituary, as Rus puts it, is a quasilegal document. A lot of people think you have to, by law, publishes in the newspaper. You do, by law, have to file for a death certificate, like we talked about in the home burials, short stuff, but you don't have to publish it in obituary, but it still definitely lets the community know, hey, this person died. If this person happen to owe you money. Yeah, I was about to say, here's your chance to come make your claim against the estate, or whatever. So it does serve some sort of function, but it's not like a law that you have to publish an obituary. But it is up to the funeral home, typically, to publish the obituary or contact the local newspaper. But the family gives all the info that they want included in it, and they're the ones who are footing the bill. I think it's usually charged by line, so if you want to include cousins, sure. But it's going to cost you an extra $80. Right. The second cousin Eddie, really worth it. Yeah. And then things changed again, really, after 911, apparently when the obituaries became much more personal and these great stories started coming out about the people who died on 911. And I think that sort of, at least according to the people that they quote in this article, said that that kind of changed things all over the country and people started being a lot more honest and maybe funny and making them real memorials. But also, like I said, being honest and not brushing things under the rug. Like if someone suffered from depression and died by suicide, they wouldn't just put a vague that died suddenly at home. Yeah, exactly. That's what they used to say. Yes, and I'm sure some of them still do. But I think there's a trend toward honesty and openness now. More so, for sure. And apparently, according to Susan Soper, who is an obituary expert as far as Dave Rus is concerned, sure. She said that that was probably what turned the tide. That September 11 narrative obituary thing. Did you read about that last thing about saying that the deceased will not be missed in some cases? Whose was that? Was that just one? As far as I could tell, it was just one. But a few years back, there was a woman whose children, whose adult children said that the world would be better off without her, or the world is now better off without her, and she will not be met. She really jilted them as children, and they had never forgiven her for it. Nick caused a huge outcry and backlash, really? And actually, everyone sympathized with the dead woman, not the kids. And not the kids. The kids were taken as like little monsters who couldn't forgive their mom. But it was a huge deal. And it really kind of said a lot about how we view the deceased and their last send off. Just how many warts should you show? Right? I'm not going to take a side, but even if that's the case, is it gratifying to give mom a finger on the way out the door? Yeah, I don't know. You'd have to ask those kids. They were probably very surprised at the international backlash that it garnered. Interesting. Well, that's it for obituaries, Chuck. Yes. That means short stuff is out. 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." | |
Can the sun kill you? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-the-sun-kill-you | Could the sun, typically known for providing light and warmth, kill us? The Apollo 17 mission almost resulted in tragedy due to a mega-flare -- and astronauts aren't the only ones at risk. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about the sun. | Could the sun, typically known for providing light and warmth, kill us? The Apollo 17 mission almost resulted in tragedy due to a mega-flare -- and astronauts aren't the only ones at risk. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about the sun. | Tue, 17 May 2011 20:27:38 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=20, tm_min=27, tm_sec=38, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=137, tm_isdst=0) | 31597369 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workx. Comm. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W choosing Bryant. You may know us better as Joani and Chachi. Right. SYSK Morning Edition. Yeah. I literally have had two sips of coffee. This is an unusual recording time. I'm not done. This is weird. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast from the revered website howstepworks.com? Hey, they're our employers. Hey, they are. And they are where we get all of our information, right? That's right. Most of it. Yeah. There's been, like, maybe two or three podcasts that we've done that didn't come from articles off the site. Yeah, but that's the basis. Right? Okay, sure. And now everybody knows the secret. You can all go back to bed, right? I'd like to go back to bed. I know. Chuck, you've been here since 630 this morning. I know I have. And like you said, that's two sips of coffee. Whereas when we usually record, you have had 17 cups of coffee. This is going to be an unusually sedate podcast about the sun. Yes. This is almost SunTake too. I feel like this might make up a little bit for the awful sun cast we did. I don't think that's correct. No. And I don't think it's sun take, too. I think the sun comes in for a guest appearance at Cameo, if you will. But there's nothing that's ever going to make up for how the sun works. Although there was something. I think my favorite fact from the sun podcast was that you remember in the core of the sun yes. There's just helium bouncing all over the place. Sure. And I think a proton gets loose or a neutron, and it gets picked up by something else. And like this change in mass is displaced energy, and that displaced energy takes the form of a photon. Remember the tiny packet of light? Yeah. Here's the kicker, and I know you remember this. It takes a photon 1000 years to travel from the core of the sun to the surface. And then once it leaves the sun, it takes eight minutes to get to Earth. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. All of a sudden, it hauls butt. Yeah. 100,000 years. So the light that hits your skin, Chuck, is 100,000 years and eight minutes old. Wow. Didn't think of it that way. Well, now you will. That's a great fun fact. So I have a better intro than that. All right, let's hear Apollo 17. Yeah. The last Apollo mission. 1972. These guys are training to go to the Moon one last time. Let's get some people on the Moon. Nixon's in office. Everybody's really unhappy, so they're training. But there's a huge problem. There's a predicted solar flare coming. And not just any solar flare, a mega flare, Chuck. The last one scene of such magnitude was 150 years before. What does it do? Solar flare. Shoots protons out, like, highly radioactive protons out into the out into space and at Earth. Right. Earth has a magnetic field that deflects these things, or else they'd hit Earth's surface and us these radioactive protons at about a million to 3 million km/hour. So what's just a souped up version of that? Well, that's the mega version, yes. Oh, that is half a million kilometers an hour. Okay. It's way more protons. They're way more radioactive, and they reach much further out in space. It's just like a huge cough from the sun. Like I said, we have a magnetic field. The moon does not have a magnetic field. So any astronaut standing on the moon when the solar flare erupted would have gotten shot through with these radioactive protons and either would have been burned on the spot or would have just received a lethal dose of radiation sickness. Wow. So they called it off or postponed it. Luckily, the solar flare occurred between Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. So Apollo 17 went up on December 2 72, I think. And the solar flare took place in August of 1972. So they escaped it by six months or so. But isn't it crazy that they could have conceivably been standing on the moon and just been, like, something out of the movies, kind of like sunshine. Oh, yeah. I didn't think you saw that. No, I remember we talked about the first half was just classic. I've never seen a movie go off the rails like that. But I know it was so good. It was astounding I know. I really wanted it to finish off because Danny Boyle is the best. I'm on Team Boil all the way. You are. Yeah. But it raises the question it raises an interesting point, because I think we all know the answer to the question posed in this podcast. Can the sun kill you, Chuck? This is a Chuck Bryant special. Yeah, it's a little elementary, I thought. I disagree. When was it from? It's from a long time ago, but I don't know my introductions back in the day, I thought they were written for grade school. Do you want to read the first sentence? I wanted to almost get Robert Laman here to do a dramatic reading. Just to the first sentence. Anyone who's ever made it through the fifth grade can probably tell you that the sun is a star. I think it's funny how somebody, I imagine your editor went back and was like, well, there's not necessarily every person that we can say with confidence can tell you that if you've made it through fifth grade. So let's put probably in there. Yeah. So, Josh, the answer can the sun kill you? Is most certainly yes. Resounding yes. And not just by standing on the moon in a megaflare. Yeah. There's plenty of ways here on Earth that the sun can get you. Basically, the point of this podcast is don't ever leave your house again, right? That's right. And you, Mr. Tan man, do you know where sunscreen I do. I wear 70 on my face. I swear to God I wear 70. Why is it every time you come in, like on a Monday, you'll have this bronze dark face, and he's like, oh, it's at the beach. So I have either Greco Italian, Jewish, or some Mediterranean, possibly Native American in me somewhere down the line popping up. I tan extremely well. But if you've got on 70, you can't tan. So how's it defeating the sun block? I can tan. Clearly I can. And I promise you, I really do wear 70. I don't wear enough sun block like I should. I know, and I appreciate that I don't wear as much sun block as I should, but, like, everywhere, because it's just so much of me, I get bored. Like, halfway through, there's only clumps in my hair, so I can't get it rubbed in. But it's not the 70s. Remember in the 70s, it was just baby oil. Go out and sign. You actually kind of roast yourself like a turkey. Plus, I'd be wearing a medallion right now for the seventhright boy. Lizzie just cracking up. Yeah. Guest producer Lizzy. Catch her early in the morning and then we're funnier. All right, so let's go ahead and get going here with the first way, and then the first couple are just really the money is at the end of this podcast. The most interesting part. Okay, before we announce it, can we get a drum roll for the first way the sun can kill you here on Earth? Drumroll, please. It is eat stroke. That's right, yes. Most obviously, everyone knows that the body cools itself down by sweating. You get hot, your body temperature goes up a little bit, the sweat kicks in. In my case, it can be cold outside and the sweat still kicks in. Yeah, or you could be in, like, a 50 degree body of water. I will never die of heat stroke. But you can dive heat stroke. It's when your body temperature rises above 104 deg and stays there for a prolonged period. And that basically means you can't find shade. You're either an infant stuck in a car, which is the saddest. It's pretty awful. You're elderly and you're somehow shut in or infirm and your power goes out, which is equally sad. Or you're probably trapped if you're just a healthy adult out in the desert or something. Right. And heat stroke, there's three things. Heat stroke is the third in a series of escalating problems, right? Yeah. You have heat cramps and then heat exhaustion. And then heat stroke. Yeah. And when you have heat stroke, you're in big trouble. So your body has two ways of cooling itself down sweating, like you said, and then pumping your blood close to the surface of your skin, which is pressed up against the ambient air, which should be cooler, which is why you flush. Right, yeah. In babies, like you say, if you're trapped in a car, a baby's sweat process mechanism isn't very well developed, so it's not going to get cool. Right. That's so sad. And then the other problem with heat stroke is you lose your ability to salivate, so you can't swallow. So if you're out in the desert, even if you have water, after a point, you can't drink fluids any longer. They have to be introduced intravenously. That's right. That's bad news. That's very bad news. And your blood thickens, too, Chuck. With heat stroke? Yeah. Really? Yeah. You're one step away from saying the word coagulate. I'm just like if you are very hot and you're overheated and you're not cooling down, Josh, and you see some of the following, then you should really try and get into some shade, toot. Sweet. Rapid pulse, very strong, like you said. I imagine the heart speeding really fast. Hot, dry skin, headache, dizzy, hyperventilating. And these, I get the sense, escalate as we go here. Hyperventilate, confusion, nausea, seizures, hallucination, and then unconsciousness. Yeah. So if you're hallucinating, you're about to go into the light or into the dark, depending on which way you want to look at, especially if your hallucinations, like, get in the shade and your organs are going to swell, you could go into shock and you could die. Yeah. Pretty easy. Your whole body can just shut down. And that's just from heat. That's not even from the sun's rays or damage or anything. That's just from getting so hot. Right. Unbelievable. And apparently when your blood does thicken, once you hit that 104 degree mark and your blood starts to thicken, it can't be pumped towards the surface any longer. You're not sweating. You can't swallow. Right. After that, you reach a point where your body temperature just skyrockets up, and that's that for you. Really? Yes. You're cooked. I wonder how high I can get. I think it's at 100 812. Really? And then you're dead. I know. That when you have a really bad fever, if it gets up to a certain point, it's hospital time. Well, plus, a bad fever can cause brain damage. That's right. Josh and I look for some newsy items for this. And of course, it's always just some sad story about a parking lot, but workers in Japan, the nuclear reactor site, have been suffering from heat stroke, and so they've got cool room set up and they're very aware of this problem. From the radiation? The heat generated by the radiation. Yeah. And just being in the suits. And they can't sweat and evaporate like they normally could. Goodness. I know. Wow. It's like, add one more risk. The dangerous job they're doing. Yeah. So what's another way the sun can kill you? Chuck? Skin cancer. Josh no drum roll. There no drumroll there. The sun emits many different wavelengths of light. And the one that is damaging to us is UV ultraviolet light that we cannot see, which means bluerth and blue shorter. It's bluer than blue. Yeah. Remember? Yeah, that's right. Redder than red, bluerth and blue. We can't see it. That's right. But we can be damaged by it. Yeah, very much so. Check. There's two kinds of UV rays that hit us here on Earth UVA and UVB. Right. UVA is the kind of ultraviolet radiation that really penetrates the skin down to the dermis and does a lot of cellular damage. DNA damage. Right. UVB is the sun's burning rays. It's more potent, actually, than UVA. But first of all, it can be deflected by window glass, so it doesn't hit us when we're inside. But secondly, it can't penetrate as deep into the skin, so it doesn't cause cancer. It just burns you, literally. But UVA is the one that gets in there and can disrupt the normal function of cells. Right. And if you get wrinkled and freckled, this is all because of UV exposure. I reckon if you never saw the sun's rays, you would probably look very youthful. I would think so, too, for much longer than your average Joe out in the sun. We do have proteins in the skin called elastin, and they're very springy and fibrous. It helps us to stay young. But UV exposure damages and breaks down. That Alaskan, and eventually that could lead to lesions, tumors, that kind of thing. Right. And UVA specifically goes in and basically turns our melanocytes, the melanin producing pigment producing cells in the skin. It basically says you're cancerous now. Right. Because cancer is uncontrolled cellular growth. Right? That's right. So the melanocytes start to reproduce a little too quickly, then all of a sudden, you have a tumor. There are three kinds of skin cancer, Josh. There's the basil. Is it basil or basil? Basil, I would imagine probably both. Chuck. I think if you're from England, you'd say basil. Basil, cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma. And the first two aren't very dangerous. They're about 95% of all cases of skin cancer are the first two kinds. And you're doing okay. If you have one of those, you can get it removed. It's really not that big of a deal. Right. It turns to a melanoma. That's when it's serious. And about 75% of skin cancer deaths are from melanoma. Yeah. And if you find it early enough and treat it, melanoma has a pretty high survival rate around, I think, 98% survival rate, five year survival rate. If you get it before it gets to the limbs, when it hits the limbs, then the survival rate starts to drop dramatically. Yeah. And this is an interesting fact. 80% of your whole life's, UV exposure comes before you're 18. Right. And I thought about that, and it makes perfect sense because that's when you're a little kid who jumps like an idiot through a sprinkler or something like that, that's when you're outside, you're not punched over a computer, you're outdoors. Yeah. And there's only I mean, if you're a parent, you should take care of your child and slather them with sunscreen. But every day, if your kids out playing and very active a lot, chances are you're going to be slipping up there. But I don't know if that's necessarily okay, though. I think that needs to be a habit. Kind of like your kid doesn't come out of the womb, like, give me some pants and some shirts. The kid knows to put on a pant. I shirt right away. You're like, I need to cover up. I think this needs to be part and parcel with going out if you want to. I think skin cancer is a far greater problem than people are aware. Yes. And I think you make a good point in this article that it's one of the more preventable kinds of cancers just by using sunscreen. Yeah. So I think it should be part of going outside, and apparently also not just on sunny days. On that cloudy, overcast days, like 80% of the UV rays make it to the surface. And tanning beds, too, if you think that it's not sun. So it's not hurting me. That tanning bed is the same thing. Yes. Can we talk for a second about SPF? Can we solve the riddle of what SPF is? Yeah. They recommend 15, but I would say higher than that. If you want total protection, they changed it recently. Oh, really? 30 now? American Academy of Dermatology recommends 30. They should double it just to be on the safe side. Pretty much, yeah. But I suspect that there is something of a mechanism like that involved. Because SPF means some protection factor. The number right. Is the number of times longer that product will prevent a sunburn than unprotected skin. Right. So if it takes ten minutes for unprotected skin to get a sunburn SPF 15, it will take 150 minutes in that same sunlight. Right. The problem is they're like, well, you should still go ahead and reapply this every 2 hours anyway, at least. And then after you sweat or after you're in the water, so that's 2 hours at the most. So an SPF 15 would protect you, and yet they say SPF 30 is recommended. I don't understand it, but I mean, any idiot can look at suntan lotion it's SPF 70 compared to SPF five and see that it's thicker. Yeah. So I guess that's just it either that or you can just put primer on yourself, right, and really protect yeah, but I've always wondered what SPF was. How they categorize that. Yes. You didn't know that till now? No. Interesting. That's because you don't wear it. I do wear it. Why do you look like George Hamilton? I don't. Am I aging or something like that? No, you're just tanned. I'm always tanned. I'm tan. All right, so broccoli. And if you want to help yourself out, eat broccoli and eat Brussels sprouts. And if you say, I don't like Brussels sprouts, grill them, baby. So good. I've never had them. Yeah, man, I never ate them either. But what you do is you get the Brussels sprouts. You kind of chop off a little nubby end, toss it in a bowl with some olive oil, and whatever your spices, salt, pepper, rosemary, whatever you like, throw it on the grill and grill it so good. I do the same exact thing, but instead of the grill, I just roast them for a while until they're really crisp. Good stuff. Or another thing you can do is chop it in half and then do it in the skillet, and it kind of caramelizes on the flat sides. Yeah. I have a good recipe for broccoli. So you take as much broccoli as you can find, chop off the stalks, take the whole thing, put it into a plastic bag, and throw it away. You don't like broccoli? I hate broccoli. That's so weird. I love broccoli. I think broccoli is the most disgusting thing that's ever been on this planet. I think broccoli is the worst thing the Romans ever invented. I think broccoli is delicious. And they say steaming is probably the raw is the best way to eat it. But I'm not into raw broccoli. I have to steam mine a little bit. It is kind of tasteless, though. Not super flavorful. You're just not having it, are you? No, I think it's disgusting. It's actually the taste that I can't stand. All right, so, anyway, the reason I brought all this up is that there's a topical compound called ISC four found in these vegetables. And they think that if they add this, they've made a more robust version called ICS four. And if you add this to sunscreen, which they're trying to get done, they think it might be able to really beef up the skin cancer prevention. By adding this stuff from these veggies to your sunscreen, it enhances its protectiveness. Very much so it is way too early. No, I don't think we should record at 09:00 A.m. Any longer. This is an emergency. All right, so, Josh, the final way, and this is the most interesting and saddest condition of all is called zeromaigmentosum. Yes. And that is very rare. Zero derma is Latin for dry skin, and pigmentosum refers to the skin colorations that you get if you're one of the sufferers. One of the few sufferers. Yeah. I think there's been, like, 250 cases in the US. Yeah. At any given moment, I think there's about 250. So, Chuck, where did you find this condition? How did you stumble upon us when you're writing this article? I think I was just looking for, you know, I think it came from a skin cancer site, because you're very much likely to die from skin cancer if you have this condition. Right. Probably by the time you're middle aged, I think a person with zero dermapigmentosa, you say that they're we'll call it XP. Okay? That's what most people call it. Right. People with XP are about 1000 times more likely to develop skin cancer than a person without it. And that can be up to 2000 times more likely. And so this isn't from laying out. This is like walking around in your house right. And getting indirect UV radiation from indirect sunlight. Any kind of sunlight whatsoever. Yeah, indirect direct obviously is the worst. Even fluorescent lights. Yeah. There's been a bunch of stories about this and they're all very sad and sad titles. And this one from the New York Times called Midnight's Children and it's about Camp Sundown which is a camp that these parents started who have a daughter who suffers from this. And it's basically a couple of weeks out of the year. In the summer. They just have a summer camp for kids that have this and it's all flip flop it's all at night. All the activities are because they can't go out in the sun at all. And it's not just that camp don't families who have a kid with XP have to basically do that anyway? Like flip flop their night time and daytime? Yeah, the camp is just to give them some fun and like to be able to go to camp and socialize and flirt and do things that normal kids do. That's very sweet. Because one of the saddest parts about this is your sequester to your house during the day and you're outfitted all the windows are outfitted with the UV blockers and everything. And all the kids that are interviewed are like when we're awake at night, my friends are all asleep so there's nothing to do at night. That's one of the big problems if you're a kid. Yeah, that and infomercials are big problems of staying up all night. Yeah, that's true, Chuck. They recently figured out what people with XP are lacking. Right. It's an end time. Yeah. Let's hear it. Well, there's a couple of ways to say this the wrong way, which is what I'm about to do, and then the right way, which I'll probably never get, but Palmer CITA. That sounds right. Or depending on which part of the same article you want to consult. Polymerase ada. Like the Greek letter. Right. Basically, it's an enzyme that allows DNA to continue replicating successfully even when UVA radiation has damaged it. Right. It's basically like the shield. Like, you guys keep going on, I'll stand here and take all the bullets. And there's actually hopeful that it's an enzyme because stem cells are gangbusters at replacing enzymes that are missing or lacking in conditions. So there could be an all out cure for this in the next decade or so. Well, there is none now. And one of the reasons why it's taken so long to crack the nut so to speak, is that it's genetic. And both parents have to have this gene that you inherit. Right. So if both parents have to have it and it's probably not the kind because if you have the gene and you don't have it, you don't even think about it you're getting married to somebody who also has this gene that you have no idea exist. All of sudden, A, you have a kid that's born with this and it's usually diagnosed by the age of two because the son so clearly damages your baby. The story from the New York Times, the mother describes this the baby was about six weeks old and we put her to sleep in the shade of a tree. She began screaming hysterically like three minutes later. It's not like all day long. It's literally go out into the sun and your skin starts blistering immediately. She said in less than two minutes, her arms broke out in ferocious blisters that we thought were ant bites at first. Each burn began as a little pinprick then swelled up to the size of a quarter into a blister. You could literally see it happening in front of your eyes like time lapse photography. Oh, God. It's like something like a vampire in a movie goes out and the sun just starts burning their skin. Well, it's unbelievably sad. And that damage, like we said, they're 1000 to 2000 times more likely to develop skin cancer, apparently. So it takes about 60 years of sun exposure before skin cancer really develops. For most people and people with XP, it starts the same. Tumors can start by age ten. So you have skin damage, like horrific external skin damage. But at the same time the radiation damage is just working over time beneath the surface too. Yeah. Well, the same girl, they go to this pizza place at 10:00 P.m., one of their favorite pizza joints because it doesn't have fluorescent lights. And there's literally like a case with sodas and ice cream with fluorescent lights and the kid can't even go near that. Wow. Like all the other kids are there picking out their ice cream and she can't do it. I mean, she's a very sweet girl. And she says, Night is cool. I love the moon so much better than the sun. And seems like she's got a great attitude. But it definitely is a scary thing when you can't play with other kids in the daylight. Like she's literally never seen the sun. She said, I've seen it on television. Wow. Isn't that sad? Yes, but NASA is on the scene, right? Yeah. They got a cool suit. Yes. For like two grand, which is relatively cheap considering what it can let you do. But basically you can put a kid in one of these suits, a kid with XP in one of these suits and they can walk out into the sunlight. It blocks, I think, 999% of UVA and UVB radiation. And it's bulky suit or whatever, but they can go outside and play with their friends. Yeah. So there is some hope. There's the stem cell thing too, right? And there's Camp Sundown, which is awesome. And if you are one of the few suffers, I'm sure you already know about XPS, but it's the XP Society and that's like the place to go for information and support and stuff like that. So mega flares, heat stroke, skin cancer, zero derma pigmentosum. Anything else? I don't think so. Those are the ways. Yeah. And actually one extra fact about XP is a lot of the sufferers go blind because it's very harsh on the eyes as well. Good Lord. I know. I'm so sorry. This is pretty heavy for 09:00 A.m.. It really is. Bump you up for the day. Well, if you want to learn more about the sun and ways it can kill you and you want to read Chuck Bryant's first sentence in this one good stuff. You can type in can the sun kill you? In the search bar at our venerable websitehouseupworks.com, right? That's right. And it's time for listener mail. Chuck. Yes. This is a little long, but this is actually a follow up and so few follow ups do we get. This is a guy. Dan. I don't know if we read it on the air, but he was inspired by our Bouton podcast member. Do you need money to be happy? That kind of thing? No, that was Bhutan. Onto something with gross national happiness. Well, yes, but the essence of it was money equating happiness. And should you give it all up and drop out? Yeah, we called for stories at the end. So this new Dan did so a year and a half ago and he told me he was going to do it at the time and he actually followed up a year and a half later. Wow. So this is like a real test case. So two years ago I was living the American dream. 2000 sq ft house in rural New Hampshire, working a stable job at a Fortune 100 company, raking in at six figures. I had the dog. I had the loving girlfriend. But my life was hell. I worked mornings, nights, weekends, stressed beyond comprehension and commuted 2 hours a day and spent my free time doing house related chores. Saw so little of my dog that when I came home he didn't even get up off the couch to greet me. Isn't that sad? Lazy dog. Okay. My girlfriend and I discussed the predicament and came to the conclusion we would choose to continue. We could choose to continue living such a dreadful life until we died or we can make a break for a new experience on our own terms. So that's what they did. They put their house on the market, sold it that spring, quit their jobs, got married in June with a simple celebration and a bluegrass band and. Then with only a car, our dog and a couple of suitcases set off for Portland, Oregon. Not sure why Portland? I think that's where everybody in the situation starts. Portlandia? Yeah. It's been close to a year now living in Portland, and it's been an interesting experience. There was a close call. We were running out of funds, still unemployed and almost cashed in on our dreams. But we were saved by a random occurrence that landed my wife a job. They met Daddy Warbuck. Despite 10% unemployment in Portland, we both had jobs by January and we're confident that we could be successful in our transition. Now we live in a small one bedroom apartment. I make one third of the salary that I did back in New Hampshire, but I only work 40 hours a week. I love my job. I have a 30 minutes bicycle commute to work, which is along the waterfront. I only drive my car twice a month. I used to have heart palpitations from the daily stress. Now I have none. I have a lot of free time. On Mondays, my wife and I have dance lessons. Nice. Wednesdays, I'm in a kickball league, which you know something about. Sure. I've played kickball with Jerry. Yes. On her team. Never should have played kickball again. Tuesdays, I volunteered a local nonprofit theater. Thursdays and Fridays I catch several pints at the local pubs. And weekends I hike and experience the great things that Portland has to offer. He's written and produced songs and he says he actually has saved more money now than when he had the big six figure job. That is so cool. Isn't that cool? I'll bet his hair is increased in length by at least 40%. And now when I come home, the dog is wagging his tail meeting me at the door. So what a great ending here. He says it hasn't been easy in traditional terms, but it has been easy for us. Once you decide that what you own has no value to you, then most things that you worry about go away. That is so cool. Dan. Yeah, that's basically the essence. He said having free time is a great opportunity to get to know your significant other, to volunteer and to get in shape. And that is all I have to say from Dan. Well, congratulations, Dan. That's a fantastic story. Yeah, I'm literally giddy you went from a dirty uppie to a dirty hippie in a year. We applaud you for it. Yes, it's an excellent story and I'm glad he wrote in. Thank you very much for following up, Dan. Yeah, I'd like to hear from Dan every year to see what's going on. So, Dan, I challenge you to email us again next spring. OK. How about that? That's good stuff. Chuck, if you have any stories of amazing transformation, it doesn't have to be necessarily like taking a step back. It could be anything. If you haven't seen somebody in a couple of years, and they change from point A to point B, and it's just been astounding. We want to hear about it. We love stories like that, right? Yeah. You can post it on our Facebook page, facebook. Comstuffynow. You can tweet it to us syskpodcast. Or you can send us an old fashioned email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housestepworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The house upworks. iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. 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 Kilgarif, Georgia Hardstart, 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." |
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